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vasilissadragomir · 2 days ago

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no i see the vision completely and you wouldn’t even need to kill the love triangle outright!! just centering their friendship over the love/conflict with peeta would make so much of a difference.

and as i wrote this, i realized this is EXACTLY how the trilogy went from gale’s perspective.

like imagine if gale actually believed her when she said she was acting for the cameras because he could tell how uncomfortable she was in the cave. they’re best friends—he truly sees her and knows her. he knows how she thinks and, also, understands the strategy. he’s proud she’s doing what she can to survive, to come home to her family. to him. sure, he’s a bit miffed about The Kiss, but he’s already been surprised by katniss’ acting skills, so maybe she is better than he realized. and when she tells him it was all haymitch’s idea, he chooses to believe her.

and then six months of not talking to peeta confirms what he was already 99% sure of, that she’s not actually interested in peeta. so gale tries to be there for her and understand what the games were like. and her increasing affection MUST be a sign he’s getting it right, and not a result of her desperately clinging to the ONE thing at home that, at face value, hasn’t seemed to change, seeking what’s no longer there in the singular act of being out in the woods with him that used to bring her comfort, right?

and when he kisses her, it’s what he truly believes to be a ramp-up of what’s already been happening. so he’s confused when she doesn’t fall right into his arms, head over heels in love. and he’s even more confused when she goes on the victory tour and comes back with a newfound interest in peeta. then katniss is telling him that about snow’s threat, and the tension in the districts, and all the sudden he understands why she’s distracted from romance. why she’s not ready to pick up where they left off. but what he doesn’t get is why NOW she wants to run, when she never did before. now, when she has actual power and can use it to light the real spark of revolution and change the fate of the people of the districts. that’s bigger than any romance they may or may not have.

and yes, he knows she didn’t ask for that power, he knows the risks just as well as she does, but to not use it is unforgivable. but before he can process their latest divide, he’s been whipped, and she’s kissing him. and he knows she’s solidly picked him. but then the reading of the card happens, and they both know she’s going to die. and as he’s spending his few precious hours of free time training her, peeta, and haymitch for the games, he realizes she’s going to die not just because of snow, but because he’s training katniss on how to save peeta. he sees that, even if there was a chance she’d survive, she’d still pick peeta over herself. she’d rather die than come home to him again. and it’s especially devastating because, as he comes to know peeta, he understands why.

it’s all cut and dry until he watches peeta open the locket on the beach and sees his own face on the giant screen in the town square. peeta surely knows katniss intends to die for him to live, so why would he use gale to try and change her mind?

and then it clicks. peeta isn’t from the seam. he doesn’t understand owing. he doesn’t get that katniss cannot live while peeta dies. not just because she cares about him, but because she still owes him so much. so, from peeta’s perspective, it must mean she needs reminding of someone that she cares about more than peeta. and peeta thinks that’s gale. and because peeta has proven by his actions in both games that he has so little self-worth, gale knows for sure that peeta would happily die if it gave katniss a chance to live.

for a moment, he feels foolishly and selfishly hopeful that even his competitor for katniss’ heart thinks gale is her true love. but then he watches The Kiss Part II, and it all comes crashing down again. because in this moment where peeta expresses his vulnerability, his pain, she kisses him, just as she kissed gale after his whipping. which means that when she kissed gale, it was because he was in pain. except, when she kissed him, it wasn’t at all like how she’s kissing peeta right now. there’s a desperation in her actions on the beach that never existed with him. and he comes to the conclusion that while she initiates kisses with both of them because they’re in pain, she kisses peeta like that because she can’t survive without him. what he doesn’t know is if it’s because she owes him or because she loves him.

but he doesn’t have any time to figure it out because suddenly he has to save whoever he can from the annihilation of his town. he saves his family and hers, but he can’t get peeta’s. so now gale owes peeta, too. everyone has lost everyone and everything. he’s so blinded by the trauma and the anger and the hatred that something as frivolous as who katniss loves is entirely irrelevant. all that matters is that she gets out of the arena. and when he sees her, he’s so relieved that his best friend escaped again and so, so sad that he has to tell her that her home was destroyed that he just wants his friend. for her to be there for him like he tried to be there for her after her first games. to be there for him in a way she couldn’t be as he spent a whole year going into the mines all day every day and watching his family starve.

but peeta didn’t come with her. she goes into a state of psychosis, so she can’t be there for gale because she can’t even function herself. and he knows he’s right that she can’t survive without peeta. he’s so angry at the people who did this to her, who took his best friend and replaced her with a shell of a person, who destroyed his home and 90% of his community, that he’s prepared to do anything to end their power. he knows he can help, too. snares, traps, strategy. he was born for this. he’s been training for this his whole life. and finally, he’s being recognized for it, by none other than the leader of the rebellion.

katniss never wanted the power she got, but he did. not for selfish reasons. but because he knew he had it in him to change the world. and now, for the first time, he has some. for the first time, he’s not being told to quiet down or forget about his ideas, his beliefs, his feelings. the leader of the rebellion is not just entertaining, but validating his worldview. she values his opinions enough to use them. and he wants katniss to come back so bad so he can share this with her, like they used to in the woods. so they can be themselves again.

