Chapter 37

Peeta

Peeta held his father's wide eye gaze. His heart pounded against his ribcage and echoed in his ears as he struggled to put meaning to the words his father had just uttered through his pain.

They're gone.

Gone as in….somewhere else? Someplace safe? Or just gone completely? It couldn't be. Not all three of them – they had to be somewhere else. It couldn't be real. No, maybe he had made up his father's words completely. Maybe this was just a dream, a nightmare, a figment of his imagination. They couldn't be gone. This couldn't be real.

He blinked as a hand lightly touched his arm. Jerking his head to the side, he met Prim's affirming gaze. With that one look full of pity and sorrow she was able to wordlessly confirm what he feared the most.

It was real.

He sucked in a breath as he realized his lungs were burning form not breathing. Looking back down at the table to his father, he swallowed the lump in his throat.

"Gone?"

His father rasped in pain, barely able to nod his head.

"Peeta," Mrs. Everdeen spoke, "I need to give him some medicine so that I can stitch up his wound. He'll be out for a while."

Peeta's eyes fell to the table, scanning his father's side. The bloodied apron tied around his leg had been hiding a gash that made his knees weaken.

"Peeta…I need to treat your father now," Mrs. Everdeen repeated. "Please. I might be able to help him but I'll need to act fast to do it. You won't want to watch."

Peeta nodded as another gasp of pain slipped from his father's lips. That was all the confirmation he needed anyway – he wasn't sure he wanted to know any of the details of what happened. His stomach turned as he let Prim slip an arm around his waist. She hugged his side and gently pulled him away from the table.

"Mrs. E is gonna clean you up," he heard Gale murmur from his spot at Mr. Mellark's shoulders.

"I know," he heard his father pant.

"Let's go into the living room. Do you want some tea?" Prim offered meekly. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized she was only trying to be nice and keep him calm but he didn't want to be calm. He wanted to scream and cry out in anguish and fear and sadness and just feel. Instead another invisible blanket of numbness started to wash over him as he tried to put one foot in front of the other. He fought to sort all of the jumbled emotions that felt like they were crashing through his insides.

His family was gone.

He paused at the threshold that separated the open area between the living room and the kitchen where his father lay. Mrs. Everdeen clicked the side of the syringe with her fingertip and turned to his father to take his hand. She murmured something so quietly that he couldn't hear, but the words seemed to ease his father's pain. He closed his eyes as she slowly slid the needle into his arm and pushed down on the plunger. A few seconds later, his body went limp.

"I'm fine Prim, I….you can go help your mother. She probably needs it," he heard himself say. His heart was still drumming in his ears. Prim nodded, patting his arm before turning on her heel and heading back to the kitchen. Peeta glanced out the window nearest to him. The mountains still smoldered in the background, but there was smoke coming from the direction of town. He wondered if his family's bakery was still burning. Would he even be able to find their bodies to bury them?

The vomit coiled in his stomach and crept up his throat before he realized it. Peeta reeled around, heading for the backdoor of the kitchen as quickly as his feet would take him, his heavy footfalls making the kitchen floor shake as he careened past the others. He heard Gale jump up and let the chair he was sitting in bang against the floor as he barreled out the door after him.

"Peeta!" he called.

He made it to the meager woodpile before staggering a few times and promptly vomiting up several days' worth of stale Seam bread and tea. He coughed as the bitter bile burned his throat and turned his mouth sour, the frozen snow dipping where it hit. Gale thumped him on the back a few times so hard he thought he would vomit more.

"You alright?

It took him a minute to register Gale's words. He spit into the snow and nodded, sniffing back the hot tears that threatened to pour from his eyes. He braced his hands on his knees and shook his head.

"Gone," he muttered.

Gale shifted in the snow beside him, clearly uncomfortable. "Do you want to….talk about it?"

Peeta stood up straight, his eyes immediately turning towards the smoky sky in the direction of town. Gale's question hung in the air as he let his imagination run wild with thoughts of bombs and fires and hovercrafts. The images he mind created of his family's last moments on earth clouded his vision and he felt himself sway.

"My family is….dead," he stuttered, ripping his hand through his messy hair. The cold air bit at his skin but at least it was something.

Gale was silent.

Peeta looked back at the sky, the sudden feeling of rage flowing through his veins. He let out an anguished growl and turned in a circle as he fisted his hair with both hands. People, dozens of innocent people had probably been killed in the blast – he realized that the Capitol would leave no one alive if they could make an example. They would rather kill them off and forget about the Districts rather than even have them slowly decay on their own. A rage he'd never known he possessed began to boil in his bones, making his limbs quake with energy. He felt so out of control…..

Peeta walked over to the small shed in the corner of the yard and saw red as he shoved his bare fist through the boards. Gale jumped slightly and rushed to his side.

"Hey…."

