"I'm telling you, something is off."
Katniss fiddled with the sleeve of her jacket as she followed Gale through the forest. Ostensibly, they were hunting, but Gale had been more interested in discussing the conclusion of the Quarter Quell since they'd met on the other side of the fence.
The victor, a middle-aged woman from Two, had been crowned late the night before, and though much of Panem was buzzing about it, Katniss was sure most of that buzz had nothing to do with why it was Gale's preferred topic of conversation.
"Something is always off with the Capitol," Katniss said, tired of listening to Gale go on when she would much rather have silence and the ability to actually find some game. "Nothing they do is for the reasons they say it is."
"Yeah, but this time it's not the Capitol doing it," Gale continued. "There's something else up. Something with the victors. I'm telling you, they know something. Even Haymitch. I'm sure of it."
"What does it matter?" Katniss asked. "It doesn't concern us. Whatever's happening in the Capitol, life will be the same regardless. I don't know what anyone in the Capitol or the other districts are up to, and I don't care. What I care about is making sure my little sister has food tonight, and so far we're doing a terrible job of that."
Gale stopped walking and turned to face her, a frown creasing his forehead.
"We haven't checked the traps," he pointed out, "and we have plenty of time before sunset. Katniss, are you really that worried about not having food, or does the idea of something actually changing scare you?"
Katniss felt acid creeping up her throat. She tightened her hands into fists, trying to release some of the tension.
"I want things to change as much as the next person," she said. "Believe me. The problem is, I don't think that's going to happen, and I'd rather survive in reality than die in a fantasy that the world is going to change for good."
"We're not dying," Gale scoffed. "Not by a long shot. Sure, it's hard, but we're better off than a lot of others in the Seam. This, though, it could change things for everyone."
"I don't know what you expect to happen," Katniss said before he could continue. "The Capitol may fawn over their precious victors, but they'd never betray Snow for any of them. If the victors are up to anything, it's probably for themselves. Maybe Haymitch wants a steady supply of the Capitol's finest liquor so he can stop drowning himself in moonshine from the Hob."
Gale snorted, leaning against a tree.
"I may not think the best of Haymitch, but even I have more faith in him than that. Besides, our moonshine is at least as good as anything the Capitol's got."
Katniss, who had never tasted either product, didn't provide Gale with a response. With a slight shake of her head, she brushed past him, determined to find something she could take home to prove to herself that the day hadn't been a bust.
But Gale wasn't finished.
"Just imagine what could happen if we actually stood up to the Capitol for once. We wouldn't have to put children up for slaughter every year. Prim could get better treatment from a doctor. Imagine that, Katniss."
"No," Katniss growled, not slowing her walk and not looking back at him. "I'm not letting you fill my head with some fantasy that'll never be real."
"It's not a fantasy," Gale said. "Everyone in the mines sees it coming. All of us. We can't all be losing touch with reality. Something is coming. Not just in Twelve but in Panem. Something long overdue."
"Say it is," Katniss shot back. "What does that mean for us? Another war? Another hopeless rebellion the Capitol can crush? What will they subject us to then? If their Hunger Games fail, what's their next line of defense? Mass slaughter, since killing only some of us didn't work? What happens to our families? What happens to Prim, to Rory, to Vick, to Posey?"
Gale clenched his jaw.
"They have better futures," he replied.
Katniss scoffed, and Gale continued in a louder voice.
"I don't know what you think after all the years we've known each other, Katniss, but I'm not an idiot. I know a rebellion means taking a risk. The Capitol's already proven they're not above killing the kids, but that's why we have to rebel. Don't you see? My name won't be in the reaping anymore. I can't volunteer for Vick or Rory. I never could have for Posey. But their names are still in there, and Prim's will be too when yours isn't. Maybe a rebellion puts them in danger, but living underneath the Capitol has already done that. Only one option includes the chance that one day they'll be safe, and I don't think it's wrong to want to take it."
"It's not," Katniss admitted.
Her throat felt tight, making it hard to speak, but she forced herself to power through it and continue.
"I get it. I get wanting a world where everyone is safe, but I can't hope for something that places Prim in danger. Especially when long term safety isn't a guarantee. Or likely. The Capitol crushed the last rebellion. We're worse off now than we were then. I don't see what could be different this time."
"Maybe that's exactly what is different," Gale said.
Katniss raised an eyebrow at him.
"We're worse off," he continued. "At this point, what do we have to lose? If you're willing to do anything to win, then you're already a step ahead of the other side. The Capitol has a force of highly trained peacekeepers, but do any of them want to die for a Capitol that oppresses them too? No, I guarantee they don't, and that's the difference."
