Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine
Wildfire
Madge supposes she should've known it would come to something like this four years ago when she'd caught him half-naked with Johanna Mason, the senior girl from two towns over with a police record and a mustang convertible, in Delly Cartwright's poolroom during an end of year party.
Gale wasn't ready for a relationship. He liked Madge, she didn't doubt that, and he liked having her in his life, but she wasn't special. She wasn't enough something for him, and she'd never been quite sure what that was.
Now she knows though.
She just isn't enough anything for him.
She'd forgiven him though. He'd looked so completely sincere when he'd apologized, told her it was a drunken mistake and that it would never happen again.
"I'm sorry, Madge, I just got caught up," he'd told her with red-rimmed eyes and a broken voice.
Of course she'd believed him. Madge's whole life was a series of forgiving people, of taking a second place in their lives, why shouldn't she have given Gale that courtesy as well? Despite the humiliation she'd felt, all the anger and resentment that had boiled under her skin, she'd forgiven him. Somehow this had to have been her fault. If she'd have been a better girlfriend, if she'd have been more of that elusive something Gale might not have strayed.
Now it's abundantly clear that nothing she does is ever going to be enough to keep him happy. Not really.
It was supposed to be Katniss' birthday and a celebration of her and Peeta's engagement. It had been.
Peeta had made an elaborate cake and Katniss' favorite rolls, while Madge worked for a week making paper decorations with Prim.
Everything had been going so well, right up until Gale and Katniss had disappeared to take out some of the trash their friends and family had accumulated. When they'd been gone a shade too long, of course Madge had gone looking for them. The bags had probably broken, she'd warned Gale about buying those cheap things, he knew they needed the heavy duty ones for a party.
She adjust the strap on her painful little shoes, one's that put her at the right height for Gale to dance with her without hurting his back, even if he refuses to get out on the floor with her, as she steps down the threshold to find her wayward boyfriend and the birthday girl.
With a laugh still on her lips, Madge had jogged out the back door and around the Everdeen house only to stop dead in her tracks at what she saw.
They were kissing.
It wasn't passion and fire, but an awkward, stilted looking thing, and if her heart hadn't stopped mid-beat, if it hadn't been her boyfriend and her supposed friend, if it had been a scene in a movie, a cheaply made teen comedy, Madge might have laughed.
It wasn't though; it was just one more pathetic chapter in her life.
Voice dead in her throat, Madge turned to run without making so much as a shuffling noise with her shoes. She couldn't watch anymore.
When she bolted past Peeta he caught her by the arm with a frown. "Are you okay?"
The tears hadn't started yet, they were in too much of a shock, but all Madge could manage to sputter out was the word 'sick' before pulling from Peeta's grip and escaping past the rest of the guest without causing a scene. This was her private time, the calm before the storm of her failed relationship, and she didn't want to start it with the sad stares of people she knows. She needed time to straighten herself out.
When she finally reached the little street, broke into the cooling night air, she took her shoes off and began jogging, no destination in mind but to get as far away as possible.
Her feet had barely carried her four streets over when she heard the unmistakable rumble of Gale's truck engine.
"Madge?" She heard his voice call to her over the noise, his headlights sending her shadow stretching out in front of her.
Madge ignored him.
"Madge, stop running and get in the truck. Peeta said you're sick. Mrs. Everdeen wants me to bring you back so she can look you over," he tells her, his truck creeping along beside her.
She considered yelling, causing a ruckus and scaring the sleepy neighborhood into calling the police, it would've given her a vindictive pleasure, but she just continued to ignore him and let her feet continue to carry her away.
Finally he huffed, gunned his truck a few feet in front of her and stopped, opened his door and waited for her to jog past.
"Madge-" he reached for her arm but she jerked from his grip.
"Don't!" She snapped.
Her tone was so sharp, so unlike her, he froze, eyes widening.
