Chapter 1

"My name is Katniss Everdeen. Why am I not dead? I should be dead."

I was scarred.

Mutts, children blown to bits, guns fired at random civilians… You get what I mean.

If only Prim hadn't been chosen for the Hunger Games, if only Peeta hadn't gone with me, if only I didn't pull out those berries, if only Cinna hadn't designed such a stunning outfit which gave me the name of the girl on fire, if only that guard hadn't accidentally torn out my nightlock pill from my reach after I had shot Coin. Fate is like the wind, taking you to places where you do not intend to go.

If only Peeta hadn't given me the bread. I would have been dead long before. I wouldn't have had to suffer, or let others suffer for my sake. Prim and my mother would have died as well without my help. They wouldn't have to see all the pain the war I created caused.

But fate is like the wind, never acknowledging your wants and needs. The wind is strong, but unfortunately it never snuffs out my flame.

Why wouldn't it snuff out my flame? After all I did, why would it let me live? Maybe it wanted me to suffer, suffer like everyone else did in the effort to make things better. The odds were starting to be in everyone else's favour. It never was in mine.

The wind brought me someone. Someone who I had believed would help me, bring my thoughts away from the many deaths I had caused, possibly put the odds in my favour. Gale.

"I'm really sorry, Katniss," Gale said as he opened the door to my house. I only nodded in response, though I didn't look at him again.

We walked past the kitchen, where Greasy Sae was packing up. Once she saw Gale holding me, she said warmly, "Told you that you'd find something nice today."

Once I passed without response, she asked Gale what was wrong. "The grave," he replied simply.

"I'll see you at dinner, Katniss," I heard her call before the door closed.

I walked right away to my rocking chair where the fire in the fireplace was put out. Gale took a seat on the couch on the other side of the room. After a few minutes of silence, he requested, "Talk to me, Katniss. Please."

There were a few more minutes of silence, and I heard him sigh tiredly. Noticing the bright blue ball of yarn in the basket under my chair, he asked, "Do you know how to knit?"

I shook my head a bit, not making eye contact.

"I, uh, guess it would be a nice hobby if it weren't hunting weather," he stated, obviously not meaning it.

"Maybe we can ask Greasy Sae or Mabel."

I broke my gaze with the cinders in the fireplace and looked at him oddly.

"Her granddaughter," he told me. After a long silence, he finally said in a light tone, "I've missed you, Catnip." Knowing that I wouldn't respond, he continued to speak. "I'm actually kind of glad you didn't shoot me when the Capitol soldiers took me. It was a bit painful, but Thirteen quickly took care of it. I spent a couple days being checked by the doctors, then helped to oversee the rebuilding. I was also offered a job to help Beetee with technological advances in District Two. I didn't accept, as you can see, but I'm still on standby."

He paused, and there was another silence. He cleared his throat and started talking once again. "You know, Greasy Sae and I have been planning my arrival. You never picked up your phone so you wouldn't have known I was coming. We decided to take advantage of it and give you a pleasant surprise. As you can see, it didn't really work out." He paused again.

"Uh, well, my return date was scheduled since last week. Greasy Sae said that she would try to get you outside a couple days before so there would be a larger chance that you would go outside the day I came. We planned that I would wait for you in the meadow, but there was all that digging and dirt, so we changed the meeting place. I guessed that you would want to go to the rock where both of us sat that time we were filmed. So, Greasy Sae suggested that you go hunting. You would go through the meadow and past the rock to the forest, but that one thing was unexpected. We didn't know that his grave would be separated from the others. Maybe they made the grave earlier than the others." Becoming tense from the subject, he changed the subject.

"Your mother and Dr Aurelius want you to call, or at least write," Gale told me. There was another long silence in which Buttercup decided to waltz in.

"So, would you show me around the house?" he asked after the scrawny cat growled at him. After I didn't respond, he decided to take the tour himself.

Many days had been spent like that: me sitting on my rocking chair and staring into the fireplace as Gale tried to make conversation with me. I still only left the room to have breakfast and dinner, and I never wanted to go outside again.

Sometimes, Gale gave me some privacy, which I had been grateful for, though the room felt empty without his words. Gale also didn't try to force me out of my depression, which was very nice. It was what drove me to follow after him.

One particular rain day, I had followed him all the way to the end of the hallway, right before the door, but I gritted my teeth and went back to my rocking chair, preferring safety and loneliness over Gale and haunting memories.

Although he left me alone at times, he was persistent in trying to get me to become myself again.

