a/n; HI GUYS. This turned out to be an AU thing with some of the same themes as the book, without the games or death. It's quirked out of balance, and mostly made up of growing back-and-forths between Katniss and Gale.

mere exposure effect: an increase in positive feelings toward a novel stimulus (person) based on frequent exposure to it. Note that the positive feelings arise just on the basis of seeing someone frequently.

| it's a different dance |

If there's anything Katniss knows when she's twelve, it's that her age matches the dreariness of her hometown. Everything's gray and rotten and dying. The mines blow up and some people can't handle it when that happens. Sometimes, moms aren't strong, and sometimes there's nobody but yourself.

It's a good thing her father taught her how to survive. He taught her where to go along the electric fence, before the circuits shorted. It was their little secret, when he'd be off from work and take her to the little landlocked lake in the pulsing heart of the forest. She visits there, sometimes, when she's alone or when her stomach curls inside her too much to concentrate on shooting her bow. When all she can think about is her dead father and how he used to smile at her and laugh with her.

During those times, she wonders if she's the only person in the world who knows what it's like.

It's only when she hears the whispers across the halls of school, when they become too loud to ignore. They're pesky, and they make her ears itch. She tunes them out the best she can, but when rumors start circulating that a boy goes into the forest, alone, with only his twine of rope and a knife, her curiosity trumps her annoyance.

They say he's older, but young enough to wonder about. Thirteen or fourteen or fifteen. What kid would rebel against the Capitol like that? They say. Once the Peacekeepers find out, he'll bring more harm to his family than good.

What if they whip him in the town square?

What if they hang him?

What if they sever his head and place it on a pike?

Katniss gets tired of it after a while. Some nameless boy, some apparition an imaginative kid made up when they were bored. She makes things up, too, sometimes, though they're much less zealous. They're more like wishes, wishes that spirits weren't so far away.

They don't give the boy a name. When she asks Madge, she doesn't know, either. And if Madge doesn't know, then it's a false little tendril running around. Besides, Katniss hasn't seen anyone in the forest. Nothing but a few deer, rabbits, and birds all flitting around, waiting to be caught with her arrow.

It crosses her mind that they might be talking about her.

It's one day during passing periods when she accidentally runs into a group of older boys. They lounge against the walls of the hallway, loitering and passing time, skipping their respective classes - something highly punishable.

She ignores them, just like anybody else. When she begins to walk past them, one of the boys steps back from the group, and she's too close to scramble out of the way before he bumps into her.

A hand reaches out to stop her swaying. She jerks back.

"Sorry," the boy says. He watches her steady herself, giving a large smile. "I wasn't paying attention."

"Neither was I."

For some reason, the boy looks amused. "What's your name?"

The other boys that surrounded him a second before have started to turn around, their eyes migrating over her. It's almost intimidating.

"Katniss," she says, quietly.

"Catnip?" he mishears. "That's a funny name."

"No," she shakes her head, embarrassment ripe in her throat. "Katniss."

"Oh," he says. "I like Catnip better."

This grates on her nerves. "Don't you have to be in class?"

He shrugs. "No. Not right now. The teacher likes me."

"Likes you?"

"Yeah," he says, smiling and leaning forward. "I bet I could make you like me, too."

Katniss takes a step back, involuntarily repulsed.

"I don't want to like you," she says, still under the mocking stares of all the other boys. She musters up a glare toward all of them, then toward who seems to be the leader, who starts laughing at her. Then the other boys follow, and the whole group is laughing at her.

The late bell shrills across the drywall. The boy gestures toward a classroom.

"You better get to class, Catnip."

It's the way he says it and the way all the other boys stick up their noses, she thinks, that drives her to launch her arm back, crunching her knuckles against his jaw. He doesn't see it coming. If he did, he'd probably avoid it. But he doesn't, and he stumbles backward, looking a little shocked.

Then she marches away from them, her hand smarting while she gets reprimanded for being tardy.

"Someone punched Gale Hawthorne!"

It's what she hears during lunch that day, as she sits at her lonely table. The boys of her grade commence speculation over the new (surprisingly true) rumor, some claiming bravely that they saw the whole thing, while others claim that the fact that Gale Hawthorne was punched without fighting back was as preposterous as it was untrue.

"I heard he talked back to a teacher and she was so offended that she punched him!"

"They'd get fired for that, right?"

"I heard it was from a fight he got into with an upperclassman."

"What upperclassman?"

"I dunno, probably a town kid."

Something inside Katniss wants to make her stand up on her table and tell them all that it was her who punched this Gale Hawthorne kid, just to see if they'd believe her.

"Well, I heard that it was a girl that punched him."

Her ears perk up.

"A girl?"

"He let a girl punch him? No way."

The one kid that mentioned it shrugs. "Maybe. Ever since his dad died, he's been acting strange. I mean, I don't know him personally, but my dad knew his dad, and my dad says his family is having a hard time—"

Katniss tunes out the rest of their conversation after that.

Fatherless or not, it's not going to make her feel bad.

The rumor mills bleed out fast in District Twelve. In a few days, the boys and girls are talking about other things, blasé things that mean as much to her as the dying rot of autumn leaves.

And after that week, she doesn't hear about or see Gale Hawthorne for another year.

When she does see him next, she's caught in a twitch-up snare, her right ankle straining to keep her foot attached to her leg, her thigh desperately tethered to her hip. Her bow had fallen out of her hands at the sudden vertical force, the rest of her arrows falling out of her quiver. She doesn't have a knife today, of course, because it's just her luck to be at whoever's mercy, blood rushing to her head and turning the oranges and greens of the forest into whites and purples. Her vision stumbles against the trees, and gravity starts to make everything blend together.

