Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Kiss me and smile for me
Of all the stupid, impulsive things to do…
Madge growled in frustration and closed her eyes.
Things had been going so well, so very well, and he had to go and kiss her.
Gale had taken her to the opening for the newest hovercraft port. It was a huge leap for Panem, to have mass transit between the District other than the rail system. The infant government was eager to have more inter District travel and communication, and though the trains were fast and well maintained, people just weren't traveling between the Districts as much as was hoped. Trains still held the dubious honor of having taken the Tributes to the Games. That alone kept many from using them, no matter how nice they were.
So the hovercrafts were redesigned as luxury transport. Windows and large, squishy seats had been outfitted to make them more appealing, as well as adding wait staff.
Gale had been part of the committee for Inter-District cooperation and had helped with the development of the ports, their placement, and the logistics of major air travel.
"They did it before," he'd told her during one of their frequent lunches. "There were huge hubs and people flew all across the country, across the world even. We aren't anywhere near as big now. Should be easy."
That had been at the beginning of the project, almost two years ago. Madge isn't sure if that was too quick or laughably slow.
He'd attended openings in almost every District, he'd gotten the flu before the opening in Nine and wouldn't step foot in District Twelve, for obvious reasons.
When it was announced that Ten would be opening its first of many he'd called her on the battered rotary phone she and Katy-Jo Lewes shared and asked her to attend the opening with him. She was hesitant, it was undoubtedly a ploy to get her to leave Ten, go visit his family in Two, something she's avoided for the past six years, since she and Gale reunited.
Hazel, Rory, Vick, and Posy had all ventured to her tiny apartment in the southern part of District Ten, but she'd never gone to visit them. Doing so felt like crossing some invisible line, taking their friendship to another place that she wasn't sure she was ready, or even wanted, to go to.
They were close, but not too close.
They knew every part of the other's life, every dirty secret and painful event. Madge's friends, the people who'd taken care of her since her arrival so long ago, smirked knowingly.
"Boy's smitten," Jefferson, the wiry haired wrangler that had rescued her the night of Twelve's bombing had told her one day.
Madge only guffawed.
Gale was no more smitten with her than a tree was with the earth. She grounded him. It was as simple as that.
Besides, Gale loved Katniss. He'd loved her since he was a teenager. That was an invariable fact.
So she tried to think nothing of it and accepted the invitation. It would at least be a more interesting, and less disgusting, way to spend her Saturday than skinning frogs with the kids at the Community Home.
"That's the watch tower where people will sit and coordinate landings and take offs, well, when there's more than one or two going on," Gale had pointed to a boxy looking structure with windows enclosing the top.
They were standing on the landing strip, an expanse of black material with florescent borders painted on and reflectors embedded in it, when it happened.
Madge was squinting up at the building in the distance, a light breeze rustling her skirt and hair, and when she turned to smile at him and congratulate him on a job well done he dipped down and kissed her.
It had stunned her momentarily. She'd stood there, eyes open, and what she's certain was a dumbfounded expression on her face, while Gale's chapped lips pressed against hers. It wasn't unpleasant, the opposite really, but she'd pulled back.
"What-uh…what are you doing?"
His brow wrinkled, "Kissing you."
"Oh," she frowned. "Thanks?"
He looked perplexed, "You're…welcome?"
Madge's stomach churns and she takes a step back. "Gale…"
His mouth is gaping just a little and she knows that she's about to do something profoundly stupid.
"Gale…"
Hot tears start gushing out of her eyes and dripping off her chin. She turns to make a run for it, hide in the bathroom maybe, but Gale catches her elbow.
"It wasn't that bad, was it?" He asks. She thinks he's joking because he has this sweet little half smile on his face even though he's obviously truly worried about her.
"You can't kiss me, Gale!" She blubbers.
"Why not?"
"Because!" She's edging toward hysteria now. "Because you don't love me! You don't-you can't just kiss people you don't love! I mean, you can, but-but I'm not one of those people! I don't want people who don't love me kissing me!"
"Who says I don't love you!" He finally growls back.
She freezes and studies him through her puffy eyes. Her breath shudders in her chest.
"Because you love Katniss," she almost whispers. "You've always loved Katniss."
There isn't a word in Madge's vocabulary to describe the look on Gale's face. Like he's been kicked in the gut and told a beloved pet had died all at once. Then suddenly it's angry.
"I don't love Katniss. Not like that anyway."
"I saw you with her, Gale. I watched you with her for years. I know what I saw."
"That was a long time ago. Things have changed. She hates me. She's with Peeta Mellark. She's never going to be the girl she was. Pick one, she and I are over."
Madge gives him a hard look, "And if nothing had changed? If she weren't with Peeta, if she didn't hate you, if Prim's name had never been called, you'd be wi-"
"What does any of that matter? Things aren't different! This is reality. This, right here, Madge, is our reality." He jabs a finger out at the airfield then at the ground at their feet. He deflates a little, "I love you."