and slowly but surely, she does come back. they hunt, they talk, they eat. they argue, yes, more than ever, but she’s still not recovered and, well, neither is he. he’s accepted that she chose peeta, even though he hasn’t figured out if she chose him because she owes him or loves him. sure, there’s a sliver of hope that she chose peeta because she owes him, but it’s not that important right now, because at least he has his best friend. a best friend he can fight alongside for their freedom in district 8, just as he they always dreamed of.

until he doesn’t. because he goes to rescue peeta. mostly for her, but also for him, because of that damn sliver of hope. and a little for peeta, because he really is annoyingly likable. but when he returns wounded, he knows she’s in the hospital for peeta. when she looks at him, she’s seeing right through him. confirming he’s alive and nothing more.

so when she says she’s writing peeta off and is kissing him while they’re in 2, he knows she doesn’t mean it, even if she doesn’t realize it yet. because she’s reckless in a way she’s never really been before, and he knows her. he knows that the moment that peeta returned hijacked, she lost her will to live. she’d rather die than live on a planet where peeta, the real peeta, doesn’t exist. so he finally understands it doesn’t matter if she chose peeta because she owes him or because she loves him—either way, she can’t survive without him.

but he doesn’t really have the wherewithal to be hurt about anything romantic because of the look in her eyes when he proposes his plan for the nut. his brilliant plan that no one, none of the experienced adults, none of the victors, even, were able to come up with. the plan coin herself agreed with. because this plan, despite its efficacy, has irrevocably changed something between them. and yes, it’s been changing for a while, but not to this extent. the way she’s looking at him, as if he suggested killing a mountain full of innocent people, is not a look she’ll ever take back.

it takes watching the boulders tumble down the mountain, hearing the rumble of the avalanche, smelling the blood from the wounded, for him to see what she sees. his father, her father, condemned to a death in the mines to which they were shackled. these were not innocents, no, but they were people. people oppressed by the capitol, just like him. not quite as bad, much like the people from town in 12. but not taking tesserae didn’t spare them in the end, did it? his stomach is in knots, but coin assures him that it was for the good of the cause. and not just the cause, but for the majority of the people in district 2. so he decides to believe the ends justify the means.

they’re sent to fight. and at least he and katniss are on the same side. because he knows she’s there to kill snow. and while he’s there to win the war, his loyalties to his friend will always take precedent. especially since her goals and his happen to be aligned. but then peeta is sent to join their unit. and he knows that the only person who could have authorized that is coin. the very same person he’d followed down the path of trapping and killing a whole mountain full of miners.

at this point, gale knows the chance of katniss ending up with him are gone. it’s confirmed by her outburst, her anger, and ultimately, her kissing him outside the sewer. but he needs to salvage their friendship, because at this point the only other person he thought he could trust has made a choice that would unequivocally sentence katniss to death.

so the only thing left to do to keep their relationship alive is to do what is necessary to restore katniss’ will to live. which means helping peeta remember who he is. and to do that, peeta needs to know what’s real and what’s not real. especially about katniss herself. so, that night in tigris’ cellar, gale lays it out for him, clear as day. he explains katniss’ thought process so that peeta can understand her calculus. he knows it to be true because he knows her like he knows no one else. or at least he thought he did. because when he’s captured, she doesn’t shoot him.

when the second bomb explodes, he knows that everything he believed, everything he thought he knew, was wrong. he can tell because beetee feels the same. coin didn’t just use their brains. she weaponized their anger. gale wasn’t sure he was okay with that when he was trapping an enemy. but now, now that prim, someone he loved like his own sister, was in that pen, he knows it was all wrong. katniss had been right. and the thing that changed between the katniss in the woods the morning of her reaping and the katniss in this hospital bed in the president’s mansion was peeta. so when he tells her that the only thing he had going for him was protecting her family, he didn’t mean romantically. he means as a friend.

because gale realizes that even though he thought he couldn’t survive without katniss, the truth is that he can. he might love her now, but what he needs his own dandelion in the spring. so, once katniss does what must be done, he goes back to the place where he first felt the shift. the place where the mountain tumbled. his first arena. and there, he meets a girl. a girl with tan skin and soulful brown eyes. a girl who loves district 2 and its people and shows him the beauty in this place he hated enough for destroy. a girl who loves more than she hates. a girl who makes him want more than just to survival—she makes him want to live.

I know the love triangle represented Katniss choosing between war and peace but like. I would have loved Gale and Katniss just being besties. Best friends who could tell each other everything.katniss would get home from the victory tour giggling and kicking her feet about Peeta with Gale nodding as he listens to her yap. Gale telling Katniss the tea that happened while she was away. Katniss watching her best friend slowly get radicalized and manipulated by Coin.

Katniss's best friend, who she could tell anything to, being the one who caused Prim's death in the end.

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