singing is for birds

by rubyjean_jacket

Summary:

Katniss Everdeen dies in the 74th Hunger Games. Gale and Peeta pick up the pieces.

---

Peeta opens the door. For a long moment, Gale just looks at him standing there, the Capitol’s Victor, skinny and unglamorous.

“You left this,” Gale says eventually, holding out the mockingjay pin.

“Oh.” Peeta shuffles in the doorway. “I meant to. She’d want you to have it.”

No, Katniss wouldn’t. She’d want Prim to have it. Gale pockets it without saying any of that, though. Words are hard to find. Peeta is even harder to look at: Gale remembers watching him dying in a cave, watching Katniss risk everything to save him, thinking that her selfless nature was finally going to get her killed and that he was about to watch it happen in real time.

Notes:

First, I would like to say a massive shout-out to a fic that inspired this one, Weepy Chests with Weepy Sighs by twnkwlf.

Chapter 1

Katniss dies. It hits Gale like a punch in the face. Suddenly, Gale has two more mouths to feed—he’s at six now, seven including himself—and now squirrels and hares don’t generate enough income. It’s time to go down into the mines. He checks his traps in the early morning, selling and bartering for what he needs, and then he works for twelve hours a day breaking apart rock. At night, he sits at the kitchen table with his mother and together they try to find a way to stop Prim and Rory from signing up for the tesserae. He has to sell more frequently to Peacekeepers, they realise, and the decision settles in his stomach like a stone. Gale’s sold to Peacekeepers before, but never regularly, and only the big game: deer, elk, bear. Hunting big game takes time, though; Gale will have to dedicate his one day off weekly to tracking and hunting. 

 

The only bear Gale ever hunted was an accident. He was deep in the woods, deeper than he and Katniss used to go. It was the last days of winter, just when the world was waking up again. He’d stumbled on an uneven patch of ground and slid down a bluff, startling a brown bear. Surprised and hungry, it came after him. Gale shot it three times before it finally went down. He butchered it there, then trekked back to town with as much as he could carry. When he met up with Katniss, they had to move fast before the wild dogs found the carcass. Gale and Katniss sold as much as they could and dried the rest. Gale remembers that bear now. How big it was. How sure he was that he was going to die. He didn’t sleep well for a week; he kept seeing those claws coming down on him. 

 

He’s been having those dreams a lot lately.

 

But this is life now. Katniss is dead and the world keeps spinning.

 

Gale starts taking Rory along the traplines with him in the mornings. He shows him the delicate twists of the snares and how to reset them. He introduces him to his regular customers and discreetly points out which ones will try to swindle him. 

 

“This is your job now,” Gale tells him, and Rory just nods. He knows better than to complain that it’s not fair. This world isn’t a fair one. Still, Gale looks at Rory’s determined face and feels sick. He never wanted this for his brother. That’s why he hasn’t taught him how to shoot. It’s foolish and wasteful and far too naive—what if Gale was reaped or arrested for poaching or killed in a mine collapse?—but Gale can’t bring himself to do it. 

 

Gale didn’t teach Katniss how to shoot, either. That’s Capitol bullshit. Gale taught Katniss traps and snares, sure, but her skill with a bow and arrow has nothing to do with him and everything to do with her father. Gale remembers Burdock Everdeen: a soft-spoken man with coal dust under his nails, just like Gale’s own father. Burdock would sing sometimes, though, and Gale’s father never did that. Singing was for birds and daydreamers, and Hawthorne men were far too practical for that. 

 

Gale and Katniss weren’t friends at first. They were two starving kids fighting for every scrap. They were at odds, jostling for position, until they weren’t. Until they realised that two heads are better than one, even if two mouths are harder to feed. That’s how they started, trading knowledge between the two of them like something precious, because it was. Gale taught Katniss how to trap. Katniss taught Gale how to forage. Together, they mapped out the woods, finding the best places for rabbits and wild turkeys and berries. Gradually, they became friends, but only because proximity breeds familiarity, and it had yet to sour into contempt. Maybe it would have, given time. 

 

Even dead, the Capitol won’t leave Katniss alone. They’re so heartbroken about the star-crossed lovers, the love that was never to be, that they keep picking at the wound, refusing to let it scab over. They want to know all about Katniss. To know her. Where did she learn archery? Why, her coal-covered cousin in the Seam, of course. Never mind that Katniss didn’t have any cousins; with their dark hair and dark eyes, they might as well be. Gale imagines what they say about him, the Capitol elite. That boy just looks like trouble, doesn’t he? But he’s got honest employment now, thank heavens, working in the mines with the rest of his kind. 

