a/n; i started this back in august, wanted to finish it before the movie...and then i lost motivation, and then started it back up again. it's an eventual katniss/gale - and by that, i mean i'm really trying to make them grow toward each other. it might take a while. and it's gale's pov for now, set 5 years after the end. let me know what you think! :)

chapter one - homecoming

"lately, i've been wishing i had one desire
something that would make me never want another
something that would make it so that nothing matters
all would be clear then" - bright eyes, a perfect sonnet

"Gale?"

He stops the tapping of his pen and looks up from the contract he's trying to read through, into catlike eyes. It's not the first time he knows she shouldn't be here, in his office, where this plan he's been working on is so close to finishing.

"What's wrong?"

"Did you not hear me?" she says, the usual amused smile and tilt of her head gone.

He keeps silent, watching the anger on her face and giving an apologetic look.

"Sorry," he finally says, once she decides not to reply. "I've just been working on this for a few weeks, and District 3 has been cooperating selflessly. I don't want to lose it."

The built up anger in her face melts into a simmer, and she considers him. "Well, don't lose yourself."

Gale smirks. "You should know by now. I'm an expert at that."

"Sure," she says, standing up from her seat across from him, and walking around the dark, wooden desk. Her fingers trail over the intricate designs engraved into the linings, which match the moldings on the legs.

Gale remembers the strange surprise he felt when he received representatives from District 7, delivering a gift to President Paylor for the recently balanced work on regulations of food and mobility among the new country. She, for no explicit reason, directed it to Gale.

"But you know what else can make you lose yourself?" she asks, turning his chair and leaning over him, placing her hands on the arm rests, trapping him with effortless ease.

"I can guess," he says. He leans back as far as he can, keeping eye contact. "But how about – "

"We don't?" she intervenes, already knowing. She lets her nose bump his. "Because I'm angry right now?"

"Reeva," he starts, grabbing her hips to keep her from straddling him. "It's not that. After I finish this deal we can celebrate."

She fights against his grip. "But it's more fun when someone's mad," she whispers, then she kisses him hard.

The thing with Reeva, though – she was always a firecracker, always finding a different way to show her colors. Unpredictable, explosive. There was no label to read before she went off, no caution warnings, no choking hazards, and that was what was so enticing about her.

When she found Gale, District 2 was off its feet and flying high with success. Paylor had a no nonsense outlook for the work that was bestowed upon her, and the respect level from the consensus was approvingly high.

Some people had come around for work, whether to gain some of the respect that had been lacking in Panem, to find something else to do with their hands, or – in a nobler idea of helping society – to assist unselfishly to the greater cause of fixing the world.

So Reeva walked into the roughly constructed helping facility, looking for something. She requested Gale.

"You were the Mockingjay's right hand man, weren't you?" Those were her first words to him, when he arrived back from a meeting – missions were few and far between now. More cooperation, less reason for fire arms, and, to his dismay, copious diplomacy. He tried to create a lessened ideal of politicians when he could, because if there was one thing he hated more than the now deadened Capitol, it was the politics the Capitol was based on.

But after that one sentence from her, he'd been compelled to answer her.

"Once upon a time," he said.

"Since you're free now…" she grinned slyly back. "Can I be yours?"

He didn't give her permission, at the beginning, to be an assistant. She was a predator on all accounts, from the way she swayed when she entered a room to the way the dust settled after she left.

She wasn't deterred. She came around, took jobs in and around with the people Gale customarily worked with. Some would brag to him about the new volunteer, who would take no money for helping communications or food supply or even secretarial work.

Whatever her motives were, Gale gave in sooner rather than later. She wasn't the first, and she was definitely not going to be the last. Gale was a practical man, and he knew better than to think she wanted kids and a husband when she could easily glorify everything she might want from him and a possible dozen others.

It seemed school girl gossip didn't end, even in a professional arena. But he was able to utilize it – whenever he needed anything, there would always be a woman around.

The perplexing thing was…Reeva kept coming back. It was slightly disconcerting.

Kissing her now, with his hands still firmly pressing into her hips, he has the power – to push away or control to the best that he can.

Sometimes, the kisses are cool and sedated, smooth, undemanding.

The ones she was giving now, however, are stinging, like smiling too wide with cracking lips. It feels just bearable, the heightening simmers right before the boil.

