A/N: Alright, this is it: last chapter of the story... Time for me to focus on not failing exams and sort out my life, so that i can spend all summer writing more stuff, and reading all the great stories i haven't had time to start yet ;) Thanks so, so much to all of you who have followed this story, and i hope you will keep your eyes open for the post-Mockingjay follow-up that i plan to write?

As for this chapter, I'm actually a bit anxious to know what you think, so I'd be very happy for reviews! It's the original vision that popped into my head, and the reason i decided to start writing this in the first place. I guess melancholy is my thing, really. Song by the Smiths in the title, for the right feeling! Xxx

Next time I find myself standing at the front gate to Gale's rickety little Seam house, I'm sweaty and gasping for breath. Running through town is definitely going to take some getting used to. I'm not sure what I'm doing here, because in the last few short days, everything has changed. Gale's not smiling either, as he walks out the door, closing it carefully behind his back. Rather like the first time, a week ago by now, he just stands there. Our eyes lock over the few yards, conflicted and unsure of what to do with ourselves.

I know I shouldn't be here, that I should stop seeing him altogether, because my being here is just to draw out the inevitable. After all, it is now clear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I will never get to live to spend my life with him. Never get a chance to love him, even if I wanted to. And this just as I'm beginning to realise, that I would want to. Either way, the rational thing for me to do would be to leave him alone, encourage him to start living his life as if I'm not here. Eventually he'll have to anyway, and maybe it would be kinder to make it sooner, instead of reminding him every day of the whole ordeal.

I know this, but I can't make myself do it. So here I am, cowardly letting him make the decision for us both. He always was the strong one of us. If he can't stand being around me, then so be it. But if he will let me, I'll gladly spend every spare second with him. Under the current circumstances, this means fifteen minutes every morning, six days a week.

In the morning half-light, I watch him as he watches me, assessing the situation. It's another overcast, windy day, but at least spring is coming. The temperature is steadily creeping upwards. Gale is wearing only a light jumper under his uniform, I can tell. I notice he's looking thin after the long winter, and resolve to make him eat more, his pride be damned.

Finally, his face falls from the hard mask it always takes on these days. He quickly rubs his hands hard across his face a few times, as if to stir the muscles to life, or hide whatever was about to show there. Then he squares his shoulders and walks up to me, holding his left arm out for me to take. I'm so relieved I let out an audible huff, but he just pretends like nothing ever happened. Except before we set off down to the main road, he lifts my hand to his lips, just once. I can feel his hot breath against my skin, and then the moment is over.

"Sporty," he mutters, taking notice of my strange outfit.

"Laps around town," I state, and this fact probably sounds as strange to him as it does to me. "New morning routine, Peeta's idea. I'm supposed to wait for him and Haymitch, too, but if they ask, I was just too eager." My tone is a bit on the dry side. "We're exercising full time now."

Since there's nothing more to that subject, we walk in silence the rest of the way, fitting right in with the general atmosphere of the morning procession to the mines. I hand him a bunch of the super-nutritious snacks my mother has prepared for me to gain weight while training, and seeing the stubborn set of my jaw, he pops one in his mouth and the rest in a pocket.

Once there, our eyes meet again. The wide-open, matching grey pools are softer than usual, silently revealing every piece of our souls that we would share with each other, if we had a chance. Communication without words is a strength of ours, though.

"See you tomorrow?" he asks quietly. I nod once, before spinning around on my heel and sprinting off up the hill, feeling more than a little silly.

The morning after that, we meet up at the same spot, hooking arms and setting off as if it's a habit as old as our friendship. And so the days continue, six or seven days a week as spring flies by. Some days we talk, discussing small things that pop into our heads, or fill each other in on the doings of our families. Some days we can make each other smile, even laugh, as the pressure of life is just too much to think about. Other mornings, we just walk side by side in silence, because there are no words to capture the situation. On those days, I squeeze his arm a little tighter and sometimes, when I think we won't notice, I lean my face in close to his shoulder and breathe in the scent of him, hoping I'll never forget. I realise that to other people, we must look like a pretty sad pair; clinging to each other but carefully hiding whatever feelings might spring up if we let them. I don't want their pity.

