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The wind swept a stray hair in Katniss's face as she lined up her arrow with the small auburn squirrel sitting on the lowest branch of a grand oak. As she blew the strand away with a short puff of breath, she let the arrow fly.
The squirrel ceased its chittering as it was struck directly through the left eye. With a quiet thump, it fell to the ground, directly into a patch of strawberry plants. Katniss's hand hovered over the small creature for a moment before picking it up, observing the blood that had coated the tiny white flowers. The strawberries had just started to bloom the week prior.
She had seen the charming flowers all over the forest and was looking forward to bringing some of the sweet fruit home to Peeta. As she picked up the squirrel, she spotted a small red fruit underneath it. Smiling as she picked it she thought back to Peeta, who was probably awake and preparing breakfast by now. She had left before sunrise to get them something for lunch from the forest.
As she let her mind wander, she startled herself as her thoughts drifted to Madge. The first strawberry of the season used to be reserved for her. She’d always brought the mayor some of the sweet berries as soon as they were available and Madge always snuck a berry before offering them to her father. After a while Katniss started saving the very first one specifically for Madge. The first time she had handed her that strawberry Madge had rewarded her with a smile, so sweet, she could have eaten ten strawberries and not come close. Now that first sweet fruit would go to Peeta because Madge was nothing but ash nurturing the soil.
Katniss shook her head free of the thought and decided the squirrel and the small bird she had shot earlier would be enough for her, Peeta, and Haymitch.
With the warm spring sun shining on her back she started her track back to the victor's village. Even before she reached the tall black iron gate, she could hear the chattering of Haymitch’s' Geese. As she kicked open the door to his house the smell of alcohol hit her like a train. Haymitch laid passed out on the couch, a bottle still tightly clutched in his grasp. She filled two glasses of water in the man's clattered sink and promptly poured one over his face. Hamitch awoke swinging wildly with the bottle in his hand but stopped when he recognized Katniss's face.
"Do you have to do that every time?", Haymitch huffed an exasperated breath, "one of these days I'm actually gonna hit you. Can’t imagine Peeta would be too happy with me if I bashed his Wife’s head in."
"Please, as if. Peeta would just give you those sad puppy eyes and tell you to stop drinking yourself into a coma."
"Yeah, cause he knows how much I hate getting that look", he slowly sat up and held his head.
"Bad day?", Katniss asked as she handed him the unspilled glass, "I haven’t had to wake you like this in a while."
Haymitch took a gulp of water but didn’t answer.
"You know you can always crash at our place, right?", Katniss shuffled her feet awkwardly, "You should come over for dinner today. Peeta would love to have you“.
"…thanks sweetheart, I’ll consider it", Haymitch seemed like he might add something to that, but instead shook his head and pointed to the door. "You should go back home, I'm sure Loverboy is missing you already"
Katniss nods and heads out but stops briefly in the doorway "We'll see you at dinner, sober up.”
She closed the door behind her without waiting for an answer. Haymitch would come, he never ditched an invitation if he knew they’d be expecting him. She picked up some goose eggs from the pen and started quietly whistling a solemn tune on the way home.
As she took off her boots and hung her coat on the rack, the delightful smell of freshly baked bread hit her nose. She had been right, Peeta already started making breakfast. She placed a short kiss on his cheek as she set the animals and eggs on the counter and started digging through the cabinet for a pan.
"Morning Katniss. How was the forest? Anything new?", Peeta, looked over to her as he chopped some herbs.
"Nothing much. Found a Strawberry, the rest will be ripe soon."
Peeta hummed in approval and smiled. Then his expression morphed into something a bit more serious. "You were up early today, hours before sunrise. Everything okay?"
"Hmm. Yeah, I'm all right, had a bad dream, went to the woods, got it out of my system. Same old. I didn’t mean to wake you up" Katniss started cracking the eggs into a pan and took the spatula Peeta was holding out for her.
"You didn’t wake me up, I only woke up an hour or so before the sun came up, but I noticed that your side of the bed was already cold, so I figured you’d been gone for a while. You can always wake me up if you need me, you know?"
"I know. I just needed to breathe some fresh air for a bit. It wasn’t too bad."
She handed Peeta a spoon to stir the herbs into the goat milk cream cheese they had made together the day before.
"Haymitch passed out again yesterday, I just woke him up"
Peeta turned to her his brow furrowed, "Did he tell you anything?"
Katniss hummed and shook her head, "No, but he's coming over for dinner today, you can ask him about it then. Just let me know if I should give you a moment alone."
