I feel so happy! I finished this chapter pretty quick and I think it turned out pretty good. Once I started writing I couldn't stop! This chapter got so interesting for me! I really hope you love it as much as I did! Please review!
All characters belong to Suzanne Collins
I feel like the wind is being blown out of me. I am falling to the ground from our spot 50 feet in the tree. I start to scramble even though it helps none while I am in the air. Time seems to be moving in slow motion, but I don't see my life flash before my eyes like the people from the mines told me they had when they were in a near-death situation. Maybe that's a good sign.
I hit the ground hard and grunt. I hear someone screaming not far from me. I look up just in time to see a dark blob come down on me. It hits and I let out another pained grunt and my eyes are squeezed as shut as I can get them. I keep them shut as a precaution, as if keeping them shut will prevent anything else from falling on me.
"Katniss! Gale!" a shrill voice cuts through the air. I just barely manage to recognize the voice as Rues'. "Katniss, Gale!" the voice says again, closer now. It sounds like she is running very fast by the loudness of her voice.
I feel a weight lifted off me and I assume it was Katniss that landed on me.
"Katniss are you OK?" I listen as Rue talks through strained ears. Everything on me hurts and I feel like I won't manage the pain.
A loud gasp echoes the air and I assume it was Katniss taking in a breath, or maybe letting one out.
"Katniss are you OK?" she repeats
"I'm fine," she coughs "Wha- Gale!" soon I feel a pair of hands on my chest and I groan at the pain. "Gale!" she sounds very relieved that I'm at least not dead "Gale please open your eyes." She pleads. I try my best, but the pain is too much to even do that, and only manage to open them half-way. She lets out a relieved laugh "You're gonna be OK, Gale."
"Let's get him someplace softer." Rue offers
I struggle with speaking but manage to say "No," before they do.
"Why?" Katniss asks, frantic again
"The pain. I'll be fine just don't move me." My body aches in pain but I try to keep my face plain the best I can so Katniss doesn't worry.
"Then I'll stay here with you." Katniss says, her hands brushing the hair on the top of my head.
"You need to be in a tree, Katniss, it's the safest way." Speaking is getting easier, even though it still hurts a bit.
"I won't leave you down here with no way to protect yourself."
"I'll be fine."
"Not the way you are Gale, you can't move, there's no way you could put up a fight."
"What about you? You fell too."
"I'm fine. I fell on you remember?" her face cringes "That's another reason I'm staying. I feel guilty, you wouldn't be this bad if it weren't for me."
"I still fell on the ground on my back, Catnip." I manage a small smile but it turns into a grimace.
"And I'm still staying."
"Here," Rue comes up to us with two pieces of the meat and a canteen. Her lips turn up on one side like she is sorry for what happened and will do anything to help. The half-smile disappears as quickly as it happened and she sits at my feet. "So what are we going to do? Just leave you?"
I have managed to open my eyes completely now. "Yeah," Katniss speaks up "I'm going to stay with him tonight."
"Are you sure?" Rue has the same doubts as I do of staying on the floor.
"I'm going to stay up all night to keep watch. You can sleep too." She tells Rue. "You too Gale, especially you."
"What?" I ask
"Gale I know you didn't sleep at all last night. I'm not an idiot." Katniss says accusingly
"What do you mean?" I ask, still skeptical
She took a deep breath. "Whenever I woke up from my nightmares I could feel your hands going up and down my arm," I remember vaguely doing that, but barely. Maybe the fall made me forget it partially. "You can't do that in your sleep plus, I heard you talking to me."
My eyes go wide in shock. How could she wake up and I not know it?
"And by the way," she continues "I love you to."
I smile softly, still feeling the pain the pairs with movement.
We all sit in silence for a few minutes and I close my eyes. All I am aware of is Katniss' hand roaming through my hair, in fact, I almost forget about Rues' presence until Katniss speaks and I open my eyes.
"I'm going to hunt. Rue can you please watch him?" Rue nods. I am getting slightly less afraid of her as time goes by, by I remain wary. I could never let my guard down. Not here. Not ever.
