A/N: I have absolutely no idea where this came from tonight. But I thankfully had the time to sit and write it. I can't promise another quick update, but I can tell you I have managed to fill in a few gaps that seemed to be preventing any forward motion in this story. Hopefully, I don't run into another unexpected canyon.
Chapter 8
Haymitch lets out a low whistle and looks to Peeta. "The more things change, the more they stay the same, huh kid?"
"I should probably go," Peeta says, his voice forlorn. "It was good to see you again." He motions to Johanna and Gale before turning to follow Katniss' path of retreat.
Gale forbids himself to watch Peeta leave. Instead, he focuses on the houses at at the far end of the cul-de-sac, his teeth clenched against the rage simmering from the heated exchange. He breathes in once, twice, three times before he settles enough to feel Johanna prodding his side.
"Here," she says softly, handing him his gun. She doesn't say anything more, but her eyes swim with sympathy and something that looks a lot like pity. Gale bites the inside of his cheek to keep from spitting misdirected anger at her.
He manages to fall into step behind Johanna and Haymitch, trying hard not to catch pieces of their conversation and failing.
"…doing really great. Bakery is hugely popular…"
"… so that part was true after all…"
"… Katniss is… Katniss. As you saw."
"Mmmm," Johanna hums in acknowledgement, halting in front of a house. She glances over the façade, turning to Gale and says, "Like you said the more things stay the same." She cocks an eyebrow at him. Gale scowls, grabbing the door knob and roughly shoving the door open. He doesn't bid Haymitch farewell, or even care that they probably are exchanging words about him. He doesn't even care that Johanna will probably storm in here to reprimand him for his bad behavior.
Underneath his synthetic suit, his skin itches for the woods. For the openness and the freedom. The house around him is confining, claustrophobic even. It makes him sweat.
Angrily, he tosses his weapons on the island counter where they clatter loudly against the granite. He doesn't hear Johanna's entrance as he stands staring out the back kitchen windows, trying to just breathe.
"Jesus, I hope the safeties were on. Or were you trying to finish what Katniss couldn't?" Johanna snips.
He can hear in her voice that she's looking to pick a fight and turns to meet her head on. The only way she knows how to deal with anything uncomfortable in the slightest, is to make it more uncomfortable. In the past, Gale learned how to be the cool level-headed one, and walk away, a fact that might surprise those who knew him well in District 12.
But his temper is beyond boiling and if she wants to dive into the deep end, she better be prepared for the rip tide of his anger.
"What she wouldn't, you mean," he practically snarls. "Fucking coward."
Johanna gapes at him, and if Gale hadn't spent the past five years in her presence, he would have missed the actual shock that registers briefly before melding into the mocking expression she levels him with now.
"No I meant couldn't," Johanna snaps back. She sets her own gun down with a lot more care than she does her next words. "What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"With me?!"
"Yes, with you! You mope around for years over this girl and then are so pissed that she doesn't want you to get hurt that you try to get her to shoot you?"
Gale scoffs, his tone acidic. "That she doesn't want me to get hurt? Right… that's it."
"Yes, that's exactly it," Johanna hisses. Gale shakes his head, but she presses on. "Are you telling me that the one person who knew Katniss' every move, her every thought, can't read between the lines of what just happened? That's exactly it, Gale."
"She shot me!"
"She missed!"
He wheels back around, practically spitting the words across the room at her.
"Why the hell does everyone keep saying that?! Katniss. Doesn't. Miss!"
Johanna crosses her arms, her face smug, and cocks her head at him as his words echo in the small space around them. The silence after their combined raised voices is deafening. She waits for his own words to sink in.
Gale blinks once, his shoulders sagging.
"You're right, so let's look at the facts. Katniss doesn't miss. She couldn't shoot you back in the Capitol when you asked," Johanna says, approaching him slowly, ticking them off on her fingers.
He wants to retreat but find that his feet seem glued to the tiled floor.
"…she can't shoot you now despite you asking again like such a gentleman…"
She stops right in front of him, and though she's staring up, he feels like the shorter of the two beneath the weight of her brown stare.
"And yet you're somehow convinced she wants you dead? She doesn't miss, but apparently you can."
Johanna barks a short caustic laugh that makes him almost jump out of his skin. She shakes her head and saunters back to the counter, retrieving her gun. She looks at him again with that disdainful pity.
"You two really are all sorts of tragic."
Gale can only watch as she leaves him to his thoughts.
Katniss thinks that Peeta should have come for her by now.
He always come to pick up her broken shattered pieces and judging from the clock on the wall, he's running late.
She watches the second hand tick forward resolutely. Just like the rest of the world, it seems to moving on in the face of her grief and consternation, leaving her behind in the past.
She grinds her teeth against the events of the last hour.
Johanna rocketing in, her sarcasm and lack of tact, a brutal but fresh breath of air in the stagnant air of the square. Haymitch, his presence unwanted and unnecessary but also needed. She doesn't understand that. Gale, sending her smiles to someone else and so sure of himself at first, then all acid and fire and spiteful the next.
Her teeth actually hurt as she clenches her jaw together tighter. The skin on her wrist still burns from his grasp. Her fingers shake as if remembering the panic and pain she felt holding out that gun. She closes her eyes against the sting of new tears, and then scrubs viciously at the backs of her eyelids when all she sees is his gray challenging stare.
