Author's Note: This is for those WtM readers who have been wondering what Gale and Madge are getting up to in the absence of Katniss and Peeta. ;) I originally anticipated this would be a oneshot but I'm leaving the door open for potential future installments, since there are a few other scenes I might like to write for them.

The title is taken from Ch 3 of When the Moon: I silently curse Gale as colorfully as I know how. What was he doing at the mayor's house anyway? It's a good six months to strawberry time, and he'd have nothing else to trade.

Chapter One: Partners

I borrowed a much-patched brown overcoat from Briony, the youngest of our Seam maids, along with a worn gray stocking cap that once belonged to her father. In exchange she gets the use of my best winter coat for the day, a dab of perfume at her wrists and throat, and a pouchful of coins to spend at the sweet-shop.

It may be a generous trade, but if all goes well I anticipate coming out strides ahead in this bargain.

I urged her to stop by the apothecary to see if Mrs. Everdeen is making phosphates yet and if so, to stay and enjoy as many as she likes. She's more than earned a break with all the extra holiday preparations that the mayor's mansion requires, and I want to allow myself plenty of time for negotiation.

I was determined to offer something: a loaf of fresh bread, a tin of festive sweets, even a bucket of coal as a gesture of goodwill to strengthen my proposition, but Briony's never shaken her head faster. No gifts, miss, she warned. You'll only make him angry.

Now I'm standing empty-handed in front of the Hawthornes' sooty, ramshackle home and wondering if I've well and truly gone mad.

I press my lips together and give a firm rap with gloved knuckles, grounding my boots in the muddy gray snow to prevent them turning me smartly around and racing back to town before anyone sees me here.

Mrs. Hawthorne answers the door quicker than I expect. I've never actually met her before but I've seen her countless times in her capacity as a laundress, picking up and delivering orders from our neighbors. I'm told she was striking as a girl; every bit as beautiful as Alyssum Ebberfeld, only in that dark Seam fashion, and despite decades of poverty, hunger, and back-breaking work, she's still a very handsome woman. The sort any widower in town would set his cap for, if he had any sense.

She wears only white ribbons – albeit real satin ribbons – in her crown braid today, which means it's time and past the widowers took notice.

She tilts her head curiously at the sight of me, as though some exotic bird has alighted upon her doorstep. "The last time I saw your like in the Seam," she remarks by way of greeting, "Jack Everdeen got a sweetheart, and a fiancée by week's end.

"No," she amends after a moment, frowning slightly. "I take that back. Your mama was the last town girl I saw here, all pink skirts and high-buttoned shoes, carrying a satchel full of pretty dresses and kerchiefs and soaps and a canary in a cage for Jack's new bride, who ran away from home with no more than the clothes on her back."

She regards me thoughtfully. "I don't see a canary or a packed case, Miss Undersee," she says. "Have you come for a sweetheart?"

I blush without sense or reason. Her son is good-looking, I suppose, but he's also gruff and cross and downright mean to me at every opportunity, which puts a substantial damper on his appeal. Gale Hawthorne is the very last boy I would ever consider for a sweetheart, let alone pursue as one.

Truth be told, I strongly debated making this trip today because it's the day after New Year's and I don't have a single ribbon in my hair. I don't have a sweetheart, of course; I've never had one, but people assume that the mayor's daughter must have half a dozen at the very least, so for the past several years I've taken the red ribbons from two of my family's kissing boughs – the third, which hangs in the kitchen, gets parceled out among the staff – and woven them through my hair so I appear to have many sweethearts – or a single, very devoted one.

But this year I couldn't do it, in part because beribboned blonde braids would stand out like a sore thumb in the Seam but also because I knew he'd see through it in a shot. Gale always says the most cutting things and even without being at school this year, he knows full well that no boys like me, let alone enough to gift me with sweetheart ribbons.

I often wonder why he condescends to sell wild strawberries to my father. We pay generously for them, of course, but he could find another buyer with ease and not have to deal with me in the process.

But then, maybe he likes dealing with me. Likes having someone to mock on his trade rounds.

Gale makes me feel how plain and dull and worthless I am without even having to try, and I ask myself yet again why I'm doing this. I must be out of my mind.

