log; gale, katniss & peeta WHO: Gale Hawthorne, Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark WHEN: Sunday, June 21st WHERE: The hospital WHAT: Gale wakes up to find Peeniss in his face. WARNING(S): None!
_____________________
Katniss hadn’t moved in a long time. She wanted to run away, to hide, but that wasn’t an option because she couldn’t move. So she tried to hide away inside herself, keep her face hidden from Peeta (not difficult, because she was facing away from him), and closed her eyes.
Until she heard another commotion, more people coming in, bringing another person in with them. Katniss wouldn’t normally have paid attention to them, but she did open her eyes, and when she caught a glimpse of the person being carried, she was suddenly wide awake.
She’d know that shape anywhere.
“Gale,” she said, before she could stop herself. She couldn’t move to get a better look, except to lift her head a little bit. “That’s Gale.”
--
Peeta had started to drift again, content to spend hours in the hospital at Katniss's side rather than exploring. Something had shifted between them, Katniss didn't have memories that he did have, and he didn't know who was right and who was wrong. All he really knew was that he had her, and he wasn't going anywhere until she could walk and get out of here.
"Hn…?" He buried his face against her shoulder for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut and stifling a yawn before lifting his head. That's Gale. "What? Gale?"
He pushed himself up, one hand protectively on Katniss's arm to keep her from getting up and hurting herself.
--
Katniss was pretty sure she was the one that was wrong. Almost everyone, except for Finnick, was ahead of her, and all of them knew things she didn’t. But it wasn’t just that she didn’t know the future. She didn’t know her own feelings, didn’t know what they meant, or if they were enough. If they would be enough. She hadn’t really realized until now that not being able to love, at least not enough, was more terrifying than the prospect of experiencing the emotion properly. She also wasn’t sure whether the emotions she felt were actually real affection that could turn into something deeper, or just a horrible, selfish yearning to be loved.
Seeing Gale didn’t make her emotions any less complicated. But for the moment it made her forget everything else, as she watched them lie him down on a bed. Instead she found herself scanning him for clues as to when he might be from, and hoping that he wouldn’t be so far away from her, too. The only person that made complete sense to her anymore was Finnick, and even then, she wished he remembered some of the things that she did from the time they’d spent in District 13.
Gale didn’t look hurt, and he wasn’t awake either, so she relaxed back against the bed without taking her eyes off of him. “He wasn’t here before,” she said, quietly. It had been a long time since she’d seen him, and part of her was glad that he was here. Another part of her felt a little bit guilty, and dreaded any new complications to her life that he might have brought with him.
--
Peeta was beginning to understand the situation at hand as being the truth: they were being taken from different places and different points in time, and though no one knew how it was possible, it was possible. It was insane, it was impossible, but it was also the only explanation that lined up with anything he was seeing.
Didn't make it easier to swallow, but he'd calmed down.
"He wasn't here, but I was? And I don't remember a thing?"
--
Katniss nodded, her head moving slightly against the pillow. “You were here. Almost the whole time. He hasn’t been here at all.”
Now he was. A part of her was glad about that; she got along with most of the hunters well enough, but she didn’t have the same silent communication and understanding with any of them that she did with Gale. And Gale wouldn’t have taken a shot that hit her in the leg.
But it might be unfair to think that he’d want to be in her company, especially if he found out about the future. The part about Peeta, and also the part where he might be dead. Maybe she had gotten him killed, maybe it had happened on the mission to the Capitol. Her insides twisted at the thought. She hesitated, debating about asking Peeta if that had happened, but held her tongue for the moment. She was afraid to hear the answer.
--
Peeta wanted to insist that no, he wasn't here, but he didn't want Katniss to insist, didn't want to feel like he didn't have control over his own mind. He didn't know how it was possible, either, and he hadn't yet heard a good explanation.