She tries to swing herself to the tree she's attached to, but the branches are too high for her to reach. She brings herself up, missing the rope with her hands one too many times before she finally catches onto it, sweat lining her forehead and her stomach cringing from the effort. She goes to try to climb her way up through the burning of the rope against her palms, but she slips back down when she hears the voice.

"I didn't expect to catch a girl."

The force of the surprise has her swinging into the trunk of the tree. She feels blood leak from her cheek.

She twists around until she sees him, unable to tell if he's smirking or…smirking.

"Let me down."

He doesn't. First, he crosses his arms, looking over her.

"How long have you been coming here?"

She sneers. "Longer than you. Let me down."

"I thought you'd be…" he shakes his head. "Aren't you that one girl? Catnip?"

"Katniss," she hisses. "My name is Katniss."

"You shouldn't be in the forest."

"And you should?"

"I'm a guy."

He says it as if not being a boy is obvious why she shouldn't be here.

"And I'm a girl. And I almost beat you up. So let me down."

He waits a minute. "Only because I wasn't expecting it," he says, rubbing his jaw as if remembering. Then he finally walks up to her and cuts the rope in one swipe of his knife. She lands on her back with awkward gracelessness, coughing from the closure of her windpipe.

"You should leave," he says.

She's irrepressibly angry at this, going to stand on shaky, bloodless legs, reaching for her bow and a stray arrow trapped in the ground.

"Why?"

"Because Seam girl or not, you can't survive out here."

The hair on her arms bristle. She grits her teeth, eyes darting toward something, anything that she can—

She sees movement. She whips her bow around, shucking the arrow into the warm eye of a skittering rabbit, squeaking loudly as it dies on the air.

She gives him an unforgiving glare. "I have a family to feed."

Then she stomps her way to the rabbit, picks it up and places the arrow back into her quiver. Then she pushes past him to pick up all the other ones littering the ground.

"So do I."

"So does everyone," she says, before she walks away from him, ignoring his following eyes.

He lets her leave without another word.

She sees him much more often after that. Once or twice every week, she'll run into him in the forest, or she'll run into him in the Hob, or she'll run into him at school, which should be rarer than it actually is.

She's come to figure out that he's at least a year or two older, and the school system is supposed to be good at keeping them separated. Katniss guesses that the teachers still like him, since she sees him when he should be in class.

But she ignores him, at school and at the Hob and in the forest. It's easier to act like he isn't there, especially when she feels his eyes bore into her like they do, every once in a while. No Peacekeepers come after her, and she's a little surprised. She figures she shouldn't be. They're both from the Seam. They don't rat, on an old, ritualistic authority of years past.

She's got a feeling that he thought she would tell on him. She knows it from the way he sometimes bumps into her, hard, always answering in the same mocking way, "Oh, sorry Catnip. I didn't see you there."

The only time they mutually ignore each other is in the Hob. They're on their own, here, when they bargain and sell. This is her favorite way of communication between them. It's the way it should be. She'd rather have nothing to do with Gale Hawthorne, and when they do their separate bargaining wherever they can, they never fail to pretend that they've never seen each other in their lives.

It's always much nicer than his smirks. Or when his eyes are gregarious, or when he catches her looking at him.

She tries to keep her looks neutral at all times. Especially in the forest, when they happen upon each other, holding different animals and berries.

She tries not to give her hungry curiosity away when she sees the strawberries he's carrying, wondering where he possibly could have found them. This past year, and she's never come upon a bush with them. It makes the glare that she forces easier to manage.

They both size each other up, his eyes roaming over the kills around her belt. She has rabbits where he has groundhogs and squirrels. Eight around his belt, six around hers.

Then she goes to trudge past him, before he asks, a bit smug, "Ever had a strawberry before?"

She must have given herself away. She mentally slaps herself.

"Of course I have."

"Have you?"

"Yes," she says, turning around and leveling him with a steely stare.

He looks at her for a moment. "You're a liar."

She feels her cheeks blanch. "Says you."

A smirk pokes around the edges of his mouth. "Says me."

It makes her want to punch him again. The anger adorning her face gives him the affirmation he needs.

"I can tell you where they are."

She blinks, not able to trust him. "But you won't."

"I won't," he agrees.

Then he turns back around, all kinds of smug, and makes his way to the opposite side of the forest. She can only watch him go with the dregs of disdain.

Months pass like that, his shoves in the hallway getting more and more frequent, him showing up in stranger and stranger places. Their encounters at the Hob are just as frequent as at school, though he doesn't give her attention other than side glances and subtle smirks. They still mostly ignore each other, though the barrier between them has become more flexible. It's become harder to act like she doesn't know him - she notices it's the same for him. His looks are much more liberal than before. She has a mind to wonder when this started, and why he's making it so hard to ignore him.

But she's not going to openly ask him, nor is she going to start up a voluntary conversation with him. It's like he's goading her to do it, just because, like it's some sort of game. And she's not going to lose.

After her trade route, she runs into him in her neighborhood returning home with a squirrel and a few gold coins in her pocket. He comes up and stops in front of her, halting her walk. She tries to evade him, but he sidesteps her, to the left then the right. She glares up at him, sighing, and waits for him to speak.

He looks down at her and crosses his arms.

"The Reaping is in two weeks."

"Everyone knows that."

"How many times are you in?"

She swallows back her immediate answer. "I don't pay attention."

His eyes rove over her. "I'm in a lot, too."

"I didn't say I was."

"You didn't have to."

She bares her teeth at him.

"It's okay, you know," he tells her. "I'm in twenty-three times."

"Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?"

He scoffs, glancing away. "No. Not anything like that." He puts his hands in his front pants pockets. "I thought maybe if we both make it through this one, we could...hunt together. You've proven that you can fend for yourself, and –"

"And you think hunting together would accomplish what?"

"A better hunt. More kills for our family. More people to trade with. Before—"

Her mouth twitches. "What makes you so sure I'd say yes?"

