Everdeen: Chapter 4

Everyone offered to go with me to the Capitol—Haymitch, Peeta, Prim, and my mother. I opted to go alone. I was on the first train that left the following morning.

Gale was alive. The thought consumed me. And the train couldn’t seem to move fast enough.

Haymitch had told me that Gale had asked him not to reveal his whereabouts, but of course, I got that information out of him easily once I’d made my feelings clear.

Gale had been presumed dead at first, right after the takeover of the Capitol. He had suffered a head wound that had kept him in a coma for a over a month and the wounds on his face made it impossible for anyone to identify him. So, at first, no one at the hospital knew who he was. (We wore no dog tags in our unit because our identities would have made us targets for “special” torture if captured.)

Once they’d brought him out of his coma—artificially induced while his brain injury healed, he asked that I not be told that he had survived. His mother and siblings were moved from District 13 to the Capitol to be near him while he healed, so they hadn’t returned to 12, and I had mourned Gale’s death alone back home.

I was furious that he had allowed me to think he was dead, but I understood why. It was the same reason Peeta had given me the locket with Gale’s picture in it. Both of the men I’d loved knew I’d also loved another, and both had wanted me to be happy, thinking I’d choose the other if I could. How did I get so lucky to have two such selfless men in my life? One of which I wanted to throttle at the moment.

As angry as I was, I also knew that in an odd way, it was a good thing that I hadn’t known about Gale. Well, good wasn’t exactly the right word, but it had given me time to really work out my feelings for Peeta. With Gale gone and no hope of ever having him again in my life, I was free to finally make a decision. And I had. For the first time since the reaping, my decisions were all my own. And I chose Gale. Even knowing he was dead. For the first time ever, I really understood how I felt about him. I loved him. The way a woman should love a man. It was finally clear to me.

But would he accept me now? I was so damaged emotionally. I was a murderer, a liar, a manipulator. I’d used Peeta’s love to keep us both alive and had lied to the whole nation about it. I’d put Peeta before Gale so many times for so many reasons. Would Gale ever really be able to forgive me? Would he rather find someone new to start a life with now that the war was behind us? Someone undamaged. Or at least someone kindhearted, like Peeta. Maybe he already had. Maybe that was another reason Haymitch had hesitated when he told me. Maybe he’d kept that little tidbit to himself, for me to discover on my own.

As soon as the train pulled into the station, I was out the door and on my way to the hospital. It was only about a half a mile from the station, but it seemed to take forever for me to walk—and then finally, run there.

I stopped at the front desk to get his room number and then took to the stairs up to his room. I slowed my pace down when I entered the corridor, aware of my panting and panic among the quiet doctors and nurses going about their jobs.

I counted the room numbers until I came to his and stopped to take a deep breath, my heart pounding in my chest. I removed my backpack and held it in my hand, and smoothed back my hair. I planted a smile on my face and stepped inside, ready to face him.

Of course my resolve to act reasonable crumbled as soon as I saw him. He was lying in bed, his hair short and choppy on his head, presumably where it had been shaved in spots. A dark jagged scar came across the top of his head, over his forehead, and across the bridge of his nose, ending mid cheekbone. His neck was a mass of pink and red, still healing from the deep bite of the sewer mutt.

When he looked at me, I dropped my backpack and ran the last few steps to his bed. I climbed up and threw myself onto him, mindless of the tubes, and wept loudly into his chest.

His arms enveloped me and I gratefully breathed his scent with every sob. This went on for some time until I became aware of his kissing the top of my head and saying, “Shhhh. It’s okay,” over and over.

I finally calmed down a little and raised my head to look at his face. Even with the dark wound across his face, he’d never looked more beautiful to me. He smiled and kissed me hard, and I reached a hand up to wipe the tears from the side of his face where they had run down and dampened the oddly cropped hair at his temple.

We pressed our lips together, both still crying, for a long moment.

I broke the kiss and sat up a little, taking his tube-free hand in mine and kissing it while I continued to wipe his tears away.

“So, I guess you missed me,” he said and we both laughed a little as we still cried and I just nodded.

Then we just looked at each other for a long silent moment, finally able to stop the tears and take each other in.

I gently traced the scar on his head and face with my finger and he said, “Not so pretty anymore, am I?”

“You are to me,” I said. “Does it hurt?”

“Not too much. Sometimes. I’m off the morphling, so yeah, sometimes it hurts. But I’ll recover. It gets easier every day now.”

I just shook my head and said, “How could you have kept this from me?”

His eyes teared again and he bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling before he answered. “I knew you’d come. And I knew you’d be here for me because I was in pain. You always loved me when I was in pain, and that’s not what I wanted.”

A tear ran down my cheek as I said, “You thought I loved you when you were in pain. You should have seen me when you were dead.”

That made him smile, but then it faltered. “I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t think about what I’d be putting you through. I knew eventually, you’d hear about it—that I was alive if not a bit banged up, but I hoped it would give you and Peeta the time to ….” His voice trailed off.

“It did,” I said. “You did give us that.”

He nodded solemnly.

I went on, “As angry as I am that you didn’t tell me, in a strange way, you were right. Peeta and I did finally have the time we needed to sort out what we had—without the Games or the crowds to please. We’ve been back home, working together to put 12 back in working order. We’ve had time to heal too, just like you have.

“I grieved your loss and thought I couldn’t go on, but I did. Like people always do. Like both our mothers did after our fathers died.

“And now Peeta and I both understand that what we had—what developed from his innocent boyhood crush, and turned into a desperate warped kind of love for the world to see-has finally settled into a kind of bond of friendship. Now that we know we’ll both survive without it, we’ve found a way to let it rest between us while we can go on and find our own separate lives.”

He searched my eyes, as if he might determine whether I was telling him the truth. “Are you sure? Both of you?”

“Yes, we’re both sure.”

A kind of relief passed over his features and he let out a silent sigh.

“You’re the one I’ve always loved in my heart,” I said.

He bit his lip again and a small sob escaped as he nodded.

“That love wasn’t for the cameras, or to save anybody’s life. It was just what I felt. What I really felt. What I still feel.”

He pulled me to him and crushed my mouth with his. I still held his other hand between us and squeezed it tightly.

When I pulled back, I touched his mouth with my finger, still in awe that he was here, alive, and that I could touch him.

“I know without a doubt what I want,” I said. “Now the rest is up to you. What is it you want?”

He smiled and said, “I’m ready to go home. Take me home, Catnip.”

And so I did.

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