_I am so sorry that it has taken me this long to continue this story! Life has been crazy lately, but I'm back and I hope to update at least once a week! Now for a confession-This chapter is not very good. I had major writer's block with this one and I think a lot of that is because it's a transition chapter. I really don't like it, but I've already got the next couple of chapters planned out, so I decided to just go ahead and post this and hope that you all forgive me for how awful this is. The next chapters will be better, I promise!

Remember, I own nothing and am making no money from this. If you recognize it, it belongs to Suzanne Collins

Gale

It has been exactly one month and one day since the doctors released Katniss from the hospital ward. One month and one day since a doctor that I had never seen before in my life came into that waiting room and blew the last stable part of my life to bits. One month and one day of being at war inside my own head, trying my best to keep thoughts of Katniss and her baby out of my head.

I have not been able to succeed.

Nor have I laid eyes on Katniss since that day. After I came and offered myself up as a solider for Coin, I've been kept busy, strategizing, building, learning. I've been ingrained into the heart of District 13's army, I have become an essential part of the revolution. From dawn until dusk, I am constantly on the move. And even that is not enough to chase away the thoughts of Katniss. Sleep brings no relief. One would think that after putting in the number of hours I do, sleep would come easy. But the night brings no rest to my ever-whirring mind. As I lay in my family's compartment, my body exhausted, I cannot quiet my brain enough to go to sleep. Instead, thoughts of Katniss dance through my mind. I picture the way she looked at 11, when I taught her how use a snare, the way she looked on the day her sister was Reaped, the look on her face when she kissed Peeta Mellark in the first Games, the way her lips tasted when I kissed her before she left for the Victory Tour, the vacant expression on her face as her name was called for the Quarter Quell, the way tears streamed down her face when Peeta hit the force field, how close she looked to death when we pulled her out of that arena. How the first person she asked about when she woke up on that Hovercraft was him.

I wonder how, or if, I will ever stop thinking of her.

I spend my days working in the Weaponry Department alongside Beetee, one of Katniss's fellow Victors. Beetee was the first Victor/rebel conspirator that was medically cleared to assist in the revolution after the Victors were pulled out of the Quell arena and brought to District 13. Beetee was taken straight from the hovercraft to the hospital wing where he spent just one night before the leaders of District 13 wheeled his hospital bed straight into the Special Weaponry Department.

Because of this, Beetee is the first Victor that I've ever met, outside of Katniss, Haymitch, and Peeta Mellark, the man that I won't let myself think of. Finnick Odair is still hospitalized and, based on all reports, he won't be fit for duty any time soon. According to Haymitch, the minute he found out that Annie Cresta, the female tribute from District 4, had been taken prisoner and was being held in the Capitol, his grip on reality ceased. They are keeping him locked away from the rest of the district until they deem him fit for public interaction again.

I had expected to hate all Victors, save for Katniss. I certainly had no great respect for Haymitch Abernathy or Peeta Mellark and based on what I'd seen of Finnick Odair, I didn't expect him to be the Victor that changed my mind. To my surprise however, I liked Beetee Latier. He was smart and easy to work with, there was no problem that he couldn't seem to find a solution to. He was important to the revolution and working with him made me feel like I was important to the revolution too. And best of all, he didn't look at me as if I was a wounded animal, the way so many others in Thirteen did.

Word of my reaction to the announcement of Katniss's pregnancy had evidently spread and more than a few of my fellow survivors from District 12, as well as the citizens from District 13, seemed to look at me with pity in their eyes. How they knew of what had transpired in the waiting room of the hospital ward, I didn't know and I didn't want to find out. I didn't want to remember anything about that day or the way I had felt when the doctor had told us that Katniss was pregnant.

I'm sitting at a table in the Special Weaponry Department, studying blueprints of weapons that Beetee and I have designed and are preparing to build. For some reason, studying these weapon blueprints gives me the only dose of peace I receive these days. To others, it may seem a contradiction, finding peace in war. But to me, I see this war as a way of taking back my life, the lives of my family….to me, this war is the only way that we will ever truly have peace. I do not want to die for this cause, but I am prepared to. If dying means that others that I love will live in peace and freedom, without the fear of sacrificing their children to the Hunger Games or fear of having their tongues cut and being turned into Avoxes for simply disagreeing with the government. I realized a long time ago that wasn't any way for a person to live, living that way isn't really living at all. This revolution…it's the only thing that will set us free.

I'm so caught up in my thoughts that I don't hear the door to the compartment slide open. My senses, usually primed to within an inch of my life, seem to have scaled back here in the relative 'safety' of District 13. Because of this, I do not know that another person is standing beside until I hear the soft cough of a person clearing their throat.

I spin around on my stool, blueprints still held in one hand and just like that, there she is. Her face looks the same…same dark hair, gray Seam eyes…she looks healthier than the last time I saw her, screaming as the doctors stabbed a syringe into her arm. Her face seems a little fuller and her lips aren't dry and cracked. She has color in her cheeks and her eyes aren't as dull as they were when I last saw her. She looks exactly the same and for one brief moment, I think that maybe I have misunderstood…maybe she isn't pregnant, maybe she is not irrevocably tied to Peeta Mellark for the rest of her life, and then I let my gaze travel over her, searching her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and then I see it. Her stomach.

While it is not the monstrosity of a stomach that I remember my mother struggling with during her pregnancies, there is no mistaking the definite round swell of Katniss's formerly flat stomach. My eyes lock on her stomach and I can feel a lump in my throat and pressure building behind my eyes.

Here she is, the girl I love….pregnant with another's man child.

