"Catnip."
I've imagined his voice so many times that at first I think it's just a mental echo, and for a second I think about how typical it is that I would choose my wedding day to finally go insane.
Then I look up in the mirror and see an all-too-solid ghost, see a second pair of gray eyes that are molten with uncertainly, and a surge of anticipation washes through me before I can contain it, before I can remind myself that I hate him.
I take my time turning on the chair, giving my heart a chance to catch up on its skipped beats, giving me a chance to put on a frown and a narrowed expression, and by the time we're face to face he's replaced his hesitant look with a lazy smile that does nothing to hide the fact that I'm not the only one who's having trouble breathing.
"Gale," I say, coolly. "This is a surprise."
He looks exactly the same as the last time I saw him; he looks completely different. Lanky muscle has been replaced by smooth tone. His eyes still match mine down to their metallic wariness. His hair is longer. He still towers above me. His eyes are harder. He still stands with one calf tensed, ready to run at the slightest provocation. His hands are rougher. He still looks at me like I am the only exception to the rule.
He is my Gale, he is not my Gale, and for a second I don't know whether to hug him or slap him.
"I didn't want to miss this," he tells me. "Your mom told me you were finally going through with it. Took you guys long enough, huh?"
This comes out with a teasing lilt that he clearly regrets and quickly abandons, and my fingers tighten on the padded cushion, hard enough that a tremor of pain dances across my knuckles.
"Not too long," I disagree, and am pleased to find that my voice sounds almost even. "Peeta's a great guy. A really great guy. But he had some really hard stuff to get over. Plus, I mean. My sister died. So there's that."
To his credit he looks slightly abashed.
"I talk to your mom a lot," he says quietly. "Haymitch tells her how you're doing. I almost called you once, but I didn't think you'd want for me to… you know. I didn't think I would be much help."
"And yet you show up on my wedding day?" Bemused, I almost stand and then force myself to sit, taking a small pleasure in the uncertainty that flickers across his face. "What's in it for you?"
"You're like my sister, Katniss," he says, and one hand goes to the edge of the obviously expensive black shirt he is wearing and twists it, just a little, revealing a flash of tanned skin. "I know we haven't talked a lot lately-"
An understatement if ever there was one – I haven't talked to Gale in almost eight years.
"-but, you're practically family," he finishes lamely.
Silence stretches between us like a tree branch in winter: chilly, brittle, laden only with the possibility that it will snap.
"I don't think Peeta will be happy that you're here," I tell him finally. "You're not really his favorite guy."
"I'll stand at the back," Gale says. "Plus, who else have you got? Your mom's not coming. And…"
He looks trapped.
"Who else have you got?" he repeats.
"Haymitch," I say, incensed. "Greasy Sae. Um. Annie."
I can tell by his doubtful expression that an alcoholic who keeps geese, a former mental patient, and the woman who cooks dog do not impress him as a dignified wedding guest roster, but I keep my face straight. After all, Peeta and I are former mental patients too.
That makes me think of the matching bracelets that we burned in the backyard, both of us silent while they dissolved into black smoke, the way he turned to me with a blazing intensity when they were gone and kissed me with his hands tight against my cheeks while the fire popped and the orange light danced across our faces like a sunset, the dying light that has to be sacrificed before the sun can rise.
"Ah," Gale noises. "I guess I won't be able to stand at the back then."
"Gale, go home," I tell him. "You don't belong here anymore. There is nothing left here for you."
"Only because of you," he disagrees. "You're the one who changed things, Katniss. Not me."
"You killed my sister," I explode, and immediately look to the door to make sure no one is coming. Peeta has spent the morning at Haymitch's, but with the absolute solitude of our neighborhood, you can hear a feather falling a mile away. I'm sure that at least some of our conversation is filtering out to ears that don't need to hear it.
"I didn't kill Prim," Gale says coldly, his lips pressed together tightly enough that they lose all color. "She was a part of something bigger than all of us. I never would have set out to kill her. I loved her too, you know."
