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.
So shines a good deed, pt 25
Gale crosses his arms and stares unblinking into the headlights of the cars flying by.
Haymitch, drunk, dirty, asshole Haymitch, is Madge's blood. It's unbelievable.
Closing his eyes, Gale tries to find any ghosts of resemblance between Madge and Haymitch. He can't though. She only resembles her mother, and even the small differences, the brightness of her smile and the clearness of her eyes, don't connect her to Haymitch, at least not in Gale's mind.
There are other things though, that he supposes could be considered similar. The way they laugh or huff, roll their eyes. Their sense of humor, he supposes, is similar, and, much as he hates to admit it, Haymitch is smart. Madge might have gotten that from the bastard.
"Does Madge know?" He hears his dad ask, breaking his train of thought.
Alameda laughs. "No. That's a secret that's supposed to go to the grave."
"Then why are you telling us about it?" Gale grinds out.
He doesn't want this knowledge. How is he supposed to keep this a secret? Madge deserves to know. It's her life after all.
"Well, seeing as I don't think we're going to survive this little adventure I don't see the harm." She shrugs. "Still taking it to the grave."
Gale won't be. He's going to live, he's going to make it home to his family, with his dad and friends and even Haymitch. Maybe even especially Haymitch at this moment. He and Madge's mother need to be the ones to explain this mess to her, not Gale.
It makes it even more imperative that they save the jerk. Gale knows Madge, and if Haymitch dies and then she finds out the truth, she'll be devastated.
It had been important before, and it feels doubly so now.
"We need to create a distraction," he says, focusing his mind on the task at hand.
Alameda tilts her head and glances back at him. "You don't think a big ass building imploding behind the stage is a big enough distraction?"
Gale glares. "I need to get up to the stage before the explosion you idiot."
"Gale." His dad gives him a warning look.
Ignoring him, Alameda is probably already working in a comeback, Gale pulls himself forward between the seats again.
"There's got to be a back way up, right?"
She shakes her head. "Nope, Snow is very particular about security."
Grinding his teeth, Gale glares at her. "You want me to believe you're smart, well prove it. Help me figure this out."
She's the one that's been around this place and these people for years. She's the one that can spot the flaws in their system. She needs to help him.
For a second she's quiet, her eyes focused on the road. Then her eyebrows pull together and she glances I the rearview mirror.
"You love her, don't you? You aren't just trying to get in her pants?"
Gale doesn't even dignify that with a response, just narrows his eyes and scowls.
He's here isn't he? He's putting his and his family's lives on the line. Of course he loves her.
Expression hardening, Alameda guns the car, swerving around the person ahead of her and cutting across several lanes to a chorus of honks.
"Sit back and shut up then, Dorothy." She tightens her grip on the wheel. "'Cause I'm about to help you be a hero."
#######
Hazelle sets Posy down and pulls her thin coat a little tighter, trying to keep her daughter as warm as possible.
It's a useless effort, but Hazelle is desperate for a distraction.
Matilda's pale hand pushes a quilt in front of Hazelle's face, holding it there for several seconds.
"She can use this," she finally says.
Taking it, Hazelle nods, giving her a tight smile.
Posy grins, pulling the ancient looking thing close around her shoulders, looking to Matilda, her eyes dropping to the bag at her side. "What else do you have in your bag?"
An little smile flicks up on Matilda's lips and she drops down to her knees, pulling her bag in front of her and pulling it open.
Posy scoots closer, eyes wide as she waits for whatever clearly amazing things are about to be produced.
"It's just pictures," she tells Posy airily.
They're mostly of Madge. One of her when she was very small, playing under the Mayor's desk, another in the garden with an older man that Hazelle vaguely remembers as the old candy maker, Matilda's dad. Several of the others are school photos. They're all dulled with age and tattered at the edges.
"They're doubles!" Posy squeals, pointing to a pair of blonde girls.
Matilda nods. "My sister, Maysilee."
Hazelle remembers the last Quarter Quell, the one that had graced them with Haymitch Abernathy as their second Victor. Twice the tributes, twice the carnage, and in the Capitol's mind, twice the entertainment.
Forgetting it would be twice as hard.
She probably wouldn't remember Maysilee Donner, just the unlucky merchant girl that had allied with Haymitch, only to die minutes after breaking that alliance, but Matilda had etched her sister into Hazelle's mind.