The pain barely registered as he backed away from the small wooden structure and grit his teeth. If the Capitol wanted a war, they would get a war. He didn't believe in violence at all before the past week; then again, he'd never gained and lost this much in a week either. It was the price he was paying to feel alive, he realized.

"I want to kill them all."

Gale shifted beside him. "Who?"

Peeta looked up. "Them. The Capitol. Every single one of them. The war is on," he babbled, shaking his head.

Gale heaved a sigh and jammed his hands in his pockets. Peeta realized how cold it was, but he simply didn't care. He was finally angry enough to want to do something.

"So you're gonna wage war against the Capitol?"

Peeta scoffed. "Yes. I'll do whatever it takes to bring them down. It's on, you know? They starved Katniss….took her father away with their mines….blew my family to-," he stopped midsentence, choking back a sob. He held his hand over his eyes and tried to push it back, but the agony seeped through.

Gale reached over and thumped him on the back. "Come on man. We're gonna get them for this, but not today. If we're gonna do it, we have to have a plan in motion and do it right. If we go in angry we'll just be easy targets and it would have all been for nothing. Do you want that?"

Peeta sniffed, wiping the hot tears away from his eyes. "You know I don't."

Gale gave him a hard look. "Then let me officially welcome you to the rebellion, Mellark."

After his outburst he allowed Gale to coax him back into the house. He'd grabbed a handful of snow and stuck it in an extra handkerchief, holding it to his throbbing hand. In hindsight shoving his fist through a pile of rotting boards probably wasn't the brightest thing to do, but he didn't care now. The taller boy followed him to the living room where he sat in the chair by the couch and Peeta sat on the floor next to a sleeping Katniss. He leaned on the pillow and let his eyes roam over her still form. Even out cold she looked angry…but beautiful, he thought.

Gale twisted his hands and licked his lips. "You and your pa gonna be alright?"

Peeta glanced at the kitchen where Katniss' mother and Prim were still working on his father's wound. He was happy that the morphling was being put to good use again. Gale's question suddenly registered with him. The bakery had been bombed. His home was destroyed. What would he do for work? Where would he live if he made it through everything?

"I….I don't know," he admitted, shaking his head. "We lived above the bakery and….baking is all I know how to do."

Gale gave him a wry smile. "I'm in the same boat. Minin' is all I know. Well….and hunting."

Peeta looked up at Gale, chewing his lip. "If we live through this, maybe we could make a living hunting and trapping. If we win the woods wouldn't be off limits anymore I gather."

Peeta chuckled darkly. "I'm not really talented with the stealth. I'm so loud and clumsy I'd scare away any game that came within a ten mile radius of me."

"Katniss tell you that? That sounds like something she would say."

Peeta gave him a lopsided smile and nodded.

Gale shrugged. "So maybe you set traps for furs or fish."

"Baking is all I know. It's all I've ever wanted to do. And now….now I'd be willing to be that place is little more than a pile of rubble," he sighed. Pain sliced through his heart at the thought of his beloved, sweet smelling bakery and home turned into a charred pile of rubble that was stained with the blood of his family. He bit back another fresh set of tears and looked at his lap. He knew it wasn't very manly to cry, but what else could he do?

Gale shifted on the chair. "We'll get them back for this. I feel…I feel like we can't lose this one, ya know? They've been beating all of down – twelve stinking districts worth of people – for how many years? Since the Dark Days?"

Peeta gave him a skeptical look. "So?"

"So," Gale continued, "So I think that means people are angry. They're ready for a fight because they know now that it'd be worth it. They know that they can fight back and that other people are in on it. It had to count for something that it all happened at once. Imagine breaking all the different bones in your body – each district is a different bone that you'd break: Your arm, a leg, maybe your back, an ankle."

Peeta shrugged. "So you'd still be alive."

"But would you be ready for a fight?"

"I guess not," he admitted. "But the Capitol still has control of everything. It still rules over everything, even if we are the 'arms and legs' of it."

Gale nodded, shrugging. "I see your point. I guess all we can do now is hope."

Peeta watched through the open space leading to the kitchen. He could see Mrs. Everdeen bent over his father's leg, carefully stitching it up. She would pause every few stitches, her blonde eyebrows furrowed with worry as she looked up at his father's face. She would let her eyes linger there for a few moments before her expression would soften and she would return to work. Peeta stared at Katniss' mother as she worked, her pale face drawn and serious as she quietly narrated her work to a wide eyed Prim. Leaning back against the couch, he stretched his legs out in front of him, sitting with Gale in comfortable silence as the day wore on.

Gale finally sat up, stretching his back until it cracked noisily. "I should get back. The others might be worried and I told Haymitch I would come by his place to see if there was any news."

"How is he getting all of this information?" Peeta asked. "I thought of that the other day and forgot to ask you."

