In honor of the movie coming out tomorrow, I wrote a little Gale drabble thing. Gale gets no love from the fandom. -_-

I ran. I ran and ran and never looked back, even with tears blurring my eyesight and love blinding beyond measure. I feel wronged, I feel wrong, I feel like I'm going to split open and die, the way my heart was ripped out and fed to the birds that would silence themselves when she sang. I should have stayed, if only to be what I have been for what feels like eternity. A friend.

But she has that now. What hurts the most is that it isn't me. It's the baker's son, a boy from town, who never had to go hungry, never had to starve, never snuck under the electric fence to feed his family, never knew her. Never loved her the way I did.

It was wrong, so wrong, for her to let him hold her close while I laid on the table with blood dripping down my back and my skin in tatters. I was there. I was dying. And while she tried to heal the scars, she let that Mellark boy, the boy she knows I hate, to hold her close and whisper soothing words into her ear and rock her gently so she calmed down.

I couldn't have done a thing if I stayed anyway. I didn't have a chance anymore. Not after Prim. God, Prim. Her little face and desperate eyes, and my Catnip's scream that hollowed out my soul. So it fell. And the love of my life watched as everything she loved drowned in the smoke and ashes.

It was my fault. I could have saved her, I could have stopped it from dropping, I could have done something, anything, if it would mean she could have loved me again. But I wrecked it all, I stole Prim from her, I broke her heart. The Mellark boy, the youngest son, he was the one who comforted her after. Even with the fake leg and smooth talking, he can still be better than me.

Even if I was the one who shared the same mining accident in which we lost our fathers. Helped her hunt. Taught her how to set snares. Became her partner. Fed her family when she was in the Games. Stayed strong for the cameras as they announced me as her cousin. Kissed her in the forest. Loved her beyond anything I had ever loved before.

Even with all that, The soft son of a baker beat me in only a few weeks, most of it spent dying in a riverbed. He forged a deeper bond with her then I did in four years. It hurt to know that her only friend could be wiped out of her life in a second and a half with the baker's boy.

I'm running now, like a coward, because I just can't face her disappointment. Her anger. The resentment. I can't face Mrs. Everdeen. I can't look at Rory and Vick and Posy without realizing they could have been there instead. I'm weak, no matter how much I look strong.

I'll be in District Two. I'm not looking back at my greatest defeat, my worst failure. Because after I destroyed the thing she held the most dear, how could I have ever stood a chance again?