At this, he looks into her eyes. "Nothing. You can say no. We get by fine how we are now." He shrugs, looking away. "It's just something I've been thinking about."

She shakes her head. "No, thanks. I'd rather not add someone to take care of to my list of duties."

He grumbles something. "That's not what I meant. I meant partnership."

"Partnership?" she asks, face steely, revulsion charring her throat. "I'd rather be reaped."

It's as if she strikes him. It's very subtle. It's something she doesn't fully realize until later.

His voice is steeped in anger. "Do you really hate me so much?"

"It's not that I hate you," she hisses. "It's that I don't care about you."

She continues to walk, and he watches her back, like he always does, and there's nothing he can say.

She doesn't see him much after that day. Not in the halls, not the Hob, not the forest. She's lucky to see him once every two weeks—sometimes she's lucky to see him once a month.

It's something she notices right away—he's become such a part of her routine that his absence is effectively jarring. She finds herself looking around for him after the first few days.

What's strange is that her schedule doesn't change. She goes to the Hob during the same times, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She goes to the forest even more.

But Gale is never there. It's almost as if he's taken to the shadows, vanishing from her world completely.

She doesn't see him among the boys at the Reaping.

She doesn't see him for eight long months.

And when she does see him, it's almost like she finds him. He's sitting in the forest, legs dangling off the edge of the cliff drop-off, looking out into the valley she's wandered off to see a dozen times.

He hears her before she gets very close, throwing a stray rock down into the vegetation, watching it tumble into the long stalks of grass. He glances over his shoulder at her.

"Catnip," he sighs in greeting. "It's been a while."

He's different in the way he looks. He looks older—but he's always looked that way. His jaw is sharper, his back straighter. His shoulders are heavy, and there are no laugh lines around his eyes. Everyone's acquired these traits here. It's funny how she's never noticed his.

His gray eyes shimmer when they land on her, but it doesn't conceal the fatigue.

"Yes," she says, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. "It has."

"Find any strawberries lately?"

She wraps her arms in front of her, lingering behind him. "Not yet."

"Maybe I'll show you where they are, someday."

Katniss doubts that. She says so. She sees him smile slightly.

"They aren't hard to find," he tells her. "I'm sure you've walked past them all the time."

"Then would it really be so bad if you told me?"

He looks up at her, eyes holding something strange in them. He opens his mouth, closes it, says something she doesn't expect him to say.

"You're the only other person that I've ever found in the forest."

Her arms close tighter around her waist. "Not many have a death wish."

He shakes his head. "It's not a death wish. It's like freedom."

She hadn't taken him for an idealist. It takes her a second to realize that he isn't.

"Freedom is impossible," she says.

"It's just like this rock," he answers, before throwing it over the edge. Katniss watches as it braves against the boundaries. "Have you ever thought about it? Staying here. Living in here."

The thought halts all others. "Never. I have a family."

"Yeah," he says slowly. "I have people to take care of. So does everyone. Isn't that what you said, once?" He throws another rock, and she hears it shatter against something in the distance. "My sister's sick. She's three. She'll probably die while I sit here, throwing rocks."

She stares at the back of his head before he stands, wipes himself off, turns and walks past her left side.

"I know it doesn't matter to you," he says. "I don't know why I'm telling you." Then he shoves against her shoulder, and it's painfully reminiscent of days old and gone.

"My mom's a healer," she says, suddenly. "She can—"

"My mom's been to your mom," he tells her. "Even her herbs can't fix everything, Catnip."

"My name is Katniss," she answers feebly.

"Am I supposed to care?"

And then he's in between trees, under branches, and he vanishes, just as quick and abrupt as before.

She sees him again when she's fifteen. He's nearing seventeen, older, older, so much older.

He's a bona-fide womanizer, these days, just because he can be. He still hunts, she still runs into him every once in a while, though they never say a word—the encounters have become few and far between. She sees him at the Hob more than in the forest, and much more than in the hallways, but he's never alone when he's there. A girl is always bounding around him, breathing down his neck. He smiles or smirks or gives them suggestive looks that Katniss knows she'll hear about in the hallways the next day.

He doesn't acknowledge her, anymore. They don't make eye contact, nor do they have simple glances that used to constitute as greetings. He shows the girl around, and sometimes they'll eat whatever Sae claims is food, and they'll have a grand time. They'll have a grand time after dinner, too. That's what the girls say.

And as disgusting as it is to watch all of this evolve over the months that it does, Katniss is no longer repulsed. It doesn't make her want to throw up, and it doesn't make her want to punch him.

The only thing it does is take her mind back, to the time when he asked her to be his hunting partner and what agreeing would have meant.

If she had just said yes.

When the Reaping comes that year, the boy that's chosen has a name that starts with G and in the split second that the rest spills out of Effie's mouth, Katniss searches and searches until she finds Gale's face within the masses, because it's not him, but it was close, as close as it was far. Was his name right beside that boy's slip of paper? He must be in there over thirty times, but Effie's talons didn't claw him, and what are the odds?

And when her eyes finally land on him, she's surprised by how stoic he looks, by how his face is granite, stone, rock and lava and molten and she wonders, just for a second, if he wished it was him, so he could try to fight for that sliver of freedom he might have been able to bring home for his family.

She thinks he could've made it. She thinks she might have visited him in the Justice Building.

It's funny when they speak to each other the next time.

He's got shiny, sticky glaze smearing his lips, and she's counting out the coins in her bag, making sure she can buy the grains and the oil that she needs for the week.

It's nearing sunset, with him walking out of the Hob while she's walking into it. He doesn't seem to care about noticing her, or notice her, or see her at all. But she steps in front of him, forcing him to look down a half-foot to her face. He sidesteps and she counters, then he tries for the left and she counters again. His eyes fall into annoyance.

