Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too.
Chapter 10
AN: Fortunefaded2012 and Nursekelly0429 are wonderful and I can't thank them enough for helping me.
#######
They leave on a hovercraft, switch off to a train somewhere in the south before finally arriving in Ten.
It's cold and dry. Lonely winds cut through Madge's pitiful dress and all her attempts to bundle herself up. Birdy ends up digging a musty smelling blanket out from a wooden crate during the ride to Ten's Seat, the largest city in the District.
Once the train grinds to a stop, loudly, not like the graceful and silent trains from the Capitol, they hop off and Madge squints up at the setting sun. It's pale, almost white in the sky. Quickly they run to a noisy, rusty truck that smells of dirt and fumes.
The man driving is familiar, Madge recognizes him from the bombing of Twelve, and when she scoots into the middle seat of the crumbling truck, he introduces himself.
"Jefferson," he says as he offers his hand.
Taking it, Madge smiles. "Madge."
For the entire ride, which takes less than ten minutes, he updates Birdy on what's happened in her absence, which isn't much.
"Well, it'll catch up soon enough," is all Birdy says.
They stop in front of an old brick building, the base for District Ten. The architecture is something out of the nation that existed before Panem, high arches and giant windows. It's out of place in the earthy, crumbling city that surrounds it.
"This is our stop," Birdy says, giving Madge a tug out of the truck and telling Jefferson thank you.
"It's beautiful," Madge whispers. It has to be a library, or maybe a museum. It's too wonderful not to be. "What is it?"
Birdy looks up at the building for a few seconds, her steps not stopping, then back at Madge with a small smile. "Brothel."
Madge stops in her tracks and drops her reverent gaze down to Birdy. "A brothel." She feels her stomach drop. "I can't stay at a brothel."
Birdy shrugs. "Well, don't take your shoes off and you should be fine."
Closing her eyes, Madge sighs. To say she's horrified would be grossly understating the situation.
She'd thought coming to the hub that all the food bound for the Capitol went through, would land her in somewhere, well, a bit nicer. Not somewhere that she's scared to take her shoes off in.
Madge dutifully follows her through the heavy wooden doors, her expectations sufficiently lowered. She gasps at what she sees.
It isn't filthy, no like she'd expected. There are heavy ruby curtains over the high windows, a chandelier that despite having no electricity to keep it alight is still breathtaking, and an enormous fountain against the far wall made of tiny colorful tiles that glitter in the dying light of evening.
The staircases rise up on both sides, to the rooms on the next floor, then another set rise from there to the next level.
Women and men are bustling around, scurrying up and down the stairs. Some are dressed like Madge and her group, dirty and tired looking, but others look ready for a dinner party.
One of the women, tall with golden hair and a velvety blue dress, comes up to them.
"What's the gospel, Rebecca?" Birdy asks.
The woman, Rebecca, gives her a brilliant smile. "We weren't expecting you quite so soon."
"Life's full of surprises," Birdy tells her. "Where's Sorghum?"
Rebecca points one of her well manicured fingers toward a door at the back of the building. "She's a bit busy at the moment. Would you like me to take your friend up to the room?"
Birdy shakes her head without looking at Rebecca. "No, she's coming with me."
Without waiting for a response, Birdy grabs Madge by the arm and drags her through the lobby, to the room she'd been pointed to and through the door.
People are running around, craning over tables and chattering loudly to one another, paying no attention to the pair of newcomers. Birdy takes Madge and weaves through the crowd, to the back of the room, to where a woman with dark skin and glittering golden eyes is making adjustments to playing pieces on a table. Once she's taken her finger from the top of a queen, she looks up and smiles.
"Birdy, always a pleasure."
Birdy shrugs as though she doesn't believe that. "If you say so." She flops into one of the high backed chairs with bits of upholstery missing and waves her hand at the table and pieces. "What's going on?"
The woman smiles, tilts her head and takes not of Madge. She expects to be thrown out, but instead the woman holds out her hand. "I'm Commissioner Sorghum Mills."
She's tall, maybe taller than Gale, and he's the tallest person Madge has ever met, and Madge feels tiny in comparison as her sweaty hand takes the Commissioner's. "Madge Undersee."
"Ah, Birdy had mentioned you might come." She smiles, her golden eyes glittering again as she takes Madge in. "We aren't quite as high tech as what you've left behind, but I think you'll eventually see the benefits of our methods."
#######
Birdy's friend, Katy-Jo Lewes, takes them upstairs after a few hours of Madge wandering around the lower level of the building.
