Author's Note:

In hindsight, this ought to be two chapters. But it isn't, because it is after 1:30 in the morning and I am beyond the point of caring. So here is one long one. It's late; judge kindly of me.

Saturday is a workday now, so I get a day of distraction after the Games end. I never thought I'd be grateful to have to go back there. It gives me time to gather myself before I go back to the woods. In the morning there is brief talk of the District Twelve Victors, but the mine has a way of sucking the joy out of everything, so it doesn't take long for everyone to sink back into sullenness. Which suits me just fine. Even those who know me, know that Katniss and I were friends, know better than to even offer condolences for the loss of the girl that I'm pretty sure everyone assumed I'd end up with someday. Hell, I'd even gone along and sort of started to assume it, simply because who else would it have been, anyway, if nothing had ever changed?

Well, that was then. And if I'm honest, not everything that has changed has been for the worse.

By Sunday, I'm still not sure that I'm ready to brave the other side of the fence, but I have families to feed so it doesn't really matter whether I'm ready or not. Once I'm there, I try first to hunt but find the idleness required for that particular activity to be bothersome, and I realize with intense resentment that I'm back where I started a few weeks ago - except this time it is not directed solely at the Capitol but also at Katniss herself. So I move along to checking my lines, and it takes a while but the activity helps the bitterness to fade.

I take almost all of my haul home, since one day's hunting now has to last us the week and there's little to spare for trading. Only the items worth the most will I set aside to sell now that my paycheck will cover the difference. Today, I have a beaver pelt and a pint of strawberries. Then again, I'm not sure the strawberries count anymore. Part of me is disappointed that I don't get the chance to deliver them, though, because I decide that whether or not we are on speaking terms really doesn't have much bearing on whether Rory and I are okay. I can tell from the way he looks up at me when I walk through the door that he still feels slighted. I miss Madge, but I can't continue to ignore the wall between my brother and me, so I set the berries on the table as an unexpected treat (we seldom keep them for ourselves because the Mayor pays me so well) and pull Rory aside. And the beautiful thing about Madge is that she would absolutely approve of that decision.

"Listen, you understand why I don't want you going with me to the woods yet, right?" I say when he glares up at me with an uncomfortably familiar adolescent attitude problem. "If I didn't care, then I wouldn't care. Follow?" He rolls his eyes a little and gives a glum nod, and I remind myself that I love him very much. "So we'll compromise, okay?" His face brightens a little, and he is suddenly all ears. "You can keep fishing, and I'll teach you how to set some snares in the meadow, how I learned. We'll see how it goes, and go from there."

He is elated, but he tries to contain himself, likely to show me that he is capable of handling this responsibility; Rory straightens himself, looks me in the eye, nods with theatrically calm confidence. "Can we start today?" he asks levelly, and it's almost funny because I know the restraint is killing him. But not quite. I still wish he wasn't so eager. Somehow, it is like I haven't really fixed anything – I've just changed the problem. With a deep breath I pull a length of wire from my bag, knowing that I have somehow passed the point of no return; it is an uneasy feeling, but I'll need him eventually, especially now that I don't know how reliable Katniss will be once she returns, and I'd rather have him do this than take out Tesserae. And I'd rather do it with him than have him decide to do it behind my back. So we spend the afternoon crafting wire nooses.

….

I know it'll be a while before I get to see my father, since he is stuck at work making preparations for the return of the District Twelve Victors, so I'm glad that my mother is aware of the goings-on surrounding this year's Game because I desperately need to talk to someone about all of it. If nothing else, so that I can keep my mind off Gale. I figured that his usual Saturday appointment would move back a day – like it did last week - since he is working the mine now, but I don't see Gale on Sunday. It doesn't surprise me, but it is a disappointment. Try as I might, I can't quite banish the image of him those last moments in the square, just after he watched his best friend attempt suicide on national television. Caught in a landslide of despair so crushingly absolute that I knew that there was nothing that I could do or say that could save him from it. I saw a bravely defiant girl on that screen above us, manipulating the Capitol's rules and proving that they cannot control her. But he only saw her give up and abandon him and her family.

