Disclaimer: Suzanne Collins owns The Hunger Games.
Author's Note: Gale tries to understand the meaning of his relationships with Katniss, Madge, and the memories that have haunted him since his father died.
i've been around long enough now
"She smiles at you and suddenly it isn't a game anymore."
i.
The first time you meet her, you are fourteen and you're accepting a medal for your dead father and she looks so little next to you, like the world has swallowed her whole, with her dark hair and red-and-white checkered dress and sad gray eyes so much like your own (but a prettier shade because you could never be pretty in a place like the Seam; and anyway, you're too skinny and angular and gaunt to be considered something less than handsome) and suddenly you feel a sharp, stabbing pain in the pit of your stomach and you have to wince to not bend over and letting it – whatever it is – consume you from the inside out because you want to reach out to her, this strange girl who you've never seen until today. You are determined to put the light back in her eyes and the color in her cheeks and a smile on her lips.
But then, before you can ask her if she needs help carrying the medal back home (it's bigger than her palms, weighing them down), a Peacekeeper's hand is on your back and you're being shoved out of the cramped room and emerging from underground into the white, burning sunlight, and the moment is gone, lost and forgotten. (This is also, unintentionally, the very foundation of your hate for the Capitol.)
a.
After that, you see her everywhere – in the shadows playing behind your open eyelids, a shift of movement in the Hob as you swap your kill with whatever your family needs to survive, the hallways at school. You don't know her name, and she doesn't know yours, and you've always been far from the word friendly, but you're willing to make an exception for her and for this fierce protectiveness that is washing over you, drowning you because God knows why that Peeta Mellark kid, the baker's son, stares at her a little too much for your liking.
ii.
Katniss.
Her name is Katniss Everdeen, not Catnip (which you love to tease her about), like the plant. It burrows into your mind, is on the tip of your tongue, coating the backs of your teeth. You never could've thought that such a name could make your skin crawl in anticipation of learning her favorite color, or if she has any siblings, or why she reminds you so much of yourself that it hurts.
But you're selfish (or maybe selfless) and you just don't have time to worry about her and why the circles under her eyes keep getting larger each time you see her and why her bones jut out from her skin – hell, you barely have enough time to worry about your mother and Vick and Rory and Posy, and even that's not enough to keep the nagging thoughts away from eating your remaining brain cells.
You can't remember when you became so serious all of a sudden, and this scares you because you know you're way too in over your head, and like the mining accident that killed your father and killed you too, at least on the inside, there's no other way out.
iii.
You've kissed girls before, lots of them.
Your tongue's been between so many pairs of Seam lips in the dark, hands fumbling over shirts and then under them, it's hard to remember how Sarah and Madge and Grace look during the day.
The night is endless and for meeting at the Meadow or on the outskirts of District 12, where it is quiet enough to forget about the voices in your head and trying to remember how to breathe and instead focusing all your attention (however much is left of it) on whoever's pressed up against you. Oddly, it's easy to navigate in the shadows, out of sight and out of mind, and you like how your fingertips tingle with electricity at the slightest groan.
Tonight it's Madge for the second time this week (who is always considerate enough to give you a loaf of bread to take home), and being as close as you are now – in the grass of the Meadow, her hands trying to take your shirt off while you try not to tear the buttons off her Capitol-imported one – you haven't felt so far away. You're thinking about her again more than you know you should be doing – the girl with the braids, who makes snares so badly it's comical – and you scowl, your stomach churning.
Madge, sensing your mood swing and the heaviness in the air, sits up and wraps her skinny arms around you. She smells like primroses and tastes faintly of strawberries and her soft blonde hair tickles your cheek as she pulls you towards her.
"What's wrong, Gale?" she asks, running her fingers through your hair. You don't want to answer, so you bury your face in her neck and inhale, closing your eyes to block out the dark hair and full lips you want pressed against yours. (But you'd wait for her, until she was ready, you would.)
