"I'm not coming back," she tells him, head low as she traces circles in the dirt, her voice is barely a whisper but he still hears the finality in her tone.
Gale knows the moment when he will never hold Katniss's heart. The moment when he knows it lies elsewhere. She's not coming back. In a few weeks' time all that will be left is a wooden box, and a death that will become the hole in his own existence. The thought burns his insides, its implausible to him, after tomorrow he will never see Katniss Everdeen in the flesh again, his hands clench and unclench, fistfuls of grass shredded between his fingers.
He wishes they had left when she'd wanted, though Gale's hope in wishes has always been futile. He has hope in Katniss though, and he knows she could come back, she could do it. She just doesn't want to.
"So that's it," it comes out like a snarl. "You're going to save him," the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth, but he knows her saving him isn't what's causing him to feel like this.
It's the fact that she's choosing to save Peeta, over choosing to come back to him.
Gale knows it's a selfish thought, but he still thinks it and then he almost tells her that he loves her again, but he doesn't, because that's selfish, too.
And then she's telling him that she has to save Peeta, because it's only fair, because Peeta doesn't deserve to die, and because Snows never going to let her live anyway, not this time. Because, because, because he thinks. She doesn't say the real reason, and she's still not looking at him either, he knows it's because she knows that if she does he'll see it in her eyes. Doesn't matter, he figured it out anyway.
Gale knows the moment when he's lost her for good, and it's not the moment Finnick sees it, nor is it the moment the rest of Panem sees it.
It's right then.
"I know," he tells her. And she finally looks up at him. "You're not coming back," he stands a leaves without a sound, retreating out of her world as quietly as he approached it.
Gale knows that it's selfish to love her.
He wishes she could be selfish and love him back.