and the beast has no master
and the spirit no name
and the angels are hushing
and they dance in soft shame
this hysterical house
could collapse in the night
and the hinges will buckle
liars choke on their spite
but the darkness has a hunger
it offers you
blood for wild blood
blood for wild blood, razorlight
.:.
Gale Hawthorne.
The world stops turning for the fragment of a second, small as a single grain of sand, heavy as a solid mountain, stretching on forever like the sky.
Katniss can feel the sweat breaking out all over her skin like a layer of despair, can hear the odds crumble away – never in their favour. Not in his favour. Not today.
The crowd moves like an enormous insect, making way for one of its own, sending him into doom. Gale's steps are determined, steadfast. He is fighting already, shoulders broad as he shakes Effie Trinket's manicured, pale hand.
It is a different sight than usual, Gale standing on the stage, in the spotlight, for everyone in Panem to see. He is not the District 12 tribute they would expect. Face determined, set in stone. He stands broad and strong, almost promising.
Katniss wants to burst through the crowd, wants to scream and tear and pull him back, take him into the woods with her. Keep him safe.
.:.
Vic almost runs her over in the hallway, Hazelle calling after him. Katniss can see the dim light reflecting from the tear stains on her ashen face, Posy's head buried in the crook of her neck. There is no time for greetings, for compassion or grieving together as a family – which they are, Hazelle being more of a mother to Katniss than her own.
Rory passes her, chin almost touching his chest, staring at the floor as his feet carry him forward, dragging on behind what is left of his family.
He does not look up, and Katniss pushes her own legs faster down the hallway, knowing how precious time is right now, the hourglass dangerously close to emptying its last grain of sand.
She still has vivid scenarios running through her mind, plans to get Gale out of here, to escape into the wild with him. Regret fills her every pore, his proposition from just a few hours ago – or was it really a lifetime ago? - repeating in her head like the sun rising and setting in the sky. They should have run away a long time ago, escape, hide.
But as her fingers curl around the doorknob, memories of the girl with the red hair flash in her mind, and she suddenly feels desperate to know what she had been running away from, what happened to her. What her name was. Where she came from.
Catnip.
She can hear him whisper her name against her head before she even hears the door fall closed behind her, his arms enveloping her, pushing her against him so tightly she struggles to breathe for a few seconds. He has hugged her before, on rare occasions, but this is different.
Gone is the strong tribute that stood on the stage barely thirty minutes ago. He is terrified, holding on to Katniss as if she were the last thing keeping him alive.
You will look after them, will you? he asks desperately, his voice barely above a whisper, muffled by her braid.
Of course, she nods against his chest, wrapping her own arms hesitantly around hist waist, trying to hold him together, keep him for herself.
You'll have to teach Vic and Rory how to hunt,he tells her quickly, his voice rushed, because they both know they do not have much time at hand. It is slipping through their fingers like the water in the lake her father used to take her to, And there's some money under a loose floorboard under my bed. I saved it for Posy. She wants one of those lilac ribbons so badly, and I think there might be enough in there, maybe you can save something and buy her one for her birthday, and if the winter gets hard, you'll have that little extra-
Gale, Katniss interrupts him, pushing herself out of their embrace just far enough to look into his grey eyes, full of fear, despair and resignation, the Games won't last until November. You can buy Posy the ribbon yourself.
Katniss, he sighs, dropping his hands, releasing her.
No, don't start with this, she says, her voice harsh and determined as she grabs his big hands in her own, You can do this. You're not like our usual tributes. Yes, you might not get the food the other tributes get, but you're strong, you know how to hunt and kill, you know how to survive. You're smart. And if you play it right, you might join the carriers. You just have to stay alive long enough. Do you hear me?
She is pleading now, squeezing Gale's hands like they are the only things solid in the world.
You have to survive. You have to come back. Please.
Catnip, he whispers again, voice hoarse.
You actually have a chance.
And then she leans into him again, and lets him wrap his arms around her once more, his hands fisting into the soft fabric of her dress. His lips ghost over her temple just so, and she feels the shudders running down her spine. It feels new, foreign, strange. But the goose bumps that erupt all over her skin – down her bare arms, up her bare legs, disappearing underneath the blue dress - feel exciting and she leans in closer, letting her eyes fall shut.
I love you.
She hears his whisper against her skin, feels the warmth of his breath, and suddenly it all falls into place.
He has to come back home.
I should have told you that sooner, he murmurs, his hand brushing up her arm to rest against her cheek.
Lifting her head to look into his eyes one more time is such a simple task, but something holds Katniss back. Maybe she does not trust her own words and does not want the last thing she remembers about Gale be the hopelessness in his eyes (she was never good with words, they never meant anything passing her lips). Or maybe she knew that their time was up and holding on to the thin thread still holding them together was in vain.
