fic: i'm the mess (you'd wear with pride)
And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.
- - Ali Smith, girl meets boy: the myth of iphis.
*
He’s nine and they’ve had a good day today. He knows this because his father is home early and looking less harangued than usual and his eyes are bright.
It’s a good day in terms of food, too. For the first time in a long time, there are enough loaves on the table to fill everyone’s bellies and they still have food left over and Rory and his father are actually discussing what to do with extra food.
They ask him, too, at one point. They turn to him and ask his opinion but he isn’t listening anymore. His mind vaguely registers the sounds of laughter, the clinking of plates and glasses, the slurps as everyone licks syrup off their wrists. They’re not happy, not by a long shot, because there’s an electric fence and too few things to eat and staying alive through the day is a struggle.
Nevertheless.
He thinks they’re dangerously close to being content. It’s enough.
*
Gale will not know this:
“Maysilee Donner,” his father had sighed once and pushed around the remnants of alcohol in his glass. “God, but she had balls.”
Hazelle had laughed and leaned forward affectionately to muss up his hair a little bit. “Would you have married her then, if she had made it back?” Her eyes had been too calm, too self-assured, and he had looked at her, his Hazelle and found herself falling in love again, falling in love still.
“Of course not, honey,” he coos, and he is only half-pretending. “She was all gutsy and wiry and the epitome of tragedy from the beginning but she was never you. You, I took one look at and I knew who I wanted to marry.
Hazelle had blushed as he pulled her closer to drape an arm around her shoulder. Always had a way with the words, he did.
There’s a beat of silence before she opens her mouth again. “Didn’t she have a friend, though?” she asks, and gets a faraway look on her face like she’s trying to remember. “I think she was beautiful, too. You know, the one who got her songbird?”
His father had scoffed. “Her? She ran off with a coal miner.”
Hazelle had laughed again, long and true. “So did I,” she had murmured into his shoulder. “So did I.”
Gale will not know this but this will have already happened.
*
The thing is, Madge had been a girl long before she became the Mayor’s Daughter. They had known each other less formally, when they didn’t quite comprehend that there was a difference, a wedge between them.
“Your pin’s pretty,” he says in the playground, when he sees her sitting alone on the grass after school is finished.
She looks up and smiles at him, as if genuinely confused whether he means it or not. He feels a sudden urge to stick out his tongue and say of course it’s pretty, stupid but he is all of ten, and he has more restraint.
“Thank you,” she says, fingering the mockingjay on her chest. She had been a girl, then.
“Do you want to walk home together?” he inquires, even though he doesn't yet know which part of the district she lives in.
She shrugs and picks up her bag. He vaguely registers that she’s too young to be carrying around a bag that heavy, but it’s the district and they all grow up too fast, too soon.
“Sure,” she says. “I didn't particularly want to go home right after. It’s too…much sometimes, you know?” She looks up at him with wide eyes, and he nods because he does know that. That’s why he has the woods.
“What do you do when it’s too much?”
She makes a vague gesture with her hands. “Sit and wait out the feeling?” she intones, but she’s only half-joking.
When he doesn't respond, she speaks again. “You should try it. With me.”
She has a pinched look on her face, as if she’s deciding if she should stomp her foot right now, as if she can understand that he’s vaguely mocking her. She’s not pretty, he decides, not with the way her hair is flying all over the place and her knees are scratched and have grass stuck to them and her shoulder is tilted to one side from the weight of the bag.
He grins.
*
“Maybe there will be enough game for a fresh loaf tomorrow,” he smiles up at his mother. They are sitting in a circle on the floor, talking about his father’s birthday the next day. Last year, they could only afford stale bread but his snares are getting better every day, he’s been putting more and more of practice in it lately, and he’s pretty confident of getting a good kill.
“We’ll make it good,” Hazelle assures him, and gets up to get another round of tea.
Vick climbs up on his lap and he automatically runs a finger through his hair. “We’ll make it good,” he echoes his mother, murmuring the words softly into Vick’s hair.
