Disclaimer: I own none of these characters. If I did, I would be rich.
A/N: So this is the first thing I've decided to post, and I'm having a very hard time navigating this site, so if there's something formatted horribly wrong on here, please let me know. Also, I've proofread this a million times, but I'm really a terrible proofreader, so please also tell me if you find a mistake.
By the way, this was written by the Biffy half of thesociallyawkwardtwins
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Snapshots:
It's cold- unbearably so. Frigidly cold like a blustery, white-washed December morning before the sun has broken the distant horizon. It's that kind of cold. The cold that makes you feel like you're lacking something essential, something like a beating, warming heart.
But what, exactly, is that cold?
It's that moment when you're sure everything is ending. That moment when the roof of uncertainty caves in on you like a real rockslide, crushing in on you from all sides. And yet, somehow, it's bearable. It's freeing. You're almost back in control, it seems, because at least you know what's going on.
But, for one thing, Katniss Everdeen didn't think it would be this cold. She thought about the moment when you truly realized it was your moment to die, and she never imagined it as cold. She imagined it a million ways. She imagined her last few moments as terrifying, suffocating, claustrophobic, and ashamed, but never ever was it freezing cold. She thought her life would be taken by tongues of flame and ended in agonizing fire, but she never thought ice would suck away her soul and leave her body cold.
Unable to open her eyes, Katniss is susceptible to this cold. It overtakes her mind, flooding into it like gallons of ice water. Her mind feels raw, icy, and lashed as it takes over. She sees images, weak and filtered, against the backs of her eyelids like quick snapshots. She sees flickers of November dawns, snowy evenings, and bundled up walks. Ink black skies dotted with stars, windy midnights by the fire, and mornings spent brushing a fine layer of frost off the curved wood of her bow.
She sees all the moments of frigid cold. She breathes them in like the painfully cleansing winter air. A shudder runs through her body, and Katniss can feel her body giving out. Her breathing is forceful, jerky, and shallow. And yet the snapshots get brighter, lit behind by an intense, heavenly light. It's like a movie reel, the machine whacking, the lighting adjusting, the sounds and images developing.
And out of the light, Katniss makes out figures, two of them. One is larger, masculine, with dark black hair. The other is a small girl, judging by her size, with a braid the whips with her every turn. A laugh descends into the scene as the darkness of the two figures' clothing mysteriously bleeds out of the bright reflected light. A November morning, with an inch or two of snow on the ground. Katniss remembers those days. She remembers how the trees looked as they broke up the intense, fresh-fallen snow, glittering in the sun. How clearly she can remember those moments.
Those quiet moments on the hunt. The moments when she could see not only her own breath but also Gale's swirling around the air like smoke. She could almost hear his heartbeat, even and steady, from his chest. He had been that close, that calm, that steady. She could feel the warmth radiating off his body.
Katniss remembers those moments of her life, like old pictures stored in the back of her mind. Those moments when you really think your heart will stop. Your breathing will cease. They're so clear in your mind, despite their lack of importance. Those moments, for some reason, are the ones Katniss is replaying in her head in her final minutes.
Her vision darkens, and the scene of a November morning bleeds into one of inky, black midnight. Katniss can almost feel the caress of the breeze on her cheek. The grass was slightly damp, maybe it had rained earlier, but it wasn't so wet that it was muddy. It was just barely wet enough that Katniss could feel the little beads of water clinging to her skin. That kind of wet.
The image slowly widens, revealing Gale lying inches from Katniss. His face was upturned, staring into the unfathomable depth of the nighttime sky. The glow of the moon reflected in his steel gray eyes. Katniss remembers looking at his face while he stared at the stars. She was smiling a warm, carefree smile. He turned his head to meet her gaze and held up his hand, gesturing at the sweeping heavens.
"Do you ever get the feeling that somewhere out there, there's someone looking at the same star that you are, even though there are millions upon millions of them up there?" Gale asked, looking more vulnerable and open than Katniss had ever seen him.
Yes, Gale. Katniss gets that feeling now. She's looking into the stars now, however fake and generated they are. She feels that inexplicable, unexplainable feeling of connection. She hadn't responded all those years ago when Gale had really asked her that, but now she wants to respond. She wonders, if only for an instant, if Gale's looking at the same stars she's looking at now. It would be a comfort to know he's with her as he was when they were lying in the Meadow, looking at the stars the way they'd looked back then.
Because, for some reason, in that moment, the stars seemed to burn brighter and shine longer than they ever had before. It was like they carried on forever and never vanished into the distant horizons. It was like there were millions more of them than usual, shining just especially for this memory inside Katniss's head.
