A/N: Many thanks, as always, to dandelionsunset for being such a fantastic beta.
Chapter 9—still waters (Madge's Friday)
"You have no idea what it is like living under the thumb of Capitol surveillance 24 hours a day. Most of my home isn't safe for that kind of discussion. Don't discuss the Capitol again on my back porch, OK? If you ever do want to talk about the Capitol, though, I know where we can speak freely in this District and where we can't. Got it?"
And then she'd just walked away from Gale and headed home. She replayed their talk—well, her lecture—in her mind and decided she had done her best, given the circumstances.
Madge hadn't worried for one second that Gale would keep treating Katniss so horribly, whether she'd scolded him or not. Gale was stubborn and had more pride than sense but he wasn't cruel and he wasn't one to turn his back on his friends. Madge knew it was only a matter of time before he swallowed his pride and apologized. All her lecture had done was speed things up a bit.
Madge had watched Gale and Katniss interact for years. They clearly cared for each other. And Gale had rather obviously become attracted to Katniss in the last several months. Well, Gale and most of the other guys at school, not that Katniss noticed.
But love? No. Gale didn't love Katniss. He loved the idea of her. He loved what he thought she represented. When Gale looked at Katniss, he saw her grit, her determination and her weapon. He did not see who Katniss really was—a caretaker, an older sister, a provider. Gale saw freedom and rebellion when he looked at Katniss. What he should have seen instead was duty and devotion.
Gale was discreet about his hatred for the Capitol but he wasn't so discreet that Madge didn't pick up on it. Katniss agreed with Gale, but she wasn't about to challenge anybody or anything that would interfere with her ability to keep Prim fed, housed and clothed.
Katniss was no rebel. Madge was. Madge hated the Capitol.
She hated the way the Capitol controlled every aspect of their lives, how it kept the Districts poor and desperate. She hated the surveillance. She hated how some of the Peacekeepers abused their authority with no repercussions. She hated standing in the square every summer as the Reaping stole two more lives from an already underpopulated District.
More than anything else, though, Madge hated the Capitol because of what the Games had done to her mother.
Mary, Madge's mother, and Maysilee Donner were twins. By all accounts, the girls were bright, bubbly and best friends with Rosemary Bay, who would later become Katniss' mother.
Maysilee was reaped in the 50th Hunger Games. The Capitol took twice as many tributes that year. 48 young lives sacrificed for the Capitol, instead of the usual 24. Mary—like every other citizen of Panem—was forced to watch the Capitol turn her sister into a killer, before she was herself killed by a flock of absurd, tiny pink birds that looked like they belonged in their parents' sweetshop. Maysilee bled out while the last remaining tribute from District 12, a boy from the Seam named Haymitch Abernathy, held her hand.
Mary was never the same. According to John, Madge's father, Mary tried for several years to move forward. "She really did," he would say, trying as much to convince himself as he was Madge. Mary and John had a toasting not long after they survived their final Reaping. She tried to help him with his a political career; she even went to the Capitol with him once.
It was during that trip to the Capitol that Mary had her first debilitating headache. It kept her in bed for the few days they were there. Mary never returned to the Capitol but the headaches remained with her.
After a few more years, John convinced Mary to try for a family and they had Madge. Madge was a miniature copy of her Aunt Maysilee, except that Madge had her father's brown eyes. Mary's headaches got worse, much worse, after Madge was born. The older Madge became, the more she looked like Maysilee and the further away her mother pushed her.
The last time Madge had felt any sort of closeness with her mother was the day of her first Reaping. She was terrified, although she tried hard not to show it. She was in a new dress and her mother had brushed and curled her hair for the first time in years. Before they left for the Square, Mary gave Madge a gold pin. It was mockingjay surrounded by a gold circle. "This was Maysilee's," Mary told her as she pinned it on Madge's dress. "She wore it in the Arena. It's yours, now. " Mary looked at Madge for a long time with unshed tears in her eyes. Then she kissed her daughter's cheek and they walked to the Square with her father.
Mary had spent nearly every day since then confined to bed. The Capitol provided her with a steady supply of morphling for her headaches. She rarely spoke.
After her first Reaping, Madge decided to learn everything she could about the Capitol who had stolen her aunt and her mother. She began to consciously downplay her natural beauty. It wasn't an accident that she kept her head down, her looks plain and did everything she could so people would overlook her. She became quiet. People forgot she was there. Her mousy exterior made her an effective spy.
Her mother's constant health problems often distracted her father from his duties as Mayor. Madge took advantage of that. She explored their house. She read communications with the Capitol. She found where he kept all of his passwords for his computer system.
Here is what Madge knew:
*Every single room in the Mayoral Mansion was bugged for sound, except for their basement. It had been a coal cellar for decades but they did a gut rehab several years ago. As required, the Mayor requested permission from the Capitol. The Capitol approved the rehab but needed notification of when the job was complete so they could come "replace the mandatory electronic surveillance temporarily removed during construction." The Mayor duly notified the Capitol when the basement was finished. After six months, he sent a second notice. The Capitol never responded and still had not replaced the bugs.
*Most of the public areas in the District were officially under video and audio surveillance. This included the streets, the school, the municipal buildings and the town square, BUT
*because most of District 12 was frequently without electricity, surveillance in those areas was spotty, at best.
*The coal mine was always under surveillance. The Capitol had bugged the mines using devices that ran on a combination of electricity, batteries and kinetic energy harnessed by the vibrations from the drilling.
Here is what Madge suspected:
*The Capitol viewed District 12 as small, backwards and largely unworthy of notice. The fact that the Capitol had made no attempt to replace the bugs in the Mayor's basement, or to improve surveillance throughout the district, indicated their lack of concern.
*The exception was the coal mine. The Capitol kept very close tabs on the miners.