“Come on,” Hazelle says a few minutes later, coming into the room with fresh glasses of piping hot tea. She sits down and strokes her rapidly swelling belly through her dress. “Let’s practice that happy birthday song we made up the other day. Maybe your brother can even get a few mockingjays to pick up the tune tomorrow. Won’t that be a nice surprise?”
He ruffles Vick’s hair again and starts the tune.
*
It is scientifically impossible to exist in two different places at the same time. Even in the Capitol, where a nick of the knife and the press of a button can achieve most anything, this remains impossible.
However let’s imagine, just for a second, that it were possible.
If it were, if it had been possible for Gale to be in two places at once, he would have seen this:
The canaries are leading the way as a large group of miners - including his father - make their way out of the elevators and into the lower level of the basement. They work quietly for a while, the silence pierced occasionally by the song of the songbirds. After a while, suddenly, they stop.
Something is wrong, they can all feel it immediately. The air is suddenly heavy with a pungent smell , and its suffocating and there’s not enough oxygen, not for all of them.
And then, there’s an explosion. The official reports will say that it was coal dust, that the accident is an unfortunate side-effect of a risky occupation, that the explosion was caused by spontaneous combustion of the coal dust.
It will not matter anyway, because there’s an explosion.
*
And Gale?
He had been swinging his little brother around as they all practice singing happy birthday, because they all felt the need to be perfect for daddy’s special day. He had been smiling so much his eyes had crinkled at the corner, he had been laughing, laughing, laughing -
There had been a knock on the door and too many voices outside-
They had all been on fire, then.
*
This will be important later, but at the time, she is a minor distraction, barely a blip on his radar.
“That’s dangerous,” he says, stealthily coming up behind a girl with an elaborate braid and a piss-poor imitation of a snare in one hand as she examines his trap.
She jumps several feet high and turns around. He smiles and shakes his head to himself. This girl will never make it out in the woods, he thinks. He thinks he vaguely recognizes her from somewhere, but it’s too hazy.
“What’s your name?” he asks as he frees the rabbit and very distinctly doesn't look at her protruding cheekbones and hollow cheeks. He’s got a family to feed, he can’t afford to give away free game to every girl who ventures out in the woods.
“Catnip,” she whispers and it’s the closest he’s come to laughing lately.
“Well, Catnip, stealing’s punishable by death, or hadn't you heard?”
She scowls. “Katniss,” she corrects him. “And I wasn't stealing it. I just wanted to look at your snare. Mine never catch anything."
He frowns at her. “So where’d you get the squirrel?”
“I shot it,” she declares, sounding just a little proud, and displays her bow.
Well, Catnip, he thinks as he raises his eyebrows , tell me more. He leans forward.
*
In his dreams, he doesn’t have to sign up for tesserae to barely feed his family.
In his dreams, his father is still alive because there had never been any mining accident. The canaries, the songbirds have sung all through the day and then he had come back home, tired and exhausted and dripping with sweat, but with a shine in his eyes that only comes from having the satisfaction of earning one’s bread after a day of hard labor.
In his dreams, he is leading a rebellion. He isn't the one climbing on the podium of the Justice Building and saying things like we are the people and ‘til death and we will rise stronger but he’s leading the rebellion, all the same. He’s at the front-line as they travel to the Capitol, and then the Districts are behind him and following his lead and they are storming the Capitol and stopping the rich people with their bright clothes right on their tracks. They’re storming in, and really, the hint of fear on Snow’s face is a sight of sore eyes as he stands and shouts, screams orders of capture and treason but they are outnumbering the Peacekeepers by the dozen and the adrenaline is rising amongst the District. There is a brief flash of fear on Snow’s face when he approaches with a knife, the steel blade glinting in the unrelenting sun of the smoke-free environment of the Capitol.
“President,” he says, and takes a step forward.
Snow’s eyes widen for another moment, and he tries to take a step back and maybe his life is flashing in front of his eyes but who can tell really?
