Climb You
By rese
Summary: They support each other in ways they can't articulate. CF
A/N: Verse from Emmy the Great's 'Trellick Tower'. I also don't own the Hunger Games series, that's all on Suzanne Collins.
…
Can I spend my life trying to climb you?
…
Now she stares at him, his head resting on his arms as he watches her out of one eye. Gale's back is still a red horrible raw mess. She watches her mother apply the third snow coat of the day, the green, sweet smelling cold sticking to his back. His skin is greedy for the relief and Katniss watches the line of his brow smooth out.
Maybe she should take his hand. He doesn't move but she can see his jaw tighten as Prim pushes the bowl of snow around the wound, making sure every lash is coated evenly. At least he's conscious now, although the drugs haven't taken the rose out of his cheeks yet.
She bites into her apple and sits beside him, offering the fruit as she chews on her piece. Gale smirks and her family moves away, handing her another handful of the coat wrapped in cloth for her eye. They're a pair and she likes the way Gale's beautiful, long fingers brush against hers when he takes the apple from her.
He would never be able to afford the fruit and when he takes a bite she can see the flash of guilt across his face for enjoying it. It's not like the whole of Panem is covered in ice and snow, but with the Peacekeeper crackdown everything will be harder to come by, especially for those who can barely count on the tesserae to get them through the month.
They sit in silence and it's just how she likes it. She tries not to think of Peeta, sitting in his house three doors down listening to the storm outside. It's peaceful in here and she can think about something else when Gale finally turns his gaze to the window on the other side of the table.
Her mother moves into the kitchen again, washing out the basin, wiping down the countertop. Katniss and Gale pretend not to be watching her as she goes about the chores but there is little else to occupy their time. Gale passes the apple back and Katniss takes her second bite, the sweet crunch filling her mouth. It tastes wet and she knows that plenty of the juice is partly from Gale's saliva. He loves fruit though he'd tell no one.
Does have a sweet tooth after all, only when it comes to certain things.
Katniss looks at him from the corner of her eye, her lashes hiding her gaze when she pulls her knees up to her chin, wrapping the hand holding the apple around them. The snow pack is numbing her injured eye but Gale can always tell when she's regarding him and he flashes a smile, still leaning heavily against the tabletop.
She heard him ask Prim about her eye when she came in for dinner, having checked that Buttercup hadn't gotten himself stuck in the snow ditch outside the backdoor again.
"She stepped in front of Thread's whip. She was trying to protect you." Katniss hovered in the door, watching Prim's tiny hand touch Gale's shoulder. He didn't nod or say anything but she watched her sister linger, impressing something on him before he finally spoke.
"Thanks, Prim." He squeezed her hand like she was little bigger than a doll and Prim had left with his soiled bandages, smiling at Katniss when she passed her in the hall.
She wonders what it means that Gale still hasn't said anything about that day in the square and decides she's probably better off not knowing anyway. Katniss gives him the last of the apple and he eats the rest, spitting the seeds into his hand.
"You didn't have to eat the stalk."
Her voice startles her mother who turns and looks at them as if she only just remembers they're there. It reminds Katniss of surprising rabbits when you lie in a field for an hour. They'd had a lot of fun with that trick two springs ago. It feels like a lifetime ago now.
Gale's lip twitches and he starts to get up and throw the scraps out before Katniss' mother stops him.
"Don't you dare get up with that coat on!" She holds out her hand and Gale sheepishly drops the seeds in her palm, looking back at Katniss who is trying not to laugh.
Her mother so rarely exerts any authority that it has Gale a little red-faced and Katniss is unable to stop herself from chuckling when her mother leaves the room to throw the seeds out the back.
"Katniss, pour him some tea," Her mother asks, shutting the backdoor behind her before looking for Prim to help with the sewing. Gale's jacket has a terrible rip in it from when Thread pulled it from his back.
She can feel Gale's eyes on her as she gets up and fills the kettle. He stays seated but she can hear his heavy feet shift slowly under the table and Katniss sneaks a peek at him as she takes the kettle back to the oven. The snap of electricity tells her when it's on and she turns around to face her friend.
"I think we need to talk."
Katniss pulls away her bundle of ice and really looks at him. She's seen him without a shirt for what feels like a hundred times, but sitting at her family's dinner table, with a sheet of snow across his back he looks vulnerable. She's never ever thought of Gale as fragile, but without his height, without his good-natured smiles and a warm, worn jacket he doesn't seem like himself.
