Sorry if I get Rory's age wrong, but I haven't read the books in a while now, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Rory is 14 years old? Yeah. Oh yeah, it's either 42 or 48 times that Gale's name is in the bowl, and I think that I'll just go with 48. (I did the counting when I read the book & I'm pretty sure that I've got it right anyway).

EDIT: I read in a fic that Rory is 12 years old, but in mine he will be 13.
BTW I wrote most of this after I'd shared 3 spliffs with a housemate. Good times, good times.

CHARCOAL

CHAPTER 1: SUN SPOTS

We were young and drinking in the park
There was nowhere else to go
And you said you always had my back
Oh but how were we to know

That these are the days that bind you together, forever
And these little things define you forever, forever

— Bastille, Bad Blood

An hour before the Reaping his mother had given him his father's only remaining shirt. It had been cleaned and even straightened out recently, indicating that she must have been preparing to give it to him for some time now. In the summer heat his father's crisp white shirt feels uncomfortable on him. The shoulders are a bit too tight and there's already some sweat pooling between his shoulder blades and lower back.

The uncomfortableness of his father's shirt makes it feel like the weight of responsibility, something that Gale has never been willing to accept — given the circumstances, how his father suddenly died, how the role as head of the house was suddenly thrust onto him just like his father's death. But there's nothing he can do about it but sit tight and keep his mouth shut.

Under the glare of the cameras and the sun Gale feels his hatred for the Capitol flare, flare like a sun spot, blaze brighter and hotter than before, whipping up a storm that the world will have no choice but to bear the brunt of. He's nearly free, nearly over. Just this one more Reaping and then his forty-eight slips of paper with his name on it will forevermore be removed from that wretched glass bowl.

That wretched glass bowl that will steadily fill up with more Primroses, more Rorys, more Vicks and, eventually, some Posys. More victims of the Capitol and their sickness. More stains on Snow's hands.

There's a freak of nature that walks between the separated groups of girls and boys, children too innocent for this and babies forced into adulthood too soon, and climbs the podium. The Capitol freak — snow-white skin, blood pink eyelashes and lips and catlike green claws and ridiculously tight pale blonde curls to go with her equally stupidly oversized purple flower on her head, is Effie Trinket, yours truly.

Gale is sure that Katniss and he will be laughing about her outfit this year, maybe not right after the Reaping, but maybe in the coming weeks, when everything's settled down and the bitter pill that nobody from '12 has survived again has been swallowed.

Trinket could have made her entrance more entertaining by falling down the podium steps. Or by not showing up at all, like Haymitch infallibly does every year since Gale had been old enough to be put through the Reapings.

Although Trinket has an annoyingly loud voice, in the absolute uncomfortable silence of all the Reaping nominees, her voice comes across as if she were screaming. She taps the microphone twice, which sends echoes through the crowd, ringing in Gale's ears before she speaks. "Welcome, welcome, welcome, and happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favour!"

Effie claps her hands in delight, a feeling that is not shared with the rest of the people that got dealt the short stick in life.

"Now, before we begin, we have a very special film, brought all the way from the Capitol!"

She starts to continue, but Gale shuts her out, because frankly he can only put up with annoying Capitol freaks for so long, and his fuse is shorter than Katniss'. His eyes find her in the crowd after some(what frantic) searching. She's wearing a pale blue dress that probably belonged to her mother at some point (maybe it's new — he's not seen her wear it to any of their previous Reapings before), and her brown hair is roped up in a bun. She looks pretty in it, (but it's unmistakable that she has an athlete's physical build) and he winks at her when she turns and finds him looking.

While Effie is going through the same rehearsed spiel that she does each year, he mouths the first line of the stupid video the Capitol subject them to. Katniss smirks when seconds later a deep voiced narrator says; "War, terrible war,"

Gale's been feeling uneasy all day, and the feeling gets notched up higher, ball of stress in his stomach twisting into bigger knots as Effie Trinket walks over to the giant glass bowl filled with girls' names. Trinket becomes someone's bearer of death as she reaches into that horrible glittery bowl and snaps a paper out and prances back to her glittery silver microphone. She clips it open with her horrible nails and swings her hips. There's a baited breath, absolute silence as Effie Trinket has everyone hanging in suspense as she draws out some unfortunate girl's death —

"Primrose Everdeen."

No. Shit, shit. The ball of knots in his stomach turns to lead and plummets down his body to the floor. He breaks out in a cold sweat even though he was boiling in the summer heat only minutes before. No, no no. Not Catnip's little sister. Not Prim. Not sweet, innocent, fragile Prim.

