As always, thank you SO much for your reviews, favorite-ing, etc. The reviews for the last chapter were so wonderful and so helpful! You guys are fantastically encouraging.

The Hunger Games do not belong to me.

"Do you think…do you think you could ever forgive me?"

She stares at him. Her first thought is a vehement no. Of course she can't forgive him. Her second thought is an undeniable yes. He's her best friend. She wants him back.

"I don't know," is what she says out loud. "I don't want to. Well…maybe I want to try. But I don't know how." He nods.

"I don't know how to forgive myself," he whispers. "I don't know how you Victors bear it."

She looks at him in disbelief, much like Finnick looked at her when she asked him how he bore it.

"We don't!" she says. "Obviously we don't. What'd you just say, about Haymitch drinking, my nightmares, Peeta's episodes? And that's just District 12!"

"But you're still alive. You're getting better," he whispers, and she hears the hope in his voice. He wants her to tell him it might be okay: that one day, he might get better. She can't. She's not going to lie to him. She thinks of Finnick again as she answers.

"We might be getting better, but it's taking us ten times as long to put ourselves back together than it did for us to fall apart in the first place. We're broken, Gale. We're always going to be broken. All of us."

"Johanna says it's all about taking it one day at a time," he says, quietly. "She says it helps if you don't let yourself remember their faces."

She sighs; this is incredibly true. She doesn't let herself remember Marvel or Glimmer's faces. But how could Gale ever forget her sister's beautiful face?

"What does she say to you?" Katniss asks. "I mean, how does she help you forget Prim's face?"

"She…she tells me it wasn't me, not really. It was Coin."

Katniss nods; this is true. But there's a deep-seated hatred, a searing pain in her. It was his fault. He let his anger turn him into a piece in their Games. He wasn't forced into it the way she and Peeta were. He was never reaped. He volunteered.

"She grounds me, " he explains. "Keeps me stable. Helps to put out the raging inferno that seems to burn in me all the time."

He grins at her, knows she has a similar inferno burning in her. But she's thinking about Johanna, so she doesn't smile at him. He sighs, again. She isn't sure she wants to hear about this. But as minutes pass with him staring at a tree, boiling with unspoken anguish, she just asks.

"How the hell did you two end up together anyways?" He almost smiles.

"We…she lives there, in Two. She had no family, no one left in Seven. So we ended up working together…" He sighs, looks at her as if to assess her stability. She thinks that this is quite unfair, seeing as he's the one who was just glaring at a tree.

"We've been on TV a lot," he tells her. She nods; Greasy Sae had told Peeta that. They don't have a TV, aren't interested in it. "We…we wouldn't let them put you two through that again," he explains.

She looks at him, shocked. They wouldn't let…she didn't know anyone would want them on TV anymore. They're insane: she's barely able to have a normal conversation with anyone and he has yet to go a week without having an episode where he asks her questions that everyone in Panem knows the answers to. Who the hell would want them on TV? She'd probably zone out and start screaming about graveyards, which would cause Peeta to start asking questions like: "We almost died on a beach, real or not real?" or "You killed the wrong president, real or not real?" Yeah, they'd be great on TV.

"No one would want us on TV," she tells him. He rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, the Mockingjay who they loved through the entire war effort and her perfect, captivating fake-husband, the only person to ever regain sanity after hijacking… who would want to hear from them?" He's possibly as sarcastic as she's ever heard him. "You still don't know the effect you can have."

"Yes, I do!" she snaps at him. "But we're not stable enough. We're both scarred and burned and—"

"Right, brainless," he interrupts, making her glare at his nickname (no guesses where he's getting his terms of endearment from these days), "that's why Jo and I picked up the slack. You think either of us like being in front of the cameras after what we went through? We're doing it for the two of you."

It takes a moment for his words to sink in. They still want them, after all this time: the star-crossed lovers from District 12. The Girl on Fire. The Boy with the Bread. And he and Johanna took up the task of placating the public so Peeta and Katniss could sort themselves out. She feels a wave of gratitude at his practicality, his kindness. This is her best friend.

But it still doesn't explain how he and Johanna ended up sleeping together.

"So, you just got to chatting when you were in make-up and—"

"They wanted us to do a propos at a beach," he explains, cutting her off. "Neither of us could handle it. I kept thinking of the Quell, of you and Peeta and that damn locket with my picture, and she…" He sighs.

"She can't handle water," whispers Katniss, remembering. Gale nods.

"She freaked. We ran off, got to talking. Catnip, she- she understands." Katniss nods. Of course she does.

"She knows what it's like to live with guilt like this, to have everything you do feel heavy and wrong. To know that you killed people that other people needed." (She shivers at this: the word needed. But she did need Prim). "To know that you…you will never be able to forgive yourself."