On the one hand, Madge could understand why the Capitol would keep a close eye on Panem's coal supply. After all, it was one of the few energy sources left in Panem. A disruption in the supply of coal would affect the entire country but most especially the Capitol, which consumed more electricity than the 12 Districts combined.
On the other hand, given how few people lived in District 12, and how the Capitol kept insisting that re-population of Panem was every citizen's sacred duty, Madge would have thought the Capitol would take better care of its miners. Instead, miners rarely lived to an old age. It wasn't just the black lung, the burns and the occasional cave-in. It seemed like there was a large, fatal disaster in the mines every generation. It made Madge wonder if the explosion that killed Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Everdeen was really an accident.
Whether the electronic surveillance was functioning or not, the Capitol still relied on informants to let it know when there was unrest, or suspicious activity or even just mild grumbling. This kept the citizenry suspicious of each other. Madge hated that, too.
If the Capitol had any idea how much Madge knew, they would execute her. Probably her parents, as well. All of these reasons and a thousand others, injustices great and small, made Madge dream day and night about overthrowing the Capitol. She suspected Gale Hawthorne dreamed about it, too.
And that was the real reason she had gone to him today. The lecture about Katniss was just the excuse she needed to approach him. Gale was a kindred spirit—she was sure of it—and she was certain she had piqued his curiosity today.
When Madge arrived at home, she was a little surprised to see Mr. Mellark walking up their driveway.
"Hello, Madge, how are you today?" He was always so polite.
"I'm well, thank you for asking, Mr. Mellark. How are you?" Madge used her "timid" voice.
"Good, good. Is your father home, by chance? I need to discuss something with him."
"Certainly. Won't you have a seat." Madge led Mr. Mellark into the parlor, which had a total of 5 listening devices, more than any other room in the house except for his office. She had learned long ago that her father conducted his business in there because the more open he was about what he said and did, the less the Capitol paid attention.
Madge left to go get her father. The Mayor came into the parlor and shook hands with the baker. "Farl! So good to see you! I suppose this visit has something to with Rye's band?" The men sat down. Madge sat down as well. Her father raised a curious eyebrow at her presence—Madge didn't usually stick around for meetings with constituents—but he didn't tell her to leave.
Mr. Mellark dived right in. "John, I suppose you know that the singer for Rye's band is Katniss Everdeen?" The Mayor nodded. "Well, Rosemary, quite wisely, will only allow her daughter to come to evening rehearsals if she is escorted home after dark. I learned this morning that Peeta promised the young lady that he would walk her home."
Madge kept waiting for her father to lose patience with Mr. Mellark. Peeta was going to walk Katniss home. So what? He needed his parents' permission, not the Mayor's. Mr. Undersee, however, seemed to be taking this quite seriously.
"I see. And what does Marigold have to say on the matter?"
"I haven't told her yet."
Ah. That's right. Peeta's father used to be in love with Katniss' mother. Was still in love, by some accounts. Marigold hated everybody and everything Seam already. Madge didn't think that Marigold would take kindly to having Peeta walk the daughter of her husband's One True Love home to the Seam every night.
"Katniss is a good girl. Responsible. She's been taking care of her sister and her mother since her father died." Farl sighed and looked down at his hands. They were big hands, callused and scarred with burns but they looked gentle. "And Peeta-" Mr. Mellark noticed that Madge was still in the room. He suddenly looked unsure of himself.
"Dad, what Mr. Mellark is trying to say is that Peeta's been carrying a torch for Katniss for years and years. He probably jumped at the chance to walk her home." The baker looked relieved. John Undersee looked at his daughter with a small smile on his face. Then he turned back to Mr. Mellark.
"Marigold would never allow Peeta to walk this girl home," the Mayor stated. Farl nodded his head once. "Unless she has a reason to think it a benefit to her." Farl nodded his head once more. "And...this is important to you." Another nod.
Madge actually felt the plan fall into place in her mind. It just lay there, complete and perfect. "He'll do it as a favor to me," Madge announced. The men looked at her, confused expressions on their face. "Katniss is my best friend. She's the youngest member of the band, you know, and has to leave a bit earlier than the rest of them. Peeta—as a personal favor to me—is going to sacrifice his evenings to make sure that my best friend gets home safely. It will be a lot of work for Peeta, obviously, but it would mean so much to me, Mr. Mellark."
Mr. Mellark looked stunned that she'd spoken. Her father looked...proud of her.
The men left not long after that. Madge briefly checked on her mother, then she went down to the basement to wait for her father. She still had a question for him and she would prefer to ask it where the Capitol couldn't hear.
He was back about 30 minutes later, chuckling as he walked into the basement. She closed the door behind him.
"I take it everything went fine?"
"Oh, my girl, you should have seen the look on her face when she realized that she'd agreed to let him walk home Katniss Everdeen." He kept chuckling.
Madge was happy it had worked but she had to ask. "Daddy? Why on earth did you agree to do this? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it and I'm sure my friends will, too. And I get that Mrs. Mellark is a horrible, horrible witch. But Mr. Mellark is Peeta's father. He doesn't need the Mayor's permission to allow his son to walk Katniss home!"
He stopped smiling. "It isn't about permission for Peeta, Madge. This is about protection for Katniss. If this were any other girl, even if she were from the Seam, Farl wouldn't have needed my help. But I am not exaggerating when I say that Marigold would quite happily see Katniss hanging dead in the town square. If her father were alive, I wouldn't be needed, either. As far as Marigold was concerned, Cal Everdeen was keeping Rosemary far, far away from Farl. But Cal died and Marigold's bitterness has festered over the years. What I did today was step into Cal's shoes and let Marigold know that Katniss is under my protection."
Madge stepped over and gave her father a hug. She was, at that moment, intensely grateful for her father.