They go up several stories, Madge forgets to count, until they're on one of the topmost floors.
It's as nice as the other floors, long halls with polished floors and luxurious rugs running the length of them. The sconces on the walls each have candles in place of electric bulbs, casting everything in eerie yellow light.
Katy-Jo takes out an ancient looking key and opens the last door on the right.
The room is dark until Birdy and Katy-Jo carry their little candles in and light all the candles placed throughout the room.
Madge inspects the beds, a pair of iron frames painted white, with delicately sewn quilts and several fluffy pillows on top. There's a small fridge and a telephone on the bedside table, so Madge thinks that the entire building must be outfitted for electricity, there simply isn't any.
"Oh, coffee," Madge hears Birdy say as she begins fussing with something in the corner of the room. "This is good. Better than the crap Thirteen has. You've been holding out. Where'd you get this?"
Turning, Madge sees Katy-Jo shrug. "I forgot about it. Got it from a customer a few months back. Some kind of spice trader. He was a bore."
Madge frowns as she process what they're saying, but then collapses onto the bed. She's too tired to think.
She settles onto the bed, inhaling the scent of lavender from the pillow as she falls asleep to the sound of Birdy and Katy-Jo discussing coffee.
#######
It takes a couple of weeks, but Madge begins to understand the flow of things. Food arrives from Eleven and Nine and leaves with fresh meat on one day, arrives again with weapons only to leave with more meat another. In and out on the old cattle cars, across the districts to keep the Rebellion from failing from lack of food and supplies.
"It's Katy-Jo Lewes," Katy-Jo Lewes tells Madge for what feels like the thousandth time since Madge's arrival. "I'm gonna remind you until it sticks."
She isn't mad, Katy-Jo Lewes is rarely mad. Unlike Birdy who thinks it's her job to belittle and poke fun of everyone, Katy-Jo Lewes gently nudges and praises. For every reminder she gives there are at least a dozen 'good jobs'.
Katy-Jo Lewes, Madge decides, is her friends, maybe her first real one ever.
They talk, sometimes about stupid stuff, sometimes about things Madge absently brings up, between going through files to help determine routes for food to be transported across the districts as well as weapons.
"Where do the weapons come from? The bullets?" She asks, quickly adding, "Katy-Jo Lewes."
"Well, people smarter than any of us figured out how to convert the canneries in Four into munitions plants and Six has started helping make us our own hovercrafts and all those lovely guns we been using up," Katy-Jo Lewes explains.
Madge presses her lips into a line. "When?"
Katy-Jo Lewes shrugs. "I dunno. Before either one of us was born, from what I can tell."
"This party has been in the planning for decades," Birdy tells them, dropping into an empty seat beside Madge. She begins ticking off points on her fingers. "Mags Cohen, Beetee Latier, Wilhelm Maize, Wiress, just to name a few, they all had a hand in this. Every detail we have they helped to gather."
The fact that so much of the Rebellion has already been plotted out, details worked and reworked for the past seventy plus years, is both a source of comfort and worry. Maybe they hadn't been as thorough as they thought, or maybe they'd needed more time.
Only time would tell she supposed.
"And your little boyfriend too, huh?" Katy-Jo Lewes asks, wagging her eyebrows up and down.
"He's not my boyfriend," Birdy mutters. "He's an acquaintance."
"A handsome acquaintance," Katy-Jo Lewes adds, nudging Madge with her shoulder and winking. "Not unlike your tall, dark, and grumpy boy back in Thirteen."
Madge groans. She wishes she'd never mentioned Gale to Katy-Jo Lewes.
It had been during the night, when Madge had woken from one of her nightmares, which seemed to be getting worse again in her unfamiliar surroundings.
"Tell me about something pleasant," Katy-Jo Lewes had said.
After several minutes of thinking, Madge had sighed. "I can't think of anything. That's terrible isn't it?"
"It just means you need a little prodding. Life isn't all bad, can't be. People wouldn't still be around if it were."
That made as much sense as anything else, so Madge had let Katy-Jo Lewes ask her question after question, searching for happy thoughts.
"So the girl on fire sold you strawberries?" She grinned, her eyes glowing in the candle light. "And her cousin too?"
"He isn't her cousin," Madge had quickly told her. A little too quickly.
Grin widening, as if she'd caught on to something very interesting, Katy-Jo Lewes nodded. "Oh, that's right. He's…whatever he is I guess. Birdy's work I'm guessing?"
Madge nodded.
"Piss him off?"
