Waterline
Had she been more cognizant, Katniss would have shoved Plutarch off of her. As it was, though, her thoughts consumed her and she barely noticed the way he hovered by her elbow, or how Fulvia chattered about something Katniss couldn't absorb. Not when all she could see were tendrils of smoke wrapping around her arms, feel the weight of her faux wings- almost as heavy as Cinna's absence.
She wouldn't say that it was any easier thinking about him than about Coin's words, still rattling around in her mind as they were. But it was at least... smaller. The emotions might destroy her but their scope was of a more intimate sadness. Something that could be contained within the limited dimensions of her body, that could fit around the dented places and settle under the hard, scarred lines. Coin's proposal on the other hand left her almost dizzy in the wake of her inability to process it. Funneling it through the wedding dress that had burned away and left her as a physical mockingjay (inferno, she didn't remind herself) was at least within her range of capabilities.
The hallways passed in the same monotonous fashion and she was back to her indistinguishable room without realizing it. Only Plutarch's pausing caused her to stop as well, blinking mutely at the door. He didn't touch her, but she felt some sort of gesture flutter in the space behind her shoulder, cueing her to move forward. Except inertia was strong and once her legs stopped moving she wasn't exactly sure how to make them work again.
"Are you ill again, Miss Everdeen?" Plutarch's Capitol-tainted voice questioned lightly. Katniss' jaw tightened as the plastic of her bracelet chafed her wrist. If there was one thing she refused to be it was ill. No matter how her blood pounded in her ears or her stomach burned- or how convenient an excuse it was- she was alive. And the only difference that mattered was the line that separated survival from death.
Plutarch was still talking, "If you are we can call-"
"I'm fine."
Her response, sudden and following such prolonged silence, caught him off guard. At least, she assumed it did because he fell silent and said nothing as her fingers brushed against the nearly seamless door handle and yanked it to the side so the door slid open. The room looked even smaller now that she was mostly awake and had seen the other ward and conference room and hallway. But it was infinitely preferable to standing with the former Gamemaker and his assistant.
"A nurse will be sent to reconnect your IV," Fulvia said, a little haltingly. Perhaps sensing the ire barely locked within Katniss. Or maybe she was just out of her depth, talking about such concrete things that were so blatantly not within her domain.
It might have been the waver in her voice that kept Katniss from snapping at her that she did not need a nurse, did not want one. Instead, she just ran her teeth across her lower lip, crossed the threshold to her containment unit, and slid the door closed behind her until it connected with a click and plunged her into solitude.
Alone, she felt her chest deflate. Her hands shook and she leaned against the wall, palms splayed and knees bent. Despite her best effort her breath came in short, jagged slices that cut her throat as much as they cut the air. But there was no present danger- not in the room at any rate. Surrounded by the unknown was nothing new, and it wasn't as if she hadn't dealt with it before. There was no reason, quantifiable or otherwise, for her vision to blur and her jaw to pulse hotly. For her chest to heave without allowing oxygen inflate her lungs. For her suffocate on ash that didn't exist.
Time passed. She wasn't aware of it, but if there was one constant in this world it was that time moved forward regardless of what it left in its wake. Her body registered it after the pains and scrapes and trembling began to ebb off, and she knew by the burning in her thighs (a more recognizable sensation) that she had probably been standing there for more than a few minutes. And though the thought of collapsing into her bed was not a welcome one, she gravitated there and let her body fall against the stiff sheets. They were not welcoming. The fabric was more abrasive than the circlet on her wrist and the edge of the pillow was hard and dug uncomfortably into her neck. Katniss didn't expect any different. Her lips quirked dryly upward before slipping back into their natural, straighter line that didn't pull her cheeks or the corners of her eyes into any recognizable pattern.
Her legs, at least, seemed relieved. They still trembled, and her mind still wouldn't let go of the image of Coin's face or the sound of her voice- so even and reasonable as it had been. She shut her eyes. It did nothing. When the door was pulled open she didn't bother to look. The nurse would just have to deal with her prone form and needleless veins.
Except: "Sleeping on the job?"
Most nurses didn't sound like Gale.
Katniss' breath stopped short for a moment, even though she should have expected it. Gale was around now, he was here and had been with her on more than one occasion in Thirteen. But every time she heard his voice she was hearing it for the first time. Maybe that's what the acceptance of death did to you; maybe the minute you closed your eyes and let it in, you sacrificed living. Even if your heart keeps beating.
