Author's note: Hello, readers! I'll keep this brief. The Jabberjay basically picks up after Catching Fire, with one key difference. From now on, it is no longer truly canon. The titles of the chapters are of songs for each chapter, so give it a listen if you feel like it!

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Madge awakens in the care of Haymitch. Every movement aches, and her skin feels tender to the touch and taught, stretched tightly over her bones. She is confused, because the last thing that she remembers is a deafening noise, and blackness. Blistering heat. Now she's hidden out in the woods, in some shack that clearly hasn't been taken care of in years. It smells like wet rotten wood and mold.

Haymitch is cruel to her. He makes her cry, makes her scream. She throws a glass at him. But in the end, he makes one thing very clear:

Madge Undersee is dead.

District 12 is just ashes and shambles, but the Mockingjay lives, Haymitch tells her. He reminds that she has nothing to live for anymore. He says that she has a chance to make a difference. That Maysilee would have wanted it. That her parents need not have suffered in vain. He needs someone on the inside, a parallel to the Mockingjay. Someone with nothing else to lose. Someone who is willing to be the devil's advocate, no matter what it takes, in order to give life to the symbol of the rebellion.

"What do you want me to do?" She eventually asks warily. Her throat is raw from her crying and yelling.

"You need to make the Capitol forget the real problem. Be a distraction. Be your own symbol. You do have a choice in this, Madge. But I don't think that anyone but you could do it. You know the Capitol inside and out—you can walk among them easily." He's right, she'd been trained in decorum from a young age—many Capitol guests had stayed in her home.

He continues, "The Capitol citizens have always been easily distracted by beautiful things. All they want is something to fawn over and admire—something to blind them from reality. And there's nothing that the Capitol loves more than a story. A conflict. Good and evil. You, Madge, can be both."

Madge wants Katniss to live. She wants the people of District 12 to be safe again, to escape poverty. She wants the Capitol to be put down. Stripped of her identity, she feels empowered—she can do anything. People have always believed that she was meek, but Madge knew exactly what was going on. She was much more clever and perceptive than people gave her credit for. She knew how to manipulate others, how to play a role. She'd been groomed her entire life to be fake. She'd been groomed to be married to a Capitol clown and have happy, oblivious children, like their subservient, oblivious mother.

Although Haymitch admits that the survivors of the District bombing had been moved to District 13, Madge doesn't even consider joining them. There's nothing for her there. She can do better by those refugees from afar. She can make a difference. She can help put an end to this.

So she agrees. She thinks of Gale, who she would probably never see again. He would never know the true Madge Undersee. Maybe it's better that way—she has no part of herself to preserve for anyone.

"I wasn't sure what you'd like to be called. I made up every other detail, so I'm leaving this one up to you." Haymitch asks.

She'd thought about that a lot. And she knew exactly what she wanted. The final piece to the puzzle.

"Islee May." She told him. And though Haymitch's mind was addled from drink, he knew what Madge was doing for him.

"You're stronger than you think, Madge."

And that's the last time that he ever calls her by that name. She's no longer the mayor's daughter.

Haymitch cuts and washes her hair, gives her eye contacts worthy of the capitol—lavender—and a nose replica, which feels no different from real flesh. They were small changes, but enough to make her unrecognizable. Haymitch makes her repeat her new backstory over and over again, until she knows it as well as her own history. He's forged documents about her past and medical history. He tests her acting abilities—her mannerisms, how she tilts her head, the expression in her eyes. She takes on an entirely new persona.

The Mockingjay was born of the Jabberjay. Without the Capitol attempting to play god by creating those creatures, the Mockingjay never could have come to exist, never could have achieved evolution—but the very thing that the Capitol created would eventually be their undoing.

So it was with Madge Undersee.