Snorting, Madge nods again. "He was furious."
"That must've made her happy. Nothing makes her day like ruining someone else's."
Something about Madge's eyes, the way she'd said his name, had given her away, and Katy-Jo Lewes hadn't let it go.
"That boy is trouble," Birdy had told her when she'd come back to the room, apparently having gone down for a transmission in the dead of the night. "Dorothy is a steaming pile of discord and he's going to lead us all to ruin."
"You are such a ray of sunshine." Katy-Jo Lewes rolled her eyes.
"I try." Birdy shrugged.
Even though Madge regrets letting Katy-Jo Lewes in on her crush, hopeless as it will ultimately be, it's strangely nice to be able to talk about it. She's never had someone so interested in her life, boring as it's been, and she isn't all that eager to get rid of the warm feeling anytime soon, even if she tries to act annoyed.
"You two need to meet Jefferson at the range in fifteen minutes. You need to at least have the basics of firing a gun down before whatever comes comes," Birdy says, ignoring Katy-Jo Lewes jabs at her love life. Her eyebrows arch up and she shakes her head. "And stop reading romance novels. Nothing but drivel."
"Says the girl who read 'Pride and Prejudice' seven times in three years," Katy-Jo Lewes calls out at Birdy's shrinking figure.
She either doesn't hear or doesn't care, because she doesn't turn, not even to toss a rude gesture at them.
After gathering up their papers, notes scribbled on scraps and bits of wood and glass, Madge and Katy-Jo Lewes head to the range.
It's nothing more than a fenced off patch of land, not a stitch of grass left since the horses had finished with it, and cold. Madge isn't fond of it, but since Birdy had assured her that without even a working knowledge of how to defend herself Madge wouldn't be allowed to go with her if and when the final push on the Capitol came, she didn't have a choice.
"I can box," Madge had pointed out. "Isn't that good enough?"
"While I'm sure your upper cut is a thing of beauty," Birdy had told Madge while leading her to the firing range, "it would be best to not get in swinging range. Distance is our friend."
So Madge had spent at least an hour a day with wiry haired Jefferson learning how to fire a gun.
It was her least favorite time of the day.
Katy-Jo Lewes attended only to flirt, or at least that's what Madge thought. She'd yet to see her so much as touch a gun.
"You take Birdy too seriously," she'd told Madge when she asked why she didn't practice. "She won't leave us behind."
Madge doesn't tell her about Birdy's claim about not having friends, about trusting no one, because she seemed to be under the impression that she falls into both categories. Increasingly Madge thinks maybe Katy-Jo Lewes is right. She knew her before her Games, she might have a bit of insight into her mind.
Jefferson smiles as Madge takes the long gun from him and immediately checks to see if it's loaded.
"Good girl, very good."
For another hour Madge stands in the cold wind, eyes stinging and nose running, trying vainly to get closer and closer to the center of her target. It's better than when she started. The kickback from the gun had nearly startled her into falling over then. Now she at the very least clips the corner of the makeshift bulls eye, a crudely painted circle on a bed sheet affixed to a stack of rectangular hay bales.
"You get better everytime," Jefferson tells her, his crooked teeth flashing, yellowed from years of chewing some foul looking substance the wranglers all seemed very fond of.
Someone snorts behind her, and when Madge turns she finds Birdy and her friends, a pair of boys named Jessup and Jobe, laughing about something. She scowls at them.
"Well, I'm better than I was," she huffs at them.
Jefferson smiles comfortingly at her. "Don't mind them any. Jobe still can't hit the broadside of a barn at twenty paces."
"Can too!" Jobe, a burly man with a heavy beard and thick rough looking, rust colored hair snaps, his face flushing a deep red. "I'm better than Katy-Jo Lewes."
"That's not saying much," Jefferson tells him with a chuckle.
Jessup throws his arm over Madge's shoulder and takes the gun from her hands, handing it to Jefferson before steering her away from the range. "Dinner time little sister."
Jobe and Jessup are like Katy-Jo Lewes, artifacts of the Birdy that had existed before her Games, people she seems to like despite herself. They're loud and filthy, rough around the edges, but kind. They don't seem to care that Madge had been the daughter of a Mayor.
"One of our best friends was the son of a councilman," Jessup had told her with a shrug. "Everyone's equal in the eyes of the Capitol"
Everyone's lot in life was made of misery, why add to it unnecessarily? That was the creed of Ten. It was mysterious, but hopeful to her. She wasn't an outsider, not for being privileged and not for being from the outside of their district. It was a foreign feeling of acceptance, and Madge still isn't completely comfortable with it.