"I'm here on business," I tell Mrs. Hawthorne firmly. "I'd like a word with your eldest son, if he's available."

The day after New Year's is a normal work day, when almost the entire adult population of the Seam is trudging the sooty snow-path back to the mines well before sun-up. But since Katniss left to live with Peeta in the woods, Gale doesn't work in the mines anymore. He's officially employed by the newly reopened apothecary, with special permission to leave the district under Peacekeeper guard to harvest things from the woods – in this season, primarily pine products and the odd bit of wintergreen – to rebuild Mrs. Everdeen's medicine stores, but that's only half the story, if the rumors are to be believed.

I've staked quite a lot in these rumors, but it's glaringly apparent that Gale's found an additional source of income – and a substantial one – just by looking at his mother. The deep green shawl knotted at her shoulder is fine new wool, soft and beautifully woven, as is her long plaid skirt. They're not fashionable so much as practical in the bone-deep cold of the Seam, and there's not a quantity of pine needles in the world that could buy either one.

"Business?" she echoes with more interest than surprise. "Yes, he seems to go in for that sort of thing now. He's about to head in to work," she says, "but I expect he could give you a few moments, or you could walk to town with him and discuss your 'business' on the way."

I tip my head with a frown, trying to determine what she's implying, but Mrs. Hawthorne is too frank to bother with innuendo. She simply doesn't have a clue what business I could possibly have with her son, which is all the better.

"I don't suppose he'd care to be seen walking with me," I reply. "Let alone on the day after New Year's."

She considers this for a moment then reaches out with neither word nor warning to snatch off my borrowed stocking cap, and I gasp as my long pale hair tumbles out, unbraided and an absolute mess from sleep – I'd simply stuffed it all up inside the cap, having no intention of removing said garment till I was safely back at home – and bright as a flare in the dingy morning light.

"You might be surprised," she says finally and hands me back the cap. "Gale!" she calls over her shoulder, giving the door behind her a hearty pound with one fist. "Someone to see you!"

I frantically jam my hair back up into the cap but I'm not quite quick enough – or, more likely, Gale was lying in wait on the other side of the door, because he's on the stoop before his mother has finished speaking and thus gets a good withering look at my messy hair before it vanishes into the safe haven of worn gray wool once more.

My chances of securing this bargain just dropped a good fifty percent, if not more. Seam folk are proud people and trying to make a deal while looking like I literally just rolled out of bed would be a slight to any one of them, but Gale will be both offended and cruelly amused to have caught me at such a disadvantage. He'll positively delight in refusing my offer and hasten to remind me of why at every possible opportunity.

Except he doesn't look offended or amused at all. Unlike his mother, he looks absolutely gobsmacked at the sight of me.

I've never seen Gale Hawthorne gobsmacked in his life. Before this moment I couldn't even envision Gale Hawthorne gobsmacked. He's stunned and confused and utterly off his guard, even worse than that bizarre morning in November, just after the snowstorm, when he stood on our front porch and blurted out, She's leaving. She's going to live with Peeta Mellark in the woods and I wouldn't count on her coming to say goodbye.

No names – as if there were any other she we had in common – no details, no explanation: just two sentences, all but panted in my face and then he turned, sprinted back down the steps, and vanished like he'd never been there at all.

"Business," he says at last, a little hoarsely. "What business brings the mayor's daughter to the Seam the day after New Year's?"

Years of experience make me bristle, even though he hasn't really said anything insulting yet. "I'd rather not discuss it in the street, if you don't mind," I reply, as evenly as I can manage, and Gale immediately rises to the bait, his hesitation and confusion a thing of the past.

"I see," he says dryly. "Should we go to the apothecary and split a phosphate like a courting couple?"

Everything he says is so awful, always. I must be out of my mind.

Thankfully, his mother swings an arm across his ribs before I can, and in a decidedly more merciful fashion.

"If that's the impression you'd like to give the district," I answer sweetly, albeit through gritted teeth, and catch something like a smile flickering across his mother's lips.

"Go on," Mrs. Hawthorne says heartily, giving him a shove in my direction. "More business for you means more money for us, and the little ones are growing out of their clothes faster than I can alter it. I doubt she means to make you late for 'work.'"

