Chapter Text
“We really should have run when you said it. The first time. Before any of this happened.”
The bunker shakes violently, but Gale is calm. I can see Prim a few bunks over still playing crazy cat, but the crowd of onlookers is thinning. People around us are pretending to sleep, but there’s no way they are, with the way the walls tremor and lights flicker every time a bomb is dropped.
“You don’t mean that Catnip.” He sounds tired.
“I do.” I brace myself for Gale's reply. I know he believes in the war, always prioritizing the greater good of Panem or whatever he thinks he’s doing, and not understanding why I don’t feel the same way.
He shifts on the thin mattress on my family’s bunk, moving away from me almost uncomfortably. “What about Peeta?” He asks, surprising me. We don’t talk about Peeta, especially now.
“I didn’t know him then. It wouldn’t have mattered.” The words feel wrong in my mouth as they come out. “We’d have been long gone by the time the reaping even started anyway.”
The dim lights flicker and dust rains down from the concrete ceiling again. Someone in the bunks across from us whimpers and pulls the thin gray sheet higher over their face. I’m surprised the residents of thirteen seem so afraid, they’re usually such stoic people. I suppose most of them have never actually seen violence or war in their lifetimes.
Gale just nods, and moves like he’s going to wrap his arm around my shoulders, but falters and drops his hand. I wonder if he’s thinking about what his relationship would be with me if we ran and I never went to the Hunger Games. Or even if I never met Peeta Mellark. I feel the mattress shift where Gale was sitting and watch him silently head over to Prim and my mother, scooping up Buttercup on the way and making Prim laugh. I watch them for a while but Gale never looks my way again.
As far as underground bomb shelters go, this one at least has beds, I think, crawling under the thin sheet on mine and Prim's shared bunk. She won’t sleep tonight, and neither will I, but I make sure to leave space for her just in case. Every time I close my eyes all I can see is Peeta’s emaciated image on Capitol TV, risking his life to warn us. It makes me sick, but I feel so terrible I squeeze my eyes shut and endure the terrible image. All I think about lately are all the mistakes I made over the past year or so that lead to this. Everything I could have done differently to actually save the people I love, instead of putting them in danger every day of their lives. I know they pretend like it's okay, and might genuinely forgive me, but it is my fault. All of it. That’s what I was trying to say to Gale. I need to apologize to them all for not just running when we had the chance.
Prim comes over to our bunk at some point and tucks herself into my side. She’s getting older, and we’re crammed into the tiny bed, but it makes me feel better. She’s safe and that’s all that I ever wanted, even if she is stealing the entire blanket. I don’t know if Prim is actually sleeping or just pretending, but I rest my cheek on top of her blonde head like I did when she was a little girl.
I can’t even think about what’s happening to Peeta in the Capitol because of me. I wonder what would happen to him if we did leave district 12 before our reaping. He could have won, if he wasn’t preoccupied with saving me the whole time. Worst case he would have died in the Games and my family would die in the wilderness somewhere and none of this would ever happen. I wish so bad none of this ever happened. I try to think about how I could have done things differently to save Peeta and Gale and my family, but that starts to get too complicated.
I wish she was dead. I wish they were all dead and we were too.
Finnick was right.
I didn’t think I was going to sleep at all through the District 13 bombing, but I wake up the next morning, the bunker surprisingly silent. I reach to the other side of the bed and find it empty. Prim probably went to the top bunk to sleep with our mother once she realized I actually fell asleep for once. She’s so afraid of interrupting my sleep when I get so little of it lately.
I stare up to look at the bottom of my mothers bunk, blinking sleepily, and see a dim ray of sunlight on dingy wooden ceiling planks instead. The sheet I fell asleep under feels heavier and scratchier than I remember it as well, and I feel holes near the corner that weren’t there before. I roll over, and swing my feet over the other side of the bed, landing on splintered wooden floorboards. Buttercup growls at the sudden movement in our quiet little room.
This is my old house in the Seam, a disturbingly realistic image of it.
I’m dreaming. An extremely vivid dream – but just a dream.
My chest pinches with nostalgia and grief for this place. My boots are in their regular spot at the foot of the bed, laying messily across the floor like I used to leave them, carelessly kicking them off before bed. It’s strange because I never dream of life before the Games anymore. All my dreams are nightmares about vicious Capitol mutts or President Snow, flicking his snake tongue at me while Prim or Peeta or any number of my loved ones die.
