Ricochet

Chapter 37: Just Pretend

Author: Carla, aka cali-chan
Rating: Most likely PG-13. Nothing worse than what's in the books.
Genre: Adventure/suspense/drama/romance... again, pretty much what's in the books.
Pairings: Peeta/Katniss, Rory/Prim... and probably others. You'll see soon.
Canon/timeline: Same-context AU— this fic still happens in the same world as THG, but the actual events in the books never happened. I'm adding about five years to the characters from the age they were at the beginning of The Hunger Games. Katniss is 21.
Disclaimer: Yeah, just let me go get my transfer laser and switch bodies with Suzanne Collins. Until I find it in the mess that is my room, anything you can recognize belongs to her.

Note: I've never really tried this before (and I'm sure it will eventually come back and bite me in the behind), but each chapter will be from the PoV of a different character. You should be able to tell whose PoV it is fairly easily, though.

Summary: "Primrose Everdeen." This can't be happening, Katniss thought. She desperately pushed through the crowd. I volunteer!, she wanted to scream. I volunteer as tribute! But she couldn't, because she wasn't eligible for the reaping anymore. There was nothing she could do.

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"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers." —Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

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Gale ran a hand through his hair as he pored over the blueprints he'd been asked to look through. Beetee must have seen something in him when they worked together trying to locate Katniss, something that prompted him to offer Gale a job in Special Weaponry. And maybe the older man had been right because Gale had picked up on the basics of the department pretty quickly.

Initially he'd found the job a bit stifling. He wasn't used to the organization and the bureaucracy, and he'd always been more of a doer than a thinker. It was difficult to plan an infiltration in a terrain he'd never seen in his life, but the people of Thirteen were nothing if not thorough; the blueprints and maps they had provided for the division were complete down to the smallest detail, and once Gale got the hang of how things worked down here, he thought he understood why Beetee had given him the job.

He got to understand a bit how Thirteen's top brass worked when they were briefed for the mission to get Katniss and Annie Cresta out. Their strategies were very aggressive, which Gale could appreciate (the bastards deserved it), but the bottom line was, they were very much about making the Capitol forces react the way they way they wanted them to react. Which, in Gale's opinion, could be less effective. So maybe Beetee wanted to have someone in his team who saw things differently.

Gale tended to look at strategy more like... setting a snare. He couldn't force a squirrel to do what he wanted it to do, but if he didn't catch the squirrel, his family would go hungry for the day. The only way to ensnare a defensive animal was to understand what it wanted to do and let it follow its natural inclinations without realizing they were leading it straight into your snare.

"So, in order to catch a squirrel, you need to... think like a squirrel?" Katniss had asked him the first time he told her about this philosophy. He hadn't realized how stupid that sounded until he saw her start to smile, amusement clearly written in her expression. He figured she was trying to picture him acting like their furry, buck-toothed chosen pray.

Being a teenage boy, he couldn't help but puff up in indignation. He wasn't about to let himself be teased by a twelve-year-old! "Haha. Funny. Yes, I mean it." He tried to play it off like he'd just given her some very wise advice, but clearly she wasn't buying it, because her smile was growing by the second. He scoffed at her, giving up the pretense. "Fine. Laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing at you," she attempted, but he could see her pressing her lips together to keep from bursting out into laughter.

He glared at her. "Alright, but don't come crying to me when you have to go back home with a grumbling tummy this afternoon," he huffed out. He wasn't really mad at her, though; she was way too serious for such a tiny thing, and it was refreshing to see her act like a kid her age for once. That was the first time he ever saw her smile.

He looked up from the blueprints as he heard the security gates open, and who walked in if not Katniss herself, accompanied by Plutarch Heavensbee. He couldn't help but glare at the guy. Gale didn't believe someone could simply stop being a Gamemaker; it was more than just a job, it was an attitude. Playing with people like they were puppets, for entertainment. He didn't think Heavensbee had stopped looking at the world in that way and doubted he ever would. It chafed at him that Katniss had to be involved with someone like that, but it was their best bet.

She wasn't smiling much these days. Between her long imprisonment, Prim's condition, and having to be Thirteen's Mockingjay, there wasn't much for her to smile about. They were likely there just for business, anyway; he had heard that there was some misalignment on the homing system of Katniss' ultra-tech bow since the time she dropped it while doing a propo, and Beetee had agreed to fix it before they continued filming. They were probably there to pick it up.

Heavensbee predictably went directly to the back of the room, in the direction of Beetee's workshop. Katniss instead approached Gale. "Hey," she greeted him. It wasn't just your usual small talk greeting— Katniss didn't do small talk— so she must've come down to talk to him about something. This was confirmed as she launched straight into it. "Do you ever feel... strange... around here?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, confused. Was she sick or something? Still not recovered from her imprisonment? If that was it, surely someone in the medical wing could help her out. They wouldn't want to have their Mockingjay looking ill in front of the camera.

