Spaceman
Or, the devil and the deep blue sea
1:04 in the afternoon. The Capitol train is gone, and everyone minus two celebrates. Even if they can't afford it. They line up in mass numbers outside the sweetshop and bakery and butcher's—everyone is craving sugar and wonderbread and maybe a third of a steak—and you're lucky if no one tries to clandestinely or not clandestinely take what few coins you have.
This year, only the sweetshop and butcher's have lines. The bakery has a closed sign and no one blames them for it.
He can hear the thousands of TVs playing in every house, cruel advertisements to all-you-can-eat diners (complete with pictures, of course) and a repeating list of twenty-four names.
His best friend is one of them.
Gale waits in the butcher's line for four hours. The result is one thin strip of steak, the color of dull rubies, but at least he got a fair price.
His mother grills it on their stove, Katniss' mother offers herbs, Prim gives everyone goat cheese, and it's the best meal they've had in weeks, but it's the complete opposite of celebrating.
They eat in silence.
Every television in District 12 is turned off by now, but scratchy Capitol music from vintage radios replaces them. It's easy to believe that somewhere, where the songs aren't filled with static—and even where they are—people are dancing.
He can't imagine joining them.
1:04 in the afternoon. Madge waits in the sweetshop line because they've already got plenty of meat in the refrigerator at home.
Everyone is still in their reaping clothes, but she feels out of place in the dozens of dark-haired girls wearing faded homemade dresses that weren't stitched by machines in Eight.
She buys a tin of jellybeans for her father and a carton of vanilla ice cream that will definitely melt before she gets home. Maybe her mother won't go back to bed and instead she'll make shortcake like she used to, with the last of Katniss' strawberries. They they'll have fresh cake and cold ice cream and feel sick to their stomachs but invincible.
What really happens: a boy pushes her hard and grabs her bag, and the jellybeans spill in all directions. He runs off with the sweating ice cream, and everyone averts their gaze.
There's a tear in her dress, her knee is skinned, and the cotton of her dress is uncomfortably damp from waiting outside all day.
Madge scoops the candy back into the tin, and no one leaves their place in line to help her.
When she returns home, she finds her mother's already sleeping and can't be disturbed, which means no cake and no piano—but she doesn't really care for playing the national anthem anyway.
Her father grins as she gives him the jellybeans, but complains the rest of the evening about the sweetshop's incompetence because they taste like coal.
Gale glues his eyes to the television. He shouldn't be hopeful but he is anyway.
She's pretty when she's burning. But she smiles charmingly and catches kisses and he doesn't know her at all.
Peeta Mellark tells the country he's in love with her. Winning…won't help my case. Because she came here with me. Her face is red as the strawberries he gives the mayor's daughter, and Gale can almost believe she loves him back.
A little girl's fingers find his. "She promised me she'd come home, Gale. Peeta's going to help her, you'll see."
"Prim." Gale sighs, wonders how to say it. He isn't very good with comforting words. "Just…don't count on that, okay?"
The interview highlights are replayed the next morning as they wait for the main event, but there's really only one. He sits in his desk at school and ignores anyone who tries to start a conversation.
The tributes rise. Everyone starts counting to sixty. The camera flashes to Katniss, who's clearly considering at a bow and a sheath of silver arrows. Right at the Cornucopia.
"Catnip," he says under his breath. "Don't." If she knows anything about the Hunger Games, it's to not fight in the bloodbath—
The camera skips to Mellark, who's staring at her and vehemently shaking his head. For once, Gale agrees with him. But Katniss never takes her eyes off the Cornucopia, and she tenses to run.
They get a few seconds of aerial footage, showing endless trees, a lake, a stretch of prairie, and the glossy Cornucopia in the early sun. Standard. He wills her, forest.
Someone lets out a nervous cough. He swallows. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty. The gong sounds.
"Ladies and gentlemen…let the Seventy-Third Hunger Games begin!" Claudius Templesmith's voice seems far away, despite the classroom walls' built-in speakers.
She runs. But not in the direction of the trees. The camera angle changes, to the Careers quickly picking their choice of weapons. The bow is in her hands faster than anyone expected, and she genuinely smiles for a second—
Before a knife jerks through her stomach. She yanks it out weakly as she falls, and all he can think of is the stupid red ribbon that the mayor's daughter wore to the reaping.
