burnwithus | (gale) sing to me about the end of the world

(gale) sing to me about the end of the world

In 13, Katniss found that she had a penchant for hiding and finding small places to slip into where no one could possibly find her. Places that she could be alone with her thoughts, no matter how dark they were. Today she slips into the caves, avoiding the forest where she knows the Cornucopia glimmers dully in the hot island sun, yet another reminder of things she can't forget.

The bloodstains haven't quite washed away either, despite the snow.

She comes across a pool of clear water and lets her legs dangle into them, tingling against healing scars but in a way that feels good. Cathartic, in a way. Katniss stares quietly at the cavernous ceiling, noting the stalactites on the ceiling, pointing down like great stone arrows.

The fact that she can only hear the dripping of water echoing in the cave helps to calm her just a little bit, closing her eyes and trying to sift through exactly what she's feeling right now. Peeta. Gale. Everything is crowding around her mind right now until it's nearly impossible to see through. Gale had kissed her, and she'd let him. Why? Why did she do that?

It's because she wasn't thinking, Katniss realizes sullenly a few seconds later. And now Peeta knows about what happened after the Capitol took him, and she still doesn't know where they stand or where she wants them to stand.

A sharp, shuddering sigh is released from her lips, and it's loud in the all-pervasive silence of the caves, with plenty of surfaces for it to echo against.

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To be a good hunter, you just have to know how something thinks; to set a good snare, you just have to understand which way something's going to run. Since they were children in the forest together, Gale's awlays been able to find Katniss Everdeen. He understands which way she'll run.

He watches her for a long moment before he says anything.

"Exactly how long as you planning ona voiding me, Katniss?"

She hates the way he can always sneak up on her. Hates the way that he always knows where she is. Katniss doesn't move, though. She holds her ground. "I wasn't avoiding you," she tells him, even though the words fall flat even to her ears. She's never been a good liar, and today is no exception, apparently.

He's angry. She can see it in the tension of his muscles, the way he holds himself. After knowing him for so long, Katniss knows all of the signs now. But she's tired, maybe a little bit too tired for a fight.

"You were avoiding me," he says, not prepared to argue about it. He crosses the stones and drops down next to her, hugging one knee against his chest as he looks at her.

"You can't just ignore me, Catnip. I'm not going to go away."

"I know," she gives a sigh, acknowledging that yes, hiding wasn't fair to Gale. That he deserved answers, even if she couldn't give them. But hiding and running were always her first instinct, besides fighting, which also comes naturally to her. The thought only serves to pull the heaviness in her chest deeper as her feet gloss against wet stones at the bottom of the pool. "I just needed time to think," her voice is even and it's a surprisingly mature response from her.

Katniss hasn't been a child in a very long time. She keeps his gaze, holding on to gray eyes that were so much like hers.

Leaning forward, he trails the fingers of one hand in the water; it's cool on hot skin and he pushes his hand back through his hair, enjoying the feel of it against his scalp as he looks back at her.

"What did you come up with?"

There's a long pause before Katniss answers, kicking her feet up so that the splash resonates in the caves and distracts momentarily from her silence. But it can't last long, even if she's still racking her brain for something to say. "I don't know," is what she finally settles on, words moving slowly. The answer is probably not satisfying to Gale, but it's honest and in the end that is all she has. Katniss has never known how to make her words beautiful like Peeta does easily as breathing.

He makes a soft sound in the back of his throat and then leans in, brushing the tip of his nose against his cheek.

"I think..." he says, quietly, voice hoarse. "That you need to come home with me. And I don't care if I end up sleeping on my own bedroom floor, Catnip. As long as you're near."

It causes an uncomfortable twist of guilt when he says it, if only because she knows the underlying sentiment behind it is not just friendship, and Katniss just can't oblige even that. How much easier would it have been if Gale had never fallen in love with her (and she doesn't like to think it, either)? It's childish for her to wish her problems away like this, but after facing hell and more, Katniss has come to expect nothing good from life anyways.

Maybe their friendship was unraveling from the start.

"I don't know if I can," she gasps, shaking her head emphatically as she does so, moving her entire body and wincing slightly. Sometimes the skin that was burned becomes especially dry until it cracks, but now that the winter is over Katniss thinks she's borne the brunt of it. She won't complain, though. She's too stubborn (or strong, depending on your point of view) for that.

He can guess the source of the wince; she might stay covered up, but he knows about the grafts and he knows about the scars. This time, wen he leans in, he does kiss her, gently, at the corner of her mouth. Gale's been stubborn his whole life and, sometimes, he feels like he has to be stubborn with Katniss or they'll never get anywhere.

"Come home with me," he says. "The doctors gave me something for my back. Let me at least do that?"

It always comes down to this. To the point where every action she takes ends up hurting somebody in the long run. Often, Katniss wonders if there was really a choice in anything she has done, or if these were all things that were done to her. The Games were her choice as far as volunteering went, but as far as she was concerned there was no choice at all. The war, becoming the Mockingjay - it's hard to find a singular moment of her own in all of that. In the end, they were all played and the Game just took on a new face.

The berries, she thinks. The berries had been her own.

