Mockingjay: In my eyes
"There is no District 12"
My eyes widened with surprise and terror as the words sunk in.
There was no District 12?
I looked Gale, whose gray eyes were full of sympathy as I realized exactly what my rebellion had done.
He sat on the side of my bed, and took my hand in his.
"Is your family okay?"
The pain in his eyes showed me that it was far, far from being okay.
"What happened?" I asked, terrified for little Posy, Rory, Vick, and Hazelle Hawthorne. They were like family to me, because I had known them so long, and not seeing them again was like never seeing Prim again.
In a voice trying hard to be steady and emotionless, Gale whispered one word.
"Posy"
And just as easily as I woke up, my mind shut down, the only way to compensate for the losses I have sustained.
The last thing I heard was Gale saying "Katniss?" "Katniss!" and my world faded into darkness.
Waking up was a hard thing. In unconsciousness, you don't feel anything. You are free of all your worries and doubts. But there is a bad side to it too. You lose what you care about and it's like you're a nothing that's just floating around in nothingness.
When I finally had the courage to open my eyes, I looked around the room. Gale was gone, but I saw Haymitch, sitting on a chair in what looked and smelled like an alcohol-induced coma. Reassured that I was not alone and being watched over, I fell asleep.
Sometimes when I dream, it is happy. But after the Hunger Games, I haven't had a good happy dream in a long, long time.
Unfortunately, this dream was no different. I was back in the arena of the 75th Hunger Games with Peeta. But instead of Finnick, Johanna, and the other tributes, I saw my mother, Gale, Prim, Madge, Cinna, and even Posy, along with all the other people I care about.
Instead of fighting each other though, we were faced with President Snow and a line of mutts. With them I saw Rue, or at least the wolf that looked like her, glare at me with a hatred I couldn't stand to look at. I decided to look in the distance. Bad mistake. Behind the line of mutts, there were peacekeepers with guns and I knew that we didn't stand a chance. President Snow looked at me through slit eyes and even from 100 yards away I still smelled the blood on his breath.
With a twitch of his hand the mutts and peacekeepers leaped forward, and suddenly it was like I wasn't there. They would race through me, attacking my loved ones, and I was powerless to help. With people fighting 10 to 1, there was no chance at all. I woke up screaming as the last person fell. Gale.
"Shhhhh Catnip… shhhhh"
Gasping, I finally broke free of the dream, to see Gale hovered over me, no sign of the lifelessness I had seen when he finally fell. Instead in his eyes I saw worry, and even deeper, a sadness, one I didn't understand. He sat down next to me and I leaned into his chest. The comforting smell of the woods lingered on him, though he had not been hunting in a long time. I cried and cried turning his shirt wet with my tears as he sat there silently and waited for me to calm down.
When I finally dried myself out, I looked up to see Gale staring off into the distance. I can tell he's thinking about something, but just don't know what.
When he feels me move, he looks down to stare at me, and I give him a watery smile. "Thank you" I whisper, and it's all I need to say. He hugs me hard and I realize that while I'm here safe and sound, Peeta is somewhere being tortured by the Capitol. Disgusted with myself, I pull away from Gale, who looks at me with hurt in his eyes.
"It's not you, Gale," I whisper, and he relaxes, but not totally, never totally.
I lean back and go back into my own mind. I imagine Peeta being tortured, being, whipped and cut, the Capitol urging him, promising him food and rest, if he only tells him the information that he doesn't have. The information to where I am.
He is being tortured because I failed him. I promised myself that he would be free of the Capitol, that he would live a happy safe life, even if I was dead.
But I failed.
I failed.
I don't notice I'm crying again until Gale wipes the tears from my cheeks. "You love him don't you." He says, not accusingly, but emotionless, as he steadies himself for the answer. I open my mouth, but then close it, as I am lost for words. Gale misunderstands, and hardens thinking the worst. He gets up from the bed and walks towards the door. "Gale, wait!"
I jump off the bed, and totter unsteadily on my legs, and I feel suddenly light-headed and the ground comes speeding towards me.
Gale catches me just in time, and carries me back to my bed. He starts to get up again, but I grab his hand. He turns, and I see nothing in his eyes. Just like I lost the boy with the bread, I am losing Gale to my mistakes.
"Gale, I'm sorry I can't answer you, but right now my mind is so confused, and pulled toward different directions. There is no way I can choose right now. I don't want to lose you, or lose the bond of our friendship –yes it might be even more then that, and all we have been through all these years, while I try to organize my mind." This comes out of my mouth like a raging river and I can't stop it until everything comes out.
His eyes are not the cold expressionless gray that they were before, but they are still guarded, as if I could hurt him at any moment, which, with I sinking feeling, I realize I can.
It's not the external wounds that hurt you the most, it's the internal ones. You can live through punches and cuts, and things even worse then that. But when someone you love leaves your life forever, whether to go on to another life, or whether to be with someone else. It can hurt you to the point of insanity, like what happened to my mother after my father was killed in the mines. It was like her body was here, but her mind was not, lost in a far away place where she could grieve for her losses. With two kids, she had to try to pull herself together, but I know, that deep inside her, there is still that woman whose true love will be gone forever.
