Who: Katniss and Gale When:backdated to September whatevereth, after this Where: the woods What: The Everthorne Book Club! Katniss and Gale discuss the Hunger Games series, feelings abound. We were all expecting it. Rating: low, vague mention of death, war. Status: Log/complete
Gale had seen Katniss only an hour after he finished Mockingjay. As a matter of fact, he had asked her to come out to the woods to see him. He just hadn’t mentioned that he’d finished the books. He hadn’t been ready to talk about what he had read. He hadn’t had any time to think through what he was feeling. He had only known that he needed his best friend.
Consequently, Gale should not have been surprised when Katniss asked him if he had ever finished any of the books. It had never been a secret he meant to keep, more of a line of thought he hadn’t chased all of yet. Gale wasn’t good at changing his habits, and he was still more used to being estranged from Katniss than being able to tell her what was running through his head at any time. When she asked, Gale realized he’d probably been ready to talk about the books for awhile, he had just forgotten to tell Katniss.
Gale had been spending more and more time in the woods, driven away from the traffic and brightness of the city to places where he felt more calm. In the woods, Gale was free to sleep with the sun and rise with the first birds, while dew was still clinging to everything that stood still. He could watch the sunrise from a crop of rock and never hear an alarm clock buzzing in the apartment next door. He could be his own master out in the wild.
Even out in the great wide open, Gale had certain habits. He only camped in one place, so finding him wasn’t hard if he trusted you enough to show you where his hideout was. So far he had trusted only Katniss with his camping place. He was considering showing Johanna, but he didn’t yet know if he trusted her enough to sleep out in the woods with her. That probably meant no.
With Katniss, things were totally different. They had built up years worth of trust. Being with her was only a half-step from being by himself. Gale not only trusted Katniss enough to turn his back to her, but to know that she would be there protecting his blind spot. That sort of trust allowed Gale to doze in a hammock he’d slung between two trees near a creek a few yards from his tent. He didn’t know how long it would take her to get to him from the city, but he knew she’d find him when she arrived.
--
Those damn books were a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, Katniss hated that her most private thoughts and experiences, during the worst times in her life, were available to anyone who picked up the books. On the other, she could see the benefit of having them around for Peeta and Gale to read. For Peeta, they were a way for him to understand her better, which he deserved, after years of not being able to tell what was real for her and what was an act. For Gale…
Gale knew her mind better. He always had. But somewhere along the line, after her first Games, their friendship had gotten complicated. They had stopped telling each other everything. In a way, giving him permission to read the books felt like a way of making up for that. There were surely truths in there that would hurt him in one way or another; she couldn’t even begin to guess what he would think of the rest of it. All she knew was that if he really wanted to know her mind as well as the author of those books apparently did, and if she wanted him to know all of it, no matter how uncomfortable it was -- that had to be a good sign, didn’t it? So long as there wasn’t anything in those books that was too painful, too unforgivable, for them to continue being friends.
She knew the main issue was Peeta. Katniss had no choice but to get past Prim’s death, or at least to bury it down and act like it had never happened, not for Gale’s sake but for Prim’s. She had grieved, was still grieving, but she couldn’t let Prim know it, and if she could get over it enough to treat Prim normally, she could do the same for Gale. But in her heart, she had chosen Peeta and she knew that wasn’t going to change. It didn’t mean that she didn’t still occasionally wonder what if, what might have been, but not in a way that truly meant she wished things were different. They both had to adjust, find their way to a friendship that could include them loving other people. Right now that was Peeta, but eventually, she would probably have to accept Gale being with someone else, too. And she could hardly blame him for having difficulty with it when she probably would have handled it even less gracefully if their positions had been reversed.
She mulled this over as she curled up on the train, her bag slung over her shoulder, her body turned as much towards the window as she could manage, to avoid recognition. A part of her was dreading the conversation they were going to have, and so the trip out to the woods went faster than she might have liked. But once she was in the woods, she felt a sense of calm settle over her the way it always did in the wilderness. She had Beetee’s bow back in her apartment, but she had bought a regular one before that had come through the tesseract for her, and she retrieved that one from its regular hiding spot before making the hike to Gale’s campground.
She treaded silently through the woods, intent on getting to meet him, but when a squirrel crossed her path, she stopped to shoot it. With her kill in hand, bow over her shoulder, she approached his tent, purposefully letting the leaves rustle under her feet to alert him to her presence. She could materialize silently and almost out of nowhere, the way he usually did, but she couldn’t tell if he was awake -- and she had no idea how well he slept these days. Her own sleep was fraught with nightmares.
--
The problem with reading the books and with having lived through them, is that Gale knew more than the Katniss in this world did. But that didn’t mean he knew . Most of the questions he had, this Katniss probably wouldn’t be able to answer. The biggest one, really. Did she really wish he would come back?
Gale had spent the past few weeks wondering whether or not he thought it was a good idea to go back. Of course there was the complication of Katniss and Peeta. He knew now that their relationship was going to grow into something that produced children, and he really didn’t fancy the idea of being around to watch it blossom. Missing Katniss was his greatest heartache, though. Now that he had her in his life again, he couldn’t imagine choosing not to. As horrible as it was to watch her and Peeta make eyes at each other, it still hurt less than the hollow of her nonpresence when he entered the woods around District Two, rocky and sparse as the peace he felt among their flora.
As he lay in his hammock, Gale was daydreaming of their woods outside District Twelve. The creek next to him became the babble of mockingjays. Katniss was singing to them, Cressida and her video crew watching. The Hanging Tree. Gale had compared himself to the man in the song once. In his dream, he watched the Hanging Tree catch fire and turn to cinders in a moment.