"What weapons do you plan to fight with? Pickaxes? Against the peacekeepers' guns and hovercrafts and bombs?"
Gale's frown turned into a smirk.
"You have to give us more credit than that."
For the first time, Katniss realized the miners had gotten far enough into their delusions to be discussing what weapons to use. Though it was a hot summer's day, her blood felt like ice in her veins, and a shiver traveled down her spine.
A touch to her shoulder startled her, and she surfaced from her thoughts enough to ascertain that Gale was next to her, gripping her shoulder to get her attention. She moved away from him, and he didn't try to follow her.
"Leave me alone," she said. "I need to think. I can't think."
Gale held his hands up in surrender, eyes wide with something akin to fear. He watched as Katniss backed away from him.
She turned from him and pushed herself farther into the woods, not sure where she was heading.
XXX
Katniss began to see things she hadn't previously.
There were whispers, and they weren't the usual whispers that one expected around the Hob about illegal game or some trinket said to have come to Twelve from the Capitol years previously.
The peacekeepers were no longer visiting the illicit marketplace. They prowled Twelve with stiff shoulders, eyes narrowed as they watched people go about their daily business. It was a far cry from the bored looks Katniss was used to seeing one their faces.
Haymitch returned to the district after the games, and it caused a larger stir than usual, particularly among the younger miners. They hid their curiosity in the man from the peacekeepers, but Katniss saw some of them approach the drunk in the Hob, with Haymitch shooing them away with an irritated wave of his hand as he bought his alcohol.
Perhaps she should have found it reassuring that he hadn't wanted to speak to them. She might have for a day or two, but then Romulus Thread appeared.
One day, Cray was in charge of the district, leading peacekeepers that looked increasingly angry, yes, but not doing much that was outside the norm. The next, everything had changed.
Katniss had been avoiding the woods that day, knowing Gale would be in them on his one day of the week off. She'd instead made plans with Peeta to spend time together inside the district.
She had never in her wildest dreams expected to encounter someone being whipped in the middle of the square, strung up on a post that had been erected sometime in the past day.
There was a crowd of people that Katniss could see through, and at first, she couldn't be sure of what was happening. But there were definite sounds of a whip and someone's cries. A feeling of dread made her stomach feel like a lead weight as she inched forward.
Peeta caught sight of her long before she saw him. He approached her, his own face set in a frown.
"What's going on?" she asked when she spotted him.
"There's a new head peacekeeper," Peeta whispered as if he didn't want the people around them to hear.
Some of them were looking at Katniss in a way that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
"He caught Gale trying to sell a turkey, and—"
Knowing who was being whipped, Katniss didn't stay to listen to the rest of Peeta's explanation. He didn't try to stop her, though he followed as she pushed through the easily parted crowd.
When she made it to the clearing in the middle, she froze, taking in the sight of Gale hunched over in pain yet held up by chains wrapped around his wrists. His back was covered in cuts that were oozing blood. A man she'd never seen before stood over him, face furious as he gripped a whip in his hands.
Around them, on the other side of the circle, stood peacekeepers who were familiar to Katniss. Many of them had purchased goods from her and Gale before. She wondered if one of them had been the one to turn Gale in. She wondered if she would be next.
Somehow, that didn't stop her.
The man raised the whip once more, and, unthinkingly, Katniss rushed forward, launching herself into the space between Gale and the man. The whip came down on her face with a crack.
It was more painful than she had expected in the split second before it made contact. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she was sure, without being able to see it, that a welt was already forming. She couldn't open the eye that had been hit, and she had the fleeting thought that she might have been permanently blinded in that eye.
There were more pressing matters than that, though, and the thought was quickly drowned out by the danger she found herself in.
The unfamiliar peacekeeper's face was full of rage at having been intercepted. Though he didn't raise the whip again, he kept his grip on it tight, no doubt intending to use it once more after he'd sorted out the problem at hand.
"Who are you?" he snapped at Katniss, looking her up and down in a way that made bile rise in her throat.
"Katniss Everdeen."
She was surprised at how strong her voice sounded. She certainly didn't feel brave as her heart pounded in her chest.
The man laughed. He took a step back, lowering his hand that held the whip to his side. Behind Katniss, Gale moaned, but he didn't have the energy to speak, and her attention was too focused on the man in front of her to try to discern what Gale was telling her.