"Katniss, the girl who was on fire," sneers the girl from Two, taking her knife back. Now tributes are running, dying, killing, and it's all completely meaningless to him.
When the camera switches back, Mellark's reached her, and he's kneeling beside the curled up girl on the ground. "Katniss—"
The audience is expecting something romantic, a declaration of love. All she says is, "Take care of Prim." And it hits Gale that she isn't talking to Peeta Mellark, she's talking to him. "I'm sorry," she says.
He takes her hand, strokes her hair. "It's okay, it's okay."
"I love you." That's for Prim (or him?) and Mellark must know that, but he kisses her forehead anyway and says, "Me too."
Boots crunch on dirt. A Career blocks out the sun, and Katniss closes her eyes. Peeta, polite as ever, says, please.
Gale walks out before his head hits the ground.
He bruises his knuckles over and over. Take care of Prim. Take care of Prim. Take care of Prim.
Everyone at the Hob pays whatever price he suggests, pity in their eyes.
Madge opens the back door with surprise in her eyes—the color reminds him of blueberry skin, dusty blue—like she can't believe he's there bringing her strawberries, like he hasn't done this every week for at least two years.
Her gaze falls on his bruised hand.
"What, did you think I was going to wallow in grief and forget your precious strawberries?" he says coolly, conscious of the missing girl at his side who wouldn't let him be bitter towards the mayor's daughter. "Some of us have families to feed."
She colors and scowls at once, which ruins the effect of both.
Gale holds out his hand silently. She gives him money, shuts the door. He leaves the extra coins unceremoniously on her doorstep. They'll go through the exact same exchange every Sunday for the next eleven months.
He buys a chocolate cake from the crying baker who insists that he can have it for free.
Mrs. Everdeen hugs him when he knocks on their door. His whole family is already here, and the TV is turned on. Prim looks so much smaller than he remembers.
Gale slams the white box on their kitchen table. Everyone stares at him blankly.
"We're having a celebration," he announces. "You're going to eat this goddamn cake, and you're going to enjoy eating it."
For her.
And Prim, her eyelashes wet, picks up a fork.
"Ladies first!"
She wears last year's reaping dress, even though her father tells her she can have a new one. Her pin is missing, but she thinks it suited Katniss better than it could ever suit her.
It's hot and sunny and the thick curls her mother helped with are steadily deflating.
"Primrose Everdeen!" Effie announces, bright as ever, and Madge is suddenly very sure that the reaping is not by chance or luck or how many slips you have. "Oh!" Effie squeaks. "Do we have any volunteers?"
Prim blinks like she's trying not to cry. And that's why Madge walks up to the stage and shakes hands with her own father.
The crowd mutters, no doubt because she ruined all of their bets.
"Now we need our male tribute," Effie says, reaching for a name. She unfolds the paper. "Gale Hawthorne!" As if this day could get any worse.
"Pretty dress," Gale says, just to be irritating, as her hand disappears in his.
It works.
"Shut up and listen," Haymitch orders. It's a lot more forceful than either of them expected, considering the amount of wineglasses he's been through. "I am giving you a plan. You're going to win the Hunger Games, so feel free to thank me when you do."
He laughs harshly, drinks more wine.
"So what's the plan?" Gale says impatiently.
"We're going to give the audience what they want," he answers, almost with satisfaction. "Star-crossed lovers, version two point oh. The Capitol will eat it up." Haymitch looks at them like he's daring them to argue.
"No way," Madge says. She refuses to look at him, and he's fine with that.
"No way," he echoes her.
Haymitch looks unimpressed. "And why not? I've got a source who tells me the Gamemakers were planning a rule change last year. Two tributes could win, as long as they were from the same District. If only that idiot girl hadn't—"
"Katniss was my best friend," she says.
"Katniss was my best friend," he corrects stiffly, and it's petty but he's glad to see blood rush to her cheeks.
"How touching," Haymitch replies, but Gale is pretty sure he didn't imagine the pain that flashed for a split second across his face. "But the point is that they could still change the rules. If they had a reason to." He waits, but neither of them has anything to say.
"Fine. See if I care when you get no sponsors." He gestures for more liquor and they look at him with matching disgust.
"Madge," he says, catching up to her easily in the corridor.
She eyes him warily. "What?"
"I think we should follow Haymitch's plan," he forces himself to say.