Katniss starts to stand. I move my hand to her ankle, seeing as that is the closest thing I can. I inwardly wince at the pain. "Wait," I start "What if something happens to you? How will I know you're safe?"
Rue speaks up immediately "We have a song. In District eleven. We use it to signal the end of shifts and mockingjays carry it throughout almost the entire district."
"How will that help? What if she's too far away?" I ask
"You haven't noticed?" Rue questions
"What?" Katniss asks quizzically
"There are mockingjays all over the place!"
"Maybe that was the bird we heard." I say
"What's the tune?" Katniss asks Rue
Rue complies and whistles a 4-note song. It's really beautiful but it takes a majestic sound when one mockingjay sings, then another, and another, until they are all in harmony singing different parts all at once.
I see Katniss smiling and I know she must be thinking the same thing.
"You try." Rue says to Katniss. She whistles the tune and the mockingjays take up hers. "I'll do it for him since it would be likely to hard."
"Thank you." I whisper.
Katniss starts to leave but I stop her yet again with my hand against her ankle. "Wait, Katniss," she looks at me questionably and I continue "just in case." She understands what I am saying and bends down. She brings her lips to mine slowly. She is probably too scared of hurting me. Honestly I'm glad she did because even the soft touch sends small jolts of pain through my body. She must have sensed it because she backs away quickly, but not leaving yet.
"I love you." She says softly in my ear
"I love you to." I say.
She begins to get up again and this time I don't stop her. "I'll do it every couple minutes, you do the same." She says to Rue in a normal voice. And with that she leaves. I watch her go and when she is out of my sight I feel like a hole has been ripped in my stomach.
Rue is still at my feet examining her leg that Katniss has wrapped with plastic around the leaves. "So why haven't you killed us yet?" I ask
"I couldn't." she responds after a moment of silence
"Why?" I know that it sounds cruel even though I didn't mean for it to be
"She reminds me to much of-" she stops
"Who?"
"No one." She says, shaking her head violently
"Who?" I repeat
She sighs loudly "My sister. She's 19 so she couldn't volunteer for me, even though she probably wouldn't anyway. She loves me, but not as much as Katniss loves her sister."
"She told you about it?"
"Vaguely, but she didn't have to tell me much, I could see it in the reapings. Just the way she volunteered for her alone, it's selfless, like nothing matters except her safety."
"It is."
For the first time she looks up at me and I can see the hurt and worry in her eyes. "How well do you know her?"
"We're best friends. We have been for five years. We-we tell each other everything. Like I said in the interviews, she saved my life and I saved hers. But she cares about her sister so much. That's one of the reasons I love her, her selflessness. She didn't care about what happened to her, all she wanted was Prim safe, away from here. She would never have anything bad happen to her,"
I look up from where I was staring at the ground and see that Rue's eyes are filled with compassion and knowing. I'm sure that her sister would've volunteered for her if she could.
"I'm sorry," I say "about you and your sister. I'm sure she would've done the same as Katniss if she could."
She doesn't say anything and instead just stares at me. "So why haven't you killed me yet?" I ask, trying to break the awkward silence that has grown between us.
"I honestly don't know. Why haven't you killed me?"
"I couldn't do that to Katniss."
"Why would it affect her?"
"You remind her of her sister, the one the volunteered for."
"Oh. So that's why she is so nice to me."
"Yeah."
Katniss' song bursts through the air to remind us she's safe and Rue lets out hers.
"You really love her, don't you?" I realize she's staring at me again. I look at her strangely even though I don't know why. She sees this and continues with her explanation "Every time she comes up in a conversation or you get a reminder of her, your face just… just lights up. Like it did just now, when you heard the whistle, it seemed like a switch inside you just switched on to happy."
"You have no idea."
"Why do you love her?" she doesn't ask in a way that implies that it would be a crazy thing to love a girl like her, like most other people say. But they only say it because they don't know her like I do. No one knows her like I do except for Prim. No one knows the wonderful person hiding behind the mask she wears most of the time. The mask only disappears when she's in the woods really.
