(Fanfic) Tying Frayed Ends
Title: Tying Frayed Ends
Author: mercury_fire (Ellenka)
Characters/Pairing: Katniss/Gale
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Rating: T
Category: Angst
Spoilers: HG, CF, MJ
Summary: Some bonds can be broken and burned, but they never entirely disappear. A very alternative Mockingjay ending with a tiny bit of ret-conning.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own settings and characters and certain direct quotes from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I'm just borrowing them for some irreverent fun. Same goes for the quoted song lyrics, "The Tower" by Bruce Dickinson. Extra credits for inspiration and help go to Howlynn and karebear.
Warnings: Unorthodox reinterpretations of many things, including THG canon and some Tarot cards; (un)healthy dose of insanity and rather inappropriate use of snares.
Tying Frayed Ends
.00.
Past
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
and the priestess kneels
It's been two years since my world, already twisted, turned upside-down.
The last time we truly met on our rock, on the 74th Reaping day, my best friend Gale gave me bread pierced with an arrow and I laughed. We were two kids too old for our age, with hope for no more than the next hours, and yet we willed the odds to be in our favor. But fate and fortune can play terrible jokes and our hope was dashed when the paper slip bearing the name Primrose Everdeen left the reaping bowl.
I stepped up to the fancy gallows to take my sister's place, venturing from safety of everything I've ever known into the almost-certain perdition known as the Hunger Games. From the moment I started to play in her stead, I broke all rules and in the end changed everything, everything except for the fact that Prim had been chosen to die.
I forfeited my own life to the Games to save her, and lost her on the very cusp of victory, in the moment that should have justified every sacrifice. Like all Victors before, I've been ultimately punished by the loss of what was most dear to me. Prim, not yet fourteen years old, but wearing the white uniform of a field medic, appeared by some evil machination at the very center of the battlefield where bombs had just gone off. She knelt down to treat the nearest victim and the fire of the second explosion engulfed her right before my eyes. My lifeline burned with my sister, leaving me in darkness illuminated only by the unquenchable flames consuming Prim and with her my reason, my heart and my spirit.
The fire I started by volunteering for her, seized by the wrong hands and channeled in the wrong direction, reduced all the light of my world to ashes. I protected Prim from the old regime, but I failed to protect her from the revolution. Like Snow hijacked Peeta in a failed attempt to destroy me, Coin hijacked Gale's trap to catch Prim and accomplished the task of destroying me with crushing force. I thought she had arbitrarily sent Prim to the front line. Only later I learned that Coin was only too happy to issue a special permission when Prim volunteered to go, just like both Gale and I volunteered to join the Squad 451.
If I hadn't succesfully struggled to gain my pass to vengeance at all costs, I wouldn't have let her go anywhere.
I'd have been there to protect her.
Standing in front of the mirror, prepped to execute the former President Snow and thus fulfill a task that no longer mattered, I was nothing but the shell of the sister that failed, trapped in my Mockingjay costume with wings burned and broken. Then Gale entered, holding my despair in his eyes and my arrow in his hands. It was the last time we met and we were no longer us, and he gave me only an arrow.
Our hope was gone, no more hours, no more seconds; at the moment, there was nothing else I wanted from him. I thought I could relinquish him like the very last missile I was to fire to conclude the war, discharged to perform its bloody task, never to be retrieved.
I shot straight, just like he had advised me to, and the flying death plunged right into the gray heart of President Coin who rendered the victory hollow for me, preventing her to do so for the whole country.
Would I have done it if Prim lived? Or did her inadvertent sacrifice prevent the old tyranny from returning in a new guise?
A tiny voice in my head said yes, the endless cycle of vengeance would never have ended without her. She was the true savior of Panem, I was just the cathartic flame.
But that hardly mattered to me then; because she was dead, dead, DEAD and I wanted nothing but to follow her. When Peeta saved me from my own nightlock pill, I changed my mind and screamed at Gale to give me one more gift; one more arrow to end my life. The same gift I had denied him earlier and I hated him with a passion when he returned my betrayal.
But somewhere very deep inside, I was grateful that he couldn't fulfill his promise.
Prim wouldn't have wanted it.
She wouldn't have wanted me imprisoned and slowly going insane either, but would have advised me to cling to hope. I had other solutions on my mind and defiantly sang for my death, but instinctively refrained from crossing the threshold myself. Meanwhile, somewhere, someone must still have wished and truly fought for my life, because one day Haymitch appeared to tell me I've been proclaimed insane and acquitted and they plan on sending me to "rehabilitation". At least I could secretly choose where to go, and my decision was to be included in the official warrant.
I appreciated the choice, but no option seemed appealing. One chamber in hell resembles another so closely, it makes the choice trivial.
Was there a place fit for what remained of me?
"Where will you go?" I asked for a hint.
"I'll escort you wherever you say, sweetheart. But I'll have to return here soon, to keep an eye on things. Devil's work is never done."
I nodded slowly, knowing that if someone could keep guiding the nation like a star, or perhaps a sober constellation, it was Haymitch Abernathy.
"I want to go back where I started," I said at last, after long moments of barely-lucid consideration.
"Twelve? You sure?" Haymitch looked slightly crestfallen. "The rebuilding has already started and your old house could be cleared for you, but… there's nothing for you in that place, sweetheart."
I shrugged. All I needed then was my sister, alive, and nobody could bring her back for me. But I'd already realized that I'm not to follow her. I, Katniss Everdeen, the four-times damned Victor, have been chosen to live. But I'd almost forgotten how to.
"Right now, all I need is time. I can get that anywhere."
I asked to visit Peeta before leaving and surprisingly, got my wish. I found him in the kitchen of the mental health facility, frosting tiny sugar cookies with yellow dandelions. Delly Cartwright was probably there to assist him, but in that particular moment she just watched the deft movements of his hands in rapt adoration. For a while, I emulated her through the slightly open door and then steeled myself to step in.
They greeted me with almost matching warm smiles. Peeta's pupils no longer dilated at the sight of me. I breathed a light sigh of relief, though my hand inadvertently sought my neck.
No need. It's okay now, I reminded myself.
"I'm going home," I announced, preferring to start with simple things.
"They say I have to stay here to finish a round of therapy. But then I… er… we want to return home too," said Peeta, gingerly laying the frosting aside.
The corners of my mouth curled upwards, to my own surprise. Maybe there was nothing complicated between us anymore. The Games brought us together amid pain and theatrics, but they were finally over. The real that remained after them wasn't the form of affection he'd envisioned before... or what I imagined in the Quell Arena, but that was alright. I knew I wouldn't deserve him in a million years, and he's never done anything bad enough to deserve me.
"Good. I just wanted to check on you before I left."
"That's nice of you, Katniss," he said, the surprise in his voice inciting a pang of remorse in my heart.
"I… I know you are in the best care," I say, slightly embarrassed. "I'll be going. Bye, Delly."
She jumped up from the chair to hug me. "Bye, Katniss. I hope you'll feel better soon."
Hope. Was there any left for me?
Nodding absently, I turned to leave.
"Wait!" Peeta's voice stopped me in my tracks.
His hand hovered above the tray and picked a cookie, presumably the one he deemed to be the best specimen. "For good luck."
I accepted the dainty morsel of hope without hesitation, letting my fingers brush Peeta's with amiable familiarity. "Thanks."
"Anytime, Katniss."
After one more round of goodbyes, I strode down the corridor back to where Haymitch stood waiting for me, keeping my eyes on my new confectionery token. The yellow frosting was melting in the heat of my palm and I had nowhere safe to deposit the cookie. Unwilling to let it come to wasteful harm, I decided to eat it.
