Gale

Even stretched up on her toes to examine my snare hanging from the tree, the girl is small. Her dark hair is twisted into a braid and she wears an old leather jacket, a game sack at her feet. She has no idea that I've been watching her for the past ten minutes. I was making my daily run, checking my traps and snares when I stumbled upon this girl. I was surprised to see anyone else in the woods, let alone a young girl. I haven't yet decided whether she's trying to steal the rabbit out of my snare of if she's trying to figure out how the rabbit got up there to begin with. Her fingers are inching towards the wire above the rabbit when I decide it's time to make my presence known.

"That's dangerous, you know." My voice sends her leaping back several feet and she turns to face me. She's from the Seam, I can tell that immediately, the dark hair, olive skin, gray eyes, these are all characteristics of those born in the Seam, not Town. As I study her face, I recognize her.

She was in the Justice Building that day, receiving a medal right beside me. Her father died the same mine explosion that killed mine. I remember her mother and younger sister standing beside her, the mother had a blank, vacant expression on her face, the little blonde girl was clutching tightly to her older sister's hand. But even though I recognize her, I don't know her name. Honestly, it surprises me that I even remember her presence at the Justice Building. That entire day was nothing but a haze of pain for me, knowing that my father was gone, leaving two, soon to be three, little mouths to feed. My mother could only do so much, I knew it was my job now. It was my job to take care of my family now that my father was gone.

I walked over to her and began to untangle my snare.

"What's your name?" I asked as my fingers worked to disengage the rabbit from the snare.

"Catnip." She whispers.

Catnip? What kind of weird name is that? I think as I free the rabbit from the snare and tuck into my belt beside the other three I've caught today.

"Well, Catnip, stealing's punishable by death, or hadn't you heard?"

"My name is Katniss, not Catnip," She says in a slightly louder voice. "And I wasn't stealing anything, I just wanted to look at your snare. Mine never catch anything." She keeps her eyes on me as she speaks and I study her in return, not entirely convinced. I know what hunger can do to people, drive them to desperate things that they would never do under normal circumstances. And now that I'm looking at her more carefully, I can see this girl is mere steps away from starvation. The signs are evident in the ashy tint to her skin, her hollow cheeks, her dry, cracked, and peeling lips.

"Where'd you get that squirrel then?" I ask, pointing to the game bag at her feet.

To my surprise, she tells me she shot it and pulls a bow off of her shoulder. I ask if I can see it and I can feel a smile creeping across my face when she hands her bow over, telling me to remember that stealing is punishable by death. She doesn't smile back, though and as I run my fingers over the bow, our talk to turns to hunting, as I imagine the kind of game I could bring home to my family or to trade in the Hob, if only I had a bow.

She tells me that she might be able to get a bow for me, but only if I have something to trade in return. Not food, she informs me. She wants me to teach her how to build traps and snares, so that she can catch her own game. I agree that something might be worked out.

As the seasons go by, we grow into a team of sorts. I teach her about snares and fishing, while she shows me what plants are safe to eat and eventually, she gives me one of her bows. We divide the work and share the game, making sure that both our families are fed.

Eventually we become friends, confiding in each other and sharing our secrets. When the Reaping rolls around, we promise each other that if one of us gets drawn as a tribute, the other one will make sure that the other's family is fed and taken care of. I don't trust many people but I trust Katniss when she says she will make sure my family survives. I have to trust her, because as many times as my name is in the Reaping Ball, the odds are not in my favor.

Even so, it takes months before I'm able to coax a smile onto her face.

This is what I'm thinking about when the doctor from 13 comes into the waiting room and tells us that Katniss is pregnant. I keep thinking of that scared, yet proud 11-year-old little girl who didn't want to take game from me, didn't want to accept any kind of handout or charity, she just wanted me to teach her how she could do it on her own. I cannot reconcile that brave little girl with the Katniss, the pregnant Katniss, that the doctor is presenting to us now.

"Patient Everdeen is a little over three months pregnant." The doctor says and the words feel like a slap across my face.

Katniss is pregnant. And there's no way it can be mine. We've only ever kissed twice, that time in the woods after she returned from the first Games and then the hazy memory of the kiss she gave me while I lay on her kitchen table, my flesh sizzling as if it were on fire and I was ready to die to make the pain stop, until I felt her lips on mine.

And if the baby isn't mine, then it can only be Peeta Mellark's.

At this realization, a sharp pain enters my chest and begins to spread throughout my entire body. I feel myself sinking back into the chair I had just vacated, my head falls into my hands, and I'm vaguely aware of a something that sounds like the noise of an animal in severe pain. It takes me a few minutes to realize that I'm the one making those horrible animal noises, I don't recognize the sounds coming from my own body or the sobs that are wracking me from head to toe. I am not this kind of man, I do not react like this, I do not all apart.