The group ends up in a barn that's been set up as a commissary. There are benches, set end to end, lined up along the center, filled with noisily eating people.
It isn't like Thirteen, where there are set times, everyone comes when they have time and that keeps it evenly busy almost twenty-four hours a day. Madge has come in at all hours and found it filled with happily chatting people in dusty, dirty clothes. Something about that comforts her, makes it all less clinical.
The food is more varied, even if she can't say she likes it much more than the flavorless mush she'd subsided on during her stay in Thirteen.
Frog legs and fried snake, smoked animals of all sorts are the mainstay, served with snapped beans and strange, lumpy orange potatoes are certainly more available. She never goes to bed hungry in Ten.
"We raided the Peacekeepers villages," Jessup had explained to her when she'd asked where the abundance of food had come from, his dark eyes, bright but almost black, widening.
"Guess this is the last dinner we get with y'all for a while," Jobe tells them as he drops his tray, a round pie pan, onto the table. "Jessup and I are heading out north here in an hour."
Birdy frowns at him and Katy-Jo Lewes makes a face.
"Why?" She asks, a lump of potato falling from her fork. Birdy spears it from her pie pan and eats it while she awaits his answer.
"Dunno," he shrugs. "They just came to us and said 'You boys're moving out tonight, you'll be gone a bit so pack a couple longhandles', so we're leaving."
They're grunts, at least that's what they call themselves. Strong and sure, used to working hard in unfavorable conditions so they get called off at strange times, normally not for a day or two. Packing more than one pair of thermal underclothes is a bit ominous. It's an unusual trip, and they all know it.
Once they clean their plates, literally lick every crumb from the pie pans, Jobe and Jessup give the girls hugs.
"See y'all when we get back," Jessup tells them, giving Birdy a long, searching look before exchanging a glance with Katy-Jo Lewes.
They head out, across the dusty dark open area between the base and the crumbling buildings around it, until they're swallowed up by the darkness with one last glance back and a wave goodbye.
#######
"Get up," Madge hears Birdy say.
She glances at the tiny alarm clock, a relic from decades past, ticking endlessly on the nightstand. Three am.
Groaning, Madge pulls the old quilt over her head. "You just had a nightmare, Birdy. Go back to sleep."
It's happened before. Birdy will wake in a cold sweat on the ground, flailing around, terrified that she's back in her own arena, surrounded by glowing bugs and carnivorous plants, or listening to the families of Victor's burning up in their own houses, and she'll wake Madge. Not to talk and not to complain, but just to have the comfort of another person sitting with her.
Katy-Jo Lewes is too hard a sleeper, so Madge is her go to person.
"I used to go find Miss Mary or Miss Coraline, sometimes Brandsetter," she'd told Madge, the first night she'd woken her.
But Mary Jacson, Coraline Lons, and Tommy Brandsetter are all dead. She hadn't been able to rescue them from the Capitol's clutches before they were executed on live television.
Normally Madge is more receptive. She knows how bad the thoughts in a person's head can be, how helpless nightmares can make everything seem, but the cold nights of Ten's inching winter are making her sluggish. Sleep is a welcome warmth after a day of bone aching cold and she's hard pressed to abandon it at the moment.
Her bed shifts and suddenly her sheets are yanked. Madge feels herself being flung.
Gracelessly, she ends up in a heap on the ice cold floor.
"What is your problem?" She yells, not caring if she wakes the neighboring rooms.
"I told you to get up," Birdy tells her before turning to Katy-Jo Lewes' bed and grabbing the cup of water on the bedside table. "You too, Katherine Jo."
She dumps the water, which is undoubtedly frigid at the moment, onto Katy-Jo Lewes head.
Screaming, Katy-Jo Lewes sits bolt up in bed, fists swinging. After a few seconds of fruitless fighting with the air, she opens her eyes and snarls. "What in the hell was that for?"
"We're leaving," Birdy tells her, squatting down and snatching up a bag and tossing it at Katy-Jo Lewes' head. "Now."
They aren't given time to argue, Birdy throws clothing at them, shoes and thick socks, then rushes them around, refusing to tell them anything.
"I'll explain later," is all she says.
Fifteen furious minutes later, Madge and Katy-Jo Lewes unhappily run after Birdy as she takes them down the back stairwell of the base, their feet echoing ominously with each step.
Birdy, despite being shorter than both of them, having tinier strides, beats them to the bottom. She taps her foot impatiently as she waits for them to reach the bottom step.
