AN- I'm completely aware that things may be entirely off in this story compared to in the Hunger Games stories themselves. I guess graduate school has drained my brain of all important details pertaining to books worth reading, and at the moment I don't have access to the series. That being said, I enjoyed the Mockingjay movie and missed writing, and decided to give this a shot. Please let me know what you think!
The first time I tried to see her, it was because I had decided to really start my life, and I wanted her to be in it.
I know she probably assumed that I moved on and forgot about her—or that I stayed away because I cared about her, because I understood how badly my decisions and the consequences of those actions hurt her, and I knew she needed space. The first assumption was entirely off-base, and the second one was valid, but time and again I'd demonstrated that what Katniss actually needed and what I thought Katniss needed were different.
All of us needed time, though, to move forward, and I figured that was what our relationship needed as well. I knew I'd hurt her badly, that she wouldn't respond to the loss of Prim well at all. I kept my distance for a couple of years, threw my energy into the efforts to rebuild and grow together into a new nation, and tried everything I could to keep my thoughts off of her. I created a home, remained involved with the new government, and existed. I did everything I could to live, but while I was surviving during the day, I found she haunted me every night. The softness of her lips on mine, that last time, visited my dreams as frequently as her hurt, accusing eyes haunted my nightmares.
I never considered her nightmares. I knew that she had them, that she had been having them regularly since her first time in the arena, but I never thought about what they would consist of now, with her family gone and no one to hold her. That's why, when I showed up late that night at District 12, exhausted from the long trip but desperate to see Katniss before laying down to at least get a few hours sleep, I went running at her scream. I thought something had to be wrong, with the shrillness of it's pitch, the hoarseness of the sound.
I didn't think about her needs, but he did. Of course he did. Peeta was two steps in front of me, as he always had seemed to be with her, sprinting out of his house and fumbling with a key to let himself into hers. His eyes caught mine, and his legs locked for a minute, but that was all the reaction he allowed himself before he returned to running up the stairs to her to comfort her. My reaction lasted longer, several seconds of me standing outside her home, feeling a combination of shock because I hadn't realized he'd returned home as well, guilt at his clear devotion to the girl we both loved, and anger because once again he had gotten to her first. When I'd realized she was asleep, heard him telling her it was just a dream, I stayed outside her room, unable to build the courage to see her now that I knew the danger was in her dreams.
His eyes surveyed me when he left her room a half hour later, and I tried to ignore the relief I felt when I realized he wasn't planning to spend the night comforting her. I told myself I hadn't gotten there too late, that there was still hope. Everything in his eyes, his face, told me differently.
"Heard you've been keeping busy," He said quietly, squaring his shoulders and planting his feet as he spoke. I tried to determine how intentional his blocking the doorway to Katniss was, if he had to even think about it or if it now just happened naturally after so long of protecting her. I tried not to think about the fact that he'd been keeping tabs on me, that his keeping tabs on me might mean he continued to see me as a threat.
"There was a lot to get done," I responded, and swallowed at the unfriendly look on his face. His features had hardened and aged, giving him a more dangerous and threatening face than he'd ever had during the games or rebellion, when it would have been useful. "And it was the easiest way to deal with things." His eyes softened slightly in their hostility at that, his posture becoming less defensive.
"Yeah, I can understand that."
Again, the silence in the house stretched between us, all the more tangible when we both heard movement in the room behind his back. In silent agreement, we walked out the house and he turned to lock the door behind us. I followed him to his house, maintaining the silence until we'd both been seated at the table and he'd put a wedge of cheese and some bread on the table between us. I gratefully picked up the food, and reluctantly met his eyes again.
"Does that happen often?" I asked him, inclining my head toward where I knew Katniss was tossing and turning in her sleep just a few homes away. I ignored the purple shadows under his eyes that clearly indicated yes.
"Every night. I don't think she's gone a night since I got back without one." Guilt, remorse I hadn't felt so strongly since I'd last seen the remains of the hospital, kept me from saying anything for a moment. I swallowed the lump that had built in my throat and continued.
"What about during the day?"
