Absolution Chapter 3
Sinking815
March 16th, 2015

A/N: Wow, this chapter has taken for-freaking-ever. Probably because I've had to guard my own heart against all this pain and strife. This is not how I expected it to turn out but alas, this is what my subconscious conjured up. So sorry for the long wait. As always, reviews greatly appreciated.

"I keep going to the river to pray,
'Cause I need something that can wash out the pain,
And at most, I'm sleeping all these demons away,
But your ghost, the ghost of you, it keeps me awake." ~ella henderson, "ghost"

Katniss wonders what people would think if they knew she sat out in the woods for hours talking to the ghost of her sister. Probably nothing good. She thinks they'd say she needs therapy, or grief counseling, or to be readmitted to a hospital watch like she was in Thirteen. It wouldn't matter, anyway. It never helped then, and it wouldn't help now.

Not that she even wants to be helped.

There's an ache and a sadness that doesn't completely overwhelm her into a catatonic trance when she perches on this ledge and loses herself in the greenness of the valley below. But there's also a strange sense of comfort and peace. Like she and the woods are grieving together for the same missing presence. For once since the death of her sister, Katniss feels a connection to the world again, a tenuous attachment on her sanity that she doesn't want to lose.

Besides, Peeta would never make her do anything she didn't want. He'd be the white knight and vouch that she was doing better. She knows he would argue vehemently that if she wanted to talk to a ghost in the woods, then why stop her? It wasn't hurting anyone.

Except him.

She could see it in his wounded look whenever she truly met his gaze. How much he wished he was enough. But then the world crashes down around her when a primrose takes her by surprise, or when she wakes in the night screaming for her sister, or when someone mentions Gale and she visibly flinches, and she knows then that Peeta is not enough.

She thinks she may want him to be though.

Five years is a long time to tell herself that someday things will be better. Someday, Peeta will once again be the hope that she leaned on so heavily during the Games.

You leaned on more than just Peeta.

Katniss looks up to see her sister shimmering no more than a few yards away. Instinctively, she rises to her feet the way she always does when Prim comes to visit and steps toward her. Just once Katniss thinks she can reach her. And just as she always does, Prim moves back the exact number of steps Katniss takes forward.

Her big blue eyes watch Katniss with a meaningful pity, as if the little sister knows a sobering truth that the older sister cannot possibly understand.

You know why you find peace here.

Katniss grits her teeth with such force that the enamel grinds and her jaw shrieks at the friction of her frustration.

Because Katniss does understand why there's comfort in these woods. Deep down, she knows the reason for the sense of relief she feels whenever she visits their old spot. It's easier to shoulder grief with another, even if his presence is just as ghostly itself.

"He destroyed you, Prim!" she wails. "He destroyed you!"

Her voice cracks at the end and suddenly, the fragile handle over her emotions is flung across the field. Katniss makes another desperate lunge for her sister, succumbing to her prior hysteria and falling to her knees in a tumultuous shudder. When she looks up, her fingers are stretched out, reaching for solace in the fading apparition.

Prim shimmers before her, and Katniss can't tell if it's a product of her blurred vision or a trick of the light, but for a brief moment, she thinks Prim reaches back, passing her outstretched hand as if she doesn't see its frantic reach. Prim's little thumb moves gently in the air and Katniss thinks she feels a tear swiped from her cheek.

In all of Panem, you both may be the only ones who believe that.

Katniss blinks, and Prim disappears.

Katniss doesn't know how long she's been kneeling in tall overgrown grass, but the soaked pants over her knees make her think it could have been a while. She doesn't remember the shift of the summer sun, or the slow sleepy chirping of the crickets as late afternoon settled around her.

When she stands and brushes the dirt off her pants, her thighs scream in protest and her skin tingles from her hips to her toes. She hobbles a few steps, her joints stiff after enduring an extended solitary position. Her head feels heavy, her memory foggy, like she reaches for the last fragments of a dream that she knows she had, but can't remember the necessary details.

So, she collects her bow, unused and discarded, and she walks.

Katniss feels the muted existence of every day life slowly descend with every step back towards the meadow. The heat of a nascent sunburn along the back of her neck fades to lukewarm the closer she gets to the district. The cool dampness brushing her knees becomes less joltingly noticeable with each stride. Her emotions settle to tepid, almost detached in their less volatile state. She doesn't hear the crunch of twigs beneath her boots, or care to track the skittering squirrels that dart along before her.

When she reaches the edge of the forest, harsh summer light floods her vision and she's forced to bring her hand to shield her eyes. They take their time to adjust, testing her patience so much that she walks several steps partially blind.

But then her vision focuses and her eyes instantly find a figure bending over Prim's grave. His hair is dark and she thinks he hides his height in the way he's hunched. She moves forward, a strange mixture of curiosity and nervous energy swirling within her. Surely, Rory is still helping with the reconstruction at this hour of the day, she thinks. And yet, there's something vaguely familiar that reminds her of the second eldest Hawthorne…

Katniss blanches.

Her heart races into a painful pounding rhythm in her chest, at first driven with fear then melding into an aggressive beat.

First, he's had to shock her with an unannounced return, and now he's visiting Prim's grave?

Her thoughts turn sour.

Her hand reaches back to pull an arrow from her quiver and she nocks it with practiced fluidity. She stalks forward, her tread falling lightly, the wisping of the taller grass barely audible to her ears. Some older version of herself cautions her that she's never been able to sneak up on Gale and does she really want to face him like this, but her vision is red at the edges and her mind is already focused on her prey.

