He was out hunting, gun poised to shoot once the geese stirred within the tall grass. This was once such familiar territory for Gale Hawthorne but after fifteen years, everything had begun to turn its back on him. He was a stranger in these woods, and the animals were no closer to showing themselves to him as he was to showing himself to the town. Not yet, not when fear seized his gut in a chokehold.
It was a wonder he'd even grown the balls to come back here in the first place.
Finally, there was a change in the air. Gale steadied his gun, searching the land through his eyepiece for the animal that had finally made its move. It wasn't a goose, or any other bird that he'd been expecting. Further off, in the grove of the hills, was a larger creature wandering. The image was out of focus, but the more and more he adjusted the settings the more Gale's stomach turned.
"No fucking way," he muttered as he moved away from the gun, laying it down beside him. He was sure that his insomnia was now catching up to his daytime habits, causing him to see things. But, still, the animal, or rather, person continued to move. And the figure was too recognizable for him.
The curved figure and brown hair that anyone could see without a helping lens, the way she moved through the landscape with the care of a hunter, it had to be her.
"Catnip," Gale breathed out, his mouth relishing in the name as it left his lips. Suddenly, he felt parched, his throat dry as sandpaper and his body feeble. Even if she was an apparition brought on by his sleepless nights, or the sun, she was a welcomed site.
Stumbling, Gale rushed to get up and slid down from his perch up on a boulder. His army boots gripped down on the ground reassuringly, since his knees were not a friend of his anymore. They wobbled, and his hands couldn't get a good hold on his gun or duffle bag. He was a complete wreck.
Everything was telling him to let her go, leave her alone but his body, despite all the miserable shaking, was reeling him into her.
His steps fell soft against the dirt as he tried hard not to disturb the peace, trying with all his might not to scare her off like the many doe he hunted down. That was probably a horrible way of describing how he was trying to approach her, he realized with a grimace. And it was then that he realized with an immense blow just why he wasn't supposed to go anywhere near her.
As he'd killed a duck just yesterday, he'd had a hand in killing her little duck.
His throat constricted, fighting against him. Hopefully, his body would turn against him and kill him right then and there.
There was a not-so-far-off sound of crunching leaves. His head cut through the air sharply as he tried to locate the sound, the own thud of his heart working against him like everything else. He could barely hear over the roar of his heart attack.
But he could see quite fine as a figure began to emerge from the shrouded cover of the trees.
This was his warning to leave, and quickly.
So, without having to think twice, Gale turned heel and began the excruciating task of escaping from the one person he wanted to keep.
He was gaining ground and he was positive he was in the clear until, well, his body betrayed him once more.
Snap.
He froze, an infinite list of curses flying through his head as he waited for a retaliation of sort. For a while, there was simply silence. And then, his heart soared and plummeted all at the same time.
"Gale?" The vulnerable, angered, puzzled, joyful voice called from behind. The name cracked, making him flinch. His body, tense, began to melt as he replayed his name, from her lips, in his mind over and over again. She sounded less pained then when he'd let her go those many years ago. But the hurt, severe from the permanence of his mistake, lingered there in the air.
Slowly, he turned to face her and instantly felt a wave of peace and anguish wash over him. He was constantly in turmoil, knowing it was wrong to feel comfortable in his skin around her after everything that happened. He knew it was wrong to cling to their memories together, to hope for something other than the barely composed look on her face that showed she was fighting against a breakdown. He knew he had no right to want to grab her, to whisk her into his arms and hold her there forever just to make up for all the lost time. He knew it was wrong to want her, not now. Not ever.
But he still did.
"Hey, Catnip," Gale replied haphazardly. He coughed, trying to get rid of the glass lodged in his throat as Katniss assessed him, and he her.
He knew there was nothing much for her to see, besides the cargo pants and dirt-ridden shirt. His face told everything there was to know: he had a five-o-clock shadow that was itching to be shaved back and the bags under his eyes were big enough to store water. But her, she was a sight behold.
Her body had been so small when he'd last seen her, flattened by the weight of the world crushing her but with age and a steady flow of food she had grown even stronger. Her curves fanned out into a sophisticated hourglass figure, hidden and snug underneath the fabric of her dark pants and fitted t-shirt. Her skin was still sun-kissed, olive and rich. Brown hair wrestled itself in her braid, strands bursting out to caress her heart-shaped face. Lips, partially dry but all the same inviting were slanted in a shy smile and then, as he finally braved the final frontier, Gale met her eyes.
Gray pierced gray and, for what seemed like an eternity, it was a battle of the wills. She was hell-bent on not saying a word, unsure whether a stream of hateful words would come out or a stream of tears instead. He fought against the urge to apologize right then and there, over and over again on his knees. Pride told him not to but, most notably, fear whispered in his ear that if he even opened his mouth, she would hit the ground running. Or, she'd whip out a bow and arrow she had hidden in her bag and kill him on the spot.