I flip the old worn quilt back up to neaten up the bed. It’s the thin old quilt Prim and I used in the warm summer months because she couldn’t sleep without a blanket, no matter how hot it got. My mother packed it up in a box somewhere when we moved to Victors Village and didn’t need our old bedding anymore. The place looks the same as it did the last time I was here, when we packed our old belongings away to take to the Village. More lived in, though. This is how I remember our home being for the first sixteen years of my life. I didn’t realize how much I missed this tiny room.
I am so unused to good dreams that I am tense and wound-tight as I pull open the moth-eaten curtains to let the early morning light in, and rifle through my small clothing drawer. I laugh to myself when I pass on a threadbare blue t-shirt that I used to love, because I notice it has a stain on the sleeve and a small hole in the seam. I never used to notice things like that before I got a taste of expensive new tailored clothing, or the standard pristine gray District 13 uniform. When I successfully dress in a soft green top and a pair of worn but well-fitting trousers without a Muttation jumping out of my sock drawer, I decide to accept that this is a happy dream. I don’t know how much time I have here but I know I need to take advantage of whatever time I have left in this place that doesn’t exist in the real world anymore.
I stumble out the door to the main room of our small Seam shack, pulling on my hunting boots. It’s all just like I remember and I’m impressed with the amount of detail in my memory of my old home. There is a small lump of goat cheese wrapped in leaves on the counter of our small kitchen. We sell a lot of Prim’s goat milk, but sometimes, for special occasions, she will make cheese or cream for our family to keep. Usually I would put the cheese in the icebox to share later for breakfast or lunch. Today, though, I slip the cheese in my pocket and head down the narrow dirt path toward town. The diet in Thirteen is so strict that I haven’t had cheese in months, and I can’t help myself from taking it for myself. Besides, no one seems to be home and it is my dream. Maybe dream Prim meant it as a gift anyway.
Small wooden shacks line the familiar dirt road, everything coated in a gray-black dust. A few people mill around outside, but not as many as I expected on a summer morning. The Seam is usually bustling from dawn until dusk, everyone hustling to make ends meet. A woman with the same gray eyes and dark hair as me sweeps dust off her small stoop as I walk by and my heart aches for my district. The last time I was here, the homes were burnt to ash, and singed bones lined the road. Before I can process that memory, I see the Hawthorne house down the road. I remember the way me and Prim would stop by for breakfast before school sometimes and consider heading over to say hello. I decide not to because it feels ridiculous to waste time in this crazy realistic dream visiting a family I see every day in District 13 anyway. I wonder if there is school today or if it’s late enough in the summer for school to be out. It would be my last year of school in District 12 this year, and my second last year in the reaping. I’d be headed for the coal mines soon if this was real.
I’m lost in thought, impressed at how realistic my memory of District 12 is, when the street turns from dirt to paving stones. I didn’t really think about where I was walking but now I’m standing in one of the neighbourhoods bordering the town and the Seam. I can see the roof of the bakery– taller than the other merchant buildings in the town square. I never knew I noticed the height of the bakery before now, but I guess I must have. Peeta. I wonder if he’d be working this morning. I think about whether my brain would be able to conjure up the old Peeta in this District 12, or if he’d be whatever the Capitol has turned him into in the weeks since he was taken. I take one lurching step toward town square.
“Catnip!”
I whip around at the familiar voice. This is the first person I’ve heard speak in this strange dream, and he is striding toward me with a broad grin. I haven’t seen Gale smile like this in so long. I’m surprised my mind can even picture such a clear image of it. This is the Gale I left behind last year.
“What are you doing out here? I thought we were meeting later?” Gale asks as he gets closer. This version of him is something I haven’t seen in a long time, and his easy smile and confident stride, in this place that doesnt exist anymore throws me off for a moment.
“Meet?” I ask dumbly.
“Yes” He laughs “Meet. At the spot we always meet. Are you telling me you forgot?”
“No! Of course not! I didn’t– forget.” I thought I was controlling my own dream but this Gale is not something I’ve thought about since the reaping. Just seeing him like this reminds me why we were such easy friends back then. It does suddenly feel strange that I didn’t automatically go to our meeting spot in the woods. The feeling I’ve been having all morning comes back, and I feel like this is a real memory of a real day in my life, I just don’t remember which one. I know I wouldn't have wandered into town the first time I lived this day, I would already be hunting squirrels in the woods. “I was going to the bakery!” I don’t know why I tell Gale the truth. I have no reason to go to the bakery this morning. I didn’t even know Peeta Mellark yet.