And the boil is what Gale hates the most.

Her lips turn into firing coals, and there's smoke underneath his tongue, ash swirling around his trachea and to his lungs. She doesn't have an end to the climax of her kisses, and it's easy to perspire in nervous agony and exhilaration. Or, it's easy to burn off your skin. It burns his skin every time. And the most unbearable twinge the smoke leaves in his stomach – the ache and the tightening – tastes like nostalgia, like the coal mines underneath District 12.

He pushes her away, just enough to see her face and how it glows, embers shining underneath her cheeks.

"I'm going to visit my family," he breathes.

She pouts through her surprise. "Now?"

He shakes his head. "After the contract. I've been neglecting them."

The embers glow even brighter, making her eyes glint. "No celebration?"

He hesitates, because it's somehow hard to turn her down. It's hard to suppress her, all the fire and flame that coalesces around her. It can choke him into submission, but he's strong enough to handle her. He's done it time and time again. She's been around long enough for him to recognize how to compact her indestructible force – but not to where he can temper and soothe himself after being with her.

But today it's different – she's a piece of mined coal instead of a raging fire. She hides it behind those glowing cheeks and snarling eyes. After all these years, Gale has a sight for these things now, just like how he knows where to set up snares. Unfortunately, he's out of practice. He's rusty. There's not much forest where he goes, not many raw struggles for survival anymore, not many people who need killing, and she's quite a different type of beast.

So he answers with a, "No."

She stands up, abrupt and stiff, fixes her appropriately red colored dress, and click-clacks her heels until she's out of the room.

Gale can only sigh in relief. He's surprised when the walls around him aren't marred with scorch marks.

Over the years, the government was a shoddy business. It was disorganized in its entirety, but still structurally functional. It took some months to get the sections together – communications, labor, transportation, commerce, and urban development especially. Others, like education and defense, were given a backseat in regards to importance.

Since defense wasn't needed, Gale was subjected to moving around according to where was the best fit. At the beginning, he was assigned urban development – or, at least, what it would have been called now. It was mostly for District 2, first cleaning up the debris and ash leftover from the rebellions, the Nut, working on housing conditions, then on the government facility itself. Teams were soon split up, moving to different districts to help, sometimes finding recruitment from the people of the districts themselves.

Gale didn't go to any different district. He was in the group sent to the Capitol.

It wasn't permanent. His quarter was set in district 2, but he'd be shipped out to the Capitol accordingly. To help with the massive clean-up, they'd tell him. Extra, sturdy hands that would get the job done. The important things, with blueprints, reworking of the original layout into another, devoid, hopefully, of the pods and the strategic gamemaker traps, were in the hands of Paylor and her closest advisers, and the old Capitol officials who were associates to Snow and his inner circle – at least, the ones who were left. Gale concluded his age may have been an issue to not be an official, if nothing else. Why else would they not have let him go? He helped create the bomb that ended it all, though he was unwitting of it at the time. They gave him a comunicuff, like it was some sort of privilege. It wasn't like he hadn't proved his worth.

But then, he couldn't be too disappointed. Being with a team to recreate the Capitol was well enough. Being able to make change was something he had dreamed for a long, long time. He just hoped desperately Paylor wouldn't make any mistakes with Snow's associates. The job would be fine in her hands, sure. He trusted her unwaveringly in that respect. It was everyone else he wasn't sure about.

As time went by, so did reconstruction. Roads built, automobiles built, trains, hovercrafts, any type of transportation that would help districts unite better. For the sake of states, the districts kept their boundaries, if only for yet another form of organization. Each one already had a designated area of expertise. It was better for that to stay the same.

Asking permission to leave for a few days granted, Gale leaves in a company hovercraft. The driver drops him off at the outskirts of Twelve, where Gale always likes to start.

Because it's like beginning. Walking through and seeing the improvements from the previous times' memories, it swells up inside, lets him float down the streets that aren't dirt anymore but actual pavement. He likes the way his shoes can bounce on it, how concrete it is, how much more stabilizing it is for his family and others.

Passing by the fence, the meadow graveyard with tiny sticks designating bodies, looking at the forest, it seems all of those remained the same. It's always remained the same here, whether because of what it symbolizes or how it remains the essence of freedom and food that will always be there, Gale isn't quite sure.

