P H I L T A T O S

Gale x Madge, Rated M, AU-Canonverse

Part One: The Performers

With only seven entries in her last year of the reaping, Madge Undersee is going to the Capitol; as her mentor, Gale knows the odds aren’t exactly in her favor. Despite it all, he'll put on as much of a show as he has to so he can bring her home - he just hopes that she can do the same.

“A sister is someone you fight with and fight for.”

“Well, there’s no proof that will happen. You can’t count on things happening tomorrow just because they happened in the past. It’s faulty logic.”

It’s a reminder that the perfect Hunger Games we saw in the first hg book was an illusion because we had Katniss as our narrator. We didn’t have Haymitch, hell, we didn’t even have someone like Peeta because these people played the games. Katniss didn’t.

Katniss was introduced to us as a mad, simple, naive girl who literally only survived because of others. She didn’t know how much her taking Prim’s place mattered because she didn’t realise what it meant to everyone who came before her. To everyone who had heard rumours of how the last District 12 victor actually fought his games. No, Katniss had just kept her head down, hunting and providing for her family.

See, she grew up way before the Games got to her. She’d already lived through her dad’s death and watched it destroy her once lively mom. Haymitch didn’t have to go through that. Lucy Gray didn’t have to go through that. They were both angry, yes, but at the Capitol. Katniss? She was first and foremost angry at her mom. At her dad. She knew who was to blame but she had too much to do and deal with to think about that. She was already jaded in a way that the Games couldn’t touch.

Peeta? He was Haymitch. He knew what he was getting into and realised he was just on a chess board with no control. So, he adapted. He played the knight, the rook, the king, the pawn. Katniss? She just… did. Changing directions, not playing the piece she was assigned because she didn’t realise that’s what was going on. Remember her surprise at the crown twisting into two after the Games?? She was so oblivious. Until Catching Fire where everything caught up to her. Where everything so many other people had been waiting and working for caught up to her.

the "I don't want them to change me. turn me into something I'm not" to being turned into a mutt version of himself pipeline