It was exquisite, but a bit too sweet for my tastes.
"Anyone else you wanted to see?" asked Haymitch when I rejoined him.
"I… I don't know. Mom?" I said, unsure if I could deal with the weight of our combined grief.
"She's starting a hospital in District Four. Wouldn't you rather stay with her?" said Haymitch.
After a moment, I decided against it. "No… not now... we… we've always dealt with the worst on our own."
"Not even for a visit? After what you've been through… maybe you'd change your mind."
"Maybe." I didn't find it probable.
"Anyone else?" prodded Haymitch.
No and yes.
"Where… where did Gale go? I hadn't seen him since…"
Since the time I thought could have been the last.
Johanna, who just caught up with us, latched onto Haymitch's arm with a smirk. "He almost tore the place down when they didn't let him see you," she informed me with a hint of playful derision. "Looks like brainlessness runs in the family."
Haymitch squeezed her fingers with obviously more-than-affectionate force. "That was just before he left for Two. Volunteered for excavation works in the old Nut."
I frowned. It was like him to clear his own mess, but I didn't like the idea very much, not after seeing what tends to happen to volunteers.
"For how long?"
"It might take a few months. Do you want to visit him along the way?"
"Not now," I said, feeling more relief than anything else. I didn't feel up to it yet.
Better let him deal with one trap at a time, I decided.
In Four, I spent endless hours embracing my mother and the tears we cried could have rivaled the ocean crashing against the sandy shores. To her, I was like the Moon come too near, drawing the tide higher and threatening to drown us both.
She coped by submerging her misery in work and I opted not to interfere. We've never been good at helping each other.
So I returned to Twelve, back to where I came from, stripped of my past and reluctant to face the future. At first, I welcomed the peace and rest, tired and lost in the aftermath of my meaningless victory, or was it a glorified defeat? Driven by my deeply ingrained propensity for survival, my body performed basic physical routines with robotic precision. Even Haymitch was gradually convinced that I'll keep adhering to his advice and stay alive. When he decided to return to mentoring the fledgling democracy that hatched in the burned-out pyre of the revolution, I sent him off with pride, knowing the importance of the task.
He remained present as an occasional voice in my earpiece and conspicuously frequent visits from Greasy Sae assured me that I'm not left entirely to my own devices, but I relished the solitude most of the time. My mind, free of all external obligations for the first time since I could remember, devoted the endless days of my government-subsidized sick-leave to the slow process of digging through my own ashes for an elusive ember of true life.
But there was no spark. No flower. No Primrose.
Not even the victorious war I'd inadvertently started in the process of saving her sufficed to accomplish my goal. Unable to win her back from the dead, I had nothing to fight for; nothing to fight against and the stagnation gradually became unbearable. With melancholy slowly turning back to almost feral restlessness, I found it increasingly harder to hold civil conversations with mother or Haymitch and to convince Dr. Aurelius of my progress.
And the phone rang and rang even after our compulsory conversations, showing a number from District 2, so insistently I took to unplugging it from the wall.
Peeta eventually returned too and woke me up one morning with the scraping of his shovel as he planted primroses around my house to surprise me. He brought an unexpected ray of light into my life, like so many times before. I knew he would always be there for me, but he finally recognized his sunny Dandelion amid the cement gloom of Thirteen and no longer felt drawn too close to the singing flame that dragged him through recurrent nightmare instead of fulfilling his sweet childhood dreams.
Peeta had burned bread and received punishment to save me and I inadvertently sparked the burning of Panem by saving him in return. The loss I received as ultimate punishment - not a red welt but a gaping laceration on my soul - will never stop hurting. Perhaps he could help me heal my wounds, but I couldn't reap him to battle with my own demons that still lured me with the siren-call of fire. Not anymore.
But my own fight wasn't over yet and I still needed someone to guard my back.
Unfortunately, the first and only candidate to come to my mind was someone who should have burned for me along with my sister.
Gale.
Impossible.
Persistent in my grudge, I kept incinerating all his letters with bitter laughter, tearstained, but unopened, in a vain attempt to burn our connection and not to betray my sister's memory.
A misguided act of rebellion, because Prim would have directed me to do whatever it takes to mend me.
.11.
Present
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
and the hanged man smiles
The memories flash in my mind as I sit on the rock where I used to meet with Gale. Our rock, so wide and empty after death did us part, leaving a trail of ashes instead of a bond we'd considered unbreakable for so long.
The sense of incompleteness and longing for past companionship keeps resurfacing through the images from the war that transformed the inseparable duo of hunters into two wounded predators. It's too wretched and treacherous to withstand for long and soon chases me away.
Upon my return to the house, I'm greeted by insistent ringing of the phone I'd forgotten to unplug after the three calls I had made earlier this morning.
Irritated, I grab the receiver without bothering to notice the caller's number.
"What?"
The answer is a sigh of relief and a single word, spoken by a painfully familiar voice. "Katniss?"
My heart stops beating for a second and then resumes twice as fast.
I can't avoid him forever. Maybe I don't even want to.
Forcing myself to speak, I choke out, "Gale?"
"Katniss… I'm sorry… I needed to check on you. If you told me to stop bothering you, I would, but you never answered and the line was dead most of the time and-"
"I unplugged it sometimes. It kept ringing and got on my nerves," I snap across his tumbling words before they bring me to tears.
I hear Gale breathe deeply to regain his bearings and when he speaks again, he sounds slightly exasperated. "Catnip, when you pick the phone up, it stops ringing. Fact of life."
"Yeah, but…" I begin, but can't help feeling slightly ashamed for my own faulty logic. "I didn't want to talk to you anyway." The pain is still there, noxious and deadly like a wound festering under an unchanged bandage.
"Katniss, please listen to me, just for a moment." The raw edge of his own pain resonating in his voice threatens to rip the bandage off.
Would it be a good idea? To cauterize and to heal?
"I never even told you how sorry I am for..." he continues, but I hardly bother to listen, lost in thought.
Words can't bring my Prim back. Nothing can. Some mistakes are irrevocable... and how high is the cost of forgiveness?
Gale is still talking, hardly pausing to breathe as if getting his message across mattered more than his life. "...I'd do anything for you, anything to help you-"
Could he possibly help me?
Would the pain diminish if we shared it?
"You can do nothing through the phone," I cut across him, finally returning to the conversation. "You want to talk to me? Come here. If you can make the detour."
"We are wrapping the worst up already," he says, voice laced with sudden hope. "I could be there early on Sunday morning. Okay?"
Sunday after the Games...
What would I do when I meet him again?
I don't know yet... but since he said he'd do anything for me, anything goes.
"Okay. You know where I live."
I slam the receiver down with vengeance.
Few more days to think it over...
… why do they suddenly seem too long?
And why the hell is Gale digging through some ruined mountain, anyway? It's not like he could save anyone down there after all this time.
But I'm another ruin left by this war… with unexploded mines hiding underneath...
The Saturday sun finally sets and the syrupy darkness seems to hum with anticipation.
I have no intention of waiting for Gale in the house and leave in the middle of the night, depositing a spare key and a note under the doormat, on the off-chance he would come looking for me here first. He'll know where to find me.
Then I set out towards our meeting place, with some necessary supplies and a bright flashlight I hardly even need. Starlight surely guides me to our rock.
The last time we truly met here, Gale gave me bread pierced with an arrow.
What could he give me now?
I know he can't give me Prim back, that he wasn't the one to truly take her away and I can't hate him for that. But the memory of the words he spoke in Special Weaponry is still tightly intertwined with the burning of Prim in my mind and the connection chokes me like a noose.