"I'll do that.", he smiled and bumped his hip against hers as they finished preparing their breakfast in pleasant silence. Katniss smiled quietly to herself; she loved mornings. Over the years they had found a rhythm together and on simple mornings like this one, everything felt just a little easier.
As they put the fresh bread, the cream cheese, and the eggs down at the table and sat, Katniss handed Peeta the small strawberry.
"For you, first of the season", she said with a smile.
Peeta kissed her sweetly, first on the lips, then on the cheek. "Thank you, I love strawberries"
Katniss's smile fell slightly as her thoughts wandered back to Madge. Peeta smiled just like her. Full of sunshine and sweet things, she wished she could have taken those smiles and hidden them away from the world. Suns like them should have never been dimmed by war and violence.
"What’s wrong?", Katniss snapped out of her thoughts to see Peeta looking at her with a soft concern in his gaze.
"I don’t know… I just… have you ever met Madge Undersee?", Katniss asked haltingly.
"The mayor’s daughter? Uhm... yes? I delivered a cake over to their house on her birthday once. Saw her in school from time to time too. Why do you ask?" Peeta tilted his head slightly in question.
"She loved strawberries. Since they started to bloom, I just can’t stop thinking about her", Katniss sighs and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. "I always used to give her the first one. Her smile was just like yours. I think you would have liked her a lot if you'd known her better."
Peeta smiled sadly, "Tell me about her, what was she like? What else did she love?"
Katniss looked up at Peeta and was overwhelmed to see that he really wanted to hear what she had to say. No matter how long they had been together now, it still baffled her sometimes, just how attentive he was.
“She loved playing the piano, we used to spend hours together in her room, sometimes I’d simply listen to her, and other times we’d sing together as she was playing. She was really good you know?”, Katniss looked at Peeta with a wistful smile on her face, he was hanging on to her every word and gave a small nod, inclining her to go on.
“She loved music, she even took me to the pub a couple of times, to watch one of the musicians perform there. She noticed it was a bit too crowded for me though so we didn’t go there often. She was a lot like you in that regard, always noticing when someone wasn’t feeling well. She always did her best to help.”, Katniss had to swallow the lump in her throat before she continued.
“I took her hunting with me a few times, but she never really enjoyed it. She did like the forest, though. The flowers, the trees, the birds… she always pointed out every little beautiful thing she saw. Without her there I wouldn’t have even noticed half of them. We’d sit in the meadow and just talk. Sometimes important things, other times just anything that came to mind. A lot of the time we just sat and enjoyed the quiet, with the sun on our faces. She loved weaving flowers together to make little bracelets. I never wore them for long, eventually they’d get in the way, but when she handed me one, I always put it on. I wish they had been more resilient. She always looked so sad when she saw that I lost them.”, Katniss felt a tear rolling down her cheek.
“I guess in the end she was just like her flowers. Beautiful, delicate, they were never meant to survive in a world that burned everything that dared to be sweet.”, Katniss was crying by the time she finished the sentence. Tears quietly running down her cheeks. She wiped at them furiously before looking back up at Peeta. He looked at her with a soft empathy, understanding slowly forming in his gaze.
“You loved her, didn’t you?”, he whispered with a sad smile.
“Of course I loved her, I think she was my best friend. Maybe for longer than I even realized. You know how long it can take me to trust someone.”
“Yeah, I know that, but that’s not what I’m talking about… you loved her like you love me.”, Peeta marveled at how easy that was to say. After all these years their love had become such a clear fact in his mind. Even when he still questioned some of his memories from time to time, he always knew that Katniss loved him.
“What? No. I’ve never loved someone like I love you.”, Katniss looked at him confused.
“I meant you were in love with her. Think about it – your best friend right now is Johanna, right?”
“Right”
“And you love Johanna?”, Katniss nodded, “Is it the same feeling as loving Madge?”
“Well… no? But that doesn’t mean I was in love with Madge. I don’t love anyone the same way as someone else. It’s all different, all unique.”, Katniss still looked at Peeta with a puzzled expression on her face.
“Only you could say something so sweet and make it sound like you were talking about the weather.”, Peeta huffed a small laugh and shook his head in fond exasperation.
“Let me try to put it differently… did you think Madge was pretty?”
Katniss furrowed her brows, “Of course, Madge was beautiful, anyone that ever met her could tell you that.”
“I’m asking you though, what about her made you think she was pretty?”
“I don’t know… everything? You did say you knew her, right?”
