Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 26

Gale

I politely tell Beetee that I am not hungry for the fifth and final time before the smaller man pushes his glasses up on the rim of his nose and delivers another one of his erudite smirks.

"I am going to bring you back some food, regardless of what you say. I have been observing you, Gale. You have not been eating much these past few days," he remarks bluntly. "In fact, you have barely left this room all week…"

"Wasn't aware that you were keeping tabs on my eating habits, Dad," I rebuke him without looking up from the rifle I am tinkering with in the center of our newly refurbished weaponry room. "And we've been spending more time together this week because I was demoted, remember?"

"Ah, yes," Beetee confirms, wiping his oily fingers over his dark mustache. "How could I forget? You came in that morning grumbling all about the Airtime Assault, and Coin, and something about Soldier Undersee—"

"Boy, you remember everything!" I exclaim acerbically before he can go on to rehash the details of my throwing myself in front of Madge Undersee and losing my ranking because of it.

Beetee may be a genius, but he lacks in the social cue department. He simply blinks at me until I have visibly calmed down before pouncing on his next opportunity to speak.

"It's my job to remember everything," Beetee replies, cool and matter-of-fact, as always.

I huff and cross my arms over my chest. The old coot has a point. Where would this rebellion be without the brain of Beetee Latier? I wouldn't want to think of a war without him. Thank goodness Katniss was able to save him from execution. Coin would have regretted the decision to kill him as soon as she discovered that she had no weapons, and no hacks into the Capitol, anymore to fight the war.

"I will grab you a couple of extra heaps of whatever slop they are serving today," Beetee declares adamantly, causing me to scrub a hand over my tired face and groan in response. Beetee simply chuckles at my expense.

It would be much easier to get away with my current plans of sulking in the shadows if my only company these days wasn't bent on being so damn friendly.

I mutter weak thanks as Beetee leaves, shutting the door behind him and secluding me from the District after flashing me a final look of concern. As annoying as his faux-parenting has been, Beetee still manages to understand my need for isolation, and I appreciate him making my transition back into being title-less an easier one. I've got to hand it to him, he may speak in his own language of an incoherent prodigal standard that I will never be able to keep up with, but he's as perceptive as he is intelligent.

He has left the television in the corner of the room on, however. From his jigsaw puzzle of a station—ornamented with buttons, cogs, knobs, and wheels of every shape, size, color, and function imaginable that I know better than to even think about touching—Beetee has reruns of propogandas airing on constant loop in Thirteen.

Her voice catches me by surprise. It rings out into the dead air, and I nearly let the expensive rifle slip through my fingers at the very sound of it.

Madge Undersee fills the screen. She stands atop her former home, her heated words against the Capitol loud and resonant in the otherwise silent weaponry room. I should be used to the propo at this point, but in light of recent events, I'm surprised Coin lets this particular propaganda air anymore.

I take the opportunity to creep over to the bright screen, examining the girl in the broadcast. Her blue eyes are ablaze, wind rustles her corn-colored locks, and her face is contorted in determination as she speaks vehemently while clutching a beat up old rag doll. I remember this event well. It was even more moving to see it all unfold live than it is to see it replayed onscreen.

Coin keeps this propo on the air, I conclude, because where Katniss and I lack in the stage presence category, Madge soars. Everything, from the innocent childhood toy clutched in her white-knuckled hands to her eloquent speech, makes her valiant and mighty. To any uncertain viewer, Madge Undersee, a girl who once held so much power and underestimates the power she still has inside of her, could sway them in our direction with how effortless she looks on-camera.

Without the usual restraint of my mind, my eyes orient every bit of her. The roundness of her cheekbones, the natural rouge of her lips, the curves of her hips. Her beauty is only an added bonus to her heroism.

Everything about Madge, from her brains to her bravery to her beauty, is striking. It's an understatement at best, but when it comes to describing Madge, words never really come easily.

Ever since the night of the bombing, she has appeared in nearly every one of my thoughts. When my mind wanders in meetings, it's Madge's puzzled expression I find that I've resorted to absentmindedly staring at when I return to reality. She follows me wherever I go, on my television, in conversations with other soldiers, in the strawberries that begin appearing on my dessert plate. The blonde with the pretty face and the quiet voice has even joined the ranks of my family, and the Everdeens in my nightmares of losing the people I love to the Capitol. Here, in the isolation of my own thoughts, I find that I am not alone, for Madge Undersee is now linked to me.