"I don't need to hear this," I shout at him, and now I can hear doors opening, can hear the tread of footsteps on the brittle grass. "I don't want to think about her today of all days. Today is about the part of my life that Peeta is fixing, not the part of it that you ruined."
And then Haymitch is there, his hair partially combed, glaring at Gale with as much dignity as he can muster.
It is so embarrassing that I want to die, and for a moment I don't know which one of them I hate more.
"You're both yelling," he says sternly. "I don't think you realize what people are hearing you say, and I don't think today is the day to say it."
Haymitch. I definitely hate Haymitch more.
"I've got it under control," I say through clenched teeth "Gale was just leaving. Thank you, Haymitch."
Then Gale looks at me with those eyes the color of an overcast sky, the eyes I loved for over half of my life, and for a second it's like the years strip away and he is my favorite person in the world, the only person I trust, the one person apart from Prim who can make me smile. For that bare second I remember clutching onto him with shaking hands before being shoved in a car that smelled of nothing from home, remember the desperate look on Gale's face as the door slammed between us, words left unsaid burning my tongue like cinnamon candy.
"Gale," I say slowly, his heated gaze flushing my cheeks with warmth. "What did you want to say to me right before I left for the Capitol the first time? You said 'Remember I', but then you never got to finish."
His eyes flicker to Haymitch, who is waiting with one hand outstretched in warning, and then he looks at me and sets his jaw.
"I wanted to tell you I'd be waiting when you got back," he tells me. "That I'd wait as long it took for you to come back to me. Forever, if I had to."
Without thinking, moving only on instinct, I almost rise and go to him; then I see the shatter of Haymitch's frown and think instead of Peeta, of how he has made me laugh more in three years than I have laughed in my entire lifetime, of how he has waited for me more patiently and more steadily than anyone I have ever known, and suddenly I can lift my chin and look at Gale.
"That was a long time ago," I tell him smoothly, and give him the smile I perfected during the Victory Tour, distant, confident, and more than a touch denigrating. "A lot has changed. Thanks for coming, Gale. I'm sure Peeta would extend his best wishes as well."
"Katniss-" he starts, and I turn the smile up a watt and beam. My teeth hurt. My lips ache. And something deep inside of me is breaking.
"Have a safe trip home," I say, and turn on my chair to dismiss him, watching in the mirror from beneath a loose strand of hair as Haymitch puts a hand on Gale's arm as if to escort him out, as Gale shakes him off and throws another look at me, as his heavy footsteps stomp down the hallway and down the staircase.
When the front door slams, sending a crowd of birds streaking from the trees outside with a cacophony of startled caws, Haymitch comes over to stand behind me and I tense, expecting something condescending.
"Are you okay?" he surprises me with instead. "Peeta heard you yell and thought you might be…upset."
"Hey," I tell him bravely. "If you can't yell about your dead sister on your wedding day, when - when can you, right?"
Haymitch, when he is in his right mind, is one of the most clever people I have ever met, and it always unnerves me when his eyes are clear and he looks at me like he can see my innermost secrets and they do not impress.
"Are you okay?" he asks me again, and I brush back a wayward strand of hair with a hand I have to focus on keeping steady.
"I kissed him once on the table that used to be in my kitchen," I say to him. "Yes, I'm fine. Just. Just. Just tell Peeta to give me an hour, okay?"
"Katniss," he says warningly, and I stand up and give him my most withering look.
"I will be there," I say. "Give me an hour, okay?"
I don't wait for a response, just twitch past him in the dress I dragged out of the closet and put on with mustered indifference. It is not Cinna's; it's my mothers. Simple. Yellow. A small white ribbon that laces across the waist and ties in a sweetheart knot. It matches the pale shoes, and the golden gleam of a locket; it will look nice with Peeta's blond hair.