It's not the first time she's thought she needs to protect him.
"Gale," Katniss starts, her voice soft as she steps towards him. Prim suddenly enters the kitchen and Katniss realises where she is and what she's thinking is wholly inappropriate for all the coming and going in this room.
He's injured and still on the morphling. It isn't fair of her to start digging up things he meant stone cold sober so she turns back to the kettle, listening to Prim scrounge about for thread in the drawer beside her.
"How does it feel?" Her sister asks on her way back out, black thread in hand. Katniss catches the gentle smile Gale gives Prim as he nods.
"Not so bad. Helps I have such a great team of healers."
She sees her little sister blush under the compliment and rush out of the kitchen, clutching the thread for Gale's jacket. Nobody's told her or Gale when he'll be well enough to leave, but the fact that he's even awake, sitting up at the table he was lying unconscious on two days ago is testament enough that Prim and her mother knew what they were doing.
The kettle shrills and Katniss turns off the heat, pulling two mugs across, filling them to the brim, adding two mint leaves to their bottoms. She brings them over to Gale, keeping one for herself when she sits beside him again.
"Gale." If it's possible, her voice is even quieter. Gale takes the mug between his hands and she can see goosebumps run up his arms. It must be from the heat of the tea and the cold of the snow on his back but she doesn't mention it.
"It's okay, Catnip." He says just as quietly and she ducks her head, concentrating on her mug.
He'll forgive her, he always does and she never deserves it.
"I love you."
"I know."
She sips from her tea, unflinching when the heat burns the roof of her mouth.
…
They end up using all the morphling except one bottle and Gale holds it in his hand. He'll return it to Madge tomorrow on his way home. She can hardly believe he's healed up so well. The cuts on his back will scar but she can now see the shape of his skin forming again. What looked like butcher's meat is now soft, uneven but healing.
Katniss looks away when he pulls his shirt back on, moving gingerly so that the fabric wont scrape against his skin. The television is more noise than entertainment and they sit together on the couch staring out the window above it instead. The blizzard isn't as bad as it was a week ago, but she doesn't like to think he'll be out and about in it tomorrow, not in his condition.
He'll have to go back to work soon too. Once the mines reopen there'll be a need for bread and paraffin and he'll cut away at each feeling he buries about Rory taking tesserae. She knows Gale will because she knows she'd do the very same.
"I'll never be able to thank your mom enough."
Katniss risks a look back at him and sees Gale staring at his hands.
She knows only too well that her mother has given him his life back. She was sure he'd have bled out on her table without her mother's expertise. It's easier to think about the slender, strong shape of Gales scarred hands than it is to wonder how her mother got to be so good at treating those kinds of wounds on his back.
"You looked after them when I was –" She can't make the words escape her throat and Gale meets her eyes. They're the same colour as his.
"It's not the same."
"That's not why we helped, Gale." Katniss' whips her head to the doorway and sees Prim standing there watching them. She doesn't know when her sister got so damn sneaky, but she can tell the girl's been standing there a little while.
Gale holds his hand out to Prim and she steps inside the living room, moving to take it. Sitting down they're about eye-to-eye, even though Prim's grown a good head or two since last year. Katniss hates that she's missed that.
"Thank you." There's no speech about how grateful he is and how he'll always endeavour to deserve the life they've returned to him, but Katniss knows Prim has read all of this into his two simple words and she kisses Gale on the cheek. Gale drops his eyes to her sister's socks and Prim gives Katniss a look she can't interpret before moving off to the bookcase.
Katniss doesn't know what to say, so she takes Gale's hand and returns to staring at the tv, listening to Prim turn the pages of her father's book. They say nothing else but she feels Gale's thumb move across hers just once.
…
She loses her footing on the road and Katniss frowns at her complete lack of grace.
"It's okay, I'm alright." She brushes off Peeta's hands that are quick to right her.
Katniss can feel Madge's eyes on her as they walk together past the square where those horrible devices glint in the late afternoon sun. Once the sun sets the bell will sound and the miners will spill out onto the streets, heading for homes as cold as the air outside.
Madge's hands are in her pretty jacket's pockets and Katniss imitates her posture, feeling awful that now their clothes match and strangers are now watching her instead. It doesn't take a genius to see everything the three of them wear is from the Capitol.
She should have worn her father's jacket.