The realization is unnerving. It sends goosebumps swarming up my arms and legs, churns my empty stomach, and sends my mind reeling until my thoughts are no longer cognizant.

I glare back at the girl on the screen.

"What the hell are you doing to me, Undersee?" I mutter, desperately trying to fling myself back into the pitiful concentration I had built up over the past hour for this damned rifle.

It's a question I fear I may never know the answer to.

Ever since President Coin temporarily relinquished me of my duties as a soldier, as punishment for telling Katniss about Peeta's final interview, I've had trouble knowing much of anything. As silly as it sounds, I feel purposeless without a communicuff around my wrist or a badge pinned to my uniform to tell me everything I need to know about myself.

Having to define who I am without any aide, I have found, is proving to be a more difficult task than I could have ever imagined. I have depended on my status as a soldier for so long now that the state of being without it has sent me into a tizzy, has turned me into the sleepless, purposeless, hopeless shell of a man.

I wipe unwanted trespassers, the drops of moisture forming in the corners of my eyes, away hastily. I haven't felt this unsure of who I am since I lost my father. He was my communicuff, my grip on security and self-assurance. He taught me everything, from how to construct a snare to how to hate the Capitol, since as early as I can remember.

Like the communicuff that had been yanked from my wrist, my father was ripped away from me.

And I still haven't managed to reassemble the pieces his death left me in. The task is all the more difficult when you've got to complete it yourself.

"Knock, knock," a familiar voice interrupts my train of thought. Katniss waddles her way up to my side, a slip of paper gripped tightly in her hands.

In another world, the rifle I am barely fixing up would be a simple household chore, or a project that has kept me up late. My wife would be coming to check on me, to invite me to bed. The child swimming in her womb would be mine.

This world is entirely imaginary, a fantasized future that has been nothing but a delusion of grandeur for months.

"Afternoon, Catnip," I greet her. She sends me a soft smile in return.

"I haven't seen you in a while, and you didn't come hunting this morning," she begins slowly. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"Not much to talk about," I reply tersely, refusing to look up from my work should she see that my eyelids are sporting red rims. "I told you about the interview. I got in trouble. I work here full time now."

I hear her habitual smacking of her lips, a sound reserved for her expressions of genuine concern.

"Coin said you could earn that communicuff back, you know," she reminds me, her tone cautious beneath the casual layer she tries to spread over it. "Keep working hard here, shoot a couple of propos with me, and follow the rules and you'll be back at Command in no time."

"Can't wait."

She pauses for a long while.

"…Do you even want to come back, Gale?"

I sigh heavily, finally tossing down the useless endeavor that is my work, and stare up into her slate eyes. "Of course I want to come back, Katniss. But President Coin also told you months ago that she would send out a rescue mission to the Capitol, and look at how much shit has gone down for it to actually be happening."

Her only reply comes in the form of her bowed head.

I release a long, drawn out exhalation and return to fiddling with the rifle in my hands. "My point is that I'm not holding my breath. As much as we want something…we don't always get to have it."

I expect a mutual understanding on what I mean by all of this. It's not like I've ever been subtle about my efforts with her.

"Yeah, well," she states dumbly, struggling to let the right words ease out of her. This retort is starting off less than graceful, and for a moment, I begin to believe that she has not gotten the memo.

Her silver eyes flash a shade of a huskier gray before she utters, "I've also learned from that example that if you fight hard enough for something, something you really, really want… you can get it."

I eye her quizzically. Katniss speaks in code, leaving me to decipher what this 'something' is that she speaks of.

So, I fight for it, in hopes that I'll get what I have wanted for years.

My hands find her flushed cheeks, and my lips quickly cover hers before she can say anything more. I lift her—with surprising ease considering the extra load she carries in front—up onto the table while sweeping the rifle and Beetee's work to the floor in one swift motion.

My mouth moves every which way against hers, yet she remains stony and still, barely responsive to my touch. I'm about to pronounce her lips dead on arrival when Katniss' lips finally part somewhat. Her hands eventually find my shoulders. I ignore the slight pressure she exerts against them.

The kiss is brash, hasty, forced. This is everything that the kiss we shared on the eve of my whipping was not.

In an attempt to enhance the mood for us both, I ease up on the abrasive roughness of my gesture and allow my eyes to flutter closed, trying to fuse myself to her. Katniss never quite manages to relax against me.

