fic: not the one to break promises 1/2 (thg, gale, gale/katniss)
title: not the one to break promises (1/2)
characters: gale; gale/katniss; others
rating: pg13
summary: gale hawthorne is the District 12 tribute for the 74th Hunger Games
author's note: emotional ruin lies ahead. no really, writing this fic tore a part of my soul out of my chest, and it's not coming back. there's two endings to it, so you get to pick which one you would like to believe is the real one.
The Girl on Fire.
That's what they call her, that's what they remember her as. She is Catnip, Katniss, forever to him. But The Girl on Fire to those who would see them sooner dead than alive for their entertainment.
He was on fire too, but that's not what they call him. He doesn't get a special nickname, nor does he want one for them to name him by. He hates them, all of them.
His fire burns inside of him, licks higher and higher as his emotions threaten to boil over.
They don't call him that, but he'll make them remember that he too has fire.
He has made a promise and he will keep it.
---
42 times his name is in the bowl for today.
Gale tells it as a joke to Katniss' query, laughs at it, because he doesn't care. Or well, it's that he doesn't care that his name's in there that many times. Every slip of paper in there will be a slip of paper that has kept his family alive, has given food to little Posy and Vick and Rory; and his mother too. His family is alive and it's a trade he doesn't regret.
"And may the odds be ever in your favor."
They both grin at her accented tone as she repeats the familiar phrase.
It's not even irony how many times his name is in there and the reaping that’s today.
---
His name is called.
---
"Gale Hawthorne."
His name is said with such excitement and cheer from the lips of the Capitol woman that she could have been announcing anything other than him being reaped.
He's blinded by Katniss on stage, has been since she volunteered, stunned as he'd watched her walk forward in place of Prim, and so it takes his name being repeated twice before recognition actually kicks in. He stops, boots heavy on the gravel, poor dirt and crushed rocks like the rest of their District grinding under his soles, and feels Prim's hands tighten around his neck. Her gasp, so loud in his ears, confirms it.
There is no fighting it. A name called is a name called. A reaped tribute is a reaped tribute.
Gale shushes Prim as he pries her skinny arms from around his neck, skinny bird arms that are so slight in his large hands, and sets her down. "Go to your mom," he tells her, puts a hand on her back to point her the way.
The others around him have drawn further away, as if he is something diseased, as if they can catch this from him and be made to go too. He feels large next to the Capitol guards as they escort him towards the stage, large and awkward as they take him to Katniss. He is glad they do not touch him; he doesn't think he could stand that if they were to actually put their hands on him.
The rest of their District is quiet, solemn as they are announced as their tributes. They raise their fingers in farewell.
His last year, forty two slips of paper, and this is what he thinks as he looks out for what will certainly be the last time at what has always been his home.
There is no irony in this and the odds are not in his favor.
---
Gale doesn't remember saying goodbye to his family when he thinks on it later. When he lies in the plush bed the Capitol has given him, head spinning from the thoughts of 'stay alive' and 'keep Katniss alive', he tries to remember their last words to him.
He can't.
He remembers the press of his brothers and sister close to him, remembers the way his mother's hand had lingered in the hair that curled at the start of his neck, remembers the way her eyes had not shone wet, how little Posy had demanded him to come home, remembers some part of him wanting to tell them to not watch, to not even turn their old TV set on, remembers touch and sight and smell.
But not sound. Their lips move but the words don't come forth.
Gale closes his eyes and lets the images play over the back of his lids, holds them to him before letting them go. They will not keep him alive.
---
He doesn't remember much of the car ride to the train either. He's squished in the backseat, Katniss against the opposite side, their escort in the middle, and he takes up too much space, hulking body, slouched back, his knees knocking, legs already cramped.
And then they are being ushered up the steps and into the train that will take them away from this place that is their home; it's not a good place, it's dilapidated and broken, some say beyond repair, but it's their home, their district, their families and the people they know. Katniss doesn't look as it starts to whiz past them, their escort saying something about the speed of the train, as if it's something to marvel at, but Gale does. He watches, because this might be the last he sees of it; ever.
She takes them to a compartment, tells them they can have whatever they want. Katniss' hand bumps against his own as they stand and look at the splendor.
Splendor it is, but it disgusts him. Opulence and richness, in every bit of the silver tableware, the decadently colored food that he's never seen before, never had the opportunity to taste, the plush carpet underneath his worn and cracked boots, and the lights that illuminate it all from overhead.
If Gale had anything like shame in him he might feel grubby in his pants that have a fraying hem and his shirt that stretches too tight across his shoulders. As it is, it only serves to fuel the anger in him at the Capitol, and so he crosses the room to lounge in one of the chairs. He hopes that some of the dirt, some of the dust from their District rubs off.
---
To call their mentor a disappointment would be an understatement.
Gale watches the man Effie, he commits her name to memory, had gone to collect enter their car, feet stumbling in a way that has nothing to do with the train's speed and everything to do with the smell of distilled liquor that follows in his wake. Beside him, Katniss is still quiet, and would they were alone Gale would talk to her. As it is, he reaches out to touch her thigh quickly, just something for reassurance, to let her know that he's still here, that this is still real; though she needs no reassurance for that, there's no escape from this, this is reality at its height for them. She doesn't say anything to him, but her hand covers the spot where he just touched, and that's enough.
He turns back to the man, Haymitch, Effie had said his name was, and looks him over again. A suit that bears wrinkles, nicer though than anything they wear, even on the best of days at events. Hair that is longer than what is normal in District 12, sweaty strands that have had fingers run through them. A disappointment is all Gale sees. How is this man supposed to keep them alive? How he is supposed to keep Katniss alive?
Neither of them, he or Katniss, say anything at first. The train keeps its course forward, away from what had been home, the trees whistling by outside, the faint hum of the engines; somewhere in the back of his mind he's fascinated by it all.
"Where's the ice?"
Gale blinks and swings his head back around from the window where he'd looked away. His eyes narrow when he sees that the man is after another drink. He's seen drunks before in District 12, men who had it hard in the mines, women who'd lost their husbands, lost their families, liquor the only consolation to them afterwards.
He finally speaks, digs his fingers into the cloth covering his seat, and says, "Aren't you supposed to help us?"
The other man blinks at them, giving up on his quest for ice, seeing as there's none in the bucket to begin with. "And what do you want me to say?"
Gale tilts his head, feeling small in his seat. "Something about all of this? Something about staying alive?"
The man, Haymitch, he reminds himself, smiles. It's a sharp twist at the right corner of his mouth, something mocking, something like weariness in the crease. "First, you have to accept the fact of your inevitable death," he shakes his glass at them. "And then have a drink. How's that for advice."
The last is not said as a question, and the car's door closes with a snap, leaving them alone again.
---
Gale has never been anything but forward, so he doesn't leave their mentor alone for long. He gives Katniss a look, finds her still staring out at the landscape going by, and says, "I'm going to go find him. Talk to him." The last statement sticks on his tongue, but what else would he say.
She turns her head, answers back with, "She told me to try to win." Her face is a shadowed thing, her eyes wide and open, so open, and he can read everything in them.
Twenty-four go in, and only one comes out, and Prim had told her sister to try and win.
Gale smiles because what else can he do. "You will." It is a promise he makes and one he will keep.
He leaves her there, doesn't turn around, and moves through the cars till he finds their mentor in one with Effie. He takes a seat across from him and tries to remember everything he knows about Haymitch Abernathy. It's not much, but it does fill in the gaps, and he thinks maybe he understands the full glass of amber liquid cradled in his hand; Gale is not stupid, remember.