She wrapped her arms around her torso like she didn't quite know what to do with them. "It's just... this district. It's so... enclosed. I'm fine with spending most of my time with Prim, but even when I'm anywhere else, it almost constantly feels like the walls are caving in on me." She took a deep breath. "It's all gray walls, and gray clothes and gray... people. Everywhere. All the time. Do you get what I mean?"

It surprised him that she was telling him this, as she wasn't usually one to talk about feelings of any kind, but he understood. He felt the same way sometimes.

He liked working in Special Weaponry, and he liked training, and he was grateful that Thirteen gave them a place to live after their district was destroyed, but being underground 24/7 was starting to get to him. He thought the mission to get Katniss out would help with the feeling, finally being out on the surface and doing something, but it wasn't as freeing as he expected, just going from safe house to safe house, hovercraft to hovercraft, infiltrating Snow's prison, which was so closed it might as well be a fortress, and then back to the stone-colored halls and corridors of Thirteen. He didn't really get to be outside, and he missed the forest.

The meager greenery outside of the underground bunker that housed District Thirteen was no comparison to the lush, fresh, lively forest outside the fences of Twelve, but it would be something. "Yeah. I know what you mean." Katniss nodded and let out a breath. He almost scoffed; she should've known out of all people, he would be the one most likely to understand.

The relief in her expression was noticeable and somewhat unexpected for Gale. "Good," she nodded, a little more emphatically than Katniss usually would. "I'm... I'm really sick of being cooped up inside. I'm going crazy here. I wish they would let me go to the surface to hunt. Or even just to be outside for a while." He could agree, knowing she felt about hunting and the forest the same way he did, but it just hit him how much worse that claustrophobic feeling was for her.

There was an edge of desperation in her eyes as she looked everywhere but at him. After having been imprisoned in that small, dark and terrifying cell for weeks, being outside and seeing the sun was probably the only way she would truly feel that she was away from that place, finally free. But surely Coin wouldn't let her "Mockingjay" go out there, risking being spotted or attacked, so perhaps giving her his agreement was the least Gale could do to help her. "Maybe someone can put in a good word, try and convince the brass to give you a break," he suggested. "Abernathy or someone."

She nodded but didn't even attempt any more of a response. His heart ached at seeing her so fragile.

He wanted to say something else, but that's when Heavensbee came out of Beetee's workshop and Gale's mood immediately hardened like cold steel. The Capitolite handed Katniss her bow, which she took back silently. The former Head Gamemaker didn't hold him in any higher esteem, he knew, as every time they met, the man's eyes swept over him like Gale wasn't even there. He figured all the district people probably looked the same to Heavensbee— he probably couldn't distinguish one random District Twelve refugee from the other.

This time it seemed to be going the same way, but then in the middle of a sentence to Katniss about which propos they had to re-film, he did a double-take and his eyes snapped back to Gale. "That's right..." he muttered, almost to himself, but Gale and Katniss could still hear him. "You two are friends, right?"

Having confirmed that the ridiculous man truly didn't know who Gale was despite having assisted to periodic meetings together for almost two months wasn't what bugged him. What really annoyed him was that for Heavensbee, this was normal. Unless you were a President, his beloved Mockingjay, or you were useful to him in some way, you were beneath his notice, and this was completely acceptable behavior. He saw Katniss throw the man a scowl to match his and recognized that they were probably thinking the same.

Heavensbee continued like the glares didn't bother him one bit. "You should come sit in when we film propos with Katniss. Who knows, you might be able to help her... inspiration," he suggested, eyes slightly narrowed. "Remind her of the good old days in District Twelve and such."

Katniss tensed. "I don't think that's a good idea. Really, I don't need any—"

Gale had a scathing reply on his tongue even before Katniss started speaking, and so it came out over her words. "The 'good old days' of seeing people die in the mines and almost starving, you mean?" The intensity of his glare did not lower even a fraction. This man may be an integral part of the rebellion, but that did not mean he was sorry for anything that happened because of the government they were attempting to overthrow. He didn't feel any remorse over the state of things in the districts, in Twelve, for the past seventy-nine years. He wasn't fighting this war for a purpose he believed in; he just wanted to be on the winning side. And Gale couldn't stand that.

He was sure the man could see it in his eyes, and yet, pretended everything was a-okay. "Whatever works, Mr. Hawthorne," he quipped efficiently. "Whatever works."

Gale's fists clenched but Heavensbee turned and left before any other words were said. Watching him walk away, Katniss, who had noticed Gale's rising anger, laid a hand on his closed fist. He didn't know if it was an attempt to calm him down or just to stop him from lunging at the Capitolite. "You know, you don't have to do this if you don't want to. I'm really not that hopeless." She tried to sound convincing. She failed. She had never been a good actress.

Regardless of whether he wanted to do it or not, he was soon stripped of a choice: the next time Katniss was slated to film a propo, the schedule inked on his forearm directed him to the auditorium at 1500 hours.

