Kindness
Summary: A short collection of kindness; to and from.
from.
A boy waits, the snow numbing his knees.
With a trail of fourteen-year old footprints following him like a shadow he can't shake off, Gale Hawthorne waits patiently. The night is quiet and light. It almost seems too little, too late; the frost-bitten sign that warns collapsed mine ahead, do not enter. Of course, no entry means no rescue. But waiting feels necessary; part of grief; and grief can only end once it's all burnt out.
Dad. I can't do this alone.
Old hands like dried out paper handle him as he falls to the snow, and he vaguely recognises the owner as Sae, the woman who runs the soup stall in the Hob.
"C'mon, kid. Time for you to go home."
He holds onto her skirt and cries; his first real tears, and they fall past his cold knees and melt the snow.
to.
Raine Alder's eyes look in different directions; his hands shake when he speaks, and he carries his father's photograph around in his mother's locket. His dad died in the same accident as Gale's. It's a Monday when Gale realises that he hates everyone that lives more than five steps outside the border of the Seam. The air is warm and close.
They're like a swarm of bees; black uniforms and light yellow hair; angry bees, closing around the weakest prey they can find. Merchant kids; the type that live in enough poverty to be bitter but not enough to know how much it pecks at your soul when you can't afford to eat.
Gale's stomach is so empty. He'd be easy pickings, but it's Raine Adler they go for that day.
Raine falls to the ground and the locket he'd been twisting between his unsteady fingers falls to the floor. Even from across the playground, Gale thinks that he can hear the glass in the locket smash; a boy's father. The Baker's kid telling them to knock it off (not loud enough). And the sound of Raine's first sob, like a breath being drawn. Like salt in a wound.
The mine collapses.
Maybe he's a hero that day, he thinks. Or a villain. Depends which way you twist it. Because those Merchant kid's faces sure felt good smashing off the bones of his knuckles.
They break his arm, and he finally agrees to teach Catnip how to make those snares herself.
He gets pulled out of class to make amends with the other kids two days later. There's a cockroach on the Principal's desk, and he watches it crawl over yellowed paper and into a crack in the wood. He wonders, if he had a knife, if he could hit it. His aim is pretty damn sharp now.
He's told the story hundreds of times, but somehow he's the one who has to apologise. And as he shakes hands with each of them in turn, and watches just how different his dark, Seam skin looks against their fair, white fingers, he thinks; oh, I understand.
from.
The baby gets sick; little Posy and her tiny coughs. He tells Catnip, and then regrets it later. She's doing well; she's catching more than he is, finding more roots. His mind is somewhere else. Back home, with his mother's barely restrained tears and the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He catches Catnip slipping two extra squirrels into his bag, and doesn't even try to refuse them.
She's a real catch, this one.
to.
Catnip falls and twists her ankle. Her fifteen year old body feels so light in his arms that he thinks about setting her down and cooking all the game right here; watching over her to make sure she eats it all. He can feel every bone in the backs of her knees against the crook of his elbow, and the sharp blade of her cheekbone where it rests against his neck.
It's takes so long to walk back from the lake that she falls asleep.
He stops to catch his breath. Every step feels like an uphill stride. Game has been scarce the past week; nothing seemed to want to come out and play.
He feels the evidence of it in each of her ribs. He can count them all.
She jolts awake against him. "Sorry," she mutters, and stays upright and stiff in his arms the rest of the way home, but her fist doesn't uncurl from the neck of his sweater.
from.
Mrs Everdeen hands him Catnip's jacket; well, her dad's old jacket. Her eyes are blank and weary, but understanding; the healer of hearts as well as broken bodies. He holds it close to his chest, and closes his eyes, trying to fight back the tears. Behind him, the television flickers, but he can't bring himself to look at her face, because they've taken to cutting to that huge burn on her leg as though everyone's forgetting. Well, some people probably are. But he feels each wound, each step, each moment of sleep that she steals. He feels it all.
And he misses her.
Gale sits down at a chair in the Everdeen table and finally allow himself bring the scruff of the jacket up to his face. But it's empty; no bony shoulders to cling to; no heartbeat. Just hanging leather, and no promise of a return.
He should've told her.
He says his goodnights and leaves, and Mrs Everdeen's kind eyes follow him all the way home.
to.
The second time she goes in, Mrs Everdeen's gone completely. Her eyes are like hollowed out apples. Gale can see the carving marks. He'll be damned if he can find her. But Prim is crying in her bed, and he can't get through to the woman, and all the shouting in the world can't seem to bring her back.
So he abandons her and crosses the room to sit with Prim. Her nose streams, and there are dried tears in her hair. The television sits in the corner, the sound off.
He sees himself, standing in the snow, all those years ago. Waiting for security to wrap its arms around him. The longest wait of his life.
He pulls Prim into his lap and settles against the headboard of the bed, trying to imagine what Katniss would do; what she'd say, how she'd stroke Prim's hair.
"It's OK, Prim, she's coming back. She'll come back," he soothes.
And if she doesn't - he thinks - I'll make damn sure nothing happens to you.
from.
The first time he sees her after the war, she's swollen and pregnant and beautiful. He waits outside the house in his uniform, and suddenly wants to slap himself for not changing. How will he look to her? Like the very people they used to despise.
She shuffles outside to fetch the morning paper and sees him; goes pale like she's seen a ghost. Her pregnant belly pokes out from under her nightgown, and she stares at him for a long while as though trying to remember that he exists.
He's spent so many years trying to wash off the blood on his hands; so many years running from the thing that could make it all better. Trying to put out the fire with constant, random acts of goodness; of healing. Trying to fix the world so that the boy in the snow wouldn't have to wait. Except now, in his memory, it's Prim that waits in the snow. Always, Prim, with the promise he didn't keep held between her trembling fingers. And the promise of all the lives she could've saved with her healing hands.
When Katniss holds him, and he cries into her shoulder, he realises that this one act of forgiveness is the kindest thing he's ever witnessed.
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