I'd have given anything to make him understand. He may still, eventually. But in that moment, when I saw his face, he was unreachable. So for now, all I can do is worry about him, and hope that I'll see him again.

I spend the weekend obsessing over every newspaper and magazine that I can find while I wait for Mom to recover. The very moment she is feeling better and I have a chance to be alone with her without the Capitol Media Team scavenging about, I throw my arms around her and tell her, "They did it, they won, we won!"

She smiles, but cautiously, and reminds me, "The Games are just beginning."

"I know," I say, because she is right. "But this means they can. This had to work before anything else could happen." I tell her what I've read in the papers and overheard from the reporters - how this year's audience loved the outcome of the Hunger Games, how no one can wait to see the victory interview when Katniss and Peeta will be reunited, how mention of Seneca Crane had been conspicuously absent during all of it.

"That's a good sign if no one is talking about the Head Gamemaker," she admits, and it is clear that this kind of optimism is uncharted territory for her. "But I hope it's not a bad sign for our Victors that they are getting this attention."

My stomach knots at the point she makes; Victors always get plenty of attention, but this is a new kind of celebrity altogether. They had already tried quite deliberately to eliminate the Girl on Fire in the Arena simply because she had outshined all their favorites. This is the first time the rules had ever been changed, the first time the Capitol's had had been forced. The first time the odds were in our favor.

Suddenly, I wonder how much Katniss and Peeta know about our plans, and I ask her what she thinks. It had seemed from what we had watched of the Hunger Games that they were unaware of the deeper strategy behind enabling them both to win, everything had appeared so genuinely spontaneous, but it was hard to say because their own survival and the Rebellion's survival were so closely entwined.

"Haymitch wouldn't have told them anything," she says with the first thing like certainty that I've heard from her. "He may be playing the game, but he'll protect them first."

I believe her. Whatever my doubts about Haymitch Abernathy, he has done right by our Tributes, by all of us.

….

When I go back to my first full week in the mine, I throw myself into my work with abandon. I hate it, but I hate it less than thinking about Katniss not being Katniss anymore and Rory getting closer to venturing outside the fence.

After the first two days, my body aches in places I didn't know could hurt. It becomes clear that even after the days that I had worked last week, I am still not acclimated to such grueling physical labor. It's going to take a while. Longer than I thought, in fact. And it doesn't help that I'm half to blame for pushing myself so hard. The morning of the third day, I awaken earlier than usual, coughing up black grime that feels like it comes from somewhere deeper than just my lungs. As a result, I resign myself to tying a rag over my face while I chip away at the walls around me. Some of the experienced workers on my team had recommended it since our managers do not provide us any means for keeping the ubiquitous dust out of our eyes and noses and mouths, but I resisted at first because I had already found the underground tunnels unbearably stifling in their own right. It's uncomfortable, but it'll add years to my life. Or at least a few months, anyway. By Thursday it is hard to get out of bed – not because I don't want to (that's not any different from any other day) but because I'm so stiff that my joints won't let me. It isn't until I am nearly to the mine that I can move well enough to walk without limping, and it occurs to me what a difference it had made that my first week on the job was broken up by the end of the Hunger Games. The day after that, my hands shake so badly that I have trouble buttoning my shirt, and I'm afraid to even attempt to hold a razor near my face. Then, when I get home and Posy throws herself at me in a joyful greeting, my arms give when I pick her up and I nearly drop her. The concern that washes over her little face is heartbreaking. The post-Games Victory interviews come and go, but to be truthful, I don't pay any attention. By Saturday, I worry that if I couldn't pick up my little sister, there is no way I can handle a pickaxe, or worse a shovel loaded with coal, but I need to work to feed her, so I make it happen. I last to the end of the day by sheer force of will. And by reciting my brothers' and sister's names over and over through the pain. And remembering that Madge admires the fight in me. I ought to give her some fight to admire.

