The Hunger Games: Book Four - How it Might Have Been ... Gale.

Page Eight

Gale

The following week is an experience for us all - Katniss, Oenothera, Kuwai and I. They become accustomed to my home, gradually, warily, but eventually. By the third day, Kuwai is no longer afraid to place his fingers on the window panes as he overlooks the city, awestruck and bewildered by it all. Oeno eventually trusts the electrical appliances they evidently don't have yet in District 12, especially the ArchivePlayer. It's a new development even to me. It plays all past mandatory programming the old Districts were forced to watch on TV back when I was younger, living in District 12, hunting and surviving day to day. I catch Oeno watching the tape of the 74th Games more than once, but she is quick to switch it off when I walk past, and even quicker when her mother is nearby. She obviously has some sort of fascination with the nation's past history, a hobby she can never pursue with the parents she has. The children make me smile. They're so like their mother, so ambitious and fierce, yet wary until they're certain what's they're up against.

Katniss has eventually uncoiled herself from the tight spring of herself she has been wrapped in since her husband was 'abucted'. I use the word loosely. By the third day, she goes 'shopping' - but I know she was never one for that. She's scoping out the area like she would a patch of the forest we would hunt in, looking for predators and prey. I'm surprised when she leaves without a bow and arrow strapped to her back.

"She hasn't shot a bow in years," Oeno says to me after her mother has left. She says it almost sadly, nostalgically. "I think it brings her back too much. But it's part of who she is." Oeno and I have not had a full conversation until this one. She's easier to warm to than her brother, however, who watches us from behind the sofa tenatively. 

"Your mother is a very talented archer," I say, and my throat catches a bit at the words. Hunting with her, it was an experience I took for granted. The bow was like an extension of her arm, the arrow simply her ambition to hunt personified as it flew through the air. Right into the eyeball; that was the most humane way. She never said the word 'humane' after she returned from her first games.

"I wish... I wish I could get her to shoot again," Oeno says, sighing. It surprises me - she sounds more like an old friend of Katniss's rather than her own flesh and blood. "She taught me how to shoot, but she never once let go of the arrow. I've seen videos... the way she shoots... it just seems like... such a waste."

"Have you ever mentioned it to her?"

"Oh no," her eyes look straight into mine, almost shocked. "They - her and... her and Dad... - they don't talk about... about the..."

"The Hunger Games."

Kuwai winces as I say the words aloud. That is when I realize that these children as more desensitized to the past we lived in than I first thought. Their parents have stopped them from finding out what they went through, but more than that, what they achieved.

"You can't say those words," Kuwai squeaks, but his little voice is determined. The sparkle in his eyes is a mirror image of his Dad's. These children were spawned from people who, years ago, did everything in their power to spread the word about the injustice of the Capitol. And now they were hiding it, concealing it, pretending it never happened, even to their own children.

And so I make a decision. I'm getting Peeta Mellark back. I'm getting Katniss Everdeen back. I'm getting them both back, physically, but mentally. I'm going to search these people for the warriors that saved our nation years ago, and if needs be, make sure they do it again. 

And so, the children and I watch the 74th Hunger Games.