 

Gale’s lungs never feel clear anymore, not even in the woods. 

 

Of course, the real reason the Capitol calls Gale her cousin is because of the Games’ victor. Nothing can be permitted to threaten Katniss and Peeta’s love, doomed or not.

 

Gale stops in at the Hob. “My brother been treating you well?” he asks Greasy Sae.

 

“Well as can do,” Sae says. “Someone’s been asking after you.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“The baker’s boy.”

 

Gale struggles to keep his breath even. “Peeta?”

 

Sae nods. “Left this.” She puts something in his palm. It’s a mockingjay pin. Gale remembers seeing it onscreen, a broadcast of the 74th Hunger Games. Katniss’ shaking hands, stained dark with nightlock, pressing the pin into Peeta’s hands.

 

Gale feels sick. His fingers curl around the pin. “Thanks.”

 

He goes to Victor Village that night. A half-dozen houses stand in the neighbourhood, but only one of them has lights on. Gale walks up to the front door, which has an ornate iron knocker wrought in the number 74.

 

He knocks. It feels wrong; no one ever knocks in the Seam. He walks into the Hawthorne house and the Everdeen house the same way, like he’s a member of the household. In many ways, he is. 

 

Peeta opens the door. For a long moment, Gale just looks at him standing there, the Capitol’s Victor, skinny and unglamorous.

 

“You left this,” Gale says eventually, holding out the mockingjay pin.

 

“Oh.” Peeta shuffles in the doorway. “I meant to. She’d want you to have it.”

 

No, Katniss wouldn’t. She’d want Prim to have it. Gale pockets it without saying any of that, though. Words are hard to find. Peeta is even harder to look at: Gale remembers watching him dying in a cave, watching Katniss risk everything to save him, thinking that her selfless nature was finally going to get her killed and that he was about to watch it happen in real time. 

 

“You ready for the Victory Tour?” is what Gale settles on saying. He’s not sure why. It’s not like they’re friends.

 

Peeta shakes his head. “I don’t want to do it.”

 

“Be strange if you did.”

 

Peeta pulls the door open the rest of the way, stepping aside. “Come in,” he says, not as a question.

 

For some reason, Gale complies. Once inside, he takes a look at his surroundings. It’s nothing like the houses in the Seam and very little like the houses in the Town. It’s like a little slice of the Capitol given a District 12 veneer.

 

Gale settles on a plush couch with a floral print and immediately feels bad about it. He’s caked with dust; has been since he started in the mines and probably will be for the rest of time. It’s not a type of dirtiness that just washes off.

 

But then, Peeta would know something about that.

 

“How are Prim and Asterid?” Peeta asks. He sits in an armchair opposite Gale, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking small and angular.

 

“Alive.” Gale feels his face pull into an ugly shape. “And fed.”

 

“Thanks to you.”

 

Gale shrugs. 

 

“You know, I get a monthly stipend,” Peeta says, straightening up in his chair. “I could—”

 

Gale interrupts him. “You could what? Ease your guilty conscience?”

 

Peeta frowns. “I could help,” he says, like it hurts. “I want to help. Just let me help.”

 

As if Gale’s the one who can barely leave his house, who shutters the windows and sleeps the day away, withering into skin and bones. Gale’s heard talk. His own two eyes can confirm it: Peeta’s jutting hip bones, his sunken eyes. Peeta’s offering help, but what he’s really asking is for Gale to take care of him, too, except instead of bringing him squirrels, he’s supposed to bring him peace of mind. Well, joke’s on Peeta. If Gale could give that, District 12 would be a much happier place.

 

“I don’t need your charity,” Gale says.

 

“You sound like her,” Peeta says. He looks at Gale, taking him in like he’s cataloguing every feature. “You look like her, too.”

 

“All Seam kids do.”

 

They’re talking around her. Sometimes it’s too painful, using her name. 

 

Peeta shakes his head. “No. She was different. She had this fire.”

 

Katniss’ dress bursting into flames. Gale wants to laugh.

 

“You have it, too,” Peeta finishes.

 

“I don’t,” Gale says. 

 

Peeta looks Gale in the eye. “You do,” he says again, “and you can deny it, but it’s true.”

 

It’s getting late. Gale has to be at work early tomorrow morning. He says as much, rising to leave, but Peeta reaches out, wrapping a thin hand around Gale’s wrist.