Gale squeezes my hand and leaves the room, and, not for the first time, I feel trapped in this world, longing for the few happy days of my life, of hunting with Gale, laughing with Prim, and the muddled, but still happy days with my father.
Gale slides my door shut, and as darkness unfolds around me, I feel utter loneliness as if I am a million miles away from the world. With that happy thought, I drift back into a nightmare filled sleep.
My dreams are horrible, this might have been the worst night of my life, except for the last dream, which blows all of the other dreams away, and for once, since before the Hunger Games, I am happy. Truly and wonderfully happy. It all starts after my horrible nightmares, of which they didn't let me volunteer for Prim, and I saw her savaged by Cato, Clove, Foxface, Glimmer, mutts, and attacked by tracker jackers and tortured by jabberjays. I find myself in the forest with Rue. It was not in the Arena, but outside District 12, beside the lake my father took me to and showed me the plant that got me my name. I was teaching Rue to swim. She was surprisingly stubborn, and I knew that she wasn't going into the deeper part of the lake easily, I grabbed her in my arms, and pulled her out into deeper waters. She floundered around a bit, until finally, she got the hang of it, and swam around like a fish. We were drying by the side, eating wild berries that stained our mouth, and Rue began to sing. At first it was her melody, which she would sing, to tell everyone it was time to end the day. Then it turned into the song I sang to her as she died.
"Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true, here is the place where I love you…"
The words fade as the world comes slowly back to me, and for once I feel content.
I woke up with a smile on my lips as the last bit of the song stayed in my head, and I rolled over relishing in the happy dream.
I saw clothes on my bed, and I realized I was strong enough to walk. Putting on the clothes I walked out of my room and looked out the window in the hallway. The ground was speeding below us, and I remembered we were headed to District 13, the district said to be gone, killed by the Capitol, as a way to force us into obedience, to scare us, to tell us that if we rebelled against the Capitol again, we would be next.
I walked down the hall and looked into a room filled with food, fruit tureens resting in ice, grain and gravy, hot chocolate and tea and coffee. I grab a plate, and take a chunk of everything, realizing how hungry I was, and sit down on a chair towards the back of the room and scarf down the food.
I am walking out the room when I run into my mother, who I haven't seen I was taken away for the Hunger Games. I hug her, and don't want to let go. I can hear her crying, and feel her body shake with relief that I'm alright as she hugs me back.
Prim is behind her, and she is crying to, I rush to hug her, to stop the tears running down her face, aged for someone so young, because she had seen so much, from her father dying, to her mother gone, starvation, watching her sister being tortured for not one, but two Hunger Games,
"I saw you when there were the jabberjays." She says with a sniffle, and I glance down at her, tears of my own running sown my face, and I realize that she watched me be tortured by the sounds of her painful screams, everyone's pain coming out from the hated beaks of the birds, and I realize how much sorrow and torture she must have gone through watching me, the sister who was so brave and strong, and always there to protect her crumple at immeasurable pain and terror I went through.
"she practically tried to destroy the television when it happened." A voice said from behind. I turned to see Gale, leaning against the wall as if he had been here the whole time, "The Capitol's ways were horrible." He see's the echo of pain in my eyes as I remember the sound of his voice, mixed through machines to make it sound like he was in great immeasurable pain and sent out through the jabberjays as I crumpled on the ground and jabberjays circled, filling me with pain.
Haymitch appears, probably from walking down the hall to the room with the food, and I see that he's been drinking again, from the smell of vomit and spirits wafting from him.
Suddenly the hallway seems to crowded, as Plutrach and Finnick join into the little party in the hall, and I slip out into a room, that's not mine, but is obviously in use. I sit on the bed and look out the window, watching the trees and fields disappear past us.
Footsteps come into the room and I look to see a startled Gale walk in and stare at me. "What are you doing in my room Catnip?"
"Oh this is your room? I'm sorry I didn't know. I just needed to get away from the party in the hall. As if on cue, I heard the sounds of retching and I knew Haymitch threw up somewhere as disgusted sounds of other people filled the hallway.
Footsteps retreated as my mother probably helped Haymitch to his feet around the puke, and away to get cleaned up and put to bed, where he would wake up with a hangover and no recollection of the hall party.
Gale watched me with thoughtful eyes as I turned back to the window.
"Do you want me to leave?" I ask, not turning back to him.
"No… yes… I don't know." He stammers, and I hide a smile.
"So… when I first left for the Hunger Games, what were you going to tell me? I think the words were 'I won't! You know I won't! Katniss remember I-' I what? What were you going to say?"
Gale looks at me, a little embarrassed, and says "I was going to say 'I will miss you' but something tells me from the look in his eyes that he's lying. I don't say anything though, because I know he will tell me in time.