He doesn't look in the opposite direction as he passes, toward the old, broken down houses, or by the new opening in the fence.

It's a strange thing – people can take walks in the woods now, if they're careful and know how to take care of themselves. All those years sneaking in and out will only be stories now.

He passes through the Hob, which isn't the Hob any longer. It radiates with lights and bricks and life meant to last. Style that carves out its own in the regenerating world of fashion. Greasy Sae's is still Greasy Sae's, but the immaculate upkeep through the windows and into the store makes Gale wonder if she still sells wild dog and labels it as sirloin tips. The faces on the people inside are a tell tale sign that if there is a difference between the two, it doesn't mean a thing.

The sweetshop looks the same, with a bit more elbow grease in the shine. More wax in the windows, more attracting lighting on the candy in the plush pillows, watching you with a greedy eye, wanting you to be greedy in turn.

The bakery is taken up – it was closed for a while, with half of the shop destroyed from the decimation years passed. Gale doesn't notice anything new that he didn't see the last time. He's sure if he looks close enough, he'll see a hairline crack in a window, a loose knob on the entry door.

He keeps his head down, not wanting to catch much attention from the ones who remember him. Many are gone to other districts – to travel the new medium – but many are still around. He wants to be ready to greet and smile the ones he could see, but the elation he gets from seeing the district is enough for now.

By the time he gets to his house, he's anxious and excited, both emotions making the smile on his face a half-scowl. His mom will answer, like always, cheeks fuller, hands soothed with oils, face open and beaming.

It never matters how long he's gone, and he wishes he can explain the depth of his apology when she opens the door and hugs him. And she hugs him like he'll never come back, just the same as the last time, and the times before that.

"Hey, mom," he says.

"Gale," she breathes, and he feels her inhale with all of her being.

"Sorry I'm late," he tries, because it seems, it's easier to leave seriousness behind every once in a while. But it's a running joke between them, already. He's gotten less punctual with visits over the years, but he'll never let the letters pile up on his desk – family is the one thing he will never let himself lose.

But it seems time is something he'd never learned to cherish. It shows in the way his mother stares and stares at him, scared she'll forget the curve of his face.

The greatest thing, though, is looking back at her, and starting conversations with the easiest flourish.

She sets out a hearty bowl of soup for him, a side of baked potato and other experimental delicacies she always tries on him – though the delicacies are no longer delicacies, the name persists in the household. When they catch up, and he gets updates on Rory, Vick, and Posy from a real person rather than from words on paper, knowing they're in school and learning instead of striving to survive, he feels full in his chest and his stomach.

"Posy's already got boys wrapped around her finger."

Gale smiles. "She learns from the best."

"I'd rather say it runs in the family," Hazelle laughs.

They sit together on the new couch – only new because they've never had one before. But all the topics of normal chatter have been covered except one, and Gale already sighs in defeat into the cushions.

"Peeta's done well for the people here, what with the bakery. I've got to hand it to him," Hazelle says, brushing at Gale's hair. "He makes a mean croissant."

"Aren't you the bread connoisseur, now."

She shrugs. "I'm starting to become one."

He wonders how many times his mom has been in that shop, wonders what her real motive is.

"Why?" he decides to say.

She gives Gale a look and takes a moment before she explains. "Because I want to know more about the man Katniss loves."

Gale reacts with a crooked smile. "Hard to hate, isn't he?"

Hazelle shakes her head. "It's horrible. He's a sweetheart."

"I'm sure he's as selfless now as he was in the arena," he says.

"Just as selfless as you are to the world."

Gale laughs. "I don't need you to console me, mom."

She stays silent awhile, taking the time out to examine her son.

"Go say hello, Gale. To Katniss."

Gale blinks his eyes open, feeling the grasp of sleep from the after effects of lunch. It's hard to fend it off.

"It's not a good idea."

"You don't know that," she says.

"Trust me. It's not. It's too soon."

"Five years is not long enough?" Hazelle asks, and he can hear the anger in her voice. He feels the crawling of dread come around him.

"Not even close." He closes his eyes again, and it's shocking to know how fast the sleep can leave you.