 

“Stay?” he asks, and again, Gale hears the plea there: take care of me .

 

“No,” Gale says.

 

“Please?” Peeta looks up, eyes big in his gaunt face. “I can’t be alone, Gale, I can’t stand it anymore.”

 

Take care of me.

 

“I can’t,” Gale says, and wrenches himself free. He has too many people to take care of already; Peeta will have to make do. Gale can only save so many. He leaves and pretends he doesn’t hear Peeta’s shuddering breaths.

Chapter 2

A few days later, the Victory Tour starts. Gale doesn’t pay any attention to the spectacle, although he has to go out of his way, what with the novelty of an outer district winner. The last outer district winner was only a few years ago, but she was from 7, which everyone knows is leagues different from 12. The last District 12 Victor was Haymitch ages ago: the second Quarter Quell.

 

Another Quarter Quell is coming, Gale realises, and feels sick. Rory is old enough to be reaped now, and of course, so is Prim. That’s what got them into this mess in the first place: Effie Fucking Trinket reading Prim’s name off a little slip of paper. Funny, how a little thing like that can have such tremendous consequences. A little slip of paper killed Katniss. 

 

Winter ends. Gale bags three deer and an elk and doesn’t see any bears. With the change in the seasons, he turns his attention back to smaller, more abundant game: wild dogs, wild turkeys, rabbits. 

 

In late spring, illness spreads through 12. Gale’s never seen anything this bad before. It’s nothing like the seasonal flus of autumn. For the most part, the Hawthorne family is spared from the more serious effects, but Vick falls ill early. Gale and his mother try desperately to scrape together money for medicine, but the line they walk is so fine that they can’t muster together anything more than a few dollars.

 

“If only Asterid were well…” Gale’s mother says one night.

 

Gale remembers Katniss talking about her mother. How much resentment she had built up, years of it, as her mother became a passenger, another mouth to feed that offered nothing in return. He clenches his jaw.

 

Vick gets worse. 

 

Gale goes to Victor Village, up to the wrought-iron 74. He knocks and waits.

 

Peeta opens the door.

 

“I need your help,” Gale says. He may be Seam proud, but his pride does not extend so far as to risk Vick’s life. “Please.”

 

Peeta gives Gale enough money to pay for the medicine twice over.

 

Vick gets better.

 

“You tell that boy thank you,” Gale’s mother says, almost accusingly, and Gale has to trudge his way back to the fancy houses and their fancy knockers and wait for Peeta to answer before he can fumble his way through a thank-you.

 

“You look like her,” Peeta says.

 

“And you look awful,” Gale responds, because Peeta does.

 

Peeta laughs. It sounds broken somehow. Gale hears something in it, the same thing he heard when Peeta offered his help. Take care of me. 

 

This time, though, Gale wants to.

 

Gale thinks of Katniss in the cave. How sure he was that she was doing the wrong thing. How strongly he believed that, in her place, he’d do the right thing. Gale knows now that he was wrong, because he kisses Peeta right there. He doesn’t do it the way Katniss did, though, innocent and halting. Gale kisses Peeta and sticks his tongue down Peeta’s throat. Gale feels Peeta recoil underneath him and he crowds Peeta forward until they’re both in the entranceway of the house and Peeta’s back is to a wall and when finally Gale breaks away from Peeta to take a much-needed breath, Peeta’s voice says, breathless, “Gale—”

 

Gale goes to kiss him again, but Peeta’s hands come up to his shoulders, holding him a few inches away.

 

“Gale,” Peeta says again. “Gale, wait.”

 

Gale stops. He’s breathing hard. 

 

“You didn’t mean to do that,” Peeta says, still pressed up against Gale. “You’re just…confused.”

 

Anger flares up in Gale’s chest. “Confused?”

 

“I know you’re not Katniss,” Peeta says, and her name burns hot in the fragile space between them. “You don’t have to pretend to be. That’s not why I gave you the money.”

 

“You think I’m pretending to be Katniss?”

 

“Aren’t you?” Peeta asks.

 

Gale thinks about it. About all the time spent trying to coax Asterid into the present, holding Prim while she cries. Thinks about trading game at the Hob at twice his old pace and talking with Greasy Sae. Thinks about nodding to Madge Undersee on the rare occasions when their paths cross. Thinks about Peeta in this big house by himself.

 

“I’m not pretending to be anybody,” Gale says. “I’m just doing my duty.”

