I will warn you one last time: DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU HAVENT READ TAKING SIDES!

If you have read Taking Sides…welcome and I'm so glad you're here! I never thought we'd get this far, did you?

I meet him in the woods, alone. It's the only way we can see each other, away from the world's prying eyes. It's a bit of a sacrifice, maybe, but we made a promise, and we have kept it: no one has seen us together since that day at the train station, six months ago, now.

I don't think about that day often. At least, I try not to. Memories resurface all-too-frequently without my consent, and it's always easier to remember the bad parts than the good. Being surprised and shouted at the train station. More yelling, in the Victor's Village. The accusing words and stares that came after.

Most everyone has forgotten about that day. They've forgotten they had a reason to dislike me and life carries on as normal, with a few notable exceptions. I think if I could do it over again, I'd make the same choice. It would be hard, but I'd do it.

Gale is already in our spot. He beats me almost every day, since I have school to worry about and he has no such demands of his time. I don't resent him for it, not by any means. Gale paid a steep price for his early graduation, and the wealth that came with it.

"Glad you decided to show up," Gale says sarcastically, passing me my bow.

I roll my eyes as I take it. "I'm sorry we can't all be drop-outs. Where are we hunting today?"

"Oh…you want to hunt?"

An arm snakes around my waist before I can really protest. I laugh and push him away even though there's definitely something tempting about his embrace. It's good to see Gale happy; it doesn't happen all that often. "You know I have to hunt to feed Mom and Prim."

"Or you could let me buy food for them."

I wrinkle my nose at him and he drops the issue immediately. Gale, of all people, understands. He is just as stubborn and proud as I am, maybe even more so. If the roles were reversed, he would never accept charity from me, so it wouldn't be right for me to take advantage of his generosity. He's been far too generous to us already.

"Alright, so we'll go hunting," Gale concedes. "But just remember, this is your last chance to see me for three whole weeks."

The playful mood between us sours. I hate that Gale is leaving, even though it's not his choice. It's his Victory Tour. A stupid fanfare where the victor (in this case, Gale) dresses up and makes speeches in every district, plus the Capitol.

Every other year, I've thought of it as boring and dumb. This year, it will be agony. I don't want to relive the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, and Gale certainly doesn't either. He's locked up that part of himself; I don't know if he could have gone on living any other way. Going through all of it again, in pictures and in memories, will be hard on him. And being away from him will be hard on me.

"Three weeks will fly by," I say, attempting to keep my tone light. The more it gets to me, the more it will get to Gale, and he'll need to be strong to get through this. For the next three weeks, he will not have me to comfort him. The closest he'll have is his mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, who more or less hates him and probably would not be willing to cuddle.

"Maybe for you."

"Yeah, they'll fly by because I'll be working double-time to keep the kids fed!" I nudge Gale with my elbow and hold up my bow, reminding him why I'm here. "You gonna help or not?"

Gale chooses to help, and we effortlessly slip into hunting mode. It's the most familiar thing in the world- I've known Gale as a hunting partner much longer than I've known him as a boyfriend. I'm still figuring out how romance works, but to stalk prey together? Easy as breathing.

We work together like we were born to, although, there's some difficulty just in finding work to be done. What's easy in the summer is much more difficult in the winter. Our snares rarely catch anything, with the trap itself often ending up buried in snowdrifts, and many of the animals we usually hunt are bedded down, far away. Worst of all, there's no safety net of gathering herbs and berries should our quest for meat fail. What we catch is what we get.

Well, not entirely. Gale can buy whatever he wants, of course, and I have a stash of preserved food items at home. There's also 'Parcel Day', the magical day once a month where a Capitol train arrives with free food for everyone in the district. That has helped us keep going so far, but it's only December: we have a lot of winter left to go.

Our snare line yields nothing, and I'm losing hope, but I spot a squirrel leaping between two oak trees right in front of us. Gale spots it at the same time, but he automatically looks to me. He's got a bow too, and he's a decent shot, but I'm better. For a small piece of prey moving at that speed, it has to be me.

I train my eyes on the squirrel and nock an arrow. With all the branches in the way, it's not going to be an easy shot, but I make it anyway. My aim is true. The squirrel falls and Gale manages to catch it by its tail.

To cheer would be in bad taste (and also scare any potential prey away) but I'm undeniably pleased to have something to show for our efforts. My joy sours a little bit when I realize my shot, although commendable, was not the cleanest. "Ah, missed the eye. Better just take this one home."

"You sure? Wouldn't want to disappoint Mellark."

His voice turns distinctly icy, and it irks me. "Really? You're still on about that?"

Gale rolls his eyes. "I don't see why I would stop."

"I'm not cutting ties with a perfectly good trading partner just because you have a problem with him."

"It's not the baker I have a problem with."

Now I'm the one rolling eyes. How many times have we argued about this before? "Honestly, Gale, I'll never understand why you have such a problem with him. He's not a bad guy. He helped pay your sponsorship, remember?"

That's not a good enough excuse for Gale. "Well, I'm sure he had some ulterior motive."

"Just because you never do anything out of the goodness of your heart-" I stop myself before this can escalate any further. "Forget about it. I said I'm not going there, alright? And I don't want to fight right before you leave."