Haymitch looks up at him from where his head is bent. Effie minds her own business in her seat, a mirror and her hair more interesting for the moment. "I told you already your advice."
Gale's mouth twists into a frown. He taps a finger on the table. "That's not good enough. You're supposed to help us."
"I am. By telling you what to expect. You can expect to die."
He shakes his head, repeats. "Not good enough." He narrows his eyes. "Think you can quit your drinking just for a minute to give me something of a real strategy."
He's not thinking of himself. He's thinking of Catnip, his Catnip. He wants her alive, and this man will help if he pushes. Prim had made Katniss promise, and he made a promise, and if he pushes then he can make it so. He just has to know how to do it, arrange all the pieces in this game the way they need to be. He is secondary, he is a tool, and he too can be used; he has not forgotten his hatred of everything involved here either.
Haymitch smiles at his retort, as if somehow he's just made him proud, shown him something in him to work with. He turns to face Effie over on the couch. "You want to talk strategy already? We're not even in the Capitol yet, and he wants to talk strategies."
Effie smiles, wide and bright. "That's the spirit."
Gale shrugs. “If I’m going to die, I don’t want to go out first.”
He seems to think that over, eyes narrowing in thought and teeth chewing on his bottom lip. “Alright,” he tips his glass towards Gale. “We can work with that. Don’t be disappointed though. First thing is we have to figure out your strengths. And then get you people, sponsors, on your side. Figure out what they’re going to like to see from you.”
His counsel is cut off when the car’s door swooshes open. Gale swings his head around and up to see Katniss lounge in the doorway before entering. Her jaw’s set, determination and stubbornness in the jut of her bone and the way her eyebrows pinch downward. He stares at her.
He stares at her and then turns his head when Haymitch laughs lowly, looking between the two of them, where Gale is watching Katniss and Katniss is looking at both of them, “We can work with that too.”
---
Katniss stabs the table with a knife when she grows frustrated with Haymitch and his advice.
Effie shouts about the table being mahogany.
Haymitch laughs and says congratulations, your first kill is a place mat.
Gale thinks he will have to make sure Katniss wins sponsors without alienating them, or frightening them.
---
The Capitol is something else.
They’ve all heard stories, watched the video that plays at the annual Reaping, seen the propaganda posters, but nothing prepares him for the crowd that’s waiting for them when the train pulls in. Some part of him looks at the buildings in awe, so different from what District 12 is, so big, stretching towards the sky as if they will never cease.
The people cheer, roaring and screaming and hollering out their names to get glimpses of their faces. Gale watches, peers out at them with a blank face, cataloguing their manners, the way they dress, the bright colors and the bleached teeth. They cry out his name. They are his death chorus, and he wonders if they will cheer louder when his blood stains the ground of the arena, if they will scream if he is one of the last to go or if he is first, if they will say anything at all because he is just a boy from District 12 and no one cares for them.
Gale lifts a hand slowly, curling his fingers and then moving his wrist back and forth. He waves and smiles and thinks that if he dies, when he dies, so be it, but he will have their love first, he will have them know him.
---
His stylist’s name is Portia.
She’s pretty with streaks of colored dye in her hair, no wig, but bright pops of pink and blue and green and purple. Curving over her right breast and then her shoulder and neck is a tattoo that glimmers in the low light from overhead. She eyes him when he’s brought to her, clucking her tongue and pursing her lips. She runs her hands over his shoulders, tugs on his hair, taps the olive skin of his forearm.
He feels like an animal on display, being sized up, weighed and measured.
“Good,” she declares. “Not as breathtakingly beautiful as the girl from One, but good.”
She waves her hand at a trio, his prep team, and pushes him off on them.
It’s invasive and somewhat embarrassing for him to lie there while they poke and prod at him, take away his imperfections and the miniscule faults that cannot exist here. When they are done, when he has been deemed passable, he swings his legs from the table and stands. He turns and sees that he’s not alone anymore. They’ve been joined by a dark skinned man with gold rimmed eyes and Katniss.
Portia and the other man lean close, talking in hushed voices, eyeing the both of them.
Katniss rolls her eyes, a moment of levity, and scrunches her face up in mock seriousness. He smiles at her. She sidles around the two stylists and says to him, “His name’s Cinna. He’s got an idea for the parade.”
Portia and Cinna finish, looking up. It’s Cinna who speaks though. He tells them the tribute parade’s tonight, that most stylists dress their tributes in representative clothing of their district. He raises an eyebrow, looks at them intense, “I don’t want to do that though.”
Gale crosses his arms and waits.
“I want to make them see you as something real.”
Next to him, Portia shrugs her shoulders with a sly grin. “It’s a good idea.”
There’s something in both of their facial expressions that tells him it is indeed a good idea. He’s rapidly figuring out just how this game is played.
---
Cinna’s idea, turns out, is to set them on fire.
Their outfits are black, tailored to fit the lines of their body, to show them as weapons, to show them as strong, nothing silly like the pink fur of District 1 or the silver sheen of 3.
They ride out on a chariot like the others, last, and then Cinna sets them on fire.
The crowd loves it.
---
It moves fast from there, the day of the actual Games coming closer and closer.
They train, herded together with the other tributes, told not to kill one another, told not to touch, to wait because there will be plenty of time for that later; that’s said with a laugh.
Haymitch tells him to pay attention to the others, to watch for their strengths and for their weakness, not too obviously, but to watch all the same. He does. He sees the tiny girl from 11 and thinks of Posy. He sees the way the Careers eye them all up to slaughter, their gazes marking them all for dead by their hands, and thinks they will die from arrogance. He sees the ones that will die early, the ones that will last longer than others, sees corpses with every inhale and exhale. Death wants them all, and Death is ever patient.
Gale hangs back, vacillating between watching and showing. He is adept with a knife, can throw the spear, can shoot the bow.
Katniss leans in close while the two from District 5 climb before them. “They watch us.”
He’s got no need to ask her who she means. “They watch all of us.”
She twists her mouth. “Then show them something good.”
He lets the boy nearly as tall as him from 2 see him build a trap, marks him just as he has been marked, bares his teeth and tells him to come for it.
---
“Sponsors,” Haymitch says over dinner. “Can keep you alive when you need it most.”
Katniss carves a piece of her meat. “How?”
He takes a sip from his drink. “When you’re thirsty or starving or hurt, close to dying, a sponsor can keep you going. Save your life.”
Katniss grunts, states that most people don’t like her, so that will be hard.
“I like you,” Gale replies, words spilling from his tongue without hesitation. He gets a small smile for that, an easy thing.
He’s already thinking ahead, mind in the arena. He will make them love her just as much as he loves her.
---
They’re to be ranked, given a number after performing in front of a panel of select chosen ones.
District 12 will be last because they’re done in order, and well, they come last.
Haymitch grips his shoulder and tells him, tells them both, “This is the time to show them everything you’ve got. Don’t hold back. Your number matters.”
Katniss gives him a severe look before he goes in, repeats Haymitch’s words, but hers are laced with meaning, several shades and layers of emotions that he doesn’t begin to know how to unravel and decipher.
Gale throws the spear, the knives, shoots the bow. He builds snares and traps and shows them how logical his mind can be, how he can build from nothing, how he can be resourceful, how he can turn something simple into a weapon that can hurt, shows them how he can survive.
He leaves and feels their heavy gazes on his back all the way out of the door.