He woke to the crunch of dry leaves and sat up, scanning the area. He saw movement near his tent, dark hair and a jacket he recognized. “Katniss,” he called as he rolled out of the hammock. He’d never had one before, but he was finally getting the hang of it. He took a few strides toward her, a smile breaking out on his face.
--
If he’d been asleep, he was awakened quickly by the sound of her approach, which was as she’d expected. The smile was a pleasant surprise. At the sight of it, Katniss felt her worries and dread about this conversation start to dissipate. He had read the books and he was still glad to see her. She was less afraid that he would dislike the person that the books revealed her to be, and more worried that, at some point, she’d thought something that he’d find unforgivable. Something about him, or maybe about Peeta. It was uncomfortable to think that now they both knew precisely what had been going through her mind when she had been torn between the two of them, but on the other hand… it probably cleared up a lot of confusion and misunderstandings, too. Maybe even offered some closure.
Once she’d seen him smile, it almost felt like any other day in the woods. Her bow was different, not handmade by her father, and so were her boots -- she’d had to find a good pair here, since she’d shown up in the shoes she’d been given in District Thirteen. These weren’t the same woods, either. But she was wearing her father’s hunting jacket, and the rest of her clothes were good enough replacements, and the woods were familiar to her now that she’d spent enough time out here. It was just different enough to avoid giving her a truly vivid flashback to the old days, but enough to make her feel nostalgic.
After offering him a smile in return, she set down the squirrel, her bag, and her bow. Gesturing to the squirrel, she said, “I wasn’t going to hunt on the way here, but he practically ran right over my feet.” She looked up at him. Deciding not to jump right into the talking, she asked, “Did you check your snares already?”
It wasn’t a way out, exactly, but it was something they could do to ease their way into it. Talking while they hunted would scare off game, but they could talk while they went over the snares, skinned and cleaned the day’s haul. It would take some of the pressure off of both of them to have something to do. And it would feel more companionable, more normal, more like them.
--
Despite the heavy nature of their meeting today, Gale was glad to see Katniss. The strange dream hung over him like cobwebs, but somehow the erie images left him feeling liberated. Looking at her, he felt certain that no matter how this talk went today, he wasn’t going to lose his friend. It was such a strange thing to be sure of after what had happened back in Panem, but Gale was beginning to trust that this wasn’t Panem, that his story could have whatever ending he wrote for it. Well, almost. He was also beginning to accept that Katniss loved someone else, and he would have to learn to do the same one day.
Gale was in no rush to find another girl. He hadn’t been in a rush to find Katniss, either. His love had been built day by day in the little moments. Right now, he wasn’t sure he wanted to let anyone get that close to him. He wanted some time to get back to normal. He wanted some stability in this world before he started thinking about getting onto the rickety raft of romance.
With all the thoughts swimming in his head, Gale was grateful to Katniss for suggesting the work. He could use the activity, the meditative repeated movements, the sense of habit. He was pretty sure he could add a few more carcasses to the pile. This world was strange, with its supermarkets full of meat in plastic packages. Gale still preferred his way.
“Hopefully squirrels aren’t the only things running where they shouldn’t today. You ready?” He turned to lead her toward his line of snares trailing along the creek, looking over his shoulder to make sure she followed behind.
--
Most of Katniss’s food these days came from a store. It was just too difficult to get out to the woods every day, and the game never lasted very long. She appreciated the variety that was available to her now, and she also liked that it still felt like she’d earned it, more than she’d earned any of the food that had been available at her fingertips in the Capitol. It wasn’t the Capitol’s money, either; she had worked for it, in a way that didn’t involve killing people. That, too, was refreshing.
But still, none of it was ever as fresh as anything she could bring home from the woods, and there was still a sense of satisfaction in being able to get her own food from the wild without anyone’s help, without any money at all. Well, except for what she’d spent to get the bow and the hunting license, but she could have done it without paying for either of those things.
She nodded in answer to his question, and fell into step with him easily. It was instinctive, after years of practice. Questions were on the tip of her tongue -- only one question, really, prompting him to tell her his thoughts on the books and ask her his questions -- but she stayed silent, knowing he would speak whenever he was ready. She followed him to the snares, and immediately went to work helping him bring in the day’s haul, and her question was almost forgotten, fallen to the wayside as she concentrated on removing a rabbit and carefully resetting the snare.
--
Gale took his time trying to decide how to start the conversation. He wanted, perhaps first, to apologize. Ever since her reaping, Gale had had many very unfair thoughts about Katniss. Reading her perspective had cleared up a lot of things for him, most importantly, that he’d been reading a lot of things wrong. Oh, most of them he’d got right. Mostly the ones he’d wanted to be wrong about. But he had not fully grasped the magnitude of changes Katniss had gone through until he saw them through her eyes.
He didn’t know how to tell her any of that, though, so he walked the line of snares, pulling some kind of weasel -- he hadn't yet learned the names of all the species in these woods -- from a snare and stooping to reset it. He thought back through the text, through all the days they had both lived, for a place to start.
“Remember when you came home? The first time. You hugged me. Right off the train and everyone looked like they expected it. Except the people from the Capitol.” And Peeta, but Gale left that part out. He didn’t want to harp on Peeta right now. Maybe later. Right now, he wanted to talk to Katniss about their friendship, and just how deep it really ran.
--
Of all the things Katniss had expected him to bring up, that wasn’t it. And yet, it made a strange kind of sense that he’d say it, once it had happened. She did remember the ride home on the train, and Gale there waiting for her with all of his family, and her mother referring to him as her cousin. So of course, she’d hugged him, knowing that it was awkward for multiple reasons and, for just that one moment, not caring. That hug, and the return to as much of their routine as they could manage, had been the best things about coming back after the Games.
Of course, that had been because she’d actually thought she could return to that life. That all she had to worry about was getting through the Victory Tour, and then she’d be fine. Incredibly naive, in retrospect.