Once I drag myself above ground, I consider sitting down to rest for a few minutes before going home, but I'm afraid I won't be able to get up again. I stagger to the latrine instead so I can splash some water on my face, hoping to create at least the illusion of feeling refreshed. I almost have myself convinced that it's working when I make the mistake of looking in the cracked mirror above the sink. I try to wash away most of the dark smudges from my face and hands, but there isn't much I can do about the dirt that is so permanently embedded under my nails that it probably wouldn't come out if I washed my hands in lye, or the dust covering every inch of my uniform, or the fact that I haven't been able to shave in two days. Or the way my legs can barely hold me upright. The defeated look on my face. We are the walking dead – and don't I sure as hell look the part.

I think of how worried my sister – a four-year-old who shouldn't have to worry about something like this - looked when I couldn't pick her up yesterday, how carefully neutral my mother's face is when I walk in the door now, and the thought of going home to them in this state is unbearable. So I go back outside and find Bristel.

"Hey," I call after him; he is just beginning his walk home, and he hasn't put himself through the paces like I have so I can't quite catch up to him. When he turns to look at me, he may be moving better than I am but he looks about as bedraggled. "Can you stop by my house on your way home, tell my mom I'm not going home right away, so she doesn't worry?"

He eyes me curiously, but doesn't comment. In a way it's a relief, but on the other hand it's rather telling. "Yeah, okay," he says before turning to go again.

I'm not sure what possesses me to do such a stupid thing. Maybe it's the exhaustion. Maybe it's finally being tired of being alone. Maybe it's the thought that getting kicked while I'm down is the most efficient way to handle all the disappointments in my life at present – no sense in dragging it out. If I'm not going home, I might as well go somewhere, and I head to town.

I rap a sore fist against the door and pray that the person that I am looking for is actually the one who answers. She had asked me not to disappear, but that was before she'd seen me at my worst. Before she knew what she'd be getting. Might as well get this over with. The door opens, and Madge's smile fades as quickly as it appears when she sees me slumped against the railing on the porch.

"Gale!" she says, surprised. "Are – you alright?"

I right myself slightly so I'm not leaning against the rail anymore, but I still feel a little lopsided while I search for an answer. I note rather absurdly that she is a perfect negative of me standing there, in an ivory sundress with her sun-and-sky ponytail and eyes, beautiful and vibrant and kind. Weeks ago I'd have found it infuriating, and now it's just….

She speaks again, and now there is only curiosity and concern in her voice. No irritation. No displeasure. There's hope yet. "What are you doing here?"

That I can answer, and the words slip from my lips before I think better of it. "Calling your bluff."

She cocks her head slightly, as if caught unawares, and I brace myself for the awkwardly polite excuses and dismissal that I know must be coming. But after a second, she does the most extraordinary thing. In one fluid motion, she crosses the threshold and throws her arms around me.

I am so surprised by this that it takes me a moment to react; I circle my arms clumsily around her but then can't decide what to do with my hands, so I let one settle on her shoulder blade and the other at the middle of her back. She tightens her embrace just barely, and I finally give, relax, lean into her, letting her take some of the weight that I cannot. Madge doesn't budge. She's strong, I think as I let my chin rest on the top of her head.

I feel her voice against my chest as much as I hear it. "You're an idiot," she mumbles, and just like that, she wrenches a smile from me.

….

Stars above, he feels good. I drink him in for another moment, still not quite believing that I dared do this at all, wanting to memorize it in case I never get the chance again. Then the dread that had consumed me when I first saw him here tonight pulls at me again, and I lean back from him to look him in the eye. "Why didn't you go home?" I ask as gently as I can. Is there something wrong, a reason that he looks so distraught? "They'll be worried-"

I stop when his faint smile vanishes and his storm-gray eyes fall away from mine. "I can't let them see me like this..." he says, his voice almost inaudible, his head bowed in shame.

