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Gale had come on the morning train without knowing what to say. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, part of a well-made jacket that could withstand strain. Quality clothing is a perk of living in District Two: but he supposes being a war hero is equally impactful. Either way, he doesn’t feel like much of a hero these days. It’s almost enough to make him turn around and head straight back home. (For all intents and purposes, he is home. He can no more change the fact that Twelve is home than travel back in time. Even if it doesn’t feel like it these days… Gale returning is a homecoming.)
He walks down a newly paved road, trying to keep his head down. In the years that have passed since the war, the primary players have become almost infamous. Being recognized is not a particular interest of his, at least not at the moment. Sometimes when people thank him he can almost pretend that he doesn’t wake up at night with tears on his cheeks. Now he thinks shame is to his benefit, and feels guilty for ascribing guilt to seeing Katniss. He doesn’t think he was wrong, but she does, and he doesn’t know how to work in a world where Katniss Everdeen doesn’t trust him. That was why he came back.
On his right is a small building that used to belong to the Everdeens, but is now being used as some relic of history. It’s deserted at the moment, even though a sign proudly proclaims tours are provided from nine to five. He hates that, dislikes it with a fervour he hasn’t felt in a while, because he is so tired of people profiteering off of pain. As if everything the Mockingjay went through can be cut into bite-size pieces and sold. It’s hard to keep his head down, but it would’ve been harder if anyone was actually there. Gale doesn’t stop. He knows where he’s going.
Peeta’s house is a sturdy thing in what used to be Victor’s Village. It’s almost intimidating. They must’ve rebuilt it after the war; he remembers the fires that caught their neat thatched roof and stained everything inside with soot. Now it looks like just another one in a line of perfect houses with perfect stories. It occurs to Gale that maybe they have recovered from the war and all he will accomplish is ripping open old scars. (It’s a ridiculous thought, even to his scattered mind. He just wants a good reason to leave. Fist against the soft wood, strike three times. There’s no point giving up now.)
It takes a while before anyone answers, an agonizing clump of time that burrows down into the chest and makes him consider—not for the first time—running back to Two and falling into a forced familiarity with his tail between his legs. But Gale Hawthorne is not a coward. He quells his fear and waits politely by the door for a few moments more. Only silence comes from the house. They must be out. He is about to turn and check the market when the door swings open.
“I thought you’d come,” says Peeta Mellark. His face has filled in since the war; he no longer looks like a ghost. Still, Gale recoils as though he is one. The last time he saw Peeta was as a shred of a man with wrists rubbed raw by handcuffs. He cannot reconcile that wreck of a boy with the specimen in front of him. Gale feels—as he often does when faced with Peeta—hopelessly inadequate.
The other man seems to take his silence as an invitation instead of a sign that Gale wants to hit the ground running and never look back. “I’ll go get her. She’s probably in the back, we’ve got this new garden… you don’t want to hear about all of that. Come in. Make yourself comfortable.”
It occurs to Gale that Peeta is probably discomfited by his presence, which only exacerbates the urge to leave. He steels himself and walks into the house, trying not to feel a terrible sense of not belonging. It doesn’t seem like so long ago that Katniss was a known quantity, a regular appearance in his life. Now he drifts through her hallways like a ghost that cannot call it quits. It is an awkward way to exist.
“We have some food, if you’re hungry,” says Peeta. It’s something they used to say, specifically in the Seam, even when they had nothing to eat. It was considered polite to offer something, even if you didn’t have anything to eat. Hearing the words fall from District Twelve’s golden boy irks Gale more than he cares to admit. It doesn’t help that he says hungry with a lilt at the end, closer to Capitol than is comfortable.
“You don’t have to pretend you’re happy to have me here,” says Gale. They’re the first words he has said, and he means to speak quietly, but the weight of his accusation falls to the plush carpets like shouting. Peeta actually flinches, which makes him feel worse.
“I know she will be,” says Peeta, which is not really an answer. There is no acknowledgement of who she is, that is always something that has floated between them without being touched. Gale runs his sweaty palms down jeans that feel too stiff and wishes he hadn’t come.
He has not looked up into the house so far, but there is a rustling before him and now he lifts his head. Katniss has not changed. Her forehead is lined with an extra stressor, her clothes have no tears or signs of misuse, but it is the same forceful gaze that meets his. Her hair still lie in a single braid, although it hangs looser than it was when she was a hunter. For a moment, no one says anything.
“Gale,” says Katniss, and there is no sign of whether she wants him gone.
“Katniss,” he says, and because he can’t resist the dig, “is it Mellark now? You didn’t strike me as the type.” Instinctively, he claps a hand over his own mouth, shoving down his biting words with the taste of coal dust. It’s an unfair jab and both of them know it. (He didn’t think seeing her would hurt, but it feels like a stab wound reopened after inadequate bandaging.)
