Title: nobody said it was easy
Fandom: The Hunger Games
Rating: T
Words: 438 words
Characters/Pairings: Gale/Madge, implied Gale/Katniss
Prompt: gale/madge, tell me your secrets and ask me your questions for jada_jasmine.
Summary: Madge is warned about boys like him, angry and armed and not nearly cautious enough. Spoilers for Catching Fire/Mockingjay. Originally posted at the girl on fire ficathon.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games.
Madge is warned about boys like him, angry and armed and not nearly cautious enough. They orbit one another in a delicate truce, their friendship with Katniss a proxy for parlance and their meetings strictly matters of business. They trade forbidden fruit for a family's survival and even the daughter of the mayor, sitting in the loveliest house in town, sees the injustice in that.
Gale keeps his promise and makes his deliveries, is taken aback when he arrives home to see his siblings enjoying the comfort of freshly baked bread. He doesn't like the idea of being in the Mellarks' debt, the loaves mocking his abilities to keep them all alive, but it's his mother who tells him it was all the work of the Undersee girl. "Looked as scared to be here as those rabbits we cook," Rory says. Gale does not admit that he is impressed, not until she shows up at his doorstep, wanting to hear more about his thoughts on tesserae and he thinks there's hope for her yet.
In the long days after Katniss enters the arena, the passing of coin and food between them becomes code, the sympathetic smiles and lingering touches messages to be deciphered. She thinks she should feel guilty when he leans in close and leaves her with something other than a simple goodbye, but she whispers familiar words against his cheek instead. "Go, before the Peacekeepers find you." She doesn't dare watch the lines of his retreating back when she can still feel the press of his lips, not even from her window where her safety is a luxury.
Gale buries the thought that when his fingers push away her dress, he wishes the fabric was coarser, the hair darker, the eyes not quite so bright. She kisses him hard, stealing away the chance to pant a name that isn't hers, and they reach an understanding.
She never sings for him, but he listens to her play the piano and he convinces himself it's the next best thing.
When Madge sneaks off to the Seam with the medicine, her mother's solemn words echo in her head: those grey eyes will be the death of you. She thinks of Katniss and Peeta, the widowed Mrs. Everdeen, her aunt she never knew. Madge keeps running; they're all on borrowed time and she might as well make use of hers.
In the belly of District 2, long after the war has ended, Gale remembers this: Katniss was the Girl on Fire, but Panem's revolution burned Madge too.