(fitting)
It was fitting, he supposed, that this should happen. Like father, like son (and, in the same way, like mother like daughter).
Sitting at a table with one too few occupied chairs, Peeta stared down at his now empty plate and ran his finger over the rim of his half-empty glass. The bitter aftertaste of black coffee rested on his tastebuds, and the even more sour taste of a halfhearted goodbye weighed on his mind.
It was only appropriate, he thought, that she should run off with a miner. To lay aside a life of comfort for what she knew.
Well, he was a general now, and so their life was rather plush, but that was beside the point.
She had given up a beautiful, polished pearl for a lump of dark, chalky coal. Or so his wife told him. He didn't remind her that from coal comes diamonds and that diamonds can crush pearls.
No, instead he just rocked their baby to bed and fell asleep with the woman he married, though every night he replaced her blond hair with black, her pale complexion with a tanned olive, her bright green eyes with deep grey.
He didn't know who she was. Her skin was no longer hollow and pallid, her hair was cut shorter and worn loose, her body had filled out with flesh exactly where it was needed, and her eyes were so much softer. She was smiling. And laughing. And hanging onto a strong, dark arm belonging to that miner (no, general). And there was a little bundle of soft fabric and olive skin and dark hair nestled at her side.
The words he could hear from across the room were an unparalleled melody that made his heart absolutely melt.
He had always dreamed of dying without regrets. That dream, of course, had dissolved into the smokey District 12 air long before. So he would take his last breath an incomplete and unforgiven man.
It was fitting, he supposed, that this should happen. Like father like son.
It was only appropriate, he thought, that the Girl on Fire should set his life aflame one last time and render him mute. Even if his speechlessness was no longer caused by her warmth and glow, but by the smoke that trailed after her instead.
Team Gale forever. Or at least until we come up with something better than the whole "team" thing, because that's way too Twilight.
Though I must say that writing this made me pity Peeta. A little bit. Haha, pity Peeta, that's kind of an alliteration, hahaha…
Merry Christmas, wonderful community of FanFiction readers slash writers slash, uh...other people. Or Happy Hanukkah. Or Kool Kwanzaa. Or satisfactory nondenominational capitalist wintertime gift-giving season. Or whatever.