"I need you to step out of the way, miss," the peacekeeper said, his voice shallowly polite even as malice glinted in his eyes. "You're interrupting the rightful punishment of a criminal."
"Since when are people whipped in the street?"
Before the man could answer, Peeta was at her side. Katniss felt a rush of frustration. She hadn't intended for him to get involved, and she was tempted to snap at him in front of the peacekeeper, but he spoke before she could, his hands raised in the hope of placating the soldier.
"We're very sorry," Peeta said in a calmer voice than the professional peacekeeper had been able to manage. "We really are. It's just that this man is a friend of ours, and we'd like to know what it is he's done to deserve something like this. If he's broken the law, why not handle it privately? You're scaring the children."
The man's gaze followed Peeta's pointing finger to several children who were huddled together on the edge of the crowd, staring at the proceedings with wide, frightened eyes as they held each other.
The scene caused the man to smirk rather than appear regretful as Peeta might have hoped. It also called his attention to how large the crowd around them had become. His posture straightened as his eyes roved the crowd.
"Now, why would I do that?" the man asked, turning back to Peeta, Katniss, and Gale with his cruel smile firmly in place. "It's clear to me that District 12 has been allowed to run wild. Thankfully, President Snow was smart enough to send me here to fix that. Gone are the days when you lot could get away with breaking the law as you've been allowed to do for so long."
He turned to look at the assembled crowd, making it clear his words were for everyone. The people of Twelve frowned back. Many of the older people in the crowd looked grim, but some of the children were more confused than anything else. A young boy of around six, with a firm grip on the pants leg of his father, tugged to get the man's attention, asking a question that couldn't be heard from the middle of the circle but which caused the father to hush the boy.
Katniss turned back to the peacekeeper, brow furrowed. What had happened to Cray? Just the day before, Katniss had seen him in the Hob purchasing soup from Greasy Sae and looking confident of his position. There was no reason he shouldn't have been. He'd been the head peacekeeper in Twelve her entire life.
The man smirked at Katniss' confusion.
"I'm Romulus Thread," he said in a booming voice that carried over the assembled people though his eyes remained on Katniss. "Snow has appointed me as the head peacekeeper of Twelve, a title I intend to return the honor to. Your friend," he said the word with distaste, "was selling an illegal turkey. One that he no doubt went into the woods to fetch, as I have been reliably informed the birds do not regularly fly over the district fence as your friend attempted to claim they do."
It could have been possible for Gale to get the bird that way. Katniss had seen turkeys fly high enough during an escape that they could have made it over the fence if they'd tried, but it was also true that she had never seen such a thing actually happen. They didn't tend to come near town.
Thread continued, "I am executing a punishment that is on the books and entirely legal. If you would like to discuss it further, that can be done at a later time. After Hawthorne's lashes have been administered."
Fire burned in Katniss' veins. She felt Peeta touch her elbow, but it didn't shift her focus away from Thread, who held her attention in a strangely hypnotic, though terrifying, way. He was unlike any peacekeeper she'd previously encountered. She was used to them being cruel if they didn't get their way but entirely uninterested in following the letter of the law.
She took a step forward, unsure what she was about to say but knowing it would get her into a heap of trouble she didn't need.
As she opened her mouth, a figure staggered out of the crowd, managing to catch everyone's attention as he nearly stumbled to the ground.
"Woah, woah, woah."
Katniss' eyes widened as she watched Haymitch Abernathy place himself strategically between her and Thread. He held his hands up as if he were protesting his own innocence.
"Let's not do anything too hasty," Haymitch told Thread, his voice almost mocking. "The girl hasn't broken any laws. You can't blame her for being a little shocked to see her friend hunched over with welts all over his back. That gets people a little worked up."
He faux whispered the last part as if he and Thread were conspirators concealing their true feelings from Katniss. As if they were both somehow above ridiculous emotions that "normal" people felt when they saw someone beaten.
Katniss supposed they both were. That was the only way one rose to either of their positions.
She leaned around Haymitch to look at Thread. She took in his armor, a more intense version than anything the peacekeepers wore in Twelve. It looked similar to the pictures she'd seen of peacekeepers during the rebellion except modernized.
Gale's words flashed through her mind.
But perhaps Thread just relished the chance to feel powerful and chose his armor for personal reasons. Perhaps this was the standard uniform wherever he'd last been stationed. Not everyone did things like they did in Twelve. Thread had already reminded her of that much.
"That may be," Thread continued, speaking to Haymitch as one might a toddler who needed things simplified, "but she is also interfering in a lawful punishment. That in and of itself warrants action on my part."
