A/N- Hey, this is my first fanfiction, but I love writing, so I hope everyone enjoys it! Please review and enjoy! :) Also, as a disclaimer, I will say that the characters and setting is all from Suzanne Collins, but I am trying to add my own unique twist on it! And the prologue takes place a few years before the 74th Hunger Games! Well, I'm off; hope you like it!
"Hey, showoff," jeered the girl, still sweating from running through the forest in the hot, summer sun. "Lay off; I'm a girl, for God's sake!" Other girls would have been teasing, or in his own mother's words, all-out flirting with her son, but anyone could be fairly certain that this particular girl, with her half-scowl and her spitfire attitude, was slightly angry, or aggravated at least a tick.
Even though she was, in general, a quieter type of girl in all aspects, trying to remain very non-assuming to the eye, he was starting to see flashes of what she was really like, full of a sort of raw nerve and determination to do whatever was thrown at her. Any girl who could shoot something point-blank with a hand-crafted wooden bow from twenty feet up in a thick tangle of tree branches and scorched, summer leaves was no doubt someone worth his valued time.
"Exactly, Catnip," the boy was handsome, a trait he got from his father, and when he smiled like he was now, with his teeth and his charcoal eyes, almost any girl who was boy-crazy would swoon and beam back.
But not Katniss Everdeen.
"Just because I'm a skinny girl all alone in the woods with a bow and I'm two years younger than you does not mean you can go around murdering all the animals for me!" Katniss gestured to the medium-sized bobcat that lay motionless on the ground, wiped her brow, and tried to look as intimidating as a twelve-year-old girl could be to a boy almost twice her size. She pointed a threatening finger at him. "And if you call me that one more time I swear I will s-"
"C'mon, Catnip," Gale jokingly flicked Katniss's usual hairstyle, a thick, dark braid, which was as messy and carefree as usual, like she literally would wake up and make an immediate beeline to the woods. He decided to play up her nickname a while longer; he liked it, and it was one of the few moments where he could genuinely laugh out loud without pretending to be particularly well-mannered. Simply speaking, Gale felt like he could just act like himself, not the 'polite, young gentleman' his mother wanted him to be. "All the cats adore you and your name. It's just so purr-fect."
Katniss flinched at that, and little sparks flared up in her slanted gray eyes, the same eyes that reminded Gale of a cat's—deadly but with sort of a mystifying side. He thought they were rather pretty, even though her eyes and head were always pointed at the ground, like she was trying to evade everyone and get on with her life in solitude.
Gale brushed a few fallen leaves out of his dark, shaggy hair, which remained, as usual, uncut until his mother would beg him to do at least something about it, and Gale tried not to be hurt by Katniss's defensiveness. It was only expected of a girl growing up in the environment that she was, but he still felt upset, betrayed even, that she would reject his help so stubbornly. Gale wasn't used to being turned down by people, especially if they happened to be girls from the ages of ten to eighteen. Of course Katniss was capable of handling and killing that bobcat all by herself, being as lean and slight as she was, but he figured it would be a nice favor that one would normally smile at and accept graciously.
Unfortunately Gale was going to get it now; Katniss didn't need anyone looking after her, especially after the loss of her own father and the difficulty of reviving her own mother from the mental shock that her own husband was blown up in a deadly mine explosion. She was a born-and-raised Seam child—aside from the typical Seam table manners—who could cope quite well on her own, thank you very much.
"Shut it, Hawthorne," her teeth gritted and her eyes, which appeared flecked with bits of dark, dazzling blue-grays in the sunlight, fixed onto the dead bobcat, a two wooden arrows sticking out of its flank. The fur was matted with dried blood and mud from the edge of the nearby stream, and the animal's piercing yellow eyes, almost eerie to look at, were stuck in an eternal glaze. The cat had been following the snares Gale had cleverly set for a few days now, Katniss having pointed out slight outlines of paw prints in the dusty, dry soil, leaving Gale amazed by her natural ability to hunt and track down and kill almost any small prey she set her mind on. That girl has some real grit to her, he noted as Katniss tried to rub off some smeared dirt on her rosy cheeks with a faded burgundy shirt sleeve, which predictably, made it worse.
"Oh, and I'll get the bobcat taken care of," he gestured to the body. Katniss didn't even look at him, presumably ignoring him on the whole matter. Gale would rather have that then some ditzy girl running up and trying to give him a huge kiss on the cheek or something disgusting like that.
Katniss Everdeen was different. That was all there was to it. Hair braided, boots laced, simple clothes rumpled like she didn't give a care, misty gray eyes twinkling... he liked almost everything about her instantly, and she definitely could prove to be an exceptional hunting partner. Something made her stand out more than any other girl at school, even the ones who dolled up every day in their pricey merchant clothes and makeup. Gale, at fourteen, had already snagged a few of those rich merchant girls, even kissed the mayor's daughter once, but Katniss was special, almost like a sister to him. She could easily become the girl who could eventually become someone he trusted more than himself at times. True, she was still warming up to him, and true, they had met a mere two months ago, but he couldn't help but be caring towards her.
And besides, she was the only girl whose scowl seemed to brighten the whole town.