 

“And hers,” Peeta points out.

 

“Well, it’s mine now. Just like my duty would be hers if it had been me in those Games. That’s how it works. We take care of each other.”

 

Peeta sighs. “I don’t think she really wanted to kiss me,” he says, thoughtfully. “She only did it because she had to.” He looks at Gale pointedly. “Because it was her duty.”

 

“Maybe I just wanted to kiss you,” Gale says. “Ever considered that?”

 

“No,” Peeta says truthfully.

 

They stay like that for a moment, close enough to breathe each other’s air. Close enough for Gale to start to notice little things like the blue of Peeta’s eyes and the dimple in his chin. 

 

“I think you should go,” Peeta says.

 

Gale does.

Chapter 3

Spring bleeds into summer. Gale survives his first mine collapse. It isn’t a very big one, just a small landslide that blocks off the newest part of a tunnel. No one dies, no one’s even injured, but it terrifies Gale anyway, being underground and hearing the earth shift overtop of him. He thinks of his father buried under the same earth. They’d managed to find his body, but Burdock Everdeen’s is still in the rock. Gale has time to think about that as he and his fellow miners shore up the walls: if he dies in the mines, would he rather be found or lost? He knows the lack of closure ate at Katniss, but he can still see his father’s body when he closes his eyes.

 

He’d gone to Katniss’ funeral. He told himself he wasn’t going to look at the body. He didn’t need to see whatever the Capitol had done to it to make it presentable, because the whole affair was televised, of course: camera operators swarming like wasps; Peeta standing with the family, crying. Whatever her body looked like wouldn’t replace Gale’s last memory of Katniss: mutts tearing her apart in graphic, gory detail. But Gale looked anyway. 

 

So the mine collapses, but only a little bit. Katniss is dead and the Quarter Quell looms large in everyone’s mind.

 

“I’m signing up for the tesserae,” Rory says. 

 

Gale is instantly annoyed. “Like hell you are!”

 

“Language,” their mother says, glaring at Gale. She fixes Rory with a look. “Your brother’s right.”

 

“Gale can’t keep killing himself for me,” Rory protests. “I can’t take it anymore.”

 

And then their mother slaps Rory. It rings out, the sound of her bare palm across his cheek, reddening where it lands. Gale stares at her. All his frustration evaporates, leaving behind a dryness in his throat.

 

“You damn well will,” their mother says, her voice low and dangerous, “because your brother is going to keep killing himself whether you sign up or not, and if you get reaped, he’ll have killed himself for nothing.”

 

“That’s not fair,” Rory says, this side of teary. He’s just a kid, after all.

 

Their mother laughs meanly. “Who said this world was fair?”

 

“Ma,” Gale says.

 

“You mind yourself, Gale,” she says forcefully. “I’m the parent here.”

 

That hasn’t been true for a long time. Gale’s been playing the part of his pa since they fished his body out of the rubble.

 

In the end, it doesn’t matter: Rory doesn’t get the chance to sign up for the tesserae, because there is no tesserae this year. Gale watches his television, awestruck, as President Snow outlines the rules for the third Quarter Quell.

 

On the 75th anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol , the male and female tributes will be reaped from the existing pool of victors. Tributes will be reaped here in the Capitol without regard to gender or District of origin. There will be no Volunteers permitted.

 

“Holy shit,” Gale says.

 

“Language,” his mother says idly. Even she can’t take her eyes from the screen.

 

Sitting on the floor in front of the couch, Rory is speechless. Finally, he says, “So no tesserae?”

 

“Nope,” Gale says, trying and failing not to sound smug. “No tesserae and one less entry for you.”

 

“Piss off,” Rory says. 

 

Their mother doesn’t have a chance to say anything about the cuss because Gale launches himself off the couch and onto Rory, capturing his younger brother in a headlock and giving him a noogie mercilessly. 

 

It’s not until later that night that Gale thinks about Peeta. He finds himself in Victor Village within minutes, despite the late hour and the fact that he has work in the morning. When he makes it to Peeta’s house, the lights are off. This time, Gale lets himself in.

 

“Hey,” he says to the empty house. “It’s me.”

 

No response.

 

“Bad luck,” he says, moving through to the kitchen.

 

“I haven’t been reaped yet.” 

 

Gale hears a voice behind him and he turns to see Peeta at the top of the stairs. “Still,” he says, and while Peeta doesn’t quite laugh, it’s close. Gale squints at him. “Are you wearing a housecoat?”

