Hazelle sits on a Mossy patch of forest floor, watching the people around her. Disbelief and exhaustion still overwhelm most of them. She can't even be sure that she's recovered. They have been through a terrible night, but today Hazelle is only grateful for who her son has become, proud for the leadership he has shown in these last few hours.
Without Gale's hunting, would he have been awake to see the snare?
What would have happened to her family if he had been sleeping? Would they have gotten out in time? He had been keeping vigil, staying up not just to watch Katniss - she knew it was hard for him to see her in the arena again, let alone watching her with Peeta. Gale also needed to see what snare the victor Beetee was laying for their enemies in the arena. He had a mind for puzzles that that he channeled into the snares that had, until recently, kept his family fed. Hazelle had been surprised by her son's interest in the district three victor, but he must have seen something in Beetee and his snares.
Without Gale's obsession with the evils of the Capitol, would he have have felt danger coming when the t.v. went black last night?
She'd always felt he spent too much time on things they couldn't change. Having spent so much time consumed by the myriad of ways Snow enforced his tyranny, somehow Gale seemed to have developed a sense of how the Capitol worked. Seeing Katniss entangled into their twisted designs had only focused his attention on them further.
Without his experience in the mines, could he have rallied those men to tear down the fence?
He'd sent the family ahead to the meadow as he went back for others. The crowd had formed in the meadow, men and women and children, many in their nightclothes. In that kind of gathering, their panicked fear multiplied as they watched firebombs destroy their homes, as they pushed against each other in the night. Gale didn't think like the others, didn't see the fence itself as a barrier, only the electricity that ran through it no more. He had been the one to call on his friends, on men he knew from the mines, on Thom and Elliot and all the others. Together they had pulled down that chain link fence that had imprisoned them for so long, opening the gates to the frantic mob that pushed their way out of the district and into the unfamiliar woods. Those woods, so beautiful and yet so threatening, for those who'd never crossed into them. Even for Hazelle, it had been a long long time ago, before Gale was born, that she'd last crossed that fence.
Without his knowledge of the woods, could he have led the survivors to this lake?
Hazelle hadn't even known it was here, never heard about it from Gale. Yet here they were, worn and weary, burned and blistered, but alive. Beyond the little cabin, she saw Rory and Posy, picking berries where Gale had shown them. Looking over the scattered crowd, only a fraction of the district had made it, and almost all from the Seam, from the looks of it. Hardly a blond among them, other than the Everdeens.
Without his love for Katniss, would they have a healer with them to tend their burns?
She knew that was the first place Gale had gone. He'd gone all the way to the Victors Village, risking everything as he ran almost the entire length of the district as the firebombs rained down, to save Katniss' family. To save them for her. She may be the one in the clutches of the Capitol, but for him that meant it was his job to keep her family safe. Hazelle shuddered to think what could have happened to her eldest boy. And now, the Everdeens are kept so busy, the only ones here who can ease the pain of the burned and injured.
Soon they will need to find food. They will need to share whatever meager resources they have, and think about how they will survive in the wilderness. And Hazelle knows that Gale will be needed. But for now, she gently strokes his hair and lets him sleep.