When Katniss tells him that she’d shot an arrow straight into the crowd, knocking the apple from the pig’s mouth, he chokes on his drink. They both laugh, faces cracking under their smiles. Effie takes them to task, outraged at Katniss’ audacity. Haymitch tells her good job.
Gale gets a 10.
Katniss scores an 11.
It’s higher than even the Careers.
Good, he thinks, good, love her like I do, see her like I do.
---
That night they sit pressed against the glass windows on the top floor, looking down at the city. Tomorrow they will have the interviews with Caesar in front of all the Capitol. Tonight, though, they are here.
Gale’s tongue is thick with the drinks from dinner, in celebration of their scores, and he watches her as she looks out the glass. He knows her, has known her for so long, and can tell so much about her. He knows her as surely she knows him. He doesn’t need to look at her face to imprint it into his mind’s eye, but he does it anyway.
Finally, Katniss speaks. Her voice is quiet, low in the darkness of the rest of the suite. “I don’t want to have to kill you.”
He tastes the liquor in the back of his throat. “You won’t.”
---
Gale goes on stage, sits across from Caesar, and smiles for the Capitol and its people.
He doesn’t flirt like some of the others, doesn’t play up his youth or innocence, doesn’t simper or fawn. Instead, he’s straightforward. He’s honest.
“And,” Caesar asks, blue tongue peeking behind his straight, white teeth. “Do you know your fellow tribute? The lovely Miss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire.”
Gale folds his hands over his crossed knee. “Yes. We’re friends. She’s my closest friend. I love her.”
Caesar smiles, turning to the crowd. “Loving friends. Childhood friends. So dear and precious.”
The crowd coos, reacting appropriately. They think it sad that District 12 sent two friends that will have to tear one another apart.
Strategy, Gale thinks, and smiles.
Caesar goes on to ask him about his family, and Gale answers as to why his name’s been in forty-two times. Sympathy, then, at the poverty of District 12. They are all sob stories here.
---
Katniss rounds on him in anger afterwards. “Why did you tell them that? They have no right to know about our lives. They don’t deserve to know that.”
Gale stares at her, uncomprehending how she doesn’t see that this will help. That he’s made them seem sad and tragic, two friends thrust into this impossible situation. The Capitol loves their stories.
“You’re mine,” she spits. “They don’t get to have you. Or us. It’s none of their business.”
Haymitch intervenes then, tells her to cool it, to think.
Gale watches the long line of her throat as she swallows and turns around to walk away.
Haymitch claps him on the shoulder. “Smart move there.”
---
She comes to him later that night, the night before. Knocks on his door, whispers softly and asks if he’s awake, and when he opens the door he pulls her in to sit on the bed beside him. She twists the gold fabric of her shirt in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispers still. “For earlier.”
He smiles softly and traces the planes of her face and sincere eyes with his own. “It’s okay. I’m the one who usually blows up.” Which is true. She has long been his ear to many of his complaints and tirades against the Capitol. “You can have a turn too.”
The smile she tries to give him doesn’t reach fullness, strained on her young face. “I just,” she pauses, collects her thoughts. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want you to be here. I never wanted that.”
He never wanted her here either.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “It’s the way it is, Catnip. It’s their whole system, these games, we’re their entertainment.”
She looks him in the eyes, straight on, admits with shocking honesty and truth. “I can’t think about anything else but getting home to Prim.”
He nods. He understands.
---
Haymitch gives him one last string of advice before he’s sent off with Portia, pulls him to the side. “Don’t step off before time. You’ll blow sky high.You leave the Cornucopia alone. It’s a bloodbath. You don’t want to get trapped in there. You’ll be dead before you can blink. And just,” he pauses, staring at him, holding his gaze. “Be smart. Remember what it is you’re doing in there.”
---
Portia clucks at him, clicking her tongue and trailing her fingers over his shoulders underneath his jacket. “Try and stay alive, will you?”
She makes him smile as she sends him into the tube.
---
The first thing he registers is the chirping of birds. And then the sky overhead, blue and clear, the other tributes around him, the countdown in the artificial sky, and the Cornucopia gleaming silver in front of them. He can spot the spear, the bow, the knives and packs.
Gale tries to catch Katniss’ eye but she’s so far away. He can read her face though, knows she sees the bow too and wants. Haymitch must have told her similar advice to stay away.
There’s no time though because the countdown is over, they’re released, and everyone starts to run. She’s off like the deer they used to hunt in their woods, feet propelling her over the ground and to the weapon she desires. Gale follows, curving and arching away from the forest. There’s blood rushing in his ears, adrenaline pushing him forward. She can’t die, she can’t die, nononono.
He understands then what Haymitch had meant about a bloodbath. And it truly is. He watches District 2 pick up the sword and cleave a kid’s face in, smiling at the red that spurts forth. Katniss sees it too because she stops, realizing the situation and dives for one of the packs on the ground that remain. She nearly takes a knife from 2’s partner but uses the pack as a shield.
And then he’s beside her, hands gripping underneath her arms, dragging her up. “Katniss,” he says, or maybe he shouts, there’s still a rushing in his head that’s made everything seem so slow. “Katniss, come on.”
They run then.
---
Leaves crunch under their feet and branches whip at their arms and legs and faces as they race further and further into the forest, away from the Cornucopia. Canons, a mocking salute to the dead, chase their backs.
They stop and count the booms overhead.
Twelve. Twelve total, half of them.
Katniss stares at him with wide eyes. “We’re a team.”
Gale nods. “A team.”
---
There’s rope in her pack and they both can climb.
In the tree for the night, stretched out opposite one another on a branch with their calves looped and tied together, they wait.
Katniss talks, and Gale listens, but part of his mind is already on the things around them that he can use; his mind always works in this way, calculating, turning over, building and breaking down and tearing apart.
“The girl from One took the bow. I saw her run off with it.”
Gale stares at ground below, making a mental map of the topography of the arena, or what the parts that he knows exists. “We can get it from her.” When she’s dead.
“They won’t be easy to kill.” Katniss’ face is unreadable in the darkness.
“Neither are we,” he responds.
She agrees, and then goes on. “Haymitch said to find high ground, stay near water.”
“We can wait them out. Let them kill one another and then we take care of the rest.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “Okay.”
This is the strategy they choose.
---
Unfortunately the Gamemakers aren’t fond of it.
They grow bored of their waiting it out and set the woods on fire. Literally, set the woods on fire, and Gale’s not sure whether they find some delicious humor in it because of the tribute parade or what, but it’s effective.
The heat from the flames singe the hair off his bare arms, licks at his heels as if to say he wasn’t fast enough, wouldn’t be fast enough, burnburnburn.
The fire also separates them.
He loses Katniss.
It’s enough to make him want to scream.
---
He does scream.
At them, bares his teeth towards the sky, and damns them for their actions.
The only blessing is that he doesn’t see her face up above.
---
Gale circles his way back towards the Cornucopia. He stakes out land close by and lays his traps, builds snares designed to snap ankle bones and pits with sharpened spears to split open soft stomachs. He’s not without his own advantages.
A boy with brown hair and wide eyes falls through one on the fourth day.
He stares down at the dead tribute, notes the dribble of blood that’s slid from his mouth down his chin, the glassy look in those unmoving eyes. He forces himself to look, to see what he’s done, to see what he can’t escape.
He whispers a sorry as the canon booms overhead, and says aloud, “Better you than me.”
---
The screams wake him up.
Gale runs, hoping, wondering, some part of him knowing.