Gradually, her eyes warmed and the wall that kept him from looking inside crumbled.
"I would say it's illegal to hunt but that line's been destroyed, hasn't it?" Katniss said, managing a smile as she tried to compose herself. There were still unshed tears and urgent questions hiding somewhere but for now she was Catnip, meeting Gale in the woods as if nothing had ever happened.
If only it would last.
"You still can't cook, can you," Gale teased as he tore a piece of duck off of the bone and chewed. He made a sour face, provoking Katniss to toss a discarded duck eye at him.
"What the? Stop wasting food," he joked, laughing as he took the slimy eyeball and popped it into his mouth to Katniss's disgust. She shook her head, unable to wrap her mind around her friend.
Friend.
It had been a while since she'd been able to properly use that term in relation to Gale Hawthorne. Even now, it didn't seem to roll of the tongue so easily as before. There were still shards in her stomach when she looked at him, shattered remnants of who she used to be, yearning to find their way back together again. She wanted desperately to find her way back to Gale, but after everything that had happened and despite all the therapy she had gone through in the years, it was still a wound far too deep to heal so fast.
"It's getting dark. Shouldn't you be getting back?" If the hurt in her stomach wasn't enough to break the illusion of lightheartedness that they'd had for the past few hours hunting and roaming the familiar outskirts of district 12, that question did the job.
She fidgeted, fumbling with her fingers and crushing them until blood begged to flow again. Her silence, for Gale, spoke loudly enough.
"You're not going back." It wasn't a question.
Katniss sighed, leaning back against the worn out stump of a chair that laid in the small shack her father brought her to so long ago. After all the destruction, the small sanctuary still lingered in the midst of the trees, forgotten and frozen in time. She'd thought that if she stayed here for a while, she too would become forgotten and frozen. Then, everything would lose its ability to sting.
"No, no I'm not," she replied. Gale's raised eyebrows told her that whatever she had on her mind best come out her mouth. She grimaced and toyed with the bone she'd cleaned off before flicking it into the small fire they had burning.
"I left home last night and I've been camping out here until I figure out where I want to go because I'm sure they'll come looking for me out here at some point. Or maybe not, since they're better off now," she rambled on, frustrated at her inability to stay indifferent. And Gale was already so good at seeing through her.
"Them? Since when is Peeta a 'them'?" He probed.
"The kids," she blurted out. The crackle of the fire against wood filled the void that was swallowing them both up. Memories neither of them wanted to talk about filled their heads, and Gale bit back the burning retort that ate away at him from the inside out.
"I thought you never wanted to have kids?" But that would never leave his mouth. That was another life, under different circumstances. Yet, he felt it would still apply even after so many years. She'd been so devoted to that promise, that she wouldn't have kids, that he was able to comfort himself over the years. If she didn't want kids, then they wouldn't have worked out anyways because he yearned to have children.
Now, here they were fifteen years later and the roles were reversed.
"Why would you leave your children?" And Peeta. But, his ego left the last member of the Mellark family out.
"Because," Katniss haggardly sighed, "because nothing has gotten better and I feel like all I do is scare them with my nightly screams. I treat them like strangers when I wake up from shock and when it's Peeta-" Her voice shook, overwhelmed. "And when it's Peeta, his episodes leave him scared of me too. Everyone, the way they look at me. It's like I'm a mutt all over again in his eyes, and theirs. He doesn't have any more nightmares about losing me. Every moment of terror for him stems from the hijacking now. I'm the root, the source of every problem-"
"Katniss-"
"So many people died because of me and now the people I love look at me like, like," and his arms were wrapped around her. He couldn't fight it anymore, keep himself at bay. It hurt too much. So he kept her prisoner in his fierce grip while she cried.
"Like you're a monster," he breathed, pressing his face into her hair and breathing in the familiar, nostalgic scent of her. He was filled with the smell of the woods, with a small dash of flour that warned him that she was not his to hold. But he didn't care, not now. Not when he was finally able to touch her and feel the warmth that had evaded him for so long. For years, he'd kept his heart at bay as he worked in district 2, keeping and losing women so many times that their faces all merged into one. None could hold a flicker of light to his childhood friend and love. He couldn't shake her, and he wanted to feel the burn of her touch, the fire she and he used to have together.
A few minutes passed of him rubbing her back, soothing her until finally Katniss fell still in his arms. It wasn't uncomfortable, which shocked them both. She felt at ease against his chest, a foreign sensation these days, and found herself nestling into the bend in his shoulder. Her guard had fallen with exhaustion and she just wanted a friend. After fifteen years of remorse on both of their sides, she wanted to find a refuge in him once more.
