A/N: This is the epilogue. I published it the same time as Chapter 34 so you might have missed that. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE READ CHAPTER 34 BEFORE YOU START READING THE EPILOGUE :)

Epilogue

Johanna stays with Gale.

It isn't a perfect relationship - how could it ever be, with two broken people like them? But it works, somehow. They fight, they yell, they throw plates at each other. Rarely a month passes without one of them storming out of the house in the middle of the night, threatening to never come back. But they always do, and that's what matters.

They never marry, though. Johanna thinks it's ridiculous and Gale thinks it's unnecessary.

When Johanna tells him she is pregnant, it's a shock. Gale calls off from work and disappears into the woods for a few days. He sleeps under the stars, hunts his own food, and makes up his mind. And he realizes how much he has missed having a family.

When he returns to civilisation, he tells Johanna for the first time that he loves her.

When their daughter is born, Gale thinks back to the night, all those years ago, when he helped to bring Posy into this world. How different everything had been back then, how infinitely more hopeless… Gale's child will be part of a whole new generation, a generation that will be able to grow up free and in peace. He is proud because he knows he helped to enable this.

The only connection to District 12 the little girl has is the olive skin she inherited from her father. He's glad that she has Johanna's golden brown eyes instead of his grey ones.

Neither one of her parents intends to take the little baby girl to their respective home Districts. Too many bad memories there, they both agree.

They give her a typical District 2 name: Aurora. To them, she is the dawn of a new day.

Hazelle calls once a week. After Aurora is born, she even takes Vick and Posy for a visit to Two. Rory refuses to come. Whatever there had been between Primrose and him, losing her has broken him.

Gale hates himself for bringing so much sorrow onto his brother, but he also knows that Rory is still young and he will get over it someday. Gale would know, he has a lot of experience with broken hearts.

Aurora grows up.

Life in Panem moves on. Brand new buildings grow up into the sky everywhere, new trees are planted, new jobs created.

The people move on, too.

Hazelle's calls become less frequently and before they know it they only talk once or twice a year. Posy was still a little kid when Gale left 12, and time blurs her memories of him. Soon he is nothing more than a boy in an old, yellowed and slightly burned family portrait in the living room who lives far away and sends her expensive birthday presents.

Gale would love to see her grow up, but Hazelle doesn't want to move to Two and Gale hates visiting Twelve. He feels like a stranger anytime he does. This place isn't his home anymore.

Gale and Johanna receive invitations to various weddings.

First Haymitch and Effie Trinket (Gale frowns at the letter unbelievingly, while Johanna bursts out in laughter and mumbles something about that sneaky old bastard finally getting her).

Then, Annie Odair. She gets engaged to a man from Four, but the relationship doesn't even last until the wedding. For her, there will only ever be Finnick.

Vick surprises his brother by falling in love with a young man. Gale accepts it without hesitation, but what's really bothering him is that he doesn't know his brother well enough anymore to have figured out his preferences earlier.

When a card arrives that announces the wedding of Mr Peeta Mellark and Miss Katniss Everdeen, Gale takes a long walk through the forest.

Saying he didn't have any feelings left for Katniss would be a lie - wounds like these might heal, but they always leave a scar.

But it doesn't matter. He has Johanna and Aurora and he loves both of them dearly. Katniss and Peeta deserve the same peace Gale has found.

The Hawthornes don't attend the wedding, though. Johanna doesn't want to risk re-opening old wounds. Sometimes Gale is afraid she doesn't trust him...

Aurora is shocked when she learns who her parents are, no, who they were. Gale can barely stand the horrified expression on her face when they tell her about their parts in the Games and the war, stories about axes and bombs.

After they are finished, Gale wants to hug his daughter, but she shoves him away, yelling: "Don't you dare to touch me!" and storms out of the house.

She returns hours later.

"I was at the library, doing some research, about the reign of the Capitol and the war and everything…" she says. "And I came to the conclusion…" She looks up at Gale. "That you did what you had to do."

This time, she accepts his embrace. Gale is relieved. He doesn't care what the rest of the nation thinks of him, but he needs his daughter's acceptance.

He has his bad moments, of course.