"It's nothing," you mumble into her skin, pulling away to look at her. She's pretty in the moonlight, like all the other girls were before her and will be after you've gotten tired of her and she's gotten tired of the games you're too old to play anymore, all soft angles and large, wide eyes framed with thick eyelashes the color of coal.
"You sure you don't wanna talk about it?"
You cough out a dry laugh. "Yeah."
She smiles shyly at you and takes your hand in hers, moving it towards the middle of her wrinkled shirt. One button is undone, and then another and another, until you're pulled back under the current, where her mouth is traveling down your naked chest and your fingers are slipping under her skirt, finding the warmth in all this cold.
iv.
You're pissed by the time she shows up.
She'd never been this late before, almost a whole hour, and you thought a Peacekeeper had seen her or she'd gotten off-ed by the electrical fence.
It's another Sunday in another nameless month – May or June maybe, you've never bothered to pay much attention to dates, only seasons – and three squirrels are hanging off your belt, already skinned and ready to be sold at the Hob.
She stumbles into the clearing, which isn't really one, only a flat slab of rock, her bow sliding off her shoulder. She looks healthier, more alive than she did the last time you saw her, eyes bright and cheeks flushed – and you don't want to be mad at her for something so stupid, something she didn't even do for God's sake, but hate burns in your veins.
With a huff she settles down beside you, laying on her back to soak up the sunlight. You rip some grass out of the earth and ball your shaking hands into fists to keep from pinning down her arms and taking advantage of her right then and there.
"Why so late, Catnip?" Your tone is cynical, one you rarely use around her, and you regret it instantly. Her face falls and, nervous, she smiles at you and suddenly it isn't a game anymore.
"I got held up this morning."
"By what?"
"A goat," she giggles. You raise your eyebrows, confused, and she hastily scrambles to explain that she bought a banged-up goat off some sleaze in the Hob who was selling it because it was too old to have babies anymore and a bunch of other shit but could still produce milk so she brought it home to Prim and gave it to her as an early birthday gift, who named it Lady and promised to take very very very good care of her if her mother said she could keep it pretty pretty please.
"Lady, huh?" you muse, "I like it."
"Me too," she hums, rolling onto her side and reaching over to pluck a blade of grass from your hand. For as innocent as she is, the things you've thought about doing to her are anything but. A piece of hair falls out of her messy braid and onto her cheek and, absentmindedly, you brush it behind her ear before realizing what you've just done.
"Gale, what're we doing?" she mumbles, deer-in-the-headlight eyes flicking up to meet yours. Her skin is soft and tinged the lightest pink – is she blushing? – freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks.
You suck in a breath and say "I don't know" because you really don't know how the spring air got so thick and when her face got so close to yours. Some distant part of you knows that she's just a kid and that you shouldn't be messing around with her like this, but the other part – the lost part – needs her because she is your food and your water and your air. With her, you can breathe.
"Neither do I," she says, and suddenly you can't see anything else because she's right there and she smells like fire, lips centimeters from yours, and all you can think is oh God this is going to happen this is going to happen this is going to happen –
But nothing does. Against your will, you find yourself more agitated than relieved, and you rip up another clump of grass, hoping she can't see the fury in your eyes. You close them, forcing yourself to think of Madge and how her body molds into yours, whose parents are out of town because they're in the Capitol, who will be home alone tonight.
(This time, you don't say goodbye to Katniss when you part ways at the Hob. She bites on her un-kissed lip and asks if she'll see you again next Sunday, and you learn that lying to her hurts more than telling her the truth.)
b.
You show up at the Mayor's House a little past nine and don't bother to knock. The front door opens easily, just a twist of the knob, and then you're inside the cold house, sliding the bolt home. No matter how many times you've stood in this exact spot, looking up at the winding staircase and the white walls and marble floor and rescued antique furniture from the Dark Days, you're still amazed at how beautiful it all is.