 

Peeta groans. “Let me have my little luxuries, Hawthorne. I have to spend my money on something.”

 

Gale lifts his hands in surrender. “Fair enough.”

 

It’s awkward, the two of them talking with a length of staircase in between, but it’s also not. Gale doesn’t have the words to describe it, so he doesn’t try, just looks up at Peeta at the top of the stairs in his white flowing housecoat and wonders if this is what angels looked like.

 

“Are you going to stand there all night, or are you coming up?” Peeta asks.

 

An upstairs is something Gale’s never experienced. Not like this, at least. Sure, there are buildings in town with multiple stories, a few of the stores and the government buildings, but no homes; nothing made for living. 

 

When Gale reaches the top of the stairs, Peeta pulls him in close and kisses him. It’s not like their last: slower, almost romantic.

 

“I’m not Katniss,” Gale says, when they come up for air.

 

Peeta ghosts his hand over the side of Gale’s face, feeling the stubble there. “I know. You’re much less good-looking, for one.”

 

Despite himself, Gale laughs. “I think we’re doing this all wrong,” he says, and even though his voice is light, he feels a heaviness in himself at the words. There’s truth in them. Asterid isn’t lucid most days, and Prim is distant, and Rory’s inherited Gale’s tendency towards martyrdom, and Vick still has a wretched cough, and Posy is lonely, and their mother hates Gale for overstepping, but he can’t stop or they’ll all starve. And then there’s Peeta, who’s still skinny and whose eyes are still sad. Gale still isn’t sure what it is he’s feeling when he looks at Peeta. Is it hate? Gale’s never known hate to fester quite like this.

 

Peeta shrugs. “Maybe.”

 

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

 

Peeta sighs. “If there’s one thing I learned in that arena, it’s that right and wrong are like left and right: completely dependent on perspective.”

 

Gale remembers his conversation with Katniss before the arena. He believed she could win. He had to. The alternative was too awful to consider. He’d looked her in the eye and told her she could do it. Not only that she could become a killer, but that she had to. For her, for him, for Prim. 

 

“Yeah, I know,” Gale says, but something must show on his face because Peeta pulls him impossibly closer and kisses him until he’s lightheaded.

Chapter 4

Reaping day comes. Gale watches the ceremony from his couch at home. He watches the tributes get reaped one after another and tells himself that, whatever happens, Rory and Prim are in the living room with him, not out in the cordoned-off section of the town square full of terrified children, and that will have to be enough. 

 

That strategy is very effective up until the last name.

 

Peeta Mellark.

 

Because of course it is.

 

As a rule, Gale doesn’t go out into the woods at night. But he needs to be somewhere where other people aren’t, so he finds himself in Peeta’s house. Specifically, Peeta’s bedroom. He’s been here before. He’d lain next to Peeta in the big bed and looked up at the ceiling and said, “My pa used to say that singing was for birds and daydreamers.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“It wasn’t always daydreamers. Sometimes it was fools. Sometimes it was fairies.”

 

“Fairies? Like with wings?”

 

Gale swallowed. “I used to think so. But one time my ma heard him say that, and she got real mad. I don’t think she’d be that angry if he really meant fairies.”

 

Gale heard Peeta shifting in the bed beside him. ”My ma used to hit me.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Gale said into the darkness, because that seemed like the sort of thing to say.

 

“Did your parents ever hit you?”

 

“Sometimes. Not often.” There were kids in the Seam who got beaten, who showed up to school with black eyes and bruises, who would refuse to take their shirts off in the summer heat. Gale wasn’t one of them. 

 

“As punishment?”

 

Gale frowned. “Why else?”

 

Peeta sighed, long and loud. “I don’t know. Boredom? Cruelty?” He took another shaky breath. “Let’s just sleep.”

 

And they had.

 

Gale lies in the bed now. It’s too big for one person. He remembers the way Peeta’s arm curled around his, hesitant, like Gale was going to bolt at the briefest contact. Gale didn’t. He wouldn’t. He’d give anything to have Peeta beside him right now, not in the Capitol with its bright colours and vapid people who want for nothing but thirst for blood. When will it be enough? 

