AN: Funny story time (well, I think it's funny). My friend and I went to a bookstore to hang out (because we're nerds like that). We were bored (because we had already finished making fun of a magazine that had a bunch of Justine Bieber pics in it), so we started talking about how fake emos are annoying (they are!), how guys sometimes look really gay in skinny jeans (they do!), and how emo hair is hot (it is!). Then we look up and there's this guy standing a few feet away from us looking like the type of guy we were just talking about. Everything about him screamed stereotypical emo. I mean, he had emo hair, dark clothing, skinny jeans, piercings, even an emo-looking girlfriend! Good thing he was talking on his phone or he would've heard us. I don't know why, but it made my friend and I laugh so hard. Coincidence much?. Heh, it's not really funny. It was funny then.

Gale and Katniss sat in awkward silence for a while because, well, they had nothing to say to each other. Katniss was painting her nails absentmindedly, watching Gale out of the corner of her eye. Gale was still cutting himself and complaining about how nobody understood him. Typical. Then a thought occurred to Katniss.

"Hey, Gale, where are those spoons I put in the bag for you?" she asked Gale curiously. She took the bag (it was still sitting next to Gale) and peeked inside it. She frowned when she realized that there were no spoons in there. That was when she realized that it had been a mistake to give Gale the spoons. Now Sue-Mary would have no spoons to befriend. How sad. Katniss felt her eyes beginning to water.

"Oh, I left them in the forest somewhere," Gale said. "They were too colorful. The colors were scaring me." Gale shuddered.

"B-but they were prettiful!" Katniss tightened her grip on Sue-Mary, afraid that Gale would hurt her new friend.

"But they were colorful!"

"You know, Gale, you really need to get over your chromatophobia," Katniss said knowingly, admiring her nails.

Gale looked confused. "What's that?"

"The fear of colors."

"How do you know that?" Gale said disbelievingly. Katniss liked spoons and pink. How the hell did she know about random phobias? Heck, he hadn't even known that she knew what "phobia" meant. Which is just sad.

"Peeta let me borrow his dictionary!" Katniss said proudly, pulling her trusty Merriam-Webster dictionary out of her pocket. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "The definition of 'pretty' isn't 'Katniss'. Did you know that? We should sue!"

Gale rolled his eyes. Strangely, he wasn't surprised that the definition of 'pretty' wasn't 'Katniss'. Of course, he wasn't going to tell Katniss that. No, that would be suicide. Well, now that he thought about it…maybe it was a good idea. He had been trying to kill himself anyway…

"Is the definition of 'stupid' 'Katniss'?" he asked.

Katniss gasped. Could he really be implying what she thought he was implying? That she was…stupid? Of course, being stupid was better than being ugly, but she never thought Gale would call her stupid. She thought he was her friend! Could he really be turning against her?

"No…why would you think that?"

"I was just wondering," Gale said innocently. Gale thought for a moment. "You know, I would tell you I love you, but since I'm supposedly depressed, I'm not."

"Okay," Katniss said. She hadn't really heard a word of what Gale had said—she was too busy wondering whether she was stupid or not.

"You should really cut yourself. It's surprisingly really relaxing," Gale suggested.

Katniss looked at Gale exasperatedly. "No, Gale. Cutting myself would give me scars and everyone knows scars will make me ugly."

Gale pouted.

"I should probably get Peeta if we're going to run away," Katniss said, standing up. "He'll probably want to write a poem about our trip."

Gale glowered (isn't that a pretty word?) at Katniss. "The wimp is coming too?"

Katniss rolled her eyes. "You're not allowed to call him that. You're allowed to call him The Boy with the Bread, The Idiot Who Writes Poems, or even the Screw-Up—actually, I'm pretty sure he calls you that—but I've already told you can't call him "the wimp". It hurts his feelings."

Gale stood up quickly. "I'm going to organize an uprising in District 12 just to make you mad!"

"But Gale! Think about all the makeup you'll lose in an uprising! Think about the makeup!" Katniss gasped.

"No, Katniss. We have to think about the good of the many. Plus, I might be able to accidentally kill Peeta in the uprising!" Gale said cheerfully.

"You're being a suicidal idiot!" Katniss yelled.

"But I'm always a suicidal idiot," Gale pointed out.