She cracked an eyelid open and turned to look at him. His expression wasn't as happy as it could have been, especially given his greeting. Lacking the energy to do anything else, Katniss made a noise at the back of her throat and snorted. Gale stepped fully into the room, pulling the door shut behind him, then made his way over to the chair by the bed.
"So you met her," he said without preamble. Neither needed clarification as to whom he meant.
"Yeah," Katniss rasped. She said nothing else for a while, letting her voice even out. "... You?"
"Yeah."
A few seconds passed where neither of them breathe, and then all at once a cacophony rumbled in their chests and rocketed from their lips. The little room with its grey, thick walls and dark corners was suddenly filled with piercing peals of laughter. It was a frenzy emptying from Katniss' stomach into her throat and off of her tongue. A fizzy, lightheaded sensation edged out the muddled heaviness of her medication, her day, her life. Right now she was not waiting for a nurse to stick her with an IV needle just so she could rip it out again. She was not remembering Cinna. She was not her wedding dress or the amount of sparks she could produce. She was not an inferno because the bed was intact, the floor bore no ashy marks.
She was Gale's laughter, and the promise of Prim and the knowledge that Peeta was safe. She was the one who crouched over Finnick as he slept (though later she might be anger and hurt once more). She was Katniss.
The mantra she'd been mulling over was at the edge of her conscious thoughts, but it fell away. Her frenzied, chaotic laughter was too loud when combined with Gale's and there was no room for anything else.
At some point, Katniss capitulated and let the darkness of sleep take her. As promised, a nurse had come by to reconnect her to the IVs of fluids and drugs and she had taken it out of her arm the moment the door closed- Coin be damned. Gale had chuckled his approval and within moments her sore, healing body gave up the ghost and the next thing she knew she was waking up with heavy eyes and a thick tongue.
Gale was still there when she awoke. But she couldn't find the smile that was always so easy to come by with him. He was already awake, perhaps hadn't slept at all, and solemn lines were visible around his eyes. Katniss was sure her own face didn't look any cheerier- the laughter of the previous day had cut out large chasms inside of her and once it was gone those new spots were hollow. If she tried to move she wondered if she might actually break apart.
"No comment," she warned Gale, shifting so that she was sitting upright in the bed. Gale's lips twitched but he acquiesced her request by staying silent. She hadn't minded his teasing the previous day, or any day, but it didn't feel right in the moment. Still, she realized she didn't really need to say anything at all. These things, the cues or the flow, were always just there. Her mind must still have been muddled.
It was easier to settle herself than moving had been since she'd woken up in Thirteen. Though her vision still swam a bit and her muscles ached it was manageable enough that the act of stuffing the pillow against the metal backing of the bed and sitting against it took only a little more time than it usually did. Only once she was properly upright and felt confident enough in her voice and her body holding out did she turn to face Gale properly.
They both understood what sat, as of yet unspoken between them. And while the manic, instinctual turn to laughter had been as welcome as it was necessary, it would not carry them through the rest of the day. And besides, this was Gale. Discussing their current situation was no different than dreaming of running into the woods and never returning: just as dangerous to do as to avoid. So while she could have fidgeted her time away and dawdled until he spoke first, she bit the bullet and dove right in.
"Did you hear?"
"Rumors," Gale replied, not looking away from her. "Coin's a pretty present figure, but nothing comes out of her. Still, people are talking."
"Of course they are." Bitterness coated her tongue and sharpened her features into a tight glare.
"So." Tell me he didn't have to say. Katniss sighed.
"Well, you know most of it already, don't you? The whole country's in revolution, people are dying, and apparently I'm at the helm of all of this-"
"-Change?"
"Madness."
Gale leaned back a little in his chair, countenance serious and drawn. It wasn't an unusual look for him, but all the same Katniss wanted to smooth it away. If not for his sake than at least for hers. There was no avoiding that expression, not whatever was to follow it.
"So what is it they're asking you to do?"
Katniss licked her cracked lips and tried to gather the fragments of her knowledge together. "I'm- not entirely sure. I don't think they want me fighting. Not directly at any rate. It's... I think it's more posing." She couldn't help but layer the last word with enough derision to fell a grown man. But Gale looked undisturbed.
"Alright, so you'll find out more. Maybe they'll let you out in the middle of things once you're more recovered. Or when they think you are. So you should work on that, see how much leeway you'll get." By the end, he had withdrawn into himself, rubbing a hand over his jaw as he planned.