It's a long time before his mother speaks. "She's still a shell of what she used to be. Not even happy, Gale," she whispers. "She doesn't hunt as often. She helps in the bakery, but it's not the same. I know it isn't."

"Does she ever complain?"

She sighs. "No."

"Then she's fine."

He can feel the disappointment from her as it radiates and reflects off him. He starts to pretend he's asleep, but he's sure he gave it away when he scowled. If she notices, she does nothing about it.

Soon, Hazelle leaves to her job of cleaning Haymitch's house – Gale has had it in him to tell her to quit the drunkard's home, but he's watched her get ready, with all her tools and equipment ready for the heavy duty task ahead of her, and decided a long time ago that she has never seemed quite as happy. Perhaps it's because she found the slot she had been looking for after everything turned on its side to normal. Normal is hard to come by. Fixing up a man's ramshackle lifestyle is something closer to home, something like surviving.

So Gale didn't say anything, but he did ask if there would be a wedding.

"What in the world," she had evaded, huffing, throwing her hands up as if the mere thought was atrocious and unfit for conversation.

Gale smiled and called over to her that four kids was enough.

Hazelle promptly cuffed his ear, but was flustered into silence.

As Gale hears his mother's goodbye and the closing of the door, he wishes he placed time into getting to know Haymitch. He was a winner of the Games. A man who lost everything, who was lost, who somehow found it befitting to live inebriated instead of not living at all.

Gale decides...maybe he shouldn't talk to him. Talking to Haymitch might only ensure things are really as bad as they seem to be. Gale doesn't want to face that, maybe, he's turned into Haymitch – drowning in his own puddle of spit, of his own making, with Hazelle there to knit back the patches on soiled clothing.

Lying on that couch, Gale looks down at his arms and legs. He can see his mother's knitting thread scars inside the crease of his elbows, around the belt of his pants. He can feel them when he creases his eyebrows together, and he knows that he's in pretty bad shape. It's not something he likes to admit - he's made a good living, he's done so many good things. He shouldn't feel like everything he's done has been for nothing, as if it was an escape route just to leave. Because it isn't that, but there's something weighing him down, keeping his pride down to a tapering flame, like it doesn't have enough oxygen to survive for long.

He slowly rises from the couch, now pushing him away with a sedated hatred. He turns to the front door and jostles the knob open, stepping outside to the settled grayness of the District. Some areas look better, more colorful, but the old colors are still there, soaked into the ground and the pavement.

He decides not to sneak around this time, because he can't, because he's already sweating by the time he's two steps from the door. It's too sticky and hot, and the only way he'll be able to make it is if he runs.

So he does. He runs until he sprints, and then his feet touch the meadow and he jerks, as if the vibrant grass twirls around his shoes, unties his shoelaces into a trap like dainty little fingers.

It's alive, this meadow. It's green and golden, and it shines its pearly fangs to him, opens its mouth into a grave.

It's beckoning, it's so inviting, all warm and moist and dark. The tongue bed is the color of a rose petal, as rich as blood, and Gale can smell it. It crawls up his nose, makes its home there, up, up, up until it lies by the sinus of his brain. He feels it digging, worming the thin layer of bone away.

His hypnotic, reckless trudging lets his feet crunch on flowers. It's all it takes to wipe the daydream clean. But it's only because the flower is dead and brown. It's because the flower is, used to be, a primrose.

The worm, the fangs and tongue, all screech and collapse into a pile of old dirt, covering the opening. The toppling twig is scratched, but the sloppy writing shows the ownership of the person, presiding and decaying, if there really is a body underneath the dirt. Either way, it seems to tell Gale to go away because I'm your fault.

It could be an illusion - did they find the pieces of her, all of her? Is her flesh hidden inside the meadow, making it flourish with beautiful green grass?

He kneels and hesitates, pressing his arm forward to the flower he broke, even though it had already died. His fingers shake, the sweat that began in his house rolls down his back in buckets. It's autumn, but the sun has never been as stifling as it is now.

It takes only seconds to realize. He can't do it. He can't touch the damn flower because he'll trap it. He'll detonate it. It'll turn to ash, and it will burn, all over again.

He wonders when it'll stop visiting him. When her face will stop being gray and start being the vibrant yellow it used to be.

