People still tell me I should forgive Gale like I've forgiven Beetee so many years ago. But I'm a firm believer that forgiveness isn't something you force out of people: it happens or it doesn't.
Some say that the ability to forgive is the finest quality a person can have; others say not possessing it makes me a bad person. Too bad; I never claimed to be a good one. Peeta, for instance, is a forgiver. It comes easily for him, but he understands my point of view.
One day, sixteen years ago, Hazelle came to our house in tears: Gale Hawthorne had been involved in a serious car crash at the Capitol and he wasn't expected to live for another day. Out of pity for the Hawthornes and for Gale himself, we fetched a private jet for the whole clan to see him one last time.
Peeta kept insisting we should go as well. We joined the others at the last minute; it was a chance for me to see my sister Ella, who was in her internship as a doctor at that same hospital.
Gale's condition turned out not to be so serious. His body was seriously damaged, he had to learn to walk again, but he lived.
I was enraged upon receiving the invitation to the wedding, six months later. Gale was forty five years old then, and Ella was twenty years younger. It was too sick to be true. Peeta and I had fed Ella bottles as a baby; we had changed her diapers, yet Gale was trying to take the last of my sisters away from me again. To me, it seemed some kind of sick revenge. A part of me wondered if he could still be obsessing over me twenty five years after the war.
I tried to stop it. I tried to reason with Ella. In the end, I even told her my story with Gale and Prim. She cried a lot, but nothing I could say would make her give him up. She was very certain of their relationship. When I talked to Gale, though, I realized he had no idea I even had a living sister. Her name, Ella Hendricks, doesn't make anyone think we are connected, and I had been careful to keep her out of the spotlight all those years.
According to him, what caught his attention was how intriguing she was, how familiar she seemed. He said her face had been the first he had seen when he woke up after the crash. She was kind and lively and took good care of him. "Seeing her made me feel in peace," he concluded. "She felt like home."
No wonder she did.
But, somehow, Gale's words were what finally healed me.
We could have taken over the world together, Prim, Peeta and I. But Prim died at thirteen and she'll be that age forever. She won't be a doctor, she will have no children of her own, no talks with her nephews and nieces. Nothing is left of her. She'll be gone when I'm gone.
Some days, that knowledge made the pain too much to bear. Who knows what I would have done without Peeta by my side. But on that day, upon hearing Gale's words, I immediately recalled the moment of the explosion at the Capitol and something made sense to me.
Prim didn't die alone. She spent her last moments of life doing what she loved. In her last seconds in this world, she was looking at me as I came to her.
She died looking at home.
From that day on I didn't suffer anymore.
And in the end, I believed Gale's intentions. He and Ella are good for each other. She's calm and lively, while he's fiery and determined. She brings out the best in him, while I used to bring the worst. They've been happy for fifteen years with their son, Gael.
Still, I didn't forgive Gale. Our relationship was still awkward, at best.
When President Paylor had to find a successor for the most recent election, her party considered Thom the best candidate. But he's happy as the mayor of district Twelve and no one could convince him to move to the Capitol.
Gale was considered instead.
Traditionally, the Mellarks are seen as the biggest source of political support in Panem. The candidate endorsed by Peeta and me has always unequivocally won the election. When Gale asked us for our support, we didn't answer right away. We wouldn't support him just because he is our brother-in-law and our children love him; he has a lot of flaws to be considered, too.
More than a week passed before we made a decision. One weekend, out of the blue, our son Dan made us watch the film the late Plutarch Heavensbee once made about Gale Hawthorne. We were heartbroken to watch, for the first time, the graphic reconstruction of the bombing of district Twelve, the way Gale regrouped the survivors and convinced them to follow him to the questionable safety of the woods and district Thirteen.
Peeta and I weren't in district Twelve at the time, so we never had a chance to know how exactly it had happened, but my mother, Thom and Delly were in tears when they said it was accurate. I had never thought of Gale as a war hero before. On that same night, we called him and told him he had our support.
It was yet another tiring campaign, touring the districts, surrounded by our now adult children. However, when Ella asked if it all meant I had finally forgiven Gale, I replied:
"I don't forgive, I move on."
On the day Gale Hawthorne takes office as the President of Panem, he chooses to walk to the big stone I had once seen when we came to Enobaria's funeral decades ago. This is the stone that marks the mass grave of the children killed by Coin's bombs. The place where Prim is buried.
Gale walks to the stone in front of the television cameras and deposits a bucket of flowers there, primroses from our garden in district Twelve which my mother sent to him at his request.
My sister Ella, my mother and I are called to come closer. I won't let go of Peeta's hand as we follow Gale's footsteps. Peeta is asked to help Gale uncover a new statue. We knew nothing about this, although by the size it is a prominent and majestic monument.
They name it the Freedom Statue. It's a bronze girl with pigtails, tucking in her shirt. I come closer, shaking, and touch the inscription to regain my balance. It reads "Primrose Everdeen, the girl who started a revolution."
All cameras point to me, and I see my own face on every screen. That's all I can do not to burst out crying.
It's the last day at the Capitol before we go back home. Our oldest children are already back in Twelve, because they have to take care of their own families. We're fifty-eight years old, and we're now parents and grandparents.
It seems there's a tendency between the children of victors to marry each other. Brandi always says it's because us victors are crazy and only our children can understand each other. We've tried our best; I hope she's kidding.
Still, their tendency is to end up together. Of the seven children of the remaining victors, Brandi Abernathy married Finn Odair, and our daughter Rye became Jameson Abernathy's second wife. Our son, Dan, is the only exception.
Both Rye and Dan live in the two houses which were given to Peeta and I in Victor's Village after we won the Hunger Games. Peeta and I have moved to the lake house a long time ago, although we still have our house above the bakery whenever we need to be in town.