The underground of Thirteen, so much grayer and more hopeless than the Seam, trapped us both in a twisted web of lies and blinded us to everything including each other, leaving us in darkness replete with nightmares of loss and vengeance. Nightmares that drove him to create the terrible bomb he'd never use for the purpose it ultimately fulfilled, while driving me to lead the Squad 451 on my own unnecessary suicide mission. The fractional blame he bears for the death of my sister is nothing compared to my own guilt for the deaths of my comrades-in-arms, and for some reason, it angers me to no end.
We both have our share of war-crimes to contend with and I shouldn't hate him. I have no truly justified reason to, but I'm too lost without a driving force, without focus, without aim, damn, I'm too lost without him. Right now, I have no idea what exactly to do, but I need to see him, maybe then I'll figure it out. All I know is that I'm not letting him walk away before I decide. I can't move on without a real closure or a new beginning, and this place, our place provides the best setting.
A nearby magnificent tree with a convenient branch overhung with a curtain of vines will serve my purpose just right.
From the years we'd spent here together, I know everything I need to prepare the trap. Even how many steps Gale needs to cross the clearing... and that he always looks straight at me as he approaches. The knowledge comes in handy now and I set a snare he had taught me himself before the Quarter Quell and smile as I picture my hanged man sacrificed, for justice or vengeance. I wait for him, wearing the first reaping dress that Effie somehow managed to save for me. Its bright blue color, so unusual in the forest setting, is bound to draw Gale's full attention. If he looks anywhere but at me, he'd notice the taut green-dyed rope among the vines, but I'm betting that he won't. Sadly, I'm the only one left to bet on me now.
While waiting, I open the locket Peeta had gave me in the Quell for the first time since my return. I glance at the pictures of mother and Prim… alongside with Gale... and shut my eyes for a moment to squeeze back the tears threatening to spill. Then I slip the pearl from my pocket, round and perfect like the full circle we are yet to complete, and deposit it into the locket before closing it again.
As the light of dawn slowly creeps above the trees, the time of truth draws near and I intend to find the answers I need by any means necessary.
Closing my eyes and slowly counting to ten, I will Gale to materialize soundlessly at the edge of the clearing, like he did so many times before.
After I repeat the process few times, he does, standing exactly where I anticipated him, hands empty and face blank save for the vestiges of regret wrought too deeply to disappear under the illusion of composure.
"Hey, Gale."
"Hey, Katniss."
Our gazes meet, no longer hard as steel but leaden like stormclouds. Suddenly, I wish for a bolt of lightning to issue from the collision and to smite the wall of grief between us, freeing us from the prison we built from the ruins we'd created. But it won't be that easy. Our journey here was long and torturous and a shortcut back can be found only from a wholly new perspective.
I set out in this very attire, already in the process of being changed beyond recognition.
"How's the dress?" I ask out of the blue. "Pretty enough? You never even got to tell me that day."
Gale takes a moment to scrutinize me from under a slightly worried frown, rightfully questioning my sanity. "That's not the most important thing I didn't get to tell you before they took you away, Katniss."
"I know. Let's start with simple things," I say, smoothing my skirt with an exaggerated gesture.
The frown remains firmly in place. How I missed it…
"Of course the dress is pretty. Don't tell me you really cared," he says tentatively.
"Of course I don't. Did you? What about now?"
He shrugs; one corner of his mouth curling upwards with a hint of wistful longing. "You are prettiest when you are yourself, Catnip. And I care about you no matter what. I'd do anything for a chance to prove it."
I mirror his expression. We've both been played for fools countless times, but still know our own game. "We'll see. Once you told me you'll be like the man in the Hanging Tree, forever waiting for an answer."
His eyes widen slightly. "I meant it, Catnip… I thought I'd brought it upon me already … but if you have anything to tell me…"
"We have a lot of things to tell each other… " I spread my arms. "D'you want to get your answer?"
Gale raises his eyebrows in abject surprise, but starts towards me without a moment of hesitation.
Great. I supress a triumphant smile.
Never shifting his gaze from my eyes, he steps right into my snare and hardly any emotion registers on his face as the noose immediately tightens. As if he expected or perceived it after all. My heart clenches with unwelcome remorse at the nasty thud he hits the ground with despite his nimble attempt to break the fall. Then the snare whips him up, leaving him suspended from the living tree by one leg, his head dangling few feet above the ground, outstretched fingers just skimming through the green blades of lush grass. Almost comical with his messy hair hanging down in a dark nimbus around his head and cheeks reddened with the sudden inrush of blood, Gale crosses his arms and tucks his free leg behind the other.
"Always taking things too literally, are we?" He grimaces with a mixture of pain and wry amusement. His shirt creeps down from where it's been tucked into his pants, offering me a glimpse of his taut stomach and the many scars on his back as he helplessly twirls to face the other direction.
"Tell me how it feels to be caught in your trap," I whisper dangerously, crouching down for an occasional chance to meet his gaze.
"It it feels different when I deserve it. Good, in a way," Gale answers. When he moves in an attempt to gesticulate, his shirt slips down to obscure his face and he exasperatedly slides it over his head and tosses it away before crossing his arms again. With another turn of the rope I see a history of pain wrought into his back, countless marks from the whip, the scar he acquired while saving Peeta, the angry red abrasions and blossoming bruises from my own snare-ambush. "Call it poetic justice."
I feel another pang of compassion.
Justice... he never experienced much of it... but his attempt to win it had inadvertently destroyed the very incarnation of selfless innocence...
How did Prim feel, in that terrible fraction of a moment before the flames from the second explosion ended her life?
I reach forward, grabbing Gale's shoulders and steadying him to face me.
"Tell me how she felt, then," I hiss insistently, clenching my jaw to prevent my lower lip from trembling.
Gale reads the unspoken name in my eyes and his own fill with sorrow that transcends fear. "I can't tell you how she felt, Catnip," he whispers. "I'll never know and it keeps haunting me."
"Do you think she realized what killed her?" I shake him a little and Gale makes no movement to protest. "Do you realize what killed her?"
"Compassion," he whispers, his voice strained almost as if the noose tightened around his neck. "The very best in her."
The very best in her nature killed her... and thus prevented the pointless vendetta from repeating...
"And possibly the very worst in me," Gale continues. "You warned me, but I refused to listen, then. You have every right to condemn me, Katniss."
"D'you think so?" Do I think so? I thought I'd dealt justice with my bow before, but now I don't even know anymore...
"Yes. For her and for all the others," he chokes out.
"She was the only one who mattered to me…" I mutter, digging my nails into his shoulders and averting my gaze. How horrible the admission is? What would I deserve for it?
"You know I'd have done anything to save her… if… if I could."
I know that. If he hadn't been captured, he'd have tried to save her, even if it killed him. Hell, he wouldn't even have to do that, if we'd arrived together, he'd have known early enough to prevent her from running to her preordained doom.
"You weren't there…" I whisper, more to myself then to him. He wasn't there and we both know why. He fell into a Capitol trap I'd lead him into.
"I loved her like my own sister, Katniss," Gale continues, his voice strained and breathless. "I did everything to keep her safe when you couldn't. If I'd thought for a second that I'd possibly have a hand in stealing her from you without even knowing it-"
Of course he didn't know. He'd been in the crumbling streets of the Capitol with me… We both volunteered for a game of murder, leaving Prim to fend for herself. It couldn't have ended well.
We couldn't save her and she would have told us it wasn't about saving her anyway.
"Have you found out yet?" I blurt through clenched teeth.
"No. We tried, but no. Does it matter? I played by their rules. It was the worst mistake I've ever made and I'll never be anywhere near done paying for it."