"What's on your face?" she asks him.

He grins salaciously. "Girl."

She blinks, stares, before he tries to walk past her again.

"What kind of girl?"

"The kind that tastes good."

She makes a face at him. "I didn't know we tasted like anything."

"It's an art," he says, leering over her, trying to scare her away. "I'm sure you're a highly acquired taste."

She frowns, not quite sure what he means. "I guess you wouldn't know."

"No," he says, trying to push past her. She obnoxiously goes to stand in front of him, her toes kissing his, encased in faux-leather tanned hides. "Would you move?"

"What ever happened to your sister?"

It's a stupid question. She knows Posy is fine. Death isn't loud here, but it's always significant in whispered words.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Then he gives her a large shove, and she has to concentrate on not losing her balance. By the time she looks up, he's already gone around the corner.

It's not so funny when she sees him the next time.

His wrists are wrapped in fraying rope, skin breaking from the stress. His shirt's gone, his back like a fancy stove burner, all red and bright, slivers of blood wrapping around him like spider webs.

Peacekeepers are everywhere, and Darius is gone, and Katniss isn't sure why they suddenly decided to come here, today, to the edge of existence. The people are smart enough—or fearful enough—to not rebel against them, not when they hold machines and guns with bullets inside. They demonstrated on a tree, a puncture wound imbedded forever.

If Gale resists, they'll stop playing and shoot his head off, his brains surely littering the slab he's roped to, and all Katniss can do is watch and imagine, staring at the Peacekeeper standing watch with his weapon hot and ready. She thinks about it. She thinks she can get to him without noticing, take the knife out of her boot, rip the cartilage of his throat to his spine.

But she knows she won't—she can't do that. She wonders how much longer the fear will combat her hunger for freedom.

Gale lasts too long. He doesn't fall unconscious until minutes and minutes and minutes, skin trying to suck up all the blood he's lost, failing as he finally descends like a broken bird.

Then the Peacekeepers filter out, because what else are they going to do? Katniss waits with bated breath to see if they'll shoot him and end it, carry him away somewhere, turn him into an avox, but they don't. She thinks this is worse, because they'll come back and check the forest and scavenge for what remains of him next time, and will he make it, next time? Will she?

Many people stay their ground and watch him breathe, as if uncertain if they're allowed to help him. Katniss runs up to the slab on impulse, untying the knots with shaky hands, pulling them away as gingerly as she can. Some flesh rebels and loosely hangs down his arm while some sticks to the rope. She tries her best not to gag.

She curls under one of his arms, and though he's dead weight, he isn't nearly as heavy as he should be. It's all the blood he lost, she thinks, as they make it toward her house. It's all the girls he handles and the food he gives to his family, the love he must have, somewhere inside.

Those are the things that can waste a man away.

She bites her nails and then her knuckles and then some of her hair watching her mother and Prim work, fetching them things and hovering over them, being a nuisance with all her questions as her mother's forehead sweats and Prim's fingernails turn rusty with lines of drying blood.

It's an hour, or two, or three, Katniss doesn't keep up. But sooner or later, he's not so still, and his chest pushes him up with his dreaming breaths, a cool, damp cloth over his back stained a rose petal pink. His wrists are tightly bandaged with old, leftover cloths. His hair hides his face, and she's glad.

Hazelle comes by not an hour later, only hearing the news after her job, face stretched taught with perpetual worry. She sits beside Katniss until he wakes.

"How's your daughter?" Katniss asks, on a whim.

Hazelle looks at her, then over her, then inside her, like she knows her. "She's…much better."

Katniss manages a soft smile.

He doesn't wake until the next day. Hazelle has to leave because the rest of her children need her, and Katniss and her mother and Prim can look after him for a while, can't they?

He's a giant elephant in their small entryway. They think about moving him to a bedroom, then think against it.

Katniss leaves for her routine during the day, partly because she doesn't want to be there when he wakes. In fact, she doesn't want to see him at all anymore. She's had enough of him, pestering her then not pestering her, ignoring her, shoving her, making his own niche in the creases of her skin over the years.

She doesn't arrive until late afternoon, nearing supper time, convincing herself that he'll be gone when she arrives back with dinner meat.

He's not.

While she's gone, he remains lying on his chest throughout the day, a displeasuring feeling after several of the morning hours. He tries to push himself up, only to be pushed back down from pain or Prim and her mother.

"You have to stay here until your body regains all the blood you lost," Prim tells him, her soft falsetto unable to be unheard.

"But I need to get back to—"

"Your mom is well aware of your condition," Miss Everdeen says, doing her best to placate him. Her tone is terse but validating, like a doctor, and Gale wonders if she's only doing this for him because she failed for Posy. Nobody is this selfless in this town. They must have slaved for hours over him, considering that he doesn't feel any piercing pain.

"Why did you do this?"

Prim and Miss Everdeen look over him, in this way, both eyes blue and hair golden blond, and he can see Katniss in them, against all odds.

"Did you suppose there was a reason for us not to help you?"

He's not sure why he detests this so much. He's not sure why, underneath the herbs they've infused inside him, he can't be grateful.

Maybe it's because he expected to die. He's been goading the Peacekeepers enough. He's been slowly losing his mind these past four years, though he feels he's held up pretty well.

Or maybe it's because this is Katniss' family, and he doesn't want anything to do with them. Because he knows nothing good will come out of knowing them or cherishing them or loving them.

"I…" he says. "I don't know."

"Well, your mom was very happy when we sent her the news about you waking up. As was the rest of your siblings."

He feels his lips curl up into a smile.

"Not like they could do much without me."

He tries his best to leave before Katniss shows up. He's got a feeling that she's giving him as much time as she can to wander out of the house. But Prim and Miss Everdeen are persistent when he goes to stand or get to his feet, sliding out from under the tattered blanket.

