Disclaimer: I am not Suzanne Collins, so I do not own The Hunger Games, Catching Fire or Mockingjay. If I did, Finnick would still be with us, and Katniss would not.

Written for the Starvation Forum monthly prompt challenge.

September prompt: Longing

Warning: Language and mentions of prostitutes and sex

If some longing goes unmet, don't be astonished. We call that Life.

~Anna Freud

~.*~.*~.*

He sits alone on the patio, smoking a cigarette, thinking of what could have and should have been. The ashes of his cigarette fall onto his olive skin as he moves the foul-tasting thing from his lips. He watches the light gray smoke dissipate in the air above his head. The young man lets the little white burning stub fall to the concrete beneath his feet before he stamps it out with his booted heel.

Slowly, he stands up and begins to unbutton the shirt to his ugly beige military uniform. He and some other egotistical young officers often joke about how men as damn sexy as them shouldn't be trapped in such horrid uniforms, but the people in charge don't seem too keen on issuing new uniforms, so he and the rest of them just deal with it.

As the shirt begins to slip off of his shoulders, he twists his body just a little so that the shirt will just crumple to the floor. He winces as a wave of pain shoots through him like a bullet from a gun. Absentmindedly, his hand travels to the source of the pain. The scars on his back rise up like when he first got them. Perhaps not as badly, but to him, it's all the same. Regardless of how ugly or sexy his "battle scars" may look to other people, they will always be nasty little fuckers to him.

Still an attractive man, he gets women all the time. Whether it be one night stands, a booty call from a friend, or a paid visit from one of his favorite courtesans, his scars get attention. He has never divulged the truth behind his scars to any of them. When they come to him with their inquiries or when they can't keep their sneaky little fingers off of the discolored ridges, he just explains them away as "wounds from the rebellion."

Those Capitolite women and those whores don't deserve the truth from him- at least, not in his mind. The only woman he wishes to have run her fingers along the scars and know the truth belongs to someone else.

The damned baker boy took her away.

How Gale hates him. How he wishes he could pound on his pale-skinned, blue-eyed face. How he wanted to march in and claim what's rightfully his. The baker's wife was his first.

It's been sixteen years. It's been sixteen years and not a day goes by that the boy from the Seam doesn't miss and long for the girl on fire. His girl on fire.

Gale wonders if her husband knows everything about her that he does. Probably not. He hopes not.

His fingers return to his scars. Oftentimes, as the other women are tracing the delicate lines on his back, he imagines her long, things fingers. He imagines her cold, gray eyes, so much like his. He imagines her long, flowing black hair that looks best in a complicated braid. He imagines her.

Imagination is a bitch.

He imagines things that could have been, should have been, but will never be.