A/N: Once again, I'm so sorry for the lengthy amount of time between updates. I have been so busy with real life that any thoughts of finishing my fanfiction have sort of flown out the window. On the upside, I'm passing all of my classes! Yay! Only a few more classes until finals and Christmas break, and then I might have more time and inspiration to work on this and my other stories. BWTB is kinda on my backburner of thought, though, because for quite some time I've been thinking about completely revamping Our Story, as in completely changing what I have and splitting the rest of it into three parts, introducing some new villains and adding more character depth to other besides Rose and Scorpius, (and wow nevermind too many details) and that might be a massive undertaking. (oh, and if you haven't read Our Story, please please please check it out! I guarantee you'll enjoy it!)

Anyway, onwards! To the chapter!

8

"No!"

Unfortunately for the state of my mental health and any future sleep I might (or most likely not) be getting, my view is unimpeded. I see everything. Katniss, flinging herself in front of Gale. The flash of the Peacekeeper's whip, drenched in Gale's blood, coming down, too late to stop, too late to change course. Katniss, her arms occupied protecting as much of Gale's broken body as possible. And Katniss, taking the full force of the lash on the left side of her cheek.

I wince. My own cheek burns in a sympathy pain. That image is burned into my memory forever. Added to the collection of 'worst-ever-memories,' right up there with all the people I've killed and anytime Katniss has come to harm. But it's not the worst thing she's ever been dealt and I know it.

Katniss falls to her knees. One hand cups her cheek and the other keeps her balance. Already, her face is swelling up. Haymitch and I push even more fiercely through the crowd.

"Stop it! You'll kill him!" Katniss shrieks.

The Peacekeeper, who wears the Head Peacekeeper uniform and is definitely not Cray, the Head Peacekeeper that has been in charge of the district most of my life, raises a powerful arm again. It seems he doesn't care who he whips, or even if they have committed a crime (though Katniss has committed many, and interrupting a whipping is in itself a crime). The whip swings back. Katniss's hand flies to her shoulder, closing on an invisible arrow that, had it been there, would be in the Peacekeeper's eye before he even knew what happened.

But it's not there. And Katniss is going to get hit again with the whip. The whole crowd tenses and every inch of me screams out silently in anger, helplessness, protest, hate, rebellion. This can't happen. This can't be happening. Not to her. Once again, feelings of hatred toward the Capitol fester inside me. I stiffen as I mentally prepare for the next lash.

"Hold it!"

Thank god for Haymitch.

He trips over a Peacekeeper lying on the ground. I'm close enough now to see the red hair and know that it's Darius, another Peacekeeper that I have heard through rumors is a frequenter of the Hob and trades often with Katniss and Gale. What happened? Is he dead? Did he try to come to Gale's aid? I can't tell from my angle whether he's breathing or not.

Haymitch ignores him and pulls Katniss to her feet roughly, placing his body between the whip and her seemingly without realizing it. But I know better. He did it to instinctively protect her, just as I would have done had it been me. "Oh, excellent," he says, examining Katniss's cheek. I recognize the change in tone. The act has begun. "She's got a photo shoot next week modeling wedding dresses. What am I supposed to tell her stylist?" The sentence hits me like a kick to the groin. Wedding dresses. Right. I'm getting married.

The Peacekeeper pauses, recognition crossing his face. As Katniss is bundled up against the cold, her face free of makeup, her braid tucked carelessly under her coat, it's not easy to identify her as the victor of the latest Hunger Games. But Haymitch has been showing up on television for years, and he's difficult to forget. The Peacekeeper rests the whip on his hip. "She interrupted the punishment of a confessed criminal," he says.

This man is a dangerous threat. From his unknown person, to his commanding voice, the odd accent and the whip in his hand, there's no doubt about it. It fills me with a chill that has nothing to do with the weather. Why is he here? What happened to Cray? To Darius? What sinister change has the Capitol brought about in my home?

"I don't care if she blew up the blasted Justice Building!" continues Haymitch. "Look at her cheek! Think that will be camera ready in a week?" he snarls.

I push through a middle-aged couple from the Seam and I'm in the circle that seems to be no-man's-land. I slide on something slick and look down. The cobblestones are slippery with Gale's blood. It turns my stomach. I hurry to Katniss's side.

"That's not my problem," the Peacekeeper says, though there's an edge of doubt in his voice now.

"No? Well, it's about to be, my friend. The first call I make when I get home is to the Capitol," says Haymitch. It strikes me in the back of my mind that this is an empty threat, as Haymitch doesn't even have a working telephone. No matter. He's more than welcome to use mine. "Find out who authorized you to mess up my victor's pretty little face!"

