Some days, I can't help but to pity Gale. I know his position in the fandom is well established as the prim reaper, but gale song by the lumineers altered by brain chemistry and I've been obsessing over him. Gale is as much as a tragedy as Katniss and Haymitch. Imagine being a child and having to take care of other younger more scared children bcs your father died, and the only way to do so was by worsening your chances at the already unjust tesserae system. Imagine watching your only friend, the girl you think you love, be sent to her almost certain death, and the only thing you can do is feed her family while already struggling to feed yours. Imagine watching that same girl return, but it's no longer her and it never will be bcs she saw and experienced horrors beyond your imagination. You will never get her back. And you try, you really try, but maybe not in the right way. You will never truly understand. Imagine starting to work in the mines, the same mines that killed your father, because it's the only way to sustain your family now. The same forests that made you feel alive are too dangerous now. Also, you WILL be wiped to almost death, and you can't even be angry bcs a wave of repression is going through your town: the peacekeepers are more violent, the pay from the mines is minimal, the food is starting to scarce, and your own little brother is starting to follow your steps and take tesserae. Imagine watching the girl you already lost because of the games be sent back, with even less chances to survive, and again, there's nothing you can do. Imagine having your district bombed, your home destroyed, your people killed. You manage to save 900, you managed to save Katniss's family, but the rest? They are lost. You couldn't save them. In response, you work your ass for three days to somehow feed those 900 people in the woods until a beacon of hope appears and you are rescued. Imagine that, finally, after being powerless, angry, hurt, and watching the genocide of your people, you finally have a chance to strike back. Or at least you think so. To what extent are you being manipulated by Coin? At the end of the day, you don't care, you finally can do something. So you design the bombs. And that costs you everything. Your bombs, though you will never be a hundred percent sure, killed the little girl you swore to protect and fought to save for so long. The bombs took your home, and now they take your best friend too, because Katniss will never see you the same way again. You finally and irremediably lost her. And it's your own fault. Everything that came before can be blamed on the capitol, on your father's death, on your poverty, on the world that you lived in. But when you finally had the power of choice to change your live? You picked the wrong option. But you're just a kid. A kid that has been angry, lost, hurt, and thrust with so many responsibilities since the day your father died. All you've ever known is violence and hate. The only person beyond your family that you trust and love and care for leaves you, and you can't even blame her because it's your own fault, and, to be honest, she IS better without you. You never had a chance, did you? You tried to be a savior, but you aren't, are you? Someone always gets hurt. You always fail someone, either Katniss, Prim, yourself, or the hundreds of people you didn't save. Maybe that's why you leave behind everything and settle in district 2. Maybe there the ghosts of district 12 won't haunt you as loudly.
