Chapter Text
The air in District 12 was lighter than the one in District 2, and colder too. He didn't really choose to come back. All his family was here and his mother insisted it was time for him to come back after more than 20 years in District 2.
Gale thinks his mom is so insistent because he didn't really have any friends in 2 and he also didn't build a family. He was too concentrated in his work training peacekeepers to think about anything like that. To concentrated trying to forget...her. He hadn't really spoken to her at all after he left for 2 and she left for 12. And he wasn't that close to his siblings anymore so, the few times they wrote, they tended to leave Katniss out of the letters.
When he gets out of the train he guesses is around noon, he gets his backpack and starts to walk through the town. He doesn't recognize anything anymore, nothing is were it was when his District was bombed. Also, everything looked...happier, nothing like in District 2 where everything was made of concrete and was grey. Here, a lot of establishments had colors and lights, and big letters or drawings.
He passed a bakery with warm yellow trim around the windows and baskets of braided loaves stacked behind the glass. He didn’t need to look at the sign to know who it belonged to. He knew Peeta had come back at some point, he had reports about it. And Rory did mentioned that he was working for Peeta on the afternoons.
Gale kept walking.
The sun was low enough now to cast long shadows behind the buildings, stretching across cobbled roads that hadn’t been there when he was young.
He found his way to the edge of the Seam almost on instinct. A couple of the original houses were still standing, patched and modernized but holding on. Others had been rebuilt altogether. The people here smiled more, walked slower. Children laughed. That was the strangest part of all...how carefree they sounded. Like the air didn’t carry ghosts anymore. He walked until he arrived to the Victor's Village. He had to see her, tell her that he was here. He noticed there was only two houses that had light in it.
Just as he was deciding which one he had to knock in, one of the doors opened up. A girl, no older than 7, ran out of it with her two dark braids following behind her.
"Mama come on! We'll be late to pick up Daddy!" She called while she climbed the stairs of the other house and knocking too many times "Nonna Effieeeeeeee!"
Nonna Effie? That's who live there? Effie? He didn't know Effie had kids, much less grandkids.
The door she had come from stood wide open now, soft light spilling out across the porch and onto the garden path. Inside, he could hear movement and footsteps, a hurried clatter of something being dropped, and then a low, familiar voice.
"Willow, stop knocking like that, Daddy can wait for us 5 minutes"
Katniss.
A second later, she appeared in the doorway.
It knocked the wind out of him.
She was older now, of course. They both were. The years had worked their quiet changes...lines at the corners of her mouth, a stillness in her posture,but Katniss Everdeen was unmistakable. In her hip a boy, maybe 4, with blonde curls and grey eyes. That left no mistake in Gale's mind, that kid was the picture of his father, just with Katniss' eyes.
She put down the boy, taking something from his hair. The boy, instead of running like his sister, kept on Katniss' side taking her hand. That's when she looked up and saw him. She seemed as surprised as he was at seeing the kids.
"Hey Catnip" Gale said, The nickname came out before he could stop it. It landed between them like a memory that didn’t know where to sit.
"Gale"
There was a beat of silence, broken only by the impatient voice of her daughter from the top of Effie’s porch. “Mamaaa!”
Katniss turned, called back without looking: “Two minutes! Get Nonna!”
"I'm tryin'" Willow called knocking again.
"Birdy, wait a second!" Haymitch said opening the door. Wait...Haymitch? Wasn't the girl knocking for Effie? "For the love of- Nonna is in the back feeding the geese. You can wait 5 minutes without shaking the house down"
"Grandpa" Willow said as serious as a 6 year old can be crossing her arms “Daddy’s gonna be done, and we’ll be late!”
“You sound just like your mother,” he muttered, stepping aside to let Willow barge in without another word.
Katniss rolled her eyes at the comment, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward but as she turned back to Gale the smiled disappeared.
"You're back" Katniss said to him, probably because she didn't know what else to say. She didn't know him anymore.
"Yeah um... thought I'd come say hi before you heard I'm here from other people" Gale explained.
The little boy clutched his mom's hand, looking up at Gale with round and curious eyes.
"Hello, I'm Rye" He stated, Katniss looked down at him and caressed his curls "Mama you know him?"
"I used to" she said softly, it wasn't meant to be mean, Gale knew that. It was just the truth.