"Do you ever miss us?" She murmured, turning to rest her cheek against him. His heartbeat was steady and so hauntingly in sync with her own. She could feel his arms tighten around her, relishing in the strength he gave and showed her, and knowing with confidence that he wasn't going to hurt her. No matter his wrongs, he'd never meant to hurt her.
"Always," Gale sighed against her hair, bristling the strands against her ear and sending a shiver down her back.
Just friends, she reminded herself. She wasn't sure she could handle anything more than that. But, the more his hands stroked her back, the more his fingertips brushed against her skin and his breath rushed onto her cheek leaving it damp and warm with his scent, the more she longed for something different.
Sighing, she tried to sit up, to pull away from him before she could endanger herself any more than she'd already had. Gale was quick to release her, not wanting to test her ability to deal with him. He wanted so much more, but he knew it was for her to ask and not for him to demand. She looked at him, really looked at him, and her eyes turned critical, confused.
"Why'd you come back?" She asked, already regretting her need to know. He clenched his jaw, turning into stone as he tried to figure out a way to say all the right words without triggering the subject neither of them wanted to approach.
"I… I wanted to come home."
"Then why weren't you in town?" She just had to press on, didn't she?
"Because I needed time to figure out how to, how to go back. I just, I felt like I wasn't allowed to so I stayed out here."
Silence. He turned his eyes to the fire, watching as it danced against the wood and played with the shadows that he wanted so much to disappear into. He could feel her piercing into him with her stare, sense her body tense as the meaning of his words settled in.
"Because of me. And if I wasn't here?" She demanded, her voice like ice. He shook his head, mentally cursing himself for not saying something simple, like "I just got here and I wanted to hunt first". But, she would have known he was lying. They could never keep secrets from one another, not for long.
"Katniss, it's not like that."
"Damn you, of course it is!" And, she was up, as if sitting next to him burned. And, perhaps, it did. She was seething already, and Gale had to fight back his own screams of frustration. He couldn't fight fire with fire. Hadn't he learned that by now?
So, he stayed planted on the ground.
"Katniss, you need to calm down. It's not just you. I just feel like a stranger after all this time, okay?" The look she jabbed him with was enough to let him know that excuse didn't fly.
"Really? And why were you away for so long? Because of what happened, right? Gale, you can't lie to me. Not after everything we've gone through, after everything I've gone through. Don't." Her face was inflamed with rage and her eyes were turning red as she fought back tears. She always seemed to cry when she was angry.
Gale stood up, frantic to fix this, whatever it was.
"Katniss, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. This, this is why I couldn't go back there. I couldn't face you after the hurt I've caused. I didn't want to bring the memories back with me," Gale rushed to say, his arms stretched out to grab her shoulders and still her as she paced about the shack. She shoved his arms aside, bewildered and unable to cope. Just as he'd feared.
"I knew this was a bad idea," he sighed, rubbing his forehead in frustration.
"No," Katniss replied tiredly. She stopped pacing and stood there in front of him. He looked up at her, and he could see that they both longed for the same thing: resolution. "No, it wasn't. I needed to see you, Gale. I needed to hear those words again and be able to forgive."
"And can you?" He choked out.
"I'm trying. It hurts, but I'm trying," she admitted while still struggling to keep her composure. Sometimes Gale just wanted to shake her, shake out the pride and stubbornness that kept her from freeing herself completely. But, instead of that, he allowed himself another embrace.
"You don't have to forgive me. I never expected you to. I just wanted to say those words again," he said, clinging to her for dear life. "I just wanted to know you were getting better."
"You never said goodbye, Gale. Neither of us did," she gasped, her arms constricting around him. "I've missed you so much, and I don't want you to hide from me."
"I don't think I can," Gale admitted with a half-hearted laugh. His face was strangely wet.
After a stretch of silence that allowed them both to admire the feel of one another, Katniss smiled against his chest. "Can I still take you up on that offer?"
"What offer?" Gale asked, confused.
"The one you gave me years ago, right here, to run away into the woods," Katniss sighed, turning to look up at Gale, noticing the allure of his lips. Had he kissed other girls after them? Had he thought of her?
Had she thought of him over the years in that way?
Gale searched her expression for a falter in her resolve. She was acting out of desperation, he knew. She was searching for comfort after leaving what she'd grown to love for so long. Her hands, when they came up to trace the curvature of his face, were empty of a ring but Gale knew that she did not belong with him.
But that didn't keep him from leaning into her caress, from gingerly placing his lips upon her and delving into the sweetness that had been off limits. She was soft under his hands as they kept her there, her fingertips butterflies delivering their own kisses to his skin as they melted onto his cheeks and memorized every wrinkle, pore, and bone they came to pass. The kiss, their lips, turned frantic with desire and hurt. They mashed together almost painfully as they argued without speaking, demanding more from one another then they could ever give.
