Hi. I… forgot how to do this writing thing, but here go some disjointed fragments I needed to get out of my system. No copyright infringement intended etc. Title quote paraphrased from You Will Hear Thunder by Anna Akhmatova.
she wanted storms
the rim of the sky will be the color of molten silver, and her heart, as it was then, will be on fire
1.
The season of snow is long past, but when the cold spring sky darkens and rumbles, ice spills down instead of rain.
Katniss runs headlong into the blizzard, to greet it or to fight it, she doesn't know. Out, out and away, she tramples past the blighted dandelions and primroses, past the meadow no longer fenced, into the windswept wilderness she still calls her own.
Fury breaks through her shell of grief and her blood pounds more alive than it had for months; she screams but the wind fails to answer in the right voice. Her feet carry her blindly through the deepening snow, on a path as familiar as the lines in her palms, to a meeting place long abandoned.
The storm abates just before she reaches it, along with the burst of energy that propelled her. The wind quiets to a whisper, plastering tendrils of cold, wet hair to her burning cheeks. Only emptiness is there to greet her, the rock hidden in a snowdrift so deep she can't dig deep enough to reach it before her fingers turn red-purple and numb.
Clouds break and arrows of sunlight shoot through as she makes her way back, despondent and shivering, icy fingers curled in her pockets.
Her own house is cold, but she can always count on a place near an oven to thaw.
2.
Katniss is floating on her back between the green arrows and white flowers of her namesake, eyes closed against the rebounding raindrops.
Lightning flashes behind her eyelids, but no clock is ticking, not anymore.
She could shoot straight into the great gray eye of the storm, but she doesn't want to, not anymore. The sky has shattered with her help once already, now it's just nature taking its course. In the hot summer, she can let the elemental fury embrace her fully, weightless, with a sharp tang of ozone in her mouth.
Wading out, she sways in time with the trees, bare feet sinking into soft mud on her way to the lakeside cabin.
In another life, arms could have welcomed her there, brown skin and hungry mouth to match hers. She almost sees him there, feels his warmth again, sees them clasping hands and running away. But only the rain caresses her, only the wind raises goosebumps on her skin.
Katniss passes the empty doorway to dry off.
She doesn't start the fire, not yet, only rakes the cold ashes with a bent old poker, her knuckles clenched and pale. She eats a cheese bun, drinks tea spiked with liquor, almost enough to warm her core. She clenches the poker tighter.
3.
Autumn chill chases her inside the cabin, wet-haired and windswept, lips tinged blue for no eyes to see. This time, she kindles the fire with shaking hands. Perhaps she doesn't need it to survive, nothing as dire as that, but wants to see if the she can live with it.
Staring past the flames, she watches dead leaves swirl between the raindrops, golden sparks in the stormy gray, wind whipping flowers of froth on the surface of the lake.
When the rain slows to a trickle, she ventures out again, making her way back.
She passes an old snare, a rusting wire unset and harmless, one of the few that escaped her when shed torn the snare-line down in a fury, wraps the rusting wire around her fingers and lets it unfold again.
Her course alters to the rock, half-empty now that it is only hers.
The blackberry bushes have been abundant this summer, she'd plucked countless pounds and carried them back with her to sweeten pies, never letting them pass her lips fresh and raw. Only now she throws a stray few into her mouth, the fruit bitter with an afterthought of grief.
The rock she sits on seems molded to her bones, the other half is familiar to the minutest detail as she rakes her fingertips over it, the rough surface wet and cold. She's been offered other places of comfort, warmer, softer, yet she feels herself drawn here more. The shape of the absence is different here, not a blond-braided ghost, but a heartbeat lacking in the rustle of the wind, larger, darker shadow missing at her back.
The mass of clouds is breaking over the horizon, silver seeping between the thunderheads.
She almost wishes the storm to return.
4.
Her pantry is well stocked, but Katniss is anything but ready for the long winter, the slow dark snowbound hours with no escape. When she has to face herself, her companions, her empty spaces. The one that can't be filled, the one that can.
She holds out as long as she can before the blizzard hits, the raging wind all but carries her home, icy fingers clawing at her braid, burning her cheeks. Snow covers the ruins not yet cleared, the rebuilt town square she crosses at a run, droplets of turkey blood trailing in her wake, freezing on the spot and disappearing into the whiteness.
Up in her village of three, she checks the adjacent houses for signs of light and life, but retreats to her own. Peeta and Haymitch will be over for dinner later, but first…
Her hands no longer shake as she kindles the fire in her own hearth. Heart and hearth, the fire is there, she might as well face it. She feeds it letters, a whole stack of them, unopened. Two names in the same familiar. handwriting curl and blacken and turn to ash. Only one last scrap escapes the pyre, Katniss snatches it back from the flames and keeps it. She copies the return address onto a fresh envelope, and before she slides the charred corner in, she writes on the other side:
come home.
5. (and counting)
Gale comes back in the spring and Katniss runs at the first sight of him, almost topples over their rock before she realizes she's running in the wrong direction this time. After all, she had enough time to see deep in her heart that what she needs may not be what she wants. She wanted storms, waited for her own throughout the winter as the snow fell and melted, for a closure or a new beginning, she didn't even know.
She wanted him back.
The stone at her fingertips is cold, but her tears are hot and so are his when he catches up. Many storms pass between them, of the crying and screaming kind, a hail of small fists hammering against a repentant chest.
But there's more in the quiet spells in between: a heartbeat where silence used to haunt her, a mirror more true than the calm surface of the lake in his eyes. With their fingers entwining like roots of the thorned bushes surrounding their rock, something new springs – fresh leaves from barren branches, fresh fire from ashen hearts.
She takes to running still, but with him at her back, she's never not home.
A summer storm catches them at their rock, no longer half-empty, though only Gale is sitting there on a haphazardly thrown blanket. Katniss is in his lap, weightless as if floating, his hands caressing her along with the rain, cold water and fiery heat. Bodies meeting in tune with the thunderclaps, wiry limbs entwined like snares, coiling rivulets of wet black hair on scarred skin, mouths joined in a breathless kiss.
The storm is around her, inside her, with her to stay.