Prim instantly starts crying silently, and Gale feels compelled to get her away from Effie and the peacekeepers, hide her from the Capitol. But in that instant shock when the crowd parts and Prim starts walking towards the podium, Gale knows what Katniss will do. What she has to do. "No!" She screams, screams it again and it's ripping through Gale, even as he's pushing other guys aside so that he can get to the edge to get to Prim and Katniss, "Kat—"

"I volunteer as tribute!" Katniss screams at Effie and to the peacekeepers holding her down, and the shock is like an explosion, like the one that killed both of their fathers, big enough of an impact to throw off the peacekeepers and halt Gale in his tracks.

Instantly, Prim runs back to her sister and sobs into her chest and Katniss can only clutch her tight before she looks up and straight at Gale. It's unspoken what he has to do — he's going to look after Prim and her mother — Katniss has been chosen, has volunteered. With a heart turned to stone, he grabs Prim and lifts her up — instantly she starts screaming at him, at Katniss, to her mother. He starts panicking. Gale reaches, tries grabbing Katniss' wrist as if he could just take her with him as well, but he misses and a peacekeeper shoves him, but he reaches again, so does Katniss, and when he grabs hold of her hand he squeezes it as hard as he can. "I love you." He says fiercely, heart stricken with hate and madness and emptiness and shock. He feels like such a dick, but he's compulsive and she knows that. He's doing it now because there may never be another chance — Catnip will be gone.

Katniss' eyes go wide and that's the last he sees of her before a peacekeeper grabs her and spins her around and together with three others start walking her to the podium. Fucking peacekeepers and their inability to dish out 'justice' unless it's with strength in numbers.

Prim is still screaming, but she's shaking now as well as he carries her back to her mother. Maybe it's because she realises that she'll maybe never see Katniss again, or see her and him happy together. Katniss' mother looks broken, but there's a shine of something in her eyes when she sees Gale walking to her, something that makes her run and grab Prim from his arms and crush her into her own chest, cradle her head. Katniss' mother looks worn and old and dead with a thousand-mile stare. He feels like utter crap standing in front of them, and all he can do is ball his fists tight and glare at the ground while Katniss' mother weeps and Prim wails.

A hand grasps his shoulder and steers him back to the group of boys and Gale lets himself be dragged by the peacekeeper, walks backwards until the man irritably turns him around, just stares at Catnip's broken family and feels helplessly useless as their figures grow smaller and smaller and the realisation sinks in fully that he now has to support this family because Katniss is gone.

"And now, for the boys," Capitol freak calls out on the speakers, and somehow that blazing hatred he felt before at the start of the Reaping is nothing compared to the burning rage he feels now, loathing and despise for this disgusting nation boiling and bubbling just under the surface of his heated skin with the intensity of a thousand suns and stars, a whole galaxy of infinite hate and anger towards the system that has cheated so many of a good life, a happy childhood, a joyful parentage. His father's shirt feels like a restriction, feels like he's clothed in a lifetime's worth of oppression and poverty. He's never felt — been — so angry in his life as he is now.

His thoughts turn to Rory, with his name written twice on two pieces of paper in one dazzling bowl that will filter out another future from the population to distinguish. Another life snuffed out. But before he can even scan the crowd for his little brother's black mousy hair the tell-tale snapping of a paper seal rings throughout the Seam and that Capitol bitch calls —

"Gale Hawthorne."

Gale feels like the floor has just given out beneath his feet and his gut is twisting itself into shreds and his lungs have turned to ice. It feels like someone has just thrown a bucket of ice over him, water seeping through his clothes through his skin right down the pores straight into his bones, stabbing and stabbing and over and over. He's drowning in it. No, this was not how it was meant to happen. He's got to — got to support Katniss from outside the arena. Because Katniss has been chosen, ripped from him, how can this be no, no. Gale has got to — it's an obligation — but his name, in that horrible bowl — forty-eight times. The odds — never in your favour.

Rory has slipped through the crowd of boys to get to him, and he clutches for all of his life to Gale, and there are tears staining his father's last shirt, one that his mother will probably want back so she can cry at the memory of Gale and her husband. Gale, however, feels like it's all very unfair, even though he's still in shock. He feels like he's reeling from a blow to the head, one that he can't shake off no matter what.

"Gale? Where are you?" Trinket calls out through the speakers, all simpering sweet, as if she were talking to a child, and the group of boys surrounding him seem to falter, swaying like trees in the wind. They're hesitant. Gale catches a glimpse of peacekeepers closing in on their group, and feels his muscles twitch — he wants to escape, run away.

Run away into the forest with Katniss and never return again.

But they have Prim and Posy and Rory and Vick and their mothers

— But if they didn't —

The cameras have found them now, and they zoom in on his face, all dark and full of emotion that he can't place. Rory is saying stuff to him, but it's not registering in his ears. There's something very wrong.