My eyes fly open seconds later. I jerk myself away from her abruptly, gasping in shock, when the lips beneath mine are no longer Katniss', but the soft red pillows on the face of Madge Undersee.

What the—?

No, this isn't how it's supposed to be. Katniss and I are supposed to be together. Katniss' lips should be the ones my imagination speculates about. I'm supposed to want only Katniss. My love for her was always something I thought I had in my control, and I can't let that slip from me during this confusing time as well.

But I am losing grip on whatever passion I harbor towards her, and the thought of drifting out into open waters shakes me to my core.

When we pull apart, I don't know how I expect her to react. Hell, I don't know how to react myself to what has just happened, who I've just seen while kissing her.

Usually a master of wearing her heart on her scowl, Katniss' expression, for once, is unreadable.

She's suddenly staring again, immobile and unblinking. In a single look, she understands the leverage of my previous words, and all of the tension in her shell-shocked body remounts as she takes in my heavily breathing, expectant form.

Her shoulders slump slightly, and she ducks her head low before gazing up at me through the curtain of her dark eyelashes.

"I wasn't talking about me…"

Of course she wasn't. She was talking about the communicuff. The man she wants is thousands of miles away.

Despite how far Peeta is, however, there is no denying that there is way more distance between Katniss and myself at this present moment.

I'm an idiot.

We can't always get what we want. I lost the one thing I have wanted for years in a single night to a man who was willing to lose everything for her. Katniss is just another checkpoint to add to the ongoing list of aspects of my life I thought I had a handle over but had been swiped from underneath me in a flash of lightning.

I shake my head quickly, acting aloof as best I can. Katniss frowns, the lone audience member of my one man spectacle.

"Yeah, I—I know, Catnip. Gosh, I'm sorry. I don't know what that was…"

I truly don't know why I kissed her. To rekindle the passion that had begun to dwindle towards her? To rewrite a history that died with District Twelve? To remind her that she once was mine?

"N-no. I mean. I just—I just thought you were really worked up about being suspended from your job, and that was all that was bugging you. I had no idea you still felt…You know, since you loved being a soldier so much, I figured that you'd want it back. That you'd want to fight to get it back, like I did with Peeta…"

Like a fish out of water, Katniss' gills have filled with air, and she can no longer breathe in this foreign surface.

The sound of his name still manages to make me bristle with envy. That little green monster on my shoulder hasn't been around so much nowadays. My once-zealous hatred for Peeta Mellark has diminished greatly since coming to Thirteen, I realize. I am shocked to discover that even my thoughts toward Mellark were no longer on even playing ground.

Perhaps that is the doing of something, someone, who has helped me forget all about my jealousy.

I stare at Katniss, trying to make some sense out of what we are now. It's too vague of an idea, Katniss and I, to even begin to wrap my head around. So much has happened to both of us, together and apart, that romance has been the furthest thing on either of our minds until now.

I reach behind me and nervously scratch the back of my neck. "Maybe it's for the best if I don't get my job back. I'm less tempted to do things like, well…what I just did."

There isn't a thing she can say that will undo what I have just done. Nothing will resolve the awkward sexual tension that has just invaded the room that is full of weapons yet manages to remain the number one culprit for what will bring about the death of us.

So, she settles for silence.

After what feels like years of me trying to make busy work out of every possible gadget in the room, Beetee, my four-eyed savior, returns with a handful of sandwiches tucked under his arm.

"Surprisingly, they were serving solid food today—Oh, am I interrupting?" he sputters upon noticing my ruby-red cheeks, Katniss' quivering hand on her lips, and the mess on the floor.

"No!" both Katniss and I jump on the word quickly, too quickly. Beetee eyes us both suspiciously before starting to retrieve his work from the floor. Katniss' feet dangle above him from where she is still situated on the counter.

Brushing off her jarred expression, she leaps from the furniture and shakes her head violently. "I was just leaving."

She keeps her eyes averted as she passes me, but something in the doorway stops her. My heart rate skyrockets as she turns on her heels and walks right back up to me. Instead of an explanation, however, she hands me the piece of paper she has been holding, now a crumpled ball due to her having crushed it against my shoulder when she tried to pry me off of her.

"For you and Beetee," she says as formally as she can muster. I unfold and read the crinkly stationary that tells me I have been 'cordially invited' to 'the year's biggest event'.