“Gale Hawthorne of District 12,” he introduces himself politely, and sinks the knife in Snow’s stomach.
*
In his dreams, in his dreams, in his dreams -
And then he wakes up.
Goddamn.
*
“I had a dream you were dying,” he says, the next time they are walking back from the woods. It’s been a good day, they have enough game to sell at the Hob, and he is breathing a little lighter knowing that they will have relatively full bellies for at least a week.
Katniss cocks her head up to look at him.
“It was one of those dreams,” he shrugs. “The ones where you wake up and think it’s real for a second. I dreamt that you were dying right out here in the woods. They had activated the fence again and there were these new Peacekeepers standing guard by the time we were coming back with game. We saw them and started running back out, and we were pretty fast too. I remember because you stumbled once on a patch of leaves and I had to grasp your hand and drag you away so that we didn't lose momentum. But we were too late, one of the Peacekeepers had fired a bullet of sorts, and I looked back and yelled for you to duck, but it was too late. I could do absolutely nothing but watch as the silver bullet entered your chest. A second later, I saw you stumble to the ground and blood started seeping out of the wound where the bullet entered you. I tried, Katniss, I swear I tried to staunch the bleeding, tore off pieces of cloth to press over your wound, tried to find moss leaves, but nothing improved and then you started coughing and gasping and then, slowly, you stopped fighting and closed your eyes. I tried to scream at you to hold on, just a little longer, and then I woke up."
He turns around to look at Katniss and she’s smiling. Something is not right, he thinks, but there is a brightness in her eyes that he can’t look away from and in that moment, he fears that he’s revealed too little, too much.
“You were there?” Katniss asks, looking up to him, looking incredibly young and child-like and he remembers that after all, she is just a kid. “You were there, right?” she asks again, still smiling far too brightly.
He tucks a stray strand of hair into her braid. “Yes.”
She’s still smiling and he doesn't know why he can suddenly feel his heart beating in his throat.
“What?”
“That means I wasn't dying alone,” she says simply, and laces her fingers through his.
*
He will learn this far too late for it to make any difference, but he will learn it nonetheless. It’s surreal; he is used to being the one who teaches the tough lessons of life, the one who learns that this is all shit purely by experience. But like all good things in life, he finds this out too late.
So, you see:
Gale had loved Katniss first. He had loved Madge first too, loved her in the winter and in the snow and in the autumn when the leaves would get stuck between the knots at the back of her head that she could never brush out. He had hated Madge first, too, hated her the way he had come to hate anyone who didn't need to sign up for tessarae, who didn't need to wonder if every meal were their last, who could think of birds as birds and not kill. He had hated her the way he loved her too, because he had been all of thirteen, damn it, and what is love when you have to bury your father and you don’t have a roof over your head.
But, we are deviating from the point.
Gale had loved Katniss first.
By no means does that mean that Gale had loved Katniss last, that he had loved her in the end.
And this is the lesson, and be ready so it doesn't break your heart: Gale had loved Katniss first, but he had never been the only one.
*
“Do you know,” Madge asks quietly, bare feet swinging and kicking softly around the ledge of the roof of their school building, “in the Capitol, there are people who pen words for a living?”
He turns towards her. “What?”
She nods and lets out a breathy laugh. “I didn't believe it, either, when dad told me about it. But when he was invited to the Capitol the last time, he took me with him and they took us to this place called the “library”. There are all these books, and when I asked the people where they came from, they told me that were all written by people of the Capitol through the years. Some of them weren't even real, they said, some of them were just imaginary worlds written by people, just for the purpose of writing them.
“But-” Gale falters, tries to wrap his head around this. “What do they eat?”
Madge shrugs. “It’s like their version of trade,” she explains. “They sell their imaginations.”
