The year is 4078, seventy eight years since the first Hunger Games, four years since the 75th Hunger Games, three years since the Third Quarter Quell, two since the Rebellion, and one year since Panem's official Declaration of Freedom.

And who is he kidding, Gale lives the good life. He has all the food he needs, all the girls he wants, and all the luxuries District Two can offer.

He fucks someone else every other night. He doesn't really care what they look like, or how old they are, or how drunk they are. He's normally pretty drunk by about that time, anyway.

A couple of times, he fucks Johanna Mason. She's something like a friend, and she can give him what he wants, because when the whiskey bottle is calling his name, he knows he needs to get high off of something other than morphling and trashy alcohol. Something like pain, and the first time she sees the blood running down his arm she runs away, and the second time she sees it she slaps him and she kisses him until he feels alive in a way only the blood-fuelled adrenaline can make him.

The next day, he sees her in work and they fake smile at each other. In light voices they discuss the documents, and Johanna's cat, and if Gale is coming to the party on Saturday.

(Four hours later, she sits on the sofa in his house and watches the mesmerizing dribble of his red blood make a tired rust-colored stain on the grey-carpeted gloom)

Gale doesn't really have much left to ask for. He has his family, and his estranged friends (he calls them at night sometimes, when his blood has turned into alcohol and ecstasy).

There are no woods in District Two: not like Twelve, Eleven and Six. The ground just sort of dissolves into a crumbly, white- yellow powder, which he doesn't like to walk on. (He knows it's called sand, but just because he knows what it is doesn't mean he has to like it.)

By the border leading to District One, Gale notices that the ground is a thicker, smooth gray clay. He thinks about this for a second and comes to the conclusion that he doesn't care.

Sometimes he wishes he had his hunting partner there with him. Like when he sees something she'd laugh at, and he turns to look at her because he knows she'll be there, and she isn't. Or when he's aiming his bow, and there are two targets there, and he whispers "left," so she knows to shoot the right, but he's the only one there. And when he lies in the bed at night and he moans the wrong name. her name, instead of whoever the hell's in the bed with him.

Honestly, the worst thing was when he was walking with his mother in Twelve, and he saw Peeta Mellark, Lover Boy, holding Katniss in his arms and calling her Catnip. It makes his head throb unevenly, like blood under a bruise, and the words he cannot say hurt his tongue as he thinks desperately that the nickname is his and nobody else's, and he wants to scream that Catnip is the girl from the woods, from before the Games, the girl who shared blackberries and arrows and smiles, the girl he knew better than himself, the girl who belonged to Gale.

But he knows it's stupid to be distracted with hopeless memories, and he reminds himself that memories never stopped Katniss Everdeen when she ran into her lover's arms, so instead he concentrates on his paperwork.

Bloody paperwork.