Over all though, the whole thing is very innocent, something that doesn't stop the whispers from spreading through District 12. The odd Peacekeeper is eventually sent to monitor selected parts of the dirt road leading to the mines, their patrols not exactly lighting the tense mood among the workers. I start to wonder anxiously if I have overstayed my welcome down in the Seam, but Gale reassures me, voice steady, that it's fine. That down in the mines, the whole thing is a source of much humour. A single little girl, doing nothing but keeping her supposed cousin company to work, but attracting more attention from law enforcement than the rest of them together. I say as much to a Peacekeeper one day, when he gruffly calls me to a halt, asking my business there.

"Walking," I say simply. "Is there a rule against that now?"

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" he retorts, badly hiding his contempt.

I point, maybe overly obvious, to the warm-weather sporting assembly I now favour, shorts and a hooded sweater.

"Daily exercise. Hunger Games to win, you know."

The man walks off, grunting to himself. I can't help but smile a little, feeling reckless but secretly liking it.

Back home that evening, Peeta doesn't find this little escapade quite as funny. He, and Haymitch and my mother, for that part, are obviously not happy with my new morning routine, but so far no one has confronted me about it. Until now, that is. In order to keep up the charade of being one big happy victor family, we've made a habit of having meals together. For Peeta and Haymitch, it means actually getting a proper cooked meal regularly, a great improvement to their living standard. And Sunday dinners with Gales family is long since rules out.

"Perhaps, Katniss, you shouldn't go running through town tomorrow morning," says the supposed love of my life after dinner, a mildly disapproving frown in his face.

I know he means only well, and I know he's right of course, but I simply can't let them take away from me the one good thing in my life right now. How could I get up in the morning, knowing I would be facing nothing but strained determination from both of my fellow victors? I just don't share their enthusiasm.

"You could question me about that, Peeta," I say, careful to keep my calm. "But then you would lose all chance of me acting out this Career plan of yours." It's mean, but it's also the truth.

We scowl at each other for a while. Then, because he's Peeta and he's way too nice for me, he gives up and just looks at me sadly instead, which he knows is worse. I grit my teeth and leave the table, hearing Haymitch mutter something about "most miserable bloody thing I ever saw, anyway".

Then suddenly, in no time, I wake up to the morning before the reaping. My last day of freedom. For a moment I'm paralysed by fear, before remembering I have somewhere to be. I'm starting to enjoy my morning runs. It clears my head, if only for a while. When I come jogging up, Gale's already on the porch step, waiting.

"Sorry," I pant, bending forward to steady my pulse. It's late spring, almost summer, and I'm sweating already at this hour. He says nothing, and I can see the muscles in his jaw working furiously.

Today, the silence is thick between us, a clear distance separating our bodies as we walk next to each other. I don't try to guess where his mind's at, just as I struggle not to think of anything myself. Each step I take, my body locks down a little bit more. My breathing seems unnaturally loud, as if there were no other sounds it the world. We're just a few minutes away, at the outskirts of town, where the ground starts elevating up to the entrance of the mines, before the tension is broken. Gale springs into action too fast for me to realise what's happening, and I'm yanked off into a narrow passage between two uninhabited houses. A half-crumbled wall sticking out is just enough to cover us from sight for those still on the road. I wonder briefly what people who saw us dart in here think we're up to. Probably no good. As long as they don't alert any Peacekeepers we'll be fine though.

I have only a split second to think all this, then Gale is pressing me up with my back against the coal-dusted old house. The front part of my body is in full contact with his, my chin up to meet his face. For a moment I worry he'll do something stupid, like kiss me. My stomach does a flop in anticipation. But his eyes are shining with something else, a resolve that I recognize all too well from Peeta these days.

"So what's your plan?" he demands. I swallow, my throat gone dry. I can't hold his gaze any longer, as I know what my answer is.

"You don't want to know," I say back in a clipped tone. I try fervently to brush away a smudge of coal on his shoulder, knowing full and well it's futile.

"But you have to try, Katniss! Surely, you've got to have a good chance now, I mean, you're prepared, and…"

I don't even try to correct him, but he figures it out anyway. I feel him grip my shoulders tight, trying to shake some sense into me. His voice is low and raw with suppressed anger when he confronts me again.

"So you're gonna try to save him? That's your plan?" He forces my face up to meet his eyes with one hand, his grip a little too tight. "I can't stand it." And like that, his whole face falls to pieces before my eyes, those grey eyes becoming a storm of hurt and desperation.

My composure is dangerously close to breaking along with him, and I draw in a ragged breath. My hands clasp his face in return, pulling down his forehead to mine.