“I remember,” she said, looking at him, wondering where he was going with this. For him, maybe it had been even more of a hopeful moment than it had for her. She hadn’t known, then, how he felt. She wouldn’t know until later, until he kissed her, until they’d nearly run away together. But she tried to think of that from his perspective, knowing now what she didn’t then-- his best friend, the girl he loved, had come home from the Games and essentially ended the pretense of her star-crossed romance, at least where the people who knew her were concerned. Even though he’d been working in the mines, and their hunting time was limited, he must have thought that things could change for them. And then they hadn’t.
But maybe it still mattered, that moment. For what reason, she didn’t know. Maybe because she’d defied everyone’s expectations just to hug him, because he mattered. She tried to remember precisely what she was feeling in that moment, but all she remembered was conflicting emotion: confusion, guilt, relief. It hadn’t stood out in her mind the way other things had, but apparently it was of some significance to him.
--
When she stepped off of that train Gale had held back. Under normal circumstances, he would have shoved his way to the front of the line, knowing his was a face she would want to see. But after her weeks in the arena -- after everything he had watched her do and say to Peeta Mellark -- he didn’t know if she still considered him an essential part of her life. That was what the hug meant to him. It told him Katniss still needed him on her team.
In that way, it was significant. But it wasn’t the hug itself he wanted to talk about. It was everyone else. “Before that moment, I thought maybe you’d really changed in there.” He cut a glance at her, his face pulled tight with embarrassment at his own stupidity. She had changed in there, just not in ways he’d understood until much later. “I thought you would come back all Capitol. You were so… fractured on screen. The Gamemakers pieced together this version of you that had even me questioning everything I knew. Until you hugged me, I wasn’t sure you were still you.”
This would have been one of the many good opportunities to apologize. He had become detached from his best friend in the mayhem, allowed himself to be convinced that she was someone else’s Katniss and had secretly been all along. In the face of the metamorphosis into a Star Crossed Lover of Twelve, he had lost sight of the girl he knew better than anyone else on this earth and who knew him just as well. In a way the speech itself was an apology. By admitting that he had expected anything less than what they’d always had, he was confessing his lapse of faith.
“Especially when Effie Trinket made that pinched little face like I’d smeared coal dust in her wig.” He continued with a joke meant to conceal just how small he’d felt in the line of Effie’s perplexed gaze. How little he meant to the people of the Capitol had always been a fact of Gale’s life, but seeing them look genuinely surprised that he existed at all had been too much to bear. He had been a little bit glad that Katniss had been too busy to seek him out for the rest of the time cameras were present.
It had given him some time to sort out what he thought he’d learned on the train platform. It turned out he would be wrong after all, but for a few weeks he’d been on the verge of a strange giddiness he hadn’t even known he was capable of. The despair he plunged into after met a new depth as well. The Hunger Games complicated the lives of everyone in Panem, but since they took Katniss, every moment Gale lived seemed charged with too many feelings.
He wanted to apologize for being absent after she returned from the Games, but there was nothing he could have done about it except run away with her. No longer able to depend on tesserae to feed his family, he had been forced to work in the same mines that had killed his father. But that didn’t trouble him as much as the distance that sprang up between him and Katniss in so little time. He could apologize for his part of that, maybe, but it had taken both of them. There were some questions in this nest of thoughts, but Gale was having trouble keeping everything orderly in his head. The books had contained so much information, and he had so many overlapping thoughts.
--
Katniss wasn’t sure how to feel about that. In the back of her mind, she thought vaguely; this is the kind of thing I would find, if there were a book to read about him. She would have seen herself through his eyes. She wondered if there was a moment when she’d lost faith, doubted him like this. Probably not in the same way. She never would have expected him to be “all Capitol”, as he’d put it. He’d never been forced to play their games the way she had, and she wasn’t thinking about the ones in the Arena.
“I guess I should take that as a compliment,” she said, after a moment. “A testament to my acting skills.” But she didn’t. It just reminded her of how terrifying those times had been, even before she’d had Snow’s threat hanging over her head. At more than one point, she’d thought that everyone to see right through her, but if anyone should have been able to, it was Gale.
It was probably his jealousy talking, she knew. Not just jealousy in regards to Peeta, but the Capitol as well. After all, they literally had the power to take her away from him, and change her into something else. She probably shouldn’t take that personally, but it was hard not to. And at the same time, it made her feel guilty, too.
“I did feel like I’d been lying to you,” she said. “But… you probably know that already.” Because those damn books had probably told him, and more eloquently than she could have managed.
--
When he said all Capitol he was really thinking actually in love with Peeta. He meant that she intended to follow their design for her life. Gale recognized the enormity of the gift Katniss had given him by letting him read her thoughts. This was the best he could do to return that favor. He could open his heart and tell her the things he hadn’t had the courage or time to when he was first thinking them. He could help her read his mind in return. It was a pale gift, and maybe one that would create more questions than it answered. She might discover his thoughts were not always so charitable, but that was a risk he had to take, because they were best friends and that only counted if she knew the whole truth about him, too.
“I was being an idiot, Katniss.” He looked over at her now, regret inscribed over every inch of him. He knew that the thoughts he had just shared were hurtful ones. He wanted to get them out of the way early. If she knew how convoluted his mind had become over her, then maybe she could understand why he did and said some of the things he had. “You thought something, though, in one of the books. About how you’d have felt in my place. Made me feel a little better.”
Katniss’s assessment of her feelings were pretty close to his own. He felt envy, betrayal, he felt he’d been made a fool of. Without Katniss beside him to say otherwise, he had really begun to believe that what he felt between them didn’t exist at all. The most agonizing part had been learning that he was right. Oh, not so cut and dry, nor so callous, but Katniss really didn’t feel for Gale as he did for her. He couldn’t blame her for that, but he still hurt over it. He thought he always would, but he wasn’t going to tell Katniss that. She didn’t need to carry any more of the burden of his unrequited love than she already did. A part of him would always wish to see them run away to the woods together. But if he was going to survive, he had to let that part go. He had to accept that a best friend was what Katniss was meant to be, and that it was more than sufficient.