Then he hears it. The snap of a branch or a twist of a rock. It could be anything, but it's a noise, and it makes him still. He waits and swallows while he waits, until he hears the fast pattering of feet disappear around a corner or down a road he can't reach.

It's then when he turns, looks down to see the fresh petals of a primrose fallen and delicately shifting in regards to haste. They leave him a trail that's supposed to be invisible.

He can hear her. Prim says, "Follow her, Gale. Follow Katniss."

But her face remains ashen and gray and singed with black. He knows better than to listen.

Maybe he was gone a long time. Rory, Vick, and Posy litter the house with chatter, and they all run toward him when he enters. Gripping him tightly is Posy, all ten years of her bundled up in his ragged, brown button up shirt.

"I was hoping you were coming soon! Ma doesn't tell us anything!"

Gale reaches down, wrapping one arm around her back while the other ruffles her bangs. "I didn't tell her this time."

She buries in deeper, muttering a, "Liar," into the wrinkles she's making, and it's hard to look at her without regretting his absence. He can't remember when her hair got so long, when her grip got so strong, where that scar on her forearm came from. It's only been about a year, but years are long episodes.

Gale glances up to Rory and Vick, both aged into fine boys. Rory looks like a mirror – his face, eyes, and structure. The hair's different than his, shorter, but he still seems young with his large smile and boyish lines, and that was the biggest difference.

Vick grew like a weed, surpassing Gale and Rory, and Gale's so happy he can look up to one of his brothers. The burden he was trying to hold is no longer there, and Gale knows Vick will live up to it.

They both nod to him, pry little Posy away so they can get decent hugs themselves.

It always strikes Gale how desperately he's missed this place when he settles himself in each year. It's easy to forget the smells of dinner roasting, the banter, the stories about their days, with the world's problems hanging around.

Gale learns Rory's helping out with the coal mines. After the massive cleanup and the renovations of old and new houses in the neighborhoods, the coal mines were still a death trap, holding up but just slightly. Urban development was sent in, minor repairs were made, and the elevators worked just a minute faster. Most of the district was happy with that. Rory, inspired more by Gale than by studying, spent more time at the mines than at school.

It turned out Gale wasn't the only one with fancy hands. Rory studied mechanics, how to manipulate a wire to send the voltage quicker, to stabilize the metal arms of the lift to hold with something sustainable. The Titan, the miners called it. Made by Rory, the little lion.

And now Rory had joined them, nineteen years old and living in the dark six to six every day.

"You don't have to work there, Rory," Gale says. "You've done so much already. You can travel and see the other districts –"

But Rory would tell him no. "Dad did it. You did it. I'm gonna do it, too."

Gale couldn't tell Rory not to be like him. It got stuck in his throat when Rory grinned like he did.

"You can live in the mines," Vick says. "I'm gonna see the world. There's too much not to see it."

Gale likes that idea. Vick, at least, is young enough to turn all the dusty memories of Thirteen into something of a lesser tragedy. But sometimes Gale forgets they didn't see all the things he saw.

Posy only pouts at her corner of the table. She looks to Gale with bulbous eyes, and he quirks a brow at her.

"What's up, Posy?"

She blinks, scuttles out of her chair and squishes herself into his lap. She's still a tiny thing, with skinny bones and skinny muscles. She can't be half Gale's size.

"Boys," she huffs.

"They can be a handful," Gale tries.

"Handful?" Posy asks, disbelieving. "They're awful."

He laughs and kisses the top of her head. "Is that directed to me, too?"

"You're not a boy," she says, rolling her eyes. "You're my brother."

Gale glances discreetly to Rory and Vick, while they snicker. "Thanks, Pose."

"They won't leave me alone!"

"Sorry to break it to ya, Posy," Rory speaks up. "That'll last all your life."

Posy shrieks, "All my life?"

Gale gives Rory a glare over her worried head. "Don't worry. Us Hawthorne's have a way of fending for ourselves."

Posy looks up to him with hope. "You mean they'll go away?"

He gives a shrug. "If you put your foot down."

She seems to be complacent, her fidgets dying down.

Then she says, "Can you tell me a story tonight?"

It's funny, how the question shatters that happily burning glow.

"How 'bout I tell you five stories?"

Posy only squeezes him, grins with glee, and answers, "I missed you, Gale."