Peeta doesn't try to take her hand anymore and she can't say that it's an easy and welcomed change. It probably helps now though, knowing whom they're all looking to meet before he gets home.
The streets are a little perilous in the dark this time of the year so Katniss hurries them along, taking the shortcuts she's memorized since her father worked there in her youth. Her youth, that's a joke. She's only seventeen.
Her feet quicken, despite her misstep before and she almost plummets herself into Gale's crew before she sees them. Bristel tips his hat, amused by her flushed face before the rest of them return her expression with a scowl, parting their ways.
Gale remains behind, staring at the three of them, his clothes covered in the black soot each miner unwillingly wears. Katniss instantly feels foolish and hates that she didn't try to lose Peeta after bumping into him outside the bakery. Gale's eyes narrow at the boy but he leads them down the lane further into the Seam.
They haven't gone hunting since Gale was whipped and they haven't spoken about it either. Somehow she feels more comfortable seeing Gale with others these days. She doesn't want to think about speaking to him alone, or the knot in her stomach that accompanies the idea.
Madge hunches further into her coat and Katniss pretends not to notice that Gale does. This is just one of the reasons she doesn't want to bring people either. Maybe it would be easier if she just didn't make an effort to see him at all. But then she can't imagine holing herself up at home with only Peeta and Haymitch for visitors.
Gale won't come near the Victor's Village since he left.
The silence between the four of them is deafening. She can't think for the life of her what to say, and Peeta, master of words seems to be occupied with the path in front of his feet.
They finally arrive at the Hawthorne's and Gale holds the door open, waiting for them to go through before him. Madge enters first, pulling off her winter hat, smiling at Hazelle who hallos in the kitchen. Katniss can hear Rory and Vick rouse when Peeta steps in and she risks a look up at Gale who waits just over her shoulder.
His grey eyes are dark in the dusk and she has to swallow hard to remember to look away and follow her friends inside.
"Hi!" Posy pushes past them all with a wave before launching herself at Gale. The little girl's pox still mark her skin but Gale is uncaring as he returns his sister's hug. He gets dirt all over her but Posy only realises this when she is let down again.
"Oh no." She pats down her dress – it's one of Prim's hand-me-downs – and scowls up at her big brother.
"Gotta remember that keeps happening." He brushes her hair once and gestures for them to sit down. Madge and Peeta take the sofa that Vick and Rory vacate and Katniss realises there's nowhere to sit. Peeta's lap is empty but that is so much crueller than the weather outside so she leans against the bench Hazelle stands behind, cutting roots over. Gale rests beside her and she can tell his back is bothering him.
"So, I have a proposition." Katniss feels her cheeks heat under Gale's suddenly intense gaze as she speaks to his mother. Hazelle's knife hesitates as she watches the pair of them, her brows raised.
"I'm listening…"
"How about you work for Haymitch Abernathy. He needs a cleaner and I was thinking if the laundry isn't picking up, he can keep you on some kind of permanent basis or something." Katniss doesn't mention how she's thought this all out, without Haymitch. She also doesn't think about how much she just wants a Hawthorne around the Village. Even if it is the wrong one.
"I promise you, cleaning that place up will save his life," Peeta pipes up from the couch. Madge looks uncomfortable beside him, twisting her head around to watch them in the kitchen. "I can't think of anywhere that needs it more."
Katniss tries not to think of her old house. It's emptier than she feels at this moment but full of dust and webs and god knows what infesting under the floorboards. The beds are still there though, and she doesn't know what about that thought makes her look at Gale.
He looks serious as his mother contemplates her offer. Katniss finds herself unable to look away this time and when he takes her arm at last something inside her flares to life.
"Alright." Hazelle breaks the spell and Katniss turns back to Gale's mother, feeling his hand slip away.
"You will? Great!" Katniss is smiling now, pleased she's solved the problem of Gale's family going hungry without their hunting. It won't be easy, Hazelle having to be away from the children, but it's a start. And if they're at school all day it won't be too much trouble.
"Have you told Haymitch?" Peeta asks, and she knows he knows she hasn't from his tone.
Katniss stiffly replies. "He asked me to ask Hazelle." She stuffs her hands in her pockets and tries to ignore the way her friends are staring at her. There isn't a single person in the room who doesn't know she just lied.
"Well, thank you, Katniss." Hazelle reaches over the benchtop and squeezes her arm, touching the same spot her son just held. Katniss nods and smiles happily.
