Chapter 6: I Release You
It is the following evening, and Gale and I are sitting on the beach, looking out at the sunset dipping below the outline of the Cornucopia in the near distance. It has been a whirlwind thirty-six hours.
I had been woken up by the arrival of a sponsor gift sometime during the night, followed by a mysterious set of chimes. A fog had then come over my allies and me, one that turned out to be toxic, forcing us to flee through the jungle. Mags…. She had sacrificed herself for Finnick to help get Gale and me out.
Then the monkeys had attacked us; Gale and I firing a flurry of arrows. I had watched my husband nearly die from a bite at the hands of that mutt, only for the other Morphling to intervene. Making a break for the beach, we had held her as she died in the surf. Gale had been clearly moved, but hadn't spoken about it.
This morning, things had taken a turn when Johanna appeared with Wiress and Beetee in tow. The woman from 7 had been thrilled to see us, to the point that she actually kissed my husband full on the mouth in greeting, right in front of me! Our alliances had merged into one, though I think Johanna and I could mutually agree that neither of us at least had been happy about it. Apart from kissing my husband, Johanna had further annoyed me by acting short with Wiress; when I'd attacked her for it, she had berated me.
In the end, though, my instincts about the pair from Three were proven right, when Wiress solved the riddle to the arena: it's a clock, with a new danger every hour but they only stay within their own wedge. Our band of six had gone to the Cornucopia Island to regroup, and try to map out what we knew.
That was when the Careers had attacked us.
I shot Gloss dead, but not before Wiress had been knifed, and Johanna actually defended me by cleaving Cashmere's Capitol-altered breasts in half. Brutus and Enobaria had gone for my husband and me, but we drove them off and had been ready to give chase, pursue them to the edge of the arena, when the whole damn island started to spin.
Then I had heard my sister scream.
Taking off into the trees in a panic, I had heard more screams: from my husband. From my mother. My mother-in-law. From….. Peeta? All had viscerally affected me until I was on the ground in the fetal position, screaming and rocking back and forth by the time the cruel hour was up.
Now, we are back at the beach, five of the Final Eight and Beetee has just laid out an ingenious plan for getting rid of the Careers.
It's clever, all right. But what happens if it does work?
"I think it's time we clear out," I tell my husband.
"The old man's plan is gonna work."
"I think so too, but once District 2 is dead, we both know what happens next. I…. I don't want to be the one who shoots first." Last year, we had never been confronted with the scenario of needing to kill an ally, but now…. there are three of them, and I care for them. ….OK, I don't care for Johanna – I won't have any qualms about killing her, and that's even without her hitting on my husband. But Beetee and Finnick…. Beetee won't make it much farther, but Finnick….
"What if they don't either? What if all of us refuse to shoot first?"
"We might still end up dead," I point out bitterly.
"Maybe not. It worked for us last time."
I bark out a humorless, bitter chuckle. "They're not gonna make that same mistake again, Gale: you know and I know there's only one person walking out of here, and it's gonna be one of us." A lump comes to my throat as I say it, but it has to be said.
We sit in companionable silence for a moment, having already achieved that intimacy between couples of holding a conversation with no words, if and when none are needed. Gale finally speaks:
"Catnip, honey, I…. I don't know what kind of deals you made with Abernathy, but he made me promises too."
He lifts a chain from around his neck, and a golden medallion catches the light of the dying sun. It's his district token, apparently; I had seen Effie give it to him during Training, but that time had been so hectic, that I hadn't given much thought to it.
"We always said one of us, if we won, should get home alive to take care of our families," Gale is saying. He holds the medallion out to me. "That person should be you."
His thumb slides along the catch, and I realize it is more than just a medallion – it is a locket. Taking it, I expect to look inside and see a picture – people tend to put pictures of loved ones in lockets. I expect to see a photograph of my family, or maybe his….
…. So I gawp when I now see a picture of Peeta Mellark staring back at me.
Why would Gale have a picture of our personal trainer in his locket? The weirdness of it makes me frown, until I consider that…. maybe Peeta's picture was meant for me.