She'd stood in the Square, day in and day out, missed class, just to watch her sister, a mirror image of herself, suffer through a game no one thought she had a chance of winning. Her sweet face, hazy eyes full of tears, had made her sister memorable to District Twelve, even if the rest of the country had forgotten her before her blood had even finished draining from her body.
People ridiculed her, to her face and behind her back, not even letting the fact that her sister, one of the few people who treated her decently, had been stolen from her. They'd laughed at her pain, at her loss, even though she'd never hurt anyone. Not even the fact that her dad, the old candy maker, was one of the kindest men in the District made a difference.
Matilda Donner had been odd, and that alone had earned her scorn, cost her the sympathy she so rightly deserved.
For a second Matilda stares at the photo sadly, lost in her own thoughts, before Posy drags her back to reality.
"Where is she?"
The picture slips from Matilda's fingers, drifting back to her bag gently, before she sighs.
"Gone."
She doesn't elaborate, just smiles sadly at the next photo in her hand.
"Who are they?" Posy asks, moving on from Maysilee Donner, to the picture of another family.
It takes Hazelle a second to recognize the boy in the photo, despite the fact that the smirk on his face hasn't changed in twenty-five years.
The Haymitch in the photo is younger, dark haired and adorable, maybe a little younger than Posy, sitting next to dark haired woman cradling a baby, all in front of a somber faced man. Haymitch's family.
"That's Haymitch," Matilda tells her, pulling out another photo, one of Haymitch and a boy Hazelle now recognizes as his brother. "That's Graeme, his brother."
Posy nods. "Is he gone too?"
With a small smile, Matilda nods.
She lets the rest of the photos fall back into the bag.
Hazelle sighs, looking away from them and back toward the now dark District.
She wishes she had pictures of her children like Matilda does. Mementos of when they'd been small. There are school pictures, but she and Asher had never been able to afford them. Any that might exist will be destroyed soon, she thinks bitterly.
There are no wedding photos for her and Asher, no baby pictures of any of her children, no printed memories of Asher or her parents, their siblings, nothing.
For a second she wishes Matilda didn't have any either. It isn't fair that when this ends, she'll be the only one with proof her family ever existed.
As quickly as the thought forms, it disintegrates.
Matilda only has pictures. Hazelle has her family still, and Matilda has lost almost all of hers.
She can't begrudge her a few slips of paper.
"Keep your eyes open," Hazelle tells them, hoping to distract them from the pictures. "When people start coming, we need to be ready."
For whatever comes next.
#######
Madge beats the others to the edge of town.
Sweat is dripping from her hair, making her clothes cling to her uncomfortably and sending a chill to surround her despite the warmth of the evening.
There's a dull hum growing, people coming into the street to investigate the siren and the loss of electricity.
"Katniss," Madge huffs, trying to catch her breath, wiping droplets of perspiration from her face, smearing it messily, "you and Vick go to the Seam and try to get everyone moving. Delly and I will work on the Town."
Vick shakes his head.
"I'm not leaving you," he tells her. "You're Gale's girlfriend, your family, I can't leave you."
Madge blinks, tears almost fighting their way out the corners of her eyes.
She's family. The fact that he considers her that, that he feels the need to treat her like a sister, refusing to leave her side, is too much. This is all her fault, after all. His life is being pulled apart at the seams because of her, she doesn't deserve his loyalty.
Pulling him into a hug, Madge takes a deep breath. "It's going to be okay. We need to split up though, understand?"
It's the only way to get as many people out as possible.
For a few seconds he just holds onto her, sniffling and letting his tears seep through her dress, before he pulls back.
Vick wipes his eyes, sniffs again, then nods. He looks up and gives her a brave smile. "Be careful."
"You too."
With that and another small smile, he's gone, trailing after Katniss to the Seam.
Turning back to Delly, Madge wipes her cheeks and forces her face into a determined expression.
"We need to get to the Square," she tells her. "There's a megaphone at the Justice Building that runs on batteries we can use it to give everyone directions."
And get their voices over the blaring scream of the siren.
Delly nods. "What's one more crime on this spree, right?"
Madge grins. "That's the spirit."
#######
Asher stares at the girl across from him as Gale makes a disbelieving sound.
"You had a plan to save everyone-"
"Some people," she corrects. "Finnick and Annie, old Mags, Cecilia, the other Victors from my District, that's it."
She's collaborated with one, drugged another, and bribed traffic officials to stage a wreck to keep the rest trapped on the other side of the city.
