Twenty-six Missing Moments

Because there was so much left unsaid.

Four: D is for dying. In which they look at each other and all they can see is the wedge that's driving them apart. [Katniss/Gale.]

They know from the start that it's not going to be easy—they're just so similar (too similar)—but they're willing to give it a shot. They love each other after all, so how hard can it really be?

They never thought they would have any problems, so they aren't ready for the mess they soon find themselves in. They fight so much that he spends more nights sleeping on the couch than in the bed. It's always the little things that set them off: she didn't do the laundry, he didn't pick up more sugar, and why is the window open?

None of that is really the problem (the real problem, anyway).

She can't look at his face without seeing another one: an innocent little girl with soft blonde hair and blue eyes too sweet for someone who lived a life like hers. The image stings her every time she sees it, leaving a new scar that he does nothing but enflame.

He knows that when she wakes up in the morning and sees him lying next to her (the nights she hasn't kicked him out, anyway), she really wants to see someone else. When he catches her staring out the window, eyes distant and hazy, he knows she's think about the other him, and it's like she punched him.

It's your fault! she wants to scream every time she looks at him. You're the reason she's gone!

You won't love me no matter what I do! he almost yells whenever their eyes meet. I'm just your second-best!

But they never say any of that; neither of them have ever been any good at working through their problems. They think that maybe if they just ignore it, it'll go away and they can be happy.

But it never works out like that.

That's why they're always hurling vicious words that rip out the other's heart and tear it in two. They know they can't face their problems, so they pretend like they don't exist and lash out at each other with whips of harsh words and spill blood and tears over nothing.

They push each other away over nothing because they're too afraid to push each other away over something.

And he's always back the next morning, sometimes with a flower or a ribbon or some sweets. He says the same thing every time: "Can't we please try again?" and she always smiles despite herself and lets him take her back into his arms, because she does love him. But once they aren't tired anymore, it always wears off tense, bitter, and strained. They can hardly even look at each other, hardly say two words.

Prim, their minds whisper. Peeta.

And so they go on ignoring the heavy cloud hanging over them, pretending that they're really fighting about whose turn it is to do the dishes and stubbornly thinking that they've come this far, so they'll be able to pull through anything as long as they trust each other. (But they don't.)

What they don't realize is that something can only break so many times before it's impossible to put back together again.

So I'm actually not dead, and I'm so sorry that this took so long. I just couldn't keep up with my writing once school started, but I'll make sure that doesn't happen next year. I'm definitely not abandoning this story, and I look forward to hearing some more prompts from you guys!

Credit for this prompt goes to minimadi12: it was an idea she had suggested earlier and a prompt that she gave for this chapter that I mixed and matched.

May the odds be ever in your favor,
~Rae