My eyes prick with tears as I realize what Gale is really telling me: he's letting me go. He's giving me permission to move on, to go home if I win and find, be with, love someone else. I feel an odd pink rise to my cheeks and I cradle the locket close to my chest. I don't want the Capitol to see this. I'm mortified enough that Gale has seen…. What? Has he suspected some sort of conflict within me? Did he see something in the way I acted around Peeta during our informal training? I don't think – no, I know – that I have never given my husband any cause to believe I've been unfaithful or strayed. Or did he hear Peeta's cries for me, manufactured by the jabberjays, and seen how viscerally I reacted to him being hurt, almost as viscerally as I came apart while listening to my own husband's agonized cries.
I lift my eyes to Gale, in shock. "I…. I…. What about you?"
Gale grins grimly, as if he is resigned to his fate.
"Your family needs you!" I cry to him.
"Your family needs you more," Gale counters. "Rory and Vick will be grown before long. They can hunt; you could teach them. Posy will have my mother. Nobody really needs me."
I gaze at him. "….. I do. I need you."
He starts to open his mouth to voice some kind of denial, and I lunge forward and kiss him hard before I can.
As our lips move back and forth, slanting with an easy give and take, I think back to our wedding kiss in the cave. Like that kiss, this kiss is a kiss that fuels me, burns me, makes me want another.
As I swing myself into Gale's lap, straddling his hips and deepening the kiss, I dreamily think that I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.
Johanna ruins the moment by catcalling to us to get ready; we'll have to move out soon if we want to implement Beetee's plan. Rising up languidly out of Gale's lap, I help him to his feet.
We're walking back to join the others when I realize I'm still carrying his medallion locket. Without thinking about it too much, I close the clasp shut and string it around my neck, where it settles just over my breasts, next to my mockingjay pin, directly over my heart.
There is a giant lightning tree in the center of the arena, which we think burns up with plasma from a lightning strike to signal noon and midnight each day. Examining it, Beetee declares it an impressive conductor – whatever that means – and proceeds to wind a coil of wire around the trunk. The wire itself is a mystery – Johanna claims the old man risked taking a knife in the back at the Cornucopia to get it.
Beeetee tells Johanna and me that he will be dispatching us girls with whatever wire is left down to the water, as we'd previously discussed. He seems confident that the wire will react to the lightning just as he says it will.
However, before Johanna and I can make this most dangerous of Midnight Runs, all hell breaks loose.
The sound of a cannon firing is all that alerts us before Brutus and Enobaria are suddenly bursting out of the undergrowth and setting themselves upon us. The Final Eight – well, now Final Seven is a wild free-for-all. I am firing arrows without giving too much distinction to ally or adversary, not remembering who the real enemy is.
Beetee is thrown into the forcefield. Johanna manages to wound Enobaria before Brutus retaliates and crushes the lumberjack's skull. With a roar of anger, Gale avenges Johanna by tackling Brutus and scrabbling on the ground in a wrestling match to kill. I keep my arrow trained on the men, ready to make a move if I have to, while Finnick engages Enobaria. There is a roar, and then the CRACK of someone's neck being snapped like a twig, and my husband's eyes catch the moonlight, lifting his head, winded but triumphant.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Wait – four cannons? Gale and I barely have time to glance at each other before a rapid Enobaria is screaming and lunging for my husband, taking him down in a flying tackle. I see fangs catch the moonlight, and then hear Gale's bellow of agony.
"NO!" I cry, and I send an arrow bulleting straight into Enobaria's temple. She collapses.
BOOM.
Kicking Enobaria's corpse aside with my boot so that she rolls off of him, I tearfully kneel in the grass and gather my husband in my arms, cradling his head in my lap. Blood is coating his neck: Enobaria tried to rip his throat out – her signature move – and mostly succeeded.
"Cat-nip….." Gale glugs. He is choking on his own blood and I whimper, allowing my tears to fall on his face like sweet rain. "Be…. happy. No matter what happens, I need for you to be happy, Catnip. Whatever decisions you make in your life, I promise I will support any decision that you make."
I nod dumbly. Lowering my face to his, I press my lips to his softly, kissing him goodbye tenderly. Gale caresses my face, smile sad and also strangely peaceful, his dark eyes brimming with love.
I choke down a sob. "I love you!" I whisper breathlessly, nuzzling my face into the hard planes of his chest.
I feel the life leave him, and then the final cannon fires. As I throw myself prostrate over him and weep over my husband's body, Claudius Templesmith announces my Victory:
"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the winner of the 75th Annual Hunger Games, the Third Quarter Quell: Katniss Everdeen, of District 12! I give you…. the Victor of Victors!"