A/N: Yes, I'm on an accelerated uploading schedule. :) Trying to finish/post all of this before I go on vacation in 3 weeks.

Bent

"It feels strange," I say into the awkwardness. "You leaving - me seeing you off, this time."

Gale smiles a little at that; it erases the dark and distant thoughts on his face. I try to call all our history together to the front of my mind. He has changed so little, really over the last five years; everything between us has, though, and I can no longer - I desire no longer to - force it back into place. Whatever lies between Gale and me in the future will have to be built over again from scratch. "That's true," he says.

"Look, if you could do me a favor," I add, then bite my lip. "Could you try not to get yourself killed?"

His smile deepens. "Of course. I think they've trained me pretty well."

"There's so much more than skill," I tell him earnestly. "There's a lot of luck - and outside assistance. And it's so much more real in person that it is on camera. It's much quieter, so incredibly quiet, and it hurts - here," I touch his chest, "to spill blood up close. Like every impulse toward life in you is bent out of shape and it doesn't fit right anymore."

His expression grows very patient. "Sometimes these are the things we must sacrifice so that other people can survive, Katniss."

"I know," I tell him, dropping my hand.

"I was born for this," he says. "Whatever happens to me, you have to promise me you won't wallow in it. You'll move on, knowing that I ended things on my terms, fighting - no longer a slave."

As he touches my cheek with a wry smile, I'm thinking how bad I am at moving on; and them I'm startled by his sudden move toward me, the crush of his lips against my cheek. Nothing more - nothing intimate. Our kisses never have been. Never will be.

"I had to do that," he tells me, a smile in his voice. "At least one last time."

I watch him leave Command - through the artificial meadow and out towards the double-locked doors and the elevators. And I know he's right. This is what he was born to do. No - check that. None of us were born to this. This is what he was shaped, molded, made to do - through temperament and trauma and circumstance. There is no way he would have ever survived, unscathed, the wrath of the Capitol in District 12. Of all of us whose courses have been altered - our lives turned upside down by my return from the Games with Peeta - it might be Gale who has benefited the most. I cross my fingers for him - that he comes back unscathed. Then I leave Command myself.

I make my way up, up, all the way outside, to the fenced-in training ground. It's cold now - the air is frosty. But I breathe it deep into my lungs, grateful for it. I am uneasy, even more restless underground than I used to be. Short of joining the military myself and following Gale, I'm out of ideas for getting myself to the Capitol. Now that I've finally started attending regular strategy meetings, Coin herself is aloof and uncommunicative, and there seems to be no current plan for the Mockingjay, other than prolonged and unnecessary recuperation. I'm hoping I can persuade Plutarch to send me out for a propo, as close to the Capitol as possible, and I can start making my way there on my own.

There are complications to work out first, of course. I don't want to leave my mother and Prim in Coin's care when I go. I don't trust that they won't be made to pay for my transgressions. If there is a way to isolate them from my actions, I have to find it. That leaves Peeta to Haymitch's ….

Peeta. As if I've conjured him up by the thought, I see him now, rounding a corner at the back of the fence line, jogging along with some teenagers - some I recognize, kids from the Seam - all in the baggy District 13 uniform. As is Peeta.

A swoop of anger follows swiftly on the jolt of fear. He is neither shackled nor particularly well watched. He's even armed.

I run back down into 13, deep down again - back to Command. When I step off the elevator, I realize that I don't know where he actually lives in this warren. But I round up Beetee without much trouble, and he gives me directions.

Haymitch has a room surprisingly close to the hospital ward. I suppose that, since both his tributes have spent most of their time there, this makes a certain amount of sense. I startle him by bursting in without knocking - a risky move, probably - but I'm in no mood to worry about Haymitch's feelings. But he's just napping in a chair.

"What?"" he asks me blurrily.

"What in the hell are they doing with Peeta?"

He tries to hide - but just can't quite - the consternation on his face. "What do you think they are doing, Katniss?" he asks me. "He's a rather valuable piece of propaganda."

"It looks like they're prepping him to go into combat."