The emphasis is the same as she used in regard to my "business," and for some reason that makes me smile.

"And give your mama a kiss," she reminds him, catching at his coat – a parka of gray wool, knee-length and fleece-lined, with a deep hood; the sort of winter gear you'd expect on a Capitol camera crew or a Head Peacekeeper, not a Seam boy, no matter what he does for a living – and tugging him back to dispense a dutiful, if cursory kiss on her cheek.

This seems unusually sentimental until you remember that Gale's father died in a mine explosion, the same one that claimed Katniss's father, and I wonder if Mrs. Hawthorne remembered to get her goodbye kiss that morning or if she's been trying to make up for it ever since.

Gale walks past me, scowling fiercely, and starts down the street, leaving me no choice but to hurry to catch up with his angry, long-legged strides. "And it wouldn't do you any harm to buy the girl a phosphate," Mrs. Hawthorne calls after us. "Especially if this offer of hers is any good."

"Is that what you want?" Gale asks cuttingly as I come up alongside him, but he slows his pace just the same. "A treat for walking all the way out to the Seam?"

"I've been here before," I point out. "And I don't want any 'treat' from you."

He pulls up sharply to look at me, and it's more unnerving than usual because he's almost – almost – curious. There's a light deep in his gray eyes that I've never seen before, and I can't begin to guess what it signifies. "But you do want something," he says; muses, really, and my nerve tears off like a cat on fire.

"Not this badly," I decide and walk away, as quickly as I can manage, but it takes Gale less than three strides to catch up.

"No sweethearts this year," he remarks, half a question, and I tug the gray knit down to my eyebrows, mortified. All at once I know why his mother pulled off my cap: to see if I was wearing any sweetheart ribbons in my hair, though what interest that could possibly be to her, I can't imagine.

"And what business could that possibly be of yours?" I retort.

"Not one single ribbon for the mayor's pretty daughter?" he wonders, but without the barb I've come to expect beneath anything resembling a compliment.

"I didn't come here for insults," I say, glaring at him on instinct. "I could've caught you at the Hob for that."

I'm too conditioned to these encounters; too well-trained by his jibes to simply accept anything he says at face value. Thankfully, those hair-trigger instincts will be put to good use very soon, if I can convince him to accept my proposal.

"So what do you want?" he asks.

This time it's me who stops short. "I want to go into business," I answer, raising my chin to regard him as levelly as I can, despite his superior height. "And for better or for worse, with you."

"And just what sort of business would that be, Princess Undersee?" he taunts. "Are you planning to give your cousins at the sweet-shop a run for their money?" He punctuates this with a bark of mirthless laughter; once more the bitter, angry young man I know so painfully well.

Good. That's exactly who I was prepared to deal with, and now I can finally spell out my proposition.

"I want to be your hunting partner," I reply.

And for the second time in eighteen years, Gale Hawthorne is utterly gobsmacked. Only for a second, maybe, but it floods my chest and straightens my back with the hot golden light of triumph.

"Hunting's illegal," he says, too casually, "punishable by death. I've got my mom and three little kids to look out for. I'd never be mixed up in something like that."

It's my turn to laugh sharply. "Don't let's lie to each other," I retort. "How about I tell you what I know and you tell me if I miss anything?"

He stares at me for a long moment, frowning but not quite scowling, and the triumph-heat in my chest flares a little hotter. "Spin your tale, if you must," he concedes. "And I'll tell you if you get any of it right."

"A week after Peeta took Katniss away with him, you quit working in the mines and were officially employed by Mrs. Everdeen as designated forager for the apothecary shop - through Peeta's influence, of course," I begin. "Six days a week you go to the apothecary for your orders and then report to the Peacekeeper outpost at the eastern gate. You have a Peacekeeper keeper, as it were, usually Darius, which is convenient because the two of you are friends, and have been for awhile. He's supposed to supervise you while you collect pine needles, mosses, bark and such for medicines."

All of this is fact, of course, probably already marked down in the annals of District Twelve, as maintained at the Justice Building.

"But of course, that arrangement is far too promising to restrict to simple herb gathering," I go on, lowering my voice, but not as much as I suspect he would like. "You forage, of course, because that's your job, but you hunt and lay snares at the same time, and the Peacekeepers double your generous apothecary wages in return for a steady supply of fresh meat."