I've walked this route so many times that I could take it in my sleep, but I still keep my face resolutely turned from Haymitch's windows as I stalk past them, refusing to look and see if those blue eyes are peering out, if he's watching me leave and wondering where I'm going.
The grass crunches under my shoes, and the heels get caught in the mud often enough that I finally wrench them off and twine them through my fingers, walking through the dead stalks on steadily freezing feet. When I finally see Gale's tall figure, waiting for me beyond the fence next to the rock where he waited for me every day for years, I feel strangely off-balance. I am the one getting married, and he is the better dressed.
"I'm sorry," he says, his back to me, and I walk up to stand beside him, smelling the scent that is so inherently Gale: water, sweat, grass, and something just a little sweet that I've never been able to identify. "I shouldn't have come. I just had some… misguided duty or something."
He looks down at me and gives me a funny little smile that lifts up one side of his mouth, twists his perfect lips into something resembling a snarl.
"I don't think I've learned that you don't need me anymore," he says quietly.
I choose my words carefully; I may hate him, but there is something much deeper than that that still loves him unconditionally.
"Not anymore," I say briefly. "I mean, that's nice, sort of. A little weird. But nice."
He stands still for a long moment.
"I have no idea what you're trying to say," he tells me, and I shrug.
"I think," I say, "that I'm trying to say that you're an enormous idiot for coming, but in a way I'm almost glad."
"Almost?"
"Well," I say. "I'm marrying another man today. How does that make you feel?"
"Like an enormous idiot," he tells me honestly. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a small photograph encased in plastic, one that has obviously been shown off often.
"I have a daughter," he says. "Briony. I think she looks like you."
She is the child we would have had in another life; is Gale in perfect miniature, with dark hair that dusts laughing gray eyes. Chubby legs and tanned arms. A tiny crease that darts between her eyes and obviously deepens when she is upset.
A little bow of a mouth that looks like it smiles often and well is the only hint that someone else had a hand in her genetics; he is right, she looks like me.
"She's pretty," I say briefly, handing it back. "I didn't know you got married."
"I didn't," he says, tucking the photo back into his pocket. "It just didn't feel right. I'm not with… with her anymore."
I wonder if Gale sometimes looks at his daughter and feels a tug of panic that someone someday will throw her away as casually as he tossed away Prim, if that is why he cannot attach himself to anyone who does not share his blood.
"I only have an hour," I tell him. "I need to go back. Finish getting ready. You know."
He looks over at me and for the several long seconds our eyes meet, I feel like I'm lost in the forest during a thunderstorm: fogged in by gray, wind-tossed, unsure as to which direction is right and which is wrong but never doubting that I'll eventually find my way home.
"You don't need to change a thing," he says finally. This is so obviously pat flattery that I offer him a trace of a smile and turn to leave, but he reaches out with those long fingers that were so well suited for hunting and stops me, freezes me in my tracks with a touch I remember so well I could have last felt it yesterday.
"Katniss," he says. "Will you save me a dance?"
I have to suck in a quick breath as I remember the last time I danced; Finnick and Annie's wedding, Prim laughing hysterically and spinning in my arms; Gale claiming me for a single song, his hands leading me as surely as they had done for years before; Finnick holding Annie as gently as if she'd been made of glass; Peeta's gorgeous cake interrupting everything as people went still in quiet appreciation.
"Yes," I say faintly. "But Gale. Don't come again."
I wrench my arm from his hand and go without looking back, keeping my face straight ahead until I can pick out the indentions in the ground where the fence used to loom. Half of it went down when Twelve was bombed, and the other half was the first thing destroyed after the people returned, but grass still won't grow to cover the holes and there's a solid row of dead stalks that will forever separate one side from the other.
I'm not at all surprised to see Peeta waiting on the other side of the line, but it does surprise me that for the second time in one morning I am outdressed. Like me he has eschewed tradition; I am not wearing white, he is not wearing something that's only merit is that it's clean. We have both passed on wearing anything designed in the Capitol: though his suit is perfectly cut, it is clearly not anything touched by Portia's talented hands.
