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

Page Fifteen

"Mom?"

Katniss and I break apart. My breath comes in ragged gasps, and she is shuddering. We spin around to see Kuwai standing in the doorway of his bedroom, rubbing his eyes to get rid of the sleep - that, or the image he has just seen. Maybe he didn't see it.

"Ku! What are you doing up?" Katniss rushes over to him, picking him up in a motherly gesture I never saw in her before, except when she was with Prim.

"Couldn't sleep. I'm scared," Kuwai frowns, ignoring me. "Mommy, what's the Capitol?"

Katniss doesn't answer him, just fastens the top button of his pyjamas and tuts. "You shouldn't be scared. Uncle Gale and I are going to protect you and your sister, no matter what. Now, you should go back to sleep..."

"Do the Capitol have Daddy?" Kuwai's voice is so young and so innocent it's hard for me to hear him ask these questions he couldn't possibly understand the gravity of.

"You shouldn't ask questions like that. You know that."

"Oeno said I should. She said she's going to start asking questions, too. We're not kids, Mommy. We need to understand the sit... the situ.. the..."

"The situation?"

"Yeah, that word. We need to understand the situation. At least that's why Oeno said."

I find myself smiling. He's so innocent; his big sister is his role model.

"Oeno should know better than to be polluting your head with thoughts like that."

There is a pause as Kuwai takes this in. He is not satisfied with the lack of answers to the questions he hasn't even come up with himself. He asks another, and this time, he genuinely wants an answer. "Mommy, why didn't you and Unclce Gale protect Daddy from the Capitol?"

My smile fades and Katniss goes rigid. Her son waits in her arms, hopeful for an answer. He doesn't get one. "Maybe it's time you go to bed."

"But the sun is up, Mommy."

"Don't argue with me."

She turns to carry him into the bedroom, and Kuwai's eyes lock with mine. Another question springs to his mind - I can see it in his eyes - but he doesn't ask it.

I have a feeling he will ask again, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.

I kissed his mother, a married woman.

The woman I still love.