"Look out the window, Katniss," Gale told me. I did. The sky was a beautiful bright blue; the few flowers in the plant boxes were blooming; the green grass on my front yard was swaying to the wind. If only the ashen ground just in sight outside of the Victor's Village wasn't there.

"It's nice weather," he remarked. "Maybe we can go outside, maybe pick some flowers to put in that empty vase on the kitchen counter."

I didn't respond, though deep inside me, I longed to go outside.

"We wouldn't have to go far. Maybe just sit on the porch and enjoy the weather," he suggested.

Although it was a rather good idea, I stayed put in my rocking chair.

"Let's at last open up the windows. You need the fresh air," Gale said, standing up and holding out his hand to me.

I stood up, refusing to take his hand, and opened the closest window. Before I could sit down again, Gale blocked my way.

"Come on, that's not enough," he said, holding my arms so I wouldn't try to go around him, "the wind isn't even blowing in from that direction. We have to open up every window of the house."

I crossed my arms and glared at him.

"It's not that hard," he said, holding my hand. "Follow me."

He dragged my around the house, opening every window as slowly as possible, yet still quickly blocking my way to my rocking chair. "It would go by faster if you helped," he told me. Grudgingly, I helped him open the last window on the first floor.

"Let's go upstairs now," he said, pulling my hand towards the staircase. "Katniss, you need exercise," he told me as he dragged me up.

He opened the doors to each room and opened the windows twice as slowly as he did downstairs. I sighed, and proceeded to finish the job myself. I ended at my bedroom, where the wind entered the most. The breeze blew my unclean hair out of my face. I closed my eyes and breathed in the fresh air.

"I see you like the weather," Gale said with a smirk, watching me in the doorway. I walked out with a bundle of clean clothes towards the bathroom to take a shower, punching his arm on the way.

Slowly, he was able to get me to open up. I was more enthusiastic in walking through the house, and being more hygienic after my first few weeks of not bathing. But, I still didn't talk.

Gale continued to try to make small talk, usually with a silence to reply to him.

In a stronger attempt to get me to talk, he tried to include Mabel in his conversation.

"No, Mabel, that isn't yours," Greasy Sae lightly rebuked as Mabel took the bright blue yarn from the basket. "Put it back in the basket."

"No, it's okay. Katniss doesn't know how to knit," Gale answered for me. "Do you know how to knit, Mabel?"

She didn't seem to hear him, and instead played with the yarn, weaving it between her fingers. "There's a game me and Lina used to play," she said after a while. "Want me to teach it to you, Katniss?"

After I heard her call my name, I looked up from the piece of loose thread on my sleeve I had been fiddling with. I shook my head.

"Maybe you can teach me," Gale told her.

"It's called Cat's Cradle," Mabel said as she cut off a long piece of yarn and tied the ends together.

"Can you show me?" Gale asked.

"Mabel proceeded in putting her hands in the circle of yarn and weaving her fingers through. She brought her hands farther and farther until the yarn could stretch no more, and the yarn crossed over itself, creating a geometric pattern.

She moved her hands towards Gale's and nudged them, gesturing for him to hold it. He proceeded to follow her orders, transferring the yarn from her tiny hands, almost as delicate as china, to his large and burly hands. She had placed her fingers in between some of the overlapping yarn, brought her hands over and stretched the yarn again until the yarn crossed into different patterns.

"That's pretty cool," Gale told her as he let go of the yarn.

She smiled. "There are lots of different ways you can change the shape."

Mabel continued the pattern: she moved the yarn around and gestured for Gale to hold it. The pattern continued until the shape of the yarn was almost like a simple rectangle.

"I guess the game's over," Gale said, about to let go.

"No wait!" Mabel exclaimed, holding his hands in place. When she determined that his hands would stay in place, she slipped her delicate fingers through the yarn into holes that seemed to never exist. She moved her hands through again and there was another shape. "Even if you think it's the end, there's still a way to continue. You're not supposed to keep passing to your partner, I just did it to show you the ways to move the yarn." She finally brought her hands together and held the small bundle of yarn in her tiny hand.

"Alright, Mabel. We'll have to finish this tomorrow," Greasy Sae said, holding her hand. "Goodbye."

"Bye Gale!" Mabel called. "Bye Katniss!"

"Bye," I whispered quietly right after the door closed.

Soon, I felt as though my depression would end, that Gale was able to lead me to happiness.

"Even if you think it's the end, there's still a way to continue," whether you like it or not.