Same goes for me.
I nod slowly.
"You are right on that account, Gale. I can help you there," I mutter, before pressing my hands against his crossed arms to prevent him from reaching for me and lightly brushing my lips against his. "You know what I think about paying debts."
"Too well," says Gale. Then he gives me a smile, an inverted image of the one he had given me so long ago when I handed him my bow for examination, with an acid reminder that stealing is punishable by death.
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
let the fool decide...
Now I stride a dozen yards away, pull my bow from behind a shrub and load it.
Gale watches me intently and an eerie ghost of relief rises from the terrible abysses of remorse in his ashen eyes.
I return his gaze along the shaft of the arrow, switching my aim between his eyes, taunting him to get some sort of reaction out of him.
Is he really ready to accept any doom from my hand?
Apparently yes. After all, Gale never was one to plead with me. With an unfaltering smile, he uncrosses his arms and spreads them out. My aim shifts to his heart. That's what I want from him.
Gale finally speaks. "It's yours, Catnip. Shoot straight. Remember, I-"
I'll never forget.
Finally certain what to do, I shift my bow upward and the truly last arrow of the war gleams golden in the rising sun; severs the rope and disappears in the endless green surrounding us.
I don't want our world to be upside-down anymore, not after we'd paid the highest price to set it right.
True, I'll never be able to entirely separate Prim's death from Gale… but I am not guilt-free either. And guilt is not what she'd want us to feel anyway.
We can deal with the aftermath of an explosion that shattered our world together, just like we did before, after the loss of our fathers. Both of us can function alone, but we work better as a pair.
Gale managed to break his fall with an awkward somersault and remains sitting on the ground, running his shaking hands through his hair.
"So I'm not getting out that easily, am I?" he mutters, the mixture of annoyance and adoration in his voice almost incongruous with the situation.
Throwing my bow aside, I hurry to him and kneel down, taking his hands in mine and holding on tightly. "No," I whisper. "If you still want to give me your heart, I accept. But I'll need it functioning."
Gale shakes his head and smiles again. His eyes reflect the sunlight, silvery like the moon. "You are crazy," he remarks and peers down to inspect the rope around his ankle. "And so am I."
"You knew?" Do I even need him to confirm it verbally?
He knows that I don't and just nods.
"Why did you step in, then?"
He shrugs as if it were obvious. "I figured that was what you needed. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure if you wanted to kill me or not."
"Then how could you..." my voice trails off.
"I told you I'd do anything to help you move on. The freedom we won was empty without you. If you hated me enough to give me death without remorse, I'd have gladly accepted it."
Tears threaten to spill from my eyes again.
"I'm so sorry, Gale. I thought I could hate you... but I can't," I whisper, squeezing his hands once more and releasing them to untie the rope from his ankle and peek at the bruising. "Does... does it hurt?"
He moves his ankle experimentally and shrugs. "Negligibly."
"I'm sorry," I repeat. A sudden, truly crazy thought occurs to me. "Please don't tell my shrink... or Haymitch."
Gale winks with a crooked smile. "We'd rather not let authority get between us again, huh?
I shake my head defiantly. "No. And don't leave me on my own anymore. I don't want to cope with everything alone." Now I no longer need him to help me kill or die; now I need him like an arrow to fix a tourniquet that will stop my sanity from bleeding out. I move closer as I realize the truth. "For me, freedom is empty without you."
"I'm right here," he says, shifting his position to put his arms around me. "I no longer dared to dream you'd want me to, but I'll stay with you."
"Don't get your hopes up," I snap, snuggling closer. "I'll be your worst punishment."
"Million times better than anything I'd deserve. Just in case you forgot, I love you."
"Even after this?"
Is that a better answer than I know?
Gale chuckles and tightens his embrace. "You are addictive substance, Catnip," he whispers into my hair. "You'd have to shoot me for real to get rid of me."
Lightly trailing my hand over his bare chest, I feel the frantic beating of his heart, suddenly dizzy with relief that the only arrow I've ever shot there had been metaphorical. "I'll keep it in mind, just in case."
Another laugh rumbles against my questing fingers, this time more devilish. "Good thinking."
I emit some embarrassing sound of surprise as he rolls us over, pinning my body under his and capturing my wrists above my head in an iron grip.
"Tell me how it feels to be caught in your own trap," he whispers, leaning so close our noses almost touch and his breath fans strands of loose hair from my face.
"You'd better make it worthwhile," I answer softly, leaving my mouth parted and inviting.
Gale eliminates the last distance between us and claims my lips without hesitation. The invisible walls dividing us crumble as if struck by lightning and I almost hear them crashing amid the rush of blood in my ears.
Or is it the blaring of trumpets?
We are in our woods and under our mountains now, and we might as well find our way. At least to oblivion, before we start working on redemption.
Gale walked away from me more than once, knowing full well I'd hate us both more if he stayed. For years he had thought he would snare my heart, but I refused with all the stubbornness of my wild nature. Now that I've snared him, I'll make damn sure he's not going anywhere, at least not without me. The return to the certainty that sustained me for years brings me solace and the contentment with my choice warms my soul like a blazing hearth.
Back in the house, after I curl to sleep by Gale's side, long liberated from my reaping dress, slightly sore and most pleasantly exhausted, my dreams are sweet for a while and hopefully, someday brings them true.
Even Prim appears in them, carefree and beautiful, and blesses us with a smile.
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
the magician laughs
Next evening, Haymitch ostentatiously "drops by while inspecting the rebuilding of Twelve", but I suspect his surprise visit might have something to do with the fact that my phone-line's been left for dead since Saturday morning and none of his "spies" managed to get a glimpse of me. When he discovers that I've been AWOL because of my reunion with Gale, he grins with shrewd amusement, reminding me of his perpetually drunk old self we sometimes chanced upon at the Hob so long ago. "Still thick as thieves, huh? Should've known you little delinquents would end up together no matter what," he says.
Then his smirk turns ominous as he takes a step towards Gale and glares at him, equally tall and naturally more intimidating than the younger Seam boy, "But I'm telling you right now, Hawthorne, you hurt her again and there won't be a hole deep enough for you to hide from me. Do we understand each other?"
Gale grins, obviously unperturbed. "I'm not planning on hurting her."
Haymitch backs off a little and winks at me as he calmly says, "Don't kid yourself, there are going to be days you'll want to."
Looping my arm around Gale's waist, I wink back at Haymitch. "You don't have to bother with pulling strings here. We have it all figured out," I say before Gale can answer.
"Besides, the odds are she'd have me swinging from a tree before you even knew she was mad at me. I'm counting on you to get her acquitted, just in case," Gale tells Haymitch with a confidential wink. I furtively kick his good ankle, hard. I trust him not to rat me out, but he might underestimate Haymitch's powers of deduction.
But Haymitch just shakes his head in amusement. "You kids are barking mad."
I grin at him. "Well, if you want to see nice and cute, we can visit Peeta and Delly downtown. They reopened the bakery already."
He bursts into a fit of hearty laughter and we set on our way.
The western sky glows sunset-orange, Peeta's favorite color, while silvery moon rises over the green canopy of woods in the east and the star that heralds both evening and morning twinkles in between.
.22.
Future?
The stone of infinity, washed in the flood...
We passed through trials and fire and we'll step into the void again, now as two fools together.
We can do it. Gale and I. We'll be us again, but with a lot of work to do and heaps of ashes to atone for.
We'll save each other a little every day, just like we did before, finding hope and courage to face the next hour and sharing our pain.
Sometimes we may tie some knots and end up a little worse for wear, but who cares?