He got there a few minutes late because he had to run from the opposite side of the district from training, but nobody said anything about it. In fact, nobody seemed to notice he was there. Katniss and Peeta were down by the stage, Cressida in front of them giving them instructions, with the camera crew setting up around them. Madge was sitting in the front row, writing something down in a tablet while she waited for filming to begin. Haymitch was slumped down in his seat a couple of chairs to her right. Heavensbee was nowhere to be found.

He took a seat near the middle of the row in the more or less the center of the seating area and waited; after a while, the lights overhead dimmed down and the cameras finally began rolling.

He wasn't really sure what the point was for him to be here. Mellark was responding to Cressida's questions in a perfectly comfortable manner, and yeah, Katniss was a stiff as a board and looking everywhere but at the camera, but Gale had no idea how he could help with that. When Katniss's gaze lingered somewhere in the first few rows and he saw her grab Mellark's hand, he decided he really, really didn't want to be here, either.

"Katniss?" Cressida asked after Mellark answered three straight questions without their Mockingjay even uttering so much as a peep. "Recordings have leaked recently of your imprisonment in the Capitol and the appalling way you were treated, even in your condition. Are you doing better now? The baby?"

Gale saw her pause before speaking, as if putting her thoughts together. He wasn't there when the whole "baby" situation was explained to Katniss, and she didn't mention it at all the few times they had spoken since her rescue, but he knew it must've caught her by surprise. "I'm okay," she finally said. She didn't bring up the baby, but Cressida didn't bring it up again, so Gale assumed it was implied.

He saw her look down at where her hand was holding Mellark's, and they all heard her say, in a tremulous voice: "They told me what you did. To convince them to get me out." Gale wasn't sure what she meant, exactly— making up the baby story, refusing to film anymore propos until they rescued her from the Capitol, or something else— and as far as he understood, the one who finally did manage to convince President Coin to send out a squad was Abernathy, but then again, there might be circumstances he simply wasn't aware of. "...Thank you," she finished, somewhat choppily.

Mellark seemed to understand what she meant, however. "You would've done the same for me," he said, turning to look at her for the first time since they started filming. Gale had to ignore the churning in his stomach he got whenever he saw Mellark looking at her that way— the same way he knew he himself looked at her— but seeing it in this context made it even worse than usual. He didn't know what was worse: the fact that Katniss couldn't pull away, because the cameras were still rolling, or the fact that she didn't seem to want to.

She shook her head, and once again Gale was pained to recognize that he didn't know what that gesture meant. Was she saying she wouldn't do the same for Mellark? Was she implying she didn't like him saying that? It bothered him that he couldn't tell; it meant he didn't know her as well as he used to. "I don't..." she started, then stopped, and started again in a completely different direction. "I'm sorry."

Mellark frowned. "Sorry for what?" Gale didn't understand what she meant, either, but at least he wasn't alone on that this time.

"Your family," she rasped out, like it was somehow an obvious response. She pulled her hand away from Mellark's grasp, and shook her head again, this time more resolute, and looking more like the stubborn Katniss Everdeen Gale had known all his life. "District Twelve. If I hadn't—"

"What are you talking about?" Mellark interrupted her before she could pin all the blame on herself, and Gale was glad for it. Katniss had had a lot of time to think about everything that was happening during her imprisonment, and even after her rescue, in the long hours of sitting by Prim's bedside, and clearly her mind had gone to unexpected places.

Mellark shook his head as well, but in his case the gesture was one of frustration. "What happened to Twelve was not your fault, Katniss. It was Snow. With the way the districts are treated by the Capitol, a rebellion would've happened with or without you, and Snow would've destroyed District Twelve no matter what, because that's what he does: he destroys every good thing we have."

Gale could see Cressida perking up at the sudden turn of the conversation in a way that would've been borderline funny had the discussion not been so serious. He hated to admit it, but there was a reason why Mellark worked so effectively as a communicator in these propos: he was good. It wasn't just anyone who could inject such sentiments into a conversation and not have them sound forced or scripted. Cressida urged the cameramen with a hand sign to move closer, keep rolling.

Katniss wasn't giving up that easily. "If you hadn't come to the Capitol with me—"

"I'd probably be dead," Mellark intervened yet again before she could get the full idea out. Gale could see her starting to get frustrated as well. "I made my choice, Katniss. This is more important—"

"Don't say that!" Katniss stood up, glaring down at him. Cressida once again gestured to the cameramen to keep her in the frame. "This is your family we're talking about—"

"Yes," Mellark said, standing up as well, so they were on a more even level. The cameras rearranged themselves around them none-too-subtly. "And it sucks that they're gone, but I wouldn't have been able to save them either way, you know what they were like, so if I had to do it all over again—"

"I shouldn't have said anything," Katniss tried to quiet him by covering his mouth with her hand. "We shouldn't even be discussing this—"

Mellark grabbed her hand and moved it away from him. "—I still would—" he tried to finish the thought, but Katniss instead pulled at his hand, which made him take a step closer to her and then...