“Just humor me”
“Fine. She had beautiful eyes. I never quite figured out what color they were, somewhere between blue, grey, and green. They looked like anything from a summer sky to the evergreens in the forest, depending on the way the light hit them. But no matter the color, they were always full of kindness. She never looked at me like I was wounded or weak, something pitiful, or some sort of spectacle, like everyone else did after the games. She looked at me like I was important like I deserved her kindness.”
“You did, you’ve always deserved to have good people in your life”, Peeta took her hand in his and wiped the remnants of the tears from her cheeks. “I’m glad you had her to be there for you after the games. I know things were still pretty awkward between us back then and Gale… well, we’ve already had that conversation. I just… the way you talk about her reminds me of the way I used to talk about you. If you want me to back off, I will, but I think if I’m right, you need to realize how you felt, otherwise she’ll haunt you forever.”
“No… you’re fine. Maybe you’re right. Before Madge, I never really had a friend, unless you count Gale, but like you said, we already had that conversation. I guess I just don’t really have a frame of reference. Like I said, I love everyone differently, not more or less, just different. I figured out what kind of different I felt about you, based on how I felt when I kissed you. I don’t have that with Madge, I never kissed her.”
“Imagine it. Imagine kissing Madge, how would you feel?”, Peeta squeezed her hand and looked at her encouragingly.
Katniss closed her eyes and imagined herself back in Madge's room during one of their sleepovers. She imagined Madge waking her after a restless sleep and holding her cheek gently, as she used to do whenever Katniss had a nightmare. But instead of laying back down with her and singing her softly to sleep, as she had usually done, Katniss imagined what it would have felt like if she had kissed her. She used the gifted kiss on the cheek from the train ride to the arena as a reference for how her lips might have felt. Katniss felt a warm content feeling bubble up in her stomach as she imagined those soft lips meeting hers and with a start, she opened her eyes.
“I think you’re right. But… what do I do with that now? Even if I did love her, she’s gone. I’m never going to see her again. Do you think she loved me too?”
Peeta looked thoughtful for a moment and let out a long sigh.
“I didn’t really know her, but when I think back to school, I remember seeing her look at you, the same way I did.”
“I wish I had known. Maybe I would have realized sooner, maybe Gale would have gotten her out. Maybe I could have kissed her, spent more time with her.”, Katniss's breathing started to pick up.
“Hey, look at me.”, Peeta put a hand on her cheek and lifted her gaze to meet his. “Don’t think about what ifs. That won’t bring her back. I’m sorry for making you mourn her all over again.”
“I just don’t know what to do now… all that love, I never even told her. Where do I put it now that she’s gone?”, Katniss looked at Peeta with a wild and desperate look in her eyes.
“The same place we put it for everyone else we lost. Our memory. We’ll add another page to her entry in the book, if you want, we can plant some strawberries in the front yard, next to the primroses. Keep saving the first strawberry for her, we’ll put it by the memorial in the square. Keep her in your heart, it’s more than big enough to fit her next to me.”
Overwhelmed, Katniss buried her head in Peeta’s shoulder. When he put his arms around her she couldn’t help but cry. The quiet tears turned into big, ugly, heaving sobs, as Katniss thought back to Madge Undersee, her first friend, first love, her Madge. If only she hadn’t taken so long to realize. Even if it wouldn’t have saved her, how long could they have been together? Would it have been easier to lose her like that, or was it better to never fully know what could have been?
Katniss and Peeta stayed like that for a long time, tangled up in each other's arms, mourning the past. Eventually, the tears ceased and they unfolded.
“You know, the name Madge, actually means pearl… I know you still keep the pearl I gave you in the arena. Maybe you could use it to keep us both close now?”, Peeta looked uncertain, but Katniss's heart flooded with love for the sweet boy in front of her.
“Would you be ok with that? I love you, I married you. I don’t want you to think I would have chosen her over you.”, Katniss met his eyes uncertainly.
“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t. I love you. I know you love me. I also know you have an infinitely big heart and I know me and Madge can share a space in it. You don’t need to choose, I’d never blame you for loving her.”
Katniss placed a hand on Peeta’s cheek and pulled him in for a long kiss. She tried her best to pour all her love and thankfulness into it, but just in case it wasn’t clear, as she pulled away, she quietly told him, “Thank you Peeta. I love you more than I could ever say.”
She rested her forehead against his for another moment, before standing and pulling Peeta to his feet as well.
“Come on. We should get started on dinner, don’t wanna send Haymitch home with an empty stomach.”
Fin~