"Hmm, good point…"

"Can't you see? They're taking away our freedom! They don't let us do what we want. We're starving while people in the Capitol have so much food! They punish us when we don't do our jobs and they made me watch Barney. That stupid purple dinosaur!" Gale exclaimed.

"Gale—"

"Now I can't get that stupid song out of my head. I love you; you love me; we're a happy family; with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you; won't you say you love me too?" Gale sang while slapping himself. "I can't stop singing it. It's stuck in my head!"

"Gale—"

Gale grabbed Katniss' shoulders and forced her to look at him straight in the eye. "Do you see why I have to do this?" he asked Katniss, shaking her roughly. "They made me watch a happy purple dinosaur. I have to have my revenge!"

"Gale—"

"I had a nightmare where Barney tried to kill me with a chainsaw!" Gale exclaimed.

Katniss looked at Gale like he had gone around the bend—which he totally had. "I heard Barney was bad, but is he that bad?"

"He tried to kill me with a freaking chainsaw!" Gale started pacing around the small house…thing. "This is why we have to rebel! I won't let them force another innocent person to watch Barney," he proclaimed.

With those words, he ran away from the house, from Katniss. Katniss fell to the ground. She had just lost her best friend in the world, and the pain was worse than anything she had imagined. Why did she feel so lost, so empty?

After a few moments, she realized why.

It was because she had dropped Sue-Mary when she had been arguing with Gale, of course!

She picked up the spoon and immediately felt better.

Katniss looked around the house and saw that Gale had left the spoons behind. She sighed and shook her head. How was he supposed to organize and uprising without spoons? Maybe his nightmares about Barney were messing with his common sense.

Katniss walked back to town, deciding to look for Peeta. She found him sitting near a tree next to his house looking at a piece of paper. Katniss approached him from behind. He didn't notice her. Katniss saw that written on Peeta's piece of paper was "My Plan to Make Katniss Fall in Love with Me". That brand of apples Peeta had told her about!

"Hi, Peeta!" Katniss said cheerfully. Peeta jumped about a foot in the air and shoved the piece of paper into his pocket. "Hi, Katniss," he said nervously.

"Why do you like those apples so much?" Katniss asked.

"What apples?" Peeta was confused.

"That brand of apples that was on your grocery list. My Plan to Make Katniss Fall in Love with Me. Where can I get some?"

"Um…Wal-Mart?" Peeta said hesitantly.

"I'll have to try some soon. Since you always seem to have them on your grocery list. By the way, we're running away soon, so make sure you get your family ready," Katniss said perkily. Before Peeta could question Katniss about what she had meant when she said "running away", Katniss heard a strange noise coming from the square. A whistling, the sound of an impact, the intake of breath from a crowd.

"Oh, I'm just going to go to the square to find out what that noise is even though I have a bad feeling about it. Isn't that a great idea?" Katniss said. Then she proceeded to run to the square quickly (which was very difficult since she was in stilettos).

When Katniss reached the square, it was clear that something was happening, but the crowd was too thick to see through. Katniss tried to force her way through the crowd, but no one would let her through. Finally, she took off her shoes and began poking people with them. She didn't care who she poked or where she poked (in fact, she thought she might have accidentally poked someone's eye), she just wanted to get through the crowd. It worked. People cleared a path for her, afraid of her stilettos.

She finally broke through to the cleared space in the middle of the crowd and gasped. Gale's wrists were bound to a wooden post. His jacket had been cast aside on the ground and his shirt was torn away. He was on his knees, unconscious, held up by the ropes on his wrists. What used to be his back was a raw, bloody slab of meat.

Standing behind him was a man dressed like a Head Peacekeeper. Katniss' thoughts went along the lines of: What the hell is he doing? The picture did not quite come together until she saw what the Peacekeeper was holding…

A silver spoon.

Why would anyone be hurting Gale with a spoon? Katniss wanted to ask Sue-Mary why one of her relatives was being used to hurt Gale. She thought spoons were supposed to be nice!

Then she realized that the object in the man's hand wasn't a spoon.

It was a whip. A long whip.

Oh. Em. Gee.

AN: Not my best. Probably because I'm not really in the mood to be funny. I know I'm totally overdoing the spoon thing, but I like it.

Review?