The Hob, both the old and the newly restored after it was burned down by the Peacekeepers, is notorious for trading gossip and the hive of secrets has been buzzing for days now. First, it was the imprisonment of their beloved mayor and his sickly wife. The day after, it was the calling of the charges and the trial. On Wednesday, it was watching the Mayor's thin, shaking waif of a wife get dragged into the square for a whipping. Her death the next day. Finally, it was the hanging. In a matter of days, the gossip turned from accusations to executions. Now, two weeks later, the gossip turns to the criminals' daughter.
"Have you heard about the Undersee girl?"
He's slapping down a few rabbit skins on a table when he overhears that tidbit of conversation. As Sae begins to appraise the furs, Gale cannot help but listen in to the two bodies behind him. He knows it shouldn't concern him and he knows he shouldn't care what happens to Undersee. He cannot get involved with a traitor's daughter; the red target on his back is big enough as it is without pulling her into the mix. But, all the same… He cannot tune their gossip out. For weeks now, the only thing on his mind has been that damn morphling. At the thought, he can almost imagine the scars on his back twitching in pain. She saved his life with those damn bottles, a secret blurted out unceremoniously by his brother when he finally regained consciousness. Madge Undersee trekked miles in the middle of a snowstorm to bring him medicine she had no business having in the first place, to help someone who had crossed the government one too many times. She's a character he can't turn the page on.
"What happened?" The second voice behind him asks, nearly as interested as Gale is in this whole thing.
The first voice seems to shrug, giving little by way of actual sympathy. The words come out of his mouth as a barbing footnote, something that happens every day, but somehow is remarkable enough to stir up conversation.
"Getting shipped off to the children's home. Parent's are dead, so there's not much else can be done with her."
Gale feels sick. Suddenly, he feels physically ill and can't seem to find the floor below him. The world is spinning as those words do dizzying footraces around the tracks in his mind. Madge's parents are dead and they're sending her to the children's home. Gale experienced The Home for a series of nights once before, just after his father died and his mother was immovable with grief, an experience which landed him matching black eyes and a busted lip. The voice behind catches onto one odd turn of phrase and questions it, confused.
"Not much else?"
Gale caught on to that wording as well. It implies that there is something that could be done, something in the realm of possibility but only just. A sigh from the first man.
"If she were married, she could get out of it, but, doesn't seem like she's so much as talked to a boy since she slugged Yarrow Davis when she was twelve," he says, chortling at his own joke.
It's a joke, but it yellows Gale's complexion as he takes some coins from Sae. Madge Undersee has talked to a boy since she was twelve. She talked to him; she talked to Gale Hawthorne every Sunday when he would bring her strawberries and every day during Katniss' games. All to abandon him when Katniss returned. All to save his miserable life with morphling. Gale is stalking away, jaw locked and stomach turned when he hears something that brings unbidden nightmares to the forefront of his mind. Something that changes his life forever.
"Damn shame too. Pretty and fragile girl like that won't last two minutes in a home."
Pretty and fragile girl. He knows what he has to do for his pretty and fragile girl.
They gave Madge two weeks. Two weeks alone in a completely empty house, two weeks to grieve. They left her alone for two weeks of packing, of mourning, of sobbing, and of saying goodbye. Then, it was back to business as usual. The new Mayor, one certainly more inline with President Snow's vision than her own father was, is moving in tomorrow, and Madge will be moving out tonight. Moving to the children's home. Her new home. She brushes a strand of hair behind her head and looks back down to her open suitcase. Not much to pack, really. Her fine frippery will be useless where she is going. Her school dress hangs limply from one hand as she thinks of all the rumors she's heard about The Home. If Romulus Thread had any say in her fate, she can be certain that every one of the stories, each worse than the one that came before, are entirely true. She's prepared to say goodbye to both her virtue and the straightness of her nose by way of her future housemates' force. Her mouth dries and she feels tears she thought she had already cried well in her eyes.
She is knocked from herself by the sound of gasping for breath and her door opening. She turns on a dime, wide eyes meeting Gale Hawthorne's. Shock stiffens her entire body. Gale struggles for breath, having sprinted across the district to be here. She hasn't seen him in weeks.
"Madge," he finally croaks, his eyes full of purpose even as he leans against the doorframe, trying to control his heart rate.
It's all too much for Madge to take in and she feels a bitter taste flood her mouth as her face contorts into a snarl of a sarcastic smile. She turns back to the suitcase on her bed, tossing a cheap ball of fabric that will pass as a dress atop the rest of her stowed belongings.
"Here to rub it in, Gale?" she bites, struggling against the bile rising up in her throat. She will not cry in front of him. With a wry laugh, she shrugs and spits the words out, "I know. My, how the might have fallen, right?"
