Disclaimer: The idea of soulmarks comes to me from Fanfic Allergy, though I'm not sure where it originated. This is my version of it.
Part One.
Katniss didn't believe in soulmarks. Didn't want to believe in the ancient superstition where your soulmate's first words to you were written across your own flesh. It wasn't common anymore since the travel reatrictions in Panem were enforced, but legends told of a time before the Dark Days when every person had a soulmark. Still, everyone in the Seam wanted to believe in the random chance of fate and prayed for the marks to appear.
Except Katniss.
She had seen firsthand the trouble it had caused her parents. Her mother's words, "Oh! You startled me," were scribbled delicately on the underside of Henry's right foot in lavender scrawl. Her father's response, "Sorry, miss," in a pale blue across Lily's matching sole.
The two met for the first time the day of their final reaping. Lily Harper was hiding from her parents behind Harper's Apothecary when Henry Everdeen walked around the corner, cutting through the merchant quarters to get to the Reaping Square early. They wanted her to marry her semi-boyfriend Bannock Mellark, a sweet boy that she cared for but could never settle down with. Her soulmark proved that Bannock wasn't her soul mate. He was a blank, having no soulmate of his own, and was therefore tied down to no one. He fell for Lily hard and the two courted through school. Lily, however, wanted romance and magic, something only her soulmate could give her. Katniss' grandparents were furious at their stubborn daughter and even pressured the baker's son set to take over the family business to propose to Lily. She was hiding from him, too.
So, you can imagine the uproar when a coal miner said those magic words to their daughter that very morning.
Lily left her life of luxury as a merchant, her comfortable future as a baker's wife, and her parents' disapproval behind. Henry and Lily were inseperable after that, sneaking off to the slag heap any time they could. Lily's parents forbid them from marrying, but Katniss' mother didn't care. They had a toasting in secret and not soon after, learned of their pregnancy. If the soulmarks didn't already, Katniss' conception sealed their fate.
They were truly happy, though. And a few years later, Primrose was born and completed their happy little family. For twelve years, Lily Everdeen was glad for her soulmark, her soulmate, her daughters. That changed with the mining accident. The day they buried Henry, they might as well have buried Lily with him.
At age eleven, Katniss stopped believing in the miracle of a soulmark as she watched her mother shrink away, half of her soul ripped out. Katniss swore she would never become her mother.
Besides, she had a family to take care of without having to make one herself with some guy. There was no "happily every after" as the ancient stories went. She didn't need a man or children to make her happy. She had her little sister Prim and a hunting partner in Gale Hawthorne.
The first time she met Gale, she was terrified he was her soul mate. She didn't trust soulmarks to bring a happy ending anymore. On that fateful day, she had decided to take to the woods to try and hunt. Things were bleak without her father and with her mother physically there but useless to the Everdeen sisters.
The week before her first hunting trip, Katniss had been revitalized by, of all things, burnt bread and a dandelion. It was fate. So, naturally, she was wary of the older boy in the woods that nearly caught her in one of his traps. Fate had already intervened once.
She called out her name when the Seam boy stepped out from behind a tree, her hands up in defense, bow hidden behind her. She prayed he didn't have her name written behind his ear, in the spot mirrored her own soulmark. But, thankfully, Gale was not her soulmate. He responded with a confused, "Catnip?" Relief flooded her and his dark eyes sparkled mischeviously.
"You don't have a..." Katniss paused. Though her family knew about her soulmark, it wasn't public knowledge. Some girls in her class flaunted their marks, hoping to catch the attention of their future mates. Katniss didn't.
"Cat got your tongue, Catnip?"
"It's Katniss." She corrected, narrowing her eyes. "And it doesn't matter."
"What brings a scrawny kid like you out into these woods?" Gale pressed. "You can't be more than what, nine?"
"I'm eleven." Katniss didn't like this boy. Who did he think he was? He didn't own the woods. "And I came here to find something."
"Or someone?" Gale probed. "You out here lookin' for a soulmate?"
Katniss flushed with embarrassment and Gale grinned. "Ah. Sorry, I hate to break it to ya, but I ain't got one. So you'll just have to fall in love with me the old fashioned way...by proving your skills."