 

Gale doesn’t watch any of the Quarter Quell’s promotional material, but he absorbs some of it through osmosis anyway. He knows that there are an equal number of male and female tributes, even though it had been a gender-blind reaping, and there is a tribute from every district, even though the reaping was District-blind, too. He knows there are four tributes from 1 and five tributes from 2: a record-high eleven Careers in a single Games. He catches parts of Peeta’s interview from the droning television on in the background as he eats, snippets of conversation overheard at the Hob, the way Prim’s hands tremble when he stops by the Everdeen house late in the day. Peeta’s going for the sympathy play. Smart. It’s the only option he has, really; make everyone feel bad for the heartbroken boy from District 12 with unbelievably bad luck.

 

Caesar Flickerman had asked the ever-important question: Do you still love Katniss?

 

“I’ll always love Katniss,” Peeta answered, and Gale’s chest went taut, like he was coming down with Vick’s flu again, only this time it was going to kill him. 

 

“Where do you go at night?” Rory asks Gale. He’s been spending more time at Peeta’s because he can’t bear the idea of it standing empty. “I’m grown up now. You can tell me. I can take it.”

 

Gale looks at Rory, really looks at him, like he’s a Gamemaker assessing a tribute. What score would he give Rory? Five? Young and thin, but not terribly so. Hard set to the jaw. Glint in his eye. Maybe he’s the one who looks like Katniss, with that fire Peeta was talking about.

 

For a moment, Gale is tempted to tell him, damn his paternal instincts and damn the consequences; Gale needs to tell somebody, and the person he wants to tell most is dead in the ground, throat held together with tailor’s stitches under a high-collared burial dress. 

 

But then he sees the boyish roundness to Rory’s face—Gale’s quite proud, actually, that Rory has enough fat for a baby face—and remembers that singing is for birds. 

 

“None of your business,” Gale says. Not an answer.

 

The Games start. Eight tributes die in the initial bloodbath. None of them are Peeta. He escapes from the Cornucopia with the District 4 tributes: an old woman and Finnick Odair, who is sex on legs. That’s not Gale’s opinion, it’s fact: Finnick Odair is sex on legs. He’s tall and tanned, with those sea-green eyes that drive the Capitol crazy. Peeta runs into the electrical barrier of the arena, and Finnick resuscitates him. Gale should be concerned about Peeta, but all he can think about is Finnick’s mouth. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to think about why.

 

The next day, Rory corners Gale at the Hob. “I know where you’re going at night,” he says, spitting the words out like they taste bad. 

 

Gale can’t breathe.

 

“What, you’re friends with Peeta now?” Rory doesn’t sound impressed. “A merchant kid? A merchant kid who killed Katniss?”

 

“He’s not—” Gale stops. Rubs his eyes. “He didn’t kill her, the Capitol did.”

 

“Same difference.”

 

“It really isn’t,” Gale says. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

 

Rory scoffs. “Yeah, right.”

 

If Rory doesn’t want to believe him, then fine. Gale slings his empty game bag back onto his shoulder and moves to leave.

 

“You know, Posy thought you might’ve been staying at a girl’s place.” Rory’s eyes are dark. They have that heat to them. Maybe he’d get a training score higher than five, after all. “Said maybe you had a sweetheart.”

 

“There’s no girl,” Gale says.

 

“Is there a sweetheart?”

 

Gale doesn’t know how to respond. He stands there in silence, listening to the sound of the Hob bustling around him, frozen.

 

Rory smiles, but it’s lopsided. “I thought so.”

 

“Rory—”

 

“Stay away from us,” Rory says. “Go to your cushy life in Victor Village. You clearly don’t want us, and we don’t need you.”

 

“Bullshit. You won’t make it through the winter without me.”

 

Rory clenches his jaw. “We will. So you run back to your—” he chokes on the word and picks a different one “—run back to him.”

 

There’s nothing to say, so Gale does. He goes back to the empty house in Victor Village, to the place that would have been a palace to his younger self, except he’s wiser now, and he can see the cracks running through it. Not all houses are homes. Without Peeta, this house is little more than wood and plaster. With Peeta, it’s something more, even if Gale’s not sure what, exactly, that is.

 

The second day ends with eight more dead. One is the old woman from 4. Finnick hadn’t wanted to leave her behind. Peeta had to drag him away from the poison fog, arms wrapped possessively around his torso. Gale grinds his teeth. He feels oddly like breaking something. Like going out into the woods and heaving a large rock into the lake.

 

He doesn’t, of course.  

 

The broadcast cuts out on the third day. Gale’s never seen that happen before. He gets to his feet slowly, wondering why he feels unsteady. Outside, he can hear people yelling. He goes to the door and opens it, looking out. From his place in Victor’s Village, he sees Peacekeepers piling into heavy armoured vehicles, sees them heading to the District edge.