"They might try to manufacture things to look like it, but it will be mostly props, I-."

"Mostly? They're not actually sending him - to the Capitol. Are they?"

He shakes his head. "You do realize that I have very little control or input as far as what goes on around here, right?"

"You're the one who suggested that I go out into the battlefield," I reply.

"How quickly did you want Coin losing interest in the Mockingjay?" he responds. "We needed results, and fast. And I had to work that room."

I snort, but remember that he is correct on that one. "And now?"

He shrugs, unhappily. "Hopefully it won't take long - to end it. They like Peeta - maybe not as much as they all like you, but it will be effective - showing him fighting for the rebellion."

"And dying for it - possibly?"

He is silent for long moments, the silence stretching everywhere, binding us together - a shared grief, disappointment, worry and a heavy despair. "We'll try to keep the margin for errors low, but -."

I run an impatient hand through my hair. "But what?"

"I admit I am at a loss - what to do with him now. When I talk to him, he is not eager to go back, but … occasionally he mentions that he thinks he has unfinished business - with the people who captured him. I know that doesn't sound like him…."

"Like who? Like Peeta Mellark? Not the old one, maybe - but this one? It sounds about right to me."

"Maybe we shouldn't let the new one make decisions with the old one's life."

I shake my head, as if to clear it. I feel sorry for Haymitch - I truly do. He is clinging on to some faint hope of recovery, refusing to admit that we were defeated. Not entirely, of course; Peeta lives (at least for now) - just not for us. But it's time we stop thinking of him as if he is two persons - one hiding behind the other. "You just said you don't really have any say in the decisions, so how are you planning to achieve that particular goal?"

He blinks at me. By the time I realize what he means by it, I've left his room in frustration and am taking out all my pent-up anger on the staircase with my stomping boots. It's only when I'm two floors away from the corridor where I live that I get it. He means me - that it is my job, again, to protect Peeta Mellark.

"Mellark. What the hell are you doing?"

He stiffens at the sound of my voice, and turns around very slowly. His raised eyebrows betray his surprise at the weapon - a military gun - that I have trained on him. He gives an exaggerated sigh. "Taking an evening stroll through the woods," he replies, flatly.

We stare at each other for awhile - our expressions too weary, I think, to constitute glares, but sullen, resentful. After a few moments of this, I only want to laugh - to relieve the tension of the silence, but also because this is all just so absurd. He resents me because the Capitol twisted and twisted him until he did. I resent him because he has been twisted. Nothing that is the fault of either of us; just something that was done to us, like the arenas. So, if before I resented unfairly our forced alliance, I should know better than to resent this unnatural enmity between us. It's a waste of energy. Romance … love … that is for the peaceable, anyway. Not me. If you think about it, there's really nothing to resent.

"For two and a half hours after you were expected for 'Reflection Time?'" I ask, sardonically.

Now he does glare at me, as if it is my fault. Not completely without cause. "How did you find me?"

"Don't I always, eventually? Haymitch … was worried about you. He says you are conflicted and - restless."

"So, you've been spying on me?"

I shrug. "Watching you."

"I can't - I can't go back inside there. I'm sick of being confined."

I swallow my sympathetic response and throw him the handcuffs I brought with me. "You haven't proven your reliability yet, Peeta," I tell him. "I'm going to need you to put those on."

"Are you serious?"

"Does it sound like I'm joking?" I retort. Then, when he makes no movement: "Or do you really want me to shoot you - after all this time?"

He grunts. "Seems like it's long overdue."

"What?"

"That was the mistake, wasn't it? Both of us coming out of that arena? And since you were the one who was the killer, it makes sense that I was the one who should have been the corpse. Might have saved -." he chokes on his words. "Might have saved some lives, let alone trouble."

"You're such an asshole," I tell him. And I mean it, too - this stranger who has the body and mind and soul of the boy I could have loved - but all of it, body, mind, soul, just warped enough to change everything. "Explain exactly how adding yourself to the pile of corpses changes the fact that there is a pile of corpses?"

"It changes the fact that I have to remember that there are corpses," he answers, angrily.