I say that last with more conviction than I feel. It feels beyond absurd, especially saying the words aloud, but the information came from Rooba, who's romanced a Peacekeeper or two over the years. I'd gladly buy whatever he brings in, but I can't match their prices, she said. As long as he doesn't make too deep a dent in my business, I've little enough to complain about. Jack Everdeen did the same in his day, if not quite so lucratively, and his mama in hers.

"The only problem is," I observe, and waver ever so slightly, because this part is pure guessing on my part, if relatively informed: "you can't do both of those jobs at once. If you fall behind in your hunting Cray can make life difficult for you, and if you don't gather enough for Mrs. Everdeen, the district – Seam and Merchant alike – doesn't get its much-needed medicines, and then the powers that be will start to wonder what you're doing in the woods for all that time if it's not the job they gave you very special permission to do.

"You have a too-successful business, as it were," I conclude. "And you need a partner."

"And you reckon that should be you?" Gale deadpans without confirmation, denial, or even a flicker of reaction to a single word I've said.

"As you are so fond of pointing out, I serve no other purpose," I remind him frankly. "I'm invisible, unneeded - and quite capable of disappearing in plain sight."

He looks me up and down, taking in my appearance for the first time. It's not a true disguise, nor did I intend it as such, but with my hair stuffed up into a cap and my torso wrapped in an patched old coat, I could pass as a Seam girl or even a boy. "I'm not as scrawny as your last partner," I admit – or rather, I add silently, as she was before Peeta took her off to the woods to make love to her in every way but the physical one – "but I'm slim, agile, and sufficiently well-fed for stamina and endurance."

"You sound like a Career volunteer," he retorts. "I wouldn't rate you past a six."

"And how would you have ranked her, the first time you met in the woods?" I counter. I know little enough about that day, save that Katniss was twelve and tiny as a hollow-boned wren, coming off those terrible months of near-starvation that followed her father's death, but I can't imagine this smug and angry boy would have regarded her with anything other than condescension and maybe pity.

"Leave her out of this," he warns, but of course, neither of us can do that.

"I know you miss her," I say, my voice softer than I intend. If Katniss had been here this New Year's, there's no doubt in my mind that Gale would have offered her a red ribbon – a rag-ribbon, of course, like the one Peeta Mellark wears around his wrist – and I know equally well how it would have ended: with Gale storming through the district the morning after New Year's, in dire need of a new hunting partner. At least this way he was spared a little heartbreak and humiliation.

"You don't know anything," he whispers.

I bite my lip and reevaluate my tactic. The entire district – probably the entire country – knows that Gale fully expected to marry Katniss, though whether that was due to affection, practicality, or a mixture of the two is still up for some debate. "Fair enough," I concede. "I won't pretend to know – or care –" I add bitingly – "about what's in your heart. It's nothing to do with me, and it has no bearing on your business or how good a partner I'd make."

He regards me for a long silent while with eyes narrowed in an expression I can't begin to decipher. "You're very sure of yourself," he says at last.

"I'm a Donner," I answer quietly; my trump card, and the one I didn't want to have to play. "Ask your mother if you don't know what that means."

He tips his head a little, almost – almost – an acknowledgement, though of what I can't begin to guess, and I realize he does know – and therefore, that my family; my mother's family, has come up at the Hawthorne hearth at least once. Gale's far too young to remember anything about my late aunt, of course, but his mother would recall her all too well.

"As I understand it, she did all right without a partner," he says after a long moment. "It was after they split that things went south."

I seize my fled nerve with both hands and cling to it for dear life. "And I'll do just fine without you," I lie boldly. "I don't need any snarky Seam boy to help me out in the wild. I'm more patient than you'll ever be, and I'd hazard I'm smarter too. I thought we'd do better if we joined forces," I say with a boredom that requires all my strength to counterfeit, "but no matter. Maybe I'll put you out of business –"

"Okay," he says suddenly - calmly enough, but still it startles me to my bones. "I'll take you to the woods on Sunday and we'll see how it goes."