It's an invitation for him to do something. Anything to make her feel something. If he's here to laugh, she hopes he just gets it over and done with. This will not be the most enduring humiliation she bears today, she knows. She waits for him to begin the taunting, to begin the pointing and laughing, to rub in her face the terrors she will suffer beside the brutish boys and the scrappy girls. But he merely blurts:
"I want to marry you."
Madge doesn't splutter or stammer or gasp or any number of cliches made absurd by romance books. It takes her a moment to record, rewind and replay that moment in her mind before she truly processes what it is he has just declared. Marry. He wants. Madge. He wants to marry Madge.
"What?"
She turns to face him again, scowling in confusion, as she waits for him to explain himself. All of the walls around her heart cautiously begin to slide open, allowing the young woman inside to come peeking out at the young man standing before her. The anger and acid in her head retreat as Gale begins to speak. His heart slams its fists against the prison walls of his chest, begging to be let out and speak to her directly. But Gale attempts to let logic, not his heart, lead him. Because if he lets his heart have its way, Gale would have kissed the tears away from her cheeks the moment she turned and looked at him.
"I can save you. They can't take you to that place if you're married," he declares, finally gaining control of his breath.
The reality of that proposal strikes Madge and she runs a hand through her dirty, blonde hair. She supposes she should take a shower before she leaves, knowing there will be no more hot showers after today, but she put the goodbyes of the house off for as long as possible. She shakes her head and folds her arms across her chest, pushing her chest toward her spine to make herself as small as possible. It is her hope that she comes across final, with no room for argument, but Gale is determined. Every time he blinks, he sees someone's hands invading Madge's body, breaking her spirit. He means nothing to her, he knows that, but he can save her. He can save her from a fate perhaps worse than her parents'.
"I'm not going to marry you," Madge scoffs.
He's fighting for her, just as she fought for him across miles of frozen, Capitol occupied snow to save his life. It's his turn. It's his duty. But… It's more than that, he finds, as his voice drops of its own accord and his eyes lose their glare. His tone is gentle, hesitant. Maybe even a little afraid. He's not good at these sorts of things and he is sure it's all coming out wrong, but, God, is he trying.
"I know it won't be the life you always wanted. Not the life you imagined," he concedes before offering her hope, "But I'll be a good husband."
Madge, apparently, isn't through with tears as she previously thought. Because halfway through his proposal, she feels their hot tracks run down her cheeks, drawing abstract art down her already salty skin. An unidentifiable ache kicks in her chest as she watches his sincere eyes make a promise. She knows enough about Gale to know that promises mean something. Hawthornes do not go back on promises. And he's making one to her. This strong, wonderful, brave man is making her a promise. The tears come before she even realizes how gloriously painful it feels to have him stitch the pieces of her fragile, heaving heart back together. Then, his hands are on either side of her face, his touch gentle and his fingers marred with work scars, his skin absorbing the salty teardrops running away from her eyes. He continues, his voice the steady hammer of a pickaxe. It holds all the hope of that moment just before sunrise.
"You don't have to love me," he begins before renewing his gentility with a whisper of a few simple words, "But I'll love you. I promise."
Madge pulls herself from his grasp, using the sleeve of her sweater to wipe at her running nose. A ridiculous sight, she's sure, and the imagining of it makes her laugh.
"Those seem like easy promises to break," she mutters, casting him a sweetly mending look.
Gale fills in a gap for her.
"Twig promises. That's what we call them in the Seam."
He smiles and she's disarmed. Retreating back to her castle of logic, she tries to think this through.
"What do you want in return? You won't just do me this favor," she winces at that word…. It seems so inappropriate. This is beyond a favor. This is salvation, "and expect nothing in return."
Gale fiddles in his pocket as he crosses closer to the beautiful woman across the room from him.
"You saved my life. Now, I'm saving yours."
Gale pulls something out of his pocket and hands it to her without ever once glancing at it. It's nearly weightless, but that alone makes Madge look at it. And, when she does, she knows, marriage or not, she will love this man until the day she dies. It's an empty morphling bottle. And, corked inside, is a simple gold wedding band. She looks up at him with a million questions in her eyes, but he merely smiles.
"We do funny things for the people we love, don't we?"
Hello, my friends! So, I posted this little drabble on tumblr yesterday and it got a pretty good response (thanks for that, by the way!) and a few people asked that I develop it into a full-fledged story! I really just wanted to put this first chapter out there to see what people thought! If you would like to see it developed into a full length (probably 10 or so chapters, around the same length as Load the Dice) story, please let me know! Also, any ideas you have for a story like that would be great! Ideas, thoughts, anything! Just send them my way in a review! I love to hear what you all think! :) Hope you enjoyed the story!