But she's clearly got designs on saving others too, or at least now she does.
"I owe some of them," she admits. "But I couldn't get too many out. I had to make a choice."
"Because of Wiress?"
She's pretty adamant about the Victors needing to be cleansed from the country, apparently. Asher can't imagine her being too receptive to Phoebe's little rescue plan.
Phoebe shrugs. "Wiress knows me. I'm sure she expects me to pull something stupid."
Like this, clearly.
"But she hasn't tried to stop you?" Gale asks, eyebrows pulled together tightly and his mouth in a deep frown.
If Wiress suspects her minion is going against the grain, Asher can't imagine her not trying to put a stop to it.
"She's got a lot on her plate," she says simply. "But I'm sure she's made contingency plans against my moves. It's part of the game."
A game that clearly only they understand. How they know who the enemy is when they're playing against each other, Asher isn't sure, and he honestly isn't sure he wants to know.
He likes his friends as his friends and his enemies at arm's length.
"You're nuts," Gale grumbles.
"You aren't wrong," she chirps back.
Asher couldn't agree more.
Over the last few minutes, after telling them how she'd saved her friends, she'd come up with something that can only be called a plan by the vaguest of terms.
"Okay, listen close because I'm not repeating myself," she'd began, biting her lip, clearly thinking hard. "When we get there we locate the honor guards, they'll be in fancy, elaborate uniforms, probably-"
"Why?"
She glared at Gale in the mirror. "What did I say about shutting up?"
For a second Gale had looked like he was going to say something, but when he caught the warning look Asher shot him his mouth snapped shut.
"We find the honor guard because they'll be the easiest to get the weapons from. They're Capitol kids. Pampered. I'll herd a couple away from the group and we'll get their weapons, then..."
She'd faltered, grinding her teeth. "...then we work our way to the front, and then...wait for the explosion, not before...then we'll have to cover ourselves against the Peacekeepers, because they'll be going crazy, then, maybe, we can get on stage and pull Haymitch off. Maybe."
"That's a lot of 'maybes'," Asher pointed out.
She shrugged. "You want my help or not? I'm pretty good at this. I've made it this far haven't I?"
Gale had just glared at her. "You lied to us. You were planning on this all along, weren't you?"
Phoebe huffed, her hands tightening on the wheel.
"No, believe it or not. If I'd planned this all along I'd have a gun already, Dorothy."
Crossing his arms, Gale had clenched his jaw, letting out a long breath. Clearly he didn't believe her.
Asher had though, he does.
She's sharp, he had no doubt she could come up with a plan on the fly. Especially one with as many glaring problems as the one she'd just laid out.
From what Asher remembers, she didn't win her games by being the strongest. There'd been fights, and she'd sought them out in a few instances, but that isn't what saved her. She'd been lucky, been overlooked, then been the last one standing. It had been a game of attrition, one that the Capitol hadn't wanted a cannibal to win.
She's a survivor, and it's those instincts that he's pinning his hope on.
Asher isn't sure if Gale believes her or not, but he's calmed down at least, which will make the next steps easier.
"Just follow my lead when we get there," she tells them.
"Why?" Gale huffs. "I can make something up just as well as you can."
Phoebe snorts. "Right, sure, you just try it." She shakes her head. "I've been reshuffling plans that have gone off the rails for years. But if you think my experience isn't useful then by all means, you just try to get through this without me."
Asher quickly shakes his head, glancing over at the still defiantly glaring Gale. They need her and what she knows about the Capitol if they want even the slimmest chance to make it out of this.
It isn't just their lives they're gambling with either. One wrong move and the Capitol knows what they're planning. Their family back in Twelve won't have time to get out.
Everything is balanced on a wire, and even if Gale doesn't like her, Phoebe is the best chance they have at not snapping that wire too soon, setting off this trap before it's ready.
"No, Phoebe, please."
Asher gives Gale a warning look, and after several seconds, his son lets out a long, irritable breath.
"Fine."
It isn't an apology, but she seems to accept it nonetheless.
Smiling brightly, she cuts across traffic again.
"Good," she chirps. "Then hold on boys, things are about to get wild."
#######
Madge outpaces Delly by several yards, taking corners ahead of her and glancing back every few seconds to make sure her ally hasn't passed out.
Skidding, Madge loses her footing and ends up sliding into several empty pots outside the backdoor of the apothecary.
Delly comes barreling down the alley a few seconds later, nearly tripping over her feet as she tries to stop for Madge.