Katniss only stared, lips twisted open and brow furrowed. Gale must have noticed her bemusement because he looked up and raised a brow to ask, what?
"You're- you're assuming that I'm going to do this."
It was Gale's turn to sit there, dumbstruck. Apparently, he had spiraled into planning mode at some point between the time she'd spoken to him last and woken up again- and hadn't given a moment to factor in her distaste for the endeavor as a whole. Katniss watched him carefully as surprise, concern, and frustration flickered across his face.
"What are you talking about?" He hedged. Likely hoping for some sort of misunderstanding. Something Katniss couldn't afford to hope for.
"What are you?" She replied, more snap in her voice than she realized would be there- not that she regretted it. A hot, angry knot had begun to form in her stomach as her cognition finally caught up with her and it sunk in that Gale wanted her to do this. As if she hadn't posed like a doll enough, as if she hadn't already done more than her fair share of being a piece in a game that she had barely signed onto, let alone understood. As if she had meant to do anything beyond survive.
Gale looked like he was about to speak again so Katniss cut him off, "If what I think is true, they just want to set me up on a stage. I've been on enough stages. I've done enough interviews and worn enough dresses, Gale."
"But that's-" She heard the growl in his voice, heard the extent to which it grew before being forcibly cut off. "That's not what this is, Katniss. What, do you think this is still some play thing? It's not the Games, it's war."
"And you think those Games weren't war?" Something had broken open inside of her and the only thing she could feel was burning, putrid rage and sticky indignation taking over her insides. Her stomach contracted and her heartbeat pounded in her throat. "You have no idea-!"
"No idea? No idea? I had to sit there, I had to watch you-"
"Yes, exactly, you were watching-"
"Do you realize how hard that was-?!"
"Not harder than knowing you were going to die!"
The last word echoed in the room, filling it up until it faded away and left the two of them alone, red faced and staring each other down. Katniss' hands had curled into fists around the blanket over the course of their short, explosive argument but she made no move to unclench them. It was fine- she was angry and was tired of hiding it.
Reluctant as he seemed to do it, as both of them were, Gale broke the silence. "Katniss. You have to understand, this isn't the same thing that you've been through. This is different, this can change everything. People are dying out there, and they need you."
She heard his words and some, less reactionary part of her mind understood them. But a deeper, more intimate one refused to let them in. "Is it, though?"
"Is it..?"
"Is it different? People are already dying. Snow was already trying to change things seventy five years ago. And all I know is that I just sat in a room with a Gamemaker and a President and listened to them tell me what I was going to do. So from where I'm sitting, I don't see any difference."
For a long few seconds, Gale said nothing. His hands were fisted on his knees, and his jaw was set in an immovable line. Before he said anything, the tightness in Katniss' stomach seemed to know exactly what his response would be, but it was no less a disappointment when it came.
"You don't get it," he said coolly. Lowly. "This is... everything we've been waiting for. This is our chance- this is everyone's chance to do what they couldn't do before. To be free."
"Free?" Katniss said through a derisive cough. "Does this look different to you than the Reaping?"
"Yes," he replied intractably. Katniss pinched her eyes closed.
"I wish I could see through your eyes."
"You used to."
That caught her off guard. Her throat tightened up. "Yeah. Used to." She knew what she needed, but even fueled by her anger and confusion it was difficult to choke out the words. "I- need you to go right now."
He only hesitated for a moment, but where she might have expected some refutation on his part there was none. "... Fine." And the only other sound that followed was that of his footsteps and the door opening and closing with a harder than necessary click.
Katniss held onto her sheets, wondering if they'd swallow her whole or if she'd still be able to breathe.
a/n: Hey, it's technically a Monday.
Wow, a semester passed by and I didn't realize it- really sorry about that guys. And thankful as always that you're still here, reading and (hopefully) enjoying. I promise, no matter how long it takes this story is not dead. It's mostly outlined and big chunks of it are being written.
As always I appreciate your reviews but this time I'm going to ask for something a little more specific (if you want to!): tell me what you want to see. I have the plot basically outlined (and the ending already written), but I have wiggle room and because this story is also for all of you, I want to write the things you want to read! So while I move in the intended direction, I'd like to include more of the things you like most.
Chapterly reminder that you all are the best readers any writer could ask for!