 

This is not good.

 

Gale sprints towards the Seam. The Everdeens’ house is closer, so he barges into it first, making a ruckus and waking Prim, who had been dozing on her mother’s shoulder.

 

“We have to go,” Gale says. “We have to go now.”

 

Asterid looks dazed. “What—”

 

“Asterid, you have got to get it together,” Gale says. “We need to get out of the District now. Prim, grab some rations and head to the woods. Head straight north past the electric fence. Move quickly. I’ll be right behind you.”

 

“Gale—”

 

Gale wishes he had time to explain. “Now, Prim!”

 

She scuttles into action. Gale heads back out into the street, running to his house while ignoring the burn in his coal-scarred lungs.

 

He throws the front door open. “Everyone out!” he shouts. “We have to go!”

 

His mother must hear something in his tone, because she starts scrambling for supplies, packing whatever she can as quickly as she can. Rory, however, doesn’t read the panic coming off of Gale. He crosses his arms. “I told you not to come back.”

 

“Rory, I swear to God, you’ll listen to me,” Gale says. It’s not a threat, but a promise.

 

“Or what?”

 

Gale wants to hit him. God, does he want to hit him. “Or we’re all fucking dead.”

 

For once, his mother doesn’t tsk at his language. “Do as he says, Rory.”

 

Rory scowls. “Like hell—”

Gale grabs Rory by the collar and all but throws him out of the house, aware that Vick and Posy are watching with wide eyes. He’s struck by how young they all are. How small. “I said, get the fuck out!”

 

He turns and heads back into the District, yelling and knocking on doors and waking as many as he can. He needs to get people out. He needs to get them safe. He needs—

 

And then the firebombing starts.

Chapter 5

The three days before District 13 saves them are the longest three days in Gale’s life. Long enough that he starts to think about the seasons changing, about the frost creeping in and empty bellies. Dull eyes. He stands in the trees a hundred meters back from the shoreline, looking at the people on the lakefront. Eight hundred of them, give or take. It’s simultaneously too many and not enough. Gale wonders what he’s going to do with all of them. How many rabbits does it take to feed eight hundred mouths? How many deer? How many bears? 

 

And then there’s the rhythmic sound of blades cutting through air. Gale looks up to see an amphibious helicopter. He watches it land with a distant sort of horror, wishing he could summon an ounce of adrenaline but finding himself completely wrung out. He hasn’t slept since the district fell. He doesn’t know if he knows how to anymore. What fresh hell will tomorrow bring? Gale doesn’t think he can bear waking up to a new disaster; better to be awake and bear witness to the catastrophe as it unfolds.

 

So Gale watches the helicopter land on the lake. Watches the people—his fellow district members, neighbours, his family—react: panic and fear and resignation.

 

“Gale!” 

 

Gale doesn’t respond. 

 

“Gale!” Rory runs up to him. “Gale, what do we do?”

 

“There’s nothing to do,” Gale says. 

 

Rory blinks at him. “What?”

 

“The Capitol always wins,” Gale says. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

 

Rory shakes his head. “You have to do something,” he says, and his high voice cracks in a way that has nothing to do with puberty. “You always know what to do.”

 

Something like anger flares in Gale’s chest. He tries to remind himself that Rory is a child and Gale is an adult. Rory is scared, and he’s reaching for the only thing in his life that’s always been there: steady, dependable Gale.

 

Take care of me.

 

Gale takes that anger and uses it to push his listless body forward. He picks his bow and quiver off the ground where he’d set them carelessly and begins the walk toward the lake.

 

“What do I do?” Rory shouts after him.

 

“Find Ma,” Gale says. “Head deeper into the woods.”

 

Around him, people are fleeing, leaving behind belongings. It’s chaos. Gale pushes through it, heading towards the lake. He keeps expecting someone to stop, to ask him what he’s doing; to join him, maybe. Maybe one of the men he knows from the mines, someone who fancies themselves something of a community leader. Of course, it’s hard to lead a community when they can still see the smoke from it over the trees.

 

On the lake, the helicopter door is open. The people inside are negotiating with an inflatable boat, filling it slowly. Gale squints at them. If they’re Peacekeepers, they’re none he’s ever seen. Each of them has a bright orange floatation vest.

 

“Safety first,” Gale mutters.