"Nice of you to expect me to do it for you," I snarl.

He bends down, picks up the cuffs and locks them over his hands. "You will eventually," he says mildly.

"Sit down."

He sits down under the tree and leans his head back against it. His expression is so bleak, so blank, that I'm frightened all of a sudden that he actually means what he says. I look down at the gun - as if I would actually shoot him. For this? For bolting from 13? He probably deserves a medal, really, for slipping their traces. And I really don't want to go back, either. I sigh, push the pack and bow from my shoulder and toss them to the ground, then sit down in the grass, folding my legs. I stare down at the gun, and it takes on a strange quality in my fingers, ceasing to be a describable object; a collection of misshapen parts - a handle, a barrel, a trigger all crammed together - not straight, not curved - bent and angular - ugly. Death.

I look up, and he's blurry now, a little shiny. This is how I imagine he must see me all the time - as if permanently behind a veil of tears. Damn him. Damn him. "Funny how you're the one who put his hands around my throat and yet I'm the one who's going to kill you."

He shrugs. "I didn't mean it. Not really. I don't even really remember it."

"That's not exactly comforting," I tell him.

"Perhaps not for you," he replies.

I really hate the very specific way that I hate him right now. I hate that he doesn't care about my feelings at all, and I hate myself for hating this. It turns out that, in the absence of love, that void within me fills up pretty easily with uglier emotions. "But why would I want to kill you? For what purpose?"

"Why have you ever?"

I growl in frustration. "I never have - except for when I thought you were helping the Careers kill me. Apart from that - I always thought of you as … " I search frantically for the right word. There really is no single word to describe what he used to be. Except maybe one. "An ally," I say at last.

"Ally," he repeats, almost curiously - as if he's never heard the word before. He moves his lips on it, tasting it. "Ally. I'll add that to the list of words I use to try to figure you out." He pauses. "Friend? Neighbor. Tribute. Victor …. Fiance. Hunter." His voice grows cooler as his list goes on. "Enemy. Target. Mutt." And then, after a pause: "Lover. Ally."

I'm blushing by the end of this. Something in his voice - all the suspicion and resentment - puts me on edge. I've never had to be the calm one, the sane one, in this relationship, and it feels so upside down. "You used to be better with words," I reply shortly.

"I used to be a lot of things."

And then this, which hurts so specifically, so unexpectedly sharply. "You are a lot of things. You - you're a painter. A baker." I'm almost blinded by memories of him, swirls of colors and the scent of herbs. A day he let tea go cold while he drew pictures in a book. A morning I watched him get dressed in the silver light of dawn, pulling on his boots. "You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. You always double-knot your shoelaces." This is impossible. Impossible! How do you tell a person who he is? Everything that he is?

He gapes at me. "How do you know all this about me? We weren't close."

"We weren't - close?" I sputter. "How much closer could we have been?"

He shakes his head. "We were flung together. We were close - but we weren't close."

I stare at my hands - they are rested on my knees, knotted together. I think of fingers making contrasting stripes against each other, locked together. The boy and the girl, merged in desperation - though there was something deliberate about it, too. Something fundamentally expected, clicking into place at the right time. No nightmares that night. No silence, either. The natural, animal rhythm of his groans matching the thrust of his hips. My cries rising and falling, the melody to his beat.

No need to ask each other if we enjoyed it. Cashmere and Gloss probably could hear us, eleven floors down.

Again.

I jump to my feet, collect my weapons and my food.

He looks up at me, puzzled. "What?"

"Time to go back."

"I'm not ready."

I almost laugh. How different he is - how recalcitrant and stubborn. If he erred too much in one direction before, it was to be a little too pliant to my wishes and suggestions. Now he resists me with equal force.

"But I thought you wanted to go back to the Capitol."

"Did Haymitch tell you that, too?"

"Yes ... yes, you may not remember this, but we are a team. He's looking out for you."

He laughs shortly.

"Why would you want to go back, anyway?" I ask him, frowning.

"What else is there for me to do?" he asks.

And for that, I have no answer.