You look like you could be each other's cousins. Dark hair, gray eyes, olive skin—these are the traits of the Seam, of people born into ash and hunger who grow old before their time. Nothing the Capitolites would find beautiful, not with their penchant for self-mutilation, but that's fine by you. You wouldn't want it any other way. You shudder to think about looking like them, with their dyed skin and piercings and surgeries—a bunch of circus freaks parading themselves on end, that's all they are.
You like Catnip just as she is, right up till the moment they really do make you into her cousin. Then you hate it, this undeniable similarity between the two of you. For the first time in your life you wish you looked like one of the merchant boys, all blonde hair and blue eyes, just so they couldn't call you her goddamn cousin. This is the thought that stews in your mind as you stalk through the woods, the absence of your usual partner like a gaping wound in your side.
Then again, you wouldn't want to look like Mellark. Just the thought of him makes anger flare up inside you. You don't make an effort to calm yourself down. You're a better hunter like this anyway. Anger has always made your vision clearer, honed your senses into razor-thin alertness rather than throwing them off balance.
Mellark, the unassuming baker's son, who'd sooner ice a cake than handle a snare or even throw a punch.
It would make you laugh it if didn't make you want to scream.
You alternate between hating him and hating him slightly less for keeping Catnip alive.
If everything else has come to pieces since the day Katniss Everdeen took her sister's place in the Games, then your hatred has been the exception. You, Gale Hawthorne, are no stranger to hate. You never liked kids like Mellark before. They were too young, too soft, not like Seam kids who hardened before their fifteenth birthdays, were damn near ancient by their eighteenth. And you sure as hell don't like him any more now, this boy who's in love with your cousin.
It would be better if you were in the arena with her. The thought never passes your lips, but it's always lingering at the forefront of your mind. Watching her dodge blasts of fire as you sit in front of a screen is almost too much to bear, and on more than one occasion you find yourself storming out of the house, your feet carrying you into the woods before your mind's caught up. You've never felt more useless, not when you were fourteen and your father's body was irretrievable deep beneath the earth, not when Rory fell sick one winter and you had to watch him wither away to almost nothing, not when you filled in the forms for forty-two tesserae slips and knew it still wouldn't be close to enough.
You could protect her if only you were there with her, you know you could. You're strong, well-built enough to take on even the Careers, and you have a hunter's senses. At the end, you know you wouldn't hesitate to die so Catnip could go home.
Ironically, it's a selfish thought. There's people who need you. Mom and Vick and Rory and Posy, of course. But.
There's no harm in wishing.