That wasn't hard. Her friendship was the thing Gale loved most. Everything he felt stemmed from that. They were two people in a union that didn’t have to have anything to do with naked parts. They had seen the most vulnerable, sensitive pieces of one another, and showed themselves capable of being entrusted with those soft inner hearts. Gale didn’t need to make Katniss his wife to keep the best part of his life, he only needed to accept her as she was.
“You said you’d have hated the girl who loved me. And maybe even me, a little bit, too… I don’t hate you,” he clarified. “What you had with Peeta was real. I hoped it wasn’t when you came back.But I knew after that first kiss.” He sighed. “Too late.”
He didn’t say that he wished she had never gone to the Games. He didn’t say he wished Peeta didn’t exist. He didn’t say that on his worst days, Gale even wished Peeta had died in the arena so that Gale could have been the one to comfort her because maybe then she would love him instead. They were thoughts too horrible to speak out loud. Maybe that was unfair, that Gale still had the luxury of keeping his crueler thoughts to himself. He still had the ability to appear a little better than he was. That wasn’t exactly true, though. Katniss could always see right through him. So he gave her a little bit of the truth, almost an invitation to ask for more, if she wanted it. “I thought way worse stuff than you did, though, so don’t worry.”
--
It wasn’t really his fault that he’d believed it. Mainly, it made Katniss feel worse about having deceived him. She hadn’t ever wanted to do that, but she’d had no way of telling him how things really were. Not until she’d gotten home from the Games. She didn’t know quite what to say about it, though, so she nodded, accepting his unspoken apology.
A moment later she really couldn’t have spoken, because she remembered the moment he was talking about, and it came back to her so suddenly that it felt like being punched in the gut. She remembered, vividly, sitting at the table while Gale lay on top of it, his back a raw and bloody mess from being whipped. She’d tried to put herself into his shoes, having to watch him on screen pretending to be in love with some other girl, and even now, it made her temper flare up, her insides twist. There was a new feeling along with it, too, a painful ache in her heart at the knowledge that eventually it would probably be real. He would find someone else to love, and it would hurt her when he did, even though she had chosen to give up her claim to him. She should want him to be happy -- she did want him to be happy -- but it was awful to know that it wouldn’t be because of her. She’d almost chosen him. She still believed she really might have done it, if things had fallen out differently.
And yet, she couldn’t imagine being able to let Peeta go, either, especially now that she knew what it was like to love him. It should be impossible for her to care so much about both of them. It seemed like loving one of them should cancel out the love she felt for the other, but it didn’t. She had been so uninterested in love and romance, so determined that it wasn’t in her future, and then suddenly ended up caught in between Gale and Peeta, thoroughly unprepared for how much she could feel.
She looked down at her fingers, numbly holding the rabbit, and forced herself to collect her thoughts, to form a response. “I still feel that way,” she admitted, her voice rough. “I know that’s not fair, that I made the choice. But I hate that it had to be a choice at all. That no matter what I chose, I would have hurt someone.” Her throat threatened to close over, and she had to swallow hard to be able to keep talking. “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me for it. Maybe you should.”
In some ways, it would be easier if he did. It would be less complicated to give up, to let go of each other and try to move on. She might have done it, if their positions had been reversed. The idea of him with someone else was still unbearably awful, and it was breaking her heart all over again. If-- or when--it actually came to pass, she was sure she would end up thinking any number of horrible things, so she couldn’t claim to be any better than him in that regard.
Would this ever get any easier, for either of them? Would she ever stop asking herself what if? Would she ever be able to let him go? She didn’t want to do that, and it was clear that Gale didn’t either. But maybe they were just prolonging the inevitable, drawing out something that would eventually have to come to an end. She really didn’t want to believe that, but couldn’t help being afraid that it was true.
--
The pain Gale felt knowing Katniss had chosen Peeta here made anything he’d felt back in Panem seem insignificant. In Panem, her choices had been limited. In the right light, it might even seem she was forced to love the boy with bread or die pretending. There were times when Gale had been so sure it was all an act, but one that she thought she had to keep up for everyone’s safety. Sometimes, she had looked at him, and Gale had believed that she was in love with him. It had torn sheets from him each time she turned back to Peeta. His whipping was more merciful.
Here, though, in this place where anything could happen? Gale had spent some time telling himself that if he’d been the first one here, she would be sleeping in his bed instead. It got harder and harder to believe, though. The more he talked to Katniss -- the more he talked to Peeta, in their strained but necessary way -- the more Gale began to believe this was an inevitable ending. Maybe… maybe if Peeta had never told Katniss how he felt, then she might have chosen Gale.
The part about it that hurt him the most was how little he thought he wanted of her. He required no great professions of love. While he treasured the memory of each kiss he’d shared with Katniss, he had never needed them before Peeta came along and got them first. The worst part of it all was that Gale loved Katniss exactly as she was, and he never wanted her to do anything more than she already did. He thought all she should do was whatever she damn well pleased. He felt like Peeta made such demands of her, pushing her to tell him things she might not yet understand about herself. He felt like she was prodded into feeling things she might not have if it hadn’t been the only way to survive.
The books had really cleared that up for him. With only her face on the screen Gale had wracked his mind to try to read hers across all the miles. She had started out just as he expected, reluctant, maybe even a little offended to have been represented as just a pretty girl instead of the Victor she would become. But as the Games had carried on, she had become less and less like the girl he knew. All through her first Games, Gale had been astonished at the way she treated this boy she didn’t even know, this boy she would eventually have to kill. She acted like she was developing something for him in a few days that she hadn’t felt with Gale in years. Hating Peeta had been a really nice way of putting it.