Sound thuds into your ears, an indecipherable song booming from behind an upstairs door, and Madge appears at the landing. She's wearing a dress that is short enough it's more like a shirt, an outfit you've never seen before and never imagined her in, all red lace that hugs her skin and pushes everything up and out, long legs shaved and skin glistening with lotion and glitter. You're beginning to drool, and she drops an eyelid to wink at you.
Your legs are shaking as you climb the stairs, gripping the wood rail for support, and soon you're in her room – which, sadly, is twice the size of your house – and the door is shut and you sense, vaguely, that there is a mattress beneath you and that she's on top of you, her tongue in your mouth and her hands under your shirt.
Madge tastes different this time, less strawberries and more white liquor. It's dizzying and sour, and you place your hands on her shoulders to push her away. She does, finally, and rests her head on your chest, breathless. Words bubble out of her in a slur but you can't hear them over the music, which has reached a crescendo and makes your temples ache.
"Want…you…" she murmurs into your shirt while playing with the waistband of your jeans. Cautious, she raises her head and her eyes are swollen, pupils dilated and nose red. You hadn't noticed it earlier, but now it seems like she'd been crying, and you feel like an asshole for letting her drag you up here.
"What happened?" you ask, wanting to catch a tear as it escapes the corner of her eye but deciding not to. She doesn't say anything, although she does move off you and leans back against the headboard, biting at a hangnail on her thumb.
You're so focused on deciphering what happened with Katniss today, second-by-second, that you barely hear Madge say, "My mother's sick."
"Oh." Well, shit. "What does she have?"
"Migraines," she answers, "Terrible ones. That's why they – my parents – are in the Capitol. The doctors say it's too expensive to ship her medicine out here, so they want to make it cheaper by lessening the dose."
She sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her arm. This is the first serious conversation you've had with her, and you never would've thought it'd be about something like this. Of course, stories had been traded around the Seam as to why Mrs. Undersee rarely left the house, but you had never been curious to know why. Now you do, and you're not quite sure if you should feel sorry for Madge or tell her to forget about it.
Her fingers search for your wrist in the semi-dark, trying to find something strong to hold onto, but you can't tell her that you're just as breakable. There's only one light on, and it's muted and an off-white color, making her face look hollow and ghost-like.
"What am I going to do, Gale?" Madge's voice cracks. "I can't watch her die."
You sit up and put an arm around her shoulders, wishing she meant more to you than the dirt under your fingernails. "Then don't."
v.
You wake up to find Madge lying next to you surrounded by a mountain of blankets and pillows, snoring lightly. She's still asleep, and if you don't make any loud sounds, she'll stay that way. Somehow, after you both passed out, the music died down to white noise or was turned off. Either way, you're grateful for the quiet and resent it at the same time.
Cautious, you get out of the bed and find your boots under the bed skirt. Stuffing your feet into them, you cross the room at a sprint and open the door, not once glancing back as you shut it behind you and disappear through the house and out into the morning.
c.
On your way home, you stop by the Everdeens' house, feeling as if you owe Katniss something more than just a flimsy apology.
Mrs. Everdeen answers the door and welcomes you inside. Like yours, the house is less of a house and more so a one room shack, with two mats shoved against one of the walls and a small fire burning in the hearth, the bureau on the other side of the room. Prim is lying on the mat closest to the wall, the cat sitting at her feet. He hisses at you and you glare at him as you head into the small patch of green behind the house.
Katniss is on her knees in the soil, trying to – it looks like – milk the goat, Lady. Lady won't budge, however; just makes a weird goat-noise, which grows louder in protest and forms a whine when Katniss pulls too hard on an utter. Out of the two of you, it's ironic that you would have more of a chance at survival in District 10.
"Need some help with that?" you say, your voice coming out an octave higher than it should. Startled, Katniss gasps and turns around, eyes instantly narrowed.
