What Happened to Gale
"Shoot straight, okay?" Then I touched her cheek and left.
That was the last I ever saw of Katniss Everdeen. It broke my heart to leave her, but I had to let go, because I was only a pain now. I only brought up bad memories. Katniss didn't need me anymore. She could survive without me.
I decided to head to District 2 because it was the farthest away I could get away from District 12 at the time. My job was good, a television reporter, far better than working in the mines. Vick, Rory, and Posy adjusted quickly, and they made new friends fast and were happy.
I made a few friends, too, I went to parties and I went to dinners. I tried to act happy, to bury the pain so deep there was no chance of it ever coming back up. But my mother knew better. I would visit her house every weekend to see her and my siblings, and one look at me and she knew I was broken inside, but she ignored it for the first few months and let me try to heal on my own.
But after that it became worse. I stopped visiting her and would instead spend my weekends sitting on a couch and looking blankly into the corner, thinking about what I had done. Blowing up the Nut. Killing Prim. Leaving Katniss. Breaking Katniss. I was almost twenty now, but I wouldn't even look at any girls. They all either reminded me of Prim or Katniss. Prim and Katniss, Prim and Katniss.
One day my mother had had enough. She left the kids at home and came over to my flat, banging on the door when I wouldn't open. I buried my head in my hands and sat on the couch, not moving. My mother eventually found the extra key that was under my mat, and she unlocked the door and looked around until she saw me curled up in a ball on the couch.
She sat next to me and hugged me, and I did something I don't I had done since the Games. I cried. I sobbed and my mother held me, her own tears mixing in with mine. Then we talked. About the Games, about my father, and about when I was little. She told me to move on. That it's okay.
With my mother's help, I slowly healed. And I thought about how much worse Katniss had it, being in the Games and all. I multiplied my pain by a hundred and only hoped that Bread Boy was taking good care of her.
I moved on. I married and raised a family and now not once did I take life for granted. I still thought about Katniss every now and then, but the pain lessened. I was no more broken. I was a shattered vase, all glued together again, looking the same from far away but when you look closely there's lines and cracks where I'm forever changed.