A big thanks too NerdyGirlProductzz, FortuneFaded2012, Madame BonBons, De Brussyere for feedback. I can't tell you how much I love reading your comments! I hope you leave more :) FortuneFaded2012 to answer your question, Madge and Gale are not living in their own home in order to maximize their resources. Gale still wants to help take care of his mother and siblings. And they would get more help with the baby. So for now they are staying with Hazelle and the kids. But they do have an assigned house. I hope at some point to write them visiting it and fixing it up. The only thing holding me back is I'm still not sure how long I'm going to make this story. Hope that answers your question. Feel free to ask questions any time.

That goes for everyone too, questions are always welcome as are comments.

Part 7: What Is And What Should Never Be

Staring at the bottom of your glass
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go so fast

I stand hidden away in the hall between the kitchen and the library while the celebration carries on. Hidden in the faint light emanating off the kitchen, secretly trying to disapear. Everyone means well with their warm wishes, with their jovial mood, but it still all feels like a bit much. I'm eternally grateful for everything they've done and that's why I choose to slip away and not spoil their fun.

I just need a moment, a moment to wrangle the feelings tight in my chest. A moment to put them back in their hiding place. A moment to myself and my intense emotions in an empty hall before I plaster a happy smile back on my face and return to the celebration.

I'm not sad or regretful, but uncertain and nervous. I'm not sure where my place is in all this. I'm not sure where I stand now. Before all this, my family and home may have been flawed, but at least I knew my place in it. Now, it feels like I've entered a whole new world with only a few familiar faces in a sea of new ones.

The days ahead feel daunting and nerve-racking as the celebration ends and I enter my life in the Seam as Gale's wife, soon to be mother of our child. It all feels so tight in my chest, like suffocating knots. I'm in the midst of trying to slowly breathe my way through them when I hear a set of heavy footsteps come up behind me.

Turning abruptly, I come face to face with Haymitch Abernathy. A man I've known all my life and yet never really knew. His connection to my mother was undeniable. He still brings my grandmother special treats from time to time, but his ties to my family have always been shrouded in mystery.

I assumed he came to the wedding, because he's Katniss and Peeta's mentor, but part of me knew that wasn't the only reason. Haymitch came, because of me too, because my mother couldn't. His glossy gray Seam eyes and staggered step tell me he's already inebriated. Though I'd be more surprised if he wasn't. I can't ever recall seeing Haymitch sober.

I'm not surprised when he leans against the wall beside me. Finding a steady support for his weight and frame. His gray eyes drill me, probe me. Haymitch always did have a knack for being socially awkward. He drags out his uncomfortable stare a little longer before finally speaking.

"You know, it's uncanny how much you look like her." Haymitch says and I'm impressed when his lips only slightly slur.

"Who?" I question, and the look in Haymitch's eye tells me he knows I'm just being difficult.

We both know who he speaks of. Conceding, I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and avert my gaze.

"I wouldn't know." I've only seen a handful of pictures of Maysilee.

Pictures are like treasures in District Twelve, even for wealth families, but she was my mother's twin, so it's not hard to imagine.

Haymitch's glare softens as I relent. He'd never say it, but I know it bothers him the distance I've placed between us since my mother's death. It's difficult for me where Haymitch is concerned. It's a bag of mixed emotions. As a child I found him funny and welcomed his visits. It was only with age and unfortunate circumstance that I grew resentful.

"She looked just like your mother." Haymitch clarifies, his glossy gaze still transfixed by my ghostly image.

I don't like his eyes upon me, knowing he's thinking of my mother. Knowing that I think of her too sometimes when I look in the mirror. My grandmother is the only person I trust to commiserating over my mother's death with.

"I hardly remember her." I lie defensively.

Growing older, I see now Haymitch loved my mother, loved her dearly. In the beginning, I think it had been about Maysilee, but before my birth it had become more. For reasons I'll never know, Haymitch could never show that love openly, only to my mother. How far their love ran, I'll never know. My father certainly wasn't a perfect husband. He was always busy being a good mayor, gone more than home. But the revelation soured the way I see Haymitch ever since I learned the truth. Near the end, Haymitch had been the only person that could bring life back to my mother when she bedridden and miles away in her mind. For reasons that are I know are childish and selfish, I always resented him for that.

A sly all-knowing grin twists Haymitch's face as his eyes never leave me. "We both know that's a lie, sweetheart." He's quick to correct me.