It's all he can do not to put her down and run away. Because he's going to leave again, and there's too much hope with her bundled up and warm against him.

"I missed you, too."

He glances away and breaks eye contact with Posy, only to find his mother looking at him. She hasn't said much, during dinner, but it isn't that uncharacteristic. She likes to watch them interact, but it's unlike her to not give her two cents.

When Hazelle rises from her seat, Gale follows, telling Posy he's going to get a glass of water and depositing her gently onto the chair. Hazelle begins to pick up the dishes around the table, following behind Gale into the kitchen.

She places the dirty dishes into the sink, turning on the faucet while adding droplets of soap.

He waits for her to speak, but once she grabs the sponge and starts sawing against the glass cups, Gale starts talking.

"You don't have to do that anymore," he says. "The dishwasher works fine."

She turns her head over her shoulder and smiles at him. "Old habits die hard," she says. "Don't you think?"

Gale stops for a second, leans on the counter top and stares into the one cup he kept, saved from his mother's scrubbing. The bottom of it acts as a portal to a different time, to a place when he was put into a temporary, covert squad to stop a small group of rebels. It was a few years ago, when he had been in the process of remaking the Nut.

Tracking them down wasn't hard – it was the resistance. If anything, it should have been easy. They were mediocre with guns at best, being used to the pampering lives in the Capitol. They weren't accustomed to sharing the food that was divided up, shipped off to the people who earned it.

He remembers seeing them, sickly thin and crazed. The eyes were confused and lost, as if they didn't know Snow died and that the Capitol wasn't superior anymore.

Put your weapons down, the squad leader had said. Don't comply and we will shoot.

Of course, they didn't comply. They let the guns blaze, bullets going wide but the powder hitting the nose with enough force to feel the heat and desperation.

No! They shouted. Not until we can get our houses back!

Then they ran out from their cover, one by one, picked off and shot down without much thought.

One had gotten free, used the falling bodies as shields as she made her way down the runway. She was aiming at Gale, eyes ferocious and clouded, aiming the gun but not able to control the force of the kickback.

Someone called for him to shoot her. Hurry up! Shoot her!

In the second before he pulled the trigger, Gale wondered about the sacrifice. There wasn't a rage inside him to blind him from the thoughts, like it used to. He wrapped his mind around the fact that killing her, and the rest, would end nothing but a nuisance. Were they worth more than the bullets or were they worth more than the guns? Maybe it didn't matter then, at the time, because their life had already been destroyed in the war. They were only debris from the ruins.

She was too close when he shot her, with the bullet from her grazing his left shoulder. He aimed for her head, but he flinched from the impact of her shot and he hit her eye instead.

It did the job. Some of the guys joked and asked what took him so long. Others remained silent, as if they understood how hard it was to pull that trigger.

But the thing that bothered Gale was not the fact of pulling the trigger so much as it was the difficulty of it. There never had been so much hesitation in his fingers.

With hesitation, he was waiting for guilt, but the guilt didn't come. He couldn't shake the feeling that this was the best for them. Where was the room for guilt in that?

Old habits…

He didn't know if repelling guilt was an old habit or a crippling flaw.

"Yeah," he ends up saying. "They do."

"Maybe someday I'll learn how that thing works," she motions to it, "but not today."

When she says nothing else, Gale considers her for a few moments. She wasn't going to give him a speech, or a talk about staying and living there in the District again, because she already knew it wouldn't do any good.

She knows him too well, he thinks, because she watched him grow up with obliterating rage. Now that it's gone, replaced with a strange, sedated calm, he's still not sure what else it left him besides an intense desire to fix.

"You should buy a phone," he says. But it's a moot point. They've been over this too.

"That thing?" she asks. "No. It's too expensive."

"I've told you I can buy one for you, if the money bothers you."

"Gale – "

"Really, mom," he insists. "The dishwasher was more expensive. Besides, it would be a lot nicer than waiting for letters to arrive. And my visits aren't long, either."

Hazelle stops her assault on washing, giving him the same look he saw at the table.

"You don't understand, Gale," she says tightly. "If we get a phone, how many times will we see you?"

That's when he realized; guilt, grief, and forgiveness all run in the same vein. Conquer one, and you'll soon conquer them all.