Katniss attempted to smooth out her coffee-colored hair, as haywire crazy as it was, thinking about how frantic her mother would be about her daughter's hair dilemma if she wasn't in a state of self-pitying shock, as Katniss called it. Careful not to let any dead, dry leaves crunch under her worn hunting boots, which were still a half-size too large, she let the rare summer breeze mix with the musty odor of the forest floor. It was a smell that somehow revived her, gave Katniss that next bit of energy to trudge home to her family's ramshackle house and put dinner on the table. Her hunting had paid off the last few months, and even though she would never admit it, Gale was helping. She was secretly surprised at how he had completely taken care of the cat for her, and despite making her feel weak and incapable, she admitted he wasn't such a terrible person to be around either. At least he shared the same opinion as her about the Capitol, though he was more vocal about it than she.
The second day they agreed to start hunting and gathering food together outside the safety of the District 12 fence, Gale had gone into a rant about how ridiculous their forced lifestyle was. How if the citizens were involved in the politics, at least the government wouldn't be full of idiots and ridiculous costume-clad flamingos that had never gotten their feathers dirty. Katniss had been speechless. Did he really trust her with all this? Even a small child could be hanged for such treasonous speech. Maybe she was only shocked because she could never trust someone like he did, and she shared the exact same opinion.
Katniss had never had a true friend, other than her younger sister Primrose, who was too young to trust with some of the more dark truths about Panem anyways, and she was almost confused at why Gale would hang around her—she rarely talked in school and kept her eyes glued on the ground. She decided to be guarded and assume eventually he would leave; only wanting to learn about Katniss's methods for getting food on the table, but so far, Gale was...okay. She was slowly losing grip on her block of shyness and suspicion and starting to trust him, bit by bit. She had even let him walk behind her today; rid of the thought he would try to shoot her from behind. Friendship was almost a new feeling for Katniss, and she could never tell that the moments her heart glowed when seeing Gale was out of friendship or something else. She tried not to think too much about that; Katniss Everdeen had much better things to worry about.
After brushing these thoughts from her wandering mind, Katniss rubbed her forehead with her hand, trying to keep on track. It's the hottest June day yet, and it's a Monday, for God's sake, I need a break. She decided that after her and Gale had reset all the snares, she would head home, take an ice-cold bath, and collapse on the rickety old bed her and Prim shared. But she also came to the wonderful conclusion that the water would be lukewarm and stale, like almost everything else was, food included, and the bed sheets more than likely needed to be changed, resulting in another chore for Katniss. And there was no way she was going to nap on that floor where that ugly cat was. Prim adored it to death, but Katniss decided that she would rather lose some sleep than be around any mangy fur ball. No rest for me. Whatever, cut the pity-party and get this over with.
Katniss quietly bent down on the ground, her nimble fingers tampering with the slightly frayed rope of one of Gale's snares until she was able to retrieve the tangled rabbit entwined in it. If the rabbit wasn't the definition of food in the Katniss edition of the dictionary, she might have felt a pang of sadness for it, but Katniss, being hard-driven to do anything for a little meat on the table, simply shook off her frown and flung the limp rabbit onto the game bag, figuring she would skin it after she was done with the snares. Meat was meat. She felt Gale's eyes on her, and despite her mental arguments that Gale was 'the hunting partner,' Katniss's heart fluttered in her chest just enough to make her want to climb a tree and hide out for about six hours.
"Just some heart palpitations, right?" she grumbled to the dead rabbit, almost waiting for it to reply back, at least with a twitch of a nose or the blink of its wide open eyelids. But Mr. Floppy Ears remained as dead as always, and Gale's eyes remained glued on her as always. It was quite uncanny having two pairs of eyes stare at her at the same time, one being dead and the other being quite unnerving. Katniss simply shook her head. She must be having some sort of mild hallucinations from that chilled mushroom and lentil soup at the Hob; when in doubt, blame the soup. And God knows what other mysterious ingredients were added. Bent on thinking that mushrooms were the cause of her weird persona today, she set to work on resetting the snare like Gale had taught her. And she might as well take care of the bobcat because Gale looked quite content with just watching her and doing nothing else.
"Not going to try and steal that one, right?" Gale called to her as he shielded his face from the sun with his tanned arm and nodded at the rabbit, still motionless on the rough burlap game sack. "You look more in love with that one though; you keep staring at it."
Then you must at least like me, Gale. Katniss retorted mentally, like she always did when she wasn't bold enough to voice her comebacks. She was too shy to say it, but his statement was rather ironic.
"I didn't steal anything, Gale, shut it."
"Oh, yeah, totally didn't. Totally."
"Gale." Her tone should warn him to stay away.
"Katniss."
"Gale..."
"What?" He was obviously messing with her, judging by a shadow of a grin on his face.
"Oh, never mind..." She tried to be genuinely annoyed with him instead of using all this good-natured banter, but what's life without a little bit of fun? Katniss managed to crack a small grin that further cracked her dried-out lips and let out a little bit of laughter; it couldn't hurt, could it?
After all, it was the best medicine, and the dark-haired boy just might have been curing her sickness.
I hope it was okay? :) And please refer this to friends and whatnot; I love feedback (I would love to take constructive critisim too!) So please keep on reading! And I am yammering, but also, I write daily, so you will never have to wait like... six months for an update!
Kisses, E