Only our youngest daughter, Willow, lives here at the Capitol. She's an archer, an Olympic medalist who has travelled the whole world in competition. Currently, she spends her days at the old Training Center, which is now a sports center under the same name. I absolutely hate it that she's there every day, but we've finally accepted her invitation to come and spend the day there.
Outside, the Training Center is still frozen in time, although everything around it has changed. I feel chills as I approach the place: this is the first time I know I'm getting out alive, but it doesn't make it any easier.
I was here for two editions of the Hunger Games as a tribute from district Twelve. The first time, I had only a small hope that I could get out. The second, I was certain I wouldn't, because I had decided I'd give my life to keep Peeta alive. And then, after I killed Alma Coin, I was imprisoned here, thinking the whole time that I would be sentenced to death. That was when I cared the least, because Prim and Peeta were lost to me.
Still, I got out.
Peeta and I visit the underground gymnasium and take a look at the training stations. Chilling as the memories should be, we don't have a lot of time to think about them because all the athletes are thrilled to see us. They make us take dozens of pictures with them, so they can show their family and friends they met the star-crossed lovers of district Twelve. Our Games are the most famous right now and they pass at the TV almost every year, so they all know our story, but I wonder how everyone recognizes our faces forty years older.
"We have lunch at one," says Willow when the trainer summons them. "There's a dining room attached to the gym, if you want to join us. But we'll still have dinner together if you don't want to stay here for that long."
"What do you think?" says Peeta as our daughter leaves before we can give her an answer. "We'll have the whole day to ourselves."
The roof – that's what we're both thinking.
We order a bunch of food, grab some blankets, and head up to the roof for a daylong picnic in the flower garden that tinkles with wind chimes. We eat. We lie in the sun. We throw an apple outside, and it falls on the street. There's no force field surrounding the roof anymore.
No one comes to look for us all day. I lie with my head on my husband's lap while he fiddles with my hair.
"Are you still practicing your knots after all this time?" I tease him.
He chuckles and his hands go still. "Do you remember the last time we were here? I wished I could freeze the moment and live in it forever," he says faintly.
I smile. I remember that, and the smile in his voice, the same voice that's unchanged decades later. I wonder how I didn't brush him off then, because those declarations always made me feel so awkward and guilty, but the answer is easy. I wanted it too. "And I allowed it," I reply.
His fingers go back to my hair. "You did," he smiles. "It's almost unbelievable to be here again. Everything has remained almost unchanged here. It still seems we're in that Era."
"Things changed a lot, in my opinion," I say. "We won. We've been living in that moment for forty years now."
His hands pause, as if he's coming to the same realization.
"I think it's this rooftop," he says. "Every wish becomes true here."
"Really?" I laugh.
"Yes," he replies, very serious. "This is a place where I only asked for impossible things, and they all happened as I asked."
"Oh," I say. "What else did you ask for?"
"In the first Hunger Games," he replies promptly. "I asked for us both to go home, although it was impossible."
I smile as we watch the sunset. It's a spectacular yellow and orange blaze behind the skyline of the Capitol.
"I think we should go now," he says, looking almost sad. "Willow must be looking for us."
"Of course," I reply, standing up and preparing to leave. "I just wish we could stay here until bedtime. Like on that day, do you remember? And it would be fun to… to watch the city lights."
He smiles. "We can come back whenever you want."
But I don't think we will. We don't want to revive the bad memories that are attached to this place.
Willow finds us as we get to the elevator lobby. "I've been looking for you everywhere!" she says, her blonde hair wet after training, pretending to chastise us with her sparkling blue eyes. "Axel is waiting for us at the park."
Johanna's boy will be my son-in-law one day. He and Willow have known each other for their entire lives, but somehow they connected in a new, different way when Willow came to train and study at the Capitol. Axel is a teacher at the Capitol University so, in the beginning, they tried to hide it. Also, he was thirty-eight years old, while she was only eighteen. Now, almost two years later, they live together and are generally accepted as a couple.
We don't particularly approve the age difference, but we know he is a great man who loves our girl dearly. It's good to know they're taking care of each other while we live so far away.
Johanna is fine; Annie is living with her in district Seven so that Brandi, Finn and their children have some privacy. We still spend quite some time with the two of them.
Beetee has moved into a retirement home and we haven't seen him for a couple of years now. And Haymitch and Lana are fine, still bickering about something new every day, then making up immediately.
As we enter the car, Peeta proudly announces, "I made one last wish at the rooftop."
"What was that?" I ask.
"You said we're living in this moment for forty years," he states. "So I asked for forty more."
"Another forty years?" I chuckle. "We'll have to live almost a hundred years for that to be true!"
"Would it be that bad?" he asks in mock offense, holding my hand carefully. "It's not that difficult. Beetee is almost there."
I'm about to answer it's not that easy either. That our grandparents didn't get past sixty. That it will be bad for him, to live with this grumpy wife for so long. But at the last second I sigh and understand that this part of me will always be here. The part that avoids thinking that things will be fine. It was here as a girl, it's here as a woman and I'm sure it will be here when I'm an old lady. But I feel so warm and relaxed and certain it will happen exactly as Peeta says, so I just let the word slip out. "Okay."
I can hear the smile in his voice. "Then you'll allow it?"
And my smile says I will.
Thank you so much for reading this story! This is the first time I write in more than a decade, and also the first time I write in English. My initial goal was to write only 3 or 4 chapters and try to find someone to continue it, so this is huge to me.
Thank you for all your support, comments and kudos!
If you managed to get this far, you'll probably enjoy my other Everlark story, A quiet life beyond the sea. It's currently on chapter 11 (I'm working on the next chapter) and I'm absolutely in love with it.