(before you read this, this isn't a pro-galeniss and/or pro-everlark post)
the biggest misconception that plagues the thg fandom: the end of the hunger games trilogy wasn't about who katniss loved the most. gale so much as said so.
"Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without.”
from the beginning, it's obvious she loved gale a lot. they clashed because gale had a much more rebellious nature, and cared more for the people of his district more than katniss ever did (which was fine and completely in character; katniss was always much more practical and had a survival instinct that really came down to her, gale and her family). but she loved him a lot, and gale loved her back, because they were always good for each other and kept one another alive.
this is expressed in a lot of ways, but what i thought was one of the more obvious was who made katniss safe to the point where she was genuinely happy.
"Gale says I never smile except in the woods."
who was always in the woods with her? gale.
“My spirit. This is a new thought. I'm not sure exactly what it means, but it suggests I'm a fighter. In a sort of brave way. It's not as if I'm never friendly. Okay, maybe I don't go around loving everybody I meet, maybe my smiles are hard to come by, but I do care for some people.”
but then at some point in the trilogy, after the games, there is a shift.
"You're alive," I whisper, pressing my palms against my cheeks, feeling the smile that's so wide it must look like a grimace. Peeta's alive. And a traitor. But at the moment, I don't care. Not what he says, or who he says it for, only that he is still capable of speech.
peeta being alive made her happy. she is lost without him at this point because they had been so connected after the games she knows, like the games, she can't survive without him. she so much as says so in the epilogue:
They play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs. It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it. Carrying him was a little easier, but not much. The questions are just beginning. The arenas have been completely destroyed, the memorials built, there are no more Hunger Games. But they teach about them at school, and the girl knows we played a role in them. The boy will know in a few years. How can I tell them about that world without frightening them to death? My children, who take the words of the song for granted:
Deep in the meadow, under the willow
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy
eyes
And when again they open, the sun will rise.
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.
My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard. Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver. But one day I'll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won't ever really go away.
I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.
But there are much worse games to play.
her mind is still in the games. but as long as they have each other, they could survive. this is why katniss chose peeta in the end. because she and gale's dynamic had shifted, and she could no longer survive with him. even in the song she teaches her children and they sing, she equates safety with love.
the fact that katniss had children after she had been so brutally scarred by what had been done to other children (including herself), that she had said she would never have any herself if she lived in the same world who committed those acts to those children (which she did- remember when other characters suggested putting capitol children in a hunger games situation?), leaves the grossest feeling in my stomach. she is so scared she doesn't even name her children in her pov- only "the boy" and "the girl." she associates them with the games despite (or maybe because of) their naiveté, like the boy and the girl that would be chosen as tributes over 20 years ago.
a healthy love isn't about survival. fear is. katniss remained to be scared even after all of the events in mockingjay, and whatever she could have had with gale or peeta was destroyed because of the capitol.