Shaking, Madge glared at him, fought off the angry tears threatening to spill down her cheeks and tried to take even breaths, keep herself from falling completely apart.
His eyebrows knitted together, as he studied her, trying to work out what had her so upset. "What is wrong with you?"
"What do you think is wrong with me?" She asked as evenly as she could, her voice still sounding pathetically wet and whiny to her ears.
Gale's face shifted into a scowl. "Dammit, Madge, I hate playing these stupid games with you. Just tell me what's wrong."
A little laugh, a cold thing that sounded nothing like her, burst out of her chest.
"Games? You think I'm the one playing games?" She crossed her arms to keep them from shaking. "I'm not the one playing at anything, Gale."
She felt her lips begin trembling as she waited for him to say something, admit what he'd just done. She's was giving him this chance to explain himself, tell her it was all a big misunderstanding and take her back in his arms. It would've just take an 'I'm so sorry' an act of contrition and she would've forgiven him, she loved him too much and she wanted so badly to forgive him.
"What is wrong with you?" He asked again, his expression growing more frustrated.
For a minute all Madge could do was stare at him, study him.
Her heart cracked down the center. He was perfect. Tall, dark, and handsome, braver than she could ever hope to be, outspoken and creative…perfect.
He was heat and passion and life. Her life, but she clearly wasn't his.
Madge's voice broke when she finally found it again, forced it out.
"I saw," is all she managed to get past her lips.
Gale's head tilted, eyebrows pulled together again, trying to work out her cryptic words. It only took a second for his expression to fall.
"Madge…" He started, but his words seemed to stick in his throat.
A cool breeze ruffled Madge's dress, one she'd picked out specifically because she knew Gale liked to feel of the fabric, and her skin began to itch. She wanted to get home and burn the damned thing.
"I just had to do it. Once. Just to know."
At first Madge wasn't sure what she was hearing and she blinked at him, frowned. "What?"
His mouth seemed to dry and he licked his lips to get them to unstick.
"I had to kiss her. I had to know."
Madge felt the prickling tears begin to leak out the sides of her eyes despite her furious efforts to blink them back. "Had to know what?"
"What might've been," he finally sputtered out. He ran his hand through his hair. "I-Katniss and I have been friends for year. When she started dating Mellark I wondered-and then when they announced they were getting married I finally had to know-"
"Know what?" Madge yelled, not carrying if she did wake the neighborhood.
"Know if we could've been something!" He finally shouted back. His voice drops. "We are perfect for each other and I just-I just needed to know."
We are perfect for each other.
Gale was right. He and Katniss were perfect for each other. They were both fire and heat, energy, bravely venturing out where Madge could only follow. Just like Johanna Mason, Katniss was free and wild, if in a much different way. Not like Madge.
Madge was controlled, a small flame on a candle wick trying to teach him to be useful and not destructive. Not a wildfire, consuming and shaping the world around it, but a small flame, a tamed patch of light that will reach the end of its wick eventually.
She wonders if she hasn't reached the end of her wick with Gale now.
Hot tears started pouring down Madge's cheeks, ruining her carefully placed makeup, turning her into as big a mess on the outside as she was on the inside. She gritted her teeth. "Well, I hope you got your answer."
As she turned to leave, finish running herself into the ground, Gale caught her arm. "I did."
He smiled at her, and normally that would've been it, she would've melted into his arms and let him apologize. This time is different though.
"Katniss and I-there was nothing there," his mouth stretched further up.
He must think that's what she wants or needs to hear, that his little experiment had yielded negative results, but it only settles a stone in her stomach. There shouldn't have been a reason to test those waters. Madge should've been enough. Was there not something there with them?
His smile faded when Madge pulled away. She swats at the tears rolling down her cheeks and narrowed her eyes. "And now there's nothing here either."
With that she drops her uncomfortable shoes and runs.
#######
Gale leaves her messages, fills up her outbox and lights up her texts. When he sends flowers to her apartment, an expensive looking bouquet of mixed exotics, she knows he's desperate. Gale thinks paying for flowers is pointless and a waste of money.