He passes the girl who took the bow and notes that she’d be unrecognizable, her face so swollen and purple, if it wasn’t for the bright blonde of her hair. She’s not the one he’s after though.
He finds her face down not far away, the silver bow clutched in her hand. She’s mumbling, eyes vivid as they rapidly move side to side. He kneels, reaching out to touch her hot skin. “Katniss.”
She moans. “Gale?” His name’s garbled.
“Oh, Catnip.”
She smiles at that though, how she does it he’s not sure, but smile she does.
---
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah.”
The tracker jacker poison has worked its way through and out of her system.
“I’ve killed someone too.”
---
While Gale had worked alone during their separation, Katniss had teamed up with the tiny girl from District 11.
“Her name’s Rue,” Katniss tells him.
She’s cute, the tiny girl, and Gale thinks that she could have been the sweetheart of the Capitol if only they’d played it that way.
They fold her in with them, because she’s little and alone and what else would they do, and Gale shows them the traps he’s made.
---
And then the Gamemakers announce the rule change.
Two tributes from the same District can win. Together.
They trade glances between them, doing the match.
There’s three complete sets of tributes left.
Rue takes off running.
---
She doesn’t make it to her partner.
Her face lingers in the sky long after the canon. Katniss pays her back by putting an arrow through District 1’s throat. While she puts flowers over Rue’s dead body, Gale takes the spear, holds it in his hands, grips it tight.
---
They circle back towards the Cornucopia.
There’s less and less of them left.
The rest of the Careers and their alliance have set up around there with all of the resources piled together. Gale studies it from the cover of the woods, Katniss crouched next to him. “I could blow it all up. Them too probably.”
Katniss stares at him. “Could you?”
He nods.
“Then let’s.”
---
The mines are easy to manipulate. He does it under the cover of the darkness, moving through the trees and out into the clearing, works while their enemies snore nearby. They sleep on as he does his job and then retreats.
They blow them up during the day, and it works like they’re supposed to.
Except for the fact that in order to set the mines off, Gale has to be close to them. The blast catches him and throws him backward. He survives that, but his arm is not so lucky. He doesn’t realize that he’s taken a hit himself until he’s back in the woods and Katniss’ is pressing her fingers into the bloody wound.
“Gale.” His name’s said with a fine tremor.
He swipes the blood away, winces at the raw and open flesh. “It’s fine.”
---
It’s not fine.
The wound’s on his bicep, up into his shoulder, and he can barely hold the spear in that arm. It will be infected soon, and already the pain is close to unbearable. It cannot be stitched, so blown open it is. He needs medicine.
There’s also the two Careers from District 2 left, sure to be out looking for them.
In the sky, up above, the canon sounds and the red haired girl from District 5’s face swims overhead.
Katniss’ jaw clenches, and she states, “You need medicine.”
Gale shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. Listen, you have to finish this. You can do this. Cato and Clove are still out there. I’m not much help to you like this.”
“Shut up,” she says and hits him on his uninjured shoulder, strikes him with a balled fist. “They said both of us could win.”
“Catnip,” he tries again, a soft exhale in the night air.
“No,” Katniss shakes her head and slides closer, puts her arms around his neck and holds him close. “Not without you. They changed the rule. They said so. You’re my friend.”
He wonders if they’re watching this on the screen, the Capitol, their families back in District 12, if Posy and his mother and brothers are watching him die, if anyone at all cares.
---
Fever sets in.
He turns to her during the night, whispers out in time with the insects and other noises, “Do you remember the woods, Catnip?”
“Yes,” she answers. “I could never forget.”
---
“Gale,” she calls out, and he stirs, blinking open heavy eyes. “I love you.”
He wants to laugh.
I’ve always loved you, he thinks.
---
Someone cares, someone’s watching, because a little parachute lands near them after another hour. The beep draws him awake, and then Katniss is spreading a pungent cream over the burn on his shoulder.
Haymitch’s note reads: Good job, sweetheart. You too, boy.
---
In the morning Gale can move his shoulder and the skin no longer looks so bad.
They leave their place, moving through the trees and over roots, until they find Foxface’s body. Her mouth is stained purple, and Gale eyes the berries in her hand.
Katniss doesn’t look at her long; she doesn’t see him reach down.
The knife comes whizzing through the trees, barely misses Katniss’ head and buries itself with a solid thunk in the bark behind her. She’s on Katniss after that in barely a heartbeat, barrels out of the brush, skinny legs and arms and tiny body and slams into her, another knife already in hand. They wrestle on the ground, the knife glinting silver in the sunlight, a wickedly curved thing.
Gale can only think that Clove hadn’t seen him where he was crouched down next to the dead body of Foxface. He moves without thinking, and it’s the easiest thing in the world. To reach down and pull her off, duck away from her knife, and slide his arms and hands around her neck. A vicious, quick turn to the left. She doesn’t even have time to scream for help.
The cracking of her neck reverberates in the air even after she’s gone still, limp in his too large hands.
He drops her body and Katniss stares up at him in something like disbelief.
He hopes his family’s not watching back home.
---
Four left and they’re the only pair.
That’s when the Gamemakers release the mutts.
They’re hunted and corralled like animals, and they know that Rue’s partner dies from them because they hear the howls and see his face in the sky.
They run. Katniss and he run, faster than they’ve ever run before probably in their lives, and this is nothing like their woods back home. The spear’s heavy in his hands, and Gale pulls his lips back over his teeth and growls along with the shadowy shapes that stay on their heels. They’ve not come this far, they’ve not stayed alive, he’s not made sure she’s alive, for them to go out like this.
The Cornucopia gleams up ahead. Katniss reaches it first, already climbing, and Gale’s ready to start after her when something slams into him from the side.
He thinks they’ve been too late at first, waits for the teeth that are sure to sink into his flesh, but no, it’s a fist to his head he gets. Cato, he realizes, blinking up and seeing the other tribute. Katniss screams his name from up above as he rolls away.
“You killed her, you fucker.” Cato’s spitting mad, eyes wild and teeth bared in fierce snarl. “And now I’m going to kill you.”
“Fuck you,” Gale spits back, lashing out with his legs.
The mutts are close, and sooner rather than later they both will be eaten. There’s silence from above and nothing else except for their grunts as they trade blows, and then-
-the twang of the bow’s string and an arrow lodges itself in Cato’s throat.
Gale wastes no time climbing up the side of the structure to join her.
They both breathe harshly, staring at one another, shaky smiles echoed on one another’s faces. A laugh, a punched out noise that’s not humorous, but more a sigh of relief than anything else.
“We did it.”
“We won.”
They wait for a voice that will not tell them what they want to hear.
Instead, they get one that tells them the rule change has been reversed.
Their smiles falter.
---
Katniss stares out at the arena, turned away from him. She exhales, breathes out a steady stream of negatives. The voice doesn’t come back no matter how much she demands it to.
Part of Gale wants to laugh, a perverse part of them that tells him what else did he expect from the Capitol. They are all pawns in their game, to be pushed and prodded, and now they want a finish to their show. They want them to turn on one another, to kill one another.
He had thought snapping Clove’s neck to be the easiest thing in the world to do.
It’s not. Eating the berries from Foxface’s hand is much easier.
Katniss turns around and falters when she sees his lips that must be stained purple. She rushes to him as he sinks to his knees and then falls backwards; he will at least die laying down.
She hits him, yells at him, says his name over and over.
He wants to tell her one more time, but he thinks she may know what it is he would tell her, what he feels, because he sees it in her eyes.