He thought about the question carefully, looking off absently at something behind me as he helped himself to some cheese and a smaller piece of bread. I waited as patiently as I could, shifting in the chair, as he slowly chewed and swallowed, the refocused his eyes on my face. "She's not good, but she's… better. There're okay days, days she can focus on what's happening now and help other people in the hub and spend time in the forest without fear, and I think those have been happening more often. But when the bad days come, they're bad." His voice chokes off at the end, and I don't press for more. I don't feel like I have the right to. "We're getting by, though, which is more than either she or I expected to be able to do at one point."
When he'd looked defensive and afraid before, standing in front of her room, I had been hoping he was defensive for her. I had thought he still considered me competition, still felt that he had to fight to earn her attention. But the way Katniss was so effortlessly included in his "we," the way he clearly slept even less than her every night just to be there when she woke up—the way he surveyed me now across the table, his eyes evaluating me and what I hoped to achieve here—made it pretty clear why he saw me as a threat. I wasn't a threat to them, or to him—I was a threat to her. To her stability and happiness, to her ability to move on.
I had wanted to really start my life, and to make her an important part of it. But I understood, looking into Peeta's eyes, that just seeing me might be enough to keep Katniss from living, from having the experiences that I had been hoping to share with her. I thanked him for the food, stepped outside and spent a moment staring at the dark and empty house I knew she slept in. Then I bought the earliest ticket available to get me out of 12, and out of her life.
The second time I tried to see her, it was because I wanted to be able to get her out of my life.
Despite not having seen her for almost two decades, Katniss felt like a constant shadow over me. I couldn't move on to see other women without comparing their attitudes, beliefs, and appearance to hers. I saw her braid everywhere, on the women I dated and let go, and on the smallest children on their way to school for the first time with their parents. I couldn't make even simple decisions, basic choices in my daily activities, without wondering what she would think about them.
In the end, I felt entitled to see her and at least try to gain some closure. Even if I couldn't have a relationship with her, could not even maintain a friendship with her, I could at least check in on her, and see that she was doing okay. I had convinced myself that I might not even need to talk to her- that just watching her and recognizing that she had recovered from everything I had put her through would be enough.
I timed that second trip to District 12 a little better than I had the first one. I arrived mid-afternoon, and spent a little bit of time walking through the city to see the rebuilding before I made my way to Victor's Village. I saw a few people, a small number of older members of the community who had originally lived in 12, and an even larger number of faces I recognized from my time in 13. Some of them I nodded at or waved to—a larger number I passed with my eyes on the ground, too ashamed as I remembered my behavior and actions from that darker time in my past, to look up and see them judging me.
Eventually, I realized that few of them were even paying attention to me at all. The town was bustling, full of more trade, playing children and gossiping young women than had ever been seen in the district prior to the rebellion. The buildings looked a little less new than I had briefly seen on my last visit to 12, but seemed brighter, cleaner, than I'd ever imagined possible in an area known for dirt and coal. It was late summer, and the sounds of the forest just outside the district boundaries surrounded me full-force, unhindered by the humming of any electric fence. I meandered slowly through the buildings, gradually making my way toward the person I had made the trip for, the person I had tried to spend the last many years of my life trying to avoid thinking about.
I was about to reach the arch for the old Victors Village when a small, dark-haired missile hit me hard enough to almost knock me over. As it was, the force of the hit did manage to knock her over, sending her sprawling onto the gravel path with enough force to skin her knee and bring her to tears.
"Are you okay?" I asked her, leaning over to put me more on her level and to try to calm her down. I looked around for her parents, but the only person near enough and paying attention to us was a boy even younger than the little girl who was standing a few feet away, watching with a combination of satisfaction and curiosity.
"I'll be fine," The little girl answered, and for a second her words and deep brown hair reminded me of the woman I'd been headed to see, before a set of deep blue eyes flashed up to look at me. Before I could recover, those eyes had narrowed to glare at the boy I'd noticed before. "But you won't be, Rye, once mom finds out you've been pretending to hunt poor Butterscotch again. I wouldn't have been running or hurt if you'd just left him alone. I'm tired of chasing after him to protect him, and Butterscotch is getting tired of it too."
