"And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer, feel no untold and strange distress."

Charlotte Bronte

Madge couldn't concentrate in class. She was supposed to be doing arithmetic, but the sums on the blackboard blurred out of focus and, instead, she saw Katniss and Peeta. The flames of their costumes and their hands intertwined in the air were burned into her retinas. It's not real, her father had said. Whether he meant the flames, or the hand-holding, or both, Madge didn't know.

She looked across the room to where Peeta used to sit. Once, when the teacher called on her and she floundered for the correct response to the question asked, Peeta whispered the answer to her. She remembered that small kindness now.

For Katniss to come home, Peeta and twenty-two others would have to die. Madge turned her eyes back to the blackboard. She hated arithmetic. Always had.

The other students kept their distance from Gale, like he was something contagious. The teachers gave him sympathetic smiles. His lab partner had asked to be reassigned, but he supposed that was his fault. He shouldn't have lashed out at Delly. She'd only meant to comfort him.

"I know how you feel," she'd said over the pile of minerals they were meant to be labelling. "Peeta's my friend. Watching him on the television last night...it was...horrible."

Gale cradled his bruised fist to his chest. He shouldn't have slammed it against the desk, but in the moment, his only thought was to make Delly stop talking. She was standing across the yard now, her friends flocked around her in a protective circle, throwing glares in his direction. She was still crying.

"Peeta's going to die," he'd told her. It was the only option he was willing to consider. Peeta and twenty-two others were going to die and he prayed to the universe that they would, because there was no other way for Katniss to come home. So no, he doubted that sweet Delly Cartwright from Town understood how he felt. He doubted she was capable of wishing someone dead, let alone twenty-two children.

Lunch break was almost over. When the bell rang, no one noticed him slip behind the school building. He couldn't go back inside. He didn't belong with decent people.

After lunch, Madge went to the nurse, claimed a migraine, and was given permission to go home. As the mayor's daughter and top of her class, no one questioned her honesty. This wasn't the first time she'd played hookie, but it was the first time she didn't just go home, and hole up in the library, where she learned more important things than were taught in school. Like the names of stars and that, hundreds of years ago, before Panem, people wrote poetry. She'd been content with her lonely life of reading and piano playing, until Katniss opened her eyes to what words and music notes couldn't give. Companionship, recognition, even if it was mostly silent.

Madge didn't have a destination in mind. Her feet took her to the boundary between Town and Seam. She stopped. It wasn't illegal to be here. Still, she checked for Peacekeepers. Katniss had never been inside of the mayor's house, but Madge had never even seen where Katniss lived. There were boundaries to their friendship.

It would be easy to cross the line. There was no electric fence to stop her, only an ingrained fear of breaking the rules.

Then she heard a low, throaty growl from behind. Madge swallowed hard. She turned her head just enough to catch a glimpse of something big, black, and four-legged from the corner of her eye. She bolted straight for the Seam, her fear of dogs outweighing her fear of the unknown.

Gale was nearing home when a blur of pink and blonde flashed by.

"Watch where you're…" The girl who'd bumped into him didn't stop, but she glanced back. In that small second, he recognized her. It was none other than Madge do-no-wrong Undersee racing wild through the Seam. He wondered what she was doing, skipping school. When she whipped around the corner, he realized the better question was, where the hell is she going?

At the end of the road, Gale went left, after Madge, away from home.

Madge couldn't catch her breath. Her heart threatened to beat from her chest. She was terrified of looking back again, but she had to know if the dog was still after her. It wasn't. She stopped, gasping for air in the quiet twilight, her eyes on the opposite end of the street. She tensed at the dull thud of footsteps. A shadowy figure slunk around the corner. Only a man…

Still, she didn't want them to catch her, either. She made a sharp right and kept going at a clipped pace. Sweat prickled under her collar. Her feet squelched in the mud, so did the man's. Each time she rounded another corner, she stole a glance at him. He always appeared just in time to see which direction she turned.

Whoever he was, whatever he wanted, he was following her. Madge darted between run-down shack-houses, circled behind outhouses, and trampled through scraggly gardens, losing herself deeper in the Seam as she tried to shake him. She lost the road. The houses became scarce and then there were none.

She stumbled onto a muddy trail and followed it, hoping it would lead her back to...well, somewhere. The man was still following her. He was an ominous speck in the near distance. She walked faster, and faster, until she was running again.

By the time Madge began to run again, Gale had given up on figuring out where she meant to go. If she kept on in this direction, she'd hit the fence in a little over a mile. He jogged after her. Surely she wasn't going into the woods. It would be dark soon and the woods were no place to be alone at night, especially not for the mayor's daughter.

