Seasons of Wither, Chapter 7
Gale's eyes are locked on mine as he awaits some sort of confirmation of his assumption. My first instinct is to tell him no, to deny everything. It's a hunch, and there's no way that he can prove that I am pregnant. I could fabricate some sort of elaborate lie, tell him that I contracted something from the deer. Tell him that I am dying. Anything would be better than the truth.
But as my mind races, I realize that I am am unwittingly shaking my head and my mouth is gaping. I have been giving myself away the entire time I've been mentally concocting this lie.
"Katniss," he says lowly with a gentle look in his eyes.
I feel cornered. I don't know what to say to him, so I do what I always do in situations that I don't know how to handle: I run. I run as quickly away from Gale as my legs will carry me. But with my mind clouded the way that it is, I'm not as agile right now as I usually am, and my foot manages to find every single root on the forest floor as I flee. I'm literally tripping my way back up the hill, my destination the fence that borders District 12. I realize that just over 12 hours ago that I was fleeing from the same person in the opposite direction. The irony.
All I know is that I don't want to be here right now. All I want to do is find a place to hide, to cry, maybe to roll up and just die. But I don't get too far away before a pair of strong arms wrap around me and Gale pulls me back against his chest. His hold on me is strong enough to keep me from breaking free, but feels surprisingly gentle as his chin rests on my shoulder. "You can't run from this one, Catnip," he whispers into my ear before turning me to face him. I burst into tears instantly.
Gale's eyes are filled with worry as he goes to draw me into a hug, but my tightly closed fists push back hard against his chest as my body begins to tremble with sobs. "Katniss...Katniss, it's going to be okay," he tries to sooth.
"It is not going to be okay, Gale!" I roar. "Your brothers and sister are starving to death, all of the animals are dying off, and now I am pregnant!" It's the first time I've actually said the word myself, and it scares me. Before it was just an unspoken fear, but somehow by saying it, I've now made it all very real. The secret has been revealed, and now it is something that I have no choice but to deal with.
I'm still trying to wriggle free from Gale's dominating grasp as he tries desperately to calm me. He is so uncharacteristically composed about all of this, though I admit that my reaction to it all hasn't given him much of a choice in the matter. But there is still something about his demeanor that tells me maybe he has had his suspicions about my "sickness" all along.
I watch him close his eyes, pulling me tighter against him as my body finally gives in and allows him to draw me into his embrace. My fingers end up tangled tightly in the fabric of his shirt, my face buried deep within his chest as I cry all of the tears that had been pent up for the past several weeks. I can feel him inhale a large breath of air before heaving a sigh.
"I'm sorry," I finally sob into his chest. "I'm so sorry, Gale."
His hold on me tightens as I feel him bury his face in my hair.
"It's going to be okay, Catnip," he assures me again, though I can also detect an underlying uncertainty in his voice. "I swear that everything will be fine."
…
The morning passes by without us saying much to one another. Somehow, we've given up hunting and berry-picking for the day and just sit in our spot. We don't talk about it. I think that right now we are both just trying to absorb it all.
I sit back on my elbows, looking down over the rolling hills before us. I occasionally glance up to watch as Gale mindlessly carves away at the stick in his hand with his hunting knife. There seems to be something methodically settling about it for him. He grimaces a bit as he chips away at the bark, finally putting his knife down to look up at me.
"It happened two months ago," he suddenly says, and I sit up with a frown. "No...it was almost three months ago. Why didn't you tell me?" he finally asks me. "I don't understand why you didn't just tell me in the first place."
I stare at him blankly as he glowers. "You weren't going to tell me, where you?"
I fold my hands onto my lap as I stare down at them. He seems angry, but I guess he has a reason to. "I didn't want you to stress yourself over it. Things were hard enough the way it was."
Gale just shakes his head at me, because there is an obvious glitch in my reasoning. "You didn't think I would notice that you're pregnant? That you're suddenly carrying around a baby that looks like me? I know pregnant women can be irrational, but-"
"The baby won't survive," I interrupt him, and he looks shocked by my words. I instantly know what he thinks I intended to do. It's not an extremely uncommon thing for young ladies to do to themselves here in the starvation-riddled District 12 when they feel that they have no other choice. My mother had treated a couple gone wrong. I had even watched a young woman bleed to death on our kitchen table when I was still too young to understand what was happening. It wasn't until years later that I realized what she had really died from.
"No Gale, the famine," I quickly correct myself. "This baby...it won't carry to term. There's not enough for it to grow, to keep it alive. My mother's already watched a few women miscarry because of it. I didn't want to tell you because I didn't think it was necessary. I didn't want to worry you for no reason."
I watch him as he swallows hard, returning back to his whittling. "Your mother knows then?" he asks me.
