"Enclosed is the love I've never sent,
and this power to forget you.
Well tonight,
I can see through a lifetime of wretched demise;
and these words can hurt me."
"Hurt Me"- Aiden
A/N: I am so terribly sorry for such the long wait! I've been on Spring Break and surprisingly busy.
I have spent a lot of time writing, though, but mostly with my other story. Alas, don't fret! Chapter 7 is here!
And obviously, I don't own The Hunger Games.
I wake up to Peeta jostling me.
"What?" I croak groggily, a scowl creeping over my face. I was enjoying my sleep.
"We have to hide. Now," he says with urgency flooding his tone.
I stand up and glance around to what's left of our squad. Finnick stands next to the door to our hiding place; everyone else is huddling near the other end of the room, throwing pelts over themselves to attempt to hide.
I struggle against Peeta, refusing to move until I get answers. He opens his mouth to explain, but before he can I hear a shriek from upstairs.
"They're here. C'mon, Katniss. We need to hide!" This time it's Gale pulling me into the darkness with Cressida and Pollux, Peeta following. Finnick stays where he is.
"Finnick!" I yell. I can't lose him. Sometime during our torment in 13, we became good friends. Best friends really. He understands me in a way Gale couldn't and we share an experience I never could with Peeta. Losing Finnick would feel like losing a brother I never had. I had to protect him; not only for my own selfish reasons but for Annie and their son—I just knew they'd have a son, and he'd look just like Finnick. I can't let that child be a ghost of such an amazing man. No, Finnick is coming home.
"Shh!" He looks at me and gives me such a terrible death glare I can't help but comply. He doesn't offer any explanation and I know that I will just have to trust that he won't do anything stupid.
I finally stop resisting Gale and Peeta to move, but I refuse to hide under pelts like Cressida and Pollux.
"We're here to fight! I'm not going to cower down now," I say sternly. This is my fight after all. I am the one who started this rebellion with those berries so long ago. And it is my fault that almost all of our squad has perished on a "mission" I made up. It's my fault we're here; I will not hide from the consequences of my choices any longer. I will fight.
Peeta looks at me with those beautiful blue eyes I love so much. Only this time, he's not looking at me, but rather through me. He nods his head solemnly and picks up a gun. He straps it to his chest and takes my hand.
He tenderly kisses my wrist and whispers something to me. It's too quiet for me to make out and as I open my mouth to ask what he said, the shrieking comes to an end.
The screams end with a bang. A single gunshot and upstairs goes quiet. Complete silence settles around us like that black fog from the pod we encountered what seems like forever ago.
It last only mere moments before footsteps begin shuffling down the stairs. We're completely silent. The men, I'm assuming to be peacekeepers, yell strings of profanity as they experience difficulty finding us. The woman shrieking must have been Tigris. I can only hope that she didn't tell them about this room; but I never did trust her too much, so I wouldn't be surprised if she told them.
Finnick locks the door in haste and presses back against the wall. I make my way back across the rooms to retrieve my bow and arrows when suddenly I hear a loud buzzing noise and instantly, the door flies open—almost crushing Finnick as he hides behind it.
Peeta jumps in front of me, shielding me from the aim of the three peacekeepers' guns—that are now aimed at Peeta's chest, since he's the only one possessing a weapon.
My eyes look frantically to Finnick. He only has a single knife, there's no way he could take out all three peacekeepers before they shot Peeta or noticed him; so I do the only logical thing of which I can think.
I shove Peeta behind me, and back up; pushing him into the corner and using all my weight as leverage to keep him from reversing our positions.
"You can't take him!" I scream at the peacekeepers; their guns now trained at his head that sticks out above my own. I've never hated being short more than now. I want to shield him from anything and everything, but something are trivial as six inches in height difference are going to mean his death.
The man in the center, presumably the leader just laughs.
"You really thought that the three of you could make it to the president?"
Good, that means he only sees Gale, Peeta, and me. He doesn't know Finnick is there.
"We've got friends, you know," Gale says with a smirk. He momentarily diverts two of the men's attention. Finnick takes advantage of this.
He lunges forward with the stealth and grace of a practiced hunter and slits the third man's throat. The man on the other side of their leader drops his gun as he runs to his fallen comrade. Finnick is hidden again. They central peacekeeper, still with a finger on his gun, laughs again and points his gun back to Peeta's temple.
I hear the click, and pull us both down; shooting the man with Peeta's gun. At the same time Finnick's knife makes an appearance in the final peacekeeper's chest. The blood drips all the way over to Peeta and myself, lying on the ground a few yards away.
