Chapter Four: Maybe
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I do NOT own The Hunger Games, any of its characters, or ideas. Those all belong to Suzanne Collins. :)
My trial has commenced. Though there isn't much I can say in my defense, with the evidence dangling by the nail through it's neck on the post just a few feet away, I try to make up a less criminal story about how I killed the turkey. I tell Thread that it wondered into the district over the fence and I stabbed it through the neck with a stick. By some miracle, he believes me. I am forced to plead guilty to my crime and sentenced to a whipping to be carried out immediately.
Just like that, two other Peacekeepers bind my wrists and tie me to the pole with the turkey still dangling over my head. A drop of it's still warm, thick blood drips onto my forehead and slides down the bridge of my nose. My warm flannel shirt is ripped from my tensed back, leaving me fully exposed to the frigid snow fall and bitter wind. But the cold weather is the least of my worries.
A substantial crowd has gathered before the post in the square to bear witness to my punishment. I know many of the faces from the Hob and countless others yet: people from school last year, those who buy the game that Katniss and I sell, mine workers, good friends, young children, even the Peacekeepers who bound me to the post. They all look on with faces that register shock, dissent, and disgust for what is about to occur. Their expressions relay one universal message: We do not condone. Before the imminent display of horror, I look to the crowd for one last time and give them a sad but reassuring smile, and close my eyes in preparation for the inevitable anguish that awaits me.
The crack of the whip is followed by an excruciating pain to which I have never felt an equivalent. This happens over and over and jagged flashes of white light speckled with inky dots cross my vision with every impact. Everything happens in slow motion. The contact between my now raw, bleeding flesh and the sadistically braided whip lingers on longer and longer with every blow. The world starts to spin, my vision blurs, and I begin to feel myself slipping away. Whether it is from the blood-loss or pain, I'll never know, but after about the 30th strike, I loose consciousness.
The next thing I am aware of is the searing pain of my wounds and the terrible moaning sound escaping from my chapped lips. I can feel who I believe is my mother pressing my hand to her lips and her tears flowing over my fingertips. Then, I see her; Katniss pleading with her mother to give me painkillers, I think. She's loosing it now and I can make out who I believe to be Haymitch and Peeta dragging her, thrashing and screaming obscenities, out of the room. My mind commands me to bolt up and tear her from their grasps; to hold her in my arms, firmly locked in my protective embrace, and to assure her that everything will be alright. But my body refuses and continues to lay motionless like a raw slab of meat on the cold wooden table in Mrs. Everdeen's kitchen. Why are Peeta and Haymitch here? Did they, along with Katniss, try to stop my flogging? I'll never know for certain, but my heart tells me that it's true.
I am vaguely aware of a knock at the door. I don't know who answers it, but after only what seems like a brief conversation Mrs. Everdeen's blurry figure reenters the room with a package filled with tiny vials of clear liquid, possibly sleep syrup. Katniss, after much negotiation, I assume, is allowed back into the kitchen. I am about to reach out to grasp her hand when her mother injects me with the clear contents of the vials, and the world fades into oblivion.
Whatever was in those vials was not sleep syrup. I am dead to the world now and trapped in some fuzzy, violet-tinged realm where confusion, hollowness, and occasional stabs of deadened pain plague me. Visions of what was, what is, and what could be swirl around in a tempest of chaos, and I find myself wishing I was conscious and in agony on Katniss' kitchen table rather than stuck in this dull, torturous limbo between fantasy and reality.
Despite the effects of what I am later told is a drug called morphling, I become aware of Katniss' presence. Her head is laying on mine and I can feel her soft, delicate hands gingerly stroking my back. I hear her whisper something, but I can't make it out. Then she kisses me.
At this, my eyes flutter open, and, through the haze of opiates, I can see her looking down at me with a mixed expression of guilt and relief.
"Hey, Catnip." I say.
"Hey, Gale." she manages to choke out. Tears well up in her exhausted grey eyes and she speaks with a strained voice. Even with the gruesome scar-which I can only assume is the result of her intervention on my behalf in the square-having sealed her left eye shut, she is still as beautiful as ever.
"Thought you'd be gone by now," I reply.
"I'm not going anywhere," she assures me. "I'm going to stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble."
"Me too." I can just manage a smile before the drugs pull me back under.
The next thing I'm conscious of is the faint smell of freshly baked cheese buns and Peeta's fuzzy figure looming over me. Oh great. What's he doing here? Still in my drug-induced dreamland, I can hear him speaking to me in a tone sadder than any I have ever heard before. "You know she really does love you. You can tell just by the way she looks at you and how she almost punched me square in the nose to get to you last night when we were dragging her out of the kitchen," he almost chuckles. "You're very lucky."
Lucky? I don't call watching the only girl you've ever loved kiss another boy on national television lucky. I don't call watching the only girl you've ever looked at with such longing plan her wedding to another man lucky. As of right now, lying motionless and half-asleep on a kitchen table with my back and my heart still throbbing in agony despite the powerful drugs, I am the unluckiest person alive. But maybe there is still hope for me, for us. She did kiss me last night, if that was indeed reality and not some hopeful vision for the future fabricated by the morphling. And she did tell me that she wasn't leaving, that she was going to stay and fight with me. Maybe we still have a chance. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.