"I appreciate what you've done, but I need to leave—"

"Katniss is getting your family food, if that's what you're worried about," Prim says absently, pushing him down. She doesn't have to. He gets dizzy seconds after he finds his feet.

"What?"

"Your family is fine," Miss Everdeen tells him. "Now rest."

He closes his eyes. "But—why would she do that?"

"Because we look out for each other," Prim pipes up.

But she doesn't like me, he wants to tell them. Is she really setting aside her feelings, or lack thereof, for this? Her? Gale doesn't think so, but stranger things have happened.

He's quick to fall back into slumber, but all he dreams of are strawberries and braids.

He's not awake when she arrives, and she hopes that he was awake enough while she was gone to keep sleeping.

He doesn't wake while they eat, sleeping through the smells of fresh food. He only sleeps and sleeps, as if he hasn't slept in years.

Katniss thinks he steals all the sleep for himself. She tosses and turns in her own bed, Prim on her other side, little, deep breaths flitting out of her easily.

She ends up getting out of bed, walking the short length of their house. She can't avoid the lump Gale makes, in the middle of the main room. She stands by the hallway leading back to her room, staring at him, knowing he's the reason she can't sleep and glaring at him because of that.

Then she finds herself sitting in the vacant spot Hazelle left, the day before, watching as his arm dangles off the table, three of his fingers resting on the floor.

When he starts talking, she jumps.

"I'm not good at being the damsel in distress," he says, and she can see his teeth shine from the moonlight. "I'll be gone before they wake up."

She opens her mouth, blinks, then says, "You're too weak."

"No," he counters. "I'm wounded."

"And weak."

"I'm fine, Catnip," he snaps, as roughly as he can manage. "I didn't need you to bring me to your mom."

She bristles. "You would have died. Is that what you wanted?"

He cuts his eyes to her. "I'd rather die than have you save me."

The words are strangely reminiscent to something she told him, once. They've only talked a handful of times—and she remembers it clearly.

"You don't mean that."

"How would you know what I mean?" She can see the whites of his eyes, the slippery silver against them.

She swallows. "I don't. But I know that you'd never leave your family like that."

"Maybe I wouldn't." He trails his fingers against the wood of the floor. "Just don't go into the forest, because then I'd have to save you back."

She recoils. "You wouldn't dare."

"You dared."

"This is different."

"How?" He moves his head to look at her better. "How is this possibly any different?"

She straightens, sharpening her shoulders. "I work by myself. I don't need anyone."

"You can't be the knight and the damsel."

Her eyes narrow. "I can try."

He stares at her for a few long moments. Then a few moments more. Then he turns his head away. "Like I said," he tells her. "I'll be gone before morning."

It's her cue to leave him alone, but she wonders what suddenly makes him sound so defeated.

She stands and walks past him, but she stops in the doorway leading to her room, looking over her shoulder to him.

"Why…why did you let the Peacekeepers catch you?"

She sees him still, just for a singular second. "I didn't exactly have a choice."

She doesn't leave. She crosses her arms, seeing right through him. There's just something...something off in the way he had given up on running away from them. He is more than capable of keeping himself from the Peacekeepers. "Tell me."

His body heaves, his breath showing his slow deflation.

"So you'd wonder why I let them catch me."

"That doesn't make any sense."

It takes him a while to answer, and when he does, he says every word with lingering deliberation, as if he's giving them great thought. She can't tell if he's mocking her.

"You know, it's like those strawberries. Right under your nose, and you can't even see them."

He hears her mutter something, like irritation and confusion. Then she turns on her heel and goes to her bedroom.

He keeps his word. In the morning, all that's left of him is the pink-tinted towel and a shadow against the table. He was only there for thirty-six hours. It's a wonder why it feels so bare.

Miss Everdeen is furious. She pushes herbs and bandages into Katniss' arms, tasking Katniss with finding him and making sure he takes care of himself. Katniss is horrified and angry and relieved all at once. She can and can't get out of the house fast enough to find him.

He's finally where she thinks he'd be, holed up in his house. His mother answers the door, smiling when she sees her, opening the door wider to let her come in. Katniss hesitates.

"I'm just delivering the medicine. I have other things to do," she says impulsively lying through her teeth. Hazelle doesn't know her well enough to call it, though her eyes are like shovels, digging deep into her.

"I'm sure Gale would like to see you."

"I think he's sick of seeing me."

Her smile softens. "Don't always believe what he says, sweetheart. Boys should rarely be listened to."

Katniss quirks her eyebrows at her, not quite certain how to take her words.

"I'll try to remember that." Then she shoves the supplies into Hazelle's hands, not sure why she's resisting all this if it was the thing she wanted in the first place.

"Thank you, Katniss," she answers, graciously taking the items. "You are welcome to join us for dinner. You've done more than enough."

She's not sure how to politely turn her down.

"I appreciate it, but I…"

She's interrupted by a gravelly voice. Gale wanders up beside Hazelle, pushing his arm against the door.

"Good luck with trying to refuse that one, Catnip."

She suppresses the smile, or maybe it's a grimace, that tries to rise onto her lips at the sight of him. She wonders how his eyes can look so tired when he got so much sleep.

"Gale Hawthorne," Hazelle starts. "You should be in bed."

"I've slept enough to last a lifetime," he waves her off. She has none of it, grabbing at his shoulders to push him backward.

Katniss says, "Okay."

They both look at her.

"For dinner," she says. "I'll…I'll join you."

Gale stares at her in a funny way, as if unsure he heard her correctly. Hazelle smiles again.

"Wonderful. We will see you tonight."

Then Gale disappears behind the door, as fast as he can.

Katniss sticks to her word just like Gale did that morning. She arrives, even though she dreads it, being pulled in by Hazelle before she can think any more about why she agreed in the first place.

