Disclaimer: I am not Suzanne Collins.
Short one shot of why Gale and Katniss would never have been happy together.
"So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for allt he kisses I've withheld, and because it doesn't matter anymore, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it….The instant I open my eyes, the world seems disjointed. This is not our woods or our mountains or our way.
Mockingjay, page 198
Gale always thought it was a competition—who I'd end up with, that he and Peeta were competing for me. In a way…I guess that's true. If Peeta had went to those games and died, I might have ended up with Gale. But that's hard to imagine seventeen years later with another baby on the way. It's easier this time, this second time—but not by much.
I wonder if in some other place that I would have been Gale and I—But I come to the conclusion over and over again that it was always meant to be Peeta. Even without the games, I think I would have found him.
All the kisses I shared with Gale were to stop him from hurting, to soothe my loneliness. It was not our way. I was trying to give him what was left of me since there was no more Peeta to love. All Gale's and I's kisses tasted of heat and misery, of mutual loneliness. Two lost souls trying to find something—but we weren't it. We were never meant for each other.
Peeta drew me in like a fire does on a cold night. He warmed my cold, frozen heart. He gave me hope in a world I had long since lost hope in. And I guess it's true, I never got over that loaf of bread when we were eleven. Even on my worst of days, it's the top of things on my list—that bread he gave me. He has loved me even when I hated myself. He has shown me that life does get better—that love can heal.
Gale and I were never meant to be—together we were too destructive. His anger and fire was too much for me. I'm sick of fire—except I'm not. It's not the heat and fury of Gale that has ever drawn me in, but the soft, tingling heat the Peeta inspires in me. It can consume me, and I'm still not burned. That's something I've never felt with Gale.
I remember when wondered if he'd be waiting for an answer like the man in the song. He nor I could see how things worked out back then. But they worked out the only way they would have ever worked out. We're both happy in a way we'd never have been if we were with each other. It was simply never our way to love like that.
It's something that took a lot of time to understand, because I didn't understand myself and in some way I still don't understand why I was drawn to Peeta. The only conclusion I can come to is that he is the missing part of me, only I didn't know it was missing back then at all. A future with Gale had never been in the cards, some things aren't meant to be. I know that now as I've known it since I told Peeta, "Real." I don't have to feel guilty that I messed it up or drove Gale away—that in some other life things would be different between us.
It was not and will never be Gale and I's way. We just couldn't see it back then.