"I guess because I got to know her, I got to know her like no one else does." Why am I telling her this? She's practically a stranger and she's going to die soon. Maybe that's why though. If it's because she's about to die and it won't matter if she knew my secrets. "I got know her loving side," I continue. I laugh slightly as I think of the next thing I'm going to say, "I didn't even realize I loved her until I got jealous of someone hitting on her." Rue laughs a little too, "But I didn't know how she would react to me telling her, so I kept it a secret."
"Until now." She says
"Yeah, it kind of just, came out." She hives me look and I can tell she's confused "We were talking about the Games and how we wanted to get each other home so badly," I can see Rue tense up, even though she might know she won't make it, this still probably makes her think that we will do anything to get the other home alive. "it kind of just slipped out."
"That you loved her?"
"Yeah."
"Then what was with the interviews? When she was talking about how you weren't in love and nothing was real? What was that anyway, I mean, it seemed out of place even if she wasn't in love with you."
The whistle came again and Rue did the same.
"There had been a, a problem."
"What?"
"Our escort had told me that we should act like lovers. I didn't care, I mean, I loved her anyway, but then she found out that there was an angle and she thought everything I said was a lie. I couldn't convince her it wasn't so at the interviews she still thought what I said wasn't real."
"I couldn't tell if it was staged or not."
"What?"
"Well, the video came up right after that."
"Our mentor did that. I had no idea and neither did she. Hell, she was pissed when we got back to our floor."
"Didn't seem like that backstage." She said with a smirk
"You saw?"
"Everyone saw."
I roll my eyes "She told me she was sorry and she realized that I was telling the truth."
We sat in silence, not really needing to say anything.
"Well, well, well," I jerked my head around to see the menacing Cato swinging his sword around playfully "I hear it's not safe to just sit on the ground talking all day long."
I looked at Rue for a split second and could see that she was frozen to the spot with her eyes wide.
Cato made a step towards us and I scrambled to me feet, even though my body was writhing in pain. "Rue run!" I screamed, even though she was next to me. She did but we ended up going in opposite directions. It could be a good thing, if I wasn't worried that he would catch up to one of us and easily get the other.
To my slight advantage, he went after Rue, even though I feel like Katniss won't forgive me for not protecting her.
I kept running anyway. If I lose him I might be safe.
After running for ten minutes, I have to stop. The pain has become too much. I sit and lean against a tree and force myself to keep my eyes open in case someone starts to come for me. I've heard Katniss' whistle a few times while I was running so I'm sure she's safe.
Boom!
Rue! Cato must have got her. I scramble to my feet and begin walking. I don't trust myself to continue to run for fear of having to stop. I hear the whistle again and know that it must be Katniss. They had a slightly different tune, Katniss' ended in a lower note and so did the whistle. She's OK!
"Come on Lover Boy! Fight like a man!"
I turn around and see Cato again, running towards me. I try to run but it ends up being a fast walk because of my pain. He quickly makes it closer to me even though I'm constantly trying to be faster. I run behind a tree and just miss getting hit by his sword. I run in the opposite direction from Cato as he tries to hit me again.
The boy from District 1 comes out from behind a tree just in front of me so I turn left, but the girl from 1 stands before me too. I am blocked to the left by the girl from 4 and get completely surrounded when Cato closes the circle of people around me. I begin to turn around in a circle, looking at my surroundings. The world gets dizzy and I'm not sure if it's because of the pain or the complete fear that I'm about to die. Maybe it's the combination of both.
Catos' sword starts at me but I see it just in time to swerve out of the way, but it nicks my side and blood starts coming out.
I feel like I'm about to pass out from everything happening around me. The world starts to go black and I fall to the ground, facing the woods. The last things I see are tiny feet that are getting bigger every second.
Then I hear something, something other than the Careers laughter at my almost unconsciousness, which very well may be my death. The very last thing I hear before the world goes black is my name being screamed franticly.
Katniss!
I hope you guys liked the heart-to-heart Gale and Rue had. I felt it was time for him to be a little more comfortable around her. Tell me if you liked it please!