And then she kissed him.

There was a gasp from somewhere in the front, but he didn't bother checking to see who it came from— probably Madge— because he couldn't look away from the stage. He was aware his hands were clutching the hand rests of his seat in a death grip, but he didn't know if that was out of anger or hurt because he knew, he saw with his own eyes that it was Katniss who initiated the embrace and he didn't know why she did that, if it was because she genuinely felt something for the baker or if it was all for the cameras, and honestly he didn't know which explanation would make him feel worse...

But he was much more used to anger, so he defaulted to that. Just as the two on stage separated, he pushed himself off his seat and made his way toward the exit at a brisk pace. Clearly, they weren't going to need any input from him to get their "money shot."

He could hear a hubbub erupt behind him as he moved between the rows of seats to get to the exit, with many people suddenly speaking all over each other at the same time, but he didn't pay attention to any voice in particular as he was focused only on getting the hell out of there as fast as he possibly could.

It was as he was finally making his way out the door of the auditorium that he heard someone calling out, "Gale! Gale, wait!" and he realized Katniss was trying to catch up with him. He doubled his pace— his legs were longer so she'd have to run if she wanted to reach him— but the disadvantage of living in a giant underground bunker is that eventually he couldn't go any further and had to stop, just dodging a group of people from Thirteen who were waiting to get into the elevator, and turn into an empty room that seemed to be a conference site of sorts.

Katniss was right at his heels at that point and he knew he couldn't avoid her anymore. "Would you just stop for a moment?" she demanded as she entered the room as well, her breath somewhat winded.

It chafed at him that she felt she could demand anything from him at that moment. Alright, she wanted to have this conversation? Fine, they'd have this goddamn conversation right then and there. He clenched his jaw and turned to look at her. "So, what? You're with him now?" he asked, straight to the point.

"I'm not—" she started, but cut herself off almost straight away. She sounded agitated, almost frenzied, and he had a feeling it didn't have anything to do with having had to run in order to catch up with him. "I just wanted him to stop speaking, a-and— It's got nothing to do with you, okay?" she finished, defensive.

He bristled at that. "Great, that makes me feel better— knowing that my best friend's life has got nothing to do with me," he retorted, contempt dripping from his words at her easy dismissal of his role in her life. Did his staying behind on District Twelve completely destroy the close bond they'd forged since they were children? And was he supposed to just accept that things had changed so drastically if it did?

Well, perhaps things hadn't changed as much as he worried they had, because his tone made her angry, and he saw that straight away. "No, you don't get to do that," she sentenced harshly. She took three strides closer to where he stood near the edge of a conference table that occupied most of the length of the room. "You know our friendship is not the real reason you're so pissed off, and you know what—"

"Damn right, it's not!" he rebutted, admitting what they both had been dancing around for years. "I've never made it a secret that I want to be with you." He paused and took a breath, uneasily thrown back to that day, many years ago in the forest outside of Twelve, when he told her he loved her, and she reeled away.

He ran a hand through his hair as he started to pace in his spot. "And then this whole thing with Mellark— I mean, at first I thought it was fake, what with the handholding, and the touching and stuff." He thought it was fake because the Katniss he knew was still not ready for any of it; she wasn't ready for love or a relationship, or the possibility of marriage and kids, just as she'd been telling him for years. "I thought it was just to keep up the act. But now you're kissing him? Just like that? Do you think it's easy for me to see that?"

Her expression softened for a second, and he wondered if she could see in his eyes how much this truly hurt him. How it hurt that she'd been keeping him at arms' length since they were teens, but now she could just entirely too easily turn around and be with Mellark the way she'd always insisted she wouldn't want to be with anyone. "Gale, it's not—"

He barely heard the attempt, kept speaking over her words, even before she stopped abruptly. "But I thought—" He held back for a moment and shook his head, the anger tinged with disillusionment in every word that came out of his mouth. "I thought as my friend you'd at least have the decency to tell me you don't give a shit about me instead of stringing me along—"

"It is all pretend, okay?!" she blurted out, interrupting his tirade. Her scream stopped him in his tracks, and he turned toward her again, waiting tensely for whatever justification she was going to give him. "It's all part of this Mockingjay thing, and— and I didn't ask for any of this! Alright?"

She ran her hands over her face as if trying to allay some of the tension in her head. "I didn't ask for him to feel anything for me, and I didn't ask for you to feel anything for me, but I have to do this for Prim, so if you could just back off and not make this harder than it already is..." She crossed her arms and glared at him, as if daring him to make himself the victim of this situation when Prim was still unconscious in a hospital bed.