"What are you doing down there?" She asks, looking truly perplexed.
'Thought I'd take a nap' almost slips out of Madge's mouth, but she catches it before it does. She doesn't want to upset her.
Clumsily, Delly starts to help Madge up, but freezes, her expression tight.
"Do you hear that?"
Tilting her ear, Madge quickly hears the sound of humming. Voices at the front side of the store. She'd missed them earlier over her running and the blood thrumming through her ears.
"Come on!" She shouts, pushing herself up and tripping her way around the building.
There are hundreds of people, all milling around, looking toward the sound of the siren and holding candles to stave off the growing darkness.
Sucking in her breath, Madge starts toward them.
She freezes though.
What is she supposed to say to them? Will they even listen? She's just a girl, and a wild looking one at that. There's no reason for them to listen to her.
"Everyone, RUN!" Delly starts yelling, red faced and exhausted. "They're going to bomb us! Run!"
No one moves though.
Finally, Madge feels the air race back into her lungs, stinging and cool.
"Didn't you hear her?" She begins, her voice shaking. "Run! The Capitol is going to-"
Something solid and blunt comes into contact with her face, causing starbursts to fill her eyes and her cheek to burn.
She's knocked off her feet, tumbling down to the rough ground, catching herself on her palms.
"What are you talking about?" The Peacekeeper snaps. "Troublemaker. Trying to start a riot?"
"She isn't," Delly tells him, her face still reddened and her eyes shining. She turns on the spot, looking desperately at the people around, watching with morbid curiosity. "She isn't lying! They're coming! Madge blew up the electric house, she took out the power so we can escape!"
Oh…probably not the best thing to tell him.
The Peacekeeper's lips curl up and he smiles cruelly down at Madge. "You did that?" His gun clicks. "Shouldn't've done that, princess."
He raises the gun, pointing it at Madge's head. He could execute her and not get so much as a slap on the wrist, and for a second, that's exactly what she thinks he's going to do.
Then Delly's blue skirt swooshes in front of her face and the Peacekeeper is thrown to the ground, her knee in his middle and her forearm against his neck.
"You. Aren't. Very. Gentlemanly." She grunts, punctuating each word with a hard hit that Madge thinks would've made her father proud.
Finally, his eyes roll back and he goes limp, his lip busted and sporting two black-eyes.
No one moves, too shocked by normally sweet Delly's sudden outburst.
The second Peacekeeper makes a noise, fussing with his gun, but drops it when Delly looks up from her spot on his friend and snarls, causing him to run off. Probably to get reinforcements.
Just as suddenly as she'd snapped, Delly is back on her feet, dusting herself off and turning, already fussing over Madge's face.
"You're going to have a black-eye," she frets, tears filling her eyes. "Oh that was uncalled for."
Madge is on the verge of asking her just where that outburst had come from, when a thunder of feet come back around the corner and down the street.
"You attacked a Peacekeeper?" A surly man, one of the commanding officers, asks a tall boy.
The question is barely asked when the boy points to Delly, shaking his head. "She did it!"
He looks at Delly, now standing with her hands clutched to her chest and her eyes wide, and snorts. "A little girl? You expect me to believe that," he gestures in disgust at Delly, "took down a highly trained Peacekeeper?"
A burst of laughter fills the air and he turns back to his group, clearly expecting reciprocation.
What he gets is the butt of a gun to the nose.
Crimson burst from his face as he swears, holding his spurting nose and groping for his gun.
The girl, dark skinned and bright eyed, watches him in amusement. "This little girl just took you down, sweetie."
She kicks out her foot, catching him around the ankle and sending him to the ground.
Stunned, Madge looks at the rest of the group.
About half of them have their guns up, but they aren't pointed at the rebellious girl. They're pointed at the other half of their group.
"Listen well, children," the girl begins. "You got two choices. Either you do as I say and we let you live, or you keep your loyalty to the Capitol and get a bullet in your heads." She smiles pleasantly. "Choice is yours."
Only half a second passes before the remaining Peacekeepers drop their guns to the ground and raise their hands.
"Good choice."
While the others are securing their prisoners, the girl walks over to Madge and Delly, eyeing the downed Peacekeeper.
"Damn." She looks at Delly, impressed. "Damn."
"Excuse me," Madge finally finds her voice. "But who are you?"
A bright smile stretches on the girl's face as she holds out her hand. "Katy-Jo Lewes. We're here to help."