It feels like she's waited to hear those words from him since she was seventeen. But a nasty voice in the back of her head whispers to her that it's a lie.
"You can't."
"And why the hell not?"
"Because you loved her…" She presses her fingers to her eyes, "and we are so different."
Her eyes still closed she continues.
"The two of you are fire and steel and she inspired a rebellion. I'm none of that. I would have died in the arena. I just barely survived the bombings. I could never do any of the things she did. You can't love me if you loved her, it just isn't possible."
It can't be.
Gale is, has always been, fire and passion. It had scared Madge, truth be told, for the longest time. She remembered when Birdy had arrived in Twelve to prepare them for the 'friends and family interviews' when Katniss and Peeta had made it to the final eight, the former Victor had warned him back then about it.
"You've got a lot of fire, Dorothy. Best watch it though, or you'll burn to ash. Then what will you be? Nothing but a lost little boy with no fire, no fight, and no friend."
It had nearly been right. Gale still had plenty of fight, though he'd redirected it in the years since the Rebellion. His family was still as much a part of his life as it had ever been, but he'd lost Katniss. And his fire had definitely dulled. It wasn't the dangerous inferno that had created the bombs that drove the wedge between he and Katniss, but a low burning ember, a comforting heat on a very cold morning.
Madge knows she's none of that. She's ice and calm. Picking up on things and finding weak points and failings. She was part of the background, living scenery at best, that served a purpose occasionally. Her part was in the schemes, not the action.
After another violent breath she opens her eyes.
Gale is staring at the ground, working something over in his mind.
"You don't get to tell me how I feel," he tells her slowly. "Maybe it's 'cause you're nothing like her that I love you. Maybe she was never what I needed in the first place. Fires will burn themselves out if there isn't someone to tend them, Madge."
"I'm always going to feel like a consolation prize…"
Because she would be. He didn't win the heart of the 'Girl on Fire', the 'Mockingjay', so he'd settle for Madge, less than nobody without her father's title. She hated gutting and processing meat, she hated hunting and camping, she was a complete disaster without running water…she was every prissy poor opinion Gale had ever held about her and more.
"You're no prize, Madge."
She gives him a flat look, "Wow, you're a real charmer, Gale."
"That," he runs his fingers through his hair and tugs at it roughly, "that isn't what I meant."
She was less than a second choice, she was self-flagellation.
"I'm just a second choice. You don-"
"Stop putting words in my mouth," he growls again.
Madge shakes her head, she can feel the careful curls she'd place in her hair coming undone in the humidity. Tears are still trickling out the corners of her eyes.
"I need-I have to go."
She doesn't give him a chance to catch her this time, wind quick as she runs, across the airfield and away from him.
#####################################################################################################
She's curled up in her bed, wrapped in half a dozen quilts, her skin blotching from constant crying.
It's been two days since she ran off on Gale. Two painfully long days.
The most activity she's had is hopping to the bathroom, then to the kitchen, then back to her bed.
She's contemplating worming to the living area, there isn't a television in her room and one of the programs her old housekeeper use to watch is about to come on. It isn't very good. The acting is atrocious and the storylines have more loose ends than half the sweaters in her closet, but it's a guilty pleasure, a kind of old comfort from her past.
After she's rolled to her side she hears a thudding noise. Someone's coming up the stairs to the apartment. She figures it's just Katy-Jo Lewes coming up from the coffee shop for lunch and ignores it until her door creaks open and she's suddenly flung from the bed, sprawling out on the floor in a heap.
"Alright, I've had enough of this. Get up, take a shower, put on some pants, and brush your damn teeth! We are going out," Katy-Jo Lewes yells at her, punctuating each point with a jab of her highly lacquered nails.
"But-" Madge begins to protest, only to be cut off by a threatening snarl.
Katy-Jo Lewes takes her to a restaurant run by one of her fellow 'daughters' from before the Rebellion. It's a comfy place with squishy booths, a patio, and a band.
Rebecca, the 'daughter', a honey blonde woman with a smattering of light freckles across her nose, brought them the special of the day, goulash. She gives Madge a sympathetic smile before she walks off.
"Spill it," Katy-Jo Lewes tells her. "I want the whole story."
And because she can't think of a reason not to, Madge does.
She tells her again about the kiss and the fight. About Katniss, and how she'll never be Katniss, and Gale is making a mistake-
"You are an idiot." She's finally cut off from her hour long rant by a highly unimpressed looking Katy-Jo Lewes.
"He told you he loved you!"
"He doesn't know what he's talking about," Madge picks at a noodle. "Besides, I'm always going to live in Katniss' shadow. I'm never going to live up to that. I'll always just be his second choice."
Katy-Jo Lewes' lips press together and she lets out a long sigh.
