a/n; This might be considered sacrilegious. This is not Gale/Katniss. WHO AM I. I apologize to any of the readers who are still around who enjoy my usual Gale/Katniss stories, and who might have been hoping this was another Gale/Katniss.
As I'm purging all of my unfinished pieces, I came across this one. It was supposed to be a short, angst-riddled piece using Madge and Gale, and it was going to be tragic and unhappy. I figured my 20 year old me would appreciate finishing what she started, even though it became a different type of monster than the one she wanted. I'm happy to say that it is now, officially, complete.
This has become an experimental endeavor for me. I took liberties with Madge's character, considering that we don't really know her very well, and I haven't read the book in years. This was also once inspired by Pedro the Lion. They're still good if you want to take a listen.
Happy reading! Any reviews, comments, thoughts are always highly valued, loved, and appreciated.
SecondBest
chapter one
"I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pair of lips." - Mockingjay
Madge will always remember the day she ran into Gale in District Two. Roughly a year after the raids and the war, she had run into him on a sidewalk.
A sidewalk, of all mundane things, she remembers thinking, his unmistakable veneer a sudden wonder in the throng of people. His features were wizened and old in the morning sunlight, in a way that commands for attention.
She stops in front of him, surprised when he doesn't walk past. When his eyes look down at her, it's frightening. Shadows absorb him. Dark in his eyes and his hair and everywhere. She forces herself to stand her ground, taken back to the days where he was on her doorstep, sneering and glaring in his prideful snarls. He was frightening back then, too, but only in stature and harsh words. He reminded her more of a wounded dog—nearly harmless and only protecting himself. Now, he's fearsome in his stance, and she knows he could eat her alive if he wanted to.
He speaks first, after they give each other deliberate once overs.
"They mayor's daughter, Madge Undersee," he says, flatly. "You're not in your castle."
"You think I'd still hide away in a castle?" she says, her tone clashing acutely against his. It makes her cringe. She shakes her head. "I've been in Twelve for most of their reconstruction. Now I'm here."
"Fascinating," he says. "Don't dirty your pretty, little dresses." Then he pushes passed her, on his way to whatever it is that he does. She is indignant, clothes far from pretty and far from formal. Her clothes match his, her status matches his.
Not that she was expecting him to notice or to care. But it seemed, in the rebirth of Panem, there was a rebirth in her, as well.
Orphaned and alone, a familiar face is something she found herself ardently clinging onto. The familiar face being Gale Hawthorne doesn't do much to discourage the sentiment.
She thinks she could easily find him around the District if she wanted to, once she acquaints herself with it. Few bars, food joints, and shops litter the area. She tries each one, tasting the difference in the food and the atmosphere, feeling liberated by each subtly altered experience.
When she finds Gale in a quaint little eatery, she boldly takes the vacant seat in front of him.
He isn't startled by her appearance, nor is he interested in her arrival. He gives her one passive glance, and it provokes a very insignificant feeling inside her. She straightens her back against her seat in return, trying to fend it off.
"Loneliness seems to suit you," she says, nerves getting the better of her.
"Then why are you here?"
She's never been good with interaction of any kind. Her father and the imposed seclusion on her childhood helped to nurture that. She bites her bottom lip.
"I've never been to this place."
He gives her a cold stare, and it is unsettling how much he can file down her carefully crafted apathy into a ball of insecurity. Perhaps he's always had that talent—she remembers trying to ignore him when he and Katniss would arrive at her doorstep, because she did not like what he made her feel. Unworthy. Villainous. Due to that, she would not acknowledge it. Not acknowledging any emotion helped to cultivate how she was able to protect herself from them.
Now, however, it is very difficult. His eyes are lasers of indifference. She feels small and inadequate, no matter how much she tries to brush the creeping feelings away.
She digs her nails into the palm of her hand below the table, and decides to look around the café. It is different than most of the places she has been. The lights overhead are soft, reminding her of the morning light. The tables look antique—old wood refurbished with stains and paint. The seats are cushioned comfortably, handstitched from the looks of it, and there is a window along the back wall, allowing a view into the back kitchen. The smells waft to the open eating area with pleasant aromas. There is some chatter among the patrons, filling the room with vibration, intermingled with the sounds of sizzling food. The walls are painted in a soft, pastel yellow, and bright, wooden oak floors complete the area inside, reflecting the morning and the soft, overhead lights into a comfortable bubble of space.
Madge wonders, not for the first time, why Gale is here, with his darkness, and brooding, and cold stares.
A waitress comes around not long after, unabashedly pouting at Madge. She's young, with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, full red lips, and a dimple that appears beside her mouth while she pouts.
Ah, Madge thinks. This is why Gale's here.
"Oh, I didn't know you were having company! I would have put down another place setting," the young waitress says with no hint of honesty. Madge meanly wonders how much time it takes her to do her make-up, and what she's trying to hide with it all clumped over her face.
"I'm not having company," Gale answers, smiling effortlessly at the waitress. How is he able to do that? Madge wonders. She hardly ever has the energy to smile at anyone, much less when she doesn't mean it.
"She's merely just an unfortunate acquaintance," Gale continues, gesturing in Madge's general direction. "Can you bring me the check? I'm leaving."
The young waitress blinks, glances at Madge, then smiles back at Gale. "Not a problem, I'll bring it out in just a second."
She saunters off, and Madge watches her go, wondering if the waitress thinks her hips are undulating seductively enough to catch Gale's interest. What a poor girl—she doesn't seem like she's been affected by the war at all, not with how vacuous her eyes seem to be, or how she twirls her perfectly curled hair while she rings up Gale's ticket.