---
He kept his promise.
---
( alternate ending)
characters: gale; gale/katniss; others
rating: pg13
summary: gale hawthorne is the District 12 tribute for the 74th Hunger Games
author's note: emotional ruin lies ahead. no really, writing this fic tore a part of my soul out of my chest, and it's not coming back. there's two endings to it, so you get to pick which one you would like to believe is the real one.
The Girl on Fire.
That's what they call her, that's what they remember her as. She is Catnip, Katniss, forever to him. But The Girl on Fire to those who would see them sooner dead than alive for their entertainment.
He was on fire too, but that's not what they call him. He doesn't get a special nickname, nor does he want one for them to name him by. He hates them, all of them.
His fire burns inside of him, licks higher and higher as his emotions threaten to boil over.
They don't call him that, but he'll make them remember that he too has fire.
He has made a promise and he will keep it.
---
42 times his name is in the bowl for today.
Gale tells it as a joke to Katniss' query, laughs at it, because he doesn't care. Or well, it's that he doesn't care that his name's in there that many times. Every slip of paper in there will be a slip of paper that has kept his family alive, has given food to little Posy and Vick and Rory; and his mother too. His family is alive and it's a trade he doesn't regret.
"And may the odds be ever in your favor."
They both grin at her accented tone as she repeats the familiar phrase.
It's not even irony how many times his name is in there and the reaping that’s today.
---
His name is called.
---
"Gale Hawthorne."
His name is said with such excitement and cheer from the lips of the Capitol woman that she could have been announcing anything other than him being reaped.
He's blinded by Katniss on stage, has been since she volunteered, stunned as he'd watched her walk forward in place of Prim, and so it takes his name being repeated twice before recognition actually kicks in. He stops, boots heavy on the gravel, poor dirt and crushed rocks like the rest of their District grinding under his soles, and feels Prim's hands tighten around his neck. Her gasp, so loud in his ears, confirms it.
There is no fighting it. A name called is a name called. A reaped tribute is a reaped tribute.
Gale shushes Prim as he pries her skinny arms from around his neck, skinny bird arms that are so slight in his large hands, and sets her down. "Go to your mom," he tells her, puts a hand on her back to point her the way.
The others around him have drawn further away, as if he is something diseased, as if they can catch this from him and be made to go too. He feels large next to the Capitol guards as they escort him towards the stage, large and awkward as they take him to Katniss. He is glad they do not touch him; he doesn't think he could stand that if they were to actually put their hands on him.
The rest of their District is quiet, solemn as they are announced as their tributes. They raise their fingers in farewell.
His last year, forty two slips of paper, and this is what he thinks as he looks out for what will certainly be the last time at what has always been his home.
There is no irony in this and the odds are not in his favor.
---
Gale doesn't remember saying goodbye to his family when he thinks on it later. When he lies in the plush bed the Capitol has given him, head spinning from the thoughts of 'stay alive' and 'keep Katniss alive', he tries to remember their last words to him.
He can't.
He remembers the press of his brothers and sister close to him, remembers the way his mother's hand had lingered in the hair that curled at the start of his neck, remembers the way her eyes had not shone wet, how little Posy had demanded him to come home, remembers some part of him wanting to tell them to not watch, to not even turn their old TV set on, remembers touch and sight and smell.
But not sound. Their lips move but the words don't come forth.
Gale closes his eyes and lets the images play over the back of his lids, holds them to him before letting them go. They will not keep him alive.
---
He doesn't remember much of the car ride to the train either. He's squished in the backseat, Katniss against the opposite side, their escort in the middle, and he takes up too much space, hulking body, slouched back, his knees knocking, legs already cramped.
And then they are being ushered up the steps and into the train that will take them away from this place that is their home; it's not a good place, it's dilapidated and broken, some say beyond repair, but it's their home, their district, their families and the people they know. Katniss doesn't look as it starts to whiz past them, their escort saying something about the speed of the train, as if it's something to marvel at, but Gale does. He watches, because this might be the last he sees of it; ever.
She takes them to a compartment, tells them they can have whatever they want. Katniss' hand bumps against his own as they stand and look at the splendor.
Splendor it is, but it disgusts him. Opulence and richness, in every bit of the silver tableware, the decadently colored food that he's never seen before, never had the opportunity to taste, the plush carpet underneath his worn and cracked boots, and the lights that illuminate it all from overhead.
If Gale had anything like shame in him he might feel grubby in his pants that have a fraying hem and his shirt that stretches too tight across his shoulders. As it is, it only serves to fuel the anger in him at the Capitol, and so he crosses the room to lounge in one of the chairs. He hopes that some of the dirt, some of the dust from their District rubs off.
---
To call their mentor a disappointment would be an understatement.
Gale watches the man Effie, he commits her name to memory, had gone to collect enter their car, feet stumbling in a way that has nothing to do with the train's speed and everything to do with the smell of distilled liquor that follows in his wake. Beside him, Katniss is still quiet, and would they were alone Gale would talk to her. As it is, he reaches out to touch her thigh quickly, just something for reassurance, to let her know that he's still here, that this is still real; though she needs no reassurance for that, there's no escape from this, this is reality at its height for them. She doesn't say anything to him, but her hand covers the spot where he just touched, and that's enough.
He turns back to the man, Haymitch, Effie had said his name was, and looks him over again. A suit that bears wrinkles, nicer though than anything they wear, even on the best of days at events. Hair that is longer than what is normal in District 12, sweaty strands that have had fingers run through them. A disappointment is all Gale sees. How is this man supposed to keep them alive? How he is supposed to keep Katniss alive?
Neither of them, he or Katniss, say anything at first. The train keeps its course forward, away from what had been home, the trees whistling by outside, the faint hum of the engines; somewhere in the back of his mind he's fascinated by it all.
"Where's the ice?"
Gale blinks and swings his head back around from the window where he'd looked away. His eyes narrow when he sees that the man is after another drink. He's seen drunks before in District 12, men who had it hard in the mines, women who'd lost their husbands, lost their families, liquor the only consolation to them afterwards.
He finally speaks, digs his fingers into the cloth covering his seat, and says, "Aren't you supposed to help us?"
The other man blinks at them, giving up on his quest for ice, seeing as there's none in the bucket to begin with. "And what do you want me to say?"
Gale tilts his head, feeling small in his seat. "Something about all of this? Something about staying alive?"
The man, Haymitch, he reminds himself, smiles. It's a sharp twist at the right corner of his mouth, something mocking, something like weariness in the crease. "First, you have to accept the fact of your inevitable death," he shakes his glass at them. "And then have a drink. How's that for advice."
The last is not said as a question, and the car's door closes with a snap, leaving them alone again.
---
Gale has never been anything but forward, so he doesn't leave their mentor alone for long. He gives Katniss a look, finds her still staring out at the landscape going by, and says, "I'm going to go find him. Talk to him." The last statement sticks on his tongue, but what else would he say.
She turns her head, answers back with, "She told me to try to win." Her face is a shadowed thing, her eyes wide and open, so open, and he can read everything in them.
Twenty-four go in, and only one comes out, and Prim had told her sister to try and win.
Gale smiles because what else can he do. "You will." It is a promise he makes and one he will keep.
He leaves her there, doesn't turn around, and moves through the cars till he finds their mentor in one with Effie. He takes a seat across from him and tries to remember everything he knows about Haymitch Abernathy. It's not much, but it does fill in the gaps, and he thinks maybe he understands the full glass of amber liquid cradled in his hand; Gale is not stupid, remember.