Until he heard the story from her own lips in Thirteen, Gale had been sure everything happening between her and Peeta was a symptom of trauma in the arena. The knowledge that Peeta had come first rocked everything Gale knew about him and Katniss, thought it really shouldn’t have. What they had was never based on comparisons against what they had with anyone else. They’d never even had to ask, because their friendship stood on it’s own.
And as much as it hurt him now to watch the girl he loved live happily with another, the friendship was worth it. Sometimes, Gale wanted to walk away. He could easily have disappeared in this big world. It might even have been easier on him and Katniss to part ways and try to learn to live without each other, and without the pain that still came for them when by all rights they’d suffered enough of it. But no matter how much easier it would have been, it wasn’t right. They had fought too hard and come such a long way together, giving up now seemed the most cowardly of all. Katniss didn’t make it easy, though. Saying she was still jealous.
“No, you’re right. It’s not fair. But I don’t blame you.” The most unfair part was that she got to hurt at all over her choice when he was the one left out in the cold, but saying that would just start a fight he really didn’t want. He was feeling distant enough from her right now, all the terrible things that pushed them apart piled up in the middle, staring at him. “Hating you’s not an option for me. Even if it was, I wouldn’t want it. This really sucks, but I’ve been through worse. I’ve lived totally without you. I can take it. Whatever you do, as long as you still want me around, I can take it.” The end of Mockingjay had left him raw and aching, re-opening the wound he’d spent the past several weeks trying to heal. No way would he go back to that emptiness if he ever had the choice.
--
Katniss knew she shouldn’t have said it. She had intended to keep it to herself, and would have, if he hadn’t already known the sentiment existed. But maybe it was better that she’d said it aloud. That he knew it now, that she knew he knew it, and then they could move past it. Then it wouldn’t be something that took either of them by surprise, whenever he found someone else.
But they were still making it harder on each other, right in this moment. She’d done it first, and now he was doing it, too. She had to close her eyes against it, against the ragged pain of imagining him alone-- imagining herself without Gale. Even though she knew the reasons why they’d parted ways in the future, it still felt like imagining herself losing a limb. No, some other part of her that was even more essential than that. A lung, or a kidney. But… not her heart. Some part of her knew that, that her heart had never really belonged to him, even though she managed to love him in some way, anyway. He was a part of her that she didn’t want to live without, either. Not here, at least.
And if he could bear it, she thought, so could she. She put her fears out of her mind, and looked at him.
“I won’t hate you, either,” she managed to say, quietly. The pain was self-inflicted and she couldn’t hold it against him. “If-- when-- you find someone else. Just make sure they deserve you, this time.” She tried to say it lightly, but it came out more fiercely than she intended. She managed the smallest of smiles, to try to soften the bite of the emotion behind it, some strange mixture of jealousy and self-hatred. In the end, it really was her she hated for the position they were both in, not him. And that was only right, seeing as it was her own fault.
“I had to let it go, Gale,” she said after a moment. “Everything you told me about the future. I had to. For Prim. I can’t let it get in her way here.” She took a deep breath. “It won’t get in our way, either. And if you can handle the rest of it, I can, too.”
Even as she said it, she thought of all the difficulty that might come their way. The tesseract could steal her away, or change her, against her will. Gale could leave or change, too. Even Prim might disappear, and then it might be harder to look at him without being reminded of her sister’s death. But even then, could she really shut him out? She had a feeling he was right, that living without each other would be worse. It wouldn’t be the same as living in this world when he was at home and had never been here with her, because she hadn’t known how far apart they would end up. That they might not talk to each other ever again.
If he disappeared from here, she realized, he might be lost to her for good. She didn’t trust that her future self, wrecked by Prim’s death and all the others, would ever find it in herself to reach out to him again. And he was right. That thought was even more unbearable than the idea of him being happy with someone else.
Unable to stop herself, she reached out and grabbed hold of his sleeve, as if she could physically keep him here in this world with her. “I won’t shut you out,” she managed to say, her voice coming out strained. “Whatever happens, we’ll find a way to get past it.”it.”
--
While he had never had confirmation before the books, Gale had suspected -- or maybe even hoped -- that Katniss was filled with that all-consuming jealousy when she thought about him loving anyone but her. In his less decent moments, he'd even hoped he could learn to love someone else while she still cared enough to get upset about it. Just to be sure she really did. But he didn't have it in him to turn from the girl whose entire being seemed to fit so well with his. Not as well as it fit with Peeta's, apparently, but who could ever compete with someone so... soft?
Gale caught the dangerous edge his mind was wandering toward. Yes, he still loved Katniss -- not just romantically, which made this so much harder. She was closer than a sister, more vital to him than the little word "best" could elevate their friendship. To say he was jealous would be to make tracker jackers into fire ants. The emptiness of lost hopes was jagged, scarring his insides with each breath. And yet... He couldn't walk away.
Even in Panem, after Prim's death, he would have stayed. If Katniss had only asked for him, he would have come. He would have been powerless to stop himself. The implication that she deserved less than him -- less than him whose hand was in her sister’s death -- flashed scarlet anger across his eyes. Didn’t she know they were equals, always? They both deserved happiness, and his was in her. That he could never have it was no one’s fault, not even Peeta’s, but it was still painful. Maybe one day, somewhere, someone else would make him feel that free. He doubted it. But it was a hope he’d hold onto, for Katniss, if for no one else.
