Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.

Fairy Tales and Happy Endings

Madge's mother had read her fairy tales when she was very small. They were filled with true loves, brave princes, damsels in distress, and wonderful, loving kisses that could wake sleeping beauties, turn frogs to handsome princes, and keep mermaids on land.

"And they lived happily ever after, love," she would tell her in her always airy voice. True love solved every dilemma, in her mother's versions, there were no problems after the story ended.

Madge loved those stories, but she was a practical child. She lived in a world filled with death and suffering, princes and kisses would do very little to solve the problems of her world.

Her father had told her fairy tales too, but they were less fanciful. Those sleeping princesses could wake without kisses, frogs were changed by being thrown against walls, and mermaids turned to foam in the sea.

It was better to save yourself in those stories. Other people only caused you pain, or were pretty useless.

True love didn't matter and happy endings were in the perspective.

Her mother's versions were the stuff of dreams, foreign fantasies beyond her grasp, and her father's the workings of a grim imagination, but so much more relatable.

Madge was no princess, and if she were she's certain she'd have been the one just unlucky enough to choke on an apple. There were no princes waiting in the wings for her, no knights to fight a dragon and saver her, no curse to be broken or not, no 'happily ever after' in her future.

She was certain of that.

Then the Rebellion happened and that certainty became absolute.

She was battered and useless. No longer a daughter of privilege in the new world, no longer anyone of importance. No longer worth saving.

During long nights she would read through what few library books she could find, remember the happy endings her mother was so fond of. Madge needed the distraction, the blissful impracticality of her mother's stories over her father's, to ease the chill from her soul, make the loneliness of her new life a little more bearable.

It was silly to imagine true love and true love's kiss healing all, but god she wished it were that simple.

When Gale stumbled back into her life, she remembered those stories, wished she were simply a lost princess for him to save. He would scale a tower, fight her demons, kiss her senseless, and they would ride off into the sunset. Happily ever after.

Her life was no fairy tale,though, she was no princess, and she wasn't getting her white knight. She was a fable about appreciating what you had, accepting people's faults, planning ahead. She was a tragedy, a privileged girl who lost everything, a wanderer without a home, the last of a lost class.

She was convinced he didn't even care for her beyond a friend, his heart, his true love, belonged to a girl who was so much more than Madge could ever hope to be. A girl who didn't need to be saved.

So Madge worked to save herself, not to be like Katniss, but to be like the heroines in her father's stories. She wouldn't depend on others, lean on them, they'd only hurt and disappoint her.

Gale belong in another girl's story, she knew that down to her very core. Even if he'd lost out to another prince, a knight in shinier armor on a whiter horse, his true love still rested with her.

As much as she wanted him to love her, she knew he couldn't. She was just a secondary character in his story, a decoy to his tragic love, and she wanted no part in that. No one would chose her when they'd had Katniss in their life. No one would chose her if they had any option in their life.

Then Gale kissed her, said he loved her, chose her.

It wasn't something out of her mother's stories, not by a long shot. He wasn't suave during it, didn't sweep her off her feet, and she didn't let him.

Gale said he did, though, and he sounded so sincere as he breathe 'I love you' against her skin, as if he believed it himself, and Madge wanted to believe it too. She wanted to believe it so badly.

He made her believe it.

Gale held her and kissed her and carried her along with him.

It wasn't perfect, though.

They fought still, had misunderstandings. More than a few times she worried he would give up on her, realize she was too much of a mess for him to want to deal with.

Every time she irritated him with her insecurities or her inabilities she just knew he'd see her for what she was: nothing but a broken little rich girl.

Especially when she did something so stupid.

Madge fought back tears, "I'm sorry."

She'd burned their dinner, for the millionth time. The first few times she'd laughed it off, but she should've had it figured out by now and it frustrated her she hadn't. Meat was just not something she was meant to cook it seemed.

"No," Gale pressed a kiss to her temple. "Don't be sorry. There isn't any reason to be sorry. I'm sure it'll be fine."

He took a bite of the charred remains of what had once been a beautiful steak. It cracked painfully between his teeth. He tried to smile, it came across as a grimace though.

"It's, uh, just a little crispy. Not as much as last time though."

"I ruinedit."

She was a dreadful girlfriend. She couldn't even broil a simple steak. He'd given her step by step instructions and she still hadn't been able to accomplish what he'd assured her was such a simple task.

