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The dark man sits at a mahogany wooden table. He has pitch black hair and grey eyes that seem like they’ve seen too much of life. His fist is clenched tightly around the small black object in his hand. He knows the act actually shouldn’t take much. All the man has to do is dial ten digits, the digits to a phone number he had memorized years ago. The problem was, he has no idea what he could possibly say if someone answered the phone.
After taking a deep breath, the man dials the first number. 7.
“NO!” he thinks forcefully, hastily pressing clear. “She wouldn’t want to talk to me. She made that clear.” Setting the phone down, he roughly pushes himself away from the table and stomps away, slamming the door in his wake.
This becomes a daily ritual. Everyday, he makes it a couple more digits into the number before loosing his nerve. The man’s wife knows. She does not encourage him, nor does she disapprove. She knows he must do this on his own.
It takes a week and a half for the grey-eyed man to finally dial all ten digits of the phone number. He waits with baited breath for the phone to ring once, twice, three times. He breathes sharply from shock when a young, innocent voice picks up the phone and asks, “Hello?”
The man shuts the phone with a snap.
He feels a slight pressure on his shoulder, and looks up into the beautiful, deep blue eyes of the woman he loves. He knows it would never have worked out with the other girl. They both had too much anger, always fueled by hatred. Alex balanced him out. She was the ice to his fire.
“No?” Alex asks, though she already knows the answer.
The mad shakes his head sadly. “I think her son picked up.”
“You knew she had children,” Alex whispers, though no one else is in the house and she isn’t sure why she is.
The man puts his hand over hers and nods, his eyes fixated on a slightly discolored spot on the wooden table.
“You’ll talk to her. I know you will.” Alex kisses the man on the cheek.
* * * * *
Several days pass. It becomes habit for the man to dial the phone number, stare at it for a long time, and then press end. One day, the man decides that today would be the day. He was finally going to have the conversation he should have had fifteen years ago.
The man steels his resolve, dials the phone number, and with a deep breath, presses send.
“Hello, Melllark residence,” a deep male voice says.
“Hi,” the dark man breaths, so softly that the man on the other end doesn’t hear.
“Hello?” the deep male voice asks.
“Hi,” the dark man repeats more loudly. “Is Katniss there?”
“May I know who’s speaking?”
“Just…tell her it’s an old friend.”
“Um…alright. I’ll go get her.”
Seconds pass. To the dark-haired man, the seconds feel like an eternity.
“Hello,” a female voice speaks into the phone.
“Hey,” the man says softly.
“Um…do I know you?” the woman asks.
“We were friends when we were younger. We used to sneak out and go hunting together.”
“Gale!”
“Katniss,” Gale says, his voice husky with emotion.
The silence and distance between them is pregnant with tension and words left unsaid.
“When did you and Peeta tie the knot?” Gale asks.
“Eleven years ago. We didn’t send you an invitation because --,”
“I know why,” Gale cuts her off.
Katniss doesn’t reply, and the pair sits in silence.
“Are you married?” Katniss asks abruptly.
“Yeah.”
Silence.
“Her name is Alex.”
“Do you love her?” Katniss asks.
“Very much, yes.”
“Good,” she grunts.
Gale nearly asks Katniss if she loves Peeta, but thinks better of it. He no longer has feelings for her, he isn’t sure he wants to hear the answer.
He knows what Katniss really wants to talk about, but doesn’t want to bring up the subject on his own. Because it had been his job. It had been the one thing he had going for him. To take care of Katniss’s family.
Prim sat huddled up in the corner of the old, worn, patched-up couch. She was wearing an old, oversized sweater and was hiding under a soft blanket. The blanket covered her feet and was tucked under her chin so that the only part of the girl people could see was her head, most of which was hidden under long, dark tresses.
Prim’s eyes were wide with fear as she stared, shocked and helpless, at the horrible violence occurring on the television screen in front of her.
Gale stood by the door of the room, his muscular arms crossed tightly over his chest, his narrowed eyes flicking from the screen to the girl. She was like his sister; he would do anything to protect her, and he too felt helpless because he couldn’t stop what was happening. Quietly, Gale walked over to the girl and sat down next to her on the couch, and put his arm around her comfortingly. She turned her head and glanced at him, then rested her head on his shoulder.
“Is Katniss ever coming back?” she asked softly.
Gale’s breathing caught for moment before it returned to normal. The possibility that his best friend may never return was unfathomable, and he couldn’t-- wouldn’t-- allow himself to think of it. “Of course she is,” he replied.
