Post-War

When I hold back, you can push back; gotta bring back the define me, put it all behind 't you see I'm falling for you? Tell me you will believe, if the world gives up on me.


The thing about Gale and Johanna is that it's always seemed like Gale needs somebody and Johanna needs nobody, but really it's the other way around. See, Johanna's been alone before and it's made her hard and tough and cruel and cynical so if it happened again it would just make her empty. And Gale's just been surrounded by people and their needs for so long that sometimes he's okay when he realizes that he's alone.


He doesn't remember exactly how they met up after the war, but he sees this montage in his head of her on his doorstep, and then her becoming tender and for some reason she's hugging him, and then he sees himself hugging her back.

He doesn't really remember when they started kissing again. Or when it became more than kissing.

All he knows it that somehow these things just happened.


What he does remember is his proposal.

At first she had blatantly said no, and then he stood up."Look me in the eye and tell me that you don't want to marry me," he had said, desperation seeping into his voice.

She shook her head, determined, and looked him in the eye."I. Can't." she said fiercely.

She was never one to lie, but she was also never the best at keeping the things and people that belonged to her.

"So let's do it then!" he exclaims, and she continues to stare him down.

"No," she repeats, and he sighs and begins to leave.

"Wait," she says slowly, testing the word out for the first time in a long time. "If we get…married," ugh, that word, she thinks, "How do I know that I wont lose you?"

He says, "You'd have to try very, very hard to get rid of me," and she says "Okay," and kisses him before he can process it.

"Yes?" he asks, once she pulls away "You realize that this means that it'll be you and me forever, right?"

And then she nods in such a way that he thinks he's seeing someone else, and she says the one thing that she's always wanted from anyone who could give it to her: "Forever."


The first spring of freedom was over, the overbearing heat of Summer passed eventually, the fall came fast and ended as quickly, and soon winter came. She cried the whole way through the first blizzard.

"It's like it's him, like he's everywhere again, watching us...Gale, it's like he's back again."

And he held her until the snow had long since melted away.


Gale was never a guy who fucked.

He 'made love' to Madge the first night after he saw the baker's son kiss Katniss, and he wasn't sure exactly what he did with that girl from District 13. But that was really it: awkward and sweet with Madge, sloppy and dizzy and overall drunken with the other one.

Johanna was different, as she mostly is with everything.

She made him realize that he was angry and bitter and bottled up, so that first night when she grabbed him by his fancy suit and took off her clothes, he understood the difference between what he was doing then and what he had done with the Mayor's daughter years before.


Gale meets up with her one day after work to tell her that this isn't a healthy relationship. She nods slowly, but as he turns to walk away, she spins him back around and slaps him across the face. "I'm pregnant, asshole."

"Oh!" he yells, and then, lower, he repeats it: "Oh."

And then they just smile.


He even tried the poetic approach sometimes: "You dont have a soul, you are a soul; you have a body."

But it usually ended like this:"Don't pull that eloquent shit on me."

And then he would get all defensive: "Well it's not mine anyway. I found it in a book."

And usually she would end up beaming, which she's doing much more often these days.


Tossing and turning was kind of a Katniss thing, and screaming was more of an Annie thing, and Finnick probably used to sit up and start tying knots, and Peeta would be fine if he woke up next to Katniss. But when Johanna had nightmares, he could feel it in his heart.

Her Games and her view of the rebellion were recounted in such vivid detail that when he blinked he saw the blood of her first kill. He saw the water and felt himself drowning and clenched his fists when she mumbled through the part about the electricity.

But in those moments when she would subconsciously walk him straight into the hidden corners of her vulnerability, he didn't once think of her as weak. Because she survived what most could not bear for three minutes; she was strong. And sometimes, going through it all with her, he felt stronger too.


The one thing that Johanna wants more than anything is for someone to make her forget.

She wants to forget that Finnick called her beautiful once and then fell in love with someone else, she wants to forget that some fancy prick in the Capitol pushed her onto a bed in a hotel and then taught her what people meant when they said men could be rough, and she wants to forget that she was pushed on her knees and then bit his dick so hard it bled and everyone she loved died because of it.

And sometimes, when she's collapsed on the bed next to Gale it makes her wonder about how her future with him could just be right instead of remembering where she's gone wrong in the past.


One time, Gale made Johanna remember her childhood.