She walks slowly into the entry way, the structure of their house nearly identical to hers. The kitchen is meshed with the living room and the hallway leading to a bedroom or two.

She sees Posy putting makeshift plates on the table in the middle of the room. Rory and Vick stumble in moments later, pushing and jumping on each other. They stop immediately when they notice Katniss, Hazelle leading her in.

"You know Katniss," Hazelle says, walking around to help Posy, patting the boys on the head.

Rory beams up at her after a moment while, remembering her from the day before when she delivered their food, she guesses. Vick hunches on himself, averting his eyes, shy.

"Hi!" Rory says. Posy looks up to her and smiles, too, teeth missing along her lips.

"Hi, Katniss!" she shouts.

Katniss looks back and forth between them. She tries to smile. "Um…hi."

"Come here!" Posy says. "I fixed your spot. You can sit by Gale, because he likes you."

Katniss blinks. "What?"

She comes around, grabs her by the forearm with her tiny little fist, and marches her over to her seat. Hazelle laughs, setting the last plate on the table. Rory and Vick take their respective seats, and Posy bustles back to the kitchen, carrying a pan that is much too big for her. Hazelle takes it away from her quickly.

Hazelle puts her hands on her hips. "What is taking him…"

"He's doing those bandages," Rory pipes up. "He takes a long time doing them."

Katniss bites the inside of her cheek, seeing Gale's back when she blinks, thinking about the scabs and the scars.

He walks in a moment after, tucking in the white wrap on his left wrist. He says a soft apology, eyes falling on the only empty seat beside her and body going more rigid. He stiffly makes his way over, eyes trying not to see her. Her stomach plugs up with nerves when he takes his seat.

"You didn't have to come," is the first thing he says once Posy grabs the pan and scoops the food onto her plate. He says it gruffly, and it comes out like a quiet rumble, hidden by the high din of Posy's conversation with the rest of the table.

"I couldn't deny your mom," she says, just as softly.

"Of course you could have. I was kidding."

"Well, I…" she hesitates. "I didn't want to."

He scoffs.

"Is that hard to believe, or something?"

"Yes."

She looks at him as he gets a small portion of food, handing the pan to her.

"Why?"

"The past years don't really support your cause."

She rushes to get the food on her plate, handing the pan to Rory's eager hands.

"What, because I didn't talk to you all the time?"

"No," he says. "Because you never wanted to."

She crosses her arms, glaring at him, then at the table.

He smiles wryly. He says nothing more. She stares at the side of his face.

"So you suddenly want to talk?" she says, finally, before curling her lip. "Can you try to make sense?"

"Can you grow a brain?"

Katniss bristles. "Why are you so angry at me? You should be grateful."

"Why?" he hisses. "Because you helped me? Because you're eating with my family? This," he says, motioning to the table, "doesn't mean I care about you or what you did. We're both on the radar with the Peacekeepers now. By associating yourself with me, they're going to keep tabs on you. I'm surprised they didn't kill you yesterday. What would your family have done if that happened? Did you think about any of that, Catnip? There is nothing I should be grateful about when it comes to you."

She blinks, a rough clawing twisting the inside of her stomach. She gnaws at the inside of her lip and tongue, a thousand words in her throat, all of them mangled, rushing to the forefront. But she opens her mouth and not a single one comes out.

She twists her head around, noticing the sudden looks from his family, Posy, Rory, and Vick looking back and forth between them, Hazelle glaring at Gale, reprimands ready and on her lips.

Katniss doesn't hear them. She stands up and walks out the door before anything else is said.

And it's suddenly back to the way it was. It's come around full circle. She sees him everywhere, as much as she doesn't want to. Every time she sees him, her stomach claws and protests, and she tries not to catch his eye across the hall or the lane of the Hob or between the trees of the forest.

She's hazy on the details. She isn't sure why what he said affected her the way it did. She's not sure why the mere sight of him makes her feel like she needs to run and hide and get away.

It's only when his wrists have healed, perhaps a month later, when he finally comes up to her, quiet and unsuspecting. It's such a sudden thing that fleeing doesn't present itself as an option. It's in the middle of the Hob, and she just stands there, like a fool, eyes looking up to him while he looks down at her. Their boots kiss.

"Sorry," he says.

She blinks, mouth moving automatically. "How many times did it take for your mom to tell you to say that to me?"

"Does that really matter?" Then he takes a step away before shoving roughly at her shoulder. He doesn't give her another glance as he walks toward his home, and her whole arm tingles as she watches him retreat. There's nothing she can say to make him turn back.

It's quicker when he comes back to her, just like a boomerang. One day in the hallway of school, he's there, and they're looking at each other and he says, "She didn't tell me once."

And she knows he's talking about his mother, about his simple, as close to insincere as he could possibly get, apology. But he looks earnest, and he looks a little wounded, still, and she can't help but think that this means much more to him than he's letting on.

"Okay," she answers.

He nods after a moment. "Okay."

They stare at each other. The bell shrills against the drywall.

"Is this the part where you punch me?" he asks.

"Not this time."

He takes a step back. "Then you better get to class, Catnip."

It's her cue to shove against his shoulder, and she does. But it turns out to be more of a gentle brush, and their eyes catch, and it should be different. It should feel different. There should be something else there, besides tension and friction and heat.

Strangely, it feels the same. Like what they have now is what they've always had, and she's never noticed before.

That's the last time she sees him in what feels like a long, long while. He starts his shifts in the mines as soon as he can. He's only off on Sundays, and that's a day where she can get a glimpse of him if she tries. Most of the time she compensates for the loss of him by bringing his family food. She can't imagine he has time to do it during the days he works, and even if he does, he'll evolve into dust before long.

Besides, fresh meat is always so much better than what Sae sells.

