Author's Note: Hi, I've only started reading fan fiction recently and I decided that I wanted to give it a go myself. So if you read it I really appreciate it and if you liked it or hated it please let me know!
Disclaimer: No copy right infringement is intended by this story. All Hunger Games plots and characters are property of Suzanne Collins.
PROLOGUE
I just want to warn you before you read this.
This isn't one of those sappy sickly-sweet Capitol thought-up love stories. Not some fake relationship put on simply to entertain an audience that's sick and tired of the same old same old. It's real alright.
So now you're thinking it's an average boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married at the district office and have a toasting ceremony to make it official. Well you're wrong.
It wasn't love at first sight either. In fact, I was even a little repulsed at the thought of spending time with another starving and scrawny seam girl. They were all the same. Yet she was different. Her chocolate hair was made of strands of thousands of rich colours and her grey eyes were like the sky right before a hurricane. And behind those mesmerizing eyes is a fiery personality with plenty of fight. I'm hardly surprised that we became the closest friends imaginable. More like brother and sister than anything else.
After all that you'd think that it would've worked out. But surprise surprise, it didn't. I never thought I could hurt her in the same way she hurt me. With that searing pain of betrayal that tears your heart in two. I hurt her more. Much, much more. So I understand that he truly deserves her. At least she'll be genuinely happy with him. That's just about the closest I'll ever get to true happiness.
I deserve this punishment. It hurts to know that I won't get married or have kids. Who would want me anyway? I'm nothing more than an empty shell, someone who forces a dazzling smile for the cameras. I'm as bad as any of those mutts who forced kids in the games in the former Capitol. No one can see that I'm dying inside. But none of that hurts anywhere near as much as knowing that I will never see her again.
Never hear her sweet melodic voice trilling to the mockingjays. Never see the determination in those deep stormy-grey eyes of hers right before she sent her arrow soaring. And never feel her soft, moist lips against mine again.
This is the story of me. Gale Hawthorne.