She wasn’t wrong. Whatever they’d once known of each other was long gone, blurred by time and smoke and the miles he’d put between them.
“I was a friend of your mom’s,” Gale said, crouching slightly to Rye’s level. “A long time ago.”
Rye studied him with the serious eyes of a child trying to put someone in the right storybook.
“Before me?” he asked.
“Way before you” Katniss answered with a small smile, that again disappeared when she looked back at Gale "We're going to pick Peeta up from the Bakery, we do it every day. Rory is probably there with him, want to come with us?"
She doesn't know why she asks, but Rory is his brother so it would make sense that he would come and then go back home with him.
Gale blinked, surprised, not by the invitation, but by the quiet, almost resigned tone in Katniss’s voice. It wasn’t warm, not really. But it wasn’t cold either. A kind of polite reflex that had once been buried under layers of shared pain and unspoken words. Now it floated up like something lighter, and more distant.
He nodded. “Sure. I haven’t seen Rory yet.”
Just as he said that, Willow came back, this time with Effie behind her. Effie Trinket had changed with time, but not entirely. The makeup was lighter, more subtle, but the poise was the same. And her smile, though slower to appear, was still theatrical in its arrival.
“Oh, Gale Hawthorne,” she said with a surprised breath, eyes scanning him like she was trying to confirm he wasn’t a mirage. “You’re taller than I remember"
He didn’t know what to say to that, so he offered a polite, “Hello, Effie.”
Willow had already seized her grandmother’s hand and was tugging at her coat, urging her forward. “We have to go! Daddy’s almost done!”
Effie leaned down just enough to kiss the top of Willow’s head, but her eyes never left Gale.
“Well,” she said more softly now, “this is unexpected.”
“I just got in today,” Gale replied, adjusting the strap on his shoulder. Willow just seemed to realize this new company. And frowned her eyebrows just like Katniss always did when she didn't trust something.
Willow stepped closer to her mother, her wide blue eyes narrowing as she studied Gale the way a squirrel might study a curious noise in the brush.Protective. Skeptical. And she didn't say one word.
“She’s got your frown,” Gale said before he could stop himself, the words quieter, almost meant for Katniss alone.
Katniss gave a faint huff through her nose but she didn’t respond. She just looked down at her daughter, smoothing a hand over Willow’s braids in a habitual, grounding way. It struck Gale suddenly how natural it all looked. How settled she seemed in this life, with her children orbiting close, Peeta waiting in the warm light of the bakery, Effie and Haymitch living in front of her like old fixtures still holding the seams of the world together. It seemed like Katniss had kept everyone on her life. Everyone except him.
Willow, ever bold in the face of mystery, finally broke the silence.
“Are you a bad guy?” she asked bluntly.
Gale blinked, startled. “What?”
"Willow" Katniss tried to intervene.
Willow didn’t flinch. “You made Mama look sad. And Grandpa says people who make Mama look sad gotta explain themselves.”
Oh great, the kid got Katniss looks and Peeta's brain. How a girl this small could detect that her mother was sad was out of comprehension for him.
"He's not a bad guy birdy" Katniss said to her, and Gale wanted to think it was true, but he knew she was lying so Willow wouldn't get anxious. The girl accepted that and took Effie's hand again before they started to walk to the bakery.
They walked in a quiet line down the path that led into town, past the houses that had once stood empty, now filled with life and blooming flower beds. Gale trailed just behind the group, his boots brushing the edges of the cobbled path. Rye had climbed up into Katniss’s arms, head resting on her shoulder.
Willow walked ahead, swinging Effie’s hand in hers and narrating some story about the bakery’s secret cookie stash that Peeta kept “just for them.”
The bakery came into view, glowing with that same honey-colored light that had stopped him earlier. The smell reached them first, sugar and yeast and something cinnamon, and the sight of people moving in and out of the little shop, arms full of loaves and pastries.
Through the front window, Gale saw him.
Peeta stood behind the counter, his sleeves rolled up, a dusting of flour across his forearms. He was laughing at something Rory was saying while lifting a tray of rolls from the oven. Nothing was left of the boy he had seen last years ago, full of scars and fears.
Willow made it in first, making the bells of the door ring. She ran straight to her father's arms.
"Daddy we made it in time!" she said delighted.