Peeta comes by first.
"Katniss told me what happened," he says. "And then Gale told us what happened with you."
Madge nods, but her voice hasn't worked since that night.
"I told him you should've kicked him in the balls," Peeta tells her, not cracking a smile.
That gets a snort of laughter out of her. A smile, the first she's had in a week, pushes up her blotchy cheeks. Then come the tears.
"Peeta?" She tries to force them back, but a few still trickle out. "What's wrong with me? What did I do wrong?"
His expression hardens, completely un-Peeta like, and he pulls her into a hug. "You didn't do anything wrong, Madge. Gale did this. Not you." He cuts his eyes down to her increasingly wet eyes, "Understand me?"
She doesn't, not completely, but Peeta's words are definitely something she needs to hear.
"What did-What did Katniss say?" Madge finally asks.
Peeta shrugs. "She told me Gale was an idiot. Worst kiss in her life, though from what I've been told it that's probably a gross misrepresentation for my benefit. I don't plan on challenging it though, not unless Gale and I are both very drunk."
He's trying to get her to laugh again, but it doesn't work and his little smile slips off his face.
Madge presses her cheek to his shoulder. "You forgive her?"
He nods. "I love her. And she told me immediately after, said Gale had lost his mind. Then he came back without you…I knew he'd screwed up again."
Peeta had helped her stitch herself together again after the Johanna incident, he'd watched her put she and Gale's broken relationship back together, and now he's watching it fall apart again.
"Madge," he starts, "you shouldn't be the only one working in this thing. He has to put in some effort too."
"He is," Madge starts, waving her hand at the vase, setting on the kitchen table. "He is trying."
"No," Peeta shakes his head. "He's doing damage control. You're the one who does all the work. You're the one that plans things for the two of you. You're the one who thinks of him when you dress in the morning. You're the one sitting in your living room with a week's worth of grim on you, crying in your 'Babs Bunny' sweatshirt-"
"Gale-"
"Gale is a selfish bastard. He thinks that he had to kiss Katniss to see if there was something there, some stupid possibility, when he already had something great in his life. He's chasing something, and you don't need that."
Madge rubs her eyes, sniffles and stares at Peeta. "What are you telling me?"
Peeta sighs. "I'm telling you that you are amazing, that you could be even more amazing if you weren't so concerned with being whatever it is that Gale is looking for. He's missing out on what's right in front of him, and I don't want you to pay for that."
Stomach lurching, probably from eating a steady diet of Cherry Garcia and Twinkies, Madge flops back onto the couch. "What does Katniss say?"
Katniss had only called Madge, she wasn't much of a talker, but she'd wanted to apologize, even if it couldn't be in person.
"I doubted you wanted to see me anyway," she told Madge when she'd finally answered.
That wasn't entirely untrue. She wasn't mad at Katniss. She hadn't kissed Gale, just been kissed.
"He's an idiot," she'd began. "He's an idiot, but he loves you and he's sorry. It won't happen again."
Madge assumes Katniss means Gale won't kiss her again, probably under threat of a beating, because from what Madge can tell, Gale will probably kiss plenty of other girls after this. Somewhere in her head she wonders if he hasn't already kissed plenty of girls, probably done more, without Madge knowing. She starts to ask Katniss, but she either wouldn't tell or, more likely, wouldn't know. Its gossip and Katniss isn't much for that.
"Katniss tell him you'll forgive him," Peeta sighs. "You love him and you'll come around."
Madge doesn't ask if Gale is as beat up about this as she is. She knows he'll be upset, but a cruel part of her mind tells her he'll only be upset that he got caught and is having to work for her when she'd always fallen so easily back to him.
They sit on the lumpy couch for a few minute, listening to the slow ticking of the clock on the mantle, counting down Madge's wasted life.