A shuddering breath shook her.

"Well," he pulled her to him, wrapping her in his warm arms, "it's a good thing I'm not with you for your culinary skills then."

She bit her lip. How could he be so unaffected by this? She'd wasted food. It was a sin in Gale's book. He'd grown up so poor, constantly on the brink of starvation, how could her stupidity not make him want to yell at her? Curse her for being such a careless child of privilege?

A few tears slipped out, down her cheeks and soaking his shirt.

She sniffled. "Why aren't you mad?"

His chest rumbled against her, his deep chuckle vibrating between them. "You didn't mean to burn it, Madge."

"That shouldn't matter." She tried to pull away, she needed to clean up her disaster.

"Why shouldn't it?"

He tangles his fingers in her hair, nestling his nose into her scalp, refusing to let her go.

"Because…" She nearly stops herself, but lets the words spill out anyway. "I keep doing it…and it never mattered before."

When they'd been younger, when she'd still been the Mayor's daughter and he'd been just a miner's son. Her efforts had always merited his scorn then. No matter how well she'd meant, all her tries, her attempts, were met with dark looks and hurtful words. This was no different, just one more of her failed attempt to be useful.

His fingers still, she can almost see him closing his eyes in frustration. She tenses, prepares for the fight.

When he speaks his voice is a little harsh. "Don't hold my mistakes against me."

Madge jerks back, brushing a few wayward tears from her cheeks, nodding. She doesn't wanthim go to be mad at her, but she feels she deserves it. She knows she deserves it.

Gale lets out a long breath, begins twirling a strand of her hair around his index finger.

"We aren't where we were. We aren't who we were." He takes her face between his hands, cupping it and brushing a few more traitorous tears from below her eyes.

She knows that. She's faced with her new reality every time she looked in the mirror. Every time she tries to do something she was never prepared to do in her former life. Domestic skills weren't of any importance to a girl whose life would be consumed, undoubtedly, with playing hostess, smiling and making small talk, with Capitol officials.

She isn't who she was or where she was, but she still wasn't quite prepared for who she was going to be, who she'd have to be, and it was wearing sometimes.

"I'm just such a mess," she mutters, casting her eyes down, focusing on the collar of his shirt, the tiny scar on his neck.

A little smile flickers on his face, "I'm a mess too, you know."

A tiny snort erupts from her lips.

As much as she was never prepared to be a regular girl, domestic, Gale was just as unprepared to be at the forefront of a new government. He'd been taught throughout school he was never meant to be more than a lowly miner, a cog in the machine.

Now he was often the face on the television, though they'd long since realized making speeches wasn't something he should be doing, even with meticulous scripting. He still made the background more often than not. He was camera ready as they came, even if they didn't want him talking. He was too handsome to waste.

They'd switched places somewhere along the way.

Now they needed one another to soften the confusion, to guide the other through the things they were never designed to do, but were having to anyway.

Madge nods, leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to his lips. "Thank you."

She hated it, but she needed the reminder that they were both a little lost in the world every now and then. She accepted his failings as much as he accepted hers.

He dipped back in, trying to make more of it than she'd been prepared for it to be.

"Gale!" She giggled as he nipped at her neck. "We still need to eat."

He signed, "Just eat the jerky."

She huffed and he pulled back, a devious look in his eyes.

"Fine, Posy and my mother said there was this place near the school that has pasta. I provide the dinner and you" a smirk grew on his lips as he trailed his eyes up her body, "pony up dessert."

Madge gave him a light little punch in the shoulder, trying not to smile, sniffling the last of her tears away.

"You are a pervert."

"Maybe, but I'm your pervert."

"Yes", she linked her arm through his tugging him toward the front of the house, away from the smell of burnt meat, "you are, aren't you?"

He was no knight, no prince, and she was no princess, but maybe both her parents' fairy tales held a little bit of truth within their fantasy.

They both had demons to fight, and they'd battle them together. Saving herself wasn't the only option. She and Gale could,would, save each other. From the world and from themselves.

Their happily ever after wasn't perfect, there were still hurdles to jump with their less than white horse, some of their own making, but they were happy. True love's kiss didn't solve all their problems, but it certainly made them easier to work through.

True love did matter and happy endings existed, even if it took some perspective.