There are far worse games to play.
Author: mercury_fire (Ellenka)
Characters/Pairing: Katniss/Gale
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Rating: T
Category: Angst
Spoilers: HG, CF, MJ
Summary: Some bonds can be broken and burned, but they never entirely disappear. A very alternative Mockingjay ending with a tiny bit of ret-conning.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to own settings and characters and certain direct quotes from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I'm just borrowing them for some irreverent fun. Same goes for the quoted song lyrics, "The Tower" by Bruce Dickinson. Extra credits for inspiration and help go to Howlynn and karebear.
Warnings: Unorthodox reinterpretations of many things, including THG canon and some Tarot cards; (un)healthy dose of insanity and rather inappropriate use of snares.
Tying Frayed Ends
.00.
Past
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
and the priestess kneels
It's been two years since my world, already twisted, turned upside-down.
The last time we truly met on our rock, on the 74th Reaping day, my best friend Gale gave me bread pierced with an arrow and I laughed. We were two kids too old for our age, with hope for no more than the next hours, and yet we willed the odds to be in our favor. But fate and fortune can play terrible jokes and our hope was dashed when the paper slip bearing the name Primrose Everdeen left the reaping bowl.
I stepped up to the fancy gallows to take my sister's place, venturing from safety of everything I've ever known into the almost-certain perdition known as the Hunger Games. From the moment I started to play in her stead, I broke all rules and in the end changed everything, everything except for the fact that Prim had been chosen to die.
I forfeited my own life to the Games to save her, and lost her on the very cusp of victory, in the moment that should have justified every sacrifice. Like all Victors before, I've been ultimately punished by the loss of what was most dear to me. Prim, not yet fourteen years old, but wearing the white uniform of a field medic, appeared by some evil machination at the very center of the battlefield where bombs had just gone off. She knelt down to treat the nearest victim and the fire of the second explosion engulfed her right before my eyes. My lifeline burned with my sister, leaving me in darkness illuminated only by the unquenchable flames consuming Prim and with her my reason, my heart and my spirit.
The fire I started by volunteering for her, seized by the wrong hands and channeled in the wrong direction, reduced all the light of my world to ashes. I protected Prim from the old regime, but I failed to protect her from the revolution. Like Snow hijacked Peeta in a failed attempt to destroy me, Coin hijacked Gale's trap to catch Prim and accomplished the task of destroying me with crushing force. I thought she had arbitrarily sent Prim to the front line. Only later I learned that Coin was only too happy to issue a special permission when Prim volunteered to go, just like both Gale and I volunteered to join the Squad 451.
If I hadn't succesfully struggled to gain my pass to vengeance at all costs, I wouldn't have let her go anywhere.
I'd have been there to protect her.
Standing in front of the mirror, prepped to execute the former President Snow and thus fulfill a task that no longer mattered, I was nothing but the shell of the sister that failed, trapped in my Mockingjay costume with wings burned and broken. Then Gale entered, holding my despair in his eyes and my arrow in his hands. It was the last time we met and we were no longer us, and he gave me only an arrow.
Our hope was gone, no more hours, no more seconds; at the moment, there was nothing else I wanted from him. I thought I could relinquish him like the very last missile I was to fire to conclude the war, discharged to perform its bloody task, never to be retrieved.
I shot straight, just like he had advised me to, and the flying death plunged right into the gray heart of President Coin who rendered the victory hollow for me, preventing her to do so for the whole country.
Would I have done it if Prim lived? Or did her inadvertent sacrifice prevent the old tyranny from returning in a new guise?
A tiny voice in my head said yes, the endless cycle of vengeance would never have ended without her. She was the true savior of Panem, I was just the cathartic flame.
But that hardly mattered to me then; because she was dead, dead, DEAD and I wanted nothing but to follow her. When Peeta saved me from my own nightlock pill, I changed my mind and screamed at Gale to give me one more gift; one more arrow to end my life. The same gift I had denied him earlier and I hated him with a passion when he returned my betrayal.
But somewhere very deep inside, I was grateful that he couldn't fulfill his promise.
Prim wouldn't have wanted it.
She wouldn't have wanted me imprisoned and slowly going insane either, but would have advised me to cling to hope. I had other solutions on my mind and defiantly sang for my death, but instinctively refrained from crossing the threshold myself. Meanwhile, somewhere, someone must still have wished and truly fought for my life, because one day Haymitch appeared to tell me I've been proclaimed insane and acquitted and they plan on sending me to "rehabilitation". At least I could secretly choose where to go, and my decision was to be included in the official warrant.
I appreciated the choice, but no option seemed appealing. One chamber in hell resembles another so closely, it makes the choice trivial.
Was there a place fit for what remained of me?
"Where will you go?" I asked for a hint.
"I'll escort you wherever you say, sweetheart. But I'll have to return here soon, to keep an eye on things. Devil's work is never done."
I nodded slowly, knowing that if someone could keep guiding the nation like a star, or perhaps a sober constellation, it was Haymitch Abernathy.
"I want to go back where I started," I said at last, after long moments of barely-lucid consideration.
"Twelve? You sure?" Haymitch looked slightly crestfallen. "The rebuilding has already started and your old house could be cleared for you, but… there's nothing for you in that place, sweetheart."
I shrugged. All I needed then was my sister, alive, and nobody could bring her back for me. But I'd already realized that I'm not to follow her. I, Katniss Everdeen, the four-times damned Victor, have been chosen to live. But I'd almost forgotten how to.
"Right now, all I need is time. I can get that anywhere."
I asked to visit Peeta before leaving and surprisingly, got my wish. I found him in the kitchen of the mental health facility, frosting tiny sugar cookies with yellow dandelions. Delly Cartwright was probably there to assist him, but in that particular moment she just watched the deft movements of his hands in rapt adoration. For a while, I emulated her through the slightly open door and then steeled myself to step in.
They greeted me with almost matching warm smiles. Peeta's pupils no longer dilated at the sight of me. I breathed a light sigh of relief, though my hand inadvertently sought my neck.
No need. It's okay now, I reminded myself.
"I'm going home," I announced, preferring to start with simple things.
"They say I have to stay here to finish a round of therapy. But then I… er… we want to return home too," said Peeta, gingerly laying the frosting aside.
The corners of my mouth curled upwards, to my own surprise. Maybe there was nothing complicated between us anymore. The Games brought us together amid pain and theatrics, but they were finally over. The real that remained after them wasn't the form of affection he'd envisioned before... or what I imagined in the Quell Arena, but that was alright. I knew I wouldn't deserve him in a million years, and he's never done anything bad enough to deserve me.
"Good. I just wanted to check on you before I left."
"That's nice of you, Katniss," he said, the surprise in his voice inciting a pang of remorse in my heart.
"I… I know you are in the best care," I say, slightly embarrassed. "I'll be going. Bye, Delly."
She jumped up from the chair to hug me. "Bye, Katniss. I hope you'll feel better soon."
Hope. Was there any left for me?
Nodding absently, I turned to leave.
"Wait!" Peeta's voice stopped me in my tracks.
His hand hovered above the tray and picked a cookie, presumably the one he deemed to be the best specimen. "For good luck."
I accepted the dainty morsel of hope without hesitation, letting my fingers brush Peeta's with amiable familiarity. "Thanks."
"Anytime, Katniss."
After one more round of goodbyes, I strode down the corridor back to where Haymitch stood waiting for me, keeping my eyes on my new confectionery token. The yellow frosting was melting in the heat of my palm and I had nowhere safe to deposit the cookie. Unwilling to let it come to wasteful harm, I decided to eat it.
It was exquisite, but a bit too sweet for my tastes.