But while I went as simple as possible, Peeta has made every effort to dress in accordance with the importance he places on the day: black fitted pants that manage to flatter legs both real and fake; a button-down white shirt that gleams like snow against the ink colored lapels of a jacket, against a tie that is the yellow fluff of a dandelion.
"We match," he says, delighted, reaching out for me as I cross the fence line and draw closer to him. "I wasn't sure if you were going to wear white or not."
"Yeah, yellow really brings out my eyes," I say, allowing myself to be folded into his arms, resting my head right on his chest above the steady thump of his heart. "In fact, I think it makes me glow."
Peeta smells so different from Gale that it's almost easy to forget that I just passed from one man's hands into another; whereas Gale is everything that reminds me of survival, Peeta is soap and cinnamon, Prim's roses and fresh air.
"Haymitch said Gale was here," Peeta whispers against my hair, and I stiffen against him and feel his laughter rumble against my cheek.
"It's okay, Katniss," he says. "If you were going to take off with him, you're doing a really terrible job of it."
"I tried to make him leave," I say helplessly, raising my face to his. "I don't know why he came."
"He loved you a lot," Peeta says simply, and for the second time I remember Finnick and Annie's wedding; Peeta with his wary eyes and carefully restrained arms, casually cruel words and a curled up snarl.
I must have loved you a lot.
You did.
And did you love me?
Everyone says I did.
I think of weeping with Finnick while Peeta and Annie were screaming together; think of the brief moment I hated Finnick with a fire that threatened to burn me alive when Annie was safe in his arms and Peeta was far outside of my reach.
"I love you more," I tell him. "More than I ever loved him. Need you more."
Peeta goes quiet with this bald declaration.
"Well," he tells me finally. "That's a relief."
That makes me laugh into the crisp autumn air, and the strangeness of seeing Gale dissipates, leaving me surrounded with the kind of comfort that only Peeta can bring.
"Katniss," he says, and takes a step away from me, gallantly offering his arm. "Would you like to marry me?"
"Yes," I tell him, and find with only mild surprise that it's true. "Very much."
Peeta asked me once if I'd like for Haymitch to stand in for my father, if I'd like for him to give me away, and I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt for a week afterwards, and I had to leave because I couldn't tell if I was crying or not. He never brought it up again. Instead, Peeta and I walk unaccompanied in to the Justice Building, where a facsimile of government has pulled itself together. Cecil Holmes, who used to work in the Hob, took over official paperwork once people starting having a use for it again, and he walks us through the marriage forms without any fanfare. With a terse "Congratulations," and a sideways look whose meaning I cannot decipher, Cecil stamps the form on top and shoves it over to us.
"Celebratory," I comment sarcastically as we walk back out into the sunshine that is not putting a dent in the chilly air, and Peeta gives me his gentle grin as his hand finds mine.
"That's never been the exciting part," he chides me softly. "We'll have a few people over later, and then we can-"
His voice halts as cleanly as if it had been cut with a knife, and I look up at him, puzzled, and then follow the progression of his blue eyes and come to a dead stop in the middle of the road, dimly aware that beside me Peeta has started to laugh.
They've lined the way to the Victor's Village, from the creaking gate that is about to fall off its hinges up to our front door and past even that, a solid wave of people I've known since I was born, and people I've only met since the district got blown to pieces, and people I've never seen before in my life. People who start to cheer when they see us coming, people who throw flower petals so that we walk through a rain of yellow, of pink, of the palest orange, people who are all smiling at us like it is the happiest day of their lives, and I turn up to look at Peeta, who is still grinning, flushed with surprise.
"You didn't do this?" I ask him unnecessarily, and he shakes his head and looks at me with bright eyes.
"I don't have the imagination for this," he deadpans, but without a pause he sweeps me into his arms and dips me down to the ground, giving me the kind of kiss that flares through my stomach like a sparkler as people start to whoop.
