Hello !

So, this chapter is longer and slightly divergent from cannon. This was actually my original idea so that's why it's a bit more developed than the others (although Finnick's is long too... maybe longer actually). When I read the book I had a lot of images coming to mind about Gale and his reaction to the whole thing. Unfortunately, the situations that popped into my mind didn't exist in the book so I had to made them up (and maybe they're possible because the book is Katniss' POV so who knows what she doesn't know?). So here is my interpretation of Gale's view on some parts of the story.

Enjoy !

'Till next time ;)

xx

[Chapter update: there is nothing new, just correcting a few typos and re-cutting paragraphs on Nikkette's suggestion - thanks for tip ;) )

They Watched

Gale

Gale remembers. How could he forget? How could he forget that day? That day he watched the woman he loved volunteer to save her sister.

How could she not? Gale knew her. He knew that Katniss would do anything for Prim. When her voice rang out in the square he had had half a mind to volunteer too. So he could be with her. So he could protect her. So he could make sure she would come back to the flower who loved her goat and cat.

But Gale knew Katniss. He knew that she would never forgive him if he volunteered. She would never forgive him for risking his own life. For abandoning his family. And for abandoning hers. It was an unspoken agreement between the two of them. No. It was more than an agreement. It was a vow. A promise. Should anything happen to one of them, the other would take care of her or his family.

Thus, Gale had to watch as she saved her sister, condemning herself to a deadly game and condemning him to watch her fight for her life.

He knew she could do it. He remembers telling her that in the small room in the Justice building before she was forced onto the train that would take her away. He knew she could survive this. But it tore him apart to know she would suffer while doing it. Katniss, despite her roughness and borderline pessimistic realism, was someone pure. Someone who loved deeply and suffered greatly from the life the world was forced to live. No, not the whole world. But that was another debate he would not have now. He watched as Katniss, his strong and beautiful Catnip, the woman he loved so deeply disappeared in a train she might not come back out from.

Weeks later he watched her get out of the train. How proud he was. And relieved. Not happy. The dimness in her eyes and the boy's hand in hers prevented him from being truly happy. Of course he was happy that she survived. But he had this feeling that it was not over.

He admits that he was also relieved and happy when the weeks passed and she kept away from the other boy. He was happy that they could just be the two of them in the woods when he was not deep inside the earth, digging in the tunnels that killed both their fathers.

But he remembers other things too.

He remembers that one morning, before the sun even came up, he softly knocked on the door of her new house, his sick brother in his arms. Mrs Everdeen had opened and motioned them inside. Gale would never forget. He could never forget the blood-curdling scream that suddenly resonated in the house as Mrs Everdeen examined Vick. He would never forget how Mrs Everdeen had run upstairs, himself following her, to find the door to a bedroom open, Primrose in her nightgown trying to wake a screaming Katniss up. He would never forget the feral yet terrified look in her eyes when she snapped to awakeness, still screaming. He remembers how her scream just stopped and how she had called for Prim in a panic, her voice rough and broken. He remembers how once her eyes had found her sister she had clung onto her like life itself, like she was drowning, not even noticing the tears that were streaming down her face.

Gale remembers thinking, in that moment, that perhaps he had lied to her all those weeks ago when he had told her that hunting animals and humans were the same things, that she would be fine.

As he watched his Catnip struggle to breathe he realized that maybe she wasn't all right. Far from it.

After that day he had paid more attention to her, to the shadows in her eyes, to the shape of her lips. And he saw that she wasn't fine. She wasn't all right. She was getting better. But Gale wondered if she was really getting better or just better at pretending that she was.

He watched her, over her. He passed by the Victor's Village everyday after work.

She never noticed.

He would watch her on the couch from the shadows of the kitchen, where Mrs Everdeen asked him again and again to make himself known to her. Everyday Lylia would open her door to the quiet rasping of his knuckles on it, always when Katniss was in another room. He knew that she wouldn't want his worry, mistaking it for pity. So he stayed hidden. He watched as her face grew more elongated, the shadow under her eyes deeper, darker.

He watched as she moved around in another world. A world that was juxtaposed to the one he and everyone else lived in. Even the baker boy.

He watched as she crossed the street to her mentor's house and came back with a waver in her step but her whole frame less tense. Gale realized that she wasn't alone in her world, even if she didn't realize it herself. Or maybe she did. Gale realized that in that world, in the other world also lived Haymitch Abernathy.

