Begin Again

Chapter 4~ Shoot Straight

Katniss's P.O.V

"Gale," I whisper, fleeing from my shock to the screen and placing my hands against it.

My eyes scan his body. He looks hardly himself. The Gale I knew would only bother with a suit on reaping day. I remember after war how he'd had about the same amount of scars I have myself and possibly more. Here, he looks clearer and fresher than he ever has. I can only see a faint mark on his neck that allows me to just barely recognize it as a scar. I know immediately there's been an attempt to cloak the damage done to him with something like a heavy coat of bronzer. But that big a scar is impossible to obliterate.

I remember the last time I saw him. When I was about to shoot Coin and he gave me my bow and arrow. I close my eyes, envisioning it perfectly. The wrap around his neck that failed to cover a section of the gash, revealing its severity. I could never forget. The image haunts my mind every time I sleep and the last words he spoke to me linger constantly in the air. They weren't important, no, but I hold onto the sound anyway. It's like holding onto my last piece of him just like I still keep Buttercup as a remembrance of Prim.

"Shoot straight."

Those were his words to me. They had no sentimental value at all. The words were useless, but those two words along with Buttercup help me hold onto a slither of sanity I constantly try to tell myself I still have. Those words, they sounded like him. It was something he would say to me. The words were Gale's. The Gale I had known. Not the Gale who's on the television screen. The words he speaks right now are scripted. He sounds as fake as Effie's wig.

I naw mindlessly on my lower lip. He seems to have lost weight. Even though someone has clearly tried desperately to cover up his scars and weight loss, it will not fool me. I can see that he is still as broken as I. Left lost in the cruelty of the Capitol. Something is bothering him. I see it in those grey eyes that used to look at me with such fascination. Something is making him lose appetite like me. Something is keeping him from wanting to do something as simple as eat resulting in weight loss. His eyes stare deeply into the camera as if he is face to face with me, staring at me, but yet he still seems distant. As if his mind is thinking of something other than the words he's uttering.

Every now and then he'll glance down at his notecards and flip to the next one with a deft movement of his hands. Those hands. The ones that once so prestigiously set up snares in the woods while I watched carefully taking notes. I wonder if he still hunts. Alone, or maybe with a guy friend . . . a girlfriend. As for me, while I will eventually walk into the woods again, I will never touch a bow and arrow again. It evolves too many painful memories.

Gale finishes up, reading off the last couple of sentences well enough. As stable as possible. I've learned he's a government official now. The job suits him well. I know he'd always wanted to take part in changing the world for the better. Now that's happened, the fact that he's doing something that'll keep it the better way delivers me no surprise. He's professional looking. I'm sure I'm the only one who can see beyond the coverup though. I see the disastrous mess he really is. Like myself. Only I witness the broken piece the Capitol left him in along with many others.

As he gets to the final sentence, he hesitates. He stares at the notecard with a pain inflicted look. I recognize it as the same look I often have myself. He's remembering something. Something terrible from the past. Something that most likely haunts him endlessly. He frowns and knits his eyebrows together. I know he does not like whatever it is he has to say and is trying to reword it, but when he sighs, it's visible he has given up and decides to read it anyway.

"Together we will shoot for the goal we have of repairing the nations destruction and reach it; we just have to," I see something flash in his eyes and he loses the confidence he's built up, dropping the fake determination in his voice when he says, "we just have to shoot straight."