"Anyone else you wanted to see?" asked Haymitch when I rejoined him.
"I… I don't know. Mom?" I said, unsure if I could deal with the weight of our combined grief.
"She's starting a hospital in District Four. Wouldn't you rather stay with her?" said Haymitch.
After a moment, I decided against it. "No… not now... we… we've always dealt with the worst on our own."
"Not even for a visit? After what you've been through… maybe you'd change your mind."
"Maybe." I didn't find it probable.
"Anyone else?" prodded Haymitch.
No and yes.
"Where… where did Gale go? I hadn't seen him since…"
Since the time I thought could have been the last.
Johanna, who just caught up with us, latched onto Haymitch's arm with a smirk. "He almost tore the place down when they didn't let him see you," she informed me with a hint of playful derision. "Looks like brainlessness runs in the family."
Haymitch squeezed her fingers with obviously more-than-affectionate force. "That was just before he left for Two. Volunteered for excavation works in the old Nut."
I frowned. It was like him to clear his own mess, but I didn't like the idea very much, not after seeing what tends to happen to volunteers.
"For how long?"
"It might take a few months. Do you want to visit him along the way?"
"Not now," I said, feeling more relief than anything else. I didn't feel up to it yet.
Better let him deal with one trap at a time, I decided.
In Four, I spent endless hours embracing my mother and the tears we cried could have rivaled the ocean crashing against the sandy shores. To her, I was like the Moon come too near, drawing the tide higher and threatening to drown us both.
She coped by submerging her misery in work and I opted not to interfere. We've never been good at helping each other.
So I returned to Twelve, back to where I came from, stripped of my past and reluctant to face the future. At first, I welcomed the peace and rest, tired and lost in the aftermath of my meaningless victory, or was it a glorified defeat? Driven by my deeply ingrained propensity for survival, my body performed basic physical routines with robotic precision. Even Haymitch was gradually convinced that I'll keep adhering to his advice and stay alive. When he decided to return to mentoring the fledgling democracy that hatched in the burned-out pyre of the revolution, I sent him off with pride, knowing the importance of the task.
He remained present as an occasional voice in my earpiece and conspicuously frequent visits from Greasy Sae assured me that I'm not left entirely to my own devices, but I relished the solitude most of the time. My mind, free of all external obligations for the first time since I could remember, devoted the endless days of my government-subsidized sick-leave to the slow process of digging through my own ashes for an elusive ember of true life.
But there was no spark. No flower. No Primrose.
Not even the victorious war I'd inadvertently started in the process of saving her sufficed to accomplish my goal. Unable to win her back from the dead, I had nothing to fight for; nothing to fight against and the stagnation gradually became unbearable. With melancholy slowly turning back to almost feral restlessness, I found it increasingly harder to hold civil conversations with mother or Haymitch and to convince Dr. Aurelius of my progress.
And the phone rang and rang even after our compulsory conversations, showing a number from District 2, so insistently I took to unplugging it from the wall.
Peeta eventually returned too and woke me up one morning with the scraping of his shovel as he planted primroses around my house to surprise me. He brought an unexpected ray of light into my life, like so many times before. I knew he would always be there for me, but he finally recognized his sunny Dandelion amid the cement gloom of Thirteen and no longer felt drawn too close to the singing flame that dragged him through recurrent nightmare instead of fulfilling his sweet childhood dreams.
Peeta had burned bread and received punishment to save me and I inadvertently sparked the burning of Panem by saving him in return. The loss I received as ultimate punishment - not a red welt but a gaping laceration on my soul - will never stop hurting. Perhaps he could help me heal my wounds, but I couldn't reap him to battle with my own demons that still lured me with the siren-call of fire. Not anymore.
But my own fight wasn't over yet and I still needed someone to guard my back.
Unfortunately, the first and only candidate to come to my mind was someone who should have burned for me along with my sister.
Gale.
Impossible.
Persistent in my grudge, I kept incinerating all his letters with bitter laughter, tearstained, but unopened, in a vain attempt to burn our connection and not to betray my sister's memory.
A misguided act of rebellion, because Prim would have directed me to do whatever it takes to mend me.
.11.
Present
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
and the hanged man smiles
The memories flash in my mind as I sit on the rock where I used to meet with Gale. Our rock, so wide and empty after death did us part, leaving a trail of ashes instead of a bond we'd considered unbreakable for so long.
The sense of incompleteness and longing for past companionship keeps resurfacing through the images from the war that transformed the inseparable duo of hunters into two wounded predators. It's too wretched and treacherous to withstand for long and soon chases me away.
Upon my return to the house, I'm greeted by insistent ringing of the phone I'd forgotten to unplug after the three calls I had made earlier this morning.
Irritated, I grab the receiver without bothering to notice the caller's number.
"What?"
The answer is a sigh of relief and a single word, spoken by a painfully familiar voice. "Katniss?"
My heart stops beating for a second and then resumes twice as fast.
I can't avoid him forever. Maybe I don't even want to.
Forcing myself to speak, I choke out, "Gale?"
"Katniss… I'm sorry… I needed to check on you. If you told me to stop bothering you, I would, but you never answered and the line was dead most of the time and-"
"I unplugged it sometimes. It kept ringing and got on my nerves," I snap across his tumbling words before they bring me to tears.
I hear Gale breathe deeply to regain his bearings and when he speaks again, he sounds slightly exasperated. "Catnip, when you pick the phone up, it stops ringing. Fact of life."
"Yeah, but…" I begin, but can't help feeling slightly ashamed for my own faulty logic. "I didn't want to talk to you anyway." The pain is still there, noxious and deadly like a wound festering under an unchanged bandage.
"Katniss, please listen to me, just for a moment." The raw edge of his own pain resonating in his voice threatens to rip the bandage off.
Would it be a good idea? To cauterize and to heal?
"I never even told you how sorry I am for..." he continues, but I hardly bother to listen, lost in thought.
Words can't bring my Prim back. Nothing can. Some mistakes are irrevocable... and how high is the cost of forgiveness?
Gale is still talking, hardly pausing to breathe as if getting his message across mattered more than his life. "...I'd do anything for you, anything to help you-"
Could he possibly help me?
Would the pain diminish if we shared it?
"You can do nothing through the phone," I cut across him, finally returning to the conversation. "You want to talk to me? Come here. If you can make the detour."
"We are wrapping the worst up already," he says, voice laced with sudden hope. "I could be there early on Sunday morning. Okay?"
Sunday after the Games...
What would I do when I meet him again?
I don't know yet... but since he said he'd do anything for me, anything goes.
"Okay. You know where I live."
I slam the receiver down with vengeance.
Few more days to think it over...
… why do they suddenly seem too long?
And why the hell is Gale digging through some ruined mountain, anyway? It's not like he could save anyone down there after all this time.
But I'm another ruin left by this war… with unexploded mines hiding underneath...
The Saturday sun finally sets and the syrupy darkness seems to hum with anticipation.
I have no intention of waiting for Gale in the house and leave in the middle of the night, depositing a spare key and a note under the doormat, on the off-chance he would come looking for me here first. He'll know where to find me.
Then I set out towards our meeting place, with some necessary supplies and a bright flashlight I hardly even need. Starlight surely guides me to our rock.
The last time we truly met here, Gale gave me bread pierced with an arrow.
What could he give me now?
I know he can't give me Prim back, that he wasn't the one to truly take her away and I can't hate him for that. But the memory of the words he spoke in Special Weaponry is still tightly intertwined with the burning of Prim in my mind and the connection chokes me like a noose.
