What troubled Katniss troubled Gale. That was the commitment he’d made to her. Becoming her hunting partner and best friend had begun as just a way to make it in their world, but with each shared day, they had grown closer until they became what they were today. Well, what they had been before the Games. They had been one large family back in Twelve. Prim was his sister as much as Posy was, and when Katniss was sad, he felt it just as much as if she were Vick or Rory or his own mom. Even before he’d been in love with her, Gale had loved her, and so Katniss’s heart had become his own. He had allowed himself to let her in, and from then on he couldn’t help but care about what she cared about.
That included Peeta. At first, he’d been mad about it. The proof was in the books. He’d acted like quite the jerk about it, at times. But eventually there had been no choice but to accept that she cared about Peeta. And then no choice but to care about him, too. If he was really honest with himself, Gale could admit that he’d volunteered to save Peeta for more than just Katniss. He had gone on that rescue mission because Peeta was too good to be tortured by the Capitol.
He was glad that Peeta was better here. While he and Gale hadn't exactly become best friends, Gale could see that Peeta cared for Katniss. And that with him, she looked almost like she could believe in safety. That was all stuff she knew already. Well, maybe she didn't know what Gale saw when he looked at the two of them here. His approval wasn't anything she'd asked for, so he kept it to himself. Besides, liking Peeta well enough didn't erase the rest of his feelings.
Gale was getting used to wanting what he would never have. You might think, growing up in the Seam, he would be used to going without. And he was. He could go hungry and barely notice, but there were some things he'd gotten used to. It had started back in Panem. Losing Prim -- and in another way watching Katniss slowly slip through his fingers over time, and then all of a sudden -- had changed him. Losing his father had been just another instance of powerlessness in his life. But Prim's death, that was directly linked to some of the first real power he had ever tasted. Coin had given him the ability to make the best traps his mind could create, and then she had turned them on the people he cared for most in the world. She'd used him, used Prim, Katniss, even Peeta. Maybe especially Peeta. He and Gale were alike in that. Both set to destroy Katniss, each other's failsafes.
"Coin sent him to hurt you, you know. Toward the end of the war. It was..." It had been so tragic, so uncomfortable, so terrifying. "It was unbelievable. But you could tell he knew. He didn't want to." It had seemed so important at the time, had in fact convinced Gale not to just shoot Peeta on his watch. Coin's plan had failed because Peeta had fought himself, and won.
There was amazing strength in that. Gale had never been stung by a tracker jacker. He had only Katniss's experience to go on, and even then the book's description hadn't done it justice, he knew. The hijacking Peeta not only survived, but recovered from, would have taken down lesser people. Did he have the strength to withstand it? Gale thought of himself as pretty strong, but if reading Katniss's story had taught him anything, it was that he had actually not been through the worst of anything.
Maybe losing her. That might have been truly the worst. But only because they had once been so synchronous. Being without Katniss was a loneliness beyond loneliness. It was emptiness paired with the full knowledge that his own designs had created their rift. He had ultimately been turned into a weapon against his best friend. He had been neatly severed from her side, the raw bits cauterized in a fire of Gale's own invention. The wound was beginning to heal here, though, where he and Katniss had the time to get back in line with one another. They were beginning to regain that ability to understand each other without explanations -- more accurately, they were learning the new parts of each other as well as they'd known the old ones.