"An invitation? To what, may I ask?"

Everything about Katniss' posture slackens, and her jaw unhinges in utter embarrassment as she states that the 'year's biggest event' that I've been invited to is her baby shower.

It's then that I take the time notice her appearance. Her hair is let down from its braided shackles, cascading over her shoulders in done-up curls, and ruffled with the slight frizz that has been brought about by my fingers' interference. She wears a bright yellow dress, of all things.

"What's a baby shower?" I blurt out, nose crinkled and brow furrowed in stupefaction.

Beetee decides that now is an appropriate time to interject. "A baby shower is a gathering or get-together for an expectant mother and her closest family and friends to celebrate the upcoming birth of her baby. There are games, gifts, general merriment. They're all the rage."

Sure it is, for people who can actually afford such a function. Growing up in the Seam, the event that was a child being born was anything but a party. The celebration came in the form of delivering congratulations to both mother and child for surviving childbirth.

The thought of associating myself with such an uppity function sickens me.

"It started out as Prim's idea. She had heard about it from Delly Cartwright and has been insistent upon it since. Plutarch somehow discovered what Prim and my mother were planning and he decided to make propaganda out of it. To get all of us together, looking happy in the face of oppression, with the whole baby angle Finnick came up with, blah, blah, blah," Katniss continues speedily, as if she and I share telepathy and she senses how apprehensive I am about the idea.

I gather the sense that she feels the same way. Katniss never really was one who enjoyed drawing any kind of attention to herself.

How ironic that she now garners the attention of the whole nation with every move she makes.

"And," she tacks on sheepishly, "it's sort of mandatory…sorry. But I would really love it if you were there, both of you."

"Sounds lovely," Beetee inputs long after Katniss' statement has trailed off, down a deserted road of silence that she and I travel frequently and, unlike Latier, are used to. "I'm looking forward to the party, Katniss."

Both of them are suddenly staring at me, waiting for an answer I am not ready to give.

The spurned lover in me, the Gale Hawthorne from lifetimes past who had only eyes for Katniss, whose thoughts would have never strayed to think of other girls while kissing Katniss, tells me to screw it and spend the night drinking away my feelings with Haymitch's liquor stash. The soldier in me, the Gale Hawthorne who nearly risked everything he had to dedicate his heart and soul to fighting off the Capitol while becoming Coin's pet in the process, tells me this party could bring me one step closer to getting back my communicuff and knowing where I stand in this war again.

The cousin in me tells me that this is an obligation and I've got no choice, despite what the rebuked lover and the resilient soldier want.

"I'll try to be there, Catnip."

It's the best I have to offer. But every jumbled up identity inside of me knows for certain that I have no intentions of heading straight to that shower any time soon.

There is another stop I have to make first.

She looks surprisingly surprised to see me, out of breath from bolting here and standing at the foot of her cot. Her soft blue eyes take everything in—my messy, untouched hair, my quaking shoulders, my dismayed grimace—before lowering the book she has been reading into her lap. I like that about her. I like that she takes the time to assess before she acts, unlike pretty much anyone in this District.

But I can't help but wonder if I like what she does because I fancy her.

"Gale? Is something wrong?"

"I don't want to talk," I answer gruffly.

She makes a playful face of mock agitation that almost causes me to react with an emasculating blush. I push the feeling back with a manly wiping of my sleev across my five o'clock shadow.

Smirking, she pries, "If you do not want to do the one thing you and I ever do, then why are you standing here, blocking my light while I try to read?"

My answer comes in the form of an action, an impulse. I advance to her spot on the bed, wrap one hand under her chin, and dig my thumb and my index finger into either of her cheeks as my mouth encloses hers.

She is tense, taken aback by the forwardness of my gesture, and for a humiliating moment I contemplate getting my rejected ass out of there and running far, far away back to weaponry.

But then, to my surprise, she starts to kiss me back.

This feeling is electrifying. Every hair on my body begins defying the laws of gravity as my lips move with hers in an urgent conversation. My hands move to caress the smooth skin along her breathtaking face. Her hands loop around my shoulders, fingers tangling with stray locks of hair on the back of my head.

Warmth washes over me, fills every hollow crevice inside of me, and brings me back to life.