Still disoriented, I wildly for a moment thought the little girl was referring to me as 'Butterscotch,' before I noticed a rather grouchy-looking and scrawny orange tabby skulking nearby in the boy's line of sight.
"You're such a tattle-tale, Willow" The boy responded in a time-honored tradition, his arms crossed over his chest just like my brothers had always done when I'd ratted them out to our mother. His eyes followed the cat as it scurried away, his face dropping even further when a voice called out his name just a few moments later.
"Rye, why is the poor cat fluffy again?" The voice asked loudly from around the corner, and familiarity both froze me and electrocuted me at once. The words that voice said were completely foreign, unthinkable coming from the person I knew twenty years ago, but time had left the exasperated tone of her voice untouched. I was thrown back to what seemed like a lifetime ago, when I had scared away a deer because I hadn't wanted the Peacekeepers to catch us.
The boy, Rye, threw a final glare at his sister before running around the corner toward the voice that had called for him. The girl stood a moment later, brushing her hands down her clothes to get as much gravel and dirt off her as possible, and briefly flashed those bright blue eyes up at me again before she followed her mother's voice. "Sorry," she murmured under her breath, and then she too was gone around the corner, out of sight.
I stood frozen still for a moment after she was gone around the corner, the nostalgia and shock combining to prevent me from doing anything more than breathing in and out. My mind was moving a lot faster, putting together the pieces of that long and thick dark hair, that stubborn chin and those piercing bright blue eyes.
A little girl then, and a little boy also if the interaction between them was the same as the ones I had played out with Rory countless times. There was no mistaking who the girl, Willow, had gotten her eyes from either—I still remembered them as clearly as if I had only just seen them yesterday, pinning me to the chair from across a table.
I'd gotten all the proof I needed then, I told myself, that she had moved on and recovered. She had children, and by the sounds of a man scolding the boy just a little ways away, she had married the man I'd lost her to all those years ago as well. She lived in a thriving district, in a nice home that she'd not moved from in the last twenty years. She'd moved on. She'd recovered. So could I.
Despite this, I felt my feet carrying me down the same path the two children had just taken, stopping just before turning around the first house in Victor's Village to gaze at the small family that stood in their front yard out in the sunshine.
Peeta's voice had gotten quieter now, and he'd apparently knelt down on the grass to put his hands on his son's shoulders. The boy, Rye, had his head hung down in a way that clearly said that Willow had been right about him getting in trouble, and Willow's face suggested that she was feeling just as satisfied as I'd expected her to be about her brother's predicament. She watched her brother get his talking-to for a moment before she turned to the woman crouched down on the grass of the lawn, and said something too quietly for me to hear. Even if she'd screamed her next words, I probably wouldn't have noticed- I was too distracted by the woman who was now running her hands through Willow's hair.
She'd filled out now, and time had made more of an impact on her face than it had on her voice. Her eyes had creases of concern between them, permanently etched there after so many years of worry, struggle and grief. Her eyes also had laugh lines though, enough that I could notice them even with the distance of several houses still between us. She was speaking to Willow as the little girl turned to let her begin braiding her unkempt hair, then smiling at Peeta as he turned Rye lose to let the little boy run inside the house. They shared a brief kiss and I almost turned and left, satisfied that Katniss had everything in life she'd ever said she never wanted, everything she'd always deserved, before the shrubbery Katniss had been gardening caught my eye.
Katniss turned back to the plant a moment later, her hands tender and sure as they pruned the primroses in her garden with gentle, practiced motions. My gaze also locked on the flowers, I almost didn't notice that the rest of the family had trooped inside, even after Katniss followed them a moment later.
I was an idiot. She had Peeta, and now also Willow and Rye. She had the home she'd always needed and the community she'd always deserved, in a world more peaceful than she'd ever probably expected to live to see. She had a life, but that life wasn't built by forgetting everything about her past—her life was built by embracing her history, even the painful and difficult parts of it.
And I realized I couldn't do that. She'd had her closure, when she'd recognized that the loss of her sister was the result of my actions and she'd decided to walk cleanly and clearly out of my life. She'd come to terms with me, with Prim's death, and with the district she'd loved that I'd never really felt at home in.
