Disclaimer: I don't own anything that belongs to the Hunger Games. That is all the property of Suzanne Collins and Scholastic.

Author's Note: Somehow I always feel more for the one who isn't picked, rather than the one who is. This is my idea of what really happened to Gale after Mockingjay.

Gale's POV

There's a strong temptation to switch the television off when I see her face on the screen, hear her voice again for the first time in years. I should switch it off, for the sake of my mental health. But I don't. I haven't seen or heard from Katniss since I walked out and left her after our confrontation over Prim's death.

I know she married Peeta, and that they have two children. That she's as happy as she can be now, with them to help ease the scars of the war.

I leave the television on, and listen to Katniss speaking at a war memorial ceremony, because I am a masochist, and this is how I torture myself.

I can't see her again in real life. I know she doesn't want that. It would only be awkward. Whatever we once had is broken, shattered beyond all repair.

I guess I always knew she'd choose him. I used to know her better than anyone, and when I saw her on the screen with him during the 74th Hunger Games, I knew.

I didn't want to face it because I was in love with her, and held onto some desperate hope that maybe during all those hours we'd spent together in the woods she had felt the beginnings of the same for me.

But I've had a chance to turn it all over in my mind over and over again, for years, and I think I understand now.

I said Katniss would choose whoever she needed to in order to survive. And what she needed was life, not death. Bread, rather than a bow. She needed gentle, kind Peeta rather than a deadly killer with his stupid, fiery rants against the Capitol.

My Catnip never needed any help to be deadly. What she needed was someone to give her a reason to fight.

I thought that it was her and me against the world, but what I didn't know was that he had got to her first, before I even met her. With the bread.

She was never really mine from the moment I met her.

It doesn't make it any easier to bear, of course. I chose to stay here in District 2, about as far away from her as I can get. I took a job, to feed my family, who are the only things I have in the world.

They're the only thing I trust now. The bond of family is the only true one, anything else is breakable. That's what I learned from what happened with me and Katniss. I never thought I'd lose her completely, but I did, our four years of partnership dissolving into nothing in the end.

It's why I'll never marry. I could never trust anyone like that again. I don't have anything to offer, anyway. Didn't she teach me that? I have nothing but hate and bitterness inside me, for something that doesn't exist anymore. We won the war, the forces of evil that I railed against are gone, and I am now a rebel with nothing to rebel against.

I don't go hunting anymore. I don't need to do it, and I don't want to, because it reminds me of her.

I know my mother worries about me, despite my best efforts at appearing to be fine. But she knows as well as I do that Katniss is gone from our lives, and will never return.

I'm not alone here. A few other battle-scarred soldiers are around, and we support each other. Annie Odair knows what it is like to face the rest of your life without the person you love. Johanna Mason knows what it is like to have no one left to love. Beetee is long dead now, but he knew how to lose himself in his work, and it's what I do now.

War sometimes takes everything from you, and despite the loss of Katniss, I still have my mother, my two little brothers, Rory and Vick, and my baby sister Posy, who is all grown up and married now.

Katniss finishes speaking, and I watch her step down from the stage and join Peeta and her children. She is happy, and that's what's important.

I'll always regret the way things ended between us, but I have to accept that some things can't be fixed. I can't undo Prim's death. I can't tell her that I didn't shoot her when she asked because I understood better than her what the situation was at the time. That she wasn't being carried off to be tortured and killed.

I don't think I could have killed her anyway, even if I wanted to. But she will be angry at me still, if she ever thinks of me at all.

Suddenly Katniss looks directly into the camera, as if she's searching for someone, and my heart leaps a little, as our eyes lock, and I fool myself into thinking that she's looking for me. Then the camera cuts away from her and I switch the television off.

I've tortured myself enough for one night.