Gale smirked and stood. "You know those tests we take in year eight?"

"Aptitude? Sure."

"Well, Haymitch scored well. Really well. He and this other girl….Madge's aunt- both did a great job. Well, when they both turned sixteen they were taken to the Capitol to be trained for some special government jobs. Apparently once a year they used to select one boy and one girl to go there and train and become some sort of liaison to the districts. I don't know the whole story, but Haymitch made friends there on the inside. These friends were all people who thought the Capitol was a sick, corrupt joke. I guess they formed a sort of pack with Madge's aunt Maysilee and had a wild plan to overthrow the whole place," Gale explained.

"So what happened?"

Gale shrugged. "Well, someone in the group betrayed them. Turned them in to Snow and I think several of them were executed as examples while the rest were sent home to 'spread the word', if you will, about what happens to Capitol Traitors. One person returned back to each district, one didn't. And Haymitch and Maysilee were friends. It was especially tough because….well, Madge swears they had a thing going on. She never knew her aunt but from what her mother told her the girl fell in love with Haymitch right away when they were chosen for the program. It was a big taboo I'd imagine; a merchant girl falling for a Seam boy. Didn't matter though – only one of them came home in the end."

He swallowed the lump in his throat. "Haymitch."

"Yup."

Peeta felt a little ill. He knew the people in the Capitol were corrupt and sick, but that was the cruelest thing he'd ever heard of. How could Haymitch face that poor girl's family? Did he ever wish he had been the one that had been executed? How did he live with that?

"Guess now I know why he drinks," Peeta muttered, his fingers tugging on the frayed edges of the rug in front of the couch. His bottom was starting to hurt from sitting on the hard ground for so long, but he wasn't about to leave Katniss' side. She'd never left his, after all.

"Guess so," Gale mused. "I can't say that I blame him. He drinks at night to ease the pain and during the day when he's halfway sober I guess he plots against them. Hell of a revenge plan I tell ya."

"So…but how does he communicate with all of these people? How do they know?"

"I wondered that for a long time too. I mean…it's no secret we'd go out in the woods, but we never worried about it because we never saw a soul. I'd suspected for years that the old drunk was talking to people on the outside but I never figured out quite how. I thought they maybe had messengers that travelled between the districts but…I never saw a sign of anyone out there in the woods, cept for me and Katniss."

"How then?"

Gale leaned back in the armchair. "This program Haymitch was in was designed to make them experts at something – a talent I guess. He always talks about how smart these kids were – some of them smarter that their damn handlers in the Capitol. I'd be willing to bet one of those guys had something to do with how he's gotten all his information."

Peeta mulled this new information over in his head for a few minutes. This new version of Haymitch he now knew was a little mind boggling – he'd always been the staggering drunk on the edge of town that smelled like white liquor and looked like he'd been to hell in back. I guess now I know that he has, Peeta thought with a slight grimace. His fingers tugged and tugged on the worn pieces of carpet, the rough fabric piling in a little heap at his fingertips as his mind tried to process the day. It was actually nice talking to Gale. He'd been slightly intimidated by the older boy his entire life, not to mention extremely jealous that Gale always seemed to be hanging around her. However, he realized Gale was just a product of his upbringing; tough, realistic, and passionate.

His eyes moved back to the kitchen as he watched Mrs. Everdeen continue her work on his father.

His father had told him once that he'd been in love with Katniss' mother a long time ago. But do you ever really stop loving someone? You might fall out of love with them, but do you ever forget those feelings? His father's marriage to his mother had clearly been one of duty and convenience. While he never doubted his father's loyalty, he could still remember the way his tone had changed when he asked after the little girl with the arrows. Had his father secretly been pining after the fair haired healer all these years? Perhaps he still loved her even now, Peeta thought. Mrs. Everdeen straightened up, wiping the sweat from her brow as stretched her back. Her wiry hands were soaked in his father's blood as she worked on the nasty gash in his thigh. Did she still love him too?

Peeta wondered how awful it must be to have the blood of a loved one literally soaking your hands. He licked his parched lips and turned back to Gale.

"So how did he do it? Communicate with the others?"

Gale swallowed, shrugging his lanky arms. "Dunno. For a drunk he certainly doesn't have loose lips. Never told me anything."

Peeta frowned. "But I wonder how he….he was so confident that now was the time to strike."

"I guess he figured if we all rebelled at once, the Capitol couldn't fight back. Too many fires to fight I suppose."

"I just hate to think about what's coming next."

"Me too, Bread boy. Me too."

Many of you commented last time that you enjoyed Peeta and Gale's friendship - I do too, so I hope you enjoyed this little chapter that was a bit centered around their bromance. I feel so bad for making Gale such an awful troll in NIOF that I think I try extra hard to make him a badass in this fic.

Thoughts? Thanks for reading guys! Oh and please review : )

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