"You should go see him," he said after a moment, squeezing her arm. Katniss hadn't talked to Gale recently — in her timeline or in Peeta's — and he knew that she missed him, regardless of what had happened between them. They'd been best friends for years, they deserved to talk to each other again.
He looked over his shoulder. "I can get you the wheelchair." Katniss wasn't supposed to be walking, and Peeta wasn't going to let her.
--
Katniss was too confused, too full of dread that there might be even more confusion to come, to immediately jump at the chance to go and see Gale. She did want to, though, so after a moment she nodded again.
She started to push herself carefully into a sitting position, and made a frustrated sound. “I hate that I can’t even walk.” It wasn’t an attempt to convince him to let her do it. Before Peeta had returned, she hadn’t even wanted to get up. Her psyche had healed enough with his presence to want to be up and around, even if it had taken a beating with all the information and emotion and confusion that had happened recently. It was one thing when there was nothing for her to do, and then she was relatively content to lie there and let herself be held. When she wanted to get up and move over quickly to see her best friend, instead she had to go through the whole production of getting into the wheelchair and maneuvering over there. It made her feel useless, and she hated it.
--
"It's the chair or I carry you," Peeta said, climbing off the bed and taking a moment to adjust his prosthetic leg. Katniss had dealt with his injury, had supported him, carried him — he wasn't any stranger to how frustrating it was to have a wounded limb and feel unable to walk.
At least nothing was actively trying to kill her here.
To his credit, Peeta moved quickly, bringing the wheelchair over and carefully helping Katniss into it. A doctor — dark hair, clean-shaven, not the one Peeta had punched — was checking on Gale, but he didn't seem to be doing anything wrong.
Peeta waited until the doctor was gone, and then he brought Katniss over.
--
Gale didn't look much older than what they were used to, but he was dressed in clothes they'd never seen before -- militaristic, sure, but definitely casual and probably from District 2 -- and one of the doctors had placed an unfamiliar bag by his bed that must have belonged to him. He didn't look sick or poorly rested, didn't bear some of the more obvious signs of living in a combat zone. Still, just looking at him was too ambiguous to make real judgements.
When he stirred, he unconsciously angled himself toward Katniss and Peeta, waking as if from a regular sleep rather than just being knocked out. (But he must have been sedated at some point, because there was no way that Gale would just sleep through being carried around, not after everything.)
And when his eyes finally opened to see two familiar people watching him sleep, he jumped, instinctively scrambling back on the bed and almost toppling off. "Shit---!" Gale groped for the other side of the bed and pulled himself upright again, giving Katniss and Peeta another look before glancing around. For whatever reason, he didn't panic. "What happened? Why are you here? Shouldn't you be in Twelve?"
--
The feeling of dread increased as Katniss got closer, and took in his clothing. She had the fleeting thought that maybe it wasn’t Gale after all, but it couldn’t be anyone else; she knew his face too well, even when he was unconscious. But the moment he awoke, her worst fears were confirmed, and she wished she wasn’t here. She wished she could walk, could run away, didn’t have to stay here in the hospital, wasn’t trapped here in her bed or in this chair with nothing to distract her from her own mind and emotions.
It was obvious that he wasn’t from a time that she’d recognize, and she was so tired of the future. But if that was true, she thought suddenly, that meant he lived. He’d lived until the point that she’d been sent back to Twelve, and the war had been over by then. So… what was the part that was supposed to be worse than Finnick?
“I guess so,” she said, in answer to his question. It was a vague and noncommittal answer, and her guard was up, in a way it shouldn’t ever have to be around Gale. “But none of us are in Panem anymore.” He hadn’t realized that yet, she was fairly certain. It wasn’t so much the lack of panic as it was his focus on Katniss’s presence as being the strange thing.
--
"Then where are we?" Gale was quick to sit up, ready to move if he had to. Peeta was slow, Katniss was in a wheelchair, he'd have to get creative if they were going to make a break for it. "Katniss, what the hell is going on?"