"What should I do?" She finally whispers, her voice still raw.
Peeta's hands, worn from working in his father's bakery, reach over and take Madge's hand, give it a squeeze.
"I think," he begins slowly, taking a deep breath, "you need to learn to be Madge. Not Gale's girlfriend. I think he needs to learn to be alone, or whatever it is he wants to be. I think the both of you need to be away from each other. He needs to learn to appreciate what a beautiful person you are, and you need to do the same."
Madge nods, feels her stomach roll again. "What would Katniss say about that?"
"Who cares?" Peeta chuckles. "Katniss doesn't get to tell me how to feel. She gets a say, has influence, but I'm my own person, Madge. Just like you. Katniss is Gale's friend first and she's going to want what's best for him. I'm your friend first, and I'm telling you to put your needs first. Katniss and I can argue about it, but we're adults and we respect that we each have our own opinions and we still love each other. Love doesn't have to be perfect to be perfect."
He presses a kiss to her temple. "Do what makes you happy and I'll support you. No matter what."
Madge blinks back tears, clears her vision, and for the first time in years wonders what it is that is going to make her happy.
#######
Madge knocks, a couple of short taps, on Gale's apartment door.
It's early, but he has summer classes and he'll be up.
Damp hair and a towel around his waist, Gale opens the door, his expression bordering on irritated. His morning routine is down to a science, has been since he was young and had to share a bathroom with his brothers.
The irritation slips off his face the minute he sees Madge.
His eyes light up and his mouth tugs up into a relieved smile as he reaches out to her. The look falls, though, when she steps from his grasp.
He recovers, puts on a small, crooked smile on just for her, and turns his body so she can come in, but she shakes her head. "I'm not coming in. I have to go."
Gale frowns. "Then why did you come by?"
Gathering her courage, Madge takes a breath. She needs to do this. She needs the closure.
"I came to say goodbye," she finally says, focusing her red-rimmed eyes on his clear gray ones.
Gale's head tilts in confusion. "Goodbye?"
Madge nods. "I'm heading west. I called a friend and I'm going to stay with her, enroll out there, move on."
She needs distance. A fresh start. It feels a bit like running away, and in a way it is. Sometimes though, she thinks, that's all you can do.
"Move on?" Gale shakes his head, not understanding.
"From us," Madge says suddenly, heart racing. She needs to finish this as soon as possible.
She bites her lip. "Gale, we aren't any good for each other. I don't make you happy-"
He starts to cut her off, but she silences him with a raised hand, a gentle gesture to beg him for a few minutes to say her piece.
"I don't make you happy. If I did you wouldn't always be looking for something that I just can't give you. I don't know what that is, but I hope you find it someday. I really d-do, because as much as you've hurt me, I love you." She swallows down tears. "I'm not doing this to hurt you. I'm doing this to help me. I can't spend the rest of my life trying to be something to you that I can't even define, and have no hope of ever being."
Despite her efforts, her cheeks begin to dampen.
"I'm sorry," Gale tells her. "I never meant to hurt you. You know that don't you?"
Madge wishes she could say she did. His texts and voicemails certainly had told her that. Deep down in her soul though, she doesn't. Somehow, she doubts Gale even considered her or her hurt feelings when he did things.
He's a wildfire. She has to build her fire break before he consumes her completely, it's his nature. Madge has to carry her little candle, barely still flickering, and protect it. She has to use it to light another candle, keep her flame alive without destroying others, that's her nature.
She can't stay and watch him burn himself out, just as she knows he's going to. It isn't in her.
Forcing a smile, Madge takes a step forward, bounces to her toes and presses a kiss to his still scruffy cheek. He hates shaving, even though his stubble is irritating to her skin.
He's still damp, she can smell his body wash and shampoo radiating off his skin. It's the best smell in the world to her.
He catches her around the waist with his free arm, buries his face in her hair and inhales. "Don't go."