"Madgie, just 'cause you're not someone's first choice, don't make you their second."
Madge rolls her eyes, "That's the definition."
"Bullshit."
They stare each other down. Wide golden eyes challenging pale blue. Daring Madge to prove her wrong.
"You are a different creature than you were back in that coal pit of a District. Different from the girl I met when you came here. You're even different since you met tall, dark, and cranky. You'll be different in a few years, trust me, I can attest to it." She smiles warmly, "Sweetie, maybe he loved her, sounds like he did…but he loves you too. There are different kinds of love. Some grow and some fade and some die. The dead ones weren't any less real, but their dead, and sometimes there's a reason for that. That make sense?"
Madge rolls it around in her mind, twisting it and pulling on it, testing it for soft spots.
She can't, there's a part of her that doesn't want to.
It takes a minute, but she realizes her face hurts. She's been smiling down at her meal. It slips off in an instant.
"I messed up."
"Yeah you did."
She looks up frantically at Katy-Jo Lewes, "What am I going to do? He's leaving today! He's going back to Two and he's never going to speak to me again! Oh, god, I've messed up so badly."
Katy-Jo Lewes comes to the other side of the booth and Madge thinks she's going to comfort her, hug her. Instead she smacks her on the back of the head with her open palm.
"Stupid girl."
Madge turns to tell her off only to be met with a piece of paper being held in front of her face. Katy-Jo Lewes shakes it in front of her.
"Well, take it," she tells her.
"What is it?"
"You have eyes. You can read."
Madge takes the papers and examines them. Tickets to District Two on the flight that afternoon. Gale's flight.
"How-wh-how did you know I'd change my mind?" She asks in awe.
"Didn't," Katy-Jo Lewes flips her braids over her shoulder. "If you didn't want them I was going to be relocating. That boy of yours is a fine piece."
Madge laughs and jumps up, pulling her friend into an awkward hug. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. Still gotta get you there."
It's twenty till noon, and the flight is scheduled to leave at fifteen after. Panic jolt through Madge. She'll never make it from where she is now.
"Don't look like that. I thought this through."
#####################################################################################################
Jefferson had been waiting outside the restaurant to take her by horseback to the airfield.
"I brought you to this District, only seems right I see you off," he tells her a little misty eyed.
"Good lord, she'll be back eventually," Katy-Jo Lewes mutters.
She'd waved goodbye to Katy-Jo Lewes and a blubbering Rebecca before the horse had taken off at a breakneck speed. She's windswept and watery eyed when they make it to the airfield.
"Good luck, honey." Jefferson tells her as he hugs her.
Madge gives him a brave smile and heads into the small building where she's to wait to board the hovercraft.
Looking around, she searches for Gale. She's nearly given up, it would be her luck for him to have taken an earlier flight, when she spots him.
He's sitting with his head down, elbows to knees, not really paying attention, dressed in his uniform. Madge bites her lip and gathers whatever courage she has. It's now or never.
"Gale?"
His head snaps up at the sound of her voice. He doesn't say anything, just stares at her, like he isn't sure she's there.
Her voice fails her and she just moves her mouth, miming the words she wishes she could say. Finally she collapses into the seat next to him. It might be easier if she isn't looking at him.
"I'm so sorry, Gale. I was just…scared." Tears begin to build up again and she forces them down, now isn't the time. "Nobody's ever chosen me, Gale. Not at school, Katniss just got stuck with me, not at home, my dad always picked my mother or the District…I've always been an afterthought. Easily ignored. When the story of the Rebellion is told I won't even warrant a footnote. I just…"
She isn't sure what she 'just' wanted. Not to be a replacement? To not exist only to be forgotten?
Gale reaches over and, gently, pulls her to him, kisses the top of her head.
"I'm choosing you, Madge."
He doesn't have to. He could tell her to go to hell and she would feel she deserves it for her erratic behavior. But he's still choosing her.
"Thank you," she gives him a watery smile.
"You're welcome," he chuckles. "Guess I need to go change my flight…"
Madge shakes her head, "I have a ticket."
She shows him the papers and he gives her a once over, "You haven't got any luggage."
Knew there was something I forgot.
She gives him a sheepish grin, "Guess we can resch-"
"No," he shakes his head with a bright grin. "I'm not giving you more time to change your mind if I don't have to. My mother is going to come unglued. She's wanted to get you up there for ages. And the kids…"
He's off on a tangent, telling her all the things he's going to show her in Two, things he's been telling her about for years. She hasn't seen him this excited in ages.
He's probably always going to be a little too impulsive and she's probably always going to be a little too cautious, but maybe that's for the best. She'll keep him from burning out and he'll keep her from freezing in place. They complement each other.
She smiles at him, takes his hand, and leads him to the hovercraft.
It's new. Maybe it's going to end badly, but maybe it won't. She hopes this is the love that grows.