#post reaping

(Gale POV)

She looked beautiful and stoic as she walked away from us. Towards the train that would take her to The Capitol. 

I had always known she was prettier in motion, her movements graceful and soft in a way her expression usually wasn’t. There were girls with prettier faces, and more enticing figures, but no girl moved the way she did. Through the forest, under the trees quietly like a whisper, hauntingly like a dream. I wish I’d gotten to dance with her at the After-the-Reaping celebration. Just once. 

But that would not be happening today, or maybe any day. Not when the Capitol saw fit to pull her little sister’s name from their reaping bowl. 

My best friend wasn’t going to stand around and watch the only easy joy she had left in the world be snuffed out. 

No. That wasn’t happening ever if she had any say in it. 

Katniss Everdeen doesn’t know how to stand down when it comes to the people she loves being put in danger. 

I’m proud of her. So damn proud. But angry too, because it wasn’t supposed to go like this. We were supposed to have more time. We were supposed to have everything. 

“You stupid bitch!” my father said as he burst into the waiting room that I had been led to and walked right up to me. He hit me across the face, hard enough that his ring caused blood to spill. “You can’t even die right! It was such a relief when you never came home and now you’re here ruining everything again.”

I stared at my father. I had never been bold enough to defy him, to respond to his abuse, before now, but I was different than the me that he knew five years ago. I pulled myself to my full height and looked my father straight in the eye. “Not this time Da,” I said just loud enough that he would hear it, before I punched him just as he had me. He stumbled backwards, collapsing into a chair. For the first time in my life, he was the one staring up at me in disbelief.

The train sounded, signaling it was time to leave. I sighed and looked at my father once more, he was still staring at me as if I had grown a second head. I wished that things could have been different but they weren’t and it was useless to think otherwise.