Peeta crouched instinctively, catching Willow in midair with the ease of long practice, spinning her once until she squealed with joy. Her laughter rang out over the hum of the shop like a bell of its own, sharp and clear and full of life.
“You did, Birdy,” Peeta said, his voice soft and warm, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Just in time to steal the last of the cinnamon cookie.”
"Ohhh no Mellark" Katniss said with the biggest smile, putting Rye down so he could also run to his dad "They had enough sugar for today, they spent the morning with Haymitch"
Rye toddled toward his father with both arms raised. Peeta leaned down and scooped him up, balancing the boy easily on one hip as he nudged the tray of cookies behind the counter with his foot.
“No more sweets today, buddy,” he said, smiling down at his son. “Mama’s declared a ban.”
Rye wrinkled his nose. “But I’m a growing boy.” that made Katniss laugh, because that was the argument she gave him so he would eat vegetables.
Peeta kissed his cheek. “Grow on carrots then.”
The little boy groaned, and Katniss laughed again, crossing the floor to lean against the counter beside Peeta, her arm brushing his. They didn’t even seem to notice they were touching. Gale did.
It wasn’t just that they were together. It was the way they moved like one unit now, two halves of something that had learned to bend instead of break. He’d never seen Katniss like this, gentle, teasing, at ease. And it wasn’t because life had gotten easier. No, Gale knew her too well to believe that. This peace...they’d carved it out of all the wreckage.
He felt like a ghost watching the living. Also because it seemed like they had completely forgotten that he was there.
"Peeta do you still have the magnolia cupcakes? Or did you sell all of them?" Effie asked looking around.
Peeta looked up at Effie’s question, as if just remembering they had company beyond the chaos of their own little world. “Uh...let me check the cooling rack,” he said, gently handing Rye off to Katniss, who hoisted the boy onto her hip like it was second nature. And then it's when Peeta's eyes locked on his, realizing they had more company.
Peeta’s expression didn’t shift much at first, not surprise, not hostility, just a pause. Recognition mixed with something like weight. His gaze lingered for a second longer than Gale was comfortable with, before he turned to check the back shelves.
“I didn’t think I would see you again” Peeta said casually as he returned, holding a small cake box tied with a ribbon. He set it on the counter without looking directly at Gale.
“Didn’t realize I’d be here either,” Gale replied, voice low. “Wasn’t exactly planned.”
Rory appeared with his day to day clothes, and Willow on his hip.
"This one got into the kitchen again, even if she knows she can't" Rory said tickling her tummy making Willow giggle loudly. Cutting the tension in the room.
Willow beamed even as she squirmed in Rory’s hold. “I wanted to help!”
“You wanted to eat the frosting,” Rory corrected, setting her down and brushing flour off her nose.
Gale watched the interaction with a strange feeling stirring in his chest. Rory, his little brother, who used to trail after him with scraped knees, was part of this world now. Comfortable in it. Peeta tousled Rory’s hair on his way past, and Rory didn’t flinch or brush it off, just rolled his eyes in a way that said it was familiar.
Family. They had a rhythm. One Gale hadn’t even known he’d missed until he was standing outside of it.
Rory finally noticed him, his mouth parting slightly in surprise. “Gale? You’re here?”
“Just got in,” Gale said, shifting on his feet. “Didn’t mean to crash your routine.”
“You didn’t,” Rory said quickly, with a genuine smile. “It’s good to see you. Mom’s been asking about you.”
Gale blinked. “She has?”
Rory nodded. “Yeah, especially lately. Said you’ve been gone too long.”
That twisted something deeper in Gale’s gut. He had been gone too long. Maybe not just from District 12, but from everything. From people. From life.
Willow tugged on Peeta’s apron now. “Can I have a cookie now?”
Peeta looked at Katniss, who raised a brow.
“One,” she said, “and only if you split it with your brother.”
“Deal!” Willow shouted, already running toward the display case.
Peeta gave Gale a glance then. Not hostile. Not warm. Just...curious. Like someone measuring a man they once knew against the one standing in front of them now.
“You sticking around?” he asked.
Gale hesitated. Then nodded. “Yeah. I think I am.”
Peeta gave a short nod in return. “Well. Welcome back.”
Katniss looked over her shoulder at him, and though her face held no smile, her eyes weren’t closed off like before. "Alright! Let's go home"
They closed off the bakery and the started to walk back to the Victor's village, Willow now on her dad's arms.