Just the smallest break in her lips invited his tongue and he tasted more of the aphrodisiac that kept him rustling in bed, unable to sleep for days on end. She'd never been inside his apartment in district two, had never slept in his bed, and yet the sheets, the pillows, the very air was pollinated with this very scent, this taste.
He drank her in like a man in a desert did water.
Katniss was the first to break the kiss, coming up for air and gasping as his lips, unyielding, went about tasting her cheeks, her chin, her eyes, her neck, the delicate collarbone that rose up and down with her frantic breaths. "I love you," he whispered over and over again, a mantra.
It wasn't for her to hear, because he knew in his heart that she couldn't return the words. It spewed out without consent, just like his lips continued to indulge in the treat it was never allowed to eat. She was planting sweet kisses against his skin too, fingers digging into his chest, trying and failing to reach his heart. But it was already hers.
"Gale," she sighed. She wanted him to make it go away, and it was working so far. Thoughts of family were slipping away with each kiss he planted on her, his embrace filling her up with the undisclosed yearnings she'd kept hidden inside her heart beneath the hurt and anger. She felt safe, and he didn't fear her. She was so tired of being feared.
Her hands slipped under his shirt, feeling the defined muscles that flinched and shivered under her touch. There was a groan and he stopped his assault, firmly resting his head against her shoulder where he stayed.
"Gale? Is something wrong?" Katniss asked, insecurity immediately overwhelming her. Once more, she was being rejected. His skin, once hot under her hands, might as well have been ice cold for how fast she removed herself.
His arms, once wrapped securely around her back and waist, moved to her shoulders. Gently, Gale steered her body away from his own, his eyes downcast.
He couldn't even look at her.
Face burning with shame, Katniss went to push off his hands. She didn't want him touching her any longer than necessary.
"Katniss, please. It's not like that," he haggardly said, as she struggled to move him away. "Katniss."
"That seems to be your favorite line tonight, Gale," she replied harshly, turning her glare to him instead of his hands. His face was forlorn, tired. She was making everything so hard for him.
"Catnip, I'm not the one you need or want. Not really," Gale murmured. Katniss, still flushed, stopped trying to wrestle his hands off her shoulders.
"Who are you to tell me what I want or need?"
He smiled gently, admiring her stubbornness. God, he loved her.
But she isn't yours to love.
There was a greater man for her, one that deserved her and needed her as she needed him. Gale was so used to needing and wanting something he couldn't have that now that he'd had a small taste of what was missing, he was able to let it go.
"You know I'm not the one. You don't love me-"
"Gale, yes I do. I'm hurt but I still love you!"
"Not enough. Your hurt stems from so many things and right now, you're just running from one of them and crashing into another. Your children, Peeta," god it hurt to say these words, "they love you. I can't take you away from them."
"I'm still leaving, with or without you," Katniss said harshly.
"No, you're not. You can't leave. You're staying here because it hurts too much to leave completely. This is your home. It's not mine anymore. You. You're not mine anymore. Really, you never were."
Katniss gazed over Gale's grim features as they morphed into one of peace. He smiled at her, his eyes glistening and torn from within but determined to send her back to where she belonged. It wasn't with him, it wasn't in the woods, and it wasn't somewhere in another district.
"But I need you," she whispered, scared that saying the words would make him vanish forever.
"You can live without me," Gale countered, his strong arms leaving her sides. She felt bare.
"Please, stay."
"You know that's impossible." She was making it so damn hard. His feet were planted, rooted to the ground but his mind begged for the body to flee. He couldn't stay here any longer, under her spell. All they did was destroy one another.
"No, it's not. You're my friend-"
"Who wants to kiss you every second of every day."
Shockingly enough, they both laughed at that.
"Yes, who wants to kiss me every second of every day," Katniss accepted with a small, bleak smile. "But, we need each other. I know we do."
"I can't stay-" He started again, exasperated.
"Then, don't. But write to me. Every day," Katniss compromised and he could see the wheels turning in her head.
He grinned, shaking his head in disbelief. "That's a tall order."
"And I expect you to live up to it. I've yet to forgive you. I need to hear from you, know what you're doing, see that you're okay. That, we'll be okay one day." Again, there was the yearning. He saw her, skinny and clumsy as she struggled about the woods to get food for her family, stealing from his snares. She'd needed him then, but did she really need him now?
"Promise to go home, Katniss. Promise, and I'll do it."
"I promise."
They shared a smile, tender and unsure of the future but knowing that, maybe, possibly, it would be bright.
"Goodbye, Gale."
"Goodbye, Katniss."