We Wouldn't Make it Five Miles
-Chapter Two-
Thank you guys for the great feedback! It's so encouraging to see such lovely reviews and it was completely unexpected! I really hope chapter two lives up to your expectations and that I stay in character. Thanks again!
Also, I don't own any of the characters and the hunger games. :) Sadbh.
They made me wait for what seemed an eternity but eventually I'm allowed to see my sister.
"Prim!" I scream as I push passed the peacekeeper and pull her into the biggest embrace. I can't do it. I can't do what Gale told me to do. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," I begin to sob over and over into her shoulder. I need to be strong for her but Prim is the only person I truly love. I hate the capitol. Every bad thing Gale's ever said about them are right.
"It's alright Katniss," Prim says. She shivers but she's so close I know she keeps forgetting to breathe. My sister keeps it together, the little girl who weeps for bugs, her eyes remain dry. "Just, just look after Lady and Buttercup. Please."
"Of course, anything." I say. I pull her closer and take in as much of her smell. The ribbons in her plaits have come undone and I try to fix them with my fumbling hands. How could they do this? How could they take such a small, innocent girl from her family? How could they let her. I choke on my last thought and I kiss her head.
"Stay strong Prim," I say. I feel a hand grip around my arm and I'm yanked away from my sister. My last image before the doors shut are Prims beautiful, blue eyes scarred with fear and tears.
I can't even look at Gale as he goes in after me. Suddenly I realise I'm alone with the peacekeeper and I ask to speak to the bakers boy. I can't sit out here on my own. I can't.
When I enter the room, his back is to me while he stares out the window. His family has come and gone. I watched his mother being forced out of the room, screaming for her son. The boy is paler than his blonde hair and he's shaking.
"I'll look after Prim," He says.
I freeze not sure how he knows it is me. Does he even know my name? I'm just the starving girl he threw bread to once, a long time ago. The painful memory cuts deep and all chance of responding disappears. To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope.
"I won't let her die," he says. There's a determination in his voice, a new raw, strength from the shaking boy. I look at him up close. Sandy hair and blue eyes with the strength of a bear. He looked closer a relation to Prim then I ever will.
"Why?" I ask confused. Why would he put himself more at risk just to help Prim?
He appears to choke on his words at first and he takes a new interest in the ground. "For you," He says so quietly I think I am mistaken at first.
It hits me like a boulder to my face. My jaw falls and I lose my voice in the confusion. Me? Peeta Mellark would put his life further at stake for me?
A pained look crosses his face and I realise I've only caused him more pain.
"Thank you," I force myself to say but I mean it. The crease between my brow knots as the peacekeeper opens the door and orders for me to get out. "Thank you," I say again.
"Why were you in there?" Gale asks, pulling me to his side and we follow the peacekeeper to the exit of the building. I can't form a reply, I don't want to, I don't know why. My head pounds and throbs and it feels like I haven't slept in years, but something tells me I won't sleep a wink for a long time. By the time we get out of the building, Gale is the only thing that holds me upright. My legs have numbed and my knees buckled, if it were any other time I would be sure I was paralyzed.
The return to my house is a long and silent walk. People bow their heads low in respect when they see me and I can feel their eyes following me until I'm out of distance. Gale brings me the long way around to my house, completely out of his direction but there's less people in our way. It's still warm outside and there is a distant humming, not from the fence but from insects wings as they fly around us, completely oblivious to hole that has been ripped out of my heart.
"I don't want to go home," I say, stopping in my tracks.
Gale turns to look at me and I realise there are dark circles under his red eyes and his face is verging blotchy. I've never seen him cry since our fathers died. The thought of death makes my insides twist and I shake my head. I need him to understand, it's to raw to go home, I can't go back.
"There's too many capitol people around to go anywhere else," He says but I can tell he doesn't want to return to the house either. Finally he sighs, exasperated. He checks the area around us before leading me closer to the fence.
We stumble through the hole in the buzzing fence and disappear like ghosts into the sea of trees before us. The afternoon is rife with life but I do my best not to notice it, I just keep walking deeper and deeper into the thicket, even when the ground begins to descend into the valley. Gale stays my side in a comforting silence. His steps are impossible to hear; an instinct from hunting. I keep seeing Prims face and I don't know where she is now but she haunts my mind and I'm sure I'm trying to run from her.
"Katniss," Gale speaks up finally.
We're back in the meadow where we shared breakfast with each other this morning. His voice stops me and I have to lean against a thick tree for support. Before me the sun is beginning to set and casts a golden haze over the hills and forest that seems to run on for miles and miles. The lake in the middle of the valley glitters in the suns light. I didn't even get a chance to bring Prim here, and I know she would have loved it. Tears burst from my eyes when I realise I can't hold on any longer and my knees buckle, and then I fall. I let out this strange, gargled cry that sends some of the birds, hidden in the long grass, far up into the sky. This is followed by hysteric sobs and I slam my fists into the ground.
I don't even notice Gale sit down beside me, I don't even notice as he pulls me to him that there are tears trailing down his face. For Prim, or maybe me, or both.
He strokes my hair with his thumb while I soak his shirt. He doesn't tell me to stop, doesn't scold me for not being strong, he just holds me until the sun's gone down.
Dusk has fallen by the time my tear wells have ran dry and I've felt all the feelings I could feel. I'm a void in the world held together by the arms around me. If Gale lets go, I don't doubt I'll burn out like a dying star. It's ironic really, for the woods to be the only place I smile, it's the only place I've ever cried so much.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, pulling his soaking wet shirt from his warm chest. It's so wet it sticks to his skin. I slip down from his leg to sit between the two, sure he's lost all feeling in it.
He shakes his head and tightens his grip on me, leaning back against the bark of the tree. I turn around to see the sky is blood red blotched with purple bruises. My throat chokes on tears it expects to come but there's no more.
I know I should think of Prim only but I can't stop myself from recalling what Peeta Mellark said. A slight hope rekindles in the deepest pits of my soul but it's clouded with confusion. "For you," he said. I'm not stupid, I know what he meant and it makes my cheeks turn pink. I gulp and remember where I am, and who I'm with. He could be gone first for all I know...but what if he survived long enough to save Prim?
"We can't stay here any longer Katnip," I hear Gale mutter at me ear.
I come crashing back to now and my eyes widen. "So soon?" I think aloud.
He shoots me a pained look and a slight nod. "I don't want to but your mother, my family... They'll be worried."
A burning pain bubbles up through my body at the thought of my mother but I know she's feeling the same. "Alright," I choke.
He slides a hand up to my head and brushes my cheek with his thumb, his eyes locked on mine. He looks overtired and there's a crease on the top of his nose from frowning so much today. I call him my friend, but in the last year it's seemed to casual a word for what Gale is to me. A pang of longing shoots through my chest. I push passed his arms and put my own around him. His body is familiar to me – the way it moves, the smell of wood smoke now mixed with my tears, even the sound of his heart beating I know from quiet moments on a hunt – but this is the first time I really feel it, lean and hard-muscled against my own.
I want to think of him all the way back to the hole in the fence, even when we find a strawberry plant and he picks at least 20 but gives them all to me. But all I can think of is the baker boys last words to me, of Prims blouse sticking out of her skirt. The two combined leave me in a state of emptiness where Gale could turn me around and offer the world and I'd still feel nothing.