"Mrs. Mellark," Peeta says to me grandly as he returns me to my feet, and he offers me his arm once again and leads me through the cascade of flower petals, a roar of off-rhythm singing as everyone lifts us over the threshold with the song that blesses the marriages of Twelve, through the front door and into the living room where Haymitch is waiting with a box of matches and a loaf of bread, looking vaguely as though he'd prefer being burned alive.
"What is all of this about?" Peeta asks as we come to a side-by-side stop, and Haymitch gives him the kind of look that could curdle milk.
"Bring over the bread, Haymitch," Haymitch mimics Peeta in a falsetto. "While we're gone, Haymitch."
"That's not exactly what I'm talking about," Peeta tells him teasingly, and Haymitch shrugs.
"Give me a break," he says. "If you don't want my help, then don't ask for it."
"Is everything out there part of your help too?" I interrupt, and Haymitch turns his glare on me, and then flicks a glance into the corner.
"Not me," he says. "I hate ninety-eight percent of the people out there. They did it."
He points to a group of strangely dressed people, and I blink several times before they can come into focus: Flavius, whose orange hair is now pale green but purple lipstick the same; Venia, with her curls once more resplendently aqua; Octavia, sweet Octavia, whose skin is now a rosy red that flatters her auburn hair.
"We wanted to get here earlier so we could dress you up," Flavius says archly, and by the look he shoots at Haymitch, I can imagine where the resistance came from. "But someone said you needed to do this by yourself."
"Which just means the party afterward had to be even bigger and better," Venia adds warmly, and Octavia nods enthusiastically beside her.
They are so obviously proud as they stand together grinning, so obviously eager to celebrate the marriage that they no doubt feel responsible for, and even though I am mortified I can resist their simple kindness now no more than I ever could.
"I can't believe you did this," is all I can manage, and before I can move they have swarmed around me, their arms warm against my cold skin, and over Octavia's bejeweled hair I can see Annie, a tiny boy clinging to her legs; Greasy Sae, beaming with one hand held over her mouth; Gale, who as promised is standing at the back, looking at me with eyes that are fever-bright with an emotion I cannot stand to name.
"Light your fire," Greasy Sae breaks in over the chatter of my former prep team, who in their feather-adorned clothes and bright colors look like peacocks against the muted gray of our living room. "Light the fire so we can dance."
Haymitch pulls me from the embrace of hands laden with glittering rings, long nails that are painted every color of the rainbow and then some, and shoves me back over to Peeta before handing him a box with a rough strip pasted on the side.
"Are you sure you want to stand so close to the fire?" I ask Haymitch. "I mean, we want the logs to catch, not your skin."
"Shut up and light it," Haymitch snaps back, but as Peeta takes a match from the box and crouches down to kindle the tree branches, Haymitch looks over and passes me a wink so swiftly that it could have only been a trick of light.
The room flares with sudden warmth, and Peeta takes the bread that he's spent the morning baking and tears off a hunk, shoving it onto a long branch that he offers to me. I offer it back to him, and he kisses me again before we stick it into the fire together, giving it a moment to toast before he pulls it out and rips off a bite. There are eyes upon eyes pressed against our living room windows, and when Peeta places the first bite in my mouth I can hear another roar from outside, the rising sound of a fiddle that's greeted with uproarious cheers of approval.
And we dance.
The line stretches from our living room out half a mile down the road, and I feel like I go down it and back half a dozen times with so many partners I lose count: Peeta, who dances with a lopsided grace, who keeps hold of me as long as he can and then passes me off to Haymitch, who stumbles like he's never danced a day in his life; to Flavius, who spins like a dancer in a music box; to Annie and little Kai, who romps and laughs with Finnick's unrestrained glee; to Octavia, who holds my hands but bravely keeps from bemoaning the state of my nails; to a hundred other people who kiss me and tell me how happy they are for us. I laugh and spin and hug and accept congratulations and finally I land in front of Gale.