"You'd think you'd both be a bit faster," she mutters, waving for them to follow her.
"I'm not taking another step 'til you tell me where we're going," Katy-Jo Lewes finally snaps, pulling a thick woolen hat over her still wet hair. "What's gotten into you?"
Birdy stops dead in her tracks, turns and crosses her arms over her chest. "We're going to Four."
Madge frowns, blinks, then rubs her face with her freezing hands. "What? Have you been drinking?"
She's had enough with drunk Victors for a lifetime.
"Do I look drunk?" Birdy asks.
Madge thinks about telling her that yes, she does look a bit drunk. Her hair is wind-blown, stringy and greasy looking, her skin an odd gray under the half shrouded moon, and her eyes shining wildly, but she decides not to prod her. Clearly she's unwell.
Waving her hand, Birdy beacons them, and with sighs of irritation, both girls do.
Finally, once the train station is in view, Birdy stops again, looks to the sky, then sighs.
"We're going to Four to prepare for the push on the Capitol."
That pushes whatever fog of sleep is left in Madge's head out. "What?"
"We go to Four, wait a few days, then we're part of the first wave into the Capitol. We're reconnaissance."
With another glance to the sky, she gestures for them to follow her.
They pass into the train yard, which is unnaturally busy. People are rushing around, wide eyed and worried, packing the cattle cars with boxes of supplies.
"Why are they packing so much?" Katy-Jo Lewes asks.
"We're leaving," Birdy says, without further explanation.
Madge and Katy-Jo Lewes scurry after her, past stacks and piles of supplies, until they reach a cattle car being filled with people.
Birdy mutters, more to herself than to anyone else and turns to the pair. She jerks her head, toward a storage building.
They go to the building, more a large shack, and Madge stops, crossing her arms and glaring.
"How can we be going in for recon?" Madge asks, her back to the trains behind her. "And why is everyone being evacuated?"
Because it's clear that's what's happening. Food, supplies, and people, everyone and everything is being cleared out of the Seat.
"We're just evacuating this half of the city," Birdy explains. "We have the other secured."
She pushes the door open, it groans, then waves for Madge and Katy-Jo Lewes to go in.
It's dark except for the sliver of moonlight glowing in through the filthy window. Birdy points to a pair of dusty sticky boxes against the wall. "Sit down, shut up, and listen, 'cause I'm not explaining this twice."
Once they're sitting, glaring at her through the dim, dust filled air, Birdy flops against the wall.
"This half of the city is going to be destroyed in a couple of hours," she says evenly, as though she's giving them the weather report.
"What?" Madge sputters, horrified.
"Shhh!" Katy-Jo Lewes presses a finger to her lips to silence her.
With a withered look, Birdy continues.
"It's part of the plan. We need to draw out some of the Capitol's forces. It's the only way we have a fighting chance. They just have too much power. We can't go in, guns blazing, when they still have so much support surrounding them. Especially in such a well secured little nest."
Slowly, almost mechanically, she begins to explain.
They'd been waiting, determining the best time to attack. Watching weather patterns and troop movements, waiting for the time to strike.
The dam that had been destroyed in Five hadn't been the Capitol's doing, it had been the Rebels'.
"It was their main power source," she explains. "They would've never destroyed it because they wanted to secure it. Getting rid of it was a priority."
"But why let Thirteen think it was the Capitol?" Madge asks.
"Psychological warfare."
"Against your own side?"
"Those of us that think Thirteen is as much trouble as the Capitol wanted them to think the Capitol is crazy, desperate. We also didn't want them to know how smart we are."
The Rebels outside of Thirteen, mostly from Five and Three, had come up with a plan to drain the Capitol's power. Take away their main source, then allow them sporadic use of the smaller power stations.
"Five had control of the smaller power stations, so that when Thirteen wanted to show a propo the Capitol couldn't cut the electricity and keep its citizens from seeing. Our people could override them and keep it on."
"I didn't think you liked the propos," Madge says without thinking.
"I never said that." Birdy grins. "I know how powerful those things can be. That's my bread and butter, messing with peoples' heads. I just don't like the people pulling the strings, I never have."
Thirteen thought it was good fortune, not strategy that was keeping the Capitol from pulling their plug on the most recent stretch of propos.
When propos weren't being funneled into the Capitol, it was being forced to use generators.
"Our little brain trust knows everything about those generators."