I start counting backward from 100 and tell myself that when I reach the number one, I will have myself under control. To my relief, when I reach the end of my counting, the dry sobs are no longer shaking my body and I'm able to lift my head from my hands and I discover that I'm alone in the waiting room. Mrs. Everdeen, Prim, and Haymitch must be with Katniss. I get to my feet and start towards the door that the doctor came out of, the door that must lead to Katniss, before stopping myself.

Katniss is pregnant with a child that is not mine. I'm not her mother or her sister, I'm not her mentor and I'm certainly not that baby's father. There is no place for me in that room.

Instead, I open the door that leads out of the waiting room and back into 13. The corridors of District 13 are bare right now, it's the middle of the day, everyone will be in their assigned places. I glance down at the inked schedule on my arm and notice that I'm supposed to be in nuclear history class right now. I've done a pretty good job of adhering to my schedule, even though having every minute of my life planned out to the last second was hard to adjust to. But there's no way I can go back to class and pretend that everything is normal. Not after what I've just heard. Not after hearing that the girl I love is carrying another man's child.

I find myself heading towards the compartment I share with the rest of my family. I'm almost certain it will be empty, my brothers and Posy will be at school, my mother will be at work in the laundry division where she was assigned to work. I'll have the privacy I need to absorb the news I've just heard. When I reach the compartment, I open the door and am greeted by nothing but silence. I was right, the compartment is empty.

I sit down at one of the five chairs at our government issued table, close my eyes and begin to think of Katniss.

She's pregnant. With Peeta Mellark's baby. I can count on one hand the number of interactions I've had with Peeta Mellark in my entire life. We've never actually exchanged words, he was younger than me in school, the most we've ever done is nodded at each other when he answered my knock at the back door of the bakery when I came to trade squirrels with his father.

Until the Games, I never gave a second though to Peeta Mellark. And then it took everything in me to watch him with Katniss. If I'd thought that watching him kissing Katniss in the cave during the first Games was hard, watching the Quarter Quell was unbearable. I could see that Katniss was falling in love with him and as Finnick Odair worked to save Peeta Mellark's life after he hit the force field, a very small part of me hoped that Odair wouldn't be able to save him. Because then Katniss would be free of him, free to come back to me and what we once had, what I hoped we'd have in the future.

Until the Games, I'd never had a bad thought or feeling towards Peeta Mellark but if he were standing in front of me right now, I would kill him.

What was she doing with him? A little voice inside my head whispers. She did chose me, didn't she? After the whipping, when she kissed me and declared that she wasn't going to run into the woods, she'd chosen to me, chosen to stay and fight with me over Mellark and the Capitol's demands.

And now she turns up in District 13, pregnant with his kid.

Three months pregnant, I remember the doctor saying, as I start counting the months back and I realize that this baby was conceived after my whipping, after the announcement of the Quarter Quell, after she swore to stay and fight, after she swore to stay with me. Even so,for a brief moment, I feel a small hope in my chest that maybe this baby isn't the end of my chance with Katniss, maybe there's still hope for us. And then reality smacks me in the face and I realize that even if Katniss did chose me, even if she wants to be with me, she will forever be connected to Mellark through that child. This baby will change everything. Nothing will ever be the same after this baby is born.

There was no place for around Katniss's hospital bed and maybe there wouldn't be a place for me in her life anymore.

This thought makes my throat tighten and I jump out of my chair, shaking the thought away. The idea of not being a part of Katniss's life anymore is too much to deal with on top of everything else that has been revealed today.

I need to get out and do something, but I don't want to go sit in class and I haven't been assigned a job yet. For a fleeting moment, I worry that there is no place for me in District Thirteen either, nowhere for me to channel all the anger and rage I feel at Katniss's pregnancy, at Mellark for doing this to her, at the Capitol for burning my home to the ground, into something decent and productive.

And then it hits me and I'm out the door, walking swiftly towards my destination.

When I first arrived in Thirteen, I was taken to a room called the Command Center and introduced to the President of District 13, Alma Coin, and Plutarch Heavensbee, former Head Gamemaker and rebel sympathizer. They were impressed with my rescue of people from District 12, they told me, and wanted to offer me a position in their military. They said they could a man like me, that the Revolution could use a man like me, that it needed me.

I refused. I was too worried about Katniss, too angry about the bombing of District 12, to want to cooperate with anyone. But now…maybe this is just what I need.

I arrive at the Command Center and step inside the doorway, taking in the sight of the busy room, the technology the keeps track of troop movement in the districts, the table of control panels. This is where I'm meant to be, I tell myself.

President Coin suddenly appears in front of me, looking exactly the same as she did when I saw her a month ago.

"Gale Hawthorne. This is area is prohibited to everyone except soldiers and even then, only those with approved military clearance are allowed inside." She says this quietly, as she gazes at me with a disinterested expression, as if I'm a small, annoying object that needs to be removed immediately. Well, if that's how she feels, she's in for a surprise.

I don't let myself think, not about Katniss, the baby, Peeta Mellark, the bombing and burning of my home or even my family. Instead, I raise my hand to my temple in a perfect salute.

"Soldier Hawthorne reporting for duty, ma'am."