A/N: So…I presume you were intrigued by my summary and that's why you're here. If so, hopefully the story will be just as good as you expect. This first chapter is in Gale's POV, but other chapters will feature Prim and her Mother. I had intended to write this whole story before I started uploading it, but I've already been away from the site for ages and really wanted to put something up. I hope you'll bear with me if I get behind schedule with my writing.

Anyway, I hope you like this and I'd love to know what you think, so leave a review if you've got time.

Disclaimer: I am not Suzanne Collins and therefore own nothing.


In The Woods

I woke up early as I always did. The fact that it was reaping day had little bearing on the matter. Katniss and I usually got up before the rest of District 12 so we could head to the woods and hunt to feed our families. Across the room I could see the rest of my family slumbering on, Rory and Vick side by side on a blanket on the floor, and Posey sharing the only bed with Mother. For them the horror of reaping day was yet to come.

Every year it was a dreadful experience. Katniss and I had signed up for tesserae so many times that the odds were never in our favour. Somehow I had managed to avoid being reaped for five years years, Katniss escaping it for three; but that day I couldn't escape the pressing feeling that it would be worse, so much worse.

Pushing aside the foreboding thoughts, I slid out of bed and picked my way across the room, avoiding the floorboards I knew creaked when I put my weight on them. I didn't want to wake my family, so I waited until I was out of the room we used as a bedroom before slipping my feet into my hunting boots and gathering my things into a game bag. I took one last look at my sleeping family, smiling slightly as Posey wriggled until she was wrapped inside Mother's arms, and then I left the house.

Walking through the Seam, I could tell that I was the only one awake. The reaping didn't start till the afternoon though, so people often tried to sleep longer and escape it for a few more precious hours. The feeling of merely waiting for it to begin was the worst thing imaginable. I stopped off at the bakery though, and found Mr Mellark already at work. He offered me a good loaf of bread for a squirrel, one I still had in my game bag from the previous hunt.

It was barely any time at all before I was standing in front of the fence. I knew the electricity running it wasn't switched on, so I ducked between part of the fence where two of the barbs had been stretched outwards. It was still awkward pulling my body through and I could feel one of the barbs pulling on my jacket. I imagined that being broad in the chest and over six feet tall would come in handy with the hard work I would have to do in the mines, if I escaped the Games; but it didn't help me clamber through the District 12 boarder fence.

Once I was in the trees though, I began to loosen up. I would be seeing Katniss – she could always cheer me up. We always laughed and joked about the Games, and Effie Trinket, of course. Laughing and joking about it was the only way to cope and deal with the situation the districts of Panem found themselves in.

The woods always provided an opportunity to escape the oppression of District 12 and the Seam.

I made my way to the special place I shared with Katniss and Katniss alone and sat down on the rock ledge, looking out over the valley. It wasn't long before Katniss joined me. She looked completely normal with her straight black hair and grey eyes, the ones I'd come to depend on to keep me sane. The stress in her face alleviated as she sat down beside me on the ledge.

"Hey, Catnip," I said, using the nickname of ours. When we first met she'd been so shy and had whispered her name. Truthfully, I had thought Catnip was her name. "Look what I shot." I held up the loaf of bread from the Mellark bakery, and show her the arrow I stabbed through it.

She laughed, the sound as pleasant as running water, and took it from me. A look of hunger passed through her eyes as she removed the arrow and inhaled the wafting goodness coming from the puncture hole.

"Mmm, still warm," she murmured appreciatively. "What did it cost you?"

"Just a squirrel, think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning. Even wished me luck," I told her.

"Well, we all feel a little closer today, don't we?" Katniss replied, reminding me after a brief lapse that it is the day of the reaping. I nodded, beginning to feel my good mood ebbing away. "Prim left us a cheese."

I smiled, trying to get rid of the atmosphere hanging over us at the thought of the reaping. "Thank you, Prim. We'll have a real feast."

Katniss nodded and took the cheese from her own game bag to show me.