"Damn you, Gale!" she says, getting up off the ground and walking towards you as Lady groans triumphantly. It's only midmorning but the sun has risen and glares down at you, obscenely bright for all the time you spend living in the dark. You feel dirty from what happened with Madge, and desperately need to wash her tears and glitter off your skin.
You swallow, not wanting to look Katniss in the eye. Something about her frightens you, the way she seems to know so many of your secrets without you actually saying a lot of them.
"So, what're you doing here?" she prompts, her voice full of fake-cheerfulness, and you want to gag because she's trying not to get her hopes up and you're trying not to lose yours, and all you can say is the wrong thing: "I went to see Madge last night."
"Madge Undersee?"
"Yeah." You nod dumbly, your mouth dry. "Her mother's sick. Her parents are in the Capitol because the doctors don't want to ship out more medicine."
"That's terrible, Gale."
"I know."
A minute passes by without either of you saying anything, you avoiding her gaze and her trying to meet yours until you clear your throat and choke on the words trying to get out.
"About yesterday…" You curl your fingers into your palms and focus on the pain as your fingernails dig in. "You don't…you don't deserve someone like that, Catnip." Someone like me, you want to say. "God knows I won't be around much longer anyway."
Her face twists into an expression you can't name, almost hysterical. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"The Games. My name's gonna be in there twice as many times this year. I'm bound to get sent into the arena sooner or later. They just want a good game, Catnip, it's all they want, and if I can give them that then –"
"No!" she cries, "What about the kids, your mom? They'd die if you did. You're the closest thing I have to a…to a…" she stammers, "friend," she says finally, and you want to throw up. "And I can't let you do that, Gale. I won't."
Your cheeks are burning with determination and regret. You squint, glancing away from her and into the sunlight, which is yellow, like egg yolks, and lies across the sky. A fly buzzes by your ear, and you feel clammy, shirt sticking to your back with sweat. Katniss is flustered, chest heaving up and down with each breath, pieces of hair plastered to the sides of her face. It's hot, and you need the coolness under the shade of trees, the comfort of knowing you haven't been caught, survived another day.
Katniss could offer you this, you think. She could be the shade of the tree; the skinned animal providing a few coins after it's traded at the Hob; the look on your mother's face when you kiss her goodnight. She could be all of these things and so much more, if you would just let her.
But you know you can't. You are a predator who survives off the weak – of your hate for the Capitol and Madge's warmth and dark nights with nowhere to go but where you're supposed to be – and Katniss is not weak. She is strong, stronger than you, and will do anything for the people she loves, even if it means sacrificing herself for someone as emotionally broken as you.
That's the difference between you and her: you're selfish and she's selfless, and you hate her for it.
vi.
Three Sundays pass before you see her again, and when you finally reunite it's in the woods. She's bent over; checking one of her snares for any dead animals it might've caught, and you step on a twig. Like the hunter she is, she turns around with an arrow drawn, ready to shoot, and lowers it only as the realization hits that it's you.
"And I thought you'd never show up," you say, crossing your arms over your chest. It's beginning to rain, the drops of water cold and refreshing on your sun burnt skin.
"People change," she retorts, her lips turning down at the corners. She looks up at the grey sky, flips her braid over her shoulder, and scowls. "I don't have all day," she says, and you bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling as you follow her deeper into the forest.
d.
You come home from the Hob with a loaf of bread, appetite full from an apple, and a week's worth of oil and grain that puts tessarae to shame. There's an envelope on your mat, and it's made of rich, thick parchment that weighs heavy in your hand and sealed closed with a Capitol sticker. You're surprised to see Madge's name scribbled above the return address, a hotel with a French sounding name.
Your mother, holding a baby Posy to her chest, gives you the faintest of smiles and turns back to tend to the pot on the stove. For once, Vick and Rory are nowhere to be found, and you wonder where your mother shooed them off to. She knows better than to ask you who the letter is from, and you don't tell her.