I think of what the doctor said told us in that waiting room, that she was over three months pregnant, so now she's close to five months pregnant. In four months, my best friend and the girl I love will become a mother…to a child that is not, and never will be, mine.

With that though echoing in my head, I yank my gaze back to her face. I can tell just by looking at her that she has some awareness of what types of thoughts have just gone through my head. A blush is creeping into her cheeks and her lips are twisted into an anxious expression. She has crossed both arms over her chest and is trying her best to keep her eyes on me.

Dropping my gaze from her face, I turn back around in my seat and scowl as I notice that I still have the blueprints, now crumpled held in one hand. Laying them on the table, I take a deep breath and run one hand over them, in a vain attempt to smooth the pages out before turning back around.

"Gale, I need to talk to you."

Her voice is soft, so unlike the girl that I know, that is causes me to turn around and face her. I have heard Katniss Everdeen's voice a thousand times, and not once have I ever heard here speak in this tone of voice.

"What do you want, Katniss?" I can't look at her while I speak to her. Not when she stands in front of me, carrying another man's child, when the last words I heard from her was that she choose me.

"I…I've just come from a meeting in Command," she says, uncrossing her arms and clenching and unclenching her fists at her sides. "They want me to be the Mockingjay."

I say nothing. I knew, of course, that they were going to ask her to be the Mockingjay, to become the face of the rebellion. I had expected her to say yes…but that was before I found out that she was pregnant. The fact that she was pregnant changed everything.

"They've been telling me that I need to do this for almost a month." She continues, walking closer and leaning one hip on the edge of my wooden worktable. "I…I haven't been cooperating. I've walked out of every meeting. Except for today." She stops and bites her lip, glancing at me before quickly glancing back at the wooden grain o my worktable.

"They want me to go back to Twelve, Gale. And I need you to go with me. I can't do this alone."

For a moment, all I can hear is the girl I love saying that she needs me. Me. Not Peeta Mellark, not Haymitch, not Cinna, her beloved stylists, not that Capitol tart escort Effie Trinket, not even her mother or her sister Prim. She needs me. She needs me and no one else. And in that moment, all I want to do is fall at her feet and tell her that yes, I'll do whatever she needs. But all it takes is a glimpse of the roundness underneath her blouse, where Peeta Mellark's baby lies, and I can feel every muscle in my body tense.

I turn around and take a deep breath, placing both hands on the worktable. I can feel my fists clench and unclench and glance down to see that my knuckles have turned white. With my anger barely contained, I whirl around and face her.

"Why Katniss? Why do you need me?"

She opens her mouth and then the expression on her face blanches. Cleary, whatever she was expecting, this was not it.

"Gale…you're my friend. My best friend."

I can feel my mouth gape open at her. Of all the things that I expected her to come back with, that wasn't it.

"You. Chose. Me." I say softly, deliberately, my eyes locked on to hers.

"Gale…."

I hold up a hand. "No. Katniss… you chose me. You said that you weren't going to run away, that you were going to stay right beside me and fight."

"I was…I did-" She begins, taking a step backwards and away from me.

"Then how did this happen?! How are you standing in front of me, pregnant with his baby? You chose me! You promised to stay with me, to fight with me! I thought that was the beginning of the future for us! Do you have any idea how it felt for me to hear that? I was laying on that table, bleeding, in the worst pain of my life, and then I hear you promise to stay with me! I felt like I could do anything after that! And then to watch you go into the Quarter Quell…to see you with him, to see you kiss him? I knew, Katniss….I knew you'd die before you let anything happen to him…and I told myself that you didn't love him, that you couldn't possibly love him, that it was all an act for the cameras. When he dropped that marriage story, that baby bomb the night before the Quell?! Was it an act, Katniss or did you know, even then? Did you know you were pregnant?! I thought I'd lost you for good! And then you were rescued…and I thought maybe we could get back on track…but then you turn up pregnant with his kid… if you chose me, then how the hell did this happen?!"

By the time I am finished, I am yelling, the blood in my body is boiling and I can feel the sweat pouring down my face. My hair is falling into my eyes and I cannot believe that once again, I am letting my emotions get the best of me. I am hoping that my passionate outburst will have resonated with Katniss, when I glance at her, however, I see that she is as stoic as ever, standing with her arms folded at her sides. Her eyes are dry and her face is wiped clean of any expression. She looks at me as if she does not recognize me, especially not as the boy she has spent the past six years hunting with in the woods. It does not surprise me…I barely recognize myself these days…There are a million things that I want to scream at her, I want to demand that she answer my questions and tell me how she could have done these things to me, but the words are stuck in my throat.

I bow my head, waiting for an answer, but only silence descends. I glance up to see her walking away from me, her back as straight as ever. She does not say a word and never looks back.

I turn back around and put my fist through my worktable.

Several hours later, I hear the door slide open once again. I leap to my feet, expecting Katniss to have come back to explain everything to me or even Beetee. To my surprise, however, it's Commander Boggs, President Coin's second in command. He stands in front of me, arms stiff at his sides, feet braced firmly apart.

"Solider Hawthorne, I have been sent by President Coin to tell you that at exactly 0700 hours, a hovercraft will be leaving for District 12. And you will be on it."

With a sharp nod in my direction, he turns and walks out the door, leaving me with a head full of questions, a heart that is twisting, and orders from the President.

I know this chapter had a horrible ending and Gale did not get the answers he wanted. Don't worry, he will! I just really needed to end this chapter so that I could go ahead and write the chapters that I already have clearly planned out. Please forgive for how awful this is!

COMING UP NEXT: Katniss returns to District 12 and to the choice between Peeta and Gale.