And of course, he couldn't. But that didn't mean that he wasn't still angry. He was angry that Katniss needed to do this in order to fulfill her duties as the Mockingjay, he was angry that he had thought she should accept the role of the Mockingjay to begin with, and he was angry that even when they were safe and together and finally fighting back, the Capitol still had a way of ruining their lives somehow.

He stepped back and took a breath, trying to get the image of Katniss and Mellark kissing out of his head, but he couldn't. "Fine," he ground out eventually. "Does he know?" At Katniss's clueless expression, he added, "Mellark. Does he know it's just pretend?"

Katniss's eyes widened, and Gale knew he had his answer. He shook his head again, disappointed. "He deserves to know it's got nothing to do with him," he muttered, throwing her own words back at her as he stepped around the table and past her toward the door, exiting the room without another word.

This time she didn't follow.

He didn't see or hear from her until the following week, when he was called to Command for a meeting. Coin and some of the brass were there, as were Heavensbee, Cressida and Messalla, and also Beetee and Abernathy. Madge, too, taking notes as per usual. Katniss and Peeta were sitting apart from each other; Gale figured with some bitterness that it was because they weren't required to be touching now that the cameras weren't filming. He wondered if Katniss had told him, after all.

Cressida explained their latest idea for a propo: They'd go down to District Twelve and film Katniss and Mellark reacting to seeing the devastation of their home district for the first time. The reasoning behind the move was that, while the other districts certainly knew about the bombing and the ordeal the people from Twelve had gone through in order to get out alive, they hadn't seen the ruins first hand. Enough time had gone by that it wasn't too soon, but it also wasn't too late for the visuals of a district completely razed by the Capitol to be an effective rallying cry.

Katniss looked for a second like she was going to throw up, but she didn't refuse. She did, however, ask Coin if she could go in alone. Mellark looked at her for a few seconds, as if measuring her response, and then declared that he wanted to go. No one could really keep him from doing so; it was his district, and so it was his right to go as well.

President Coin surprised everyone by informing them that she also wanted Madge to go— even Madge herself. Her rationale was that being the daughter of the Mayor, Madge had intimate knowledge of the district in ways that the other two didn't. She could point out how many people lived in each particular area, what they did for a living, their family histories and even bring up interactions that Katniss and Mellark would never have had the opportunity to be involved in, that could add some texture, some familiarity to the propo.

A secondary effect, Gale surmised even though Coin never brought it up, was showing people in the other districts that even those who thought they were safe— those who had some limited measure of power, or money, or both— really weren't. They were just as dispensable as the rest of the district and the fate of Madge's parents was proof of that.

Gale snuck a glance at her and all over again she looked like she had when he'd first told her that her parents were dead: pale, shaken, and completely destroyed. She was clutching her tablet so hard, her knuckles were turning white. Much like that day in the forest, he wanted to say something to maybe comfort her, but before the thought even finished forming in his mind, she took a deep breath, and there it was again, that steely determination that he'd come to associate with her, in her expression as she told Coin she would do it.

"If I may," she added, polite as she always was when directly addressing her superiors, "I think soldier Hawthorne should also come with us."

The eyes of nearly every single person in the room turned to him. He was surprised Madge had been the one to bring it up, but honestly, he wanted to go; if Mellark wasn't in the picture he might've volunteered to go with Katniss. Twelve was his district as well and he wanted to pay his respects in a way he hadn't been able to yet.

"Interesting request," Coin conceded. "Why do you think so?"

"Soldier Hawthorne was a miner," Madge pointed out, momentarily bringing Gale back to a time that by then felt long gone. He hadn't thought about the mines in months. Good riddance, as far as he was concerned. "He might give us the perspective of District Twelve's everyman in a way that might resonate better with workers in other districts. Also, he's already been back to the district once. He might have some good input on the best places to film in, as well as know how to deal with any security concerns that might arise."

The way she put it made everything sound so clinical, so strategic, that it sounded very unlike the Madge he'd come to know. He wondered if this was what every conversation between her and the President sounded like. But whether that difference in tone was on purpose or not, it seemed to be working. "Yes, I like this," Heavensbee intervened eagerly. "He is, after all, the hero of Twelve," he added in that patronizing tone Gale had come to hate. "I'm sure we could find some use for him."

Coin remained silent for a moment as she directed her gaze toward Cressida, who, after a couple of seconds of thought, nodded her head in agreement with Heavensbee's take. Then the President assented as well, briskly. "Very well. The hovercraft will be on standby to take you to Twelve tomorrow at 0700 hours. You should all be ready on time."

As Coin and the rest walked out of the room, Gale turned to Madge and silently nodded his thanks. He was grateful she had intervened in his favor; he'd lived his whole life in Twelve and it, too, was his right to be there. She gave him a small smile in return, some of her natural color back her cheeks, although she still looked somewhat hesitant about this entire endeavor.