She wanted, back then in the Meadow, to be swallowed up forever by those stars. Despite the cold, chilled wind that rushed by every so often, there was an incredible warmth under the twinkling heavens. Katniss wanted to freeze that moment and live in it forever. Where there were no worries, no pain, no hunger, no reapings. Only the night sky, a scattered million stars, the soft grass, and Gale.
The image in Katniss's mind is changing again. The dark shadowed colors of the Meadow in the beckoning twilight blur together until there is only blackness for a second. Then, another light cuts across the dark. It's blinding and stark white, hurting Katniss's unseeing eyes.
When the memory comes into focus, Katniss can't associate a single memory with the view she has. She's looking down at her feet, drawing circles in the frost covered pavement in front of the school. She remembers doing this a lot. But the voice that severs the silence a second later gives the memory away.
"Katniss," she could hear Gale yelling. She didn't look up to face him. Why? Why, because she'd done something unforgivable. But not a bad kind of unforgivable. Gale and Katniss had always kept an unspoken agreement that they would be fair and split the spoils down the middle. Katniss had broken that agreement.
Her feet stopped moving on the frosted ground when he shouted her name again. She watched her knuckles curl over the edge of the wall, turning white from exertion and cold. She prepared for the wrath of Gale Hawthorne. That must have been why she was so shocked at what happened next. She was unprepared.
Before she could look up at him, strong arms were pulling her from the wall. She stumbled forward, falling into his arms, clutching at his shoulder to keep from falling. She could see her breath whirling around her face in a puffing cloud as she exhaled quickly. But Gale just pulled her into his hug, putting his mouth close to her ear.
"Thank you."
Three pairs of boots for small feet. Bags of grain. A new white shirt. A birthday cake.
The warmth from his breath on her ear spread in the form of relief throughout her body. For an instant, Gale had thawed the ice on her skin and in her veins. She could feel a smile form on her face as she let her head fall against his shoulder. Gale's arms tightened around her, his fingers digging into her in some kind of desperation. She could feel his genuine thanks; she could hear how earnestly he meant it.
"Thank you," he repeated. "Thank you, Katniss."
It cost her almost the entire hoard of money she had hidden in her mattress for emergencies. But the Hawthornes deserved it more than anyone else. Especially on Gale's birthday, no less.
Gale moved his face to look her directly in the eyes. She could see that genuine emotion in his eyes, like this meant the world to him. It was almost like she was looking into his soul. She could see everything he was in those eyes.
And then he pressed his lips to her cheek. So close, it seemed, to her lips. And then he let her go slowly, stepping back. He said it one more time, "Thank you," and disappeared. Katniss could feel the warmth spread across her face from the spot where Gale's lips had touched. A hot, hot blush. She brought her hand to her cheek to make sure her face wasn't really on fire. She felt that blissful smile on her mouth.
Fire consumes Katniss's body. Finally, the flames. The flames that burn of rage, lit by hope and hate. Why is life such a tortured crucible of pleasure and pain? Of good and bad? Of ice and fire? Why are we given moments of complete, unsuspecting joy only to have it ripped out from underneath us by a moment of earth-shaking heartbreak?
Why is life full of snowy mornings, starry nights, and unforgettable memories only to be ended in this? In these Games that fuel hate, justify rage, and solidify fear?
Tongues of flame close in from all directions. The cold that was Katniss's death disappears in seconds of the oppressive heat. It slips away, moving towards her core, and freezing solid there, in her heart. She feels everything then- the heat, the pain, the panic. It fills her up in those seconds. She tries to move or make a sound, but her limbs refuse to move and words come out as a garbled mess.
Words turn to moans as the arena's dome of stars turns to the black lid of a coffin. She suffocates, the flames filling the small area with smoke and only smoke. Her eyes water, ash burns at her throat. Her moans turn to screams. Screams of pain, of loss, of love.
Those moments, the ones her mind is recalling for the last time, were they brought forth for a reason? Is that why life is full of the bad and the good? So that in your last minutes of life, you'd think back on them and suffer the agony of loss? Or are the good, memorable snapshots of your life used to ease you into the next life?
Katniss's body gives a final, succumbing shudder, smoke blowing out of her lungs, and her soul follows. From above, the scene looks different. There is no fire, no ash, no coffin. Only a body. Blood. Skin as white as the new-fallen snow.
It's warm- a good, pleasant warm. Like the sun in the spring as it pokes through the branches on its way to the thawing ground. It's warm like that. Like hope. Like love.
That is death. And in death, the close of life, Katniss understands something. She understands the memories. She hears the wind rustling the leaves in the forest one last time. She watches Gale's eyes, full of a laugh, one more time. She counts the stars one last time, wondering if there really are more of them this time. And that's all as it should be.
Like a bird swooping towards heaven on a summer's day, another soul departs for the next life, bringing with it the memories, the moments, the snapshots.