He licked her elbow and then giggled like a little schoolgirl. "Is this supposed to be kinky or just fucking weird?" She asked.

"You weren't supposed to feel it!"He exclaims between laughs, and she smiles back because before Gale came along, she couldn't even remember the last time that she wanted to.


They're both from forests, from the smell of pine needles and peeling bark, from the falling yellow and red leaves to the rare deer and the common squirrel and the turkey that gobble their way past every so often.

Sometimes Johanna leaves their house and sits and watches an innocent baby doe prance by, searching for it's mother, and wonders how Gale could enjoy burning this beautiful tranquility to the ground. It only takes her a moment to understand that he only did what he had to in order to survive.

(It probably would have taken Katniss a lifetime and Johanna knows that part of their whole thing is that he's thankful.)


One day, when she's almost asleep, Gale tells Johanna that President Snow once left Katniss a rose.

Johanna looks at him with a mixture of shock and pity, and then says flatly, "He sent me a rose once too. And then my little brother got a package with no return address. And when I say package I mean that the box was actually a bomb. Our wonderful president blew up my little brother and the explosion set my parent's house on fire with everyone in it." A tear starts to form and he holds her but she doesn't start crying and she doesn't stop talking and her voice doesn't change or crack. "You know, a package isn't a far cry from a parachute," and then Gale is the first one to cry.

And it's her holding him and he's thinking about Katniss and she knows it and she's crying, but she also knows that Katniss would have chosen Peeta anyway, she just wishes that Gale didn't have to go through everything that he did just for him to realize it.

She's kind of relieved that the bombs weren't his. The Capitol was a vast place full of other expert hunters, other people who knew how their prey thought. But he wasn't back there when the parachutes were dropped: obviously the Capitol was playing mind games with their own citizens, and the old President with the roses and breath like blood was not to be outdone.

They weren't Gale's, though, thats the point. Gale didn't kill the little girl.

And for once, she's the one who's thankful.


She has a miscarriage on a night when he's out working late. She falls to the floor and cries with her head against the wall. And then Annie calls, and somehow Annie has become her rock (and this is Annie Cresta, the poor mad girl who lost the one she loved and then, when all she wanted to do was forget, Annie had a baby who looks at her with his father's eyes).

"Stand up, Johanna," Annie says sharply. "You're stronger than this and you know it."

But Johanna is sure that Annie knows that she really isn't strong enough to handle this. Because this is just another person leaving her, and that's been her whole life. So Annie gets on a train with her mini-Finnick and gets to District 2 before Gale is home.

And by the time that he's home he's heard about it already because Annie's called him and told him so that Johanna didn't have to.

Again, Johanna finds herself being thankful.


There's this life inside of her and that's not just a metaphor because that life is another baby, and she doesn't think that she can handle it. She calls up Annie and tells her before she tells him but maybe that was a mistake because he gets home and he knows. Annie's told him again.

This time there are no slaps, no "Oh"s, and no crazy smiles.

What there is is a reassuring "I won't stay late, I promise. I'll be with you whenever you need me" and another exchange of "Forever"s, and then there's a hug and kiss and a "Goodnight".


They float along for nine months until Johanna yells at midnight. "MY WATER!" She shouts, but Gale doesn't wake up until she hits him with a pillow. "Let's go, Hawthorne!"

She insists on leaving the hospital after the hours of screaming and exercised breathing. "It's not recommended," they all tell her, but she flips them all off and asks them if haven't I had enough? So they let her go.


"We're so small in the scheme of things," Gale once told her and she had scoffed.

"What scheme? There's no goddamn scheme, Gale, we don't swing on stars. I don't believe in that shit."

"Of course you don't! Do you believe in anything?"

And this is where it starts, he thought, because it usually was.

This time, though, she grows soft and he's reminded that she's been to motherhood and back, and maybe that changes things but he really doesn't care for that whole experience.

"Yeah, I do, Gale. I believe in you, I believe in us, I believe in our new little baby that's sleeping upstairs, and for some strange reason I still believe in miracles."

She smiles but he doesn't really understand, so he calls up Haymitch and asks if Johanna's been getting alcohol from him again.


Johanna begins to smile more often, and it's a different kind of feeling than she remembers it being, but it's nice.

And Gale's pretty nice too, and also just pretty nice looking, so her life isn't as bad as she thought it would end up being.

Yeah, sometimes Johanna thinks that Gale might have saved her.