Over the Hills - Cut Scene from Chapter 9 (Gale’s POV)
He feels perverted for watching them. So much that for long moments he pretends he does not recognize them. Perhaps it would be easier if he imagines they are just a boy and a girl. Two strangers clinging to each other behind the glass panes of the gazebo as if hoping they could become one with one hard kiss.
Or maybe a series of them.
The polite thing to do would be to turn away. To leave them in their moment. That is what is expected of him. What a man of nearly five-and-thirty who has been rejected after a proposal should do.
Instead, Gale, Baron of Hawthorne, sought after by every unmarried (nearly every married) high woman in Vienna, can do nothing other than stare: part dumbstruck, part envious.
She never kissed me like that, he thinks.
Truth be told, she never kissed him back at all. Katniss Von Everdeen may have accepted his kisses. Even smiled afterwards. But she never returned them.
With Herr Peeta Mellark, however, she has no such qualms. She slides her fingers through the boy’s light hair, fists them at his nape. He tilts her head back, brushes his lips over her neck. Lightly at first, then with more greed.
Untutored, Gale thinks critically. He will leave a mark the next day.
But Katniss does not seem to care. She makes a sound that embarrasses Gale, heating his cheeks.
They land on the gazebo bench, Peeta letting out the slightest grunt of discomfort before pulling Katniss on his lap.
The movement jars, throwing Gale back to another garden, another time, another girl - her blonde hair flying about her, blue eyes flashing before she pulled him close.
“Margaret is such a stuffy name,” she’d told him before biting his lip. “Don’t you think so?”
A stuffy name for a girl who was anything but. Margaret. His Margaret, she called herself in the days before he jilted her out of a misplaced sense of patriotism.
The signet ring weighed heavy on his finger. He had things to do, amends to make.
She opens to him like a flower to the sun, Thom had told him of Katniss and Peeta.
Madge had done that for him. And, in all his arrogance, he chose not to see.
He wants to envy them. This boy and girl. But now, the cool metal of Madge’s ring warming against his fingers, he cannot help but feel something else.
Hope. Brought forth by a pair whose love, in another world, would have been star-crossed. Fatal.
“When The Lord closes a door, He opens a window,” Gale heard Herr Mellark saying once.
Perhaps this was it. His window. Even though he cannot see what lies on the other end.
Taking a deep breath, he turns away and makes his way to the car where Thom is waiting. By the time they drive off, he can swear that he smells strawberries.
******** I don’t normally post outtakes, but I was having trouble with the next chapter from Over the Hills. So I decided to write out a little snippet of OTH!Gale’s perspective and set up a prelude to his own happy ending. Unbetaed. All mistakes are mine.
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