"He was poaching. What business is it of hers, anyway?"

"He's her cousin," I say. I reach Katniss and take her free arm, much more gently than Haymitch. "And she's my fiancée. So if you want to get to him, expect to go through both of us."

Yup. I assessed myself correctly. I'll throw my lot in with Katniss no matter what. Even if it means protecting Gale, who, by any way you look at it, is my rival. And technically, we could all be shot for this little act of rebellion right here, if we weren't all victors. And it's really disheartening. Maybe we really are it. The only three who could possibly rebel. Make any kind of a stand. It's only temporary and, really, any stand we make at all carries dire consequences if it reaches back to President Snow's ears. Which you can bet it will. Please, don't let anyone die from this.

But at the moment, Katniss is clearly not thinking of that. All she cares about is keeping Gale alive. And all I care about is keeping her alive in turn.

The new Head Peacekeeper glances over her shoulder at his backup squad. They're all familiar faces, old Peacekeepers that have been around District 12 for years, though I can thankfully say I have not had a whole lot of direct contact with them. Still, I can tell by their expressions they aren't enjoying the show.

One of them, a woman named Purnia, steps forward stiffly. I admire her bravery, considering the fact that Darius still lies unmoving on the ground sporting a large purple bruise on his temple. "I believe, for a first offense, the required number of lashes has been dispensed, sir. Unless your sentence is death, which we would carry out by firing squad."

"Is that the standard protocol here?" asks the Head Peacekeeper, his eyes bulging slightly.

"Yes, sir," answers Purnia. Several other nod their head in agreement.

"Very well. Get your cousin out of here, then, girl." I breathe a sigh of relief that they're not going to shoot Gale and that he's not going to keeping trying to punish him. "And if he comes to," he adds threateningly, "remind him that next time he poaches on the Capitol's land, I'll assemble that firing squad personally." He wipes his hand along the length of the whip, splattering us with blood. Then he coils in into quick, neat loops and walks off. The rest of the Peacekeepers fall into an awkward formation behind him and a few stay behind and hoist Darius's unconscious body up before following.

Before they're even gone Katniss turns to Gale, all thought of her own injuries forgotten in the face of worse ones on loved ones. Someone passes me a knife and I cut the ropes. Gale collapses to the ground and I wince. It's lucky he's unconscious.

"Better get him to your mother," says Haymitch to Katniss as the crowd begins to break up, fleeing like it's the scene of a crime. Fear gets the better of compassion. So much for any sort of rebellion. Maybe running away is a good idea. For them, anyway. For me, it's not an option.

The old woman at the clothing stall sells us the board as a makeshift stretcher that serve as her countertop, telling us only to not tell where we got it.

By the time we've got Gale laid facedown on the board there's only a handful of people left in the square to help. Haymitch, a couple of miners who work on the same crew as Gale, and myself lift him up and start the trek up to the Victor's Village. A girl from the Seam, who Katniss seems to recognize but I don't, comes up to her and takes her arm. They have a quick, hurried conversation and the girl takes off. Katniss grabs Gale's jacket and hurries after us.

"Get some snow on that," Haymitch orders her over his shoulder. She does as he says and follows us.

As we walk Gale's crewmates piece together the story. Gale must have gone to the back of the Head Peacekeeper's house with a wild turkey as he's done hundreds of times, expecting to trade with Cray. But instead he found the new Head Peacekeeper: Romulus Thread. He immediately placed Gale under arrest and, since he was standing there holding a dead turkey, there was little he could say in his own defense. Word spread quickly and Gale was brought to the square, forced to plead guilty, and sentenced to whipping to be carried out immediately. He'd been lashed around forty times when we showed up. He passed out around thirty.

"Lucky he only had the turkey on him," says Bristel. "If he'd had his usual haul, would've been much worse."

"He told Thread he found it wandering around the Seam. Said it got over the fence and he stabbed it with a stick. Still a crime. But if they'd known he'd been in the woods with weapons, they'd have killed him for sure," says Thom.

"What about Darius?" I ask, the fate of the redheaded peacekeeper still burning in my mind.

"After about twenty lashes, he stepped in, saying that was enough. Only he didn't do it smart and official, like Purnia did. He grabbed Thread's arm and Thread hit him in the head with the butt of the whip. Nothing good waiting for him."

A chill sweeps over me at this. The Capitol will be sure to punish Darius. And us too.

"Doesn't sound like much good for any of us," says Haymitch, echoing my thoughts.