I might be able to come to terms with the old and new District 12, even if I didn't live here anymore and I had no desire to move back. I could probably find a new life, build a new story with someone who was willing to move forward with me in spite of the mistakes I made in my past.
But I'd never be able to accept the part of my past that had involved betraying her.
I didn't run from my old home that time the way I'd done before. I stood there in the shadows of the house lining the old Victor's Village and stared blankly at those well-kept prim roses in Katniss' garden, even as the sun set and cast shadows over them and the family's home. Long after the dark had block my view of them, after the door had been opened for Butterscotch to come in and the family had clearly gone to bed, I slowly turned away from those flowers and left.
The third time I really needed to see her, I knew I didn't have enough life left in me to try.
The sickness that had been sweeping through and wiping out the city for the last week had made it's way to me quickly, and it had taken a couple short days for the fever and weakness to make movement, let alone traveling, impossible. I laid in the hospital bed listening to the steady beeping of the monitors around me, my eyes not seeing the sterile white walls and ceilings of the building, but instead looking at a beautiful meadow set somewhere far away, from a long time ago.
I wasn't old yet, not really, but I had aged enough to recognize that I wasn't going to make it through this one. Everything hurt, even parts of me that I hadn't thought capable of causing me pain, like my nails and my hair. Every breath burned, and I thought briefly of calling out to a nurse, to see if I could at least leave Katniss a message, just something to tell her how much she had meant to me, how sorry I was for the pain I had caused her all those years before. I hadn't understood, in my anger and arrogance and power from my place in the rebellion, how ugly death could be. I saw it now in the packed and overflowing hospital, with my dignity completely gone and my life in constant danger. This must have been somewhat how Katniss had felt in that arena. This was why she'd been so reluctant to have that war, why she'd been so against the bombs I'd been eager to use against others. Death was terrifying, and I'd put her through more of it than necessary, without giving her the chance to get any closure. I had to apologize.
But as I reached out to alert the nurse of my need for someone to write something for me, to pass on to Katniss before I passed on, a voice I hadn't heard in years snapped "Stop it."
I froze, then let my hand drop to the cot below me, feeling the tears that had been choking my throat slip out between my eyelids and burn trails down my cheeks. The shock passed fairly quickly—Of course she'd be here, where else would I expect her. But the confusion caused by what she'd said meant I had to reply. "Why?" I asked, before it occurred to me just how pathetic and desperate I'd sounded. I strengthened my voice and tried again, asking "What harm could it do? I just wanted to say I was sorry."
She sighed in that familiar and exasperated way, and the similarities were more striking in that moment than they had ever been before, so much so that I stopped speaking to listen. "You're thinking about yourself again, Gale: That's always been your problem," Prim told me, her face coming into focus as she reached forward to grab my hand. "She forgave you, to the extent that she could let go of her anger and move on, years ago. It's time to forgive yourself, so you can move on too."
I saw that deer I had frightened away, the day of Katniss' first Reaping, and watched as it stared at me with wide brown eyes and darted away from us in fear. I saw those eyes become Katniss' frightened stare right after the Quarter Quell, before I'd kissed her with a desperation I hadn't realized I'd felt. I saw her take on that same desperation as she grieved for her sister, as the anger I'd been blinded by suddenly disappeared and my actions, and the consequences of those actions, became crystal clear.
I saw braiding her daughter's hair, in front of those primroses. I watched the crease between her eyes smooth out even as her laugh lines deepened, as she smiled and followed her family into her home for the evening.
Prim waited patiently at my bedside, her gaze as understanding then as it had been all those years before, and when the images in my mind faded and her face came back into view I understood. I took her hand as the years of pain and guilt loosened a knot I hadn't realized was there in my chest, and for the first time in what seemed like forever it was easy to breathe. The beeping of the monitors disappeared, replaced by the rustling of the leaves and branches around us, ("Prim, in the forest," I heard her amused voice say, sarcastic) and I finally acknowledged the role that Katniss had played, and would always play, in my life. My family stood waiting for Prim and I in the meadow ahead of me, the way I'd imagined they would back when I'd brought up running away all those years ago, and this time, unafraid and no longer tied down to a life I wasn't happy in, I went with them.