The look she gives is sad and grieving, like she missed someone or something inside him that's gone and changing. Maybe he is. He knows he certainly isn't the same as he was during the games and the war. But is he really that different?

He hopes she only missed him.

And there is no thought Gale could grasp to counter her question, because he knows voices are different than paper. It would make it more tolerable to be gone if he could talk to them everyday, no matter what he argued.

He sighs, not knowing what else to do, and walks out of the kitchen to put Posy to bed.

Posy falls asleep on Gale's chest, and he can't find it in him to move. The bed is warm and comfortable, and it smells like pine trees and District 12, and he's content to let himself fall asleep here, too.

He hears faint footsteps on the floor, followed by a light knock on the door. Gale blinks up to see Vick standing there, itching the back of his neck.

"Hey, Gale," he whispers. "Sorry. I didn't think you'd be asleep yet."

"I'm not," he whispers back, giving him a sleepy smile. "What's wrong?"

"I just, uh," he says, fidgeting. "I've been hunting, these past few months," he pauses. "With Katniss."

Gale furrows his brow, and he can't keep the surprise out of his voice. "Really?"

Vick brightens slightly. "Yeah. She came by the house one day with Peeta and –" he stops, eyes popping and biting his lip. "I mean…"

Gale chuckles. "It's alright, Vick. It doesn't matter."

"Right…" Vick says. "Well, she came by one day for dinner and she just asked. It's been nice, you know. I'm getting pretty good at the bow," he grins. "But I think using the knife is one of my stronger suits."

A large smile creeps up on Gale, but his throat is kind of tight. "That's great, Vick. Have you taken down a deer, yet?"

"No," Vick frowns. "I think they know we hunt. They're way too skittish. And I haven't gotten quiet enough," he shrugs. "That's what Katniss says, anyway."

Gale starts to think maybe he should take him out a few times – like he should have before. The process of gaining enough food for everyone in the Districts has diluted his thoughts on hunting. But it never let his desire fade, and he's found some forest in District 2 to help him out, but teaching Vick and even Rory, aside from the few times during the games, didn't occur to him to continue.

But he thinks he knows why.

"Have you learned any snares?" Gale asks.

Vick's frown deepens. "Not really. I asked her once, but she got really mad. She said nothing good would ever come of them, and I shouldn't waste my time."

It's hard to be surprised by that. "Only if you don't strap a bomb to one," he says bitterly. Posy shifts and mumbles unintelligibly from the noise, and he starts rubbing her hair.

"Yeah, well, I know better."

Gale struggles for a few seconds before he can strain, "I can, if you really want to…teach you a few, while I'm here."

Vick visibly brightens. "Sure. Can we go tomorrow?"

His enthusiasm is infectious. "Of course. Right after school, okay?"

"Alright!" he almost shouts. Posy groans and tries to use Gale's shirt to muffle the noise. "I'll tell Katniss that we can hunt later in the week."

"If you want to hunt with Katniss, we can go the day after," Gale suggests hurriedly. "It's not a problem."

"Or we could all go," Vick shrugs. "Kill two birds with one stone, right?"

Gale sighs. "You too?"

Vick turns sheepish. "Mom makes a good argument."

"Yeah," Gale says, closing his eyes and relaxing against the pillow. "Don't listen to her."

When Gale hunts in the small forest of 2, or the tropics in 4, even in 7, whenever the job calls for him to locate there for a few days, it never reminds him of 12. The game ranges from wild hogs to pelicans to foxes and coyotes. The terrain is always refreshing, and he gets the chance to explore and find hidden areas and small, sheltering caves. He gets to fall into different vegetation and experiment with berries and plants. He's gotten better at seeing what he needs to without anyone else there, and the strength in the independence is stirring in such a foreign way, it takes him back to the memories of when he was fourteen and confused and against everyone else.

In some ways, it feels like it hasn't changed, from when he was trying to fill the family's dinner table and keeping them fed adequately to just sustain the barest minimum. He hated to see their ribs show, bones break because of malnourishment and a bad trip, but at those times, the only anger he would feel would be towards the Capitol.

Now, he's trying to keep the world fed. It's tedious behind a desk, but if the job gets done, he's happy enough. And he's not confused as much, but giving everyone the benefit of the doubt is exhausting.