Haymitch looks up at him from where his head is bent. Effie minds her own business in her seat, a mirror and her hair more interesting for the moment. "I told you already your advice."
Gale's mouth twists into a frown. He taps a finger on the table. "That's not good enough. You're supposed to help us."
"I am. By telling you what to expect. You can expect to die."
He shakes his head, repeats. "Not good enough." He narrows his eyes. "Think you can quit your drinking just for a minute to give me something of a real strategy."
He's not thinking of himself. He's thinking of Catnip, his Catnip. He wants her alive, and this man will help if he pushes. Prim had made Katniss promise, and he made a promise, and if he pushes then he can make it so. He just has to know how to do it, arrange all the pieces in this game the way they need to be. He is secondary, he is a tool, and he too can be used; he has not forgotten his hatred of everything involved here either.
Haymitch smiles at his retort, as if somehow he's just made him proud, shown him something in him to work with. He turns to face Effie over on the couch. "You want to talk strategy already? We're not even in the Capitol yet, and he wants to talk strategies."
Effie smiles, wide and bright. "That's the spirit."
Gale shrugs. “If I’m going to die, I don’t want to go out first.”
He seems to think that over, eyes narrowing in thought and teeth chewing on his bottom lip. “Alright,” he tips his glass towards Gale. “We can work with that. Don’t be disappointed though. First thing is we have to figure out your strengths. And then get you people, sponsors, on your side. Figure out what they’re going to like to see from you.”
His counsel is cut off when the car’s door swooshes open. Gale swings his head around and up to see Katniss lounge in the doorway before entering. Her jaw’s set, determination and stubbornness in the jut of her bone and the way her eyebrows pinch downward. He stares at her.
He stares at her and then turns his head when Haymitch laughs lowly, looking between the two of them, where Gale is watching Katniss and Katniss is looking at both of them, “We can work with that too.”
---
Katniss stabs the table with a knife when she grows frustrated with Haymitch and his advice.
Effie shouts about the table being mahogany.
Haymitch laughs and says congratulations, your first kill is a place mat.
Gale thinks he will have to make sure Katniss wins sponsors without alienating them, or frightening them.
---
The Capitol is something else.
They’ve all heard stories, watched the video that plays at the annual Reaping, seen the propaganda posters, but nothing prepares him for the crowd that’s waiting for them when the train pulls in. Some part of him looks at the buildings in awe, so different from what District 12 is, so big, stretching towards the sky as if they will never cease.
The people cheer, roaring and screaming and hollering out their names to get glimpses of their faces. Gale watches, peers out at them with a blank face, cataloguing their manners, the way they dress, the bright colors and the bleached teeth. They cry out his name. They are his death chorus, and he wonders if they will cheer louder when his blood stains the ground of the arena, if they will scream if he is one of the last to go or if he is first, if they will say anything at all because he is just a boy from District 12 and no one cares for them.
Gale lifts a hand slowly, curling his fingers and then moving his wrist back and forth. He waves and smiles and thinks that if he dies, when he dies, so be it, but he will have their love first, he will have them know him.
---
His stylist’s name is Portia.
She’s pretty with streaks of colored dye in her hair, no wig, but bright pops of pink and blue and green and purple. Curving over her right breast and then her shoulder and neck is a tattoo that glimmers in the low light from overhead. She eyes him when he’s brought to her, clucking her tongue and pursing her lips. She runs her hands over his shoulders, tugs on his hair, taps the olive skin of his forearm.
He feels like an animal on display, being sized up, weighed and measured.
“Good,” she declares. “Not as breathtakingly beautiful as the girl from One, but good.”
She waves her hand at a trio, his prep team, and pushes him off on them.
It’s invasive and somewhat embarrassing for him to lie there while they poke and prod at him, take away his imperfections and the miniscule faults that cannot exist here. When they are done, when he has been deemed passable, he swings his legs from the table and stands. He turns and sees that he’s not alone anymore. They’ve been joined by a dark skinned man with gold rimmed eyes and Katniss.
Portia and the other man lean close, talking in hushed voices, eyeing the both of them.
Katniss rolls her eyes, a moment of levity, and scrunches her face up in mock seriousness. He smiles at her. She sidles around the two stylists and says to him, “His name’s Cinna. He’s got an idea for the parade.”
Portia and Cinna finish, looking up. It’s Cinna who speaks though. He tells them the tribute parade’s tonight, that most stylists dress their tributes in representative clothing of their district. He raises an eyebrow, looks at them intense, “I don’t want to do that though.”
Gale crosses his arms and waits.
“I want to make them see you as something real.”
Next to him, Portia shrugs her shoulders with a sly grin. “It’s a good idea.”
There’s something in both of their facial expressions that tells him it is indeed a good idea. He’s rapidly figuring out just how this game is played.
---
Cinna’s idea, turns out, is to set them on fire.
Their outfits are black, tailored to fit the lines of their body, to show them as weapons, to show them as strong, nothing silly like the pink fur of District 1 or the silver sheen of 3.
They ride out on a chariot like the others, last, and then Cinna sets them on fire.
The crowd loves it.
---
It moves fast from there, the day of the actual Games coming closer and closer.
They train, herded together with the other tributes, told not to kill one another, told not to touch, to wait because there will be plenty of time for that later; that’s said with a laugh.
Haymitch tells him to pay attention to the others, to watch for their strengths and for their weakness, not too obviously, but to watch all the same. He does. He sees the tiny girl from 11 and thinks of Posy. He sees the way the Careers eye them all up to slaughter, their gazes marking them all for dead by their hands, and thinks they will die from arrogance. He sees the ones that will die early, the ones that will last longer than others, sees corpses with every inhale and exhale. Death wants them all, and Death is ever patient.
Gale hangs back, vacillating between watching and showing. He is adept with a knife, can throw the spear, can shoot the bow.
Katniss leans in close while the two from District 5 climb before them. “They watch us.”
He’s got no need to ask her who she means. “They watch all of us.”
She twists her mouth. “Then show them something good.”
He lets the boy nearly as tall as him from 2 see him build a trap, marks him just as he has been marked, bares his teeth and tells him to come for it.
---
“Sponsors,” Haymitch says over dinner. “Can keep you alive when you need it most.”
Katniss carves a piece of her meat. “How?”
He takes a sip from his drink. “When you’re thirsty or starving or hurt, close to dying, a sponsor can keep you going. Save your life.”
Katniss grunts, states that most people don’t like her, so that will be hard.
“I like you,” Gale replies, words spilling from his tongue without hesitation. He gets a small smile for that, an easy thing.
He’s already thinking ahead, mind in the arena. He will make them love her just as much as he loves her.
---
They’re to be ranked, given a number after performing in front of a panel of select chosen ones.
District 12 will be last because they’re done in order, and well, they come last.
Haymitch grips his shoulder and tells him, tells them both, “This is the time to show them everything you’ve got. Don’t hold back. Your number matters.”
Katniss gives him a severe look before he goes in, repeats Haymitch’s words, but hers are laced with meaning, several shades and layers of emotions that he doesn’t begin to know how to unravel and decipher.
Gale throws the spear, the knives, shoots the bow. He builds snares and traps and shows them how logical his mind can be, how he can build from nothing, how he can be resourceful, how he can turn something simple into a weapon that can hurt, shows them how he can survive.
He leaves and feels their heavy gazes on his back all the way out of the door.