"You're insane," Madge says. "Totally insane. There's no way I'd pretend to be in love with you in front of the whole country." At least she didn't say I'd rather die, which would have been melodramatic but appropriately ironic.
He sighs. "Look. Not all of us are social outcasts, okay? I've got friends I want to see again. Family."
"I want to go home too," she says defensively. "But Haymitch's idiotic plan isn't the only way to win the Hunger Games. Seventy-three other people—"
Gale snorts. "Careers. Or luck. You can't seriously think that you could—"
"Insulting me isn't going to help," she says coolly. Which is true, he'll give her that at least.
They look at each other. "Sorry," he grunts finally.
And his voice softens. "I've got a little sister—Posy. She's only four. And she really loved these pink-frosted cupcakes in the window of the baker's. So a day before her birthday, I lied and said I didn't catch anything in my snares. But I'd just saved the money. And the next day, you should've seen her eyes light up when I brought home three pink cupcakes.
"I should've bought something important, like bread or new blankets. But I didn't. Posy might have been cold that night, or every night, but she slept next to me and she still smelled like icing."
Madge stares at him for a long time. He feels exposed and it's uncomfortable; the only person who he'd completely let his guard down for was Katniss, and it had taken months for that.
"Okay," is all she says.
He feels like he should thank her, but instead he enters his room and sprawls across the bed and tries not to throw up.
They tell Haymitch the next morning, at breakfast, and the man grunts with a hint of a smile and says he knew they would come around. And then he orders a uniformed Capitol attendant to bring him wine and they roll their eyes at each other.
They don't need to be original.
Cinna knows that, and he's already designed their opening ceremonies costumes to mirror last year's almost completely.
And the Capitol doesn't care. They cheer anyway, because this is their second chance, because they're still young and burning bright, and who cares if their names are different?
That night, the tributes of District 12 are mentioned the most out of all twenty-four, informs Effie.
She gets a five and he gets a nine. Her interview is passable at best. Gale's isn't very interesting until Caesar asks him if he's got a girlfriend.
He declares his love and no one cares about their scores or anyone else's.
Madge pinches her cheeks to make it look like she's blushing when the cameras turn to her, and apparently it's convincing. As Haymitch keeps repeating, the audience is nothing if not predictable.
The music drifts up, lights blaze, and she looks out her window and thinks it's ridiculous that the Capitol is celebrating something that doesn't even exist.
They watch the reruns later and laugh, and Haymitch reluctantly pronounces them to be perfect.
The sun glares, the wind is bitter cold.
They're surrounded by snow-covered peaks in a loose rectangle, with trees covering the base of the mountains.
"Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games begin!"
This is all too familiar, except now he's the one on the television. He runs for the forest and doesn't look back, like she should've done. Then he hears light footsteps behind him, and he braces himself. But it's only who he expected, and he lets out a sigh.
"Sure you want to leave me behind?" Madge asks casually. She offers a jug of water and dried cranberries. And most importantly, a knife.
Gale supposes he should say something like, I'd never leave you behind. Instead, he drags her out of the way of an arrow, grabs the knife, and aims it toward the source. It hits its mark, and he doesn't feel anything but satisfaction.
"Now we don't have a weapon," she says.
He just barely resists rolling his eyes.
"Remember when you used to bring me strawberries?" she begins. It's dusk and they've made camp in the dense part of the forest.
Seven killed in the bloodbath. Seven cannons. Seventeen left.
"Every Sunday," he offers.
"I used to look forward to that," Madge says. "I'd open the back door and you would smile and compliment my clothes and hand me the freshest strawberries. I'd invite you inside, but you would always refuse."
She's better than he is at this. "I never thought you were serious," Gale invents.
"But you hoped?"
He kisses her. It's far from the best kiss he's ever had but he pretends it is, and the sickly-sweet smile she gives him is so fake he almost laughs and ruins everything.
A silver parachute falls out of the sky. A carton of strawberries and a container of cream. "Haymitch must be feeling sentimental," he says.
"Are you kidding?" Madge says lightly. "I'll bet Effie forced him."
She calls thanks to the sky, and he would have told her to be quiet if they weren't supposed to be in love. But they eat nothing but strawberries for dinner, and it feels more like a celebration than any of his meals in the Capitol.
They make a show of curling up together under the indigo ceiling that reminds him of her eyes, and it might be fake, but it's cold out and he's glad of her next to him.
A/N: Part deux will be posted next Friday.