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

Promise

Gale was very self-conscious of his scars.

He kept them hidden, Madge had noticed, carefully keeping his back to her if he happened to change shirts when she was in the room, despite the fact that he knew she was aware of their existence.

Then, as suddenly as he'd confessed that it was his design that had killed Prim, told her he'd driven the wedge between he and Katniss, they were down at the beach in the pale blue and pink light of the early morning and he was pealing his shirt off.

It was warm, not muggy hot and uncomfortable like the inner plains, but it was definitely going to be, as Katy-Jo Lewes called it, a 'flip-flop and tank top kinda day'. Whatever that meant.

Madge could see the many ridges, discolored and raised, all along his back. They criss-crossed and stretched across his back in a harsh lattice, painfully pulling taut as he tensed, turned to look at her.

He seemed to be waiting for judgment, his gray eyes shadowed under his sand sprayed hair.

"Pretty horrible, aren't they?"

They were, there was no denying that. Though his back no longer looked like the bloody beef District Ten was so known for, it still sent chills up Madge's spine. She could remember the sound of Thread's whip on Gale's skin, tearing it and shredding it, blood splattering, painting the ground crimson, and that horrible metallic smell that had caught on the wind…

She remembered the freezing wind and snow on her face as she ran, her mother's morphling under her arm, the taste of her own blood on her lips when the harsh weather chapped them to bleeding.

His scars were horrible, but not for the reason he thought.

The Gale Hawthorne that had lived in District Twelve had been proud. He was handsome, had somecharm, and he knew when to use it.

The Gale in the shadow of the Rebellion, though, was muted, didn't flirt and smile. He was still sure of himself, still commanded respect, but lacked the bravado, was quieter, at least to Madge's ears.

He'd grown up.

Not that he hadn't always been mature, he'd had to far earlier than he should've, but he hadn't grown up back in District Twelve.

He'd been the head of his household, supported his mother, brothers, and sister, he'd braved the lands outside the fences, he'd even saved most of the District during the bombings, but Madge had seen firsthand that Gale hadn't entirely given up his childish ways back in their home District.

That Gale had been rude, judgmental, had a chip on his shoulder…not that he hadn't deserved to, his life had been anything but easy, but it had cut at Madge from an early age. She hadn't picked her lot in life anymore than he had. Why did he, or anyone else for that matter, feel the need to belittle her existence?

The man that she had become friends with, though, had dampened his fire. He no longer threatened to burn the country with his anger, instead he'd burned himself.

It was a bitter lesson, Madge knew, to learn that your greatest strength was also your most profound weakness.

The scars on his back, put there by one of the cruelest men Madge had ever met first hand, were just a physical manifestation of what she knew was festering in his mind.

Gale thought he deserved his scars, his marks. Shame had taken the place of humility.

"They're part of you," she finally said. Crossing her arms over her chest she walked slowly to him, her feet sinking in the soft sands of the beach seeping between her toes.

When she reached him, he turned, stared out across the ocean. Madge leaned into him, let her head come to a rest on his shoulder.

"They're horrible," he said again. His eyes shone in the golden morning light bouncing off the waves.

He'd done some terrible things, been led down the wrong path, Madge knew that, he'd trusted her enough to tell her about his sins. Now he was trusting her enough to show her his scars, the ones he'd been given unfairly, given for trying to survive.

Her heart sped up a little at the thought, that Gale trusted her enough to bare his soul and his tattered back to her. They were closer than she thought, or maybe there just wasn't anyone left in his life to confess to. Either way, she knew she was being given a special gift, Gale still wasn't one to let his guard down easily. After everything that had happened to him, she almost believed he was less trusting even than he had been.

"They're part of you," she finally said. "They're part of you, but don't let them be all there is to you, okay?"

For a minute he didn't respond, just stared out at the lapping waves as they inch towards them. Then, without a word, his arm came up around her, came to a rest around her bare shoulders. The warmth it provided was pleasant against the sea spray and the coolness of the damp morning air.

Before she knew what he was doing, his face was buried in her loose hair.

"Thank you."

Madge wasn't sure what he was thanking her for, her words or her not being repulsed by what he'd shown her, but she didn't question it.

Instead she just wrapped her arm around his waist, letting her fingers graze along the lowest ridges and feeling him shiver at the contact.

When she was every bit as wrapped around him as he was her, she sighed. He was more than his scars, he didn't have to be ashamed of them, self-conscious of them. He hadn't deserved them when he'd received them back in Twelve and he didn't deserve to suffer for them now, they were just another part of him. She didn't know how, but she was going to help him see that.

That was a problem she could solve slowly, she thought.

A problem, she promised both of them, she would spend the rest of their lives solving