Later, when he watched her on the television, reading speeches about dead people, he realized that this other world was the world of the Victors. He wasn't quite sure what that meant yet. Maybe he would find out some day.

When she came back from her Victory Tour, Gale wasn't jealous anymore. Not about the announced wedding. Because he had watched her and he knew this wedding hurt her as much as it could have hurt him had he let himself believe the story. Even more so.

By the look in Prim's eyes he knew that his Catnip had started screaming again. She sank deeper into her parallel world.

He watched her when they hunted. She had always been silent and observant in the woods. But now she was on her guard, the string of her bow ready to snap.

One Sunday he had been later than usual: his mother had asked him to help moving a heavy piece of furniture. He had followed her tracks (just his usual line of snares she had taken upon herself to relieve of their prey). He had arrived behind her silently.

He remembers her eyes.

How for one fraction of a second they had made him feel like he was in front of a predator. She was back in the arena. He remembers how a fraction of a second later her eyes had widened when she recognized him just as she released her arrow. That fraction of a second had been enough for her to alter her aim. He remembers the noise the arrow had made as it flew right next to his ear, grating him slightly and drawing one drop of blood. He remembers how she had yelled at him in a strange mixture of anger, panic and self-loathing. She had hit him (not even enough to hurt him). He had called out his nickname for her several times before she calmed down enough to really notice that he was all right. She had snapped her mouth shut, gone to retrieve her arrow, turned around and left. He did not follow her. He knew she didn't want him to. So he had picked up where she had left and inspected all of their snares. He didn't shoot anything that day. She had screamed loud enough for any wild life to hide for a few hours.

At the end of the afternoon when he went to her house to give her her catch she wasn't there. Lylia took the rabbits and indicated that she was at Haymitch's. When he knocked, the Victor opened his door and motioned him inside. He followed the staggering man to his living room and found Katniss passed out on the couch, an empty bottle of Ripper's rotgut in her hand. His heart had broken a bit at the sight. And hate filled him. Hate for the Capitol who made her like this. He swore to himself that he would make them pay for it. For breaking the wonderfully strong woman she had been.

He had taken her into his arms and brought her back home. Lylia's eyes were sad as she opened the door. He promised that he would pass by in the morning to check on her (he would make sure Jared covered for him at the mine for a few hours, consequences be damned). When he came back in the morning it was Katniss who opened the door. She frowned and glared and turned around without a word. When he entered the kitchen she was chopping carrots with a sharp knife, her back turned to him and the rest of the house. She ignored his attempts at conversation. He had sighed and sat down. He remained silent, knowing that she would eventually talk to him.

He saw Prim walk to the kitchen in her school clothes. She was holding a metal basin. When she entered the kitchen the basin slipped from her hands and crashed loudly on the floor.

Gale watched as it happened almost in slow motion. He watched the basin bang and bounce loudly on the floor, Prim jumping in surprise. He remembers the thwack the sharp knife Katniss had been holding made as it embedded itself in the wall behind Prim. He remembers turning around and seeing Katniss, another knife in hand, poised ready to spring, muscles tense, eyes hard, jaw set, nostrils flaring.

He remembers this eternal second it took for everyone to understand what had just happened. He then watched as Katniss crushed Prim in her arms, crying as she apologized again and again and asked her again and again if she was alright.

In that moment Gale understood. He understood so many things that he wasn't even sure it all happened in a single moment.

He understood that the other world where Haymitch and Katniss lived was a terrible world. But it was not a world parallel to the normal world. It was worst. It was a world of the past. It was the arena.

Gale understood in that moment that his Catnip didn't sometimes go back to the arena when she was in the woods. No. She had never left. He understood that when she seemed in the other world, her eyes distant, it was because she could not get herself to believe she was in the real world again, out of the arena.

He understood that she would need a very long time to recover from all this, if ever. He understood that as strong as Katniss was, there were just some things that wouldn't leave.

Plenty of other things passed by his mind in that moment but he did not understand all of them.

The moment ended and in the next a smoldering hatred swept everything inside of him. He would forever loathe the Capitol for this. For making a loving and protective sister throw a knife at a girl for having dropped a basin.

And in that moment he hated Peeta for not being broken like Katniss, or better yet, instead of her. He hated the other Victors who were not broken like hers, like that Finnick Odair, who had been in an interview on the television a few days ago, smiling and joking and being happy. Like all those Victors from 1 and 2 who spent their whole life basking in the attention.

And in that moment he hated Haymitch Abernathy a little less. He understood a little better why the Victor was always drunk, if this was the world some of the Victors lived in.