Carefully, you open the envelope using the dull side of your hunting knife and pull the letter out, eyes skimming across the curvy script in the dim light:
"Gale,
I wanted to let you know that my mother isn't getting any better from the withdrawals so they're trying a different medication this time. The morning after you left my father called and told me I needed to go to the Capitol and I thought 'this was it, she's dying'.
I was so scared and I felt so alone, Gale. I had no choice but to leave. Really, I would've told you sooner but there was no way I could reach you without word spreading. Father says we'll be home by Tuesday – I know we left some things unsaid and done and I want to apologize in person for the way I acted that night, it was distasteful and selfish. If you'd like to meet in the Meadow at midnight, I'd greatly appreciate it; otherwise, I'll just see you around.
Anyway, if you get this, write me back at the return address – we'll be staying till Sunday night. Hope it's not too late.
Yours,
Madge Undersee
Daughter of Mayor Undersee of District 12, courtesy of President Snow Correspondence and Panem Postal Office of the Nation of Panem."
You read the letter over and over until you wish you'd never opened it and crush it into a paper ball. There's an ache settling in your gut, and it's the same feeling you got when you saw Katniss at the medal ceremony three years ago, but this time you don't close your eyes to block out the fading images. Two braids knotted with little primroses. A red-and-white checkered dress. Dark skin and large, terrified eyes, looking anywhere but down at the medal in her hands.
The apple sits in your stomach, and you can feel its skin, seeds, all of it, shaping itself whole again.
e.
Katniss turns fifteen. You turn seventeen. You wish her a happy birthday and she doesn't say it back.
vii.
On Tuesday morning, Katniss spots you outside your first period class at school and pushes her way through half the Seam. You wouldn't bother letting your gaze linger on any other part of her except her eyes; however, today, you do.
Her hair is pulled into its usual braid and her full lips are beginning to say your name over the din of voices, tattered shirt and pants giving hints to the faintest outline of curves underneath. There's enough of her everywhere you don't have to imagine what she looks like in the dark with nothing but a breeze ghosting her skin, how she would feel, taste. Since that day in the woods, she's smelled of fire, and you like how it is sharp and sweet, tangible.
She's careful to keep her eyes off yours. "Have you heard from Madge?"
"No, I haven't."
"Well, let me know when you do, okay?" She's rarely asks for favors, and you promise that you'll tell her. Katniss leaves with a small smile, pulling on the end of her braid, and you think its digusting how much you'd like Madge better if she was the one you couldn't have.
f.
"Did you get my letter?"
Madge speaks from the blackness, and you follow her voice to where she's sitting in the knee-length grass. You stop walking a few feet from her and look down. The moonlight doesn't provide much, but you can see the circles under her eyes and the prominence of her cheekbones, thin lips chapped, and you wonder how much this has changed her, how something inside of you – or is it her? – has snapped and there is no going back. It's a dangerous line to cross.
"Yes, I did."
"And you read it."
"Yes."
An exhale, then, "Gale… I wanted to apologize for the way I acted when I… tried to sleep with you. It wasn't fair, my parents had left the day before, and I was so confused. I went to the Hob and bought that white liquor Haymitch Abernathy drinks, which was disgusting and just made things worse" – a sniff – "and I put on that dress because I wanted to feel good, and the only way I knew how was to be with you… and it's not like I didn't want you because I did, in a way, but I realized when I woke up and you were gone that I was tired of sneaking around and that it would just be better if we were friends."
You hadn't expected this to happen. You thought she'd come crawling back, like every other girl did, and say that she made a mistake, that she wanted to start over. But Madge had said none of these things, and now, as you stand above her, the prey afraid of the predator, too ashamed to admit your own faults, you want to tell her everything: how every day gets closer to the day where you lose Katniss, whether to the next Hunger Games or the woods; how, when it gets so bad, you want to leave and never come back; how you can't look into your mother's eyes and tell her that you're not the person she raised you to be, how you've failed to fill the gap your father left behind.