Haymitch respects my distance on most occasions, but he's never been a man to cater to bullshit. I meet his gaze dead on like a challenge and for a split second I see surprise wash over his eyes.

Clearing his throat, Haymitch settles on a less heated topic. "What's the bride doing hiding out at her own wedding?"

I stare at Haymitch silently for a moment, amazed by how a man as drunk as he is can make such an astute observation.

"I needed some air." I smile cordially.

Knowing Haymitch is cleverer than people give him credit for and I don't want him to figure out what I'm really hiding from. The last thing I want is Haymitch thinking too hard about why I just rushed to marry Gale Hawthorne. A man he knows my father would have deemed beneath me.

Haymitch nods in an exaggerated fashion as if the alcohol was sloshing around in his skull with the movement.

"Yeah, I never really liked weddings either. Lot of fuss about nothing, if you ask me."

A sober man might worry he insulted me. What with it being my wedding and all, but not Haymitch. He's never been the kind of man to care if his comments are construed as insulting. Fishing around in his jacket pocket, Haymitch pulls out a steel flask.

"Here, it'll calm your nerves." He offers me his steel container as a kind of peace offering.

I know Haymitch doesn't want to fight with me anymore than I want to fight with him. I don't hate him. It's just hard to disentangle all of my good memories of him from the secrets he shared with my mother.

I eye the flask extended in his hand for a moment, I wouldn't mind a sip right about now if I wasn't pregnant.

"No thank you," I respond with a shake of my head.

I don't have a lot of knowledge about pregnancy, but even I know, you shouldn't drink when you're pregnant. Enough booze babies in Distinct Twelve to make it clear why that's a bad idea.

Haymitch's unfocused eyes narrow as his head cocks to the side. He knows I've had a drink or two before. My parents may have died when I was young, but our family is still often invited to special District events. A show of respect among other reasons. Events Haymitch is expected to attend since he was the only victor before Katniss and Peeta. His eyes feel heavy upon me as I can practically see the wheels spinning in his mind.

"What are you pregnant?" Haymitch spits out sarcastically.

I try to hide the anxiety that sweeps through me with his joke, but Haymitch knows me too well. Instantly the liquor takes control as he begins to chuckle, his chest jumping with the hearty emotion.

"Of course you are, sweetheart." A lighter beat to his breath as he responds with a nod to himself.

Tucking his flask back in his jacket pocket, it seems to play again in his mind as if he's putting all the pieces together, and Haymitch lets out another round of hearty chortling.

"Now it all makes sense." He muses to himself. As if this whole production made no sense to him until now.

As his laughter quickly dies down, Haymitch runs a quick hand over his scraggly face. Deep contemplation heavy in his gaze as he stares aimlessly at the wall before his eyes meet mine dead on.

"Would have broken your mother's heart." He states as a matter of fact.

Guilt slams into my chest, I know she would be disappointed in me, both my parents would. My mother, because I'm so young and I barely know Gale. My father, because Gale is a lowly coal miner from the Seam. And for once I'm almost happy they aren't here to see me fall. To see me become the last thing they would want for me.

"Well she's not here to see it, now is she?" My words are laced with grief as tears build in my eyes.

Upset that Haymitch of all people gets to remind me that even in death I've let my parents down. Without a word I move as quickly as I can down the hall. Ignoring Haymitch's feeble attempts to call after me. I search for Gale, but when I don't see him in the library, I continue past the open doorway before being spotted, and move about the house in search of him.

Gale POV

After making the customary rounds with my family and friends, giving thanks and accepting their congratulations, I need air to clear my head. The ceremony went easier, better than I could have imagined, but I still can't stop the rattling of nerves in my chest with the realization I am now married.

And now that Madge doesn't need me to hold her together, it is I who feels unsteady on my feet. I sneak away as everyone devours Peeta's indulgent cake and carries on in celebration, joyous moments so rarely seen in District Twelve. I slip out Katniss' backdoor and am instantly surprised to find her already out here.

Her giant gray eyes hit me as she spins around to see who has found her. The tension in her orbs quickly relaxes as she takes my image in, and despite everything we've been through in the last month and a half, I'm pleased Katniss can still find comfort with the sight of me.

I swallow hard as I move down her back steps and join her on the dry grass. Our eyes don't find each other again for a long moment as we stand in silence. Our connection is still strong, and that's the very problem right now. It's too hard looking Katniss in the eye, carrying on a conversation, knowing what she means to me, knowing she just watched me marry Madge.