"She understands you," Katniss muses, and he nods. She sighs; that's not what she was wondering. She thinks about not asking, giving him privacy, but she isn't really interested in giving him privacy.

"Do you love her?"

"Yes." His reply is swift, unhesitant, unwavering. She smiles. Somewhere, beneath the anguish of Prim's death, she's happy for him.

"Do you still love me?"

He sighs. When he looks at her, he looks about a thousand years old. "I don't know how to love you anymore," he whispers. "I can't look at you without having everything weigh down on me even heavier than before. I…I can't look at you without seeing her."

She nods. She can't look at him without thinking of fire, destruction, death. She realizes that her subconscious has considered him a murderer from the moment those bombs went off. She just hasn't let herself consider it, feel it, until now. But…she remembers what she thought about a few days ago, sitting on top of the mass grave of bodies she killed. It all has so much to do with survival and intention. And he never intended to kill Prim. He just wanted to help make a world where people he loved could survive. In war, in these Games, there are casualties that no one ever intends. And though she wants to be furious with him for letting himself become a piece in their Games without being reaped…she volunteered to save Prim. Peeta volunteered to save her. How can she stay mad at Gale for volunteering? He may not have been reaped the way they were, but he volunteered for the same reasons they did. And though she may not know how to forgive him, she does know how to understand him. And that's a start.

"Do you love him?" he asks, and she nods.

"It's one of the only things I know for certain anymore," she whispers. He smiles.

"Do you love me?"

She sighs. He's still her best friend, really. He's still Gale. But…

"No," she says, unhesitant, unwavering. "You'll always be my best friend, but I can't look at you without thinking of her. I can't love you. I wouldn't know how."

"But you know how to love him?" He's not angry. He's genuinely curious. It may have been Gale's bomb that killed Prim, but Peeta tried to kill her.

"I do," she whispers. "And when I don't know how, he helps me."

"Jo does that with me," he says. "Sometimes I don't know how to…I don't know how to survive anymore. And that's when she…steps in." Katniss nods.

"You chose someone you couldn't survive without," she whispers, echoing his words. He smiles, tugs on her braid.

"So did you," he reminds her. She shakes her head vehemently.

"I don't need him. I could survive-"

"Catnip, I hate to break it to you, but you were never going to survive without him."

She's shaking her head, because he's wrong. He has to be.

"I could survive without him," she tells Gale, looking into his eyes. Seam eyes. "I don't need him."

Gale looks at her as if he doubts her sanity, after she's done such a good job of proving that she's regained it, or most of it.
"You said you needed him," Gale reminds her, "on the beach, in the Quell, before you two basically started going at it onscreen." She blushes to the roots of her hair.

"We weren't going at it onscreen," she mutters, wondering why she keeps having to defend herself against these accusations, "but…when I said that, that was before—I mean, things have changed…" She trails off, lost in her own thoughts.

What's changed, really? Not Peeta's feelings. Not hers. The only thing that's changed is that he was hijacked…but she loves him in spite of it. She thought she couldn't love a boy who wraps his hands around her neck in her nightmares…but she can. She does love him. And he's hers—he belongs to her, that hasn't changed. Snow may have tried to take him from her, but it's only her he wants during his episodes. He's…he's what grounds her, helps her to be sane, reminds her who she was. She was the Mockingjay. And she couldn't be the Mockingjay without him. She broke down the morning after the bombing because it was impossible to be the Mockingjay without him, impossible to be separated from him. She couldn't handle being used against him, having him used against her. They need to be together. Apart, they're just frightened children. Without him, she's worthless. But does that mean she needs him? Because she can't need him, she can't, she—

"Before his hijacking, you mean?" asks Gale. He was trying to pause and give her space, but has yet to perfect the art of figuring out when she's too lost in her own thoughts to know what's going on. It's not his fault; she's the one who's still not stable enough to have a normal conversation.

"Things have changed because of the hijacking?" Gale asks, easing her back into the conversation once it's clear she isn't sane enough to understand.

"How's he doing, by the way? Obviously, he's a lot better if you two are together."

She stares at him, realizing that she's such an idiot, because she can't lie to him but she sure as hell can't tell him the truth. He is better, but she's not sure Gale would consider him well enough to be living with her. Shit, he still doesn't know they're living together…

He's staring at her, waiting for her answer.

"He's…he's a lot better. Yeah, thanks for asking," she tells him, and then waits for him to call her out on her lie. But he nods, smiling.

"I can see why you'd think you could survive without him, even though you've said yourself that you need him," Gale continues, and she blushes. "But Catnip, if you could survive without him, would you be here?"

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