The first time they were together, it was one of those slagheap occurrences.
Gale was selling meat after Katniss had gone home. Madge was escaping the chaos of the house of a mayor.
Two friends meeting up, walking together, hiding in the rough parts of district 12 and trying to forget the world through pleasuring and being pleasured by someone else.
(After all, the 74th Hunger Games would occur in just a week. Might as well get all the living that you can in, just in case the unthinkable happens).
The next day, at the same place and same time, the same sequence of events played out. Clothes were shed and happiness was had amidst hell.
(There was only one rule: Don't tell Katniss.)
The day before the reaping, they discussed their chances of their names being called by the bubbly and exuberant Effie Trinket. Fight ensued, because Merchant vs. Seam could not be ignored in such a momentous occasion as the reaping. Madge was left angry and broken at the thought of Gale being hauled off to the capitol the next afternoon. She almost would rather go herself. Almost.
When Katniss and Gale came to sell strawberries the morning of, the tension was thick. Katniss seemed fairly oblivious. (Gale and Madge were relieved).
As the odds would have it, their mutual friend was sent off in place of her sister along with the baker's youngest son. The fight between the two lovers was quickly forgotten and they were back to tearing at each other's clothing. How could they not be when someone so close to them most likely would not come back? They had to find something to keep thoughts away from her. They found that in each other.
"You love her," Madge blurted out while they watched the scene in the cave play out on her large television after a meet up in her vacant home. This was not a question. Madge could always sort of tell. Gale never really looked AT her when he was inside her. There was always a stuttering of the letter "K" that fell from his lips at the climax of it all. She mostly tried to ignore it. It was easier to ignore than to read too much into the hateful looks he sent Peeta Mellark from the other side of the television screen. She tried to tell herself that she was successful in being oblivious, but those moments she spent in bed before falling asleep told her otherwise.
"I think the end will be today," Madge said as she followed Gale under the fence into the woods. (There was a hollow tree perfect for the activities the two participated in. Sex had become extremely frequent. There was always stress and hardship during the Hunger Games, and they got through this time together).
He replied, "All the better to be out here away from it all." He was unbuttoning her top and his trousers before she could respond.
So Katniss was coming home. Madge saw it as her coming home for her family, for Prim. Gale saw it differently. He saw it has her coming home to him.
The slagheap days had ended.
Well, until the Quarter Quell was announced.