When they touched down on District Twelve the next morning (near Victor's Village, which was mostly untouched by the destruction but pretty empty as they only had one surviving Victor and he didn't care much for home life in general), the camera crew decided to split them up into two groups to cover more ground.

Gale wasn't particularly keen on going anywhere with Katniss at this point and he was sure she wouldn't volunteer to spend any time alone with him either, so he offered to go with Madge. She'd been looking wan and jittery through the entire flight, and didn't seem any better now that they had landed, and he figured she could use some support from someone who had already seen everything there was to see in the rubble of Twelve. Messalla and one of the cameramen would go with them.

"Do you want to show them the bunker?" Gale asked her in a low tone, so it wouldn't be picked up by the microphones, before they set out for town. He remembered how much it bothered him when he first learned that the Undersees had a bunker under their house, and he knew it was sure to bother other people who thought like him, but he didn't want to throw Madge under the bus like that. It wasn't her fault the system was the way it was, and that was her home. It should be her decision if she wanted to bring it up.

She turned to look at him abruptly, her blue eyes wide as if the idea hadn't even occurred to her. "No! I—" She swallowed. "I don't want to go... there. I-I can't." She shook her head emphatically, almost desperately. "Can't we just... Can we not go to Town? I'm sure Katniss and Peeta will go there, so we don't have to— Let's go to the Seam. Please? I'd rather go to the Seam."

She was borderline begging, and Gale was almost afraid she would break down right then and there, clearly terrified of going back to the place where her parents were killed. "Hey, hey." He put his hands on her shoulders to get her to look straight at him, and he could feel her frame shaking. "We'll go to the Seam. Okay?" He turned to their Capitol crew to ask if this was okay and received a "we'll follow you wherever" signal from Messalla. "It's fine, we can go to the Seam."

As he directed the group in the opposite direction Katniss and Mellark had gone in, the differences between Town and Seam became more and more noticeable. Messalla, looking to get started on some soundbites, asked him about it. Gale explained very superficially so as not to upset Madge further, but did warn them that going in this direction would lead to some wildly different backdrops— whereas the brick constructions of Town were blown apart and reduced to rubble by the bombs, most of the structures in the Seam were now ashes because they were consumed by fire. Getting close to the mines would probably be impossible because of the smoke, and coal dust might make the air around the area unbreathable.

Madge walked silently beside him, one hand grabbing the opposite forearm and her gaze low to the ground, but the further they got from Town, the steadier she seemed. When they stopped, she looked around curiously. "Where are we?" she asked, confused, as Messalla indicated to the cameraman to start filming around the area.

"This is my street," Gale disclosed, not surprised that she couldn't recognize the location. "Or it used to be, at least." All the houses in his block were burned down to the ground, with a partial wooden frame or two still standing lopsided and charred in some places, making the sector look like a ghost town. "That was my house," he added, pointing at what would be an unrecognizable pile of ash had he not lived there all his life. He saw the camera pivot in his direction; the film crew was clearly interested in getting a shot of him in front of his destroyed house.

Madge's hands went to her mouth to cover a gasp. "Gale, I'm so sorry."

He shrugged off the sympathy. Her house was in much the same condition, as was pretty much every house in what used to be District Twelve, so it wasn't like his was any more of a tragedy. "Don't be. It's not like this is your fault." He poked at some of the burnt wood with the tip of his foot. "My brothers got everything important out before we left, anyway. This is just..." He shook his head. "It's just a house."

"But it was your home," she rebutted, discreetly wiping a few tears off her cheeks as she came to stand beside him. "That makes it important." She was crying, but not in a way that demanded he do anything about it, so it wasn't uncomfortable.

They stood there for a while, contemplative, until she touched his arm lightly to grab his attention. "Tell me about it?" she requested in a soft tone. "What it was like to grow up here," she clarified her meaning when she saw him frown. "I'd like to know."

Gale looked over her head at where Messalla was standing and saw him give him a "go ahead" signal before telling the cameraman to keep the two of them in the frame. It felt really weird to know that he had cameras filming his every move— now he knew what Katniss felt, at least to a point— but at least Messalla was a lot more hands-off about it than Cressida, and that suited Gale just fine.

He turned toward the other side of what used to be a dirt street and saw Madge's gaze turn in the same direction. "That was Thom's house," he pointed at another pile of rubble and ash diagonal to the remains of his own. "When we were kids, we used to play kickball in the middle of the road, and then when the grown-ups would come by with wheelbarrows and carts, they'd yell at us to get the hell out of the road, and we'd have to stop everything to let them pass." The memory made him think back to lighter days— not easier, because their lives had never really been easy, but at least of a time where he didn't have to worry about the Hunger Games.

Madge smiled, not a brilliant smile that would be weird given where they were standing, but a small, wistful smile, like she could see two kids playing as she looked over what used to be the road. "Did Katniss use to play with you boys, too?"

Gale shook his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his pants. "Nah. She and I didn't become friends until I was already in my teens," he reminded her.