She wishes she heard more desperation in his voice. It would give her a little hope that he loved her, would miss her, half as much as she would him.
It rings hollow to her ears though.
She falls back, sniffles down a few tears and gives him a watery smile. "Goodbye, Gale."
With that she turns, and doesn't let herself look back.
#######
5 Years Later
Madge grins as Thresh spins her across the dance floor.
He's surprisingly graceful for as big a guy as he is. They'd met in a beginners dance class, a 'get out and know people' exercise Madge's roommates, Birdy Alameda and Katy-Jo Lewes had pushed her into. He'd been determined to learn, to impress his grandmother at his cousin's wedding, and he'd done so in spectacular fashion.
When they'd advance in the class, Madge and Thresh had stayed as partners. He was a good friend, not quite as certainly spoken as Peeta, but every bit as supportive. A bit like an overprotective big brother.
On the painfully rare occasion Madge went on a date, Thresh made sure to meet the man at the apartment, let him know Madge had someone very large and very intimidating waiting up for her.
It almost made her laugh. Thresh, at least in her mind, was about as threatening as a kitten. Not that her dates knew that.
In the end, though, she enjoys spending time with her friends rather than trying to build a relationship. Her experience with Gale had left her with an empty space in her soul that she just can't bring herself to fill with another man, at least not anytime in the next fifty or so years.
Even though Gale wasn't, as Birdy called it, 'the Wesley to your Buttercup', more the Winnie Cooper to her Kevin Arnold, unlike Kevin, Madge can't let her teenage love go.
"Thresh, be careful," she snorts as he leans over, dipping her toward the floor. He's going to hurt his back.
He grins. "Stop worrying."
With a snort of laughter, she lets him dip her again.
When he pulls her up, both still laughing, a hand comes up and taps Thresh's shoulder.
The man isn't quite as tall as Thresh, who is nothing short of a giant, but since he isn't stretching his arm out he must be well above average. The man's hand is tan, a warm olive color, strong looking as it taps Thresh's shoulder.
With a huff of annoyance, Thresh turns. He gets annoyed on her behalf when men cut in on their limited dance time. Madge can almost hear the voice in his head muttering 'newbie' in agitation at the man.
"We're a closed couple," he tells the man. It's the code the class had come up with when a pair didn't want to be split up, for whatever reason, and most respected it.
Just as Thresh is about to take Madge's hand back, continue their dance, Madge catches sight of the man's disappointed face. A face she tries not to dream about every night.
Before she can stop herself, her mouth takes off. "Gale?"
He'd been about to back off, turn and walk away without speaking, which isn't, or wasn't, like him. When he hears his name, her voice and confused tone, he brightens.
"Hi, Madge."
Thresh's face twists up, gives Gale an irritated once over. "Gale Hawthorne?" He looks back at Madge. "The asshole kissed your friend right after she got engaged? The one cheated on you with the hooker?"
Madge tries not to roll her eyes. She'd told Thresh the basics of her and Gale's breakup. Birdy and Katy-Jo Lewes had filled in the rest, with some of their own spurious embellishments.
"She wasn't a hooker," Madge says, for the thousandth time, under her breath.
Thresh doesn't look impressed. His eyebrows arch up. "What do you want?"
Gale straightens himself up, to his full height, a few inches shorter than Thresh, and sets his jaw. "I came over to dance with Madge. I want to talk to her."
Hand tightening around her waist, Thresh shrugs at the statement. "Guess you're out of luck then. She's a bit occupied at the moment."
Gale's mouth settles into a line. "Doesn't she get to make that call?"
Thresh's expression squashes and he cuts Madge a look.
She considers using Thresh as her bodyguard, he would relish the chance to intimidate the man hurt his friend, but that hollowed out place in her soul won't let her. One look at the worn expression on Gale's face and she relents.
"Let him say his piece, Thresh." She'd said hers, and even if it had taken him five years, Gale deserves to say his.