"Does it?"
Haymitch's pointed question drew a mixture of groans and gasps from the crowd, especially the older members.
"You've made an example of the boy," Haymitch said. "Everyone," he motioned at the crowd, "knows what will happen to them if they defy the Capitol. The girl is young. As you rightfully pointed out, Cray had let obedience slip here. The girl was shocked, but she's been reminded of her place. She won't bother you again, just as I'm sure the boy won't either once you let him go."
Haymitch paused, but Thread didn't give him a response. Katniss had become more enthralled with the back of Haymitch's head than the peacekeeper. Though there was an occasional slur to Haymitch's words, she'd never seen him so lucid.
"Look at him," he said, motioning behind Katniss.
Thread's eyes narrowed in suspicion. He knew what Haymitch was doing, but the small glances he sent the crowd hinted that he didn't want to call the victor out on it when they had an audience.
Haymitch continued, "He's passed out. You're not really teaching him a lesson if he's not conscious for it, are you?"
Thread let out a huff. With a dismissive wave of his hand, he turned from them.
"Take the young man," he said with the confidence of one who was getting their intended outcome. "He's faced his consequences."
His eyes scanned the crowd, causing some to flinch or move to escape.
"Tell everyone you know that Romulus Thread is \ in charge here, and all laws will be followed. No exceptions."
The last part was practically barked, and one small child broke into tears, his father squatting quickly as he tried to hush the child. Thread ignored them, turning back to Katniss with a look of disgust. He didn't say anything, but his overt hostility was enough of a warning. He stalked off, and Katniss felt the pressure in her chest ease.
"That was idiotic," Haymitch growled as soon as Thread was out of sight.
Katniss bristled.
"I never asked for your help," she shot back.
Haymitch snorted. Katniss couldn't tell if he was amused or pissed off. She couldn't find it in herself to care either way.
"No," he agreed, "but it wouldn't have done anyone any good to watch you get the same as him, would it?"
He motioned at Gale, who was hunched over on the ground, his arms bent awkwardly due to the ropes binding him to the post. Katniss rushed over, tugging at them. They were tight, as evidenced by the blood that had stained them. Katniss bit at the inside of her cheek.
She couldn't look at the marks that littered his back.
One of the men Gale worked with stepped forward with a pocket knife in his hand, and Katniss moved far enough away for him to cut Gale free, Peeta and another miner catching Gale's lifeless body before he fell to the ground.
"We should take him to Mrs. Everdeen," Haymitch said, and Katniss was surprised when all the men except Peeta nodded.
Her forehead creased, but there was too much happening for her to ask about the choice. Several more men came forward, carrying a door between them. Katniss had no idea where they'd gotten it, but she couldn't complain as they lifted Gale onto it, a group of them that included Peeta lifting Gale and hurrying towards the Seam as fast as they could.
"We always used to take them to your mother," Haymitch explained for her benefit as he followed the group with Katniss. "Before Cray," he continued at Katniss' confused look. "The last peacekeeper was like the Thread fellow. We took everyone he punished to your mother. She's the best healer in the district."
She knew about her mother's talent for healing, but she'd never suspected that she'd honed that talent out of a need to heal people from injuries like those Gale was suffering from. There had been enough suffering in Twelve throughout Katniss' lifetime. It was hard to imagine it being worse, and she'd never been told anything about a head peacekeeper before Cray.
She felt useless as the men carried Gale through the streets. She fidgeted with her hands, wanting to do something with them. Instead, she had her thoughts and a victor who was staying inexplicably by her side.
"Why did you do it?" she asked. "Why step in for Gale?"
Haymitch gave her a smile that felt crueler than it did comforting.
"I may be a murderer, but even I have my limits when it comes to cruelty."
At first, she thought that was the only answer she'd get from him, but he continued a few seconds later.
"Besides, I like that boy. He's a fighter, more so than a lot of others in this damn place. Whatever Thread hoped to achieve, I think he's made a fighter stronger."
She observed Haymitch with disgust, taking in the lines of his face that made him look older than he actually was. Her mother had them too, as did most of the adults in Twelve. Any Capitol citizen, if they hadn't known of him already, would have pegged Haymitch as two decades older than he was.
He didn't say anything else. He couldn't, as they'd arrived at her family's house. Haymitch held the door open as the other men navigated their way indoors, depositing Gale on the kitchen table.
Katniss' concern for Gale won out, and she didn't notice when Haymitch slipped out of the house.
A/N: Ten more chapters to go!