The snow begins to fall as we haul Gale up the front steps to Katniss's house. The door opens and Mrs. Everdeen, who was most likely expecting Katniss, looks slightly surprised as her eyes sweep over the scene.

"New Head," says Haymitch.

She gives a curt nod as if no other explanation is needed. We carry Gale into the kitchen as Mrs. Everdeen has directed us. She covers the table in a white cloth and directs us to hoist Gale onto it, but gently. Then we stand back, I go to stand beside Katniss, but she barely seems to notice me, watching her mother with anxious eyes. She pours steaming water from a kettle into a basin, ordering Prim to pull a bunch of remedies from the medicine cabinet. Prim comes away with arms full of dried herbs and tinctures and store-bought bottles. Mrs. Everdeen the adds them skillfully to the basin, soaking a cloth in the hot liquid as she tells Prim to prepare a second brew. Finally, she turns her attention to her other daughter, barely glancing her way but she seems to know what the problem is.

"Did it cut your eye?" she asks.

"No, it's just swelled shut." Katniss answers.

"Get more snow on it," she instructs. Katniss is too fixated on her mother watching Gale to get it herself, so it seems like the perfect job for me. Prim hands me a cloth as if she knew that that was exactly what I was going to do. I go outside to scoop a couple of handfuls of snow into the cloth and wrap it up as I take it back in the house. Katniss is standing right where she was, to wrapped up in Gale to even notice I've left. I place her in a chair and hold the snow to her cheek. It looks bad, to me, anyway. An ugly wound across her beautiful face.

Haymitch tells Bristel and Thom to get home. I see him press coins in their hands before they leave. "Don't know what will happen with your crew," he says. They nod and accept the money.

Hazelle arrives, breathless and flushed, with fresh snow in her hair. She pales slightly when she sees her son on the table, but she sits on a stool next to the table without saying a word, takes Gales hand, and holds it against her lips.

Even in Mrs. Everdeen's expert hands, it takes a long time to clean the wounds, arrange what shredded skin that can be saved, apply a salve and a light bandage place over his back. As the blood clears, every stroke of the lash becomes visible. It looks incredibly painful and there's a tenseness in the room, as we're all afraid that Gale will wake up. And as the final bandages are being placed, a moan escapes from him. Hazelle strokes his hair and whispers something while Prim and Katniss's mother go through what seems a meager supply of painkillers. Katniss watches them anxiously. She knows it's not enough.

I hear them decide on an herbal concoction he can take by mouth now that he's regaining consciousness. "That won't be enough," Katniss speaks up. They look over at her, both with sympathy on their faces. "That won't be enough, I know how it feels. That will barely knock out a headache."

"We'll combine it with sleep syrup, Katniss, and he'll manage it. The herbs are more for the inflammation—" begins Mrs. Everdeen calmly, as if she expected Katniss to react like this.

"Just give him the medicine!" Katniss screams at her, eyes wide with anger and panic. "Give it to him! Who are you, anyway, to decide how much pain he can stand!"

Gale begins stirring at the sound of Katniss's voice, trying to reach for her. The movement causes fresh blood to stain his bandages and an agonized sound to come from his mouth.

"Take her out," says Mrs. Everdeen.

Katniss immediately begins to shout obscenities at her mother while Haymitch and I have to literally carry her from the room. We take her to one of the extra bedrooms and pin her down to the bed until she stops fighting, afraid she'll hurt herself or she'll run back down into the kitchen.

And then she lies there, sobbing, angry, tears trying to squeeze out of the slit in her eye. She looks so miserable and broken, so unlike the Katniss I know. I don't let on how worried I am about her. Her insane thoughts about running away, the uprising in District 8, President Snow's threats, the fact that we failed and how it's going to come back and hit us hard. We are still in just as much danger as we've ever been.

In a hushed tone, I whisper to Haymitch all Katniss has told me. About President Snow, about the uprising in District 8. "She wants us all to run," I say. Haymitch's expression is flat, and he does not offer his opinion on this if he has one.

After a while, Mrs. Everdeen comes in and treats Katniss's face. Then she holds her hand, stroking her arms, while Haymitch fills her in on what happened with Gale.

"So it's starting again?" she says. "Like before?"

"By the looks of it," he answers. "Who'd have thought we'd ever be sorry to see old Cray go?"