When she does see him, he's leaning on the trunk of a tree, glaring down at the grass between his boots, eyes frustrated. She thinks she sees him before he sees her, but he must have sensed her a while back, because he turns his eyes on her as soon as she reaches the clearing, face furious.

"You've got to stop."

Her smile falls. "What?"

"I," he says, emphasizing the syllable by pushing a finger to his chest. "Don't need you to babysit my family. Understand?"

She opens her mouth, then closes it like a creased stitch. She marches over to where he's standing.

"You don't need me?" she says, incredulously, staring up at him. "Are you kidding me? Your brothers are growing. Posy is growing. They need food."

"It's my responsibility," he shouts. "I've done well without your meddling over the past years, and I'm doing well now. Why can't you get that through your head?"

"You don't have enough time to take care of them!"

"You have no idea how much time I have."

"You can't make me believe you have the energy to feed them after working in the mines."

He remains quietly glaring at her, steam almost rising off of his skin.

Then he whispers, close to menacing, inches above her face, "Leave my family alone or you're dead."

He pushes off the tree, his shoulder grinding against her side in a warning. It makes her stumble back, but she can't let herself make him walk away again.

She reaches a hand out, fingernails blunt and cutting into his arm. She gives him the most beseeching glare see can manage.

"Why can't you depend on me?"

The look he gives her is as clear as it is sharp. She feels it in her stomach.

"Because you're like freedom, Katniss," he tells her. "And nobody," he says. "Nobody can have freedom here."

The use of her true name startles her, startles her enough to stand there and watch him leave with the knife on his belt and the snares hidden underneath his sleeves. And what she'll think later, when she's lying in bed with Prim, sleep not forthcoming, is how could she symbolize something so unobtainable to someone?

Something happens one early mid-May morning. Three months before, she was wondering about Gale. Always wondering, it seemed. It was like he was eating her brain. Now, she's listening as the megaphones blare with sirens, high-pitched to low-pitched, screaming while lights flash, a person she doesn't recognize on all the projector screens in the District, claiming that Snow is dead, Snow is dead, and freedom is upon us. It's here. It's now.

And she wakes up in a cold sweat, heart thundering underneath her breastbone and inside her ear. It's been a dream like that, over the past few days, and it never gives her a good feeling when she wakes. It's a hopeful dream, but she lies in bed like it's a nightmare, eyes seeing shadows crawl on the walls beside her.

It's made her start to believe that freedom isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Maybe she shouldn't hunger for something like that as much as she does. Not when she isn't sure what it really is. Not when it makes her tremble in her sweat night after night. Not when it's something that might be inside of her already.

She waits and waits and waits in the forest on the closest Sunday, arriving just a minute after dawn. She takes her roost in the spot she claims to be hers, overlooking the view of the valley off the cliff. A few hours pass before she considers this all might be in vain, waiting for a boy that's been absent for weeks.

It's only when he speaks that she realizes he might have been here for much longer than she believed.

"Nothing will come to you if all you do is sit there," he says to her, a bit meanly. She turns her head over her shoulder to look at him, watching as he assumes the same gait as he walks, the same crooked, not-quite-there smirk, the same condescension.

It probably won't work, she thinks, but she has to try it.

"I've been having a dream. Dreams," she says softly, forcing herself not to think about what she's saying - how vulnerable she's making herself. How easy it would be for her to lose her nerve. She doesn't look at him when she continues. "They're about...you. Sometimes. They're about - "

"I'm honored."

"They're about," she says, louder. "Snow dying, or Snow having a heart attack, or freedom or something. I don't know. It makes sense when I dream it. But - but I," she says, stopping, shaking her head. She looks out to the cliff and the long stalks of healthy grass. "I don't think I want any of that."

He sits by her, in a snap, and he's so quiet - in everything he does. He's in her periphery and he doesn't hit a twig or a rock. He's almost a ghost.

"How can you not want any of that?" he says, almost sounding angry.

She takes a breath, tasting May. "I guess because we have this," she says. "We have this forest and this cliff. We have family. We have small things that add up to big things."

"And we have the Reaping, remember?" he says, moving more into her vision. "What we don't have is time. Goddamn time. I have to watch as the rest of my family goes up to gamble their lives - "

"But you said that freedom isn't possible here. We can't wish for the impossible." She goes to stand, causing him to stand, too. "But we're in here, aren't we? This is like freedom. And you said I was like freedom. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? If you're in here, there must be freedom inside you, too." She boldly plunges two of her fingers into his chest. He holds his ground, and he catches her hand.

"What I meant was that nobody can have you. You won't let them. And this," he says, gesturing toward the cliff and forest, "is just what you said. A dream. It's a slice of what everyone should have. But it's only...ours. We've shared it for so long."

"But it isn't a slice," she tries. "It's part of us. It's in our lives."

He scoffs a laugh, dropping her hand slowly.

"Right? Don't you think so?" she prods.

He looks at her again, giving her a funny look. "Yeah. Yeah I think so."

She sighs a released relief.

"But you're in my life," he continues. "And you're not a part of it."

She furrows her brows. "What? Yes, I'm part of it. I'm here, aren't I?"

He shakes his head. "But I don't have you. It's like you and the strawberries. They're in your life, but you've never tried one after all this time."

She throws up her hands. "What do strawberries have anything to do with this?"

He smiles at her, and it's sincere. She looks at it skeptically.

"Sure they do," he says. "You've wondered about them, haven't you? You've wondered and thought about what they taste like...what it'd be like to have one. Just one."

"I...guess so."

He gives her a look she can't describe. His eyes make her shrink.

"So..." he trails. One of his hands comes up, then he drops it back down. "I can show you where they are."

She recoils, watching his hand warily. "What's the catch?"

He laughs a little, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "One thing."

"What?"

It's like he grows an inch with the way he straightens. He's tall, and it's not the first time she's noticed. His eyes flick over her face, but he doesn't answer.