Katniss takes a deep breath. "I can't stop thinking about you and the bomb. That moment. I've tried - believe me, I've really tried to."

There's got to be a way: there's got to be a way to show her that he's not that person that, even if that's who he becomes, he's never been there yet. He closes his eyes and he swallows and then he kisses her properly, full on the mouth.

"Come back with me," he says. "I've got an idea."

Gale is trying, she knows. He's stubborn enough to not let it go, but ever - and perhaps that's the reason why he was such a good friend, even if his friendship was always tinged with something else. Gale is trying and she...she supposes that she is too, in her own way. It's a daunting task to tackle or even think about tackling the mass of memories and conceptions that are now rooted deeply into her brain, but she's a fighter. Even if the small spark Katniss had possessed was now all but guttered out. There's traces of it still there. A wisp of smoke that signals the coming of a tiny flame.

Something that even a war could not take, even if she doesn't yet believe it herself. Katniss nods numbly, swallowing painfully. "Okay. What is it?"

"I want to do something for your back," he says. He pushes up, boots scraping on the rocks and holds out both hands to her.

"C'mon, Catnip," he says. "Let me try."
And he isn't just talking about her scars.
And they both know that.

She takes his hand, large and calloused as it is, enveloping hers fully. Katniss' have seen their own lifetime of scars and bruises, even if hers looks small and delicate enough. These are hands that have ended lives, pulled bowstrings and much more. They are not innocent in any sense of the word.

The talk back remains particularly silent, but she doesn't quite know how to break it, so she concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. Methodical and silent, velvet and the rocks and eventually, the forest floor. A hunter's tread.

It's always been easy to fall into step with her. He stays quiet, his tread matching hers and, when they get to the cabin, he gently tugs his hand away and dugs inside. He throws a few things into his satchel and reappears.

"Come on," he says, waiting for her. "The trees get thicker over here."

Katniss' movements are tense - the complete opposite of how she normally is in the woods. It's subtle, but there, and it's a sign that she hasn't quite forgotten about that moment. She's not sure if she ever truly will, or even if it would be right to forget. But those are debilitating thoughts that stop her in her tracks for hours at a time, so she shoves them away. Katniss moves into the place that Gale's pointed out, breathing in the scent of the trees around them.

The best time of his life, he spent with her in the forest. He walks with his head slightly bent, bag slung across his chest. He watches her out of the corner of his eye. Maybe he needs to fight here; maybe it's a case of who dares wins.

He picks his spot, near to the stream, under leafy branches. He takes the blanket out of his bag and spreads it out on the grass.

"Let me see your back."

For a second, she doesn't move, feeling the flush creep up her face, visible even against the dark tone of her skin. "You don't want to see it," is the excuse she decides on, winning out over this is a public place and a straight-out no. While she has ambivalent feelings about her scars for the most part, there's a reason why all of her clothing is long and baggy.

His grey eyes don't move from her face. He does tilt his head. He reaches back and pulls his own shirt off. He hasn't seen his back, but he knows what it's got to look like.

"I want to see it," he says, fishing the salve out of his bag. "And I want to do something to make it feel better."

There's a gasp that she can't quite hold back in time because even though Katniss has seen this twice now, it doesn't get any better on repeat. His scars are not yet healed white-pink, but still bare the dark red of barely scabbed-over wounds that form a crisscross against his back, almost as intricate as a spider's web.

She pushes the back of her shirt up but keeps it on her arms, pushing the rest of the fabric against her chest, flushing furiously. Katniss has seen it in the mirror, she knows what is must look like. Half-healed fissures of skin that look melted, patches of pink and olive where the surgeons thought it could be salvaged. She's a patchwork, a fire-mutt. An unfamiliar cool breeze hits her skin and she's surprised she can feel it even through the grafts, shivering slightly.

The gasp sort of stings, in a weird way, even though he knows what it looks like and he knows that it's a fair reaction. He reaches out, brushing his fingers against her dry skin. His fingers catch the side of her face, cradling and drawing her in for a kiss.

"On your belly," he says, lips smudging against hers. "The salve'll definitely help. I promise."

Gale kisses her a lot, and Katniss doesn't quite know what to make of it. She knows what he wants from her, of course - but that isn't something she can give, so she wishes that they could be friends again. Even if that speaks of the time before the war and she above all people should know that they can't go back. Katniss kneels, sits on her heels on the blanket and glances up at the trees and the occasional bird call ringing in the trees that remind her of Rue's four notes.

Even now, she remembers exactly what those are.

He watches her looking up and reaches out, tugging the end of her braid lightly the way he used to when they were just kids. He raises his eyebrows at her, but doesn't say anything else.

Her head snaps around at the motion, her braid swinging to hit her across her shoulders. In the past, she might have given him a sour look and eventually a smile at the perfectly innocent expression he'd give her. In the past, she might have laughed.

Here, all she does is turn her head. She does nothing at all.

He watches her for a moment, grey eyes perfectly level. So much is different here. So much has changed and he has to work out how to react, how to compensate.

He ducks his head, hair falling across his forehead.

"Lie down," he says, gently. "Please."

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