He closes his eyes briefly and tries to imagine being one of them. He imagines living in a big house with shining floors, where the closets are bigger than his whole house in District Twelve. He imagines sitting at a huge, finely furnished mahogany desk with pages and pages of white waiting to be filled with the scrawl of his hands. He tries to imagine it all, but there’s something wrong with the picture. There are no noises of unrest, no arguments about food between his mother and sisters, no songs at the Hob or toasting at someone’s wedding. He imagines there would be less laughter, too.
“Could you do it,” he asks. “Sell your words for money?”
Madge looks thoughtful. “It does sound horribly personal,” she frowns. “And besides, what if no one likes the world I thought up?”
He smiles and goes back to staring straight ahead, at the sky beyond District Twelve. How can they not is what he does not say.
*
“We could do it, you know,” he whispers, only half-joking.
“What?” Katniss asks.
It’s the day of yet another reaping - his last, his mind helpfully supplies- and he’s pretty sure he’s going to be the tribute this year. There’s only so long that he can avoid the odds.
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we can make it.” He is almost surprised at the words coming out of his mouth, almost distracted by their intensity. Sell words instead of blood, he does not say.
He knows, right then, that he won’t leave. His chest feels heavy and aches in a way that has nothing to do with hunger.
*
He’s coming out of the woods with Katniss when he sees her. She looks - he forgets his words momentarily.
“Pretty dress,” he manages, and his voice does not shake, will not break and betray him.
She looks at him with a little confused frown and in that moment, he wants to kiss her and let his lips smoothen it out. He looks at her and hopes she recognizes what he’s desperately trying not to say: be safe. don’t leave. because I still have to stay if you do.
The moment is gone as soon as it appears.
“Good luck, Katniss,” she says a little belatedly, and she sounds a little baffled. He cannot blame her.
She doesn't address him at all. He doesn't look back.
*
“I volunteer.” Katniss’ voice is strong at the reaping, her cheeks devoid of tear tracks and her eyes alight with determination, strength, fire. Girl on fire, they will say about her later, but he will have thought it first, thought it always.
“I volunteer as tribute,” Katniss announces again and her voice echoes through the Justice Building.
He draws in a sharp breath. The world spins on its axis, shifts, stops.
- - Ali Smith, girl meets boy: the myth of iphis.
*
He’s nine and they’ve had a good day today. He knows this because his father is home early and looking less harangued than usual and his eyes are bright.
It’s a good day in terms of food, too. For the first time in a long time, there are enough loaves on the table to fill everyone’s bellies and they still have food left over and Rory and his father are actually discussing what to do with extra food.
They ask him, too, at one point. They turn to him and ask his opinion but he isn’t listening anymore. His mind vaguely registers the sounds of laughter, the clinking of plates and glasses, the slurps as everyone licks syrup off their wrists. They’re not happy, not by a long shot, because there’s an electric fence and too few things to eat and staying alive through the day is a struggle.
Nevertheless.
He thinks they’re dangerously close to being content. It’s enough.
*
Gale will not know this:
“Maysilee Donner,” his father had sighed once and pushed around the remnants of alcohol in his glass. “God, but she had balls.”
Hazelle had laughed and leaned forward affectionately to muss up his hair a little bit. “Would you have married her then, if she had made it back?” Her eyes had been too calm, too self-assured, and he had looked at her, his Hazelle and found herself falling in love again, falling in love still.
“Of course not, honey,” he coos, and he is only half-pretending. “She was all gutsy and wiry and the epitome of tragedy from the beginning but she was never you. You, I took one look at and I knew who I wanted to marry.
Hazelle had blushed as he pulled her closer to drape an arm around her shoulder. Always had a way with the words, he did.
There’s a beat of silence before she opens her mouth again. “Didn’t she have a friend, though?” she asks, and gets a faraway look on her face like she’s trying to remember. “I think she was beautiful, too. You know, the one who got her songbird?”
His father had scoffed. “Her? She ran off with a coal miner.”
Hazelle had laughed again, long and true. “So did I,” she had murmured into his shoulder. “So did I.”
Gale will not know this but this will have already happened.