Like her, you say none of these things, and for the first and only time you see her realsmile – goofy and too big for her face – and it is awkward sitting here, not touching and not talking, although, after you walk her home, she pecks you on the cheek and whispers "thank you" – for what, exactly, you'll never know.
viii.
Months pass of the same routine: Monday through Friday, school is from seven a.m. until three p.m., and every other day you go under the fence to check your snares. Saturday is reserved for helping your mother with chores and trading meat with the baker for a loaf or two of bread. You recognize his son, Peeta, by the swirls of frosting he leaves behind on cakes displayed in the window facing the street. Sundays are for Katniss and hunting and meeting with Greasy Sae and Darius and, eventually, trading at the Hob; at night, exhausted, you lay on your mat staring up at the ceiling, wondering how the hell you're going to be able to get through the next week.
(But you do, and Sundays with Katniss – those few small hours – are so worth it.)
ix.
For the Seventy-Third Hunger Games, a twelve-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy who vaguely resembles a distant cousin of yours are picked. Two weeks pass of interviews and training and, at the end of it all; the girl gets a score of three and the boy a six.
You and Katniss watch the Games in your respective homes. Within the first half hour of the bloodbath, the arena – the west an industrial desert (bricks and sheets of metal strewn about) with no shade, the right snow-capped mountains and valleys full of poisonous flowers – is full of dead bodies. The boy is killed along with several of the weaker players, leaving seventeen left. On Day Three, after an unexpected earthquake in the desert killed off three more, the Careers retreat into the mountain and find the girl – who is half-frozen to death – and kill her.
Her blood stains the snow. She doesn't scream.
(The Games end five days later when the Careers all kill each other and the boy from District Eleven, Harold, wins by beating a boy from District Four to death with a brick.)
g.
Katniss turns sixteen, you turn eighteen, and the odds have never been less in your favor. You don't see Madge anymore outside of brief glances in the hallway at school, and Katniss doesn't ask you what happened, but you wish she would because all of the burdens you've been left to carry are getting heavier and heavier and it's like you're perched on the edge of a cliff, ready to fall.
x.
The day of the Reaping is as stagnant as any other – it's your last year, thank God – but you still can't swallow down the bile in your throat, stop the shaking in your hands. Everyone is herded into the square like cattle and you're trying to find Katniss amidst the crowd, but you can barely see anything from the glare the sun causes, it's so blindingly white.
In her pink wig, matching dress suit, five-inch high heels and Capitol accent, you don't know how Effie Trinket isn't dying from dehydration. Your name has been entered forty-two times, and you have to ignore the pain of your stomach splitting in half at the possibility of being sent into the arena.
The ladies, like every other year, go first. Effie takes her time finding the perfect slip of paper from the pile and pinching one between her claw-like nails.
All she has to do is read the name "Primrose Everdeen" and something inside of you – your heart? – bursts into a thousand blood cells as it breaks through your ribcage, and then, suddenly, you see a burst of copper and notice Katniss pushing against the bodies, trying to make it to the stage before Prim does, and, as if you're having an out-of-body experience, you hear her yelling, "I volunteer, I volunteer as tribute!" and the world fucking ends.
You can't focus, can't breathe, but you have to find Prim. You are a blind man stumbling through the dark, shoving people to the ground, sprinting to your death. And then you've got your arms around her waist, pulling her up, and she's pounding her fists onto your shoulder, sobbing into your shirt until she chokes, and its then, in that split second, that you've never felt so alone, irrevocably and inconceivably alone.
Katniss is staring at you and her lips are moving but you can't hear any words. As if from a distance, you hear yourself croak, "Up you go, Catnip," and she does – climbs the stage like a good girl, your girl, and stands there, horrifically stunned, waiting for the boy she'll have to eventually slaughter, and you can already sense that it won't be you.
You should've known it would end like this.
-fin-