He doesn't even notice when she's ten feet from him.

"Get. Up."

Gale freezes but makes no effort to move, and Katniss grits her teeth to keep from screaming. She steps forward heavily, with a menacing intent if he had raised his head to see it.

"I said, get up!" she grits out.

The tip of her arrow wavers precipitously as she tracks Gale's rising motion. He's staring at her like he's never seen another person before, regarding her with equal parts wariness and wonder. She watches his hands raise defensively, palms out, and his surrendering posture makes her rage flare.

Katniss draws back the string threateningly, but instead of flinching away, he drops his hands and his shoulders sag in defeat. He keeps his eyes on her though, the gray suddenly dull and lifeless.

"Go ahead," Gale chokes, his voice hoarse and rough, and it makes Katniss think he knows she wants to shoot him.

She frowns, and her brow knits together, her fingers trembling to let all the tension loose, as her mind works furiously to understand how he cannot see her in five years and the first instant he does, Gale can read her like he never left. She quickly gives up trying to understand, and starts to see in his despondent gaze how untroubled he is, how relieved he is to be at the deadly end of her aim. It occurs to her that he might want her to shoot him.

That's when she notices the fresh wetness along his cheekbones, the red swollen eyes, the uneven breaths wracking his usually steadfast frame. This isn't the friend she knew who hid his pain in layer after layer of anger and brooding. She doesn't like that he's decided to wear his misery on his sleeve, to display his grief like it's a burden he can't carry anymore.

It infuriates her that though she almost doesn't recognize him, she understands exactly how he's warped into this weakened version of his former self.

Katniss hates that, after all this time, Gale still reflects her so well.

So she lets loose her arrow.

Gale hears the snap of the bowstring before he feels the zip of the arrow's flight past his neck. He's too close to react, but something thrums inside brilliantly alive and he turns quickly away, though he knows how futile it is to escape Katniss Everdeen's aim.

He feels the sharp twinge of pain and presses his hand to his neck. His palm comes away smeared with hot blood, and he can only stare at his own liquid life for so long before he feels dizzy and sick. He looks up and Katniss' eyes are wide like she's the one who's been shot, no trace of enraged huntress to be found anywhere on her face.

She drops her bow and is at his side in an instant, her own small hand pressing to his neck, and she's muttering so fast, he can't understand the individual words of her apology.

"It's fine, you missed me," Gale says. He steps back so that her hands fall away, and gently probes with his clean hand at the wound. It stings beneath his fingers, but he can feel the tackiness of the already forming clot in the superficial cut. The collar of his shirt is stained red, some dots of blood dancing lower down his chest.

Gale turns away and locates her arrow laying in the grass not far behind him. He holds its out to her, tail first, and asks, "Want another try?"

They hold each other's gaze for an indefinite moment. She's regarding him with nothing but disdain, her gray eyes smoldering in fury, her cheeks flushing pinker whether from heat or anger, he doesn't know. She scowls at him, wrenching the arrow from his grasp hard enough that he raises his hands again defensively.

"I didn't miss," Katniss hisses, her tone dripping acid.

Her outrage is almost comical, and he fails to suppress an amused grin.

"Of course, you didn't." Gale's lips turn upwards into a smirk, as if this is some big inside joke. As if Katniss really had missed, and it's all some huge mistake they'll laugh about for years to come. His mind doesn't yet want to let him consider that she actually intended to shoot him. "You're an ace with arrow, Catnip, but…"

"STOP!"

Gale jumps a little, the grin falling from his face instantly.

"Just stop trying to pretend this is all a game to you!" Katniss whips her arm to the side, gesturing wildly to the numerous stones scattered throughout the meadow at her back. "This place is a graveyard now. Or did you forget in the last five years?"

Gale's fists clench in anger at her accusation and his brow creases in fury. Forget? Forget? He's been spending the past five years trying to forget with no success. He certainly never set foot in the two arenas, but running from the fiery consequences of her actions left him scarred and broken too. Forget? Never.

"Don't lecture me," Gale sneers, his voice dangerously calm, "Remember, I watched this place become a graveyard. I had front row seats. I got your family out."

Her mouth twitches ever so slightly, but he can see that he's wounded her with the memory. That she can see exactly what the last five years have done to him written all over his face. She buries his pain in her own.

"A lot of good that did Prim," she says acerbically.

The unspoken blame permeates the scorching air between them like poisonous fumes, its odor pungent and bitter. Gale stares woundedly at Katniss, who stares back just as wounded. Their collective misery makes him want to scoff. Even broken, they are the same.

But her words sting, and the raw wounds he had been revisiting are still fresh, so Gale can't find the common ground that lets her words glance off him.

"What do you want me to say to that, Catnip?" His voice rises at the end, desperately seeking to strike some chord in her hardened shell. He can feel his mask of anger starting to slide, and the overwhelming tremors of new grief bubbling underneath.

Katniss regards him, her gray eyes seeing the tumultuous emotions before her and softening. She hesistates against some vicious counterattack she had on the end of her tongue. He watches her stuff her arrow back into her quiver, stow her bow over her shoulder, and face him with a sad look.

"Don't call me that," she whispers. "She doesn't exist anymore."

Katniss pushes roughly past him, her braid bouncing against her shoulder as she leaves.

Gale watches her go, wondering why, after five years, he still has to restrain himself from reaching out to touch the midnight brown tail.

~Fin