"I almost forgot!" I declared, doing my best Capitol accent. "Happy Hunger Games!" The sentiment was probably the worst possible. The Hunger Games were never an enjoyable experience. Even if you escaped being chosen or having a family member in the Games, you still had to watch. The Games were mandatory viewing. Pushing the thoughts aside, I resumed my jokey manner and tugged a handful of blackberries from the bush beside me. "And may the odds-"

"-Be ever in your favour," Katniss finished, swallowing the berry I'd tossed her.

Grinning at the antics, I ate a few berries myself and then pulled a knife from my pack to slice the bread. I then spread the goat's cheese over the bread whilst Katniss plucked more berries for our meagre breakfast. Still, it was more than most had.

After eating, I found myself looking out over the woods again, taking in how they seemed to go on forever. Anyone would find it hard to survive in the endless expanse. But Katniss and I could do it, I knew that.

"We could do it, you know," I mumbled, not really realising I'd spoken out loud

"What?" Katniss asked, breaking into my thoughts.

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it," I answered, revealing exactly what I'd been contemplating so seriously. Of course, I knew it was also virtually impossible. Both Katniss and I had things to tie us down. "If we didn't have so many kids," I added when Katniss said nothing.

"I never want to have kids," she said sullenly.

Children have almost become depressing. No-one wanted to condemn a child to the life we've suffered through. But in spite of that, I knew that I wanted to have children one day.

"I might. If I didn't live here."

"But you do," Katniss snapped.

"Forget it," I replied just as irritably. It was only wishful thinking. I could never leave District 12, not without Katniss anyway. Living in District 12, however, was dangerous, hard and often, quite frankly, resulted in death. As the primary industry is coal mining, I would have to join the mines. Both my father and Katniss' had died in a mine explosion just as many other good men had before them. It was a fate that possibly awaited me. If you didn't work in the mines, though, there wasn't much else a person from the Seam could do. The wealthier people owned and ran businesses like the Mellark's Bakery. Greasy Sae was probably one of the only Seam folk to run a business. Food was always hard to come by and with sparse medical care, disease ran free. Luckily for me, I was best friends with the daughter of a healer.

Katniss finally dragged me out of my thoughts by asking what I wanted to do.

"Let's fish at the lake. We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight," I answered, standing and leading the way to the lake.

We did well, catching a dozen fish and gathering a bag of greens and some strawberries. We stopped off at the Hob on the way home, trading some of the fish for bread and salt and some of the greens for paraffin. The strawberries we sold to the Mayor, though his daughter, Madge, was the one who opened the back door and dealt with us. She was already dressed for the reaping, not that it mattered. She never had a real chance of being reaped.

"Pretty dress," I said, thinking about how no-one I else I knew would ever be able to afford such an expensive thing.

She shot me a look, trying to determine if I was being honest.

"Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don't I?"

"You won't be going to the Capitol," I told her emotionlessly, before beginning to get angry. It wasn't fair how just because she was rich, she had fewer entries in the reaping ball. "What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old."

"That's not her fault," Katniss pointed out.

"No, it's no-one's fault. Just the way it is," I replied, my voice filled with bitterness.

Katniss said her goodbyes and we headed back to the Seam in silence before going our separate ways to get ready for the reaping.

"See you in the square," she said.

"Wear something pretty," I muttered, turning down another street and going home.

A/N: I realise that all the speech in this chapter is verbatim with the first chapter of the Hunger Games, but I want to keep it as close as possible to the events from the book. When I get further into the story, things will obviously begin to differ because we don't see what's going on in District 12 whilst Katniss is in the Games.

Anyway, let me know what you thought! I'd also really appreciate you telling what kind of format you'd like this to follow in the next chapter. I've so far written the next four, doing chapters by events (the next chapter is the reaping) with each character I'm including having a POV on that event, but I realise changing POVs mid-chapter could be confusing. So please let me know if you'd rather I separated each chapter into three - one for each person's POV - or just keep them together but signpost who's POV it is. (I hope that made sense.)

Much love, SabreDae

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