Disclaimer: All stories are individuals of themselves and are unrelated to each other.
Katniss was still pretty wary of Gale ever since he moved back home after the war. They'd mended their differences, sure, but at times she looked at him and saw Prim in his eyes and couldn't be around him.
She knew, deep down, that it wasn't his fault. That the bomb wasn't his idea completely. That if he'd wanted to use it he wouldn't have used it on children, on Prim. Katniss knew Gale was innocent of all the things she blamed him for. And she'd told him so, eventually. But there were still times she needed distance from Gale. Their friendship was absolutely never going to be the same, and she knew he knew that too. So mostly, it was baby steps.
But when she found him in the graveyard, on her way to visit the grave that they'd made for Prim despite not having a body to bury there, she saw him with his head pressed to a gravestone and his shoulders shaking slightly. Her feet carried her off in his direction.
Katniss didn't realize he wasn't crying over his father's grave. The bodies of their fathers were buried in a different graveyard for a different reason. Far away. Mostly forgotten. No, they were in the graveyard made intentionally for the war. For those lost during the bombings.
"Gale?" she called out. He tensed up immediately and she halted in her steps. She gave him a moment to wipe his eyes before crossing over to him completely. "What are you doing here?"
He hadn't moved out of the way completely but Katniss could read the name on the gravestone anyway.
Madge Undersee.
Katniss stared at the name for a few moments before looking back at him. There was something in his cool gray eyes that was unfamiliar, and she thought she knew him so well. Even after their fight. Even after their distance.
"This is Madge's grave," Katniss said.
Gale nodded. "Yeah."
"Why are you at Madge's grave?"
He looked back to the stone and tried, but failed, to wipe his eyes another time without Katniss seeing. "No one else visits it," he muttered.
"That's not true." Katniss stopped by almost weekly it felt like. Peeta visited her grave all the time. Delly, too. Even Thom would come out and lay a flower on the mayor's daughter's grave every once in a while. Katniss took a risk. "Feeling guilty?"
"No."
She wasn't sure how to proceed. She shuffled awkwardly on her feet.
"You weren't even friends," Katniss tried. It was unsettling, seeing Gale so visibly upset, so distressed. Over Madge? "Were you?"
"It's complicated," he answered. He swat at his eyes another time. "I was just leaving." He took a deep breath and heaved himself to his feet, but didn't go anywhere. Neither did Katniss. Their eyes met awkwardly before he looked back at the grave. "I never told you," Gale murmured. "Not everything."
"Not everything," Katniss echoed warily.
"From when you were gone." Katniss waited a moment, hoping he would elaborate. "You won't understand," he finally murmured, mostly to himself. Before he could get too far Katniss reached out, grabbing the hem of his shirt and holding him still. She wanted to know. She wanted to understand. "I was falling in love with her," Gale rasped, not able to look at her. "Okay?"
His back was still to Katniss. "With Madge?"
"I knew you'd sound like that," he snapped, turning back to her. "Fuck, Katniss." She held her hands up as though she was approaching a deer she just shot, because Gale certainly looked like one. Wounded. "I don't know how it happened, alright?"
"But I thought…"
"Yeah," Gale picked up in her silence. Everyone in their right mind thought Gale was in love with Katniss. "But then you were gone and she was here." Gale was right, Katnissdidn't understand. She couldn't. "It's so…" he trailed off, shaking his head. "And then she was dead anyway," he muttered. There was disgust in his voice. Like it was Madge's fault she couldn't get out of her house in time.
Or like it was Gale's fault she couldn't get out in time.
"What happened?" Katniss asked. She wasn't gone that long. Not long enough for Gale to fall in love with someone else. "How…?"
There was something in his eyes again, something she hadn't seen before. It told her stories of nights in the meadow, staring at the stars. Of soft hands guiding calloused ones over the smooth keys of a piano. Of shared strawberries on a back porch. Of a kiss, maybe two, with a promise of another one on another day.
Gale didn't tell her any of that. Instead he said, "It just happened."
"Then I'm sorry," Katniss said.
Gale shoved his hands into his back pocket and turned away from the grave. "Yeah, me too." He tipped his head at Katniss and left the graveyard without another word.
Katniss lowered herself to Madge's grave once he was gone, tracing the letters of her name, wishing that things had been different.