Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you

Won't you read my mind?
Don't you let me lie here
And die here

Peeta

My teeth were clenched and my jaw muscles were so tense it almost hurt. I had difficulties keeping my leg still since it kept on bobbing up and down. She was so pale. So incredibly pale and her dark eyes were fixed on me all the time. I knew what she was looking for but couldn't give her that. The image of her lifeless body on the wet forest floor kept on popping up in my mind. She had been almost completely covered in leaves, only small parts of her pale skin had been visible. If she hadn't been that pale, I would've never found her. I would've probably just walked past her. The thought should've scared me, or at least worried. But there was nothing. Dull emptiness and this throbbing headache. A constant hammering in my mind that always came when I was thinking about her too hard. I felt strangely torn. There was a part in me that had been scared to death at her sight. And then there was the part which didn't care at all whether she lived or rotted on the forest floor. I wondered if she was aware that those few words she said to me on our way back had been the first real conversation we had since I came back.

Probably not. If I had learned one thing, then it was that I couldn't blame her. It had always been her nature. She didn't understand. My expression hardened and I was glad to sit in the shade. I placed my chin in one hand and looked at her, waiting. Her wet hair clung to her forehead that was still covered in a thin layer of sweat. Her normally deep red lips were blue and cold. The short kiss we shared was hardly worth mentioning. I might as well have kissed an ice cube. I had felt absolutely nothing. Even if I tried. Sometimes I dreamed of her death. I'd wake up soaked in sweat, heart racing and my mind running wild at the thought of losing her. And then there were mornings when I woke up and barely remembered her name. Let alone remembering what she used to be for me. Or what they told me she used to be. My mind was nothing but a pile of disturbing puzzle pieces. And each piece had her face on it. Her face glowing with rage, distorted in pain, hateful, loving, helpless, aggressive, ready to kill me and kiss me the next moment. It was a miracle I even was able to get a normal thought out of that mess. But seeing here there now, pale, wounded and helpless. It moved something in me. Just as like sight of her, as she'd been standing outside in her nightgown a few days ago had. Yes, in that moment, I loved her. Everything had pulled me towards her, I wanted to wrap myself around her and never let her go. But what I wanted wasn't the broken girl in front of me that looked at me so needy and helpless. I wanted the girl who broke every rule to protect her sister and mother to keep them alive.

I wanted the pale 12 year old which I had thrown the bread. I remembered our first encounter. That fragile, way too thin girl with the big eyes and full lips, whose voice had given me goose bumps when she sang. But the girl lying in that bed was far from it. Snow had succeeded in what I had tried so hard to prevent. She was broken and I had been changed, had been shaped and sculpted by him like dough. My head jerked reflexively at the memory of the things they had done to me. Cries rang through my mind and I tried to mute them as good as I could. They were her cries. Katniss screaming in my head as they were ripping her into a thousand pieces. Everything in my head was connected to her. I had to take a deep breath to control my raging anger. It wasn't her fault, I reminded myself. She was just a girl that had been used. By everyone. The Game Makers, Snow, the Revolution, Coin. They all had used Katniss for their own matter and by that destroyed the wonderful, pure girl that I fallen for head over heels. Sure, I could still see parts of that girl in this Katniss. There were short moments where I knew exactly who I was and who she was and what she meant to me. However, these moments were too short and far too rare. My jaw was clenched so tight it hurt.

Again I saw her lying on the forest floor. This time maggots crawled out of her empty eye sockets, her face was sunken in, skin was missing here and there. I had come too late and she was dead. The image was so real, I had to blink really hard to focus back on reality. How should I stay close to her when I never knew whether what I saw was real? These thoughts had been haunting me for weeks and led to a hard but dearly needed decision. I knew that I no longer loved her. Not like before. I couldn't help that I was falling out of love for her and she didn't seem to really want me back. She didn't talk to me, didn't respond to anything I did, she plainly ignored me. But was it indifference? Was her mind just as destroyed as mine? I was trying hard to remember what I knew about her. Her silence wasn't malicious or repellent. She just probably didn't know what to say. A shy, skinny Katniss flickered past my mind's eye. With trembling fingers, she was digging through our garbage cans, she was half-starved and looking for something edible. How sorry I had felt for her, how much her sight had been hurting me back then. I focused back to the present. Hazelle and Greasy had just undressed her and I let my eyes trail over her naked body. Scars, burns, faded bruises. I knew this sight. And in between the torn flesh there was snow-white skin that once used to be tan from the sun. My gaze wandered back to her face. She still looked at me.

Katniss. Katniss. Katniss.

Her name sounded so familiar and yet so wrong in my head. It drove me crazy. Joanna had visited me once in my cell in District 13. "Now you ca see her too right?" she had said. And yes. I had seen her at that time. The band on her wrist, her ruffled hair, she wasn't the monster of my nightmares but she was also by far not the beauty that I had been promised. At that time I had been absolutely sure that I'd never be able to feel anything for her ever again. How wrong I was. From my cell I could watch Finnicks wedding on a small screen. Watching as she danced. And that sparked something in me. It had triggered some old memories that had made my heart jump. Only for a brief moment. Then it had all went down the hill until I somehow ended where I was now. As if everything, really everything that had happened eventually had to lead to this night. I had saved her fucking life. We we're even. We were free.