For as long as I can remember, I have been hungry. Ma tells me I was the greediest of her children, the infant who continued to latch on to her long after she had run dry. I was the scrawny fourteen-year-old who mastered the art of illegal hunting and trading to keep my mouth and the mouths of my starving family full. Even in Thirteen, where my meals are printed on my arm, my stomach remains in its perpetual state of undernourishment, always growling for more, more, more.

The hunger I feel right now, drinking in the scent of her last sacred drops of perfume and tasting the salty sweetness of her appetizing lips, is of an entirely different nature. It's a hunger I fear endless kisses with her will still never be able to fully satisfy.

And all at once, it vanishes.

Madge yanks herself out of my grasp, twisting every which way until I am left in a heap on her thin mattress and she stands, towering above me with a very unpleasant glower written in her icy-hot blue eyes and puffy lips.

Now, it is my turn to be taken aback. Given my track record, I have been known to be a pretty good kisser. Never once did I have to bother listening to a girl's mindless chatter afterward; I could always tell that I was good at what I did from a girl's expression right after the first kiss.

With Katniss' bewildered stammering and Madge's look of impending doom, I fear that, in one day, I may have lost my touch.

"What the hell was that, Gale?" she spits, throwing her book and nailing her target, which unfortunately happens to be the corner of my forehead. I let out a sharp yelp and run my fingers over the spot. That is sure to leave a mark.

Before I can begin to speak, I realize that the question was entirely rhetorical. No, Madge Undersee isn't quite finished with chewing me out just yet.

"So you think you can just come in at free will and kiss me whenever you would like to now? What are we, Gale? Enemies? Friends? Or am I just your replacement Katniss to have around when she cannot tend to your needs?"

"No, Madge," I interject. The last thing I want is to bring Katniss, who's probably being retouched by her prep team, enduring being bogged down by party planners, and forgetting all about that mistake of a kiss, into this. "That's not what this is at all…"

"Then what is this, Gale? Because I have been trying to figure out what it is that you and I are ever since that first night you came to my door two years ago."

Using nearly all of my willpower to resist fighting fire with her fire, I simply arch one confused brow and cross my arms defensively across my chest. "I thought I made myself pretty clear that night about what I wanted from you…"

Her fists form taught little wrecking balls that swing menacingly at her sides while she paces around the barren 'C' bunker.

"Yes, to have someone to watch the Games with. A non-judgmental body who would help you forget what was happening to her all while caring about her getting home just as much as you did. Well, it has been two years, Gale. We have spent time with each other nearly every day since then. I've visited with your family more times than I can count now. You stayed with me the night of the bombing and have yet to leave this bunker. I believe it is safe to say that our roles with each other have gotten a little more complex since then."

"Of course they have, Madge. Things have changed between us."

"Well, then what am I to you, Gale?"

Helplessly shrugging, I stare at her with wide, forlorn eyes. "You're—you're my person."

She guffaws at the lame cop-out of a response. "Your person? What on Earth does that mean?"

I am frozen in thought. What does this person mean to me?

At first, she was a pain in the ass. For no reason at all, really, other than the simple, well-established fact that she had money and I had nothing. I hated her for the sake of hating something, anything, in our measly District that I could associate with the Capitol.

And then, when my world shook beneath me and Katniss was whisked off to the Games, I found myself on her doorstep without my usual strawberries and without a clue as to why I wandered to the Mayor's house, of all places. Instead of turning me away, the blonde merchant girl with the frilly dress and quiet demeanor welcomed my soot-covered Seam boots into her home and became my confidant.

That unlikely friendship led to two years' worth of drawing ourselves closer and closer through arguments, games of 'Good News, Bad News', conspiring, and constantly being in each other's presence until we finally crashed together, with no more space left between us to ignore the elephant that now always barges its way into the room: the fact that we mean something to each other.

But what is this something? I certainly don't have a clue, and the one who usually has my answer is now asking the question.

She eases up a bit when she notices how visibly flustered I have become.

"Gale," she starts up, her voice as soft as the comforting hands of a mother who must deal with a inconsolable child, "Just…just tell me what it is that you want from me. I care about you, I really do, but if we keep doing this—whatever it is that we do—without ever admitting how we really feel, one of us is bound to get hurt. So, Gale, I need—no, I deserve to know what you want from me, the reason why you keep showing up at my door. Because I cannot handle feeling like a part of your family, feeling loved, if I am just a temporary placeholder for someone else."