Her gaze does not harden, but her lips quirk as if smiling. “I wish you had come to the wedding,” she says. “You would’ve had a grand time of things.” Peeta glances between the two of them as if unsure what to make of things. Katniss nods at him quickly, gaze softening. “I’ll take Gale out back. You don’t need to worry.”
Peeta mumbles a noise of assent and brushes past Gale, and then it is just him and the girl whose sister he may have killed. There is no real way to address that sort of gap. Katniss turns on her heel and motions for him to follow her through the house. They get only a couple steps forward before she stops again. This time, he is faced with the back of her head as she speaks.
“I don’t know why Peeta let you in,” she says. “I’m not sure I wanted to see you again.”
“I’m sorry,” Gale says. “I just didn’t know how to tell you.” She does not look at him. He stares into the back of her head, watches how she cocks it when she considers his words. Katniss has always valued family above anything else. She did not understand what to do when it fractured, and he cannot blame her for it. He cannot blame her for staying with the warm consistency of the baker’s son.
“I hate you,” says Katniss. She does not sound as resolute as before. “But I still wish you had stayed.”
He swallows. There is so much time between the two of them, so many hours in the woods, so many years since Gale drew up a bomb and Primrose Everdeen exploded beneath it. There should be more to say, there shouldn’t be this quiet angry silence dragging them down. Katniss heaves a breath and he steps back because he can feel it. Gale hadn’t even realized he’d come so close.
“I shouldn’t have run off to Two,” he says, and the words come faster now. They’re not pretty; just desolate and desperate and sort of pathetic, but speaking is all he has. “Catnip, I should take everything back and go back into the mines again.” Gale lifts a hand to his eyes: he doesn’t know when he started to cry.
Now she turns to face him, her eyes watering with a sort of despondent certainty. Her mouth opens, closes, like sentences themselves have evaded grasp. “I don’t know how to be angry at you anymore,” Katniss says, and it sounds like a confession. “Is there anything else to say?”
Strange that Peeta should be the one who knows how to apologize when he’s the only one who should have nothing to say. Katniss leans against him like she used to when exhaustion caught up to her in the woods. Gale claps an arm awkwardly over her back, unused to an Everdeen who has had enough to eat.
The house around them is too beautiful, they are covered in too many scars to name. Later Gale will wish he had drafted a speech and explained everything the last years had brought down on him. Even beyond that, he will thank every higher power that he just walked up to the Mellark house and tried not to cry. As of that moment, he blinks back tears and swallows a sob. He isn’t used to so much feeling.
“I’m a bit of a fucking wreck today,” Gale says, and she stifles something that hovers between a laugh and a sob. He does not know whether he has missed having a friend more or whether he has just missed Katniss Everdeen, but he is willing to bet it is probably the latter. They stand there, swaying, closer than they have been since she told him to shoot her and he wouldn’t do it.
Maybe, just for that one moment, it was enough.
Disentangling is necessary but unfortunate, so he has to rest his arm against the wall to regain balance. Katniss coughs into her sleeve, and Gale makes an awful joke about how he hasn’t gotten sick since the Seam. Her answering laugh reassures him that she isn’t actually ill; something he hadn’t thought to be worried about.
“Are you okay in Twelve? Are you happy?” Gale questions her on impulse, but are you happy with Peeta feels like an attack even if he hasn’t said it. To her credit, Katniss doesn’t immediately respond, but looks off into the space behind him as if considering the merit of her answer.
“I don’t know if happy is the right word for it,” she says slowly, “but I think it’s a good one to describe how I feel most of the time.” He smiles at her, relieved that she is as okay as possible. It is all he has wanted for her, all he has thought about in the late nights when bombs sound in his brain and the war clouds every hope of rest. Hope has not been in vain.
“So the therapist got to you too?” he asks, and Katniss rolls her eyes even as her lips quirk up into a grin.
“Shut up,” she laugh-grumbles, shoving him as he snorts. It feels like they are children in the woods again, sharing goat cheese before the Reaping and not knowing there could be anything better than the life they were living. He feels almost happy, which is a hell of a lot closer than he’s been in a long time.
“How long are you staying?” Katniss asks, bringing Gale back into the present. Now that they have begun to dispel the ghosts between them, she seems newly invested in his presence.
“I was going to catch the train back to Two this afternoon,” he replies, “but I haven’t gotten a ticket yet.”
Her face lights up. “Well, no reason you shouldn’t stay for dinner. And lunch. Have you had lunch yet? You should stay,” says Katniss, and she looks more earnest than her words would imply. (Gale doesn’t want to impose. He doesn’t want to leave.)
“I’ll stay,” Gale says, and Katniss smiles.