Ahead of him, Madge tripped. She hit the ground on her hands and knees. Gale slowed down, waiting for her to get up. After a few minutes, when she still hadn't moved, he wondered if she was hurt. Gale didn't want to go to her. Whatever she was doing out here was none of his concern, but he'd followed her this far. He couldn't just leave her, possibly injured.

He approached slowly.

Madge couldn't run anymore. She curled her fingers around a rock near where she'd landed, and she waited, not daring to glance back now. The element of surprise was all she had. Her stalker's feet squelched closer, closer. She could hear him breathing, he was so close. Her head ruptured with a thousand terrible scenarios for how this chase would end.

She panicked. Unable to wait a second longer, she rolled over and flung the rock without pausing to take aim.

The rock struck Gale square in the gut. He doubled over from pain and shock. The mayor's daughter had just assaulted him. He wasn't sure what to make of that.

Madge leapt to her feet. "Why are you stalking me?" she demanded, hating the quiver in her voice. She scoured the ground for another rock. Though the man was doubled over, he was obviously much larger than her. Instinct urged her to flee while she had the chance, but she was too tired, and too afraid of darting around him.

"If you hurt me," she said, doing her best to sound important, and strong, and all that she wasn't. "Then I'll-"

The man raised his head and she faltered, her mouth hanging open.

"You'll do what?" said Gale. "Stone me to death?"

Madge continued to gape at him like she'd been struck, not him. Her hair frizzed in a golden halo around her cherry red face. She was always so put together, infuriatingly perfect, never a blonde hair out of place. Now she was panting, mud splattered up to her elbows, blood dripping down her scraped knees.

"Close your mouth, Undersee," he said.

She did, but only for a second. "Why are you following me?" she asked again.

"Why were you running?"

"Because you were chasing me! I thought…" She trailed off, her eyes darting to the ground. Gale clenched his jaw.

"You thought anyone from the Seam must be a psycho killer," he finished for her.

"No," said Madge. "That's not...I don't…"

"Save it," said Gale. He knew what she thought about him, people like him.

He'd already turned his back on her, when she muttered, "There was a dog."

"What?" he said, looking at her over his shoulder.

Madge sighed, funneling the tension from her body. "A dog," she repeated. "It was chasing me. Then you were. I just panicked." She waited for him to respond, but he kept scowling at her over his shoulder, arms folded over his chest. His stern, closed-off expression reminded her painfully of Katniss.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, chafing under Gale's hostile scrutiny. He made her feel small, out of place, even when he was selling strawberries at her own back door. Now she was in his territory and the feeling amplified to unbearable heights.

"I don't like dogs," she blurted. "I was bit when I was younger." Her hand trailed lightly over the old scars hidden under the wrinkled, muddy fabric of her tailor-made dress. "It was pretty bad," she continued nervously, filling the silence. "I had to get over fifty stitches. Ever since, I have these recurring nightmares about being mauled by giant dogs."

Gale didn't know why she was telling him any of this, as if he cared about her nightmares. It was odd, though. Madge Undersee had always been around, dancing at the edges of his life in her pink dresses and shiny shoes, but he'd never considered that she had dreams and fears.

A week ago, if someone had told him they'd seen the mayor's daughter slogging it through the Seam, he wouldn't have believed them. Yet here she was, bleeding, scared, human. He looked around for the supposed dog, before turning his body to her in full. "They can smell fear," he said. Madge cocked her head to the side, clearly confused. "Dogs," he added. "If you don't run, they'll leave you alone most of the time."

Did Gale Hawthorne smell her fear?

She tucked her hair behind her ears in an attempt to put herself together, but her dirty hands only left a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She was being silly. Gale wouldn't hurt her. She didn't need to be afraid of him. "Oh," she said, "Most of the time. That's helpful."

Gale shrugged. "What are you doing out here, anyway?" he asked.

Madge searched for a lie. For once, nothing came to her. There was something about his Seam gray eyes in the gathering dark that wouldn't allow for lies. This was the longest one on one conversation she'd had with Gale Hawthorne and it wasn't going well, so she threw caution to the wind. "I wanted to see where Katniss lived."

Gale's eyes hardened.

"Where she lives," said Madge hurriedly, horrified by her use of the past tense.

"Why?" snapped Gale. "You never visited her before."

She winced at the none-too-subtle accusation, that she and Katniss weren't friends. "She never invited me," said Madge Even if she had extended an invitation, Madge wouldn't have accepted. Katniss understood. Gale Hawthorne probably never would. He was still glaring at her. The injustice of it curdled in her chest. She didn't have to justify her friendships to him.