Disillusionment spread through my mind. Meanwhile Katniss had been dressed and fixed up. Hazelles voice interrupted my thoughts. "Do you need something Peeta? I've got some soup downstairs." She offered but I thankfully shook my head and she left us. Finally, we were alone. I felt that strange pull in my chest that I always felt when we were alone. As if a hook had been anchored in my chest that inevitably pulled me towards her

"Will you stay with me?" She asked quietly and I stood up. I walked over to her bed and crouched next to it. Gently I brushed some dark strands of hair from her forehead. There it was again, one of those moments where I remembered with brutal clarity how much I loved this young woman and that my whole world revolved around her. She was the center of my broken universe. I saw the helpless longing in her eyes as she desperately searched for an answer that I could not give her.

"Always."

I whispered in a voice that sounded strange in my head. But she smiled and closed her eyes. I stayed where I was and watched as she fell asleep, as her face relaxed, and she sank deeper and deeper into her dreams. For minutes I looked at her face, again and again stroking the damp strands from her forehead and then leaned forward to kiss her gently. Nothing. I wasn't indifferent, I felt incredibly much, just not what had I expected to feel. Snow had shredded my heart and everything in it to pieces. Again screams rang through my head. Darius. I shut my eyes and breathed away my anger. Every time this happened I had the feeling of losing myself completely, it was already difficult under normal circumstances to remind me who I was. Near her it was almost impossible.

Katniss.

My Katniss.

That sounded strange in my head even when I remembered that I had been calling her that for years in my mind. So many fragments of my positive memories had returned by now. I slowly leaned back until I sat down and could wrap my arms around my knees. I was seriously worried about her reaction to my decision and what it would do to her. How she would deal with it that this time I would be the one who left her. This was something I very clearly remembered. Her leaving me. Again my jaw muscles tightened. The dull, malignant voice that Snow had planted in my head hoisted a triumphant "she deserves it!" And I gritted my teeth. No. She did not deserve it, even if I only too clearly felt the stings of countless rejections. I wondered how I could've been so blind. She was a much better actress than I would have thought it possible. After all, I had fallen for her act for weeks. Her kisses, touches and glances. I had seen the videos from the arena. It seemed like a miracle to me that anyone in Panem had actually bought her act.

It had been my naivety and her innocence in what she'd done that had made us so believable. My unwavering faith in her love that for so long hadn't been real. I also knew the recordings from the second arena. Her shocked and desperate response to my death. What had happened there on her face, hadn't been fake. None of it. And our night at the beach? Even now the memory flashed through me and I arched an eyebrow, sighing. That hadn't been acting. But all that was over. We both needed a reboot, a fair chance at a life of our own. I thought of the song she had sung a few days ago. I can not make you love me if you do not. The memory tore at my heart. Again changed my view on it. I saw her full lips in the moonlight so pale and soft. Her high cheekbones, the curve of her long eyelashes. She was beautiful. So vulnerable. But why didn't she notice that she was slipping through my fingers? I wanted to beg her to notice it, to prevent the inevitable.

~ Please, please tell me you know that I've got to let you go. 'Cause I can't help falling out of love with you. ~

'Please' I pleaded in my thoughts, 'Please tell me you know I have to let you go. That I have to stop loving you…' But I knew that that wouldn't happen. If I wouldn't end it now, we'd eventually destroy each other. I wasn't what she needed, I couldn't protect her. Just as she wasn't what I needed. As long as she continued changing from the monster to my dream woman and back to the monster inside my mind we couldn't possibly have any sort of relationship. How had Haymitch called it? Make a clean cut. I would make a clean cut. I had to. She wasn't herself nor was I. How should any good come from this wrecked and twisted thing that our love had become? I thought of all the pictures I had painted of her. Not a day had passed on which I hadn't drawn her at least once. My basement was stuffed with pictured of her. There had been none on my walls a few days back had been the result of me throwing a tantrum. I remembered the look in her eyes as she had noticed, how pain had shadowed her expression. None of it had been an act on her part. Now she really loved me and and all I could think of was to… what? Break up with her? That sounded silly and wrong. Break our engagement? That had never been serious.

This was pathetic and ridiculous. Again, the dark voice hissed triumphantly in my head and I blocked it out. Katniss slept like a stone, I could've yelled at her and she wouldn't have woken up. Not with that amount of morphine in her body. A movement in the corner of the room made my head turn. Immediately my body tensed. But it was only the Buttercup who sneaked up on me, rubbed his ugly furry head against my legs, cast a quick glance at Katniss and decided that it was far exciting outside than it was in here. "How right you are..." I mumbled and got up. For a while I stood at the open window, looking over her garden and beyond to the woods behind the fence. How different our lives could have been. Surely she would have married Gale. Unless I would have found the courage to finally talk to her. What would have become of us? I vaguely remembered that she actually never wanted to be married and that children had been out of the question for her. I wanted children. Didn't I? My head told me that I wanted to. That I wanted a family. How unreachable and far away that life was now. There was nothing left of my home and family but ashes. I had become a stranger to myself. As if I had two lives. Mine and that of a stranger I just had happened to watch. With a deep sigh I ran my hands over my face and buried it in them. This wasn't me. I groaned, dug my fingers into the wood of the window frame and stared into the dark night. The moon had been swallowed by clouds and the terror of blackness danced before my eyes.

Not real. Not real. Not real.

I repeated my mantra but eventually closed the window. I dropped back into the chair and went through all the options of how out lives could go on. But no matter what constellation, it never felt right. Because my once upright, unconditional, infinite love for her that had get me going for such a long time had shrunk to a vestigial something in my chest and as long as I couldn't be sure it would get back to what it once had been, I didn't wanted to risk my heart. The voice in my mind laughed roughly. It would be only a temporary separation, I told myself. Nothing is final. But I had to be sure that she loved me and that I loved her. Again I felt the pull in my chest. Only this time I ignored it. I stayed where I was and tried to find the right words to make her understand why I could not be near her. Eventually I fell asleep.