Only, it's not the peacekeeper's blood.
It's Gale's.
It takes me a few moments to realize it; what happened. Gale jumped in front of a bullet, but not a bullet that was aimed at me. Gale jumped in front of a bullet for Peeta. Gale sacrificed himself for Peeta. The weight of what happened threatens to suffocate me as I squirm out of Peeta's grasp and past the bodies of the peacekeepers that litter the ground and stain the—once beautiful—pelts a deep crimson.
"Gale!" I scream. I scream his name as I crawl to his blood soaked body, lying on the ground. My legs won't work and it seems to take a year to crawl those few feet to my best friend; my hunting partner; my brother.
"Cat-nip," he says hoarsely, reaching for my hand as I sit next to him. I reach his head in my lap and try to staunch the bleeding. A bullet skimmed his neck, right along the artery. He knew and I knew that there was almost no chance I could save him, but I was going to try like hell.
"Shh, don't talk." I say, putting my fingers to his lips. I rip off part of his shirt and put pressure on it as I press it to the wound. It quickly stains red from the blood that seems to be never ending. Cressida runs to try and find me a needle and thread for makeshift stitches.
"Just..stop," he says, coughing. "It's over. I know it is."
His words hit me, and I know he's right. My whole body feels as though it's been crushed; a giant boulder has landed right on top of me.
He must notice my expression, because her reaches up to touch my cheek; wiping away a tear I didn't know had fallen. Gale is dying, yet he's comforting me. What a great friend I am.
"Listen to me, Catnip."
I can't speak over fear of losing myself to hysterics, so I just nod.
"You're going to be OK, I promise you that. When I'm gone, you won't blame yourself, ok? Promise me you won't blame yourself."
The usual fire and resignation in his voice is gone; his plea is devoid of any and all emotion but desperation. It breaks my heart to hear the man I know to be strong, brave, and warm to be reduced to nothing more than a desperate man— albeit still as selflessly concerned about my well-being as ever.
"I can't, Gale," I say, sobs escaping. Now is not the time to lose it, I keep telling myself. It's all in vain. Gale is dying and most of me is going to die with him.
"As my dying wish, promise me you will move on. Promise me you'll kill Snow; end the Games; lead the rebellion; all that heroic shit..." he pauses. He grabs my hand again, and I can feel his hands getting colder and colder as his body is being drained of blood.
"And most importantly, promise me you and Mellark will be happy. Don't let me stop you. I didn't take a bullet for him so you would feel guilty. I did this. Not you." He kisses my hand and then lets go.
"Make my death mean something, Catnip."
I nod. My hand on his neck can barely make out his pulse.
"I promise, Gale."
I kiss his forehead and watch as the life fades from his eyes. The slow rise and fall of his chest becomes nonexistent, so I close his eyes.
He's gone, and I let myself give in to the hysterics.
I crumple into his chest, blood coating my hair and face, but I don't care. I sob and sob, incapable of making any coherent words but his name. After some time, I calm down physically, but emotionally I'm manic.
Years of friendship fly through my mind. I remember:
The first time he made me laugh—we'd been hunting together for weeks, but I'd never shown him anything but a scowl. Then one day he set off his own snare and managed to get himself hung upside-down by the ankle, 8-feet off the ground. I tied him down, after staring at him and laughing for a good while;
When Prim caught pneumonia and we didn't have the money for her medicine. Gale spent a solid two days hunting, with no rest, until he shot two bucks. He sold every scrap of meet and hide and even the antlers; all to buy the medicine for Prim. I've still never repaid him for that;
When I found out he volunteered for the mission to rescue Peeta. Gale had always been doing things like that; risking himself to help me, rarely with even a 'thank you' in return.
We'd both done things like that; risked our hides to help each other out every-so-often. That's what hunting partners did. We protected each other. Somewhere along the way, we became much more than that; more than friends. We became family.
My family, my Gale, is dead.
My brain starts to get fuzzy; an effect of stress to which I'm all too accustomed. I begin my inner-narrative, like usual:
My name is Katniss Everdeen.
I am seventeen-years-old.
I survived two Hunger Games.
My home was bombed.
I am in the Capitol.
I will kill President Snow…
I killed my best friend.
And then, there's just black.
A/N: To any and all Gale lovers, I'm sorry! I personally don't like him at all, but I did my best to make him a good guy before he died.
Feedback? That'd be awesome.