"Ah, that's right," Madge murmured. She should know; it was a little bit weird to think about, but Madge had actually been friends— or at least lunchmates— with Katniss for much longer than Gale had known either of them. "Sometimes it feels like you two have always been a pair," she added almost without a thought.

"Yeah, sometimes," he muttered dismissively under his breath, wanting to swerve away from that topic completely. Yes, he and Katniss had been best friends for a long time, sure, but it didn't much feel that way these days. "Bristel lived a few blocks that way. He used to play with us, too," he revealed with something of a smirk. "He was a really sore loser, though. And he lost pretty often."

She chuckled softly. "Must've been fun." She looked around her at what was left of the neighborhood and frowned as if she was trying to see the life that used to reside there. Gale wondered if she could. The Seam had always been a pretty decrepit place overall, but at least the people who lived there were genuine. Madge had probably only ever stepped foot on that side of Twelve when she started taking food to his family, a couple of weeks before the bombing.

"You didn't play much?" he asked, wondering what her childhood had been like. As far as he could remember, she'd been pretty quiet and solitary in school, not hanging out with anyone other than Katniss, and he usually didn't see much of her in Town either whenever he went there to trade, unless they actually went to her house.

She shook her head. "I can play you a sonata any day of the week, but I know nothing about kickball." Gale remembered the piano in her living room and figured that's what she meant. "I didn't really go outside much when I was little. Just when I went to school, but most of the time I was just indoors, studying and practicing. Dad was always working and Mom was bedridden a lot because of her headaches, so it was mostly just me and Grethel." He also remembered the Seam woman who'd worked at the Undersees', and judging from Madge's crestfallen expression, he guessed they had been close. Her eyes watered again.

"I'm sure Vick can teach you how to play kickball," Gale suggested. He wasn't sure why he brought his family up at that moment. Maybe he wanted to divert her attention to a lighter topic so she wouldn't start crying. Maybe he wanted to remind her that even though her parents and caretaker were gone, she still had people who cared about her.

She paused to dab away tears from the corner of her eyes quickly before she spoke. "As long as I don't have to play with Bristel, I guess," she declared, and Gale knew she'd hold up okay.

They went to the edge of the forest, which was more barren than Gale had ever seen it since the fire spread outward even past the boundaries of the district, but he was glad to see most of the fence that kept the residents of District Twelve prisoners in their own home had been blown out or torn down by the explosions. If he never had to see a perimetral fence again in his life, he'd be satisfied. Well, that, and bringing the Capitol down for good.

He could've led Madge and the crew out to the forest, show them where he and Katniss stored the weapons they used to hunt for food and trade, but still trying as much as possible not to bring Katniss up unless strictly necessary, he chose instead to take them as close as they could possibly get to the entrance of the mines.

The place was no longer smoking, as it had been months now since the bombing and it was likely that either the rain or the cave-ins had smothered the initial fire at some point. Dark clouds of soot and coal dust lifted up into the air with the smallest breeze, however, so they still tried to keep to a safe distance. The cameraman got what felt like an infinite amount of footage of the place from every angle, while Gale explained to Messalla what each area was and what things were like down in the tunnels.

"That used to be the east entrance, right there," he called out, pointing toward a shaft on the side of the mountain, which was completely collapsed. Hell, the entire side of the mountain had collapsed. It was more than a little unsettling to see the tunnel he had gone down every day for work now so absolutely obliterated. In a sense it was almost worse than the destruction of his house, because in his mind he knew that his house was destroyed by the fire; the mine shafts had been a second away from collapse even on the best of days. Seeing the tunnels toppled over like this just put into perspective that he could have died any day in that place. Trapped in hell. Like his father had.

Swallowing down his uneasiness, he turned away from the entrance. "If you walk around to the opposite side of the mountain, you'll get to the eastside slag heap." He pointed in said direction. "The fire probably destabilized it, though, so even if it hasn't collapsed it's probably not safe."

Madge was turning around in circles, looking at everything with wide eyes. "I've never been in this area," she admitted, trying to peek around the side of the mountain to catch a glimpse of the spoil tip.

Gale had to smirk. "Of course you wouldn't have." She looked completely out of place as it was, her fair townie looks a stark contrast to the carbonized, dirty and rusted tones of pretty much everything around them at the moment. And the daughter of the Mayor ever stepping foot near the slag heap... the mere idea was laughable.

She appeared both confused and affronted at the same time, as she usually did whenever he accused her of being out of touch with regular people. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, crossing her arms and frowning at him.

"Come on," he rolled his eyes at her, using the same tone Posy liked to use on him and his two other brothers when she thought they were being deliberately obtuse. "You know what people came out here to do, right? You can't be that clueless."