That made Katniss like him more. He was the kind of guy she could fall for, if she were being honest about it now. But she was only eleven then and didn't think of Gale as anything but an ally in surviving.
"As if!" Katniss couldn't help the smile on her face. "I don't want love. What I need, though, is food."
As the years went on, Gale became more than just a hunting partner. He was her best friend. Her only friend, really. Madge Undersee, the mayor's daughter, was friendly enough at lunch and Gale's little siblings were practically family to her and Prim, but the only one she could talk to was Gale.
It was the morning of the 74th Reaping. His last, her second to last, and Prim's first. Katniss was worried about her little sister, though she and Gale were the ones without odds in their favor with all the tesserae taken out to provide for their families over the years.
"We could do it, you know. Run away and live in the woods." Gale suggested, picking at the fresh bread she had traded a squirrel to the baker for this morning.
"Prim would never leave my mother." Katniss said, though she was tempted by the offer. She knew she and Gale could survive in the woods. They'd been hunting in them for years. But it wasn't them she was worried about. "Besides, what about Posy and the boys? Or your mother? We can't just leave, Gale, and you know it."
"You're just worried about Mr. Soulmark." Gale gritted his teeth.
"What the hell has gotten into you, Gale?" Katniss asked, the tension thick in the air. "You know I don't care about that dumb thing."
"Just admit it, Katniss. You secretly want to stick around and meet him." His food was forgotten, a rare occurrence.
"I want to stick around because I have to." Katniss raised her voice. "Because unlike some people, I don't have the luxury to do whatever I want."
"And you think I do what I want?" He was a hot head, but even Katniss had never seen him this mad. "Aw hell, Katniss."
She didn't see it coming. Without warning, his lips were on hers. Gale was kissing her! She froze against him, her lips might as well have been marble. He pulled away a few seconds later.
"Wh-what was that?" Katniss didn't know what she was feeling. Gale was her best friend.
"I was just doing what you told me to." Gale's anger was long gone, replaced with something weird Katniss couldn't describe.
"I didn't tell you to kiss me, you nut."
"No, but I just wanted to, for once in my life, do what I wanted to do."
"And why the hell would you want to kiss me?" Katniss could still feel the ghost of his wet lips on hers.
"Because I love you, Katniss."
"No, no, no, no, no." She got to her feet, abandoning their breakfast. She backtracked. "Why'd you have to go and say a stupid thing like that?"
"I'm sorry, Catnip!" Gale called after her.
Katniss felt a tear run down her cheek. She was so mad. Gale knew how she felt about love, knew she didn't want what other girls did. He didn't have a soulmarks, so he could be with anyone. Why did he want her when she so obviously didn't want anyone? They had always been on the same page about this, or so she thought.
Gale loved her? Katniss felt nauseous. Because, she could imagine her life with him: a coal minerminer's wife like her mother, hunting on Sundays together like always, sharing secrets and stolen kisses, raising their siblings together until that wasn't enough for him, and then what? Kids of their own? No. She couldn't have children, not with him or anyone.
This didn't change anything. The Hunger Games still existed, her family was still barely making ends meet, her mother was barely functioning as an adult figure, and, despite herself, Katniss still had a soulmark.
She told herself that it didn't matter what was written behind her left ear in a calming sunset orange. Soulmates, boys, kisses, weren't anything but trouble.
After Gale's proclamation, Katniss had trouble concentrating on preparing for the Reaping. His kiss, though unprompted, wasn't unpleasant. Maybe she could learn to see him as more than a friend. Or, better yet, maybe that could be enough for him. If he was serious about loving her, maybe he'd understand that she could never love him back the same way. If he agreed to the no children thing, and really agreed to it, she didn't see why they couldn't make it work. Most Seam marriages, the un-soulmarked ones anyways, turned into a mutual partnership once the initial lust of courting ran out.
Katniss never got a chance to ask Gale about it, though, because fate intervened once again. Primrose Everdeen, with one slip in the bowl, was reaped for the 74th Hunger Games.