The woods are oddly quiet. As if they sense my mood and don't want to disrupt me from deep thought. Not that my thoughts are deep. If anything, they are shallow. A little spiteful, and perhaps a bit wishful. But hardly deep.
My bow hangs from my hand as I walk slowly. I don't stalk through the woods today. Truthfully, I'm not in the mood to hunt. But with all the noise and excitement as the town gears up for the ceremony, I needed to get away. Not even Peeta could distract me today. He's caught up with last minute details with the cake and the pastries he made for the feast. He tried his best to converse when I showed up this morning, but it was clear his head was elsewhere. So I brought myself elsewhere, to the one place I knew no one would bother me.
Or so I thought. As I step over a fallen log and turn the corner to follow the worn path through the foliage, I stop short. My arm draws up out of reflex as my other arm reaches behind my shoulder for an arrow. I have the tail of the arrow notched and am starting to draw the bow by the time I recognize the silhouette standing between the trunks of the trees.
"Didn't expect to see you out here," I comment. My bow is slow to lower as I keep my eyes trained on him. I'm not entirely sure his presence is a welcomed one.
"What?" he asks, a mixture of disbelief and snark. "You going to shoot me?" His turns to face me squarely, exposing a larger target of his body.
I shrug my tense shoulders as much as they will move in my stance. I tease, "Haven't quite decided yet."
"Better be quick," he replies without missing a beat. "Your arm's likely to stiffen if you hold that pose much longer."
My bluff called, I lower my bow and return the arrow to the quiver. "What are you doing out here?" These aren't his woods anymore. Haven't been for a long time, and likely never will again. "Don't you have a million different things you should be doing right now?" I wonder how much the groom is expected to do in preparation for a wedding. Finnick's and Annie's was thrown together as a way to rally the rebels; it didn't have nearly the thought and planning that have gone into Gale's. I've never witnessed a fully orchestrated wedding. My curiosity grabs hold though I'd never want the same for myself. Even if I did, there's no way to accomplish it now. Just another freedom of life Snow and the Capitol stripped away.
"I'm sure I've got an earful waiting for me back in town." He leans against a tree and tosses a rock up into the air. Catching it mid fall, he tucks it away into the safety of his palm. "But I needed a break."
"The whole town needs a break. Your mother has planned the event of the century. Her newfound wealth suits her well."
"Of the century?" he asks with a disbelieving scoff. "More like a placeholder event to garner a little attention until you or Peeta do anything out of the ordinary and stir up a ruckus."
Why do we always jab at each other? When did we become so opposed to having a civil conversation without weighed words and bitter remarks weaved through them? Though his words aren't hostile, they aren't cordial either. Everything we say carries an edge, and a tense weight sits between us, refusing to budge.
"Yes, well," I decide that two can play his game, if that's the route he wants to take. "I'm just glad you finally stopped dating my doppelgangers. Though you'd better be sure, for Cressida's sake."
He tosses the rock again. This time, he makes no move to catch it. It clatters to a halt on the dirt between us. "Not everything is about you, Katniss." Though plainly spoken, his words bite with an undertone of malice. It longer fazes me like it should, like it used to.
"No, I'm sure it was purely coincidence," I say sarcastically. "But I'm glad for you. I hope you've found the happiness you've been chasing. And the answers you were looking for. With her," I clarify for no one's benefit.
"Oh, I'm sure you are full of good tidings. You've only ever wanted what was best for me."
The woods are too good for any response I could muster. I don't want to taint this place, the only place where we always seemed to sync. The one place where we could forget the horrors that waited on the other side of the fence. But now we're both angry and resentful, and it's too hard to try to reign those feelings back in and repress them.
"I never wanted to hurt you. I'm not the one who designed a trap to kill innocent people that you cared about. I never planned anything against you, Gale. I wanted you to be happy. That's all I ever wanted for you."
"Just so long as it wasn't with you."
I grind my teeth together to keep from screaming in frustration. I'm so tired of this same fight we always come back to. No matter how hard we try, we can't escape it. It is the thing that exists between us, a solid force repelling us from each other, indefinitely. "Congratulations, Gale. I wish you and Cressida the best." Not wanting to get sucked into the same argument, I leave it at that. Turning my back, I head back towards the town to check the snares I set earlier this week.
I refuse to let him get to me anymore. He can act the wounded victim all he wants, but he's not fooling me. He's pledging himself to someone else tomorrow. I'm not responsible for putting the pieces of Gale back together. He destroyed that responsibility when we stood in Snow's mansion and he couldn't give me an answer. I don't owe him that. I don't owe him anything, not anymore. Our debt settled in a plume of smoke and the smell of fire and flesh. Our friendship charred in the ashes, unable to be the phoenix to rise from the flames.
The snares are all empty, though one has been touched. I reset it and move back into the woods, deeper towards the lake. The cover of the trees comforts me, surrounding me in a protective cocoon.
He catches up to me later in the afternoon. Silently, he joins me. He doesn't attempt to say a word and I refuse to apologize for a single thing I said. We spend the rest of the afternoon hunting together, though the silence remains. It's the only way we know how to be with each other anymore. We spot a deer and Gale motions towards it, but I shake my head. Even if I felt like felling it, everyone in town is too busy with preparations to worry about prepping the meet. We stick with quail and the occasional rabbit. We only hunt enough to fill our bags, knowing we won't be needing to eat it for a couple of days at least. With the amount of baking Peeta has done the past week, I doubt I'll be eating anything other than bread and pastries for a solid week or two.
We walk back to town together. Our steps synchronize as we find a balance to the chaos in our hearts and heads. For the first time in a long time, I can make believe we're still friends. Following the old, familiar path out of the woods and through where the fence used to stand, I almost fool myself into believing that we can just go back to the way things were before I entered the Games. If only it were that easy. Not everything about our lives before the rebellion was terrible, and I miss Gale only second to one other.
Peeta sits outside the bakery, watching for me. As he sips from a tall glass of water, I wonder how long he's been waiting. I told him I was heading into the woods when I left this morning, and I didn't expect him to be done at the bakery for another few hours at the least. Though he's usually waiting for me outside to walk home with me now that he's found a suitable pair of hands to help out around the bakery, I figured this afternoon would be the exception. But there he stands, a question in his perked eyebrow as he raises his hand in greeting to Gale.
They say pleasantries quickly, then Gale heads off towards Hazelle's to figure out what else needs to be done. We part without words, but it feels better this way. I prefer the slightly tense air to parting with snide remarks and resentments. "Well," Peeta says as he assesses me, "at least you seem to have made it home in one piece. So it couldn't have been that terrible."
Slinging my bag off my shoulder, I push it into his chest. My shoulder's stiff and if he's going to rattle of Haymitch like remarks the entire way home the least he can do is carry the results of a long day. "Maybe it isn't hopeless after all," I admit reluctantly. And the more I talk as I fill him in on my day during our walk, the more I start to believe it, no matter how unlikely it seems. Perhaps the phoenix will one day rise again, a shadowed version of its former self.