There are nights when nightmares full of fire and explosions and screams of burning people rip him out of his sleep. Those nights, he sneaks into his daughter's room and watches her breathe peacefully.

There are days when he's eaten up with guilt and self-hate. Those days, he works until he his exhausted, feeling better knowing that he is making up for everything he destroyed.

But no matter how dark the night, in the end, the sun always rises again. Day after day goes by. Then, the days become weeks and the weeks become years and the years become decades.

One morning, Gale stands in front of the mirror and stares at his face. It is full of furrows and wrinkles. Where has his youth gone all of a sudden? There are grey streaks in his dark hair. Wasn't he 20 just some time ago?

"Don't worry, gorgeous," Johanna says, putting her arms around his waist from behind. "You're still handsome."

Gale turns around and kisses her softly on the forehead.

"No, I am not," he answers with a small smile. "And I think I quite like it this way."

Aurora becomes a landscape architect and marries a farmer from Ten. Marrying a person from another District - that wouldn't even have been possible before the war.

Gale smiles when he realizes how much Panem has changed for the better.

He knows he has grown old when the wedding invitations in the mail are replaced by obituaries.

Haymitch is the first one to pass away. It doesn't really surprise anyone - all those years of drinking finally paid back.

A few months later, it's Beetee. Gale stands at his friend's and mentor's grave, paying his last respects and musing about how time flies by when you're happy.

It feels like only yesterday when he was standing in that laboratory with Beetee, excited about their ingenious plans, a young man, eager to fight a war...

Then, another year later, Gale gets a call from Vick informing him that their mother has passed away.

Gale cries at Hazelle's funeral. He knows how much she would've loved to be buried next to her husband, but his father's remains are still lost a mile below the ground, where the mines once stood.

After Hazelle is buried, Gale breaks with his old life once and for all. He doesn't visit Katniss, Peeta and their children. And he never sets another foot into District 12 for the rest of his life.

In the end, it's the heart that kills Gale. He's had a hard, stressful life and one night, it's just too weak to keep going any longer.

If somebody had told him 55 years ago that he would die in District Two, in a bed with Johanna Mason - he would've laughed at them.

His life has indeed been very different from what he imagined back then… As a kid, he thought it would all be about growing up, marrying, working in the mines, trying to put food on the table. In the end, his life turned out to be so much more than that. So much more madness. So much more fire. And so much better than he'd ever thought.

During his last moments, Gale thinks of his family: Of his father who died trying to provide for his wife and children - would he be proud of his eldest son? His mother, who was so strong and so brave and whom he owes so much. The siblings he loves and would happily die for.

He thinks of his best friend, Thom, who is long gone now, thinks of the women in his life. Heather, his first love. Katniss, the admirable, strong hunter who just wanted to live in peace and overturned a whole nation by accident instead. Madge, the girl that was his only light during dark hours and died in a burst of flames. Johanna. The crazy killer who turned out to be the one to stay with him until the end.

And of course he thinks of the daughter he never expected to have. The daughter who was able to grow up in a world without oppression and the constant fight for survival.

Gale's life wasn't perfect, no. He has suffered, he has lost, he has made mistakes. He has done and seen things that haunted him for the rest of his life. But, the point is - the world is better now than it was before. Not perfect, but certainly better.

They managed to make a change, and that was worth every sacrifice.

Gale is satisified with the path he chose. He has worked hard and seen the fruits of his work in the sparkling eyes of his daughter and grandchildren. He's done enough and can finally go to sleep, knowing that his life didn't go to waste.

Gale Hawthorne dies peacefully with a smile on his face.

The End.

A/N 2: Well, that's it, folks :) Thank you for sticking with me throughout the story and for bearing with my increasingly terrible updating habits... I'd especially like to thank all the people who reviewed - I'd never expected to get such amazing feedback for my first fanfiction; so virtual hugs to all of you :)

I'm not sure yet what I'll write next. Maybe I'm going to stray into other fandoms a bit, but I promise I'll always come back to THG since it has a really special place in my heart. I also want to read some of your stuff (I haven't forgotten I promised some of you) since you are awesome.

I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing :)

xoxo Louisa