I Should Have Known Better [Katniss]
My
relationship with Gale Hawthorne is somewhat storied. Everyone knows
that he was the one that I let get away. For what, exactly? For
something safe? For something more secure? I can't even be sure the
real reasoning other than my blaming him for Primrose's death. I
blamed him, if for nothing else, the fact it was easy to. Gale was
always someone I could put everything on his shoulders and know he
wouldn't falter.
Maybe that was the beginning of where I was
wrong.
After the rebellion and the war that changed my very
world, I returned to the graveyard that was District 12. The home I
grew up in, the home I knew, it was the very place that I felt
slighted me as I was growing up. Being poor as filth my entire
upbringing and throwing my name in the Tesserae every year to ensure
a meager year's supply of grain and oil for my family, was not an
upbringing anyone should have endured. I went back there for the
familiarity. I went back there because home was home. Victor's
Village still stood tall and despite going home alone, at least it
was home.
Being Katniss Everdeen was never a glamorous life
but the Hunger Games glorified my struggles. It glorified all of our
struggles. As a community, as a country, as a race of human kind,
that was what the Hunger Games was: a glorification of terrible
proportion over human sufferage. President Snow salivated over the
idea of watching children from each district die for the Capital's
amusement but with him dead and President Alma Coin dead from
District 13, what was next?
So many things raced through my
head but the biggest thing for me was simple: Did I make the right
decision? When I said goodbye to Gale after, in so few words, blaming
him for Primrose's death, I intended to never see him again. I swore
to myself that I had made up my mind and my decision was a simple
one. I could never love someone who let my little sister die. I could
never consciously give my heart, my soul and my loyalty to someone
who was the mastermind behind the one person I cared the most in the
world no longer being alive. I couldn't cope with Prim not being
around and my mother not returning to 12 after the Rebellion was a
difficult transition. I was barely eighteen and alone in the world
when it all went down.
At least that was what it felt like.
My father died in a mining accident when I was a child, my
sister was now gone due to an explosion and I watched her die. My
mother was in District 4. The grief was too much for my mother to
return to 12 and I understood that. Now. She lost so much and
District 12 would only remind her of the grief she had to endure. She
moved on to 4 so she could head up a new hospital there, therefore
she did well and was helping others. It was sad, is all. I never
really had my mother after my father died and when I needed her as a
technical adult, I didn't have her. Strange how that worked. I felt
no negativity toward her, though. She couldn't cope and well, to be
honest, I'm not sure I was coping all that much, either.
Victor's
Village felt colder without the warmth my mother and Prim brought to
it when they lived with me after the 74th Annual Hunger Games. I was
gifted this house, along with other victors of the long standing
tradition of Panem, and as long as I had it, they were there. We went
from our home in the Seam to a house built for Kings and Queens.
Effie thought it was "quaint" but it was far bigger and
more glamorous than anything I ever had growing up. It was a small
taste of the Capital's wealth thrown at the people who endured the
Hell that was the Hunger Games. I had to kill people to obtain the
home and that is not something I am proud of to this day. So much
blood was shed over the course of 76 years...
All that really
remained of that time were the various Victor's Villages in the
districts surrounding in Panem.
I realize now that I've
become sidetracked. I do that sometimes. I go on tangents and I can
never keep my head straight. I was talking about Gale and my choices.
Knowing he was in District 2, after securing a fancy government job
after Snow's fall and Coin's assasination, I knew he was doing well.
He always insisted that if he didn't live in 12, he would have a
family and the whole normal life thing. As I laid on my sofa in 12, I
had to wonder: was he going to get that? With the job of a government
official, ironic really considering Gale's detest for Panem's stature
when we lived in 12, it wouldn't have been hard for him to secure
that kind of thing. It also wouldn't be hard for him to find a woman
who'd love him for the strong, stubborn jerk that he was. It was
always the part of Gale I found the most charming. When he was
especially difficult, I saw myself in him, and it would bring even
the slightest of smirks to my face. Even when I didn't want him to
know I was tickled by something he'd say, it was an involuntary
thing.
I always had something special with Gale and at the
end of the day, I often wondered if I did the right thing. I was
satisfied with never seeing Gale again after the Rebellion as I never
thought I could look at the man the same way after my sister's death.
