Aquaflora17

dont think about him going into the woods alone for the first time in years, all of the pain and rage and sorrow and grief and despair rushing up at him in the hollow of the trees. how he still has to hunt, how he still has mouths to feed. about his weekly visits to the everdeen house to drop off game, how their house is empty of her, how alone he is now, how the loneliness has returned more viciously than it ever has been because now he knows what companionship means, how the task of surviving becomes less burdensome in the presence of love. and the whole time, he is watching the games. he is staring at her face, noticing every change with the capitol's makeup and waxing. he watches all the interviews, sizes up her competition, assesses their strategies. many are bigger, stronger, have more combat training. but no one is a better hunter. he tries to tamp down his hope. then comes her interview, her extravagant dress that’s worth more than his entire home. the mention of prim enrages him; not even her sister can she keep to herself. he thinks that if caesar flickerman spoke the name of Rory, Vick, or little Posy, he would kill him right on that stage. and then comes Peeta’s interview. and whether Katniss does or not, he knows the truth of his words. he’s seen the way Peeta looks at her. and what he feels isn’t jealousy—not really—after all, they are both likely going to die within the week. but he does feel a profound sadness, a disappointment and rage. how futile that love becomes in the face of the games. he is glad, too, that Peeta said what he did. he admires the rebellion in it—tributes are not supposed to be human. at least to the capitol, Gale reasons that the monstrosity of the games is harder to ignore when it becomes a love story. he recognizes the way that they are both—that all the tributes are—playing the game before they’re in the arena. then airing is done for the night, and he leaves the square. he heads to the woods—tomorrow, the games begin. there is no hope of sleep. he wanders until the misty sun rises; he cannot return to the cove they spent their last hours together with blackberries and mocking the voice of the reaper. it’s not funny anymore. and there’s no one to hear it anyway.

he’s holding out hope, watching Katniss be traumatized in real time and half making peace with a death that would spare her survival after all this. eventually, he watches her pretend to fall in love with another man, and maybe knows it isnt true but knowing that it doesnt matter anyway, that she will be bound to those lies even if she survives. watches her kill and watches people try to kill her, watches her hunt and be hunted. he watches her notch her arrows in the swift and familiar motion he has seen countless times, and he resents the eyes he knows are boring into her all across the country. because their relationship, the sacredness of their survival, will never be their own again. knowing that even if she comes back, nothing will ever be the same. and then she makes it, and shes home, and everything is different. watching her move away, and change, and process, seeing her have more money than he has ever seen in his life, knowing that she would provide enough for him that he would never have to hunt again, but she never offers because he would never accept it. working in the mines, where his father's remains still sit, where he was always headed. watching the capitol freaks visit her, dress her up and strip her down, watching the camera crews roll into town and steal her away and she is so distant now, so distant and never comign back. and still he loves her. still he knows her better and more deeply than anyone in the world. they still hunt together, but infrequently and she doesnt do it out of necessity anymore. snow threatens her and him, and she has to marry peeta and he knows she has to and still his mouth is soured at the thought. because he loves her, and because she isn’t her own person anymore. she’s a prop for the capitol, and he misses his friend.

there is buzzing in the mines of rebellion. finally, finally, a reason to stay, something to live for. he has always wanted to fight, had always harbored anger that even katniss had never understood. and one day, he brings a turkey to the head peacekeepers house, as he’s done countless times before. but it isn’t cray, with his lenience for rules and his pension for young girls. it’s a new, severe looking man that takes him to the whipping post. he can’t remember the last public whipping in 12, and it isn’t a popular event. eventually, darius tries to step in and is lashed for it. there is community, camaraderie between the peacekeepers that are starving like him, illegal like him. he is whipped until pain is the only thing he’s ever known, until he wishes he could stop bleeding because even though it is beginning to snow and he is bare, the heat of his own blood is excruciating. finally, he blacks out. katniss is there, he thinks. peeta too. another man from the seam, the mentor. of course, they carry him to katniss’ house. the healing house, the place he’s carried game to once a week for as long as he can remember, but for the worst months of his life he did it alone. he is only aware of light and pain, and katniss close by. she is hysterical, and then there is snow coat on his face and prim and asterid are there, and he trusts them, and then there is a needle in his back and things go softer. katniss stays by him, takes his hand. kisses him. promises to stay, promises to fight.

and then the announcement of the quarter quell strikes. she's going back in. he'd be a fool to think she will ever return. he readies himself for grief again, but this time it's different. shes married, and distant, and things havent been the same since the reaping anyway. and still, he prepares to watch his best friend die. the games progress, and she has allies now. people hes never met, could never trust. she used to be his ally, and him hers. and then the allies turn on her, and hes watching her bleed out on screen, and then shes fumbling with her arrow, and she is about to die. then the screen is black.

then the hovercrafts come in, and he saves the people he can but the ones he cant he watches burn, hears them scream. his entire home obliterated, his best friend likely dead but undoubtedly unreachable. three hundred mouths to feed, his people injured, charred, and starving and there’s only so much he can do. katniss was better with plants. days of his dwindling community and no foreseeable end. he teaches who he can to hunt, to hitch snares, and he doesn’t look too closely at the children’s ribs, at the gaunt, hurting eyes of his people.

an eventual rescue and they let him see her, and he looks at her battered body and knows he has to tell her, and knows too that she will know her arrow sent the hovercrafts. but now his people are fed, and katniss is safe. or at least here with him. and he is trying so hard to connect with her but she is distant and scared and angry and there are parts of her now that he will never understand, but still he is the one that finds her tucked away behind pipes, knows her spots and knows too that the things she is running from are inescapable. he is the one she hunts with, even here. and she is being used as a pawn again, just like she was in the capitol. but he is a soldier now, and he is fighting the war he has always wanted to, and he is designing weapons that exact revenge he only allowed himself to dream of in the heart of the woods.

and he knows that she needs peeta out of the capitol, so he volunteers to save him. not because he cares much for peeta, but because he knows its what she needs, and he knows what it's like to have someone you love trapped in the capitol's grasp. and he knows that she loves peeta, even if she doesn't yet know. and the decision wasnt even hard. and now peeta is rescued but it was a trap and peeta is a weapon and now he knows that he will never compete with peeta, that she will never look at him how he wants her to ever again. but he still has a war to fight, and so they do. he works on designing weapons, he films propos, he stays by katniss' side because thats what he does and it was never even a question. the war progresses and he watches her die a thousand times, sees that coin is trying to kill her. he fights beside the mockingjay and remembers a time when they were children in the woods together. they have never stopped trying to survive together. he fights beside people that he has seen on screens, learns the ways the capitol has intimately damaged them, thinks that he would choose starving over any harm they enacted against finnick, johanna, annie. he grows to care for these people. to love them for their joy and resilience, to trust and respect them as soldiers, to understand them for their rage. and of course, he loses them all too. one by one, the war takes them just as they always have. he is wary of coin but wants so badly to win, is willing to serve her for as long as it takes to be victorious.