"No problem. I should get back, though." There's no way she's going to impose on them for dinner. That pot will barely fill five bellies let alone eight, so she gestures for Peeta and Madge to jump up and follow her. "I'll tell Haymitch you'll be round tomorrow?"
"That sounds fine." Hazelle continues chopping up the greens and Katniss holds the door open for her friends, thinking she could have done this without them now that she's got it over and done with.
Gale's arm rests over her head touching the edge of the open door she leans against and Katniss is forced to look up at him as her friends wait out in the cold.
"Thanks, Catnip." He says simply and Katniss feels both Peeta and Madge staring when she watches his boots instead, embarrassed she didn't just come over during the day. It was selfish of her to wait for Gale to finish work. But now that she's seen him, she thinks it will be enough to do for another few days.
She won't be home when he comes over for her mother's check-up tomorrow night.
"No problem." She repeats and wishes she had the guts to hug him and tell him it'll get easier. His siblings won't starve yet.
Katniss shakes her head clear and steps outside. She doesn't look back as she leads the three of them back through the alley, heading for the Victor's Village.
…
She dreams of Cato's body being pushed to the ground by a green-eyed mutt. The half-breed tears open the boy's shirt – a miner's shirt – and rips into the flesh of his back. The mutt's teeth glint terribly with red blood in the moonlight and she it's then that Katniss recognises the back it sinks its teeth into isn't really Cato's at all. It's Gale's.
Katniss wakes with a start, her heart pounding in her ears, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead. She looks around her room and for an instant smells the terrible stench of artificial roses. It stops her heart beating, just for a second but she can still hear the blood rushing around her head. Katniss takes a second, deeper breath and realises it's just a mix of the oil she rubbed onto her boots from the arena and the scented paper Effie writes her notes on.
Her thumping heart slows down and Katniss grabs the paper, scrunching it into a ball before hurling it by the door. She falls backwards into the bed and pulls her legs out over the covers. For once she doesn't wish Peeta was with her. She knows why she's thinking of silver eyes and the scent of pine holding her.
In truth it feels good to be alone. No one is witness to her guilt in these moments.
Rolling onto her side she closes her eyes and imagines a body longer than hers, straight and hard where she is soft and curved. All the same, she knows his body as well as she knows her own, how it moves, how it responds. He wraps his body around hers, warm and gentle in that determined way that isn't strictly in his nature. He has to work hard at being someone she needs now. Before it was just who they were.
Gale.
But it is a fantasy and she falls asleep shivering.
…
The leafless tree scratches the window outside and Katniss shuts her eyes at the horrible sound. It reminds her too much of knives and the garden on top of their Capitol apartments.
It's freezing inside her old house, but with Cinna's thermal clothing she knows it won't be her death if she just sits here on the bed without moving for a while.
The mantelpiece is empty but she still looks for the place where they'd kept her father's picture. It used to give her great comfort after a particularly bad dream of the accident, to sit up in bed and look for his face in the moonlight.
Now there is nothing but dust in this place. Her memories will fade with time, but here at least she can pretend he's still alive. She can pretend she just got home for school and is waiting for him to step through that door.
Katniss pulls her arms down from where they press against her ears and watches the door, not really expecting the ghost of her father, but waits all the same.
BANG.
It scares her half to death when the door swings open and the icy wind cuts through her.
"God, sorry." Peeta closes the door behind him and she wonders when the hell he had the time to spot her outside the bakery window and follow her here. He never even knew her when this was home.
She wants to tell him to get out, that she can't give him this part of her life, can't let him in this far back but he's already sitting down beside her. The heat of his body instantly warms her right side and Katniss chooses to bite the inside of her cheek instead.
"You're mad, aren't you?"
It's probably better she doesn't look at him. Peeta shifts and sighs and she knows she's hurt his feelings. He's just trying to help, but she's having none of it. It was just supposed to be her, alone, dealing with everything that's been bubbling up inside of her since Gale was whipped.
Nothing's ever that easy but Peeta doesn't try to take her hand or wrap an arm around her. She's grateful for small mercies.
"I shouldn't have come, I'm sorry."
No you shouldn't have, she wants to tell him. She wants to yell at him to get out and leave her alone. He's done such a great job of that lately. God, why is she even angry with him for leaving her alone all the time! Gale's in the mines, her mother and sister are busy fixing two of the boys who got caught in a factory fire last week and Peeta has taken his cues from her mood.