So then why was she so compelled to make him understand. "I just…" Madge twisted her muddy hands together. "I thought if I could just see where she lived...lives...She's so far away. I wanted to feel close to her for a little while. You're not the only one who misses her, alright?"

Gale had so many responses, he couldn't chose from them. He wanted to tell her that she didn't know Katniss well enough to miss her the way he did. No one knew how he felt. Not Delly Cartwright. Certainly not Madge Undersee.

"Alright," he finally said, just to put an end to the conversation. The sun was setting fast and he'd promised Prim to swing by. The mayor's daughter had sidetracked him long enough. He spun around and set off towards home.

Madge was stung by his brusque response. She refused to let it show. Not that it mattered. Gale Hawthorne was already walking away. If only she could eat her own words. In the wake of her honesty, she felt raw, exposed. For a moment, she'd let herself hope it was possible to make a connection with him, that his walls would crumble as easily as her own. Idiot, she cursed herself.

After his rejection, the last thing she wanted to do was follow him, but her choices were few. She didn't know where she was. Her father would be worried, assuming he'd noticed she wasn't home yet. Her mother…

She didn't want to think about her mother. She watched Gale move further and further away, torn between pride and the fear of being left alone, after dark, in the Seam.

A dog howled nearby and she made up her mind.

Madge was keeping a careful distance behind him. She moved quietly, but he'd noticed that about her before, how good she was at blending in, fading out around the edges until she became something not quite solid. It was a quality he considered untrustworthy.

He was a hunter, though. His senses were sharp. He knew when he wasn't alone just by the weight of the air, the prick of eyes at the back of his neck. By the time he reached the first smattering of houses, he couldn't take it anymore.

"Now who's stalking who?" he said, looking back. Madge froze mid-step and he almost laughed at the absurdity of her expression.

"I'm going this way too," she said.

Gale rolled his eyes. He bet she didn't have a clue where she was going. She was lost and, of course, refusing to admit it. If she wouldn't ask for help, why should he give it? The answer came to him immediately. Because he didn't want her to follow him home, which seemed to be her plan.

"Come on," he said, resigned. He supposed it was partly his fault she'd gotten so lost to begin with. "I'll take you out of the Seam."

"You don't have to-"

He held up a hand to silence her. "The offer won't stand long, Undersee. Take it now or go your own way."

They continued in silence, side by side now. Madge kept one foot on the path and the other in the grass. Now that she wasn't fleeing for her life, she was able to drink in her surroundings. They strolled down a row of worn-down houses, all identical. A man, coated in coal dust from head to toe, sat on the steps of a porch and puffed on a pipe. His smoke drifted across her face, making her sneeze. She heard a woman singing softly through an open window.

Gradually, Madge relaxed, lulled by the stillness of evening.

"So, what did you give her?" asked Gale.

"What?" said Madge, startled.

"Katniss," he forced out the name. "You had something in your hand when you visited her on Reaping Day."

Madge was surprised he'd noticed her at all that day. "My pin," she said.

"Is it special or something?"

"No," she said, returning to the safety of lies. "She seemed to like it. I wanted to give her something to remember home by, until she comes back."

He remembered the pin she wore on Reaping Day. A gold mockingjay in flight. It was worth more than anything Katniss owned. It was utterly useless. The mayor's daughter probably had thousands of fancy trinkets to throw away.

She had that certainty in her voice again, though.

"You really believe she's coming home?" said Gale.

"I know she is," said Madge.

"She'll have to kill people."

"I know that, too," she snapped, her cheeks flooding with color. "I've watched the Games all my life, same as you. I know how it works."

Gale stopped. They were at the boundary between Town and Seam. The end of the line. He clasped his hands behind him and rocked onto his heels as he inspected the mayor's daughter. There was no trace of fear on her face now. She stared defiantly back at him.

"Katniss will do what she has to," she said, so serious that Gale thought, maybe, just maybe, she did understand.

"Yeah, well…" He turned his eyes towards Town, at all the cheery light shining in the windows. "You know where to go from here."

With home in sight and Gale Hawthorne walking away yet again, Madge was suddenly transported to the Reaping. She felt Katniss' hand slipping from her own. Being close to Gale gave her a pale shadow of Katniss' company. They were so similar. She saw her friend in his easy, long-legged stride, heard her in his guarded, monotone voice, smelled her in the coal dust gathered in the seams of his clothes.

"Thank you," Madge called after him. He didn't seem to hear.

But then, without looking back, he said, "Just keep to your side from now on, Undersee."

The illusion shattered. He wasn't anything like her friend. Katniss was a thousand miles away.