She huffs. "Wha - "

His hands trap her face, and he kisses her. It's soft, and undemanding, and it lasts a few, long seconds. She isn't sure that it happens, even when it's over. His hands still cradle her face, but he releases her. Her hands had found his shirt in the process, and she quickly lets go when she notices. She looks up at him, and he looks down at her, her lips parted in a kind of shock.

It doesn't give him pause. He motions his shoulder back.

"Come on," he says. "They're over here."

And then she's following his back for the first time in ever, touching her lips briefly, trying to remember what his felt like.

The bush is approximately ten feet away from where they had been standing moments ago, right under a thicket of a larger bush. Red rubies shine up at her.

Just right there. Right by the cliff.

"I never knew," she breathes.

"Like I said," he kneels, picking one. "Right under your nose."

He hands the bulb to her, and she hesitates a second before taking it. She stares at it for a moment.

"Why..." she says, swallowing. "Why'd you do that?"

He doesn't keep the stare. He looks off to the side and shrugs.

"I just wanted to know what it would be like, for a moment. The freedom, I mean."

"No, I mean, the...the thing."

He half-smiles. "That's what I meant. The thing."

She glares and flushes at the same time.

"I don't understand that."

He merely shrugs. "Not everyone will eat a strawberry. Not everyone will get to kiss you."

The sentence is unnerving. "So what?"

"So," he says. "I've tasted freedom."

His grin is cheeky and it makes Katniss uncomfortable. And angry. And strangely defensive.

Before she knows it, she punches him.

It claps right on the middle of his jaw. He staggers backward.

"What the hell..."

It's like five years ago. And it's not like five years ago. Katniss stays where she is, glaring at him, hand smarting.

"No, what the hell are you trying to do? You threaten me and you ignore me and you tell me you don't need me messing with your life and you kiss me? What is wrong with you?"

He rubs the side of his face, looking at her with annoyance. "Did you ever think I tried to show you differently? Dealing with you is nearly impossible."

"Impossible how? Because I'm 'freedom'?" she mocks.

He sighs and shakes his head. "No. Not that. It's...it's because you don't need anyone. You don't want anyone. You've got your family and this forest and that's all you've ever needed." He crosses his arms. "I was doomed from the start."

She looks at him, blinking a few times, frowning. "What...do you mean?"

"Just that there was a reason I was annoying and mean and when I ignored you and threatened you..." he crosses his arms. "Well, you finally wondered about me, didn't you?"

Wondered, dreamed about, thought about...She shakes her head. "It wasn't like I couldn't wonder about you. I punched you the first time I met you! Then I had to force myself to ignore you because you were everywhere. Then I saved you from bleeding out."

"Yeah," he mutters. "Then I really wanted you."

"What?"

He sighs, then reaches out and touches the side of her jaw, trailing his finger to her chin, then steps back. Her eyes follow his hand.

"Forget about it, Catnip. I need to catch up on hunting today."

"But you didn't answer me!"

He looks over her, smirks, and says, "I wanted to try to get you to feel like I have, ever since you punched me the first time. Did the kiss work?"

Katniss guesses that this is what this whole thing is all about. The freedom and her and their lives here. It's about Gale, and his unquenchable thirst of wanting what he can't have. What no one can truly have.

She opens her mouth, but it takes her too long to form words. Her silence is answer enough for him. He turns away from her and disappears between bark.

It takes her a while to form a concrete answer to his question. It takes even longer to let her be satisfied with her answer. And when she does make one, it's the middle of the week, and she can't stand holding the answer. Another day, and she'll change her mind again.

So she trudges over to the mineshaft entrance and waits. And waits. Six o'clock is a long time in coming, but it comes. The elevator rises once, then twice. Katniss has an irrational case of nerves, though she hasn't a clue why. By the third elevator, Gale finally shows up among the masses. It takes her a while to pick him out of the group, all musty and near identical with coal dust, but when she does, she starts to walk up to him. When he sees her, he meets her half-way.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, talking over her. "Is everything okay? Did something happen?"

"What? No, nothing's happened," she answers hurriedly. "I just wanted to tell you - "

"Oh." He blinks at her. "Good." Then he goes to walk past her.

She goes and steps in front of him. "Hey, listen."

"Sorry, but I have to get home so I can go hunt - "

"Your answer," she says loudly. "I have it."

"Maybe some other time." He tries to push her out of the way.

He's already leaving her. She panics, not able to think. "Yes," she blurts.

It was the right thing to say. He stops his sudden, frantic attempts to get away from her.

"What?"

"Yes," she repeats.

He blinks a few times. "Should I be surprised it only took you this long?"

He merely stares at her, eyes prominent amid the dark dust lining his face. She can't read his face, but she steps up to him and pushes on his shoulders with her hands. She tries to reach his lips, but she can't.

"What...what are you doing?"

She almost takes everything back in that second by the look on his face. "I wasn't finished giving you my answer."

His shoulders ease down, more in exhaustion and surprise than anything else, and she's able to kiss him. In the middle of all the coal miners. And she doesn't care.

This time, he tastes of coal dust and sweat and earth. Or maybe that's what he smells like. Katniss isn't completely sure on the aspect of kissing.

But Gale seems to be - and he should be, with all those girls he had. He curls his arms around her back and tilts his head once he isn't so confused anymore. He pushes her up against him, surrounding her with the entirety of his body.

"What made you decide?" he breathes against her.

"Because you were...so...so..." she breathes back. "Confusing. Something. I don't know."

"Under your nose?" he laughs. Then he kisses her again, and he doesn't let her go. And Katniss thinks, even if she doesn't need anyone, it might be nice to want someone in a place like this.

It might be nice to feel this; to have something swell and combat fear, to let their freedom bloom within each other, to let them live, if only for a while.

It might be nice to try.