*
The thing is, Madge had been a girl long before she became the Mayor’s Daughter. They had known each other less formally, when they didn’t quite comprehend that there was a difference, a wedge between them.
“Your pin’s pretty,” he says in the playground, when he sees her sitting alone on the grass after school is finished.
She looks up and smiles at him, as if genuinely confused whether he means it or not. He feels a sudden urge to stick out his tongue and say of course it’s pretty, stupid but he is all of ten, and he has more restraint.
“Thank you,” she says, fingering the mockingjay on her chest. She had been a girl, then.
“Do you want to walk home together?” he inquires, even though he doesn't yet know which part of the district she lives in.
She shrugs and picks up her bag. He vaguely registers that she’s too young to be carrying around a bag that heavy, but it’s the district and they all grow up too fast, too soon.
“Sure,” she says. “I didn't particularly want to go home right after. It’s too…much sometimes, you know?” She looks up at him with wide eyes, and he nods because he does know that. That’s why he has the woods.
“What do you do when it’s too much?”
She makes a vague gesture with her hands. “Sit and wait out the feeling?” she intones, but she’s only half-joking.
When he doesn't respond, she speaks again. “You should try it. With me.”
She has a pinched look on her face, as if she’s deciding if she should stomp her foot right now, as if she can understand that he’s vaguely mocking her. She’s not pretty, he decides, not with the way her hair is flying all over the place and her knees are scratched and have grass stuck to them and her shoulder is tilted to one side from the weight of the bag.
He grins.
*
“Maybe there will be enough game for a fresh loaf tomorrow,” he smiles up at his mother. They are sitting in a circle on the floor, talking about his father’s birthday the next day. Last year, they could only afford stale bread but his snares are getting better every day, he’s been putting more and more of practice in it lately, and he’s pretty confident of getting a good kill.
“We’ll make it good,” Hazelle assures him, and gets up to get another round of tea.
Vick climbs up on his lap and he automatically runs a finger through his hair. “We’ll make it good,” he echoes his mother, murmuring the words softly into Vick’s hair.
“Come on,” Hazelle says a few minutes later, coming into the room with fresh glasses of piping hot tea. She sits down and strokes her rapidly swelling belly through her dress. “Let’s practice that happy birthday song we made up the other day. Maybe your brother can even get a few mockingjays to pick up the tune tomorrow. Won’t that be a nice surprise?”
He ruffles Vick’s hair again and starts the tune.
*
It is scientifically impossible to exist in two different places at the same time. Even in the Capitol, where a nick of the knife and the press of a button can achieve most anything, this remains impossible.
However let’s imagine, just for a second, that it were possible.
If it were, if it had been possible for Gale to be in two places at once, he would have seen this:
The canaries are leading the way as a large group of miners - including his father - make their way out of the elevators and into the lower level of the basement. They work quietly for a while, the silence pierced occasionally by the song of the songbirds. After a while, suddenly, they stop.
Something is wrong, they can all feel it immediately. The air is suddenly heavy with a pungent smell , and its suffocating and there’s not enough oxygen, not for all of them.
And then, there’s an explosion. The official reports will say that it was coal dust, that the accident is an unfortunate side-effect of a risky occupation, that the explosion was caused by spontaneous combustion of the coal dust.
It will not matter anyway, because there’s an explosion.
*
And Gale?
He had been swinging his little brother around as they all practice singing happy birthday, because they all felt the need to be perfect for daddy’s special day. He had been smiling so much his eyes had crinkled at the corner, he had been laughing, laughing, laughing -
There had been a knock on the door and too many voices outside-
They had all been on fire, then.
*
This will be important later, but at the time, she is a minor distraction, barely a blip on his radar.
“That’s dangerous,” he says, stealthily coming up behind a girl with an elaborate braid and a piss-poor imitation of a snare in one hand as she examines his trap.
She jumps several feet high and turns around. He smiles and shakes his head to himself. This girl will never make it out in the woods, he thinks. He thinks he vaguely recognizes her from somewhere, but it’s too hazy.