But leaning his back on a tree, smelling the old scents of District 12's own forest, everything goes back to feeling okay.

He blinks up to the sun glinting through the leaves above him, takes in the cool heat of autumn. He's brought his old gaming bag, checked to see if his old bow was still where it used to be, hidden in a hollow log off to the left side of the forest. He's brought his dagger, which feels dull to the touch, but he thinks he can fix it well enough. He forced himself to bring some twine for the snares, and it feels disgustingly natural even after the length of leaving it alone. He's been trying to reacquaint himself with it, because three, four, and five years is a sufficient amount of time to start over with twitch up snares and traps. It also helps that he's doing it for Vick, too, because it gives him a reason even if he hates it.

Gale decided that he'd leave for the forest before Vick's school hours ended, to ease him into the impact of coming back. But now, underneath the smells, the songs of the birds, and the rustles of the leaves, it's as if he never left. They all rush into his skin, and he glows with pollen and dirt as he runs over the flower bushes and over low branches. He feels the stings from the twigs he kicks up, and the light touches of the draping vines. Oxygen fills his lungs to their maximum, and his heart works lazily to get it to his arms and legs. Now, it's natural. The clock stops ticking for a few beats, then a few more, until the rhythm of the world slows to the point where the swishing of his blood matches the swirling of the wind. He becomes the hunter again.

His legs take on a familiar path on their own accord, and only come to a stop when he reaches it, as he looks out to the sky with the sun still up on the early afternoon pedestal. He stands there, in the old place they would always come to meet before they started their days. He can remember vivid sunrises, painting the earth a vicious red and a blushing orange and bruising the eyes with its glory.

It's unsettling to see it now – unchanged throughout the years and waiting patiently for another to pass by, only to ignore all the transformations outside the fence. It's a whole different world here, and it's a funny thing to think back and see why the forest was such an intriguing place that would make a person forget everything else, to think a person could run into it and never be found ever again.

It is a fantasy, in this place. A refuge packed with resources.

It's dangerous.

Gale turns to find his way into the rock hollow, but stops. Quickly. He doesn't let himself breathe.

Inside the hollow is Katniss, taking up the whole space with her legs stretched, head lying straight, her eyes closed and sleeping. Her arms are wrapped around her torso protectively, and her braid keeps watch, the tail of it a long way from her body, encased in the grass fingers.

She looks tired even as she sleeps, like the sleep she has isn't sleep at all. He's certain she has nightmares. His aren't prominent like they used to be, but if she's anything like she was, it's a certain thing she still has them.

Her face doesn't seem aged – in fact, it looks exactly the same. It doesn't feel right labeling her as twenty-two when she still remains seventeen in his mind.

Her clothes are different from what they'd usually wear to hunting. Her shirt's cleaner, but he's not sure why she'd wear white. Her pants are snug and no longer ragged and disheveled. They remind him of the cotton jeans they've been shipping out from District 2.

He takes all of her in before he deems it necessary to move. He can't stay long. She'll wake up if he stares too much, for too many minutes.

But the clock has stopped a while back, and his watch is in the wrong place, in the wrong time, and this – it is so wrong.

He checks to make sure nothing is near his feet before he takes his step. In the hush of the silence, it's an earthquake. It makes him shudder and sweat and –

"Gale?"

He's still staring and his stealth and the time – where did it go?

Her voice is strangled and disbelieving. Her eyes are still foggy and not fully conscious. He thinks he can dart away before she assumes he's real and not a nightmare.

He steps back and tries to disappear in the shadows, but the trees aren't where he wants them to be – they're too far away to hide. He considers running, just running, but the thought gives him a deafening chill.

He didn't run in the beginning, even after the temptation of it. He's been in District 2 and everywhere else, and can that be judged running? Avoiding a certain place? A person? A feeling?

He knows he's been a coward, not facing the one thing that makes him choke on the guilt he's been closing his eyes to. He couldn't feel it at the graveyard, he couldn't even feel it when he was building around the scorch marks of his own bomb trap in the Capitol.

But he feels it now, at an unbelievable force, and it knocks his knees up, pulls at his tear ducts. The grass fingers trap him and keep him in his place, just like the meadow, and he has to stay. There is no more running.

"Hey, Catnip."