The light streaming into the bedroom is blinding and she blinks, feeling a lone tear fall.
Where is Peeta?
Katniss stands, collecting herself with a heavy breath, and decides to go find him. She tries not to think that maybe he has tired of her despondence and can't find it in himself anymore to instill hope and happiness where it isn't wanted. Ironically, she finds herself hoping that she hasn't caused that much damage to him.
The cold water she splashes on her face is at once invigorating and jarring. But the routine makes her feel in control and like normalcy is within reach. She pats her face with the hand towel, rehangs it on the rack and looks at herself in the mirror. She shrugs it at her reflection. She's honestly looked worse before.
When she steps out on the landing, the house is quiet.
"Peeta?" she calls.
No one answers.
She makes her way down the stairs, listening for any hints of his whereabouts. The stillness of the house is telling and she makes her way to the front foyer, knowing what she will find when she gets there.
Peeta sits with his back to her, a palette in the crook of his left arm, a brush working quickly in his right hand. She can just see the edges of his painting from where she stands. The greens and yellows blend together, seeming to emit a soft glow wherever he alights his brush to the canvas. She creeps closer, recognizing this as a vignette, the image not stretching to the corners of the frame. At least she thinks that's the word.
She approaches slowly, not wanting to startle him, but treads heavily enough so he can hear her coming. His brush pauses for a fraction of a second, and she knows it's safe to speak.
When she sees the image hidden behind him, she suddenly doesn't know if she can.
Peeta drops his hand and stares at the two figures sitting almost silhouetted against a rising pale morning sun, the forest around them reflecting the nascent light of the day in a cacophony of spring colors. The figures, a boy and a girl, are dark in comparison, with dark hair and dark clothes, but a hint of their features are highlighted so that Katniss recognizes herself and Gale.
She swallows thickly.
"I've never really saw you together in the woods, but I like to imagine this is what it looked like back then," Peeta says. There's no jealousy in his words, just a wistful sort of tone. "Before well, everything."
She leans closer, catching the end of her braid as it swings dangerously close to the wet paint. She studies herself, and not for the first time, Katniss is in awe of Peeta's uncanny ability to capture likenesses with devastating accuracy. She and Gale stare at each other, not with animosity, but not entirely with friendliness either. There's tension simmering there, ever present and unspoken. She steps back before she gets scorched.
"How did you know I always sat on the right?" she whispers, not taking her eyes of the painting.
Peeta turns and looks at her. "You always did."
This does catch her attention and her brow scrunches at him, confused.
Peeta laughs a little at her obliviousness. "You always did," he repeats. "In the mess hall. In the hovercrafts. On the missions." He looks down at his palette, his blue eyes taking on a far off gaze, and Katniss wonders if he's slipping away from her into an attack. "Even in those propos. They showed me the one where you defended the hospital. Where you shot down those Capitol bombers." He smiles a little and she feels her breath release in careful relief. "You were always on his right. Gale was always on your left."
"I never noticed that," she says, feeling strangely disoriented.
"Well I'm not sure you guys were even aware you did it," Peeta tries to explain, as if this will soothe her. "I think you had been around each other for so long, it was just second nature. I even won a bet on it once when…" He trails off, unsure, when he sees her begin worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, her eyes back on the painting.
"Never mind," Peeta says. He dabs a larger flat brush in white paint and goes to start erasing the picture.
"Don't!"
Katniss doesn't know what makes her reach out and grab his arm to stop him destroying the vignette before her. She doesn't know what makes her care, but she just can't let him take this memory from her.
"Don't?" Peeta gapes at her. "You want me to keep it?"
She nods adamantly. Her heart beats wildly in her chest and she takes a steadying breath.
"Can you finish it?"
"Yeah," Peeta flounders, "yeah, I can finish it if you want."
She nods again, and he drops the flat brush, retrieving the smaller detail brush he had been using when she walked in. He dips the brush into a dark patch already mixed on his palette and goes to add to his work, but stops as Katniss leans in to watch.
"It's going to take a little while," he says softly.
"Oh right, sorry," she stammers.
She turns to go, pausing just briefly and glancing back to steal one final peak. Peeta works diligently on the painted Katniss' hair, his brush strokes deftly capturing the intricacies of her braid. Watching for one moment more, she then turns, leaving Peeta and the canvas behind.
Later that night, he comes to bed, his eyes tired but content like they always are after he finishes one of his masterpieces.
"It's done," he says.
"Thank you," she whispers.
She waits until he's fast asleep to see it again. Carefully sliding out of bed, she pads down the stairs in barefeet, pulling her nightgown close about her. When she slips into the front room, she freezes when she sees the canvas, sitting in the center of the room, bathed in the moonlight streaming in the front window. Katniss walks closer, sitting where Peeta sat most of the afternoon, and leans in to study his handiwork.
The whole image seems to shift in the light of the moon, and if she stares closely, she thinks she can see the soft breeze flutter the loose strands of her hair, snag the collar of Gale's shirt. She sees her painted eyes holding Gale's painted gaze, the expression as intent but now somewhat softer than before. Trusting. At ease.
Katniss doesn't know how long she sits there, her eyes flicking back and forth, taking in every inch of that expression, but it's for a time. Her back begins to ache, and her toes have gone numb from how she's curled them into the carpet. She doesn't feel any of that discomfort.
All she feels is an overwhelming sadness.
~Fin