burn me up with your love [Hunger Games]
burn me up with your love
author: crown_celestial
word count: 544
summary: Gale introspective fic; spoilers for the end of Mockingjay.
You don’t shoot her.
You know she’s waiting for you to pull the arrow and end her life. You can see her, scanning the crowd as they drag her away. You know it’s you she’s looking for.
You almost want to laugh. It’s funny, you think; she only looks for you when she needs a death in her hands.
When she goes back to District 12, you don’t go back. She didn’t know the scars you had taken there. The painful memories overtake the good ones. Your hands still shake when you remember how the hoverplanes dropped bomb after bomb; killing people you know. People you once cared for.
You choke up.
You think of bombs and you think of the people you’ve killed, and you know she’ll never forgive you for them. In the end she will only see you as the person who murdered her little sister.
And yet, all this wouldn’t have happened if the Hunger Games hadn’t happened, right? But there’s no point in dwelling in fanciful things.
Before all the madness started, the one person who could’ve understood was her. Katniss. She’s not perfect. Far from it. She’s manipulative, dangerous, mean, aloof, and occasionally selfish. But you know why she’s like that and she knows why you’re like that too, so you thought, maybe, just maybe-
But Katniss doesn’t need a mirror. She doesn’t need this person who’s too much like her; who’s capable of killing people without remorse, who can feel the injustice of everything. No; a mirror would only make her want to break it into a million pieces.
What she needs is a better half. A soulmate, perhaps. Some idiot who’s able to look past all her misdeeds and her bitchy personality and love her.
See, you accept her for who she is. You love her for who she is. But you will never be afraid to disagree with her, to air how you really feel. Sometimes you can’t forgive her, and sometimes you do hate her. But you think, that’s just how you love.
But the one she needs would never be that way.
So you don’t hope. You lose hope, even as you see that one person treating her like she’s nothing; six months ago she had been his world. She probably still is; he just doesn’t remember it.
You watch her look at him with desperate, desperate eyes, and you know that since the Hunger Games you’ve already lost whatever chance you could've had with her. Should you have said something on the train goodbye, just before the very first time she left you? Would it have changed things?
But you don’t want to dwell on that. She’s different now; even though she still understands and you’re still made of the same thing. Whatever souls are made of, yours and hers are the same. And perhaps that is why you cannot have her; you are the same. A magnet will only attract the opposite force.
You kiss her and it feels wrong. Because it’s still an escape. She just keeps swinging between the two of you, like a pendulum, but one day that swinging will stop and she’ll be caught on one end.
And you know it’s not going to be yours.
author: crown_celestial
word count: 544
summary: Gale introspective fic; spoilers for the end of Mockingjay.
You don’t shoot her.
You know she’s waiting for you to pull the arrow and end her life. You can see her, scanning the crowd as they drag her away. You know it’s you she’s looking for.
You almost want to laugh. It’s funny, you think; she only looks for you when she needs a death in her hands.
When she goes back to District 12, you don’t go back. She didn’t know the scars you had taken there. The painful memories overtake the good ones. Your hands still shake when you remember how the hoverplanes dropped bomb after bomb; killing people you know. People you once cared for.
You choke up.
You think of bombs and you think of the people you’ve killed, and you know she’ll never forgive you for them. In the end she will only see you as the person who murdered her little sister.
And yet, all this wouldn’t have happened if the Hunger Games hadn’t happened, right? But there’s no point in dwelling in fanciful things.
Before all the madness started, the one person who could’ve understood was her. Katniss. She’s not perfect. Far from it. She’s manipulative, dangerous, mean, aloof, and occasionally selfish. But you know why she’s like that and she knows why you’re like that too, so you thought, maybe, just maybe-
But Katniss doesn’t need a mirror. She doesn’t need this person who’s too much like her; who’s capable of killing people without remorse, who can feel the injustice of everything. No; a mirror would only make her want to break it into a million pieces.
What she needs is a better half. A soulmate, perhaps. Some idiot who’s able to look past all her misdeeds and her bitchy personality and love her.
See, you accept her for who she is. You love her for who she is. But you will never be afraid to disagree with her, to air how you really feel. Sometimes you can’t forgive her, and sometimes you do hate her. But you think, that’s just how you love.
But the one she needs would never be that way.
So you don’t hope. You lose hope, even as you see that one person treating her like she’s nothing; six months ago she had been his world. She probably still is; he just doesn’t remember it.
You watch her look at him with desperate, desperate eyes, and you know that since the Hunger Games you’ve already lost whatever chance you could've had with her. Should you have said something on the train goodbye, just before the very first time she left you? Would it have changed things?
But you don’t want to dwell on that. She’s different now; even though she still understands and you’re still made of the same thing. Whatever souls are made of, yours and hers are the same. And perhaps that is why you cannot have her; you are the same. A magnet will only attract the opposite force.
You kiss her and it feels wrong. Because it’s still an escape. She just keeps swinging between the two of you, like a pendulum, but one day that swinging will stop and she’ll be caught on one end.
And you know it’s not going to be yours.