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

Page Twenty-Four

Katniss

We're hiding in an abandoned building just past the outskirts of the city. I don't know if we've crossed the District border yet, or even what District we're in. Since the Rebellion, the borders have been less distinct, and the country is more of a nation now than a dystopia.

The kids are asleep - I don't know how he managed to do it, but Gale rested their minds by telling them a story. I hadn't been listening intently, so I'd only heard chunks. He'd been telling them about the old days back in District Twelve when we were younger, before the Games. He'd left out the gorey details of the time he had almost died from a public whipping, the strict laws of no hunting, the fence, the Peacekeepers, the brutal murders in the Hob, the starving people living in the gutters. He'd made District Twelve sound like a haven. Then again, anywhere but here was welcome now.

I'm watching the city below, smoke rising from here and there, the wailing of sirens, people's dying screams. I'm glad we're too far away to hear the chaos in detail, or see it. I'm not sure if I can go through this again.

I'm lost in thought when Gale comes over and sits beside me. "What are you thinking about?" he asks in a direct way I'm not familiar with when it comes to Gale. He takes my hand but doesn't look at me. I follow his gaze and see he's looking beyond the burning skyscrapers. I know what he's thinking about - escape. It's all he ever thought of when we were kids.

"The old days," I say honestly - a trait that's not associated with me either. We are two different people tonight. "When we used to hunt in the woods. Before the Games, before the Rebellion, before..."

"Before Peeta?" Gale sighs, not looking at me, but I can feel the pain in his voice. I imagine, not for the first time, how he must have felt watching the Hunger Games featuring Peeta and I. We won because we were a couple, because we loved each other so much, we couldn't die - when really, our love was just a tactic. Looking at Gale now, my best friend in the whole, who knows me inside out, even over a decade later, I wonder if my love with Peeta is real. Did I marry him because I felt obliged to? Did I settle for his love because I knew I would never find anyone who loved me as much as I did? I must not have taken my own feelings into account - I haven't for years. But sitting here now, I'm wondering if it was a mistake.

"Remember when you asked me... if it would have ended differently?" I say, trying to sound non-chalant, but my voice is raspy. "If I hadn't gone in the Games... if someone elses name had been pulled out of the male jar that year..."

Gale looks at me, and his eyes hold years of trust and adoration I've looked past for so long. "Yes?"

"It would have ended differently," is all I say, and then my train of thought is cut off by the feeling of Gale's lips against mine. We block out the sounds below, the wailing, terrifying sirens that hold a promise of devastion and pain to come. We block it all out, because tonight is about the realization that I want to be with him - not because I am obliged to be with him, but because I want to.