Her deeply-rooted feelings of inferiority concerning Katniss is what this all comes down to, I realize. And although she doesn't dare say it, Madge's fears surrounding Katniss are indicators that her care for me runs much deeper than I ever thought to give her credit for.

The realization that's even more startling is that Madge is not, nor was she ever, a placeholder. She's not just my friend, or my sounding board, or another body to be in close proximity with. Madge Undersee is the first face I see when I wake and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. Her face, her essence, her spirit is everywhere. In the breezes in the forest when I hunt, in the songs that the birds sing in the morning, in the stars of the nighttime sky…she's so much more to me than anything I can out a label on. Hell, we're practically indebted up to our noses to each other at this point. She has saved me from so many dark times here, times where I could have easily backed out and given up without her quiet, yet sound, voice of reason. She's the sun that doesn't shine in Thirteen. Madge is my person.

Of course, being the fool I am, I can't bring myself to say any of it to the face that anxiously awaits an answer.

All I have to give to her is a simple, three word phrase, and she's mine. She may very well be the missing piece I have needed all along to begin to rebuild myself again.

But the thought of it all, of diving head first into uncontrolled territory, is terrifying. Madge is unpredictable. The thought of standing on such shaky ground, never knowing where I stand in this war between the Capitol and the rebels and the wars within myself, keeps me from fighting, and therefore keeps me from getting what I want.

The three word phrase I finally choke out is what neither of us really wants to hear.

"I—I don't know," I blubber defeatedly, kicking at the earthen floor with the foot of my boot. "I don't know what I want."

Madge's surface begins to crack. I see it in the teary gleam that mystifies her downtrodden eyes and the hands that continue to tremble, even as she tries so desperately to steady them and keep them firmly planted at her sides.

I have broken her.

"Okay," she whispers, and I know it's the hardest word she's had to say to me in two years.

Because 'okay' also means 'goodbye'.

"I don't even know who I am anymore. I don't know what I want," I repeat, honesty peeking through my own cracks. I plead for her to understand that the fault lines of this crumbling relationship are mine and not hers, but Madge is hearing none of it. She lost inside of her own mind at this point, staring past me at something that isn't really there.

Suddenly jolting back to life, her feet carry her toward me, eyes searching my face for the real answer, for the words I couldn't say. She reaches out and places a tentative hand on my shoulder. That warmth, the warmth I have only felt once before, when we just kissed, surges through me once again. She must feel it too, because she draws back almost instantly.

"Well," Madge says softly, gaze slipping from holding my own to staring down at her shoes, "when you figure it out, let me know."

We work together to gather my belongings in silence. It only takes minutes, considering I barely had anything to begin with and the 'C' bunker has less than two dozen inhabitants.

Just before I embark on the agonizingly long trek down to the 'E' bunker, where my family will have to make room for me, I turn and give her one last look. Her breath audibly catches in her throat, and I know I am about to let her down again.

"I don't want to lose you. The bad news is I'll lose you," I admit, trying to swallow the lump that has taken up permanent residence in my throat. There is no hiding the childish hysterics that creep up into my once strong voice.

Madge smiles sadly, my use of our game digging up reopening old wounds. "You're not losing me, you're just letting go for a little while. The good news is I'm not going anywhere. I will be here if you figure things out."

I nod, determined to conquer my demons, to turn her doubtful 'if' into a definite 'when'.

"I'll see you around, Madge."

She flashes me one last glance, her blue eyes saying those three words for me, the last exhibition of her bravery standing in stark contrast to my cowardice. Before I can respond, she resorts to her defense mechanism of wall-building and visibly removes from her features any traces of sentiment. It's almost as if she has erased every memory, every thought of me, and brought us back to square one: the scowling, self-doubting Seam boy standing before the almighty, beautiful Mayor's daughter who would forever stand too far away from him, on the other side of the tracks.

All that's missing are some strawberries.

"Good luck, Gale."

Rory, Vick, and Posy are upset with me for not bringing Madge over. Ma doesn't say a word. All I need to explain to her is written in my hopeless eyes.

They send a guard I have never seen before to fetch me. Since I no longer have a communicuff, all correspondence with Soldier Hawthorne must be done in person.

"You're wanted in Command," the stranger, his communicuff obnoxiously clamped over his shirt sleeve in true asshole fashion, orders. My entire family, in the midst of the chaos that is Ma trying to make us all look presentable for Katniss' party, watches as I read and reread the schedule on my arm to see if I overlooked this meeting. Unless 'weaponry' is the new 'Command', I've been thrown for another major twist in my day.

