A/N: Hey again! Chapter 10 is up, and it has some angst in it. Anyway enjoy!

Chapter Ten

I don't want to leave Gale alone when we have so little time left together, but something needs doing and it's almost as important as another day with Gale.

I need to say goodbye to those already left behind, one last time, without any distractions.

My father and mother, Prim, Madge and the Hob traders are far away and inaccessible back home and in the afterlife, but I can say a one-sided goodbye right here in the arena. I might not prepare them for my death, but I can prepare myself. I just have to let them go and maybe they'll let me go as well. Miracles do happen, sometimes, but only if you have hope. I know I have a little.

I sit by the stream, a green twig in my hand, absently shifting the pebbles around with it as I try to forget my loved ones. The cold water soaks my boots and the grey day turns into pale gold twilight, but I'm still there. Dead fish and woodland creatures that I dreamily killed lie by my feet, their eyes and mouths open in lifeless gasps for air, and behind me Gale stirs for the first time today.

"Never woke me," he mumbled, shielding his eyes against the glare of the sunset and glancing around to look for me.

"I didn't feel the need to," I respond quietly, barely waking from my reverie. "You needed the sleep and we need this food." I point in the vague direction of my kills and return to my dreaming.

Gale scoots up to me and studies my face – my protruding cheekbones, the dark shadows under my bloodshot eyes, the bruises decorating the pale, sallow skin – and wordlessly gathers me into his arms.

I love silence almost as much as I do Gale – it allows me to relax. I don't need to think of something to say and I'm not one of those people who needs to fill every minute with mundane chatter. Anyway, we are telepathic. I know what he wants to say aloud but won't for fear of upsetting me.

Don't you worry, Catnip. You'll be home and safe and warm before you even know it. Just that you've lost touch with a friend, that's all.

But if he says that I will scream loud enough for every living tribute to hear.

Friend?! Lost touch with a friend? I would have lost the only boy I have ever loved! Gale, how dare you refer to yourself as merely a friend?!

I know he's only trying to make it easier for me – to slowly convince me that he isn't so important, so that it won't be so painful for both him and me when we leave each other. But he knows who he really is now, and he knows that his place in my life won't ever change.

He's so much more than just a friend to me – a companion, a hunter, a partner, a lover and my dream come true. Maybe I mean less to him than he does to me, but either way he's going to be the one to go home. He'll be the one to move his family into the Victor's Village and the one to water Hazelle's plants every day. He'll be the one to go on the Victory Tour six months down the road and the cause of the twelve Parcel Days that the residents of District 12 will soon enjoy.

I know I'm being very selfish condemning him to this grief, but I just don't want to deal with a lost lover.

XxX

We eat by the stream in silence, our boots sitting up on the boulder, pressed up together in a half-embrace to stay warm. Gale's made a small fire and half-cooked the animals I killed, and we drink straight from the stream.

The fake stars seem closer to earth than before when I look at them, and they shine brighter than today's sunset. I absently dig patterns into my meal with my fingernails. Maybe they want to add on to the romance by casting more starlight on us, but it'll all backfire when I lie bloody and dying on the sandy arena floor. Or him. He'll be determined not to carry on after I die, and I need to fix that. And I think I know how.

"Gale," I blurt out, breaking our mental vow of silence. "If I asked you to do something for me, would you? If it would cost you your..." No, I don't want to hint too much by adding in the word 'joy'. He needs to agree, and then he has to go home. It's a manipulative trick, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

"If it would cost you?" I edit and finish lamely, then take a drink of water to banish the raw meat taste in my mouth that suddenly seems to have grown overwhelmingly, nauseatingly strong.

"I would, Catnip," he says, strong and sure and utterly, perfectly ignorant. "I would do anything for you."

Success that is sweet in a sick, wicked way, but success nonetheless, washes over me. I exhale, my breath blowing from my mouth in a warm gust of air, then I whirl around to face him and grab a handful of his jumpsuit, staring straight into the magical depths of his silvery-grey eyes.

"Then go home for me, Gale. Go home and give them my best."

His eyebrows knit tightly together and his face scrunches up in a mask of pain, looking like a man who has just been through hell and back. He closes his eyes tightly. I don't feel or hear his breath any more.

"You know I can't, Catnip," he finally says, but it's in a strained, stricken voice. "It's the one thing I can't do for you. How would I live without you? How would your mother and Prim? Don't you know Hazelle and Rory and Vick and Posy all love you, too? That the traders adore you? And me again – my blessing would be my damnation without you." He takes me back into his arms and buries his face in my hair. "Because we were made for each other, and we are each other's blessing."

He's not saying that I should go home. Which leads me to realize that he doesn't want one of us to return.

It's live together forever in 12 or die together here in the arena.

I make him a promise in my mind, ignoring his latest implication.

They need you, Gale, and I won't let the Capitol take you away from them.

XxX

The night after the next, I find him talking in his sleep, and that in itself is worrisome enough – he's never talked in his sleep before. But what he says, over and over again with little variation terrifies me to the bottom of my broken heart.

"Save us both, save us both, save us both"

A chill runs down my spine and I shudder. The night is suddenly too cold and I pull my coat tighter around my body, wishing for the warmth of Gale's arms but fearing that I might wake him if I go closer. He rolls onto his side and mutters louder. I clamp my hands over my ears and try to remember happy things like my father's voice.

But Gale's relentless mumbling penetrates my hands and I open my mouth in a silent scream. Save us both? Bring us both home? How? Why? What will he do to achieve this?

Eventually I have to wake him and when I do, he starts, grabbing a stray pebble from beside him and throwing it at my head. I can see from the vacantly terrified look in his eyes that he doesn't know who I am. I take him by the shoulders and shake him hard, barely avoiding the pebble he hurled at me.

"Gale!" I hiss furiously into his face, staring deep into his eyes, trying fruitlessly to bring him back and dodge the careless blows he aims at me, until the cloudy gaze fades and he blinks. Now his eyes are wide open, confused and still terrified, but he seems to know who I am now.

But then he snatches me into his arms, exhaling my name, breathing hard, his heartbeat strong and loud and fast in his chest. I lay my head on it, trying to comfort him, but it doesn't work and he seems like a petrified child, no longer the valiant boy who once defended me from man and animal alike.

"Shh, Gale," I whisper, patting his back as gently as I can while he starts to cry quietly.

"I'm so sorry," he sobs, his tears soaking through the fabric on my left shoulder. He buries his face in the hollow of my neck and shoulder and holds onto me tightly, like I'm his lifeline. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Tell me why you are crying," I breathe, trying to soothe him. "Did you have a nightmare?"

He then spills out to me everything that he had lived through in one night of his life – fighting muscular, well-armed Careers, watching the ones he loves being mutilated and tortured to death, seeing me kill myself before his eyes, and feeling like he was slowly transforming into a grief-stricken, animalistic monstrosity himself. His words flow fast and thick, punctuated by choked cries as he holds back sobs he doesn't want me to see.

But maybe I should be seeing those sobs, because they will prepare me for all of his nightmares that will soon come true.

XxX

That night, we see that the girls from 1 and 11 have died, and that we're down to both from 2 and 7 and us, and the boy from 11. It's getting close – I've seen 11's hills and heaps of muscle and the fiery determination in his burgundy eyes. 7 look stocky and strong, at least the last I'd seen of them, and 2 are perpetually in the pink of health. We're doing reasonably well, apart from petrifying delusions and nightmares.

Yes, it's going to be close.