This is what I leave for Gale at our usual meeting place on the first Sunday after the Harvest Festival.

What day is the festival on?  Katniss, you believe that Snow is going to kill you for your failure and that you need to run away in the woods, but you wait some unknown amount of days, possible up to a week, before you bother to warn your friends and family?  Especially Gale, the only person directly threatened in this whole debacle!

Good thing you have Magic Knowing Powers and can tell that Snow is going to wait for no good reason at all.

And then…we jump into a backstory that lasts for several pages and is a direct continuation from the last chapter.  The pacing in this book gives me a headache.

They hadn’t counted on the highly controlled jabberjay having the brains to adapt to the wild, to pass on its genetic code, to thrive in a new form.

Sweetie, honey, I know this is probably hard for you.  But bear with me.  The jabberjays did not survive.  They didn’t even last through a bird’s natural lifespan.  They did not ‘adapt’ to the wild. 

What they did was get horny, sex up other birds, and then keel over dead.

Words mean things.  That previous sentence?  Doesn’t not jive with ‘having the brains to adapt to the wild.’

This whole thing just raises so many questions.  Most of them involving the phrase “What the fuck, Capitol, do you just have a lot of spare time on your hands?”  Why bother to make them gendered?  Why bother to make them fertile?  Why bother to make them able to cross-breed with mockingjays?  Because all three of those traits would be very hard to obtain intentionally and pretty much impossible to do accidently.  (And why aren’t there any true mockingbirds left?  Are the crossbreeds really that genetically superior that they overtook an entire species in less than a hundred years?)

It’s a hike to the lake, no question. If he decides to follow me at all, Gale’s going to be put out by this excessive use of energy that could be better spent in hunting.

He’s on a near-starvation diet, or has been for most of his life.  (Supposedly.)  Speaking of waste, you can waste energy, too, especially when you’ve only got so many calories to spend in the first place.

I look in his eyes. His temper can’t quite mask the hurt, the sense of betrayal he feels at my engagement to Peeta.

Mind you, Katniss has never bothered to explain the situation to Gale.  Why not?  The situation is tense because she won’t explain anything to him, therefore she can’t explain anything to him to relieve the tension.  It’s a completely fabricated point of drama that could be eliminated (or at least changed) if Katniss would pull up her big-girl britches and just stop lying her ass off to everyone.

Sort of like the marriage thing, I have no sympathy for her in this situation.  She brought it on herself.

“President Snow personally threatened to have you killed,” I say.

[…]

It’s enough to bring him to the fire. He crouches before the hearth and warms himself. “Unless what?”

 “Unless nothing, now,” I say. Obviously this requires more of an explanation, but I have no idea where to start, so I just sit there staring gloomily into the fire.

Katniss, do you even listen to yourself?  You just admitted that he’s got no reason to kill any of you anymore.

She does finally tell him about everything that happened, including the fake romance and death threats.

“Gale, I can’t think about anyone that way now. All I can think about, every day, every waking minute since they drew Prim’s name at the reaping, is how afraid I am. And there doesn’t seem to be room for anything else. If we could get somewhere safe, maybe I could be different. I don’t know.”

I can see him swallowing his disappointment.

Gale’s an ass.

He hears this whole story about how she’s been forced into a relationship, been paraded around under false pretenses, been threatened with death, now she’s proposing that they flee into the dead of winter with several small children in tow…and his response is to think she wants to run away ‘with him,’ so he confesses love.  It’s like his only thought was “Wheee, let’s go play family in the woods, where I’ll literally be your only fuckable option for miles and miles around.”  And then he acted surprised when she didn’t share that brand of enthusiasm, and then disappointed at her very reasonable explanation.

“I have to, Gale. I can’t leave him and Peeta because they’d —” His scowl cuts me off. “What?”

 “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how large our party was,” he snaps at me.

And then he continues to be an ass by getting upset that she wants to save more people’s lives. 

Gale, she didn’t come to you saying “let’s run away and start a life together;” she said “let’s run before the Capitol murders us all.”  If you really believe, along with her, that these lives are in danger, then you are a sociopath of truly epic proportions for being upset that they’ll get in the way of your kissy-times.

“You’d leave him behind?” Gale asks.

 “To save Prim and my mother, yes,” I answer. “I mean, no! I’ll get him to come.”

 “And me, would you leave me?”

What even is this entire conversation?  Is he threatening to stay behind because she’s daring to bring that other boy along?

And Katniss, what are you doing?  You’ve made the offer; you’re not obligated to drag him along kicking and screaming.  If he’s going to be this level of an ass, leave him.  You don’t have to sacrifice yourself for people who don’t even want to be helped, especially if their priorities are this screwed up.

“Just if, for instance, I can’t convince my mother to drag three young kids into the wilderness in winter.”

Why didn’t he bring this up before?  Why did he wait until he found out about Peeta’s involvement before asking logical questions?

Because Gale thinks with his dick, obviously. 

Although, once they finally stop talking about the ‘I don’t want to run away with you unless I can make out with you’ plan and get on to rebellion, I do like their other argument.  It’s a nice highlight between the two sides of the debate, between Gale’s desire to fight against an oppressor and Katniss’s desire to just not see more bloodshed, especially from her loved ones.  So often in revolution stories, you only see the Gale side of things, the people who are so convinced of their cause that they brush off thoughts of collateral damage.  I was actually excited to see Katniss’s side get the spotlight here.  Mind you, I still side with Gale.  Those fuckers are wrong and need to be stopped, and rebellion hurts like woah but at least gives the chance for a better future.  But that doesn’t change the fact that there are plenty of Katniss-thinkers in every conflict, so it’s nice to see the other side. 

“What about the other families, Katniss? The ones who can’t run away? Don’t you see? It can’t be about just saving us anymore. Not if the rebellion’s begun!”

On the other hand, Gale’s really jumping the gun here.  A rebellion in District 8 doesn’t mean 12 is any better prepared.  He’s in the same situation he was in at the start of the argument, but the ‘other families’ didn’t factor into his thinking then, when he thought he would get some boneage out of the deal.

“By ‘we’ do you mean just you and me? No. Who else would be going?” he asks.

 “My family. Yours, if they want to come. Haymitch, maybe,” I say.

 “What about Gale?” he says.

And then when she talks to Peeta, he has the same reaction.  “What about that other boy?” 

Why don’t either of them have the reaction of “Holy shit, death threats?  Really?  I might die if I stay here? And my family, too?  AAAAH!”  Because, ya know, that would be too reasonable, I guess.

“Yeah. But I don’t think for a minute you will,” he says.

And then he agrees with her, but he’s just patronizing her.  “Aw, look at the little Katniss, trying to make plans.  Isn’t it so cute?”

“What?” I say, trying to force my way back up.

 “Go home, Katniss! I’ll be there in a minute, I swear!” he says.

Whatever it is, it’s terrible. I yank away from his hand and begin to push my way through the crowd. People see me, recognize my face, and then look panicked. Hands shove me back. Voices hiss.

 “Get out of here, girl.”

“Only make it worse.”

 “What do you want to do? Get him killed?”

Why won’t anyone tell her what’s going on?  She’s only pushing through because she wants to find out what the commotion is.  If someone would tell her, she wouldn’t need to proceed in order to find out.  But instead they withhold information, because this is the book of no one telling people anything.

I only know that whatever waits in the middle of the square is meant for me.

…really?  You’re really that self-centered?  You think everything, absolutely everything, revolves around you, even someone else’s punishment?

You know, there are other people in the world who might be affected by this.  Like, oh, I don’t know, the guy who’s currently getting whipped.  Or even the crowds of people standing around witnessing.