Perplexed, I blindly agree to following this robotic soldier down the many corridors of District Thirteen's bottomless pit until we have reached Command. Many of the soldiers I recognize from a time in which I stood among their ranks. Haymitch tips his glass of liquor my way as a greeting.

Everyone already sits before President Coin.

I conclude that I was a last minute addition to this meeting as the guard forcibly shoves my shoulder into a chair.

Coin immediately begins her speech, as if she was purposefully waiting on me to start this meeting. I eye the President warily from my spot at the back of the crowd as she relays her message to us.

"As you all know, we have finally gathered the means for a rescue mission into the Capitol to bring Peeta Mellark, Johanna Mason, and Annie Cresta back to our District effective immediately at midnight. The hovercraft will bring the seven soldiers on this mission into the Capitol at approximately four o'clock in the morning, where these soldiers will follow our careful instructions to remove the prisoners from the Capitol confinements in the allotted time it takes for the motion-sensor alarms to go off and for the Peacekeepers to arrive on the scene. It is a high-risk, and possibly life threatening, mission, but it is possible."

Her cold, unfeeling eyes skitter in my direction as she intakes a sharp breath. "We will start by taking volunteers, of course, and if no one steps up, we will be forced to randomly select seven of you. You have all been called here because you have what it takes to be heroes, what it takes to change the tides of this war yet again. Please carefully consider your decisions."

The room falls silent. A crowd of hand-picked cowards is what Coin has on her hands.

Finnick Odair, Plutarch Heavensbee, and Katniss Everdeen are nowhere in sight. In fact, Haymitch is the only person affiliated with the Hunger Games who is present in this room. I suddenly register why Plutarch Heavensbee vouched for Prim's party, which undoubtedly is taking place as Coin speaks, and my jaw clenches as I fight the oncoming groan. I should have expected Alma Coin to leave Katniss out of the loop again, probably because the pregnant Mockingjay would have volunteered to rescue Mellark in a heartbeat, even if her current average pace was slower than that of wounded prey.

It takes all but ten seconds for it to dawn on me why I was brought in here, and on such short notice. Coin knows that I am without power, for she was the one who personally took it all away from me. Not knowing where my allegiance as a soldier and as a boy in love lies has turned me into a borderline nut job, and Coin knows it. In fact, spending the week with myself, alone with just my troubled thoughts to dwell upon and obsess over, may have been her plan for me from the start There is not a doubt in my mind that she has been monitoring me, tracking my every move, since retracting my privileges and my communicuff.

She knows she has one of her seven soldiers, linked to the mission personally and in need of getting back into her good graces.

I don't want to make this decision because Alma Coin wants me to, however. If there's anything I have come to terms with wanting today, it is control. I want to make the decision because it is something I want to do as a soldier, a friend, a person.

It's time to fight for my own cause. Not to be a hero, but to start to remember what it feels like to be me again.

Without any further contemplation on the matter, my judgment snaps. I raise my hand, clear my throat, and shout out the two words I never thought I would have to say or hear ever again. Two words that, perhaps if not now, then in another life, I was destined to say all along:

"I volunteer!"

A/N: Hey everyone! Happy weekend! This week has been absolutely crazy, and this chapter was a monster to write, but I was finally satisfied with the outcome. This chapter was such a difficult one to get through because so much happens to poor Gale in one day and he's having a tough time making sense of it all. Gale himself is so confused, so therefore I got confused, and I tried my best to write this so YOU don't get confused (you guys are way smarter than I am though so I trust you more than I trust myself honestly) which only made me frustrated because I was confused...you get it. So that hopefully explains why he keeps circling back to these not-fully-formed ideas throughout this chapter. And I'm also sorry that Gadge's first kiss wasn't too...romantic...but don't fret! Their story isn't over! It's just beginning!

As always, you have all been consistently awesome in the review category! I absolutely love hearing your reactions and getting your insight on everything, it makes my days so much brighter! Please continue to comment and favorite and follow and be your amazing selves.

I'll do my best to get the next chapter to you all ASAP! It's a doozy! Here's a little summary: Haymitch puts in a special word to save an extra body on the rescue mission. AAAAAND a BIG surprise that no one is expecting comes our way next chapter! Stay tuned and till next time!

- ILoVeWicked