The underground of Thirteen, so much grayer and more hopeless than the Seam, trapped us both in a twisted web of lies and blinded us to everything including each other, leaving us in darkness replete with nightmares of loss and vengeance. Nightmares that drove him to create the terrible bomb he'd never use for the purpose it ultimately fulfilled, while driving me to lead the Squad 451 on my own unnecessary suicide mission. The fractional blame he bears for the death of my sister is nothing compared to my own guilt for the deaths of my comrades-in-arms, and for some reason, it angers me to no end.
We both have our share of war-crimes to contend with and I shouldn't hate him. I have no truly justified reason to, but I'm too lost without a driving force, without focus, without aim, damn, I'm too lost without him. Right now, I have no idea what exactly to do, but I need to see him, maybe then I'll figure it out. All I know is that I'm not letting him walk away before I decide. I can't move on without a real closure or a new beginning, and this place, our place provides the best setting.
A nearby magnificent tree with a convenient branch overhung with a curtain of vines will serve my purpose just right.
From the years we'd spent here together, I know everything I need to prepare the trap. Even how many steps Gale needs to cross the clearing... and that he always looks straight at me as he approaches. The knowledge comes in handy now and I set a snare he had taught me himself before the Quarter Quell and smile as I picture my hanged man sacrificed, for justice or vengeance. I wait for him, wearing the first reaping dress that Effie somehow managed to save for me. Its bright blue color, so unusual in the forest setting, is bound to draw Gale's full attention. If he looks anywhere but at me, he'd notice the taut green-dyed rope among the vines, but I'm betting that he won't. Sadly, I'm the only one left to bet on me now.
While waiting, I open the locket Peeta had gave me in the Quell for the first time since my return. I glance at the pictures of mother and Prim… alongside with Gale... and shut my eyes for a moment to squeeze back the tears threatening to spill. Then I slip the pearl from my pocket, round and perfect like the full circle we are yet to complete, and deposit it into the locket before closing it again.
As the light of dawn slowly creeps above the trees, the time of truth draws near and I intend to find the answers I need by any means necessary.
Closing my eyes and slowly counting to ten, I will Gale to materialize soundlessly at the edge of the clearing, like he did so many times before.
After I repeat the process few times, he does, standing exactly where I anticipated him, hands empty and face blank save for the vestiges of regret wrought too deeply to disappear under the illusion of composure.
"Hey, Gale."
"Hey, Katniss."
Our gazes meet, no longer hard as steel but leaden like stormclouds. Suddenly, I wish for a bolt of lightning to issue from the collision and to smite the wall of grief between us, freeing us from the prison we built from the ruins we'd created. But it won't be that easy. Our journey here was long and torturous and a shortcut back can be found only from a wholly new perspective.
I set out in this very attire, already in the process of being changed beyond recognition.
"How's the dress?" I ask out of the blue. "Pretty enough? You never even got to tell me that day."
Gale takes a moment to scrutinize me from under a slightly worried frown, rightfully questioning my sanity. "That's not the most important thing I didn't get to tell you before they took you away, Katniss."
"I know. Let's start with simple things," I say, smoothing my skirt with an exaggerated gesture.
The frown remains firmly in place. How I missed it…
"Of course the dress is pretty. Don't tell me you really cared," he says tentatively.
"Of course I don't. Did you? What about now?"
He shrugs; one corner of his mouth curling upwards with a hint of wistful longing. "You are prettiest when you are yourself, Catnip. And I care about you no matter what. I'd do anything for a chance to prove it."
I mirror his expression. We've both been played for fools countless times, but still know our own game. "We'll see. Once you told me you'll be like the man in the Hanging Tree, forever waiting for an answer."
His eyes widen slightly. "I meant it, Catnip… I thought I'd brought it upon me already … but if you have anything to tell me…"
"We have a lot of things to tell each other… " I spread my arms. "D'you want to get your answer?"
Gale raises his eyebrows in abject surprise, but starts towards me without a moment of hesitation.
Great. I supress a triumphant smile.
Never shifting his gaze from my eyes, he steps right into my snare and hardly any emotion registers on his face as the noose immediately tightens. As if he expected or perceived it after all. My heart clenches with unwelcome remorse at the nasty thud he hits the ground with despite his nimble attempt to break the fall. Then the snare whips him up, leaving him suspended from the living tree by one leg, his head dangling few feet above the ground, outstretched fingers just skimming through the green blades of lush grass. Almost comical with his messy hair hanging down in a dark nimbus around his head and cheeks reddened with the sudden inrush of blood, Gale crosses his arms and tucks his free leg behind the other.
"Always taking things too literally, are we?" He grimaces with a mixture of pain and wry amusement. His shirt creeps down from where it's been tucked into his pants, offering me a glimpse of his taut stomach and the many scars on his back as he helplessly twirls to face the other direction.
"Tell me how it feels to be caught in your trap," I whisper dangerously, crouching down for an occasional chance to meet his gaze.
"It it feels different when I deserve it. Good, in a way," Gale answers. When he moves in an attempt to gesticulate, his shirt slips down to obscure his face and he exasperatedly slides it over his head and tosses it away before crossing his arms again. With another turn of the rope I see a history of pain wrought into his back, countless marks from the whip, the scar he acquired while saving Peeta, the angry red abrasions and blossoming bruises from my own snare-ambush. "Call it poetic justice."
I feel another pang of compassion.
Justice... he never experienced much of it... but his attempt to win it had inadvertently destroyed the very incarnation of selfless innocence...
How did Prim feel, in that terrible fraction of a moment before the flames from the second explosion ended her life?
I reach forward, grabbing Gale's shoulders and steadying him to face me.
"Tell me how she felt, then," I hiss insistently, clenching my jaw to prevent my lower lip from trembling.
Gale reads the unspoken name in my eyes and his own fill with sorrow that transcends fear. "I can't tell you how she felt, Catnip," he whispers. "I'll never know and it keeps haunting me."
"Do you think she realized what killed her?" I shake him a little and Gale makes no movement to protest. "Do you realize what killed her?"
"Compassion," he whispers, his voice strained almost as if the noose tightened around his neck. "The very best in her."
The very best in her nature killed her... and thus prevented the pointless vendetta from repeating...
"And possibly the very worst in me," Gale continues. "You warned me, but I refused to listen, then. You have every right to condemn me, Katniss."
"D'you think so?" Do I think so? I thought I'd dealt justice with my bow before, but now I don't even know anymore...
"Yes. For her and for all the others," he chokes out.
"She was the only one who mattered to me…" I mutter, digging my nails into his shoulders and averting my gaze. How horrible the admission is? What would I deserve for it?
"You know I'd have done anything to save her… if… if I could."
I know that. If he hadn't been captured, he'd have tried to save her, even if it killed him. Hell, he wouldn't even have to do that, if we'd arrived together, he'd have known early enough to prevent her from running to her preordained doom.
"You weren't there…" I whisper, more to myself then to him. He wasn't there and we both know why. He fell into a Capitol trap I'd lead him into.
"I loved her like my own sister, Katniss," Gale continues, his voice strained and breathless. "I did everything to keep her safe when you couldn't. If I'd thought for a second that I'd possibly have a hand in stealing her from you without even knowing it-"
Of course he didn't know. He'd been in the crumbling streets of the Capitol with me… We both volunteered for a game of murder, leaving Prim to fend for herself. It couldn't have ended well.
We couldn't save her and she would have told us it wasn't about saving her anyway.
"Have you found out yet?" I blurt through clenched teeth.
"No. We tried, but no. Does it matter? I played by their rules. It was the worst mistake I've ever made and I'll never be anywhere near done paying for it."
Same goes for me.