When Katniss tells him that she’d shot an arrow straight into the crowd, knocking the apple from the pig’s mouth, he chokes on his drink. They both laugh, faces cracking under their smiles. Effie takes them to task, outraged at Katniss’ audacity. Haymitch tells her good job.
Gale gets a 10.
Katniss scores an 11.
It’s higher than even the Careers.
Good, he thinks, good, love her like I do, see her like I do.
---
That night they sit pressed against the glass windows on the top floor, looking down at the city. Tomorrow they will have the interviews with Caesar in front of all the Capitol. Tonight, though, they are here.
Gale’s tongue is thick with the drinks from dinner, in celebration of their scores, and he watches her as she looks out the glass. He knows her, has known her for so long, and can tell so much about her. He knows her as surely she knows him. He doesn’t need to look at her face to imprint it into his mind’s eye, but he does it anyway.
Finally, Katniss speaks. Her voice is quiet, low in the darkness of the rest of the suite. “I don’t want to have to kill you.”
He tastes the liquor in the back of his throat. “You won’t.”
---
Gale goes on stage, sits across from Caesar, and smiles for the Capitol and its people.
He doesn’t flirt like some of the others, doesn’t play up his youth or innocence, doesn’t simper or fawn. Instead, he’s straightforward. He’s honest.
“And,” Caesar asks, blue tongue peeking behind his straight, white teeth. “Do you know your fellow tribute? The lovely Miss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire.”
Gale folds his hands over his crossed knee. “Yes. We’re friends. She’s my closest friend. I love her.”
Caesar smiles, turning to the crowd. “Loving friends. Childhood friends. So dear and precious.”
The crowd coos, reacting appropriately. They think it sad that District 12 sent two friends that will have to tear one another apart.
Strategy, Gale thinks, and smiles.
Caesar goes on to ask him about his family, and Gale answers as to why his name’s been in forty-two times. Sympathy, then, at the poverty of District 12. They are all sob stories here.
---
Katniss rounds on him in anger afterwards. “Why did you tell them that? They have no right to know about our lives. They don’t deserve to know that.”
Gale stares at her, uncomprehending how she doesn’t see that this will help. That he’s made them seem sad and tragic, two friends thrust into this impossible situation. The Capitol loves their stories.
“You’re mine,” she spits. “They don’t get to have you. Or us. It’s none of their business.”
Haymitch intervenes then, tells her to cool it, to think.
Gale watches the long line of her throat as she swallows and turns around to walk away.
Haymitch claps him on the shoulder. “Smart move there.”
---
She comes to him later that night, the night before. Knocks on his door, whispers softly and asks if he’s awake, and when he opens the door he pulls her in to sit on the bed beside him. She twists the gold fabric of her shirt in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispers still. “For earlier.”
He smiles softly and traces the planes of her face and sincere eyes with his own. “It’s okay. I’m the one who usually blows up.” Which is true. She has long been his ear to many of his complaints and tirades against the Capitol. “You can have a turn too.”
The smile she tries to give him doesn’t reach fullness, strained on her young face. “I just,” she pauses, collects her thoughts. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I didn’t want you to be here. I never wanted that.”
He never wanted her here either.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “It’s the way it is, Catnip. It’s their whole system, these games, we’re their entertainment.”
She looks him in the eyes, straight on, admits with shocking honesty and truth. “I can’t think about anything else but getting home to Prim.”
He nods. He understands.
---
Haymitch gives him one last string of advice before he’s sent off with Portia, pulls him to the side. “Don’t step off before time. You’ll blow sky high.You leave the Cornucopia alone. It’s a bloodbath. You don’t want to get trapped in there. You’ll be dead before you can blink. And just,” he pauses, staring at him, holding his gaze. “Be smart. Remember what it is you’re doing in there.”
---
Portia clucks at him, clicking her tongue and trailing her fingers over his shoulders underneath his jacket. “Try and stay alive, will you?”
She makes him smile as she sends him into the tube.
---
The first thing he registers is the chirping of birds. And then the sky overhead, blue and clear, the other tributes around him, the countdown in the artificial sky, and the Cornucopia gleaming silver in front of them. He can spot the spear, the bow, the knives and packs.
Gale tries to catch Katniss’ eye but she’s so far away. He can read her face though, knows she sees the bow too and wants. Haymitch must have told her similar advice to stay away.
There’s no time though because the countdown is over, they’re released, and everyone starts to run. She’s off like the deer they used to hunt in their woods, feet propelling her over the ground and to the weapon she desires. Gale follows, curving and arching away from the forest. There’s blood rushing in his ears, adrenaline pushing him forward. She can’t die, she can’t die, nononono.
He understands then what Haymitch had meant about a bloodbath. And it truly is. He watches District 2 pick up the sword and cleave a kid’s face in, smiling at the red that spurts forth. Katniss sees it too because she stops, realizing the situation and dives for one of the packs on the ground that remain. She nearly takes a knife from 2’s partner but uses the pack as a shield.
And then he’s beside her, hands gripping underneath her arms, dragging her up. “Katniss,” he says, or maybe he shouts, there’s still a rushing in his head that’s made everything seem so slow. “Katniss, come on.”
They run then.
---
Leaves crunch under their feet and branches whip at their arms and legs and faces as they race further and further into the forest, away from the Cornucopia. Canons, a mocking salute to the dead, chase their backs.
They stop and count the booms overhead.
Twelve. Twelve total, half of them.
Katniss stares at him with wide eyes. “We’re a team.”
Gale nods. “A team.”
---
There’s rope in her pack and they both can climb.
In the tree for the night, stretched out opposite one another on a branch with their calves looped and tied together, they wait.
Katniss talks, and Gale listens, but part of his mind is already on the things around them that he can use; his mind always works in this way, calculating, turning over, building and breaking down and tearing apart.
“The girl from One took the bow. I saw her run off with it.”
Gale stares at ground below, making a mental map of the topography of the arena, or what the parts that he knows exists. “We can get it from her.” When she’s dead.
“They won’t be easy to kill.” Katniss’ face is unreadable in the darkness.
“Neither are we,” he responds.
She agrees, and then goes on. “Haymitch said to find high ground, stay near water.”
“We can wait them out. Let them kill one another and then we take care of the rest.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “Okay.”
This is the strategy they choose.
---
Unfortunately the Gamemakers aren’t fond of it.
They grow bored of their waiting it out and set the woods on fire. Literally, set the woods on fire, and Gale’s not sure whether they find some delicious humor in it because of the tribute parade or what, but it’s effective.
The heat from the flames singe the hair off his bare arms, licks at his heels as if to say he wasn’t fast enough, wouldn’t be fast enough, burnburnburn.
The fire also separates them.
He loses Katniss.
It’s enough to make him want to scream.
---
He does scream.
At them, bares his teeth towards the sky, and damns them for their actions.
The only blessing is that he doesn’t see her face up above.
---
Gale circles his way back towards the Cornucopia. He stakes out land close by and lays his traps, builds snares designed to snap ankle bones and pits with sharpened spears to split open soft stomachs. He’s not without his own advantages.
A boy with brown hair and wide eyes falls through one on the fourth day.
He stares down at the dead tribute, notes the dribble of blood that’s slid from his mouth down his chin, the glassy look in those unmoving eyes. He forces himself to look, to see what he’s done, to see what he can’t escape.
He whispers a sorry as the canon booms overhead, and says aloud, “Better you than me.”
---
The screams wake him up.
Gale runs, hoping, wondering, some part of him knowing.