He saw her eyes widen as it finally clicked in her mind, and then a second later her face immediately started going red. "Yes, I know about all of... that," she pointed vaguely in the direction of the slag heap, "I just— I never—" She grew more flustered with every word, and it amused Gale to no end. Finally, she gave up with a huff. "Oh, and I suppose you're the expert, right? How many girls did you bring here, then?"

He snorted. "Not that many! Geez, Undersee, who do you take me for?" Of course, he didn't add that most of his hookups took place elsewhere around the district. If you were trying to sneak around without other people finding out, the slag heap was probably not the best place to go; when you got back home covered in soot and coal dust, it was rather obvious where you had been and what you'd been doing.

"Well, I don't know!" she retorted, her cheeks still flushed. "I just assumed that you would have, because you're— you're all—" She vaguely gestured to... all of him, and Gale's eyebrows rose in amusement. Madge Undersee really was something else; when he walked into the hovercraft that morning, he didn't think he'd be doing much smiling that day, and yet here he was, amid the destruction of his home town, holding back a grin.

She shook her head, stopping her babbling short. "You know what, forget it. Are we done now? Can we go?" She spun on her heel in order to ask Messalla those questions. It startled Gale a bit, because he'd almost forgotten the camera crew was there with them for a second.

"Yeah, I think we have enough footage," the Capitolite replied, signaling to the cameraman that they were ready to wrap up for the trip. "Don't think that a lot of what you said is going to make the cut, but at least you look good on camera," he grumbled under his breath before following his fellow crewmember in the direction of the Town square, where they were supposed to rendezvous with the others.

Gale glared at his back as he walked away. Really, did every single person from the Capitol have to be this superficial? Even the supposedly good ones were completely insufferable. "Really, that's all they want, then? Just any girl to look pretty while standing among the rubble?" He scoffed. "No wonder Coin was so insistent for you to come along."

Madge, who had come to stand next to him once more, pursed her lips as if trying to hold a comment in before speaking in response to what he now realized had been something of an unintended compliment. "Thanks, but," her voice became a conspiratorial stage whisper, "I don't think he was talking about me."

Gale groaned— whether at her teasing or at the fact that she was probably right, he wasn't sure. "Let's just go. I'm sure the others have more than enough footage for them to get a decent propo out of this." Shaking his head, he started on the way back himself; he'd come here, as intended, to pay his respects to the people who died and to the life he once used to have, whatever few good aspects of it he could remember, but now that was done and he didn't have to stay in the district— what was left of it— any longer than necessary.

He was halfway down the block when he heard her call out. "Hey, Gale?" He turned back to see that she was still standing in the same place, and he was suddenly reminded of a moment that now seemed to have taken place ages ago, except that day he'd been walking away from the Town square and toward the Seam, and she had asked him about his feelings for Katniss.

This moment was similar but not exactly the same, not if you looked down to the details. He was still on his way out of Twelve, but not because he wanted to find something on the outside, but because he wanted to escape the district itself. Madge was still looking at him seriously, but her expression reflected less anxiety than it had that day, and more of a resigned solemnity. And when she spoke, it had nothing to do with Katniss.

"Thanks for coming with me," was what she said, the gratefulness reflected in her tone. "I know I sort of dragged you into this, but I just..." She paused for a heartbeat, as if unsure what to say next. "I don't think I could've done this on my own," she admitted, not that Gale thought anybody else would have it any easier.

He put his hands on his pockets, like he had that day months ago, but did not move otherwise. "I wanted to be here," he replied. Here in Twelve, here away from Katniss, here with Madge— either qualifier could have applied, he thought, though he didn't say it.

She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself, and nodded, finally taking her first steps back toward the square. Gale waited until she caught up to him to match her pace, and side by side they walked back to where the hovercraft awaited to ferry them back to District Thirteen.

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Author's notes!— Credit where credit is due: For this chapter, you can all thank Rue91 on FFN, who commented in a review for the previous chapter that I should give you at least one Peeta/Katniss kiss, and the comment made me go, "Oh THAT'S RIGHT, I already wrote that!" LOL. xD So here I am, giving you what you wanted. Now, I know seeing their first kiss from Gale's PoV is probably not the most satisfying thing for those of you awaiting eagerly for it, but the next chapter starts with Katniss and Peeta in D12 to parallel Gale and Madge's section at the end here, so that might be a little bit better for all y'all's shippy sensibilities. Erm... hopefully. *shifty look*

HOWEVER: don't expect the next chapter straight away. I have not written one word of chapter 38 yet, and by posting this, I have now fully lost the last bit of "buffer" I had for this story. So chapter 38 might not come until I have chapter 39 complete, just because I want to get some of that buffer back. It's just that, since everything in the world is going to hell right now what with the pandemic, I thought I could afford to post 38 today to give you just one more little something to read in case you're self-isolating. Even if it meant losing my buffer.

If anyone's still reading this, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. And let me know what you thought in a review! You never know when a small positive comment will be the thing that prompts me to write, or even to post. I'm so grateful to you all. Please stay safe.