I know, she whispers as she drops his hand. She tries not to see his face as she grants him a last smile, the kind of smile she knows belongs just to him, into the woods.
She tries to slow down her steps down the hallway, the dim, golden light filling her senses to the brim, dull and cloudy. As soon as fresh air fills her lungs and breezes through some loose strands of her braid, she starts sprinting, blindly heading for the only safe place she knows in this world.
.:.
Katniss bites the inside of her cheek so hard she draws blood as she watches her best friend kill three people at the Cornucopia, reflecting the sunlight so brightly from its golden surface that a bright spot disturbs the screen.
When he sprints into a crevice with a group of eight strong-build, well-fed and obviously bluntly heartless careers, she can hear Prim whimper by her side.
She can not think of the right words to say.
.:.
It is when Gale rams a boulder against the head of the girl whose father buys some of the fish they catch from time to time, that Katniss realizes he would never come home again.
To the Capitol, it is just another bloody kill, especially entertaining as it always is when someone kills the tribute from their own District. But Katniss can see the tremor in Gale's hand as he has to ram the boulder against the girl's temple a second time because she is still alive.
He wipes the girl's blood onto his shirt, and when the camera shows a close up of his face, Katniss sees the boy she spent so many hours pacing through the woods with slowly crumbling into bloody pieces.
.:.
It feels like she spends all her time deep in the woods, legs burning from walking for hours straight without even the shortest break. Her eyes ache from staying open, and she has to pay attention to sell what little she is able to catch these days for as much money as possible. Katniss knows she is easy prey right now.
There is not much food, and she has to provide for six people all on her own now. Herself not included. Everything she catches, she makes sure that it goes to Gale's family, her mother and Prim first. It is not until she can not go hunting one day because she faints on her way outside that she realizes that starving herself is not going to help the others, either.
Strolling through the woods alone seems odd, and sometimes she can feel a hint of fear creeping up her spine. She is not sure whether she is afraid of the dangers hidden in the forest, or of spending the rest of her days hunting beneath the trees all by herself.
She has been hunting all by herself before, when she was so much younger, just a small child, but it feels so different now. Something important is missing, no one is here to have her back.
.:.
There are only five tributes left, and Katniss starts to feel a glimmer of hope flickering inside of her. She starts to believe in her own words.
Until the day she watches the rusty spear hit Gale between the shoulder blades, watches his knees give in, the disturbingly peaceful relief in his eyes, his skin almost pale as his head hits the russet sand.
She feels Prim's tears soak through her shirt, hears her mother run after Hazelle, sees the blank expression in Rory's eyes. Rage boils inside of her, and only her sister's small hands clenching around her wrist keep her from bursting through the door. She wants to kill the coward from District 2 who was not even brave enough to face Gale when he killed him. She wants to scream and cry, but all she does is sit there, holding her sister, watching Gale's lifeless, blood-covered body being lifted from the desert.
The guilt that starts to creep itself into her brain is suffocating. She should have been there, she should have had Gale's back.
.:.
When Posy does not make it through the winter, Katniss spends the entire night in the woods, wide awake, the cold seeping deeply into her bones. The guilt, the feeling of failure is almost too hard to bear, and she draws mindless circles into the snow all night, hidden by the darkness.
Somehow, she carries her numb limbs back into her house, into the grey and dusty place that is the closest she has to home. She feels disgusted with herself for all the things she did to save enough money for medication for Posy, feels ruined. All she wants to do is jump into the now frozen lake and scrub her skin raw, wash away everything that has happened.
Prim braids one of her run-down ribbons into Posy's hair – the money under Gale's bed had been used for the medication that came too late – and Katniss strokes the young girls face, looking so much like her brother.
I'm so sorry.
.:.
It is hard not to feel grateful that there is one mouth less to feed, but spring eventually comes and they are not hungrier than they should be.
As the forest becomes alive around her again and life blossoms between the trees, Katniss walks to the hidden lake, staring at the sunlight reflecting from the waters surface, regretting that Gale never got to see this.
She looks down at her open palms, and wonders if she could ever kill another human. Wonders if she could have been as brave as Gale was. How things would be had he survived and come back home.
.:.
Primrose Everdeen
For a fragment of a second, Katniss wants to storm up the stage, tuck in her little sister's shirt and send her back into their mother's arms. She could fight in her stead. Die instead of her little sister.
But she knows that there is no one else left to look after her family when she is gone.
So, instead, she has to watch her little sister stumble up the stage, shake Effie Trinket's hand and look at the angry crowd in utter fear. It kills Katniss inside, everything tearing into different directions.
When the baker's boy takes his place next to Prim, Katniss closes her eyes, tears pooling behind her lids, before silently running down her cheeks.
They leave no trail as they drop onto the ashen ground.