Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.

Heart and Soul

Madge had the pair of glasses filled with sweet tea carefully balanced in each hand. The ice rattled ominously as she slowly carried them into the front room where Vick was waiting.

When she crossed the threshold he was by her piano, he'd lifted the cover over the keys and was experimentally tapping the C-key farthest from her. It rang out clear and high.

He doesn't hear her come in, all his attention is on the piano.

She sits the glasses down gently, but it still startles him and he slams the cover back down, catching the very tip of one of his right hand fingers.

"Damn!"

He puts it to his mouth and sucks it.

Madge rushes over in concern, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he grimaces.

She shakes her head. He's stubborn about showing any kind of supposed weakness. Being the youngest or his brothers, and by far the most sensitive, he doesn't like to be babied. It's cute, but Madge worries sometimes it'll end up getting him hurt someday.

"Let me see," she grabs his hand and examines it. The heavy cover just nipped it. She imagines it hurts, very badly, but it's more his pride that's damaged judging by the way he tries to pull his hand from her.

She lets him struggle a minute with her, a playful little tussle, before letting him have it back.

"I think you'll live."

He rolls his eyes at her.

Much more carefully than Vick had slammed it, Madge opens the cover to the keys.

"Before Panem, my dad says they use to make the keys from ebony and ivory covers. They killed the animals though, that the ivory came from, and ebony is too rare so they started with different woods." She presses down the scales, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. "These are all plastic."

Vick runs a finger over the C again. "Do you play a lot?"

She'd been trying, with absolutely no success, to teach Katniss. Other than that she hasn't played much for pleasure, so she shrugs.

"Play something."

He gives her one of his little grins, his dimples are going to make him a devil when he's older, if he chooses to be.

"Play what?" She settles down on the narrow bench, Vick plops next to her.

His face scrunches up in thought, "Something happy."

She sits up a little straighter, her instructor had always lamented her poor posture, and puts her fingers on the keys, taps out the first few notes of 'Heart and Soul' before shuffling into a more comfortable position and starting again.

When she finishes, Vick's eyes are wide, as though he's never heard anything as amazing as the song Madge had learned as an eight year old.

"That was amazing!"

She snorts. She's average, maybe slightly above, at best. He only thinks she's any good because he's never heard the masters of the past, as she had. Compared to them she barely deserves to play 'chopsticks'.

Vick taps a few chords out, dissonant and uncoordinated, and frowns.

"Gale and Rory don't care much for music." He taps another key. "Don't see any point in it. I like it, though."

Madge knows Katniss doesn't see much point in music either, and guesses Gale, and by extension Rory, see it as equally useless. After all, what good is music when you're near starving to death?

But Madge isn't starving, never has had that danger hanging over her head, so she can indulge in the beauty of a little music, however increasingly infrequent.

She gives Vick a small smile, "I like it too."

#######################################

It's been years since Madge had played anything.

After the bombing, losing her family, living her little half life in Ten, she'd finally understood why people from the Seam had so little use for music. What were silly little songs in the grander scheme of things?

But when the Hawthornes came to visit her, dragged her to the little restaurant near her shared apartment, and Vick's eyes lit up at the sight of the little piano in the corner and he gave her that same sweet smile she knew she would have to find her love of it again.

She's happy to be with them, that's true, but she can't find it in herself for the first song to be cheerful.

Her mother used to love Nocturnes, would have Madge play them for her during frequent bouts of insomnia to lull her to sleep. Her father generally asked for heartier songs, things similar to what he'd grown up hearing the wranglers and ranchers sing. The housekeeper, Mrs. Oberst, had just wanted silence.

Madge settled on a compromise.

A lullaby, one her father had sung to her when she'd been very small, before her mother had reached the worst of her illness.

It's sad, there's no doubt about that. Slow and low, it ushers someone to sleep with the promise of a better morning. Now that she's older, Madge wonders if it isn't urging someone to their eternal rest with the promise of a better afterlife. It would have to be a better afterlife. This life they had now was often so gloomy, surely they deserved something of a reward when it ended…

Despite the dimness of her choice of song, she feels lighter when she finishes.

When it's over Vick has taken the seat beside her.

His voice cracks, it hasn't quite settled into what she's sure will be as deep a sound as his brothers'.

"Still the best I've ever heard."

Madge gives him a sad smile. She's worse than she'd ever been, out of practice and sluggish, but she appreciates his compliment just the same.

Maybe there's no point in music. Just a distraction from the misery they live in, but it's such a beautiful distraction.

She sits up straighter and poises her hands on the keys. She's starting back at the beginning. Where she'd started as an eight year old. The first song she'd played for Vick back in District Twelve.

"How about something a little happier this time?"