A/N: Song lyrics (The District Sleeps Alone Tonight) are copyright to The Postal Service, although the version which I listened to, transcribed the lyrics from, and which inspired this fic, is by Frank Turner. Obviously, Hunger Games is (c) Suzanne Collins.
Smeared black ink, your palms are sweaty
And I'm barely listening to last demands
And I'm staring at the asphalt wondering
What's buried underneath where I stand?
It's been twenty years since I stood here, smelling old ash and blackened wood and rotting flesh, and pushing it all down to do what I had to. Twenty years – more than half my life – but it's still a raw wound, rawer than I expected, and as the train whizzes by the woods, it strikes me like a punch to the gut; I was happy here. Before Katniss was Reaped, before the bombings, before the rebellion, I was happy. Now, looking at the greenery which has sprouted up since then, my legs begin to shake, and I have to steady myself against the table. Luckily, I'm travelling alone, in my own carriage of the train, so there's nobody to see my moment of weakness.
The thought recurs to me, though, as I step down onto the platform, heading for the office and handing my papers to the uniformed woman behind the desk. Twenty years. It seems unbelievable, how suddenly the time's passed, regimented days blurring into each other, into weeks into months into years, until suddenly I'm not a young man any more and it's been twenty years since I saw Katniss Everdeen. There are recruits in Two who weren't born when we were fighting, who never saw the Games, young men and women who are stronger than I am, uncrippled by memories. It's a bright new era for Panem.
After twenty years, though, the shine is wearing off.
I'm in Twelve on business, reporting on the Peacekeepers in the area. It's the last stop of a tour of Panem which has taken me most of a year, inspecting the force, working alongside them, checking for corruption or cruelty. The scars on my back make for a pretty potent reminder of how deeply cruelty can damage a District, but that's not my priority. My priority is the Peacekeepers themselves – making sure we're trusted, making sure we're not overlooked, making sure we're an effective force against counter-rebellion. Mostly, I work from the Peacekeeper camps in Two, overseeing training and doing more paperwork than I'll ever be comfortable with. Sometimes, though, that isn't enough, and every ten years, one of us goes out to the Districts for what we call "deep inspection" – to keep an eye on people. That was one thing the old Capitol had right: you have to watch people. Keep your eyes open for any insurrection. We fought long and hard to bring Panem to where it is today, and we can't afford to let some malcontents take us back to the old days.
I'm starting to think the old Capitol might have had a few things right, or at least in common with the Council. Like I said, the shine is wearing off.
That's what I'm thinking, standing on the train station and half-listening to the information and instructions the nervous-sounding Peacekeeper woman is reeling off as she leafs through my papers and identification with moist hands that smudge the ink of some handwritten documents. This train station is like every other train station between the Capitol and Thirteen, and it's easy to forget where I am, to let my mind drift off in the direction of the task ahead. It's not until I step out of the station, onto the roads laid over the scorched ruins of home, that it strikes me again; this is home.
For a long moment, I stand there, unaware that my fingers are curling into a fist and crumpling my papers. My breath catches in my throat, and there's a sudden, churning nausea in my gut as I stare at my feet, polished black boots casting shadows on the asphalt pavement. Are they still lying there, I wonder suddenly – all the rotting, burnt bodies we tripped over shooting that propo film twenty years ago, all the friends and family and casual acquaintances I couldn't get away in time? A nightmarish vision flickers across my mind for a moment; all those people who didn't escape, burning forever, burning and breaking and dying while we walk over them, on asphalt that was laid when I was still young.
I know the thought's nonsense. Stupid. All the bodies were buried in mass graves further out, I cosigned the reports and gave consent to the order. There are no bodies under the pavement, no bones buried in the road. The only thing this road is built over is ash and memory.
But the memories have faces, and the faces are screaming. I close my eyes against them, and walk on.
Wear my badge, vinyl sticker with big block letters and
Adhering to my chest, it tells me where I am
I am a visitor here; I am not permanent
It isn't home any more. That much was clear from the moment I stepped off the train, and it only gets clearer as I carry my bag to the house I'm staying in, unpacking quickly and efficiently. The folded clothes barely take up half the wardrobe. I have no trinkets, nothing sentimental. The only thing to distinguish my room from any other room in Panem is the briefcase of paperwork, which I leave by the bed, and the badge identifying me by name and rank, which I'm supposed to wear on all official duty. I leave it off, and go walking. I should sleep, recover from the journey, but this District isn't exactly restful for me.
Instead, I pull on my most casual outfit, and go outside into the gathering evening, head held low to obscure my face in shadow. I don't want to be recognised, not here. I don't want anyone to know who I am, because it's hard to think what would be worse to the citizens of District Twelve – Gale Hawthorne, the head overseer of District Two's Peacekeepers, or Gale Hawthorne, the boy from the Seam. The people of District Twelve have reasons to dislike both.
Except I'm not thinking of the people of District Twelve. I'm only thinking of one of them, and I know it.
Back in Two, it's possible to exorcise her from my mind. That's why it's taken me twenty years to come back here, when I thought I'd visit at least a few times. It might sting less now if I'd been back more often, and sooner, before the raw memories of the bombings healed over into an ugly, painful scar on my memory – but it was never the right time. It was never the right time, because I never wanted to face her.
I've almost gotten to the point of hating her. I know she suffered, that she went through hell – twice in the Games, and then in the fighting. I know she lost everything, and I should forgive her because of that, because she was never a soldier – not really – and she was never given a chance to get back on her feet. And she lost Prim, of course – sweet, innocent little Prim, who was the last person she really cared about that much, I think.