“But what if she doesn’t?” Prim asked.
“She will,” Gale whispered fiercely.
After a long while, Prim fell into a fitful sleep, and Gale was left to watch the Hunger Games on his own. He didn’t like watching the violence, yet felt drawn to the screen, for every time he saw Katniss was another reassurance that she was still alive. He turned and kissed the top of Prim’s head, watching her sleep, her small escape from seeing the horrors that her sister was going through. And in that moment, he promised himself that whatever happened to Katniss, he would never let anything bad touch her sister.
And he had broken that promise.
“I’m so sorry,” Gale says softly.
Katniss doesn’t have to ask what he’s talking about. “I know,” Katniss replies.
“Beetee and I had no idea Coin would use those bombs against our own people,” Gale says in an attempt to defend himself. “What she did was…she was a….” Gale stops, unable to think of bad enough words to describe what Coin had done.
“She was a power-hungry bitch who thought every action was just a means to achieve an end,” Katniss says bitterly.
Gale nods his agreement, and then realizes Katniss can’t see him. But she knows he agrees; even after over a decade of separation, the two knew each other.
“I’m sorry too,” Katniss says after a long time.
Gale almost asks what for, why could she possibly be apologizing to him after what he had done to her, but then he remembers.
He stood on top of a tall building, looking over the mindless chaos occurring in the city below him. It had become difficult to distinguish between the rebels and the Capitol civilians; all side had just merged into a mob,, and no one was quite sure who was fight with whom. The only people Gale knew were on his side were the occasional familiar faces he could spot in the throng. Annie, the crazy girl whose husband had just been murdered. Julian, the younger soldier with whom Gale remembered sharing his food. Peeta, the man who had stolen his Katniss. And Katniss herself, fighting her way through the crowd like a wildcat, bow and arrow in hand. Suddenly, a gloved hand came over his face and covered his mouth, and a second wrapped around his torso. Another figure dressed completely in white wrenched the gun out his hand, and yet another pinned his hands behind his back.
Gale fought. He couldn’t not fight. Not fighting would go against everything he had said and done in these last few years. He tried to scream, and found the gloved hand covering his mouth had moved to cover his nose so he couldn’t breathe either. He kicked and punched and flailed his limbs around wildly, but to no avail. In a last, desperate moment, he succeeded in catching Katniss’s eyes. Please, he begged soundlessly. Please. He knew it was their unspoken agreement. Katniss had to shoot him, put him out his misery, so that the Capitol bastards couldn’t do anything to him or get any information from him. But she didn’t. All she did was watch as he was dragged away.
And, later, after she had shot Coin, that was exactly what he did for her, when she was fighting and pleading and yelling his name. Nothing.
They were sorry excuses for friends and hunters. Both of them
“I know,” Gale replies, just like Katniss had earlier.
“I should have shot…I should have known…I just didn’t think I could…I didn’t understand what…” Katniss stammers in a halfhearted attempt to justify what she had done.
Gale should have said it was okay. That it was all in the past. But it wasn’t, and it never really would be. So they sit in tense silence once more.
Suddenly, Gale hears a young voice on the other end.
“Mommy, could I have some cookies?”
“One second Gale,” Katniss says quickly into the phone. “Sweetheart, how many cookies have you had today?” she calls to her son.
“Five,” a sheepish voice replies.
Gale smiles.
“Well then, no more cookies today, okay?”
“But Mommy!”
“Hey, c’mon Michael.” Gale hears the male voice from earlier and the sound of a child’s laughter.
“Hey, I’m back,” Katniss says into the phone a couple moments later.
“Hey,” Gale replies.
“Hey…um…Gale?” Katniss starts hesitantly.
“Yeah?”
“Would you and Alex like to come over for dinner sometime? I know it’ll be odd what with you and Peeta and me and everything that’s happened but I really think it would be nice to talk face to face and—.”
“I’d love to, Katniss,” Gale says, cutting her off. He suddenly notices Alex sitting in the chair adjacent to him, and he smiles and holds her hand. She smiles back widely.
“Well…um…I have to go,” Katniss says hurriedly into the phone. “Michael’s going to eat himself sick if Peeta keeps letting him eat more cookies.
Gale laughs. “Bye Katniss.”
“Bye Gale.” He hangs up the phone.
“I’m sorry,” the both whisper at the same time, a hundred miles apart. But even though they cannot see each other, or even hear each other, they both smile. Because they are friends, and hunters, and though they may have failed tragically at those jobs one day fifteen years ago, they still understand each other better than anyone else in the world.