Was it really his fault, though? The look on his face when I told him
goodbye still burns into my eyes and into my head. Why did I pick
Peeta in that moment? I overheard Gale in the sewers tell Peeta I
would pick whomever I thought I couldn't live without but now I was
second guessing myself. I do that a lot but this wasn't like any
other time because I never questioned myself about this.
I
knew I loved Peeta and after watching his struggle, my heart felt
content with the familiarity. Peeta was a lot different than Gale in
all ways that a person could be a polar opposite. He was effortlessly
kind where as Gale was guarded. He was charming and sweet where as
Gale was rugged and heated and stubborn. Peeta had a smile that could
light up an entire room from the deepest, darkest gloom. Gale had the
softest smile that revealed the deepest, darkest parts of his heart
and soul but a person who didn't know him would never notice that.
They'd never know the depths of him like I did.
Like
I did...
The
very inner workings of Gale Hawthorne was something I was versed in.
Why did I turn away from that? I went with the safe option. Despite
Peeta's situation with being hijacked, he was the safer of the two.
Gale was so unpredictable and he was so thick headed that sometimes
it drove me crazy. I guess when I walked away from him, I walked away
from that chapter in my life. Even with Peeta being back in 12,
though, my head wouldn't rest. I didn't want to think I made the
wrong decision but I found myself mentally visiting 2. I wondered
often how Gale was doing, wondered if he was happier there than he
ever was in 12. I hoped he was happier, because if anyone deserved
it, it was Gale. He worked so hard to help my family out when I was
in the Games, the second Games, and beyond. He kept food on his
family's table when he was barely a boy himself and helped me with
mine. I tried to help him, too, but Gale was always a great provider.
He kept my mother and my sister safe when I was off playing pretend
with Peeta Mellark for the Capital's entertainment. He was the
grounded force back in 12 that I strived to get back to and leave the
charade of superiority behind me. That normalcy, that warmth, that
silent strength, those worn in hands, those defined arms and
features... that was what and who my heart ached for at my lowest.
Why did I let him go when I had the opportunity to choose him
for once? Why would I do that....
The man who always put me first
deserved so much more than I gave him and that guilt ate me up to my
very core. I never realized how much guilt in that form could hurt
and gnaw and claw inside of someone's gut. I felt guilt before,
plenty of times, but none quite like the guilt I felt regarding Gale.
There was an internal struggle for what felt like months.
Peeta was happy with the regular, every day things back in 12 with us
living close to Haymitch again. Haymitch finally was settled and
seemed to be in a better place, Peeta was getting better every day
while inside I was screaming at the top of my lungs. The internal
struggle of not knowing whether I made the right decision or not was
killing me faster than any nightlock could have.
Logically,
my heart told me to get ahold of him. If for nothing else, to ask him
how he was. I didn't want to be the unwanted, unwelcomed ghost from
his past to show up over a year after the Rebellion, wanting an
instant in back into his life. That would have been presumptious on
my behalf. I would have been repulsed if he did that to me and I
expected the exact same reaction from him had I done it. As much as
the feeling of hurting Peeta turned my stomach due to everything he
had gone through, I couldn't lie and act like I was over Gale just to
save face. I never had the opportunity to let my feelings for Gale
run their course to begin with, with everything else that was going
on at the point of my choosing. I never got to tell him, fully, that
my heart ached for him. I never was able to tell him those three
words in a genuine manner and have the meaning stick. I felt like I
missed out on so many opportunities and so many misguided choices in
trying to please everyone else. I forgot that pleasing myself was
crucial.
I knew, though, that I also couldn't stay in 12 and
pretend that I was the happiest I had ever been. I had to do
something.
I was struggling with nightmares that kept me up
at night but no longer were they nightmares provoked solely from the
Games. These nightmares involved someone showing up at my door to
tell me that Gale was killed in action or something awful happened to
him. If I was truly happy with Peeta and our perfect little
playhouse.
Even at almost twenty years old I couldn't make up
my mind. I should have just wrote a letter but that was never enough
for me and I was never good with words to do that kind of thing. I
wasn't great with talking, either, as I had shown many times. It went
with the whole "inability to be personable" thing that
Haymitch rode my ass about but I was never out to be likable and
personable. It may have been the bitter teenager inside of me, angsty
and rude, but even now as an adult I didn't want to be the center of
attention. I had enough of being the center of attention to fill four
lifetimes and then some.