"I don't want to fight either," he says, but his jaw is set in a way that tells me he'll be annoyed no matter what.

In a last-ditch attempt to soothe him, I lean over and kiss him on the mouth. I feel him soften under my lips. As much as we bicker and fight, Gale can never stay mad at me for long.

"Three weeks will fly by," I tell him again, once we come up for air. "Just don't forget about me, when you meet all those beautiful Capitol women who want a piece of you."

"I could never forget you," Gale promises. It's good to hear him say it, although he says things of that sort to me on a regular basis. He holds me close for one minute more, before we have to go our separate ways.

"I'll miss you," I promise as he leaves, and I know he'll miss me too. It goes without saying.

As for me, I'll be taking the long way home. I can't risk being seen with Gale, and I really have nothing to hurry for, anyway. I'm not thrilled with the extra time to think, though. My mind is a mess these days, made worse by the knowledge that I won't see Gale in person for three entire weeks. Thoughts of him consume me, our best and worst moments, everything I'll miss about him and what I'm worried will happen while he's gone.

It's not that I doubt Gale's devotion to me. He's never given me any reason to. I think back to our first day, the moment we ceased to be friends and became what we are now, and I realize he's made his intentions perfectly clear this whole time.

"I think we should do it," he said, moments after Haymitch left with a warning and a slam of the door.

I knew exactly what he meant, a wish I'd never voiced aloud. My love for Gale- which I had assumed would always be one-sided- had most definitely had its twists and turns lately, but now, I couldn't imagine wanting anything else. "But…what about Madge?"

I felt guilty for even speaking her name, but I had to know.

"I cared for Madge." Gale's voice was low and husky, a tone in which I never imagined he'd speak to me. "…but she's no you."

I can still feel the shiver that ran down my spine that day. The rest, as they say, was history. Gale and I have belonged to each other ever since- maybe before that, if I'm being honest. We've had our share of ups and down- screaming fights, days we don't speak to each other- but I wouldn't change a thing.

Well, no, that's not true.

I'd change some things.

The long way home takes me to the Hob, our district's black market. I stop there to trade the pelt of the squirrel I just shot. The meat would be worth much more than the pelt, obviously, but this way, my family will have something fresh to eat.

I'm a regular at the Hob, so I find the fur trader, Delmar, easily. She doesn't only trade furs, I guess, but that's what I know her for. I hold up the squirrel pelt and begin the lengthy haggling process. Of all the vendors, Delmar is probably the worst to haggle with. She knows few other people will buy furs, and she drives a hard bargain because of it. We go back and forth for a few minutes before I stop abruptly. "I like your pin. Is that a mockingjay?"

She covers her chest self-consciously, although the gold pin was already barely visible in her thick muff of wolf-hide. "It is. And I don't care if you like it; I'm not paying you a penny more!"

Back to arguing. I eventually agree to Delmar's measly price, but when she hands me the coins, I get a better look at the pin. I was right; it's a mockingjay, the same design Madge Undersee wore as a token in the Hunger Games. I wonder how many pelts Delmar had to trade for that trinket.

The long way home also takes me through town, most notably, past the bakery. I'm tempted, almost, to go in and trade the squirrel meat for some bread, even though I already decided the squirrel was for my family. The baker, Mr. Mellark, loves squirrels, and he always buys them from me at a more-than-reasonable price, and even if he's not in, any of his three sons know the drill…

I decide against it. It wouldn't be worth it, to reopen that wound, and as much as I want to, it's not a good idea to see him. Peeta, who was once my best friend. Peeta, who knows perfectly well what changed, even though I haven't breathed a word.

That's the part of the story I don't like thinking about.

We've hardly spoken over the past few months. It's like a wall sprang up between us, and it just became easier to avoid him instead of avoiding his questions when we were together and fighting with Gale afterwards. It was a choice I had to make.

It's not like I explicitly cut Peeta off, though. I simply became apathetic to our growing apart, and he pulled away at the same time. I still run into him at the bakery, sometimes. And he occasionally stops by my house with baked goods for my sister, Prim. It's not like the closeness we used to share, but it's not nothing.

I force myself to quit staring longingly at Mellark's Bakery. Gale would never quit making fun of me, if he could see me now. I hike my game bag up on my shoulder and turn on my heel. I need to get home.

By the way: despite this project literally taking up 6 months of my life with the writing process alone, I put very little effort into Googling stuff/keeping it canon. I am ALMOST CERTAIN I fudged some things with the Victory Tour, and if I did, and if you noticed that…congrats but I'm not changing it. Too late.

This chapter was shockingly easy to write- not sure if y'all have picked up on it, but I actually REALLY do not like Gale…but this has to happen. I realized it when I was writing my first draft of TS, after I left it sit for 5 years because I just didn't know how to write the ending. When I looked back at the whole story and everything that happened, I realized that Katniss would be with Gale. If I wanted The Good Ending, there would have to be a sequel, so I ended TS Draft 1 with the worst page and a half you've ever read and started outlining By Your Side.

Also in the first draft, Gale straight-up killed Madge and the high Cato scene was WAY FUNNIER. There's your lore for the day.