I nod slowly.
"You are right on that account, Gale. I can help you there," I mutter, before pressing my hands against his crossed arms to prevent him from reaching for me and lightly brushing my lips against his. "You know what I think about paying debts."
"Too well," says Gale. Then he gives me a smile, an inverted image of the one he had given me so long ago when I handed him my bow for examination, with an acid reminder that stealing is punishable by death.
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
let the fool decide...
Now I stride a dozen yards away, pull my bow from behind a shrub and load it.
Gale watches me intently and an eerie ghost of relief rises from the terrible abysses of remorse in his ashen eyes.
I return his gaze along the shaft of the arrow, switching my aim between his eyes, taunting him to get some sort of reaction out of him.
Is he really ready to accept any doom from my hand?
Apparently yes. After all, Gale never was one to plead with me. With an unfaltering smile, he uncrosses his arms and spreads them out. My aim shifts to his heart. That's what I want from him.
Gale finally speaks. "It's yours, Catnip. Shoot straight. Remember, I-"
I'll never forget.
Finally certain what to do, I shift my bow upward and the truly last arrow of the war gleams golden in the rising sun; severs the rope and disappears in the endless green surrounding us.
I don't want our world to be upside-down anymore, not after we'd paid the highest price to set it right.
True, I'll never be able to entirely separate Prim's death from Gale… but I am not guilt-free either. And guilt is not what she'd want us to feel anyway.
We can deal with the aftermath of an explosion that shattered our world together, just like we did before, after the loss of our fathers. Both of us can function alone, but we work better as a pair.
Gale managed to break his fall with an awkward somersault and remains sitting on the ground, running his shaking hands through his hair.
"So I'm not getting out that easily, am I?" he mutters, the mixture of annoyance and adoration in his voice almost incongruous with the situation.
Throwing my bow aside, I hurry to him and kneel down, taking his hands in mine and holding on tightly. "No," I whisper. "If you still want to give me your heart, I accept. But I'll need it functioning."
Gale shakes his head and smiles again. His eyes reflect the sunlight, silvery like the moon. "You are crazy," he remarks and peers down to inspect the rope around his ankle. "And so am I."
"You knew?" Do I even need him to confirm it verbally?
He knows that I don't and just nods.
"Why did you step in, then?"
He shrugs as if it were obvious. "I figured that was what you needed. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure if you wanted to kill me or not."
"Then how could you..." my voice trails off.
"I told you I'd do anything to help you move on. The freedom we won was empty without you. If you hated me enough to give me death without remorse, I'd have gladly accepted it."
Tears threaten to spill from my eyes again.
"I'm so sorry, Gale. I thought I could hate you... but I can't," I whisper, squeezing his hands once more and releasing them to untie the rope from his ankle and peek at the bruising. "Does... does it hurt?"
He moves his ankle experimentally and shrugs. "Negligibly."
"I'm sorry," I repeat. A sudden, truly crazy thought occurs to me. "Please don't tell my shrink... or Haymitch."
Gale winks with a crooked smile. "We'd rather not let authority get between us again, huh?
I shake my head defiantly. "No. And don't leave me on my own anymore. I don't want to cope with everything alone." Now I no longer need him to help me kill or die; now I need him like an arrow to fix a tourniquet that will stop my sanity from bleeding out. I move closer as I realize the truth. "For me, freedom is empty without you."
"I'm right here," he says, shifting his position to put his arms around me. "I no longer dared to dream you'd want me to, but I'll stay with you."
"Don't get your hopes up," I snap, snuggling closer. "I'll be your worst punishment."
"Million times better than anything I'd deserve. Just in case you forgot, I love you."
"Even after this?"
Is that a better answer than I know?
Gale chuckles and tightens his embrace. "You are addictive substance, Catnip," he whispers into my hair. "You'd have to shoot me for real to get rid of me."
Lightly trailing my hand over his bare chest, I feel the frantic beating of his heart, suddenly dizzy with relief that the only arrow I've ever shot there had been metaphorical. "I'll keep it in mind, just in case."
Another laugh rumbles against my questing fingers, this time more devilish. "Good thinking."
I emit some embarrassing sound of surprise as he rolls us over, pinning my body under his and capturing my wrists above my head in an iron grip.
"Tell me how it feels to be caught in your own trap," he whispers, leaning so close our noses almost touch and his breath fans strands of loose hair from my face.
"You'd better make it worthwhile," I answer softly, leaving my mouth parted and inviting.
Gale eliminates the last distance between us and claims my lips without hesitation. The invisible walls dividing us crumble as if struck by lightning and I almost hear them crashing amid the rush of blood in my ears.
Or is it the blaring of trumpets?
We are in our woods and under our mountains now, and we might as well find our way. At least to oblivion, before we start working on redemption.
Gale walked away from me more than once, knowing full well I'd hate us both more if he stayed. For years he had thought he would snare my heart, but I refused with all the stubbornness of my wild nature. Now that I've snared him, I'll make damn sure he's not going anywhere, at least not without me. The return to the certainty that sustained me for years brings me solace and the contentment with my choice warms my soul like a blazing hearth.
Back in the house, after I curl to sleep by Gale's side, long liberated from my reaping dress, slightly sore and most pleasantly exhausted, my dreams are sweet for a while and hopefully, someday brings them true.
Even Prim appears in them, carefree and beautiful, and blesses us with a smile.
Lovers in the tower
the moon and sun divided
the magician laughs
Next evening, Haymitch ostentatiously "drops by while inspecting the rebuilding of Twelve", but I suspect his surprise visit might have something to do with the fact that my phone-line's been left for dead since Saturday morning and none of his "spies" managed to get a glimpse of me. When he discovers that I've been AWOL because of my reunion with Gale, he grins with shrewd amusement, reminding me of his perpetually drunk old self we sometimes chanced upon at the Hob so long ago. "Still thick as thieves, huh? Should've known you little delinquents would end up together no matter what," he says.
Then his smirk turns ominous as he takes a step towards Gale and glares at him, equally tall and naturally more intimidating than the younger Seam boy, "But I'm telling you right now, Hawthorne, you hurt her again and there won't be a hole deep enough for you to hide from me. Do we understand each other?"
Gale grins, obviously unperturbed. "I'm not planning on hurting her."
Haymitch backs off a little and winks at me as he calmly says, "Don't kid yourself, there are going to be days you'll want to."
Looping my arm around Gale's waist, I wink back at Haymitch. "You don't have to bother with pulling strings here. We have it all figured out," I say before Gale can answer.
"Besides, the odds are she'd have me swinging from a tree before you even knew she was mad at me. I'm counting on you to get her acquitted, just in case," Gale tells Haymitch with a confidential wink. I furtively kick his good ankle, hard. I trust him not to rat me out, but he might underestimate Haymitch's powers of deduction.
But Haymitch just shakes his head in amusement. "You kids are barking mad."
I grin at him. "Well, if you want to see nice and cute, we can visit Peeta and Delly downtown. They reopened the bakery already."
He bursts into a fit of hearty laughter and we set on our way.
The western sky glows sunset-orange, Peeta's favorite color, while silvery moon rises over the green canopy of woods in the east and the star that heralds both evening and morning twinkles in between.
.22.
Future?
The stone of infinity, washed in the flood...
We passed through trials and fire and we'll step into the void again, now as two fools together.
We can do it. Gale and I. We'll be us again, but with a lot of work to do and heaps of ashes to atone for.
We'll save each other a little every day, just like we did before, finding hope and courage to face the next hour and sharing our pain.
Sometimes we may tie some knots and end up a little worse for wear, but who cares?
There are far worse games to play.