Apprehensively, Thresh leans down and gives Madge a kiss on the cheek. "Kick him in the nuts and yell he tries anything."
He isn't being funny, but it still makes her laugh. It's no wonder he and Peeta were instant friends.
With a last reassuring squeeze of her shoulder, Thresh walks off to the little refreshment table in the corner of the class.
Swallowing, Gale's Adam's apple bobs and after a few hesitant seconds, offers Madge his hand.
Still uncertain what he's going to say, how badly this is going to hurt, but more confidant she can take it better than she had the realization that she just wasn't what he needed, Madge puts her hand in his.
It's instantly apparent he's paid someone off to get into the advanced class. He's slightly better than he had been back when she'd had to drag him onto the floor years ago, but only slightly.
She narrows her eyes on him as he tries to steer her as far from Thresh's steady glare as he can.
"Why are you here, Gale?"
He swallows again and she notices he's clean shaven. Some girl had clearly, finally, gotten to him. Maybe, she suddenly thinks, he's had a daughter. Maybe he wants to apologize to her as a way of settling out some cosmic debt he feels he's incurred by hurting her so badly that she left for another coast.
"I came to apologize," he finally says. His gray eyes focus on some point of light past her ear. He can't seem to get himself to focus on her.
"I hurt you. I didn't realize what you-I didn't appreciate what I had." His eyes flick to her then back to whatever distant point they'd determined to like so much. "I was selfish. I kept thinking I was going to find something better. My whole life I'd been trying to burn twice as bright as everyone else, get noticed, be someone, but..."
He stops, his eyes finally locking with hers are a little red, wet looking. "I didn't remember that you burn out twice as fast that way too. And I burned, Madge. You weren't there to keep me from burning out, keep me going, and I burned out."
Gale had finally realized he was destroying himself, probably had hit bottom for the realization. It makes a pain shoot across Madge's chest for him, despite not wanting it to.
He'd finally learned he was a wildfire and that Madge was nothing but a candle flame trying to teach him to have a purpose to his ways.
She hadn't realized it, but they'd stopped dancing, were frozen in an awkward kind of embrace.
Gale's eyes glow with the dull light in the classroom and his hand comes up, fingers tracing along her jaw.
"I've spent the past few years trying to put myself together, after I got my head out and realized how bad I'd screwed up with you," he blinks, lets the severe line of his mouth turn up just a fraction. "I grew up, Madge. I realized I need you."
It feels like she's waited a lifetime, and in some ways she has, to hear him say that. To hear that he's learned such a hard lesson. It doesn't erase the wounds, the charred acres around her heart, that hollow place he'd created in her, though.
He's still a fire, still dangerous, and even if he's built breaks around himself, fire is still dangerous. It still burns.
"Thing don't pick up where they left off," she tells him.
"Wouldn't want it to," he says with a weak smile.
She keeps her expression neutral and his grin slips a little.
"If you want this to work, you have to help me. I know I wasn't perfect, far from it, but I was so caught up in making myself someone you'd love that I lost myself. I've grown up too. I'm not going to break myself down for you again. I can't. I have too much respect for myself now, too much life built to give it all up."
Much as she's willing, much as she wants to try with Gale again, she's never stopped loving him, she's still following Peeta's advice. She's going to keep learning to be Madge and appreciate herself, whether Gale or anyone else can or not.
The little smile twists up, brightens on Gale's face. "Ready, willing, and able."
His eyes cut over to Thresh, still glowering at them as he eats dips his undoubtedly stale chip in the homemade queso from the crockpot, and grimaces. "You think you can call off your bodyguard for me though?"
Madge takes Gale's hand and gives it a squeeze as she tugs him over to introduce him, properly, to Thresh.
She might not be the something he was looking for, but that's okay. She doesn't care anymore. For the first time in her life, Madge is the something she's been searching for, and if she can be happy with that then so can Gale.
It might not be perfect, but then again, that may be what makes it perfect.