"Gale," I whisper, anxious for him to listen to me. "I have no choice, everybody knows that. They're not gonna let me live. All I can do is try to get Peeta home alive, it's the only hope!" I can feel my voice becoming more and more unsteady, begging him to understand. Or at least accept. But I can see panic rising up inside him, and a strangled noise escapes him.

Then he pulls me even closer, crushing my body to his in his strong arms and burying his face in my hair. I do my best to hold him too, my arms around his chest locked tight, as if I can keep him in one piece if I squeeze hard enough.

He is so close. I'm wrapped up in his body heat and my senses are filled with only him, breathing in his scent, his voice vibrating in my ears as he speaks softly things I can not make out. His hands are making my skin burn wherever he touches me. It's not fair, and surely he knows this effect that his body has on me, because right then I break my unspoken rule about not making this an emotional scene.

"You know I would spend every single day with you, if the choice were mine," I say frantically, my cheek pressed to his. "Every day of my life." Of course, these are just empty words now, but I feel as if I have to make him see, that even though I can't make myself say the words he wants to hear, what I mean is the same. I'm his, and I consider him mine.

After a little while, when his tense muscles show no sign of relaxing, I know I have to break away. Being late for work won't help him in any way. He looks at me with full-blown panic in his eyes though, and suddenly I can't do it yet. Call me a coward, but I desperately grasp at the last straw. This can't be it; I can't leave him like this.

"Meet me tomorrow, same time," I say quickly, and it works. He lets out the breath he's been holding, and the terror draws back.

"Okay," he confirms, and then he jogs off, probably facing some minor correction for making the last elevator wait for him. I lean my head back against the wall, exhausted inside out.

The next morning is absolutely beautiful, fresh and bursting with life the way only early summer can. The air is brimming with the smells of wet grass and lilac from the garden, the only sound is that of birds calling to one other in the faint light.

We sit, shoulder to shoulder, watching the sun slowly begin to rise, the world coming to life around us. I have led the way over to my family's old house in the Seam, the one I still think of as my true home. We're out back, sitting sheltered from view in an ancient shack where my father used to store his tools. They're still here, rusted and worn now, not having been used in years. I haven't been out here since he died, but it seemed like a nice place to go today.

There are no more words to be said between us, so we just sit in silence, nibbling on the light breakfast I thought to bring. Tea, a few strawberries, some goat's cheese, crackers that my mother likes to buy. It's oddly peaceful. Just me and Gale, eating and watching a new day break, as if today is just any Sunday and we're headed out hunting together. I close my eyes, pretending it is. I can feel his arm flexing beside me, and then his hand moving over mine, the tops of his fingers stroking lightly across my knuckles, tracing a vein before going still. I smile softly, and crack my eyes open to find the sun streaming in at an angle, making me squint. In the sudden light, his eyes look like silver. More tender than I've ever seen them, in spite of the dread. The anger I had feared is well under the surface.

I know I should be scared, too, or angry even, at what this day will bring me. But right here and now, all I feel is peace, the Capitol a million miles away. This is how I want to remember us.

When I shift my body the tiniest bit, Gale is immediately alerted, a trickle of panic resurfacing. The knot in my stomach tightens, but I let nothing show, forcing myself to be the strong one for once.

"Don't go to the square today," I beg in a low voice, pleading with my eyes. My free hand fingers with the dark hair at his temple, slides down his cheek. He nods once, strain apparent on his face. If I see him cry, I won't be able to leave.

"Close your eyes," I whisper. He does, shutting off his gaze from mine. I linger for just one moment, allowing myself to memorize the strong lines of his face. His lips are slightly parted. Slowly, I lean forward and kiss them with the softest pressure. All the life and warmth of the sun has nothing on this, because from him, I feel them augmented a thousand times. I'm certain now this is what I have to do, that whatever it takes to keep him safe is the right thing. Without his life to fuel my own, how could I ever go on? A sense of peace settles over me. My heart beats steady, once, twice.

Then, before he has time to react, I'm off, extracting my hand from under his and rising in one swift moment. I walk away soundlessly, my arm still tingling with his warmth, his breath still ringing in my ears. Gradually, I force myself to feel only the sun heating my skin, to hear only the birds singing, and to think only of what lies ahead. This is it, but Katniss Evedeen will forever still be left in that neglected old shack, in that precious moment, with the only person who ever really knew who she was.