Luckily Katniss seems to sense that, the way she always reads me, and speaks up first.

"Well that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." She quietly admits, letting out a huffed laugh as her eyes stay glued ahead of us to the wiry district fence and then onto the dense forest that borders her property.

My dark eyes instantly drift to her. "Which part?" I find myself blurting out before I think to censor it.

I'm so use to not holding my tongue where Katniss is concerned that I find it foreign to second guess my words now before speaking to her.

Katniss meets my gaze and there's a quiet sadness in her pupil I'm sure must be in my own too.

"The cameras and everything…" She covers, and we both know it's a cover.

I'm sure the whole production with the Capitol annoyed her as much as it riled me, but we both know the real elephant in the room we struggle to speak of.

"I hate this." I find myself confessing on a heavy disgruntled breath.

My heart straining with the distance our choices are creating between us. The one person I've felt I could be myself with for so long, and suddenly there's a crevasse between us and it feels like its growing.

"Gale," Katniss sighs on an equally burdened breath, knowing what I mean, but the weight on her breath says she's not sure she wants to hear it.

"I always thought that would be me and you." I ignore Katniss' pleas and admit things I know I shouldn't say aloud.

Things that cross the boundary of our friendship. Things I kept quiet before, because I didn't think Katniss was ready to hear them, but what does it matter anymore, now she'll never be mine. And somewhere deep inside Katniss, I know my words can't be a complete surprise, but I need her to know. I need to get it off my chest and I need her to hear it.

I felt something undeniably real with Madge during our ceremony that took me by surprise, but it overwhelms me how much it pales in comparison to how I feel about Katniss and the thought it could always be this way terrifies me.

"Yeah well, things change, seems life has other plans in mind." Katniss surprises me as her eyes break from mine and drift back out to the rich evergreen trees towering in the distance.

I expected she'd shoot me down, order me to stop talking like this, but she doesn't. Katniss admits what I already know, that she's known in her own way we're more than friends, different than family. That she knows everyone thought we'd end up together. That she holds a real place in my heart.

Surprising myself, I reach out to tenderly graze her cheek with my worn knuckles.

"I'm sorry I screwed everything up." My breath is so heavy with heartbreak it's practically a husky whisper.

As my eyes drill into her profile hoping to always remember the beauty of her face, the softness of her skin. And in the same breath paying I forget it completely as Madge takes the place I always thought would be hers in my life.

Katniss moves swift and silent, like a true hunter, pulling my hand from her face, and taking a step back as she pins me with her eyes.

"Don't, we'll always have each other. Nothing changes that, but don't make this harder than it already is. What's done is done." Katniss' eyes pierce mine with more emotion than I've seen from her in a long time.

Holding my gaze, gently she gives my knuckles a quick kiss before releasing my hand, and turning to go back inside.

Realizing what even I didn't grasp, I shouldn't have come outside with her, we shouldn't be alone. It's too hard, too many high strung emotions and open wounds. It'll be easier tomorrow, I try to convince myself. It'll be easier as Madge and I settle in, but never the same.

Neither of us said it, but I think we both heard it all too clear, that was goodbye. Not to our friendship, but to what could have been. There's just no place for it now. I take a few deep breaths. Let the hot muggy air smother my lungs and refocus my mind before I go back inside and face my new life.

Well you see her when you fall asleep
But never to touch and never to keep
Cause you loved her too much and you dived too deep

Authors Note: I'm trying to lay the foundation that Haymitch and Madge share a complex relationship. I've always felt Haymitch must have known Madge's parents, especially her mom well. Because he was the only victor for so long and her dad the Mayor, because he was allies with Maysilee in the Games. So Haymitch's connection to Madge and her family is something I plan to explore. I wanted to add an extra layer between what could have been going on between Haymitch and Madge's mother. Though I am not confirming Madge's assumptions are right, but they are a big part of why Madge has mixed emotions toward Haymitch. And as you already read their relationship can get a little messy.

I wasn't trying to undermine what Madge and Gale shared during their wedding with the Katniss and Gale moment, but rather, I wanted to show the struggle Gale is facing. He loves Katniss (I'm staying true to the book). Love doesn't just go away, because you want it to. Gale is working through his feelilngs. Working through his love for Katniss that no longer has a place. And really I wanted to show their moment was a goodbye to everything Gale thought their future would hold. Because by letting go, Gale can be ready to move forward in his life with Madge. Instead of pining away for what could have been with Katniss. Hopefully that made sense.