She can't haunt the house in the Victor's Village and she can't haunt his either. She's chosen Gale, though it's beginning to feel more and more like nothing's changed. There's a distance between them that can't be covered by her feet from the Village to the Seam.
Peeta lives only three doors down but it might as well be in another District.
He moves to get up and Katniss knows she should grab his wrist and make him stay. She should apologize for making him someone who will always come between her and Gale, she should apologize for knowing Gale has always and will always come between them. But she doesn't because she's not that good of a person.
She sits there scowling at the dirty old fireplace, listening to those branches like nails on a blackboard as he looks back down at her. Peeta doesn't apologize again and she's grateful for something that doesn't come out of his mouth for once.
He stares for a moment longer, his hand hesitating by her shoulder. In the end his kind eyes turn away and his hand falls limply by his side. He leaves the same way he entered because there's nothing left to say.
…
She runs so hard and fast to the fence that every breath is like a freezing burn that flares down her throat and punctures her lungs, every step bouncing through her whole skeleton. It hurts but it feels like living and she presses on, her braid whipping against her back.
It's Sunday and he'll come. He has to.
Katniss hears the hum before she's five feet away and it pulls her up short. She shields her eyes and looks into the sun, knowing the fence is always down this time of the day. There are four peacekeepers mending a tear fifty feet to her left.
So that's that. Her last freedom, gone.
Shaking her head she steps quickly back down the path she just took, her hands are fists by her side. Prim has gone back to school and she never speaks to her mother about anything except dinner. Hazelle is working for Haymitch but Peeta hides in the bakery.
Kicking a stone across the alley, Katniss pushes her fists inside her pockets and wonders what will happen to them all. The hob lays in ashes, the fence buzzing, the square a daily reminder of the new rule – the old rule.
She runs right into the last person she expected to see. "Rory!"
The little boy smiles up at her, rubbing his forehead where he knocked into her elbow.
"Hey, Katniss."
"Have you seen Gale?"
Rory shrugs, still touching his forehead as he tries to think where he last saw his brother. No Hawthorne can keep their thoughts from their face and she smiles at the familiar expression.
"He's probably in the Meadow. I dunno, mum wants him to stay home and look after Posy. Now I gotta do it." He looks peeved and she messes his hair up, chuckling.
"I'm sure she's grateful. I'll send him back if I find him."
"You better!" Rory tells her, upset he has to babysit on a Sunday. Katniss is still smiling as she rounds the corner and heads into the barren mess that is the Meadow now. It's easy enough to spot Gale in his jacket and Vick's scarf, sitting against some ugly overturned boulder.
"Hey."
It's the first thing she's said to him in a week and he looks up, his expression changing twenty times before he replies.
"Hey, Catnip." It's quiet but he hasn't used her proper name so she takes heart and pushes him with her hip until he scoots over.
"Rory's mad at you."
That makes Gale snort out a short chuckle. "He's old enough to look after Posy now." His hands are buried in his jacket pockets too so she stares at their feet, hers splayed and his solid. Her boots look brand new in comparison to his. You'd never know she wore them through a Hunger Games.
"Here." Katniss pulls out a ribbon. It's not Prim's, it looks shiny and pink and Gale takes it after an awkward moment of staring at it. He thinks it's from the Capitol, she can tell. "I got it from the Hob, before they burnt it down." She explains.
"I was going to give it to Prim, but Posy's been so sick lately I thought…" What did she think? That this miniscule, insignificant gift would make up for every blunder she's made since she said, "I know."
She watches him wear the material between his fingers. Gale's short, broken nails are black from dirt and coal and it's strange to see them hold something so pristine and new. Is that what he sees when he looks at her now? Something foreign and unexpected? Someone so polished and pinched she doesn't belong?
Katniss swallows and looks up at the two pines that stand in the Meadow. This place is nothing like the Woods.
"She'll love it," Gale says, his voice heavy with an emotion he doesn't let past his face.
They're silent for a moment longer and then her heart is in her throat as he lifts her off the boulder and embraces her. It doesn't occur to him that there are probably others watching out here in the open, or that he's supposed to be her cousin, or that he's probably been mad at her longer than Rory's been mad at him.
She doesn't stop him though she should. Katniss presses her face into the warmth of his shoulder and lets him hug her in the Meadow where anyone can see.
It's her last act of open defiance.