 

Soon, the raft is pushing away from the helicopter. There are maybe six people in the craft. Gale doesn’t see any weapons, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. He raises his bow into a ready position. “That’s far enough!” he calls, when he decides it is.

 

The rowing stops, but the boat keeps bobbing lazily forward. The people in the boat look at Gale. “We’re here to help!” one of them calls.

 

Sure.

 

“Who are you?”

 

“We’re District 13!”

 

Well, that just makes no sense. “Bullshit!”

 

“We’re not Capitol!” 

 

Gale relaxes his stance. If they’re Capitol, he’s dead already. And if they’re not—if there’s even a chance that they can help—well, then, maybe…

 

Gale lowers his bow. 

 

When they make it to land, Gale helps them pull the boat ashore. The six people are militarized, there’s no doubt about it, but their guns are modest. Practical. No AKs or submachine guns, just plain handguns. The leader introduces herself as Livia. “Are you in charge around here?” she asks, as Gale helps her out of the boat. She looks at him skeptically, as if put off by his youth. Or maybe the bags under his eyes or the tremble in his hands.

 

Gale looks around at the nearly deserted lakefront. He cycles through potential answers in his head. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, just keeps helping people ashore. That, at least, he knows how to do.

 

Livia processes Gale’s silence and moves on. “This is Dora,” she says, pointing to the other woman, “and then Topher, Warwick, Willow, and Bellamy.”

 

Gale shakes hands. “Gale,” he says.

 

All six of them are older than Gale, of course. Thirties or forties, probably, except for Bellamy, whose face still has traces of baby fat. Mid to late twenties, then. He’s shorter and stockier than Gale, who is tall and painfully lean. Bellamy is blond, and palm is warm and dry against Gale’s. His eyes are light, like Peeta’s.

 

Gale slams the door closed on that thought. 

 

Over the next few hours, they set about gathering up the survivors, all eight hundred of them, scattered to the wind. Livia and Dora set up a command center on the lakefront. “We’ll coordinate here,” Livia says. “We’ll need to find a place to land the planes, like a field or a clearing. Do you know anywhere that would work?”

 

Gale knows these woods well. It’s densely-packed trees and uneven ground. “Back by 12. Closer to the district fence.”

 

He doesn’t want to go back there and see the scorched earth, the wasteland that used to be homes and shops. He doesn’t want to, but he knows he will. Just like he saw Katniss torn apart by mutts, killed so brutally that it seemed to echo backwards in time: now, when he thinks about Katniss, she’s already dead, even in his memories. Sometimes, he can’t keep it straight, what’s real and what’s not. Sometimes, in Gale’s head, Katniss dies on Reaping Day. They call Prim’s name and Katniss tries to fight her way through the crowd and Peacekeepers alike. She screams and claws and will not be stopped by anything but the bullet in her brain. Gale watches her fall, too far away to do anything more than witness.

 

That’s not how it happened, but does it really matter? Katniss is dead, and Gale watched it happen.

 

Night falls. Most of the survivors have been rounded back up. The lakefront is dotted with small fires, burning holes into the night. Gale sits around one with his family: the Hawthornes and the Everdeens. What’s left of them. They all stare into the flames like there might be answers in them. 

 

“What do you think District 13 is like, Gale?” Vick asks.

 

Gale can feel his ma stiffen. Once upon a time, questions like that would’ve been hers to answer. Once, but not anymore. Gale would regret that, if he was in the business of regretting. He tries not to. If he allows himself to have regrets, he’s afraid they’d swallow him alive. 

 

Of course, simply refusing to regret doesn’t mean Gale doesn’t feel it. He feels it so strongly, most days, even though he can’t for the life of him find what he should’ve done instead. Choice isn’t a concept he’s very familiar with. 

 

“I don’t know,” Gale says. 

 

“They must be very advanced to have stayed hidden so long,” Prim says. “I bet they have all sorts of technology, like in the Capitol.”

 

“I bet they live underground,” Rory says. “So when they show the footage of the destroyed buildings and stuff, that’s all true, but all the people are safe in bunkers and stuff.”

 

He looks to Gale for a reaction. For approval. Gale doesn’t want to give it to him. It wasn’t that long ago that Rory was talking shit, doing some “man of the house” posturing, trying to usurp Gale in his own home. After all Gale had done for him. What Gale’s still doing.

“Probably,” is what Gale says, instead of snapping at Rory and calling him an ungrateful little bastard, a fucking miracle of a spoiled brat who was so much younger at twelve than Gale was. Grow up. I did.