“What’s your name?” he asks as he frees the rabbit and very distinctly doesn't look at her protruding cheekbones and hollow cheeks. He’s got a family to feed, he can’t afford to give away free game to every girl who ventures out in the woods.
“Catnip,” she whispers and it’s the closest he’s come to laughing lately.
“Well, Catnip, stealing’s punishable by death, or hadn't you heard?”
She scowls. “Katniss,” she corrects him. “And I wasn't stealing it. I just wanted to look at your snare. Mine never catch anything."
He frowns at her. “So where’d you get the squirrel?”
“I shot it,” she declares, sounding just a little proud, and displays her bow.
Well, Catnip, he thinks as he raises his eyebrows , tell me more. He leans forward.
*
In his dreams, he doesn’t have to sign up for tesserae to barely feed his family.
In his dreams, his father is still alive because there had never been any mining accident. The canaries, the songbirds have sung all through the day and then he had come back home, tired and exhausted and dripping with sweat, but with a shine in his eyes that only comes from having the satisfaction of earning one’s bread after a day of hard labor.
In his dreams, he is leading a rebellion. He isn't the one climbing on the podium of the Justice Building and saying things like we are the people and ‘til death and we will rise stronger but he’s leading the rebellion, all the same. He’s at the front-line as they travel to the Capitol, and then the Districts are behind him and following his lead and they are storming the Capitol and stopping the rich people with their bright clothes right on their tracks. They’re storming in, and really, the hint of fear on Snow’s face is a sight of sore eyes as he stands and shouts, screams orders of capture and treason but they are outnumbering the Peacekeepers by the dozen and the adrenaline is rising amongst the District. There is a brief flash of fear on Snow’s face when he approaches with a knife, the steel blade glinting in the unrelenting sun of the smoke-free environment of the Capitol.
“President,” he says, and takes a step forward.
Snow’s eyes widen for another moment, and he tries to take a step back and maybe his life is flashing in front of his eyes but who can tell really?
“Gale Hawthorne of District 12,” he introduces himself politely, and sinks the knife in Snow’s stomach.
*
In his dreams, in his dreams, in his dreams -
And then he wakes up.
Goddamn.
*
“I had a dream you were dying,” he says, the next time they are walking back from the woods. It’s been a good day, they have enough game to sell at the Hob, and he is breathing a little lighter knowing that they will have relatively full bellies for at least a week.
Katniss cocks her head up to look at him.
“It was one of those dreams,” he shrugs. “The ones where you wake up and think it’s real for a second. I dreamt that you were dying right out here in the woods. They had activated the fence again and there were these new Peacekeepers standing guard by the time we were coming back with game. We saw them and started running back out, and we were pretty fast too. I remember because you stumbled once on a patch of leaves and I had to grasp your hand and drag you away so that we didn't lose momentum. But we were too late, one of the Peacekeepers had fired a bullet of sorts, and I looked back and yelled for you to duck, but it was too late. I could do absolutely nothing but watch as the silver bullet entered your chest. A second later, I saw you stumble to the ground and blood started seeping out of the wound where the bullet entered you. I tried, Katniss, I swear I tried to staunch the bleeding, tore off pieces of cloth to press over your wound, tried to find moss leaves, but nothing improved and then you started coughing and gasping and then, slowly, you stopped fighting and closed your eyes. I tried to scream at you to hold on, just a little longer, and then I woke up."
He turns around to look at Katniss and she’s smiling. Something is not right, he thinks, but there is a brightness in her eyes that he can’t look away from and in that moment, he fears that he’s revealed too little, too much.
“You were there?” Katniss asks, looking up to him, looking incredibly young and child-like and he remembers that after all, she is just a kid. “You were there, right?” she asks again, still smiling far too brightly.
He tucks a stray strand of hair into her braid. “Yes.”
She’s still smiling and he doesn't know why he can suddenly feel his heart beating in his throat.
“What?”
“That means I wasn't dying alone,” she says simply, and laces her fingers through his.