I know what Mrs. Everdeen means by things starting again. That half-fuzzy memory of that whipping, the grave looks on my parents faces when they'd mention something awful that happened in the past, some injustice done by the peacekeepers…things are starting again like before. Like things were in District 11. Peacekeepers everywhere, our every move watching. Crimes not going unpunished. Yes, things will start again like before. Like I've heard they've been before. It's not until now that I realized how lucky we were to have Cray, who, though his habit of luring starving women into his bed for money was despicable and made him an object of loathing, he never killed citizens. He never whipped anyone. He wasn't official. He didn't care about the Capitol's rules. He let crimes go unpunished, like allowing Katniss and Gale to sell their hunting kills to him without killing them for the crime of going under the fence and poaching.

As hard as Katniss, Gale, and I's generation have had it, it is nothing compared to our parent's generation. I am beginning to understand. The idea of worse times returning has seemed to have registered to all of us though, because when the doorbell rings, Haymitch and I stiffen, Mrs. Everdeen's eyes go wide with fear, and Katniss shoots straight out of bed. Who could it be this at this hour of the night? There's only one answer. Peacekeepers.

"They can't have him," says Katniss immediately.

"Might be you they're after," Haymitch reminds her.

"Or you," she answers.

"Not my house," he points out. "But I'll get the door."

"No, I'll get it," says Mrs. Everdeen quietly.

We all go though, following Mrs. Everdeen down the hall to the insistent ring of the bell. But when she opens it, there's not a squad of Peacekeepers but a single, snow-caked figure. Madge Undersee, the Mayor's daughter. For a moment I'm confused, but then I remember that her and Katniss are friends. She holds out a small, damp cardboard box out to Katniss and she takes it.

"Use these for your friend," she says. Katniss removes the lids, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. "Use them, please." She runs back into the storm before we can stop her.

"Crazy girl," mutters Haymitch as we follow Katniss's mother into the kitchen.

Katniss was right. Whatever Mrs. Everdeen has given to Gale, it wasn't enough. His teeth are gritted and his flesh shines with sweat. Katniss's mother fills a syringe with the clear liquid from one of the vials and shoots it into his arm. Almost immediately, his face begins to relax.

"What is that stuff?" I ask.

"It's from the Capitol. It's called morphling," answers Mrs. Everdeen.

"I didn't even know Madge knew Gale," I say.

"We used to sell her strawberries," says Katniss, a touch anger in her voice, leaving me wondering what she could possibly be angry about. Didn't Madge just bring Gale medicine?

"She must have quite a taste for them," says Haymitch.

And then I place her anger. Jealousy. The thought that there's something between gale and Madge, which wouldn't surprise me at all given Gale's reputation. But the thought that Katniss is jealous of Madge with Gale in turn fills me with jealousy and a terrible emptiness.

"She's my friend," says Katniss, explaining nothing.

Now that Gale has drifted away on painkillers, everyone seems to deflate. Prim makes us eat stew and bread. A room is offered to Hazelle, but she has to go home to the other kids. Haymitch and I are both willing to stay, but Mrs. Everdeen sends us both home to bed as well. On the way out I give Katniss a comforting squeeze on the shoulder, but her attention is focused on no one but Gale so I don't expect anything back. Haymitch and I leave, and halfway to our respective houses he pauses.

"She won't run," he says.

"I know," I answer. "I know what she's going to do. She's going to try and rebel."

"Stupid girl," growls Haymitch.

"I'm with her."

"I know you are. Makes you stupid too. You really think we stand a chance? The Capitol will just send more and more Peacekeepers. You really think that anyone besides you three would be up to rebelling the Capitol? Do you forget that most of these people barely have enough energy to keep themselves and their families from starving to death on a daily basis? Do you forget that most of these people have never broken a rule in their life, that none of them will want to risk breaking a law and getting whipped, tortured, killed, for the less than zero chance they might make any sort of a difference? None of them will rebel. And we'll be sitting ducks for the Capitol. In fact, any act of rebellion you three make will come back down on all of us. Rebelling will put your families in danger. Will put her in danger. Surely you realize that."

"Of course I do. But what am I going to do, stop her from assembling a mob and walking into town with torches and pitchforks? You know as well as I do there's no stopping her once she gets an idea in her head."

"I know," growls Haymitch. "But she hasn't thought this through. She hasn't thought of the consquences of fighting the Capitol. She hasn't seen the cost of going against the Capitol's agenda like I have. Neither of you have. None of you know what you're getting into. Gale getting whipped? That's just the beginning. You don't know how bad things can get, how bad they will get even without us doing anything against the Capitol."

"That why we have to try, isn't it?"

Haymitch sighs.

"Well, let me know how that works out for you. I need a drink."

And he trudges through the snow to his own house, leaving me standing there in the cold pondering his words and wondering if Katniss really does have no idea what she's getting into, and, indeed, if I have any idea what I'm getting into throwing in my lot with hers.