Gale, who takes me in his arms and holds me as close as the first time he had to let me go; Gale, who smells of the home that used to be; Gale, who rests his forehead against mine and keeps his eyes closed; Gale, who doesn't say a word as he gives me that strange smile and deposits me back with Peeta.
We dance until night falls and then we dance some more, and I sneak off to take a break from the room that is hot and heavy with the fire and the bodies, entirely unsurprised when Peeta comes to me half an hour later, a sweater in his hands.
"What are you doing out here?" he asks as he pushes open the kitchen door and finds me sitting on the step that rests above the mud that never dries, a chilly breeze raising goosebumps on my arms. He passes over the sweater and I pull it on gratefully, leaning against him as he takes the seat next to me.
"Too many people," I tell him briefly, and he flashes a smile of understanding.
"Do you remember Finnick and Annie's wedding?" I ask him, and the smile crashes like a wave as one of his eyes twitches slightly.
"I wasn't really allowed to go," he answers me after a moment of silence, and his body stiffens as he looks away. "My only contribution was the cake. You know that."
"I remember," I say, "looking at Finnick while he was holding Annie, and thinking about how I would never get to dance with you on our wedding night. I would think stuff like that and then still try to hide from the fact that I loved you."
I feel his hand against my leg, and lace my fingers through his.
"I wasted so much time," I say in distaste, thinking of the funny smile he used to give me every morning after our first Games, when he would bring over a loaf of bread or handfuls of warm muffins. Prim, usually sitting at the table with Buttercup in her lap, would inevitably say something that would make him laugh, and then he would turn that gentle smile on me and it would twist, just a touch, his eyes would flare briefly, and I almost always turned away before his mouth could form the words that I knew he was thinking.
I'll wait.
Always.
"It's okay," he tells me now, and one hand comes up to cup my cheek, to turn my eyes up to face him. "Katniss, can you think of any other way you and I would be sitting here right now if not for everything we've been through? It wasn't time wasted. It was the time we needed."
"Peeta," I say flatly. "What we needed? Me was lying to you, and myself, and the entire country, and everyone, really, other than Haymitch?"
"Not that part," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. "The part where you crawled into my bed on the train and made me tell you stories like I was Scheherazade. The part where you looked at me on that beach like you were seeing me for the first time and you really enjoyed the view. The part where we sat around the campfire playing real or not real, and your whole face lit up when I remembered the time you tried to bake bread and put in too much yeast and the whole loaf exploded all over my kitchen."
"The part," he says quietly, " before the second Games when they came to interview us and we laid in your back yard and I tried to put a reason I loved you with every star in the sky."
His eyes catch mine and I cannot look away.
"And you," he says, "laughed and said that you would run out of stars before you ran out of reasons."
I want to defend myself, to insist that I had been playing to the cameras, but I remember that night as well as he does and I remember watching the moonlight turn his hair as blue as his eyes and thinking that I might have been trying to convince the country how much I loved him, but everything in me already knew.
He hand moves up, strokes a stray piece of hair off of my forehead.
"You said you were lying to everyone," he tells me, "but I remember Finnick and Annie's wedding. I remember sitting in that bed. I remember being so excited to see you, and then wanting to kill you the second you walked through the door."
He pauses.
"I remember," he says quietly, "asking you if you loved me, and you rabbiting away. 'Everyone says I did.'"
"Peeta," I try to stop him, and he just shakes his head.
"It was the best answer," he tells me with a sweet smile. "You never would give anyone a straight answer, but you always acted honestly. If everyone could see that you loved me, then you weren't lying. That was how it was."
I think again of making knots with Finnick until our fingers ached, until the rope ran red with blood.
"How it is," I correct him. "Always."
His kiss warms me from head to toe, and then he rises from the step and offers me his hand.
"It's our wedding night," he tells me, and I go to him without hesitation.
And we dance.