"I always wondered how your charm worked," Madge says, letting his coldness settle over her. It's good practice for her. She tries to rebuild her bubble of apathy while she has his attention. "I guess it makes it easy when you go after the weakest prey, doesn't it?"
He sneers at her. "I feel sorry for you. You're just as snobbish now as you were back in District Twelve, aren't you?"
"That depends. Was I snobbish in District Twelve?"
"If memory serves, you were always pampered and clean and high and mighty in your little mansion."
"How do you know that, Gale? I never invited you in for a makeover."
"It's hard to invite anyone when you had no friends."
Madge places a hand over her chest. "Oh, is that supposed to be hurtful? You can do better than that."
"I miscalculated. I forgot you're an orphaned, self-serving bitch. Remind me next time."
The young waitress appears, standing right besides Gale's elbow, completely oblivious to the odd tension that has soaked the atmosphere between the length of the table. She bats her eyes and hands over the ticket. Gale takes it and smiles, and Madge watches carefully. It is still just as effortless as the smile beforehand. Madge is impressed. Gale, with all his outward spikes and hot pokers, doesn't seem to have any trouble with concealing them with smiles. To Madge, that's a very dangerous skill. Hiding behind any curtain you'd like—she's only ever been able to hide behind a thick curtain of transparency. Sometimes, she thinks it would make her life so much easier if she could fake and bullshit her way out of things—with a smile or a kiss or an ounce of manipulation and charm.
"Here you are, Gale. Would you like a coffee to go? Tea?"
"No, not today. Thank you, Melinda," he says, still smiling and handing her his payment. His voice even sounds warm. What a concept.
"Of course," the young waitress, Melinda, says with a shameless amount of adoration. "I'll be right back."
"Sure."
Madge wrinkles her nose. "How many times has she written her number on the back of the receipts?"
"About as many times as I'm sure you've ruined people's mornings. Desperate for human contact, princess? That's the only reason I can guess for you to be sitting across from me."
"You were the first person on my list once I realized you didn't die in the war," Madge says, pressing her elbows into the table and leaning forward. "How did the war end for you, anyway?"
"Better than yours, I imagine. I wonder how you wake up every day, with no family or friends. What are you still living for, Undersee?"
Chink. Madge can hear a piece of her building bubble chip off as she tries to relax her jaw. She tries to keep her face the epitome of passivity, an inscrutable statue.
"I saw your family back in District Twelve, before I left. What are they doing there and what are you doing here?" Madge places her chin in her palm. "Must be hard, going to visit them when they're so close to what you lost."
Gale's face becomes a darkened shadow once more, his cold stare turning to ice. She hit his armor, too, it seems. Not very hard to do. Allude Katniss Everdeen, and there's bound to be some kind of reaction.
Melinda returns, and Madge is almost surprised that there is not a lipstick kiss on the receipt.
"Have a wonderful day," Melinda says, winking. "Come back soon, okay?"
The words are nearly coated with begging. Madge stares at her, but Melinda only has eyes for Gale.
"You know I will," Gale answers smoothly, and Melinda is sauntering off again, her hips bouncing with vigor.
"Don't you ever get tired of it?" Madge says, continuing to stare at Melinda's hips. They're hypnotic in the worst way.
"What? Being adored by beautiful women?" he says sarcastically, placing the receipt in his pocket.
"Insincerity," she answers. "Smiling when you don't mean it."
"Hm. No. I enjoy talking and smiling at others. Maybe you just don't understand social interaction." He stands, and says, "Go crawl back into whatever hole you came from. Do everyone else a favor."
She watches as he takes his leave, feeling the words bounce off her rectified bubble. When she hears the little bell ring above the door, signaling his departure from the building, she sighs.
She doesn't know why she can't just be normal. She doesn't know why the first thing she wants to do when she sees an acquaintance is to attempt to wring out their insides. To be wary, to hide, to protect herself. It seems like it's been that way forever. Whenever her mother would become lucid for a few precious hours, Madge would snip and snap at her—"Oh, did you decide to grace us with your presence, mother?" Or—"Why even bother to wake up? I do everything without you, anyway." She was a nasty, petulant teenager, ungrateful and angry, and she wonders, at times, if it would have made anything different had she been more accommodating. If she had been more understanding, sympathetic, and patient. Her mother had lost her sister, and it had shattered her into unrecognizable pieces. Madge knew well that she could never be enough for what had been taken so ruthlessly away, so she would sit at her piano and play and play and play, because her mother loved it once. Had smiled or cried when she'd hear the notes echo in the house, and had pulled Madge to her before, whispering how beautiful she was. My beautiful Madge.
When her father would come home from work, he'd bypass both of them and drink from the tumbler of whiskey on the mantel. He would sit, stare out their window, and drink until it was time for bed. It was his time to be alone. Once Madge became a teenager, she stopped trying to vie for his attention. She couldn't compare to the sweet essence of libation, and her music did not stir him or give him the level of joy it had given her mother. It was all she had to offer, and she was at a loss when her father would walk out of the room.
Madge stares out the window at her side, and she watches Gale's form fade from view down the sidewalk. She wonders where the sidewalk takes him, what kind of job he has, and how far he's come from the boy he was in District Twelve.
She ends up eating at the café, replicating Gale's order once Melinda finally accepts her presence at the table. Some minutes later, Melinda delivers her a short stack of pancakes, with strawberry compote slathered on top.
Madge can't help her amusement at the irony. Strawberries. Maybe Gale hasn't changed at all.