How much power they could create and just how long they would last. At the rate they'd been used, at the beginning of the war, when the Capitol had expected a swift and decisive victory the backup electricity is dwindling.
"They're only going to be able support major facilities and absolute needs pretty soon."
With major resources knocked out, that will be the best time to send in the first wave, when the Capitol's electric is at a minimal, putting them at the disadvantage.
"We've been making due without electric for decades, we can work that way, they can't."
"So…" Madge frowns, "we're drawing some of their forces out to weaken them more?"
"Exactly."
"And just how do you know they're coming for us?" Katy-Jo Lewes asks, her eyebrows high on her forehead.
Birdy smiles serenely. "We have people on the inside, people setting traps, ways of setting out false information. They're sending a considerable force down here because they think we've been hiding something down here and they really want to wipe it out."
Madge thinks she might not want to know just what lies Birdy and her people had fed the Capitol. Something about her untroubled demeanor tell her it won't be something Madge will like.
"What exactly do they think we're hiding?" Katy-Jo Lewes finally asks, though she looks no more excited about what she's about to hear than Madge feels.
"Katniss Everdeen."
Madge frowns. "Why would they-"
Her question dies in her mouth.
There's always an ulterior motive.
"Damn you, Birdy," Madge groans, covering her face. "Is that why you brought me here? To trick them?"
"It isn't not why I brought you here," she answers with a shrug. "It was one of many reasons. I really did think you'd be useful here, and you have been."
Madge thinks there are plenty of people who could've found paths for food and supply transport. She'd been a place holder for Katniss. Again.
"So they think you brought our Mockinjay to Ten and we've been messing around with her for a few weeks?" Katy-Jo Lewes asks after a few moments of silence.
"They think she's been training. Which is probably true. Just not here." Birdy glances out the window. "I don't know though. For all I know she's curled up in a ball in the hospital ward. I also don't really care."
Katniss, at least as far as Birdy is concerned, has met her purpose. Whether she's alive or dead at the moment doesn't matter to her. It wouldn't be a pointless death. She might be refashioned as a martyr for all they know.
"So we've set them up to think she's here, watched the weather patterns and started moving our resources to the other side of the city, and had our people on the inside feed them some incorrect information. They're planning an assault on the city in the next few hours."
"But all the people in the city-"
"-are being evacuated," Birdy cuts Katy-Jo Lewes off. "Only those fully informed and prepared to die, to see this to the end, are staying."
She pushes herself from the wall and crosses to the door, pushing it open and filling the room with the noise of people and trains.
"Now come on."
#######
Madge curls up around herself as the clatter of the train drowns out any noise the other occupants of the car make.
Katy-Jo Lewes is asleep again. She can sleep through anything it seems, even life changing moves.
"Hate me yet?" Birdy asks, dropping down cross legged in front of Madge.
There's barely any light in the car, just the small bit of what may be rising sun, glowing through the cracks in the door, or maybe it's District Ten burning, she isn't sure what direction they're going, but what there is catches in Birdy's eyes, making them shine.
A part of her does. Madge feels used, and even if it isn't a new sensation, she still hates it if only for the aching familiarity it brings. She's been an ersatz Katniss for a whole new group of people now. The thought brings bile up in her throat.
"It just worked out. I would've brought you down here no matter if it had helped with the plan or not, just so you know. You needed out of there."
Madge nods. "Thanks."
Silence stretches between them and Madge watches as Birdy leans back on her palms and stares up at the roof.
"This is how they took us to the Reaping," she says suddenly. "The last time I was in a cattle car Katy-Jo Lewes and I beat some of the older boys playing cards. A few hours later and I was being packed off to the Capitol." She smiles to herself. "I hate trains."
It's a bleak thought, children being packed up like the cattle and shipped to the stockyards for the Reaping. There's an inhumanity about it that shakes Madge. No wonder her father had wanted to leave it behind.
To get her mind off the image of Birdy during her Reaping, a tiny girl in a faded green dress with wide eyes and a terrified expression, Madge thinks of the city she's just left.
"How is sacrificing fighters to a war any different than sacrificing spies, who have given as much consent for their lives to be lost as any soldier?" Madge asks, remembering Birdy's anger at the handling of the mission to save Peeta.
"It was sloppy," Birdy answers simply. "I know sacrifices have to be made, Madge, I'm not an idiot. Like Heavensbee said, I understand that. But there's been enough bloodshed. We could've started this new country without the show, without a figurehead, without losing our own morals." She sighs. "I don't want to become them anymore than I already have."
The train clatters on and Madge nods.
Neither does she.