My brows fly up as my heart clamors in both panic and elation, but I deftly pass it off as surprise at the intended delay. "Why wait?" I challenge, but it's just to have something to say, to cover up the pounding of my heart. "I could go out with you right now and show you how indispensable I'll be."

"I thought you didn't want people talking," he says dryly. "A Seam boy and a Merchant girl running off to the woods together the day after New Year's would be more than a little...suggestive."

"Of course," I agree, blushing a little and hating myself for it. "That's the last thing I want. Let's not give anyone fodder for that kind of gossip."

"But…you realize they will, right?" he says carefully. "Talk, I mean. Even a single trip to the woods together would be enough to incite a few rumors and –"

"They'll figure it out pretty quickly once they see us together in town," I dismiss. "I mean, no one ever really thought that you and Katniss were a couple."

He flinches sharply, as though I sliced a blade across his cheek, and I realize how incredibly stupid I've been not to see it all this while. I knew, like everyone else, that Gale liked Katniss and probably planned to marry her once her Reaping Days were done, but it's more than that. He loved her – probably still loves her – and I had the audacity to think I could step into her role as hunting partner like it was a simple business arrangement.

I couldn't care less who Gale Hawthorne loves, but I refuse to spend my Sundays in the woods being constantly and cruelly compared to the bravest, most beautiful girl either of us has ever known. "You know what? Never mind," I say. "Working with you would be a disaster. I knew that from the beginning."

And feeling like a colossal idiot, I turn away and am about to sprint for town when my hat is snatched off again. I whirl back in fury, pocketknife in hand, to find Gale staring at me – at my messy bed-hair, really; my knife barely registers a flicker of interest – and wearing a pensive frown.

"No sweethearts this year," he says again, as though it's some sort of intricate riddle that he needs to solve before he'll let me go.

"No sweethearts ever," I retort and snatch back the cap with my free hand.

"But…the ribbons," he puzzles. "You always wear ribbons after New Year's."

"I wear my own ribbons," I confess in a small voice, all my fire suddenly gone. "It looks bad if the mayor's daughter doesn't have any admirers. I figured that out a long time ago."

I pocket the little knife and turn for home again, tugging the cap down without bothering to tuck my hair up inside, and stop short at the sound of my name; the first he's spoken it in the whole of our conversation.

"Madge, wait."

I glower up at him, pretending that the sound of my name on his lips, said almost with respect, does nothing to me. "What now?" I ask. "You want to know how many boys I did or didn't give ribbons to?"

His lips quirk in something that could almost pass as a smile. "I strongly suspect there were none," he says lightly. "And…you were right. I do miss her. When she left, it was like a part of me had been ripped away."

I roll my eyes, not interested in his heartbreak over a relationship that was never going to happen, and he adds, "But not in the way you think. Yes, I…care about Katniss, and it killed me to just stand by while Peeta Mellark showered her family in comforts and carried her off to the woods in a fairytale sleigh painted with katniss blossoms to do who-knows-what –"

"Not what you think," I interject. "I mean, I'm sure it's heading there, but not for a good year or two. Katniss is such a cautious, wild thing and Peeta is so patient. He probably didn't even make eye contact with her for the first week."

This time it's a true smile, albeit a crooked one. "That's some small comfort, I guess," he says. "I spent that first week envisioning all the ways she might attack him if he so much as tried to kiss her.

"When she left – the first day I went to the woods on my own – it was like my left arm had been torn off at the socket," he explains quietly. "I could still do everything I'd done before, but half as quickly and half as well. As bad as the season had been, we had still, always hunted together, and without Katniss I was incomplete, impaired; exposed, even. The foraging wasn't so bad," he concedes. "There's little enough to harvest in this season, but once they figured out I could hunt at the same time…" He shakes his head. "It's a fantastic arrangement, doing what I've done for years, only legally – mostly – and getting paid for it, but –"

"You need a partner," I whisper.

"I need a partner," he agrees, softer than he's ever spoken to me before.

"I'm not Katniss," I warn him. "I don't want to be her substitute, and I don't much care to be compared."

He chuckles softly. "Somehow, I don't expect that will be a problem," he says, and holds out a hand.

I meet and shake it firmly. His grip is strong but not painfully so, as I half expected. "Sunday?" I wonder, releasing his hand.

