Disclaimer: This characters are certainly not ours (though we would be delighted if they were). All of the characters used and the fictional world they live in belong to Suzanne Collins. We are just try to sooth and fulfil our aching, fangirling hearts. Please forgive us!.
Ta,
Thoughts of a Fangirl
There was strawberries for breakfast in district 13.
Which, by itself, was pretty extraordinary. It was always plain food here. The strawberries were like a splash of red in a sea of grey and brown.
But that wasn't what Gale thought about. He sat at the table, alone, and stared at the strawberries and thought of something else.
She wasn't there. He never knew where Katniss was these days. They had grown further and further apart. Maybe it was just the games, a barrier he could never cross, something he could never really understand. Or maybe it was just the war and time and nature. She was a different person to the girl who had sat with him on reaping day and talked about running away into the hills, with him by her side. They could never go back. Maybe he didn't want to.
But it wasn't Katniss that Gale thought about.
It was a girl, from a long time ago, a time of hunting in the woods and total ignorance. A memory, triggered by a transaction of strawberries. The girl, who had filled Gale's dreams and thoughts, floating in and out of focus. Because he had never forgotten her, never forgotten the time long past.
Flashes of blond hair, a sweet face and pretty clothes. Pretty dresses to be exact. Pretty dress made of a fabric Gale could never afford. Tunes of the piano, beautiful and tragic, a melody of highs and low, that washed from her fingers to the streets outside. Pictures of a sarcastic tone and over-refined manners. Glints of sparkling blue eyes that had lit up with anger, anticipation and laughter, that reminded Gale of vast cornflower skies that he had never seen but were still longed for. Her eyes were all that was free and good and graceful, a light of sorts, that lit up the harsh darkness of reality. He had never hated her, only envied the freedom she had embodied, her chances at a long and prosperous life. Or so he had thought.
He thought of her voice, so gentle and so soft, different from anything in his world. She was so soft and so gentle, in such stark contrast to him and his world, all harsh lines and sharp edges. Her voice was quiet and caressing, when she sang behind school buildings and trees when she thought no one was there.
But he was always there. Observing the girl with the strawberries. He had loved her for every moment, a light, a halo in the world where so much was dark and evil. It had started with a simple intriguement that had soon grown into something more. Maybe it was the fiery defiance in her eyes, the future and promise that she spoke of. Her inner strength that he had loved the most.
She would have been a good rebel.
Would.
As in past tense.
It would have never had worked anyway.
She was Madge. And he was Gale. He was supposed to be bitter and sarcastic and angry. He was supposed to love Katniss. He was supposed to live in the seam and have 5 kids and struggle through every day, his back aching and his hands lined with coal.
She was supposed play her piano and sing. She was supposed to live in a grand house, filled with golden light and happy kids running around. She was supposed to have good food and live life liked she deserved to.
Gale could never have given her what she deserved.
But is would have never worked out. She had died. And he lived. And now he was broken and she was whole.
Even in death he wasn't good enough for her. The future that she had lost in the battle that wasn't her own had gone. And every day he blamed himself.
Her eyes chipped away at him, taking with them dreams that came when the sky was black, dreams of him with her, of her with him. Dreams of meadow dates and kids that hunted and played the piano.
Dreams of blonde hair and grey eyes.
Dreams of lost kisses and whole hearts.
Dreams of strawberries.
He looked back down at the strawberries and his heart lost it. He was broken. And as he got up from the table in the cafeteria to walk to a home that could never really be his own, as he ignored the whispers around him, he knew it.
Gale Hawthorne missed her.
He missed the blonde piano player. He missed his girl with the strawberries.
He missed Madge and the future that might have been. Because she deserved better. A better world.
No one would ever know why, Gale could never look at strawberries without feeling a weight drop into his throat, the weight of what would have been. Couldn't taste them without flashes of blue eyes and yellow hair. Couldn't see them knowing that she would have been all the light he would ever need.
Which was ridiculous.
They were only a fruit after all.
Right?
Too Repetitive? And the ending...I don't know...