AN: The first three chapters of this story are written already. I hope to update those quickly, after that updates may come more slowly as I finish the story. This story is dedicated to my friend Brandon, who wondered if Gale ever got over Katniss. The question made me intrigued enough to write this story. I hope you like it.
I wake up to the bright sun shining in my eyes. The covers on my small bed are twisted and rumpled again, my body drenched with sweat. Though it's summertime here in District 2, the weather is never really warm. I think that maybe I've had more nightmares. They've been coming every night and despite the large amounts of whiskey that are now readily available to me, I've not found it any easier to drift to sleep, nor stay sleeping.
It's almost always the same nightmare. When I wake I am still haunted by the same questions that I can never hope to answer. Could I have made a different decision and saved Prim? If I had saved her, would my best friend be beside me in this bed? Did my rash and regrettable choices really do that much harm? These are only questions I dare ask myself in the still of the night, after waking up from jumbled, frantic dreams that always end the same.
The regret is always there, and yet, when I am rational in the light of day, I realize that the outcome of the decisions I alone made, would always be the same. Choices I made, weapons I designed, and the destinies that were cut short because of me would always hang over my head. In the end, I always wipe the sweat from my forehead and move on in my day. During the night, the fear and shame cripples me. Come morning, I put myself back together, make the bed, shower, and show up at the Central Office, grateful that my hands no longer have to be covered by mine dust and that we now exist in a government that doesn't force young children to pay for the mistakes of a rebellion that was over long before they ever existed.
And yet, one lingering question remains to me as I push myself from the bed, ready to begin my day. The choices I made and forced upon countless innocent people - were those actions any better than the government I helped to destroy?
"Good morning, Mr. Hawthorne." A polite voice with an accent I haven't yet identified greets me like this every morning.
"Emma, how many times do I need to tell you, you can call me Gale?" I remember how to be polite and charming when the need suits me. Of course, this is spoken with a smile on my face. The fear and trauma that still lingers underneath the surface from the night now needs to be masked for the work day.
No matter how many times I tell my assistant to call me Gale, she unfailingly reverts to the more formal Mr. Hawthorne. She is a mystery, this Emma with no last name. I was asked to give her the job of being my assistant. And though she has been working with me for months now, I still know almost nothing about her other than how she drinks her coffee in the morning - two cups exactly with sugar, but no milk. She is always smartly dressed, with no stray hairs out of place and makeup done perfectly each morning. I know she excels at interpreting experimental weapons blueprints and that, even though she wears heels, she can keep up with me when we tour the factories together. I know the sandy blonde of her long, wavy hair most likely isn't the real color and that her brown eyes are the product of contact lenses, rather than genetics. I have found that if you stand too close to her or come upon her suddenly, she startles easily.
I know she intrigues me. She has no last name and hasn't been willing to provide one, at least not to me. She never speaks of her family or her past. And when she thinks I'm not listening, she hums the saddest songs. I've almost, but not quite, recognized a few. The names of the songs linger just out of reach in my memory. I've tried getting information from her. I've used humor and what I think are trick questions, and yet she never slips up and gives anything beyond what I already know about her.
"Mr. Hawthorne?" Her voice interrupts my wandering mind. "Are we finalizing this blueprint today and touring the factory again? You know they put us on a tight schedule for this new system."
"Yeah," I answer slowly, my mind coming back from thoughts of my mysterious assistant to the present task at hand. "Yeah, let's get started. We need to deliver the finished system to Factory 3 today to begin production. I received a message yesterday, after you left for the evening, saying they've rushed everything. Though I haven't a clue as to why. An upgraded inter-district communications surveillance system shouldn't need to be are plenty of other jobs that need to be finished before this one becomes necessary."
Emma just rolls her eyes at me. She is well used to me speaking my thoughts out loud and pretending she's not there. She pokes at my arm with the pencil she's taken from behind her ear and smiles not unkindly, and I know what she's about to say.
"Mr. Hawthorne, ours is not to question, but to do." This is an oft repeated phrase between the two of us. She is well aware of my tendencies to question authority regarding our newly formed government. The fact that she takes it in stride and doesn't take my musings too seriously makes me happy that she's my assistant and not one of the other young, overly eager toadies that abound in this Central Office.
Even so, an uneasiness ripples across my mind with this newest task at hand. Why would our new government need to have access to high speed cross-country communications network surveillance? I think that this job will bear watching closely in the days and weeks to come.
"So," I say to Emma, running my hands through hair that probably needs a trim. "Let's get busy. These plans won't finalize themselves, will they?"
She walks over to my desk and smiles down at me mischievously, knowing she's just avoided a twenty minute, mostly nonsensical rant about the evils of secret government doings, and pats me on the shoulder, her hand lingering just a bit longer than necessary.
"Nope, Mr. Hawthorne, they sure won't."
As I lift my head to smile in return, I find myself a bit surprised to be wondering what color her eyes actually are underneath those thick, brown contact lenses. I shrug her hand off my shoulder rather more abruptly than I normally would have done, because this line of thinking is not something I want to ponder any further. She has touched me before,so I'm not sure why this time should be any different than her picking a stray hair from my shirt or leaning over me working on the numerous designs we've created together in the last six months. And yet, this time, it is different. And not a little bit unnerving.
My mind abruptly shifts gears to someone I know will never come back to me. She's moved on and with Peeta now. Inside my head I know that, but how does the heart reconcile that a life-long friend, my best friend, is simply no longer there? It leaves a gaping hole that I'm not sure will ever be filled. I'm not sure I want it to be filled. It's been a year since I've last seen her. Haymitch has purposely not spoken of her during his few visits to see me. I'm not sure if that's to protect her or me. Either way, she's moved on. And I need to look forward, not back.
Slightly softening my voice and purposefully not looking back up at now hurt filled eyes, I clear my throat and ask a question ...
"Emma, what time is the factory tour this afternoon again? Could you check for me, please?" She straightens and, as I knew she would, shrugs off the awkward moment between us and returns to her own desk to look at her meticulously kept calendar. And I'm left with a cool breeze on my shoulder where her warm hand just was.