He nods. "It's technically my day off, so there won't be orders to fill or extra eyes to observe us. If you're up for it, I thought I'd lend you a bow and see what you're capable of."

I squeal inwardly at this news. I've always secretly wanted to learn how to shoot a bow, and if Katniss was still here this spring I would have begged her to take me to the woods. "J-Just a bow?" I squeak out, intending to tease, but I'm too excited at the news. "Wouldn't an arrow or two come in handy?"

"You get one arrow for practice," he replies, to my surprise. "If you want more than that, you'll need to make them yourself."

"Is that the deal you offered Katniss?" I ask.

He grins broadly. "It's the deal she offered me," he says. "A scrawny little mousekin of a girl with a whole armory of bows when all I had were snares, and one arrow, she says. One arrow, and then you learn to make your own."

I miss her so much that my heart aches. My stubborn, wild, beautiful friend, living half a world away with her besotted fairytale prince. "I always knew she was a tough trader," I say with a smile.

I wonder if Gale's ever thought about journeying through the woods to Peeta's house to see her and decide it might be wiser not to ask.

"Must be where you picked it up," he replies. For a split second he's almost charming, and I'm reminded that however much he purportedly loved Katniss, there's a myriad of other girls who've been on the receiving end of his kisses these past few years.

"Anyway, don't you have school today?" he asks abruptly, and it's such an ordinary question that I almost laugh.

"I cleared my schedule," I reply. "In case you took some convincing."

"Well, don't do it again," he says with surprising sharpness. "Any remotely unusual behavior will get you noticed, and I doubt my special district-leaving privileges will extend to my under-the-radar hunting partner."

"Weekends and afternoons then?" I guess – I'd anticipated as much – and he nods.

"And for pity's sake…" He rummages in the hip pocket of his parka and produces a single red ribbon, which he promptly hands to me. "Do something pretty with your hair," he orders. "You'll miss your first class, but if you come in late, flushed from the cold with a red ribbon in your hair, they'll jump to a far less suspicious conclusion."

"I hope you don't expect a kiss for this," I chide, turning the ribbon – my first ever from a boy – between my gloved fingers. "It's a day late and that wasn't the most romantic exchange."

"It wasn't an exchange at all," he points out. "Unless you plan to give me something in return."

I consider this. He's entirely correct, and Seam folk take their trades very seriously indeed. A kiss would suffice, but the last thing in the world I want to do is kiss any part of Gale Hawthorne.

So I dig in my own hip pocket for my contingency plan: one of the red ribbons from my family's bough, carried along in the event that I lost my nerve and wanted something indicative of a sweetheart to wear in my hair. "Tie that round your sleeve," I tell him, proffering the ribbon. "I've probably made you late for work, but this way you'll look like you had a good reason."

He raises his brows as he takes the ribbon and I wonder how many others are already tied around his arm beneath the parka. "Fair enough," he says, "but that's not really something I can do one-handed."

I roll my eyes. Touching Gale Hawthorne is only minutely better than being made to kiss him, but he's right, yet again, and I come up to snug the ribbon around his left sleeve and loop its ends in a bow. I've never done this before and the act feels strangely weighty, even though neither of us is the other's sweetheart.

"There," I declare when I'm finished. "Partners."

"Partners," he agrees, regarding me with unexpectedly somber eyes as his opposite hand brushes the tangible pledge. "But only if you wear my ribbon to school today."

I give a humorless snort. "Oh, I'll wear it," I assure him dryly. "By the time I've run home and changed, I'll be too late to show up without a good excuse."

"Till Sunday, then," he says.

"Till Sunday," I echo and turn away from him just before my face spills into the widest, most ridiculous smile I've worn in longer than I can remember. I allow myself one long moment to relish the victory, the anticipation, the sheer blinding happiness at finally embarking on my own fairy tale of sorts, then I sprint down the muddy street toward home.

Author's Note: I find that a lot of people miss the reference in Catching Fire to Madge "dying to go into the woods" and Katniss teaching her how to shoot. I rediscovered it when I was researching some details about the mayor's mansion for WtM and knew that she absolutely had to become Gale's new hunting partner.