"When her name was called, I - I," she pauses, shaking her head. "I didn't know what to feel."
"What did you think?" Gale asks.
She presses her lips together in a frown. "Something selfish."
Now it's his turn to pause, thinking over the implications of her words. "What? That she'd die in there and that I'd want you?"
Madge lets out a laugh. "No. The opposite, actually. Whether or not she makes it out of there, she'll always be your first choice. If she dies, you'll never forget about her. If she lives, you'll still never forget about her."
"Or maybe not."
She giggles again. "Gale, sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself."
He tentatively picks blades of grass from the ground surrounding them, then lets it drift off into the wind. He thinks of the moment when Katniss's name had been called out, how his whole body had sunk into a dream-like state and, when he had woken from it, he was waiting to speak to her in the Justice Building.
"I guess you're right, then. She'll always be my main priority. Alongside mine and her families."
"Yes," she agrees. "And I know I'll never be able to compete with that."
She leans back against the rock, stretching her arms out before her. He wonders, for a split second, what life would be like if he were able to forget about Katniss. If, regardless of whether or not she dies, he'd be capable of forgetting those feelings he felt - feels, he corrects himself bitterly- for her.
"I guess I should apologise," he says finally, after a long stretch of silence, where they listened to the sound of birds chirping, to the sound of the wind whipping at their hair.
"No, you have no reason to," she replies. "I'm sorry, though. I followed you out here. I feel like I'm standing on Katniss' turf."
He doesn't know why, but he smiles. And she does too. And they sit there until they break out into laughter for no reason, and when their laughter subsides they laugh again. And once his insides hurt, and his cheeks have gone numb from grinning so wide, he does the first thing he can think of.
He wraps his arms around her, pulls her into a tight embrace, and imagines what it would be like to forget the very existence of Katniss. Imagines what life would be like if he could spend it with Madge in his arms. Delicate, young Madge who could spit fire with her words. Who had nimble fingers and a gift with music. He imagines her taking his name. Becoming Madge Hawthorne. Imagines their children, with hair like hers and eyes like his. But he imagines the sadness, and the way his stomach will always ache when he thinks of her. Of Katniss.
And when Gale and Madge's lips part ways, and they're staring into one another's eyes in silence, nothing to be heard but their own breathing, he realises that the whole time he had wanted it to be someone else. He had wanted to open his eyes and be staring back into stone-gray.
When he says, "I love you, Katniss," for the first time, he realises that it wasn't to Katniss. It was to delicate, young Madge. Who could spit fire with her words. Who had nimble fingers and a gift with music. Who could never take his name. Could never become Madge Hawthorne. Could never have his children. And those children wouldn't have hair like hers or eyes like his, because they would never exist.
And when she turns on her heels and runs for the safety of District 12, he can only imagine the sadness he'd have felt if he had done anything else.