"No. Well, I think that she knows, but it's nothing that I've confirmed."
His hands stop working away at the wood as he looks up at me in surprise. "She can help you though, Katniss," he points out. "She can keep you from losing the baby."
"I don't know," I admit. "The only cure for famine is food. There is no food right now, not enough anyways. Once a woman starts to miscarry, there's not really anything that can be done. Besides, I thought it would be best for everyone if I did."
"You thought that I wouldn't want this baby?" he asks me, a bit hurt at my assumption.
"Well, do you?" I ask him skeptically. "Do you really want another mouth to feed? Do you want to have a baby on the way when you're still of reaping age? Want me to have a baby to care for when I'm still of reaping age? Not to mention the fact that our families will be so disappointed in us, Gale. Do you really want them to know what we did?"
"I really don't care what they think about it," he snaps. "I never regretted it in the first place."
I sit silent for a moment, contemplating what he means. There is spite behind his words, spite directed towards me. Just when I think that we're about to start a long argument about it all, Gale puts down his knife and scoots forward, clasping my hands into his. Our eyes meet, and despite the obvious malice of his last statement, there is no anger evident in his eyes, only concern.
"I don't want you to be scared, because we can make this work," he tells me as his thumb gently caresses the back of my hand. "I'm going to work soon; we'll have more money then. You'll still have time to hunt, since they probably won't let you finish school with a baby. There's no need to either, because you shouldn't be down in the mines anyways."
"And you should?" I ask him.
"I don't have much of a choice in the matter. There's plenty of other things you can do. Do the washing like my mother does. Help your own with her apothecary business," he goes on as I chuckle sarcastically at the idea of myself getting over the gore involved of being a healer. "We can still hunt until you're too big to venture out into the woods. We'll kill what we can, and then I'll take up the slack myself. We can do this, Katniss. I know that you never wanted any of this, but it isn't the end as we know it."
I look into Gale's eyes, so serious and dedicated to his statement. He's prepared to give everything he has for this baby, while I have spent the past several weeks wishing it away. It's an obvious indication of the fact that he will make a much better parent than I ever could. That I lack greatly in the understanding and affection that he had learned by raising his own siblings.
"But, the reaping," I begin, realizing the day is only two weeks away. "How many times are you in?" I ask him.
"They won't pick me, Catnip-"
"How many, Gale?" I demand.
He sighs. "Forty-two," he says, and I grimace. "It'll be fine."
"It better, because I can't do this without you," I tell him, and his jaw clenches tightly as he nods.
"You won't have to."
"I don't want your family to suffer because of me," I go on. "I don't want Rory and Vick and Posy to go hungry because of something stupid and careless that I did."
Gale sighs as he sticks his knife back into the sheath on his belt. "I guess that you've forgotten that I had a part in this, too. That it was my idea in the first place to do it."
Now I can see the guilt in his eyes. He may have admitted that he didn't regret what we did, but it certainly hasn't stopped him from thinking of how much easier it would be if it had never happened. And of course I hadn't forgotten Gale's part in this. How on earth could I ever manage to forget? I don't tell him this though, because the words are too humiliating and awkward to say out loud.
"I still don't want anyone to suffer anymore than they already are. I don't think we should risk the lives of the kids because of one that hasn't even been born yet," I say. "Our families come first. If this baby makes it, then...well, we'll deal with it. No one suffers for what we did though, okay?"
"You're not going to lose the baby, Katniss," he states confidently. "I'm not going to say that this will be easy, but we've been through hard times before. When our fathers died, we still managed. One tiny baby isn't going to doom us all."
Gale seems so certain that everything is going to work out, so I have to ask him, "How do you know? I've been so sick, I haven't been able to keep anything down on top of the fact that there's just not enough to go around. This is the absolute worst case scenario for an expectant mother."
Gale looks at me seriously. "Genetics," he simply answers. "This baby is already like its mother. It has a strong will to survive. A need to stay alive. You've made it this far, Katniss. I'm going to see that nothing bad happens to either of you."
I feel my eyes begin to burn as Gale opens his arms for me. Without arguing, I scoot into his lap before he wraps them back around me. I feel a sense of relief to have finally shared this encumbrance, to be assured by the one person who matters that it will all work out in the end. As I close my eyes, leaning into his arms once again, I notice the faint scent of lilacs on his clothing that I had been too upset to recognize earlier. I try to ignore it until Gale takes my hands into his own.
"What happened to your knuckles?" he asks me, softly passing his fingertips over the hardened scabs on my hands.
I look up at him for a second before answering. "Lost my grip climbing a tree," I lie.
He emits a small chuckle before resting his chin on my head. "You know, you're going to have to stop climbing trees, Catnip. You're going to be a mother now."