Because as much as he knew it would damage her to see him happy in a world she could never enter, he knew it would do just as much damage to them if he couldn’t let her go. She might hate the idea of him kissing anyone else, but if she knew he was holding out for her, never living his own life because he was waiting for the chance to cut into hers? No. Gale looked at her as she vowed to never hate him -- such a huge promise from them both, and one he was still a little afraid she might be unable to honor one day -- and silently vowed to let her go. When he’d told her in Twelve, after their charged kiss, that it would pass, he had only meant the pain. He would never be able to stop loving her, but he could choose put all his love into a friendship that was powerful enough to withstand any agonies.
The kind of friendship that lasted even after someone died. Gale could understand why Katniss had decided to release her future into the hands of time, and to live in the now instead. He wished that luxury was available to him. But that was his past, and he couldn’t choose to forget it. This was what he meant when he told Katniss he wasn’t sure she wanted to read the books. Once she knew every splintered detail, he was worried she wouldn’t be able to let it go. But maybe she had some warning now, and some small allotment of safety that would allow her to handle the information differently than she had in his reality.
He was nodding, just beginning to accept that things might end another way in this world, when she reached out to grip his sleeve. Automatically, his hand went over hers, anchoring himself to her in response. He felt strange, like so many of himself stacked on top of each other, all making their own echoing gestures. In another life, this would be a moment where he kissed her. A part of him still wanted to, damn the consequences, just to see if the way she kissed him had changed since she’d chosen Peeta. He shoved that part down, searching for something else, something that would make this better for them instead of worse.
“Maybe the odds are finally in our favor.” It was meant as a joke, and he tried to put the necessary levity behind it, but he felt the truth of it like a prayer, and some of that rang in his voice, too. He knew he was pinning his hopes too much on this world. He was setting himself up for disaster if he was ever sucked back into his own. Or if Katniss was. That idea was too horrible to allow. He would take it for her, if he could. If one of them had to be sent back, Gale hoped it was him. He’d already lived through the worst parts, but they were still coming for Katniss. Missing him would never be as bad as missing Prim. At least here, Prim was alive. Here, those bombs had never gone off for either of the girls, and Gale wanted to keep it that way.
--
Katniss saw the anger, and wasn’t sure if it was directed at her or at himself. No, it must be the latter, she thought, when it disappeared so quickly. If he was actually angry with her she didn’t think he would be able to contain it so well. She felt like she should explain, but she wasn’t quite sure which part of it had upset him. It never even occurred to her that he might be angry on her behalf, or that what she deserved even entered into it. Maybe in the future it would be difficult to dissociate him from what had happened to Prim, but here and now, it felt impossible to believe that her loyal, protective best friend who cared about her family as if it was his own could have possibly done such a thing. And the truth was, he hadn’t really done it. Coin had, and it had done as much to destroy him as it had to her.
Besides, another girl would have an even easier time forgiving him for that. She hoped so, anyway. But that had never been the reason she hadn't chosen him. It wasn't because there was anything wrong with Gale, and it certainly wasn't because she thought she deserved better. It was just because she was in love with Peeta, and she couldn't have changed that even if she tried. She didn't want to try.
But she still wanted something with Gale. He was too much a part of her to ever let him go entirely. It was rooted deeply in their instincts, as evidenced by the way they'd both reached for each other at the mere thought of being separated. Or maybe he'd only done it because she had done it first. Either way, she knew he meant it.
Her lips twitched at the joke. Maybe he was pinning too much on the opportunities in this world, but she had done the same thing already. Probably not long after she'd arrived, but definitely by the time she'd found out about Finnick's fate. Even more so after Annie had arrived. Now both of them were gone, and, even though she knew it was dangerous, she'd pinned her hopes on Peeta, on Prim, and on Gale.
It was terrifying. But how could she not hope for the best, for any of them? Especially when for the first time ever it actually seemed like it might be in their grasp? Whatever the odds were of getting to stay here, Gale was right. They were better odds than any of them had at home.
“That would’ve been funnier if you were throwing a berry at me,” she said, managing a genuinely lighthearted tone. She gave his arm a little squeeze and then gently withdrew her hand. She finally looked back down at the snares they’d reset, and then at him. “Ready to keep moving?”
She meant it in two different ways, and she knew he’d pick up on both. There were more snares, and there was more to talk about, she knew -- at least, she assumed he had more to say. And if she still felt curious after they’d covered what he wanted to talk about, she was contemplating asking a few questions of her own.
--
Gale had been fighting the urge to cling to Katniss like a caterpillar to his last leaf ever since he'd landed in this world. Sometimes, he didn't fight the urge, but he had been more reserved since finding out that Katniss had chosen Peeta. Most of the time, touching her at all reminded him of all the ways he never would. She drew her much needed comfort from another set of arms now. That didn't mean he regretted any contact they shared. It didn't stop him from reaching for her now, not just because she needed it, but because he did, too. While it was true that this world had its own pitfalls, it couldn't compete with what he'd lived through in Panem. He was beginning to be aware that parts of this world were just as bad as his own, if not worse. He hated that people suffered in this world, too, but he didn't know what he could do for them. He had little power, and although it was maybe a little heartless of him, even less inclination to change this world. He'd served his term, the people from this world could fight their own revolution.
When it came to his own people, that didn't hold. Gale would give his life to protect them, Peeta included, because while he was hardly a friend, he was someone Katniss needed, and he was an ally in keeping her safe in return. How Gale wished he didn't have to count on this boy to take care of Katniss. Even after everything he'd seen -- and more importantly what he'd read about from Katniss's perspective -- Gale wasn't convinced that Peeta was the best for her. Gale wasn't exactly sure he was either, to be honest, but at least they came from the same world. At least they understood struggle. At least they already knew they could help each other through it. It didn't matter, he reminded himself, because he was supposed to be letting her go. It would have been easier if he felt like he had done her any good at all.