He passes the girl who took the bow and notes that she’d be unrecognizable, her face so swollen and purple, if it wasn’t for the bright blonde of her hair. She’s not the one he’s after though.
He finds her face down not far away, the silver bow clutched in her hand. She’s mumbling, eyes vivid as they rapidly move side to side. He kneels, reaching out to touch her hot skin. “Katniss.”
She moans. “Gale?” His name’s garbled.
“Oh, Catnip.”
She smiles at that though, how she does it he’s not sure, but smile she does.
---
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah.”
The tracker jacker poison has worked its way through and out of her system.
“I’ve killed someone too.”
---
While Gale had worked alone during their separation, Katniss had teamed up with the tiny girl from District 11.
“Her name’s Rue,” Katniss tells him.
She’s cute, the tiny girl, and Gale thinks that she could have been the sweetheart of the Capitol if only they’d played it that way.
They fold her in with them, because she’s little and alone and what else would they do, and Gale shows them the traps he’s made.
---
And then the Gamemakers announce the rule change.
Two tributes from the same District can win. Together.
They trade glances between them, doing the match.
There’s three complete sets of tributes left.
Rue takes off running.
---
She doesn’t make it to her partner.
Her face lingers in the sky long after the canon. Katniss pays her back by putting an arrow through District 1’s throat. While she puts flowers over Rue’s dead body, Gale takes the spear, holds it in his hands, grips it tight.
---
They circle back towards the Cornucopia.
There’s less and less of them left.
The rest of the Careers and their alliance have set up around there with all of the resources piled together. Gale studies it from the cover of the woods, Katniss crouched next to him. “I could blow it all up. Them too probably.”
Katniss stares at him. “Could you?”
He nods.
“Then let’s.”
---
The mines are easy to manipulate. He does it under the cover of the darkness, moving through the trees and out into the clearing, works while their enemies snore nearby. They sleep on as he does his job and then retreats.
They blow them up during the day, and it works like they’re supposed to.
Except for the fact that in order to set the mines off, Gale has to be close to them. The blast catches him and throws him backward. He survives that, but his arm is not so lucky. He doesn’t realize that he’s taken a hit himself until he’s back in the woods and Katniss’ is pressing her fingers into the bloody wound.
“Gale.” His name’s said with a fine tremor.
He swipes the blood away, winces at the raw and open flesh. “It’s fine.”
---
It’s not fine.
The wound’s on his bicep, up into his shoulder, and he can barely hold the spear in that arm. It will be infected soon, and already the pain is close to unbearable. It cannot be stitched, so blown open it is. He needs medicine.
There’s also the two Careers from District 2 left, sure to be out looking for them.
In the sky, up above, the canon sounds and the red haired girl from District 5’s face swims overhead.
Katniss’ jaw clenches, and she states, “You need medicine.”
Gale shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. Listen, you have to finish this. You can do this. Cato and Clove are still out there. I’m not much help to you like this.”
“Shut up,” she says and hits him on his uninjured shoulder, strikes him with a balled fist. “They said both of us could win.”
“Catnip,” he tries again, a soft exhale in the night air.
“No,” Katniss shakes her head and slides closer, puts her arms around his neck and holds him close. “Not without you. They changed the rule. They said so. You’re my friend.”
He wonders if they’re watching this on the screen, the Capitol, their families back in District 12, if Posy and his mother and brothers are watching him die, if anyone at all cares.
---
Fever sets in.
He turns to her during the night, whispers out in time with the insects and other noises, “Do you remember the woods, Catnip?”
“Yes,” she answers. “I could never forget.”
---
“Gale,” she calls out, and he stirs, blinking open heavy eyes. “I love you.”
He wants to laugh.
I’ve always loved you, he thinks.
---
Someone cares, someone’s watching, because a little parachute lands near them after another hour. The beep draws him awake, and then Katniss is spreading a pungent cream over the burn on his shoulder.
Haymitch’s note reads: Good job, sweetheart. You too, boy.
---
In the morning Gale can move his shoulder and the skin no longer looks so bad.
They leave their place, moving through the trees and over roots, until they find Foxface’s body. Her mouth is stained purple, and Gale eyes the berries in her hand.
Katniss doesn’t look at her long; she doesn’t see him reach down.
The knife comes whizzing through the trees, barely misses Katniss’ head and buries itself with a solid thunk in the bark behind her. She’s on Katniss after that in barely a heartbeat, barrels out of the brush, skinny legs and arms and tiny body and slams into her, another knife already in hand. They wrestle on the ground, the knife glinting silver in the sunlight, a wickedly curved thing.
Gale can only think that Clove hadn’t seen him where he was crouched down next to the dead body of Foxface. He moves without thinking, and it’s the easiest thing in the world. To reach down and pull her off, duck away from her knife, and slide his arms and hands around her neck. A vicious, quick turn to the left. She doesn’t even have time to scream for help.
The cracking of her neck reverberates in the air even after she’s gone still, limp in his too large hands.
He drops her body and Katniss stares up at him in something like disbelief.
He hopes his family’s not watching back home.
---
Four left and they’re the only pair.
That’s when the Gamemakers release the mutts.
They’re hunted and corralled like animals, and they know that Rue’s partner dies from them because they hear the howls and see his face in the sky.
They run. Katniss and he run, faster than they’ve ever run before probably in their lives, and this is nothing like their woods back home. The spear’s heavy in his hands, and Gale pulls his lips back over his teeth and growls along with the shadowy shapes that stay on their heels. They’ve not come this far, they’ve not stayed alive, he’s not made sure she’s alive, for them to go out like this.
The Cornucopia gleams up ahead. Katniss reaches it first, already climbing, and Gale’s ready to start after her when something slams into him from the side.
He thinks they’ve been too late at first, waits for the teeth that are sure to sink into his flesh, but no, it’s a fist to his head he gets. Cato, he realizes, blinking up and seeing the other tribute. Katniss screams his name from up above as he rolls away.
“You killed her, you fucker.” Cato’s spitting mad, eyes wild and teeth bared in fierce snarl. “And now I’m going to kill you.”
“Fuck you,” Gale spits back, lashing out with his legs.
The mutts are close, and sooner rather than later they both will be eaten. There’s silence from above and nothing else except for their grunts as they trade blows, and then-
-the twang of the bow’s string and an arrow lodges itself in Cato’s throat.
Gale wastes no time climbing up the side of the structure to join her.
They both breathe harshly, staring at one another, shaky smiles echoed on one another’s faces. A laugh, a punched out noise that’s not humorous, but more a sigh of relief than anything else.
“We did it.”
“We won.”
They wait for a voice that will not tell them what they want to hear.
Instead, they get one that tells them the rule change has been reversed.
Their smiles falter.
---
Katniss stares out at the arena, turned away from him. She exhales, breathes out a steady stream of negatives. The voice doesn’t come back no matter how much she demands it to.
Part of Gale wants to laugh, a perverse part of them that tells him what else did he expect from the Capitol. They are all pawns in their game, to be pushed and prodded, and now they want a finish to their show. They want them to turn on one another, to kill one another.
He had thought snapping Clove’s neck to be the easiest thing in the world to do.
It’s not. Eating the berries from Foxface’s hand is much easier.
Katniss turns around and falters when she sees his lips that must be stained purple. She rushes to him as he sinks to his knees and then falls backwards; he will at least die laying down.
She hits him, yells at him, says his name over and over.
He wants to tell her one more time, but he thinks she may know what it is he would tell her, what he feels, because he sees it in her eyes.
---
He kept his promise.
---
( alternate ending)