Gale frowns slightly, confused. “I’ve already been. C’mon, let’s head out. It’s already late.” I nod too quickly and start to follow him back out of town “We’ve already gotta be back soon.”
I don’t know what he means by that. We almost never stay out too late anyway, after we had filled our game bags enough, it got hard to carry them home. I also liked to get back to the fence early enough to trade with merchants before they closed. We had stayed out until dark plenty of times though, we only had to return before it got too dark to find the way back.
The walk back through the Seam is quiet. I miss the comfortable silence Gale and I used to enjoy together. There are a few more people around now, but still not many. Most homes have curtains drawn, like everyone is sleeping in today. I think maybe my subconscious knows that many people from my District didn’t make it out of the firebomb attack, and is trying to protect me from seeing the dead even in my dreams. It doesn’t quite make sense though, because I see plenty of people I knew before who I know didn’t make it. My mind also doesn’t seem to mind showing me horrific nightmares each night, so it seems strange to draw the line at this. We pass through the gap in the fence in the meadow near my house, not wanting to waste any more time walking around the Seam. I just squeeze through the gap, and Gale is far too big. I laugh as he struggles through, and it feels safe and easy in a way I haven’t felt since before my first trip to the Capitol. There wasn’t much to laugh about as a tribute, and there definitely wasn’t much to laugh about in Thirteen. Gale always said I only ever smiled when we were in the woods anyway.
It’s nice out. It must be summer. I’m sure there is no school today, or Gale and I would not have planned to meet out here. Mid or late June maybe. The forest is alive and we have no problem hunting game and gathering nuts, herbs and berries. We are gathering strawberries at our usual patch when Gale speaks again.
“You were headed to the bakery this morning with nothing to trade?” It makes my heart twinge because of the way he asks. He’s just curious. He’s making an observation. My Gale has been so angry and so jealous lately, especially when it comes to the baker's boy. I suppose in this dream, I haven't met Peeta yet.
For the first time I wonder why I would have such a vivid dream that doesn’t involve Peeta. He is all I have been thinking of. The simple days hunting with Gale outside District 12 are so far removed from my life now. I remember being in the bomb shelter after Peeta’s warning, and a strange conversation with Gale. The conditions don’t seem ideal for such a happy, simple dream. I think again of my Peeta at the bakery, and of the Peeta I saw on Capitol TV.
I pause for a moment too long, distracted. “I had coins.” Gale says nothing “I thought I could get something for Prim. She likes to look at the display in the window.”
He just frowns, confused. This version of me would never spend our few coins on frosted sugar cookies. Especially if I expected to have game to trade later in the day. I’m sure in the real life version of this day I went to the bakery after hunting and tried to trade squirrels to the old man for stale cupcakes, or whatever the shop had left.
“I guess she could use a nice gift. Today of all days.”
I just stare at him because I don’t know what he means. Today of all days? I keep hiking toward the lake, and Gale follows.
We get a good haul. Fish, squirrels, a couple rabbits, strawberries, and most of the herbs and medicinal plants my mother might need. It all feels so real. I fall and cut my elbow on a sharp stone, and the blood and pain are so realistic I’m queasy looking at it. It’s so vivid for a dream, I wrap it up and it still hurts for a couple hours. I’m checking on my wound, getting ready to head back when I realise why this day is so familiar.
We haven’t spoken about our meeting this morning near the bakery in hours when Gale speaks up again. “Speaking of the bakery” he says “Look what I shot”
I turn around and freeze. I finally understand. This day feels real because it was real. And I remember it so vividly. I feel so stupid for not realizing, and everything rushes back to me; from the moment I woke up without Prim in our bed. I should be home comforting her right now. This is not a happy dream at all.
Gale’s smile falters when he sees my reaction, but maybe my strange behaviour today has explained it, because his arm doesn’t lower. He is holding a golden loaf of bread, with an arrow stuck in the side.
Look what I shot. It’s bakery bread. The bread Peeta, probably, baked this morning, not knowing he wouldn’t be home to enjoy it tonight. The bread the Mellark family baked special for the Reaping day rush.
“This isn’t real.” I turn away from the bread, bile rising in my throat. I can’t think about the boy at the bakery. I can’t think about what is about to happen today. I stare at the pile of fresh, red strawberries, willing myself to wake up, remembering the joy gale and I felt talking about enjoying this meal after the reaping, the first time I lived this day. I have to remind myself this is not real. This is a dream.
“What? Yes it is.” Gale thinks I am questioning the bakery bread “You saw me leaving the bakery this morning.” He breaks the bread, offering a piece to me.