It had hurt him so much to read about Katniss suffering inches from him, unable to take refuge in his arms when she so clearly needed it. He could never forgive himself for letting the Capitol push this divide into their life. She had been trapped in a mad world, and he had been too distant to help her. There had been so much he couldn't do for her anymore, after she'd returned a Victor. They were no longer a safe place for each other, and for that he blamed himself, so much more than he'd blamed the Capitol. He didn't have to ask why she didn't come to him for comfort, but he wanted to know if she was aware that he would always have given it. He had given the only thing he had left to offer, instead.
"You said you read a little. To find out what happened to Peeta. So you know what happened after the bombing?" Gale's motivation for volunteering to rescue Peeta from the Capitol was not just for Katniss. If it had been he might have thought himself a better person. But no, he'd done it selfishly, because one way or another, he needed to stop seeing her in pain. If he had died in the Capitol, at least his own torture would have ended. That gratefulness might incite amorous feelings in her never occurred to him. Only that Peeta was necessary to her sanity.
He had derived so much from that time. On that night -- Peeta wild eyed and warning they might all be dead by morning, the descent into the bomb shelter -- the seed of his loss had been planted. Until then, Gale had convinced himself that everything was reversible. He had been so sure that when things got quiet, she would finally see him in a new light and forget her fake romance with Peeta. He told himself he was angry at Katniss for forgetting to tell him, and not because he already knew just how fake it wasn't. Maybe Snow didn't think she was in love with Peeta from the start, but Gale had known her much longer. As he'd once told Peeta, their kisses had never held the same quality as those she shared with Peeta.
He wondered if she knew that he'd chosen her and then given up again almost as many times as she had. While his love for her had been steady, his desire to fight for it had waxed and waned with necessity. Sometimes he had to admit that it was pretty obvious she was in love with someone else. Sometimes he knew she meant everything her touch implied. But his pride had limits -- just not as many as his heart had excuses to return to her. The fact remained that he was tied to her, through knots of his own making. Knots he wouldn't loosen, even if he had any idea how to.
--
Katniss swallowed, and nodded. She hadn’t actually lived through the times she’d read, but the words on the page had been vivid in her imagination, and it summoned the memory anyway. The bombing. The roses that had left for her in its wake. Her mind spinning out of control and being put under, waking to find out that Gale had gone to the Capitol to rescue Peeta. That was the most vivid part, the cold terror clutching her heart at the idea of losing both of them.
Well, that and the idea of Peeta trying to strangle her to death.
“I read it,” she said, “I stopped… when I found out he thought I was a mutt.” She let out her breath, made herself draw it back in again normally. “So, yes. I know what happened after the bombing.”
--
It was incomprehensible that he'd lived through things that she hadn't. Ever since they'd met, their paths had been so similar, there was nothing the other didn't know. Until the Games. From that point, they'd been pointed in different directions, moving further and further from their shared reality. Now, Gale looked at Katniss and saw just one more layer of distance. Just one more way they couldn't understand each other. He saw it, and he wanted to right it again.
"He got better. Obviously. You knew that, right?" He couldn't imagine Peeta not telling her that. The hope for their future had to have been high on the list of important facts to tell her. Her sister died? Better keep that a secret, but by all means, roll out the happily ever after.
"There's a lot still to come, after that part. Some of what I read gave me more new questions." So many of them were questions he'd have to wait to ask, and ones he knew she might never be able to answer. After all, if she could have told him why she couldn't tell him things, she might have known enough to change her answers. "It answered more, though. All the times I thought I was out of my mind, watching you do things I couldn't find reasons for, it made sense when I read how you saw it. Sometimes a little too much sense."
He looked back at her, suddenly overcome with the feeling of prying he had sometimes gotten while reading her books. "How do you feel, knowing I can read you? Not in the book sense." That she cared for him had been clear, but there was something else he'd picked up on in the books. Disenchantment with him, maybe? He couldn't quite place it, but he kept having the feeling he'd done something wrong. Not just the obvious things, either. More like he just was wrong in his approach to everything. That zinger of an epiphany at the end had only been the finishing garnish for the dish he'd been choking on the whole series through. He wasn't what she needed. Never really had been. So why did she still think he was her best friend?
--
“Not for a while,” Katniss admitted. “When I read the books -- that was months before he got here. It was just me and Finnick, then.” That was another part, she realized, she’d never really explained. Another part of her life that he hadn’t been here for. It had been just her and Finnick alone here, for months, depending on each other just to get through the day, and more often than not, the night. He had been jealous of Finnick before, although he had no reason to be, not romantically. But would he be jealous of how close their friendship had gotten?
Well, if he wanted to know about that, she’d tell him. That was the decision she’d made, to give him all the answers he wanted, whether they came from her or from the book. That was probably the biggest thing that had changed here, in this world-- without fear constantly hanging over her, she’d finally learned how to let herself be vulnerable. First with Finnick, then Peeta, now Gale. It wasn’t how she had expected things to go, but here she was.
She lifted her hand, brushing her hair out of her face. “A while after that, he showed up, and he wasn’t -- he was only a little bit better. But he disappeared again, and then came back. The way he is now. Better.”
She’d read enough of the books to know that they were exacting in their depiction of the toll it had taken on her psyche, realizing how much Peeta’s opinion of her mattered. How little of it was actually about the fact that he’d actually been a danger to her safety. It was an insecurity that she hadn’t yet managed to shake, and wasn’t sure she ever would. But at the same time, he really made her feel like she was a better person, or at least that she could be. She needed that.
And Gale… he just accepted her for who she was. She knew that he had a realistic view of her, her strengths and flaws, and many of them were reflected in him. Maybe that was why she had trouble loving him. Because, after everything she’d done, she had trouble loving herself.
She was staring at him, she realized. Intently, and at the same time a little unfocused; not trying to read anything in his face, but looking at him as she considered him in her thoughts. She had been silent for just a few moments too long after he’d asked the question. If the question hadn’t gone almost perfectly along with her own thoughts, she might have had difficulty processing it entirely.