"Come on out now, don't be shy dear." Effie says, even makes beckoning motions at him.

He has to go — has to help Catnip. Slowly, but with pressure, he unhooks Rory's arms from around his waist, as if he were in a trance, even as Rory tries holding on tighter, and this time another boy steps up and — just like Gale did for Katniss — takes Rory from him and takes him back to Hazelle. It's the baker's son, Peter or something like that, with sandy hair and a bruise from his mother on one cheek. But all of that doesn't matter now.

He feels himself walk, feel the gazes of hundreds of people as if he were a bug under the inspection of a magnifying glass, feels the sweltering heat of those gazes, feels it absorb into his very being like a black hole. He'll burn everything in his wake, suck the Capitol dry and spit out their bones. Make them pay for what they put us through.

Effie must see how angry he is because when she bends to beckon him up the stairs, her expression falls a little and she starts looking uneasy — she knows that she's made him mad. Beside her, is Katniss, and her mouth is open a little and her eyes wide, like she's stammering. She, too, is in shock, probably feels empty inside. Gale is — was — her lifeline outside of the arena. Now he's going in with her.

They both know who would sacrifice themselves for the other.

He's so numb and shocked and too immersed in staring at Katniss and at his family in the crowd that he barely catches the end of Trinket's sentence.

"Huh? What?"

Trinket does that simpering eye-flutter and smiles at him, albeit forced, and touches up her hair with one pale, green clawed hand. "Both tributes shake hands," she says, voice not as bright and chipper as it was at the start of the Reaping. It's most likely due to his rather prominent anger licking visibly just under the cover of his skin.

Oh, yes. The handshake. Gale used to watch the tributes shake hands, and in his mind he would come up with new meanings for the handshake shared between the chosen victims. One year it was 'good luck', another year it was 'this is hell' and one year it was 'we're both going to die'.

This year, with Gale up on the stage and Catnip as his unfortunate district tribute, he knows what he's going to make this handshake symbolise.

Katniss turns to him and she seems to be thinking of shaking his hand or something else, but Gale reaches straight for her with his mind made up, and with his index, middle, and ring finger, hooks them around her own three fingers and shakes firmly.

It's a custom in the Seam, a rather old and rare one at that, but a kiss of the three main fingers is a signal of good luck, but a handshake with three fingers means something entirely different. A handshake with three fingers is what the old miners used to do. Mining is dangerous work, a fact proven by both of their fathers, and sometimes miners could lose a finger or two, but still they would continue mining, because they had to in order for their families to survive.

A handshake with three fingers became something rebellious people would use. It's a symbol of perseverance; I've lost two fingers and I'll hook my remaining fingers around yours in order to show you that I've still got strength in me, I can still go on. I'll survive.

It's a sign of strength and perseverance, and Katniss' eyes go wide at the sight of his unorthodox handshake, but then the fire that Gale loves about her returns to her eyes and she hooks her fingers around his tighter and gives their hands a deft shake.

Trinket stands between them looking a bit perplexed because she's got no idea what they're doing, because she's not cultured like they are, but after a while she nods, steps between them and cuts their handshake off. She chatters into the microphone.

"Well wasn't that a lovely handshake! I love seeing such companionship! Now, it's time for our lovely tributes to go. Happy Hunger Games, and remember; may the odds be ever in your favour!"

As Gale gets escorted by peacekeepers into the town hall, he glances back at the crowd feeling like his fate is being sealed with the steadily closing doors, when he sees Katniss behind him, with three fingers in the air and the rest of the Seam mimicking the same signal back at her.

In that moment, Gale feels like she's become the icon for something much bigger than what he thought that she'd be. It's like she's sprouted wings and will fly free of this goddamn hellhole, like she actually has a chance at this. Like she could win the Games.

Something darker in Gale also says that she could break the Games, break it for good. It's something dark and horrid but the thought feels very pleasurable while it drifts through his head. The part of him that loves Katniss also says that he will help her achieve this impossible goal, a goal that he hadn't even realised he'd set out for them himself.

Either way, Gale will make these Capitolite freaks remember this Hunger Games. The Game in which the girl with a fire burning in her eyes and a boy with anger burning in his soul will start a rebellion.

I made a decision to not have Gale volunteer, because then it would take away from the fact that Katniss started the rebellion — she volunteered. Although I did originally write it so that Rory got chosen and Gale would volunteer for him, but then I thought that Katniss would most likely tell Gale not to volunteer — she would try keep Rory safe in the arena. Gale needs to help their families survive. I just didn't see it ending that well.

EDIT: I'll see if I can update this but it may be next week or something like that, sorry guys! Please review!