GALE

There are a million reasons why I miss District 12.

My family.

The people.

Our house.

My friends.

The woods.

Katniss.

Mostly Katniss.

But I miss the old Katniss - the one that I could be comfortable around, the one, that (yes, selfishly), I had to myself. Now Peeta... Well. She's with Peeta. And they're happy. I couldn't want more than that, but... I always ask myself: what if?

What is she'd never volunteered for the Games?

What if Prim had died?

What if we were left here, the rebellion never started, and our lives had gone on as normal?

Maybe part of it is that I miss the Capitol in a twisted way. Now I have nothing to fight for - fight against, and it's left me empty and wondering what I should be doing with my life. It's left me with no purpose at all.

District 2 helps me to forget that. It gives me a little more purpose, a little more drive to work for the new world, the perfect world, that I always wanted.

It's just not really happening the way I thought it would.

And I learned, very quickly, that perfect worlds do not exist anywhere.

Beetee, like me, is working for the new government. We have uncovered documents and history on how democracies and republics and everything that we need to know about running a country smoothly, about giving rights to people, about being merciful. But it may not be enough - we have been shaped by 75 years of Hunger Games, and this memory is one that will never be able to fade. Not from our children, grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren. Horrific memories will always last.

Katniss and Peeta have changed. They do not want to speak about the Games. They are willing to move on, willing to continue with their lives, but I don't. The Games will remind us forever of what, in our darkest, most desperate moments, we are capable of. What we should never do again.

I am on the phone with Katniss - one of the things that is coming back into use in our recovering empire, something of luxury that I am not quite used to. Something that makes a guilty feeling rise in my stomach every time I see it.

"Look, Gale, come back... Take a break," Katniss pleads with me. I haven't seen them for about two years (for the precise reason that they've been married and I just can't handle seeing that), and I can tell Katniss is different - who wouldn't, after the Hunger Games - but it's more than that. She's happier, now, but sometimes I think she's hiding many things from me.

"There's a project we're working on... Secret," I tell her, even though it's not entirely true. I'm working on a project, sent specially by the government, using tech made by Beetee. A solo project. "It's busy."

My radio crackles, and I pull the phone away from my ear and tell Katniss to hold on. "Commander Hawthorne? Please state your coordinates."

I rattle off a bunch of numbers on the screen in front of me. Beetee's tech is incredible - partly because he's been taking Capitol stuff and messing around with it, making it more user-friendly. Then I go back to the phone. "Listen - I'll try to come back..."

Something weird is on the screen now.

On the screen that transmits from satellites the Capitol had up is a gigantic swirl of red, yellow and blue air. It spirals scarily fast, and I realize that... It's heading towards my boat. My heart starts beating twice as fast, and fear shudders through me. It's a hurricane.

"Gotta go. See you, I hope," I mutter and then slam the phone down. I'm off the coast of District 11, planting defensive weapons and monitoring equipment, just in case there are any hostile cultures who would attack Panem. But I wasn't expecting this - now isnot the season for storms, and neither am I far out to sea. The boat is on auto-pilot, due to Beetee's excellent tech again, and it should avoid the storm, but it seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Like magic.

"Commander Hawthorne to control center! Commander Hawthorne to control center! There's a huge hurricane heading towards me!" I shout into my radio and stumble to the upper deck. In the distance, there is a huge, swirling, white shape, advancing quickly towards my position, and with a feeling of dread, I realize that my boat could never outrun it.

The radio crackles. "Commander... Repeat... Low... Signal..." It crackles again, and then static fills my ears.

I am all alone. A huge hurricane is heading towards me, and I have no way of saving myself.

The winds begin to whip my clothes back and forth, and I stumble to the side of the boat. The water is the strangest color of sea-green, purple, black and blue, all mixed together, lit up as if there is a light shining from the depths of the ocean. The boat pitches from side to side, making me dizzy, and I sit down hard on the deck. I cling to the side of the boat, and picture my family's faces in my mind. How I will never get to say goodbye properly, how... How I never, ever told them I loved them.

Did Katniss feel the same way when she was ripped away to the Games?

Did Peeta?

I pray to whoever's listening that I will survive this. Voices echo through my mind - or are they real? Are people talking through the hurricane, blasting my boat with their breath?

Have I lived through the revolution just to die in a storm at sea?

The boat tips into the storm, and the last thing I see before the water is a beautiful swirl of colors, and a face, lit up from below, like magic.

It is Katniss's face, and I call out to her, just before everything goes black.