But that's what stings. I loved Prim, too – she was like a sister to me, especially while Katniss was fighting in her first Games – and when it came down to it, Katniss blamed me. Shut me out. It still stings, after all these years. Did she think that, when we were designing those bombs, we meant them to be used like that? Did she think that I wanted Prim dead? Anyway, did she think we were going to slip through the war without casualties?
It isn't that I'm not sorry. I never stopped being sorry that those bombs – my bombs – were responsible. But it's easier to be angry at her. In the end, though, I think I got to be a bit more at peace with the whole thing. Katniss... after the rebellion, Katniss was broken. I can't pretend otherwise. The rest of us, most of us at least, got through it stronger than she did, but she was broken by it. So maybe it was better for her not to be around me – better for her to be here, with Peeta. Peeta, who knows how to deal with broken people, because he's broken, too. Maybe.
I'm into the woods, past the point where the old fence used to hum with electricity. It's almost dark, and the forest is settling down, out of its daylight routine and into the night. A mockingjay sings out overhead, wheeling above the canopy as it heads back to its nest, and an owl answers. I try to step lightly, like I used to, so I don't disturb the deer I know must still be in here somewhere, but in heavy boots and with the limp I picked up a few years ago, it's hard. Besides, I'm out of practice.
In the end, I sit down instead, on a rotting stump which probably wasn't even a sapling last time I was here, and look up through the leaves as the stars come out. I miss this place, or the place it used to be. I miss the person I used to be then, too, back when I was filled with fire and fury and faith in a better world. I miss being young and idealistic, and talking about running away. I miss how things used to be, even though I hated them. I miss Katniss.
I'll go and see her, I think, leaning back against the trunk of a nearby tree. The worst she can do is turn me away. I'll go and see her.
It seems so out of context; go to the apartment complex –
A stranger with your door key, explaining that I'm just visiting
And I am finally seeing that I was the one worth leaving
I do go, the same evening, after a few minutes sitting in the woods and watching the empty sky. I know where her house is, assuming she hasn't moved - back in the old Victor's Village, where she used to live with Prim and her mother. That seems almost cruel, but it does make her easier to find.
The house – the vast marble mansion, which shocked me a little the first time I saw it – looks much the same, almost the only thing left after the bombings. That thought, too, brings a strange tightness to my throat, which will not be dismissed by the reminder that it was twenty years ago. I walk into the Village, hands still in my pockets and shoulders hunched a little, and, slowly, towards the mansion where Katniss lives. For a moment, nothing's changed, and it's twenty years ago again, the year of the Quarter Quell, when everything was terrible and everything was simple, when Katniss was starting to break but when I had hope, real hope, that she and I could fix each other.
Maybe we still can. Even after all this, even with Peeta, maybe we can still help each other, the way we used to. Maybe we could even go hunting, and turn everything back to when the world was broken and she was whole. Maybe we can still fix things.
I'm thinking of that, those hopeful thoughts, when I draw close to the mansion and see that someone's already by the door. A child, a little girl, maybe five or six, with dark hair plaited down her back. Not just any child, I know it in my gut the moment I see her; Katniss' child. It's in the way she moves, the way she holds herself, and most of all in that dark, complex plait, so much like Katniss' when I knew her.
I approach anyway, but slower, suddenly hesitant, and when the girl turns to face me, her thumb in her mouth, I freeze. She looks like Katniss, too – she's plumper and less hard-looking, but she has Katniss' nose, Katniss' smile, Katniss' shrewd, clear eyes. But those eyes are blue. They're Peeta's eyes, not Katniss', and for some reason that hits me harder than it should.
"Who're you?" she asks around her thumb, looking up at me fearlessly. She lisps a little, and when she withdraws her thumb, I see she's missing a front tooth.
"I'm... um." At a loss for words, not sure how to explain myself to this naive reminder of everything that's gone, I straighten up, clear my throat. "My name's Gale. I'm here to see Katniss. Katniss Everdeen?"
"She's my mom." The girl looks at me, a searching, mistrustful look which is very Katniss indeed. "You're a stranger. Dad says don't talk to strangers." Then, contradicting herself with the total innocence of a small child, she goes on anyway. "Why're you a stranger? I know e'yone round here. E'yone," she repeats, obviously proud of this achievement.
"I'm..." Again, I can't find the words. They're there, somewhere at the back of my throat, but I can't call them up. "I don't live here. I'm just... I'm visiting, that's all." Reality catches up with me, chokes me. "Don't... Don't tell your mom I came here, okay? It wasn't important." And I turn away, eyes stinging a little, and hurry away from the marble house and the little girl and Katniss, inside, who isn't the broken one. Who never was the broken one.
I'm nearly forty, and still nineteen inside. I still wake up screaming, and there's nobody to hold me. I live in the office, and never hunt any more. The war still looms large in my mind, while I cover up my own failures with lies and gild them with paperwork and medals which pronounce me important. But she has a husband, and a home, and a daughter with Peeta's blue eyes, and when I wander the woods all through the night, she'll be sleeping in his arms.
She didn't choose him because she was broken.
She chose him because I was.
The district sleeps alone tonight
After the boys turn out the lights
And send the autumn swerving into the loneliest evening
And I am finally seeing that I was the one worth leaving
That I was the one worth leaving