He took a glance around and got a look at his bag, instinctively reaching for it. There was nothing useful in there. Pens, maybe. Gale didn't carry weapons everywhere he went anymore.
--
Katniss really hated having to explain this. She didn’t understand it herself, especially now, and she wasn’t good with concepts as complicated as alternate universes. District 12 schools hadn’t exactly prepared her for this, and everything she’d been through — especially the head traumas she’d acquired in the war, which made her distracted and have difficulty paying attention — really didn’t help. The recent trauma and the medicines they’d given her didn’t make that any better.
“Mount Weather,” she said. “It’s a bunker, like District 13. It’s where the people here survived a nuclear war.” That part was simple enough, at least. They were all familiar with wars and underground bunkers. “They say it’s… a different world. There’s no real world out there. Just wilderness.”
--
Gale paused just to stare at her, incredulous. "...What kind of drugs do they have here? ---No, don't answer that. Can you walk? What happened to you?" Peeta could push the wheelchair, he decided. He could take point and clear a path for them if he could just get his hand on a weapon.
This sounded like the kind of insane bullshit the last remains of the Capitol would make up. Lock people in a hole, drug them up, tell them something they can't disprove if they can't see the outside.
--
“I got shot,” Katniss said flatly. She could understand his reaction, but she didn’t appreciate the insinuation that she’d been drugged into swallowing more untrue information. She didn’t like the reminder that she couldn’t walk, either. “Go see it for yourself, if you want.”
--
"Who shot you? Was it the people in charge here?" Gale kicked his legs off the bed. He'd been awake for less than two minutes and he was already ready to punch out a doctor. Leaning in, he looked Katniss over, making eye contact. If they had her on anything that was making her delusional, it wasn't showing.
--
Peeta bristled when Gale leaned in close. Leave it to Gale to start getting angry and trying to hurt people, he thought, before he realized that he was a massive hypocrite.
"Don't go attacking the people in charge," he said with a sigh. "They'll sedate you, and then you'll wake up here again, and the cycle starts all over again."
--
Katniss was irritated by the intent stare at first, but she met Gale’s eyes unflinchingly, knowing that he would be able to find whatever answers he was looking for. There was something steady and reassuring about it too, and her annoyance with him disappeared. The situation wasn’t as bad as Gale thought it was, she knew that, but she was so tired of being helpless. If he wanted to try to find something to fight, she wasn’t in any shape to join him, but she wasn’t going to stop him, either.
“It wasn’t them,” she said, neutrally. “If you’re not injured, they won’t keep you here. You can go and look around. If you want to go outside, you can take my bow.” She didn’t see any weapons on him; that didn’t mean he didn’t have any, but whatever they were, they probably weren’t as useful as a bow. He wouldn’t be able to use the special effects of hers, but it was something, at least.
--
It took Gale a few long moments to answer. His instincts said this was some trick, but was that rationality or hypervigilance talking? Katniss didn't seem drugged, and it wasn't like her to sit somewhere she didn't want to be unless she knew it was decent enough (wheelchair notwithstanding), but… still. Maybe they were just better at brainwashing people.
If he went outside and someone attacked, or they locked him out, then he'd just have to find a way back in.
"All right," he finally agreed. "I'll buy this. For now."
--
“It’s over there.” Katniss waved her hand back in the direction of her bed. Her bow hung by the side of it, where it had been ever since Annabeth had brought it back to her. It was just as well it hadn’t been here when she’d freaked out, or she might have tried to use it, and then the medical staff would have taken it away from her. “I’ll come with you if you want, but I’ll probably only slow you down.”
--
"You should stay with Peeta for now." That suggestion didn't grate on him like it might have a year ago. Hauling himself out of bed, Gale slung his bag over his shoulders and went for Katniss's bow, quietly grateful she'd offered it. It saved him from trying to find an armory to pilfer around here.
"Now…" Gale picked up the bow and thoughtfully tested the string. "How do I get out of here?"