Disclaimer: Gale is mine. I am his. Anything else is unthinkable.
A/n: This takes place post-MJ (so a certain amount of spoilers are ahead), and is AU. I've had this idea bumbling around in my brain trying to get free during this ficathon, and this prompt apparently set it off. I don't think this is what crickets had in mind for this prompt, but this is what came out! ;P
Prompt: gale/katniss; some things in life may change, and some things? they stay the same. (For crickets)
Ashes to Ashes
The earth shudders and there's a roar in the distance. She freezes, heart stopping in her chest. She's only heard the sound maybe two or three times in her life, but it's two or three times too many.
She races outside and the plume of smoke is billowing into the sky. Others are running now too, others with husbands in the mines.
When she reaches the crowd of the frantic and panic-stricken families and friends, she nearly doubles over with the pain of the day her father died. This is too much like that day.
In the time of peace after the war, life in the poorer Districts did improve. There was a little more of everything, as well as the option to move between Districts freely, communicate and share. They no longer were constantly living on the brink of starvation, though of course, not everything is perfect. The world still needs fuel, still needs coal, and still needs people to mine the coal.
Since the fall of the Capitol, the excess of money from being a Victor has run out (something she both misses and doesn't) though between their hunting and his shifts, they certainly make enough to get by and be comfortable. She told him he shouldn't have to work in the mines, and he'd said,
"Only for a little while. For the future."
One night she went to the spot where her home used to be, the one she shared with her mother and Prim. It was still empty, void of little else except remains and ruins of what it once was.
He'd asked her quietly if she was going to leave District 12, if she needed to live somewhere else to get away from all that had happened.
She'd leant down and scooped up a handful of dirt mixed with old ash. "This place is my home," she'd replied. "As painful as it is… I can't imagine living anywhere else."
Finally workers begin to emerge from the smoke, cloaked in soot, sorrow and relief. The families who get back their loved ones cry out and embrace them. The rescue workers go back and forth, sometimes bringing those injured in the collapse and ensuing explosion, sometimes empty-handed, seeking a break or some water or a shift change.
She does not see his face among any of have emerged and imagines a vice on her heart, holding – crushing – every emotion inside.
But it's not over yet.
She'd always been certain she'd never have children. She couldn't bring them into this world, introduce a new being to the darkness and the hardship, the pain and struggle. And after the war, though a shroud had been lifted, she still resisted the idea. She could never be a mother, she was far too damaged. She had bad days and was plagued with nightmares so horrible, she woke up screaming herself hoarse and shivering and crying until morning. She was not strong enough to live her own life, how could she ever be expected to raise a child, and to be strong for them?
And it was never a conscious decision, never one she thought about a lot, or often, or really hardly at all. But on their wedding night, as they made love and she gazed into his grey eyes, she knew somewhere deep inside, that someday (and it may be far away yet, but someday), she wanted children with him.
Time has ground to a halt and her palms are starting to bleed where her nails have dug in too deep. Too many are still waiting and hope is draining away fast, dying in the fading summer light. She hears the echo of his words all those months ago: Only for a little while. For the future.
She cannot lose anything else.
That night, the widows of District 12 grow in number as the rescue workers finally come up empty (all that's left are the dead). Almost five or six women are left, some with families or children, some standing alone – now all without husbands.
Katniss Hawthorne is one of them.