As it was, she still didn’t quite know what he meant, even though their thoughts were running along similar paths. A small furrow of confusion appeared on her brow, and she still hadn’t looked away from him. “I know you can read me. You’ve been able to do it for a long time.” That wasn’t really an answer to his question. “It doesn’t bother me any more than it ever did. It’s just… different now.”
--
It must have been terrible for her, all the time before Peeta got here, knowing he was sick, but not that he'd got better. Gale wished she'd just kept reading, so it wouldn't have troubled her as much. At least she'd had Finnick to lean on. That might have made Gale jealous once, but he knew Finnick better now. He could imagine the two of them, as they'd been in Thirteen, turning to each other for strength in ways that were anything but romantic.
"Only a little bit better? When did he come from?" Had Katniss met with the Peeta who thought she was the one trying to kill him? The one who had gotten members of their squad killed in the Capitol when he lost it? The one who had asked him how she'd choose between them? Or the one who'd been whisked away after the war for extensive doctoring. There were so many versions of Peeta. So many versions of Katniss.
Had he changed that much? He didn't feel any different from the boy who had first stumbled into Katniss years ago in the woods. Yet, when he read those books, he saw all the changes that had come for all of them. He saw he wasn't immune to becoming strange. "Do you still feel like you can read me, too?"
It was indeed different now. He could still read her face, but he couldn't always say what she'd do next anymore -- not since it had stopped being the same as what he would do. They were still so similar, but sometimes he felt their differences rising up, threatening to collapse this friendship. "Do you think there's a way to go back? To the way we were. I...don't think we need to. But." He missed the way they'd been, to put it simply. Nostalgia for their innocence and loneliness were the complex layers of that missing, but Gale couldn't have explained that precisely.
--
“I don’t know exactly,” Katniss said, honestly. “Sometime after he had figured out I was human and not trying to kill him, but… before he felt confident he wouldn’t hurt me. We didn’t get to talk very much before he disappeared.”
Which was her own fault as much as his. She had wanted to be close to him, of course she had, but she hadn’t known how. Even if she’d known he would get better, how would she have done it? She couldn’t imagine how she’d managed to do anything about it, at all, in the middle of a war. She was useless enough at it in this world, without those demands or distractions. No wonder it had taken Peeta murdering someone else to realize that he was the problem.
She wasn’t entirely sure why this was important to Gale. Which answered his question, she supposed. But -- no, she did know why it was important. Because it was her history, her secret; it was something that wasn’t in the books. But because of the books, he knew exactly how much all of this mattered to her. And because it mattered to her, it mattered to him, even though it was about Peeta. The boy she’d chosen over him.
The depths of their loyalty to her-- yes, both of them-- never ceased to stagger her, like a blow to the knees. Peeta had been more obvious about it, making grand gestures to save her to a televised audience, but she usually wished he wouldn’t. These quieter, more unobtrusive gestures were, in some ways, even dearer to her heart. They weren’t unique to Gale, but those were the ones running through her mind right now. All the little things he’d ever done for her, without any expectation of gratitude or payback, just the understanding that it was their deal.
It had been even, once, back in the woods in Twelve. They’d been careful to be sure of that, at first. Bows and arrows for snares. Agreeing to watch over each other’s families. But more and more, she was the one in trouble, the one who needed him. He’d have done exactly the same things, she knew, even if he’d only ever considered her a friend. He’d watched her back through all of it, trying to anticipate what she needed, right down to slopping extra turnips into her bowl, rescuing Peeta, rescuing Prim. Prim…
Tears stung as it hit her, all over again, the cruelty in how their friendship had been torn apart. Yes, she associated Gale with the loss of Prim. She remembered finding out that he’d created death traps for people. But when she thought about Prim, mostly, most of all-- she couldn’t stop thinking about Coin. Couldn’t stop wondering at what point she’d made the call that Prim should die. Why she’d chosen Gale’s bombs to do it. It hadn’t even been necessary for the rebellion, had it? If she’d just arranged it without Prim, without Gale, she would have gotten away with it. She would have taken power, and none of them would have known any better than to trust her. Katniss had never suspected she’d stoop to such a level.
But that didn’t matter, not right now. Gale had asked her a question, and she tried to focus on him. She owed him that-- she really felt like she owed him. Not at home, but here. At home, it had been more even. He’d gone off to Two, and she’d ended up in Twelve, divided and brokenhearted. Here… he was carrying that much heavier than she was. She had Prim and Peeta, and yes, Gale too. Most days, she could forget about everything that happened at home, because what they had here was good. But it wasn’t possible to forget the problems that were real and present, here with them. Gale was still hurting over Prim, over Katniss being with Peeta, and Katniss ached for him, hating that he was hurt. Sometimes she honestly wasn’t sure which was worse, knowing that he was hurting because of Coin or because of her. Well, all of it was because of her in one way or another, wasn’t it?
“Yes,” she managed to say, and her voice somehow came out almost normally, even though she felt like she might choke on all the emotion welling up inside of her. Of course, considering he could see right through her, she might as well just let herself break down and cry. But she didn’t. “I can still read you. Maybe not… in between the lines, the way I used to, but…”
That was the best way she could think to explain it. The subtleties, the nuances, things based on experiences he’d had when she hadn’t been around-- she wasn’t sure if she picked up on those. And she had never fully understood his love for her, the part that surpassed what she could return. But the broad strokes, the foundations of him, the things that made him who he was, those hadn’t really changed.
“We can’t go back. Not entirely. But I think, what we’re doing… trying to piece things together, tell each other things again, moving forward instead of backward, we might end up somewhere… similar.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work. I know it’s not going to be easy. But I’m in, if you are.”