*
He will learn this far too late for it to make any difference, but he will learn it nonetheless. It’s surreal; he is used to being the one who teaches the tough lessons of life, the one who learns that this is all shit purely by experience. But like all good things in life, he finds this out too late.
So, you see:
Gale had loved Katniss first. He had loved Madge first too, loved her in the winter and in the snow and in the autumn when the leaves would get stuck between the knots at the back of her head that she could never brush out. He had hated Madge first, too, hated her the way he had come to hate anyone who didn't need to sign up for tessarae, who didn't need to wonder if every meal were their last, who could think of birds as birds and not kill. He had hated her the way he loved her too, because he had been all of thirteen, damn it, and what is love when you have to bury your father and you don’t have a roof over your head.
But, we are deviating from the point.
Gale had loved Katniss first.
By no means does that mean that Gale had loved Katniss last, that he had loved her in the end.
And this is the lesson, and be ready so it doesn't break your heart: Gale had loved Katniss first, but he had never been the only one.
*
“Do you know,” Madge asks quietly, bare feet swinging and kicking softly around the ledge of the roof of their school building, “in the Capitol, there are people who pen words for a living?”
He turns towards her. “What?”
She nods and lets out a breathy laugh. “I didn't believe it, either, when dad told me about it. But when he was invited to the Capitol the last time, he took me with him and they took us to this place called the “library”. There are all these books, and when I asked the people where they came from, they told me that were all written by people of the Capitol through the years. Some of them weren't even real, they said, some of them were just imaginary worlds written by people, just for the purpose of writing them.
“But-” Gale falters, tries to wrap his head around this. “What do they eat?”
Madge shrugs. “It’s like their version of trade,” she explains. “They sell their imaginations.”
He closes his eyes briefly and tries to imagine being one of them. He imagines living in a big house with shining floors, where the closets are bigger than his whole house in District Twelve. He imagines sitting at a huge, finely furnished mahogany desk with pages and pages of white waiting to be filled with the scrawl of his hands. He tries to imagine it all, but there’s something wrong with the picture. There are no noises of unrest, no arguments about food between his mother and sisters, no songs at the Hob or toasting at someone’s wedding. He imagines there would be less laughter, too.
“Could you do it,” he asks. “Sell your words for money?”
Madge looks thoughtful. “It does sound horribly personal,” she frowns. “And besides, what if no one likes the world I thought up?”
He smiles and goes back to staring straight ahead, at the sky beyond District Twelve. How can they not is what he does not say.
*
“We could do it, you know,” he whispers, only half-joking.
“What?” Katniss asks.
It’s the day of yet another reaping - his last, his mind helpfully supplies- and he’s pretty sure he’s going to be the tribute this year. There’s only so long that he can avoid the odds.
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we can make it.” He is almost surprised at the words coming out of his mouth, almost distracted by their intensity. Sell words instead of blood, he does not say.
He knows, right then, that he won’t leave. His chest feels heavy and aches in a way that has nothing to do with hunger.
*
He’s coming out of the woods with Katniss when he sees her. She looks - he forgets his words momentarily.
“Pretty dress,” he manages, and his voice does not shake, will not break and betray him.
She looks at him with a little confused frown and in that moment, he wants to kiss her and let his lips smoothen it out. He looks at her and hopes she recognizes what he’s desperately trying not to say: be safe. don’t leave. because I still have to stay if you do.
The moment is gone as soon as it appears.
“Good luck, Katniss,” she says a little belatedly, and she sounds a little baffled. He cannot blame her.
She doesn't address him at all. He doesn't look back.
*
“I volunteer.” Katniss’ voice is strong at the reaping, her cheeks devoid of tear tracks and her eyes alight with determination, strength, fire. Girl on fire, they will say about her later, but he will have thought it first, thought it always.
“I volunteer as tribute,” Katniss announces again and her voice echoes through the Justice Building.
He draws in a sharp breath. The world spins on its axis, shifts, stops.