My heart swells and breaks at once. It pained me to see Gale so exhausted and defeated – so unlike himself – when I opened the door, but not nearly as much as hearing him say that he is afraid to let his family see it. But I also understand this to be an intimate show of trust that he would let me, an indication that he sees me not as someone high above or far below him but as someone who simply has his back. Before I can stop them my fingers ghost along the rough edge of his jawline, and my hand freezes in place when his eyes come back to me. We both stand our ground, neither of us shies away, but neither of us moves in, either; suddenly the moment is strung too tight between us and it snaps as his hands drift away from my back and I retreat half a step.

"Come inside and rest a while then," I offer, and when he nods I know that it's been repaired. My father and our reporters are back at the Justice Building making plans for Katniss and Peeta's return, and Rose is gone for the day. "I've got an empty house for once, except for Mom, and she's in bed already-"

"Oh," he sighs when I turn toward the door, "your dress…."

I look down reflexively and see that my once cream-colored dress is now dusted with a fine layer of soot from where it was pressed against his uniform. When I look back up at him, he appears caught uncomfortably between horrified and apologetic. I can only hope this is the first of many, I think privately as I roll my eyes at his reaction, and you expect me to me mad about it. "I really don't give a damn about the dress, Gale," I say. I walk inside and busy myself with retrieving a pitcher of iced tea and a pair of glasses, while I hope that he decides to follow. "Although," I add, "I probably ought to make sure I wash this one myself so no one is tempted to ask any embarrassing questions."

"You do your own laundry?" he says behind me, and when I twist around to glare at him I am startled to see that he has seated himself so quietly at the kitchen table that I'd have never known he had done it if not for the question he asked.

I nod in response, wondering at how easily he swings me from lovesick to comfortable to incensed. I make a strained effort to be fair about it though, because I know there is a part of him that cannot forget that we come from vastly different places. "Not always, but often." And I opt to change the subject immediately before I am tempted to call him an idiot again and really mean it this time. "Does anyone know you're here?" I ask, and I bite my tongue just before I offer to call his mother to let her know that her son is still alive. No one in the Seam has a telephone; that would be a brilliant way to end that conversation, Madge.

"I asked Bristel to tell them I would be late," he says.

"Okay, good," I say as I pour a glass of tea. "Are you hungry?"

"Not really."

I find this hard to believe, but I don't press; the last thing I want is for him to latch onto a reason to see my hospitality as charity borne of pity. So I just set a glass of tea in front of him and try to decipher what questions are safe to ask as I sink into a chair next to him.

Gale eyes the beverage critically. "Did you spit in it?" he asks with a smirk.

"Twice," I deadpan, "just because it's yours."

He laughs at me, albeit a little weakly, and takes a mouthful from the glass. "Thank you, though, really, for this."

I shake my head and smile to tell him that no thanks are necessary. I flounder for a moment with what to do, because I sense that right now his family is an uneasy topic, and the end of the Games even more so, and his new job flat miserable. I remember how easy it was between us the night we sat in the meadow together and I think of my music, and the piece that had finally come together for me….

"Do you… want to stay for a little while?" I ask, suddenly shy and afraid that he might get up and flee. "Because if you do, I have something I want to show you."

He looks at me carefully for a second. "Sure."

I rise from my seat. "Come sit in the parlor," I say as I beckon for him to follow. "The couch is a lot more comfortable, anyway."

I cross the room to the piano, and lift the lid on the bench to get the sheet music for the piece I've been practicing. "For a long time I could never really figure this out," I explain. "I could read the notes but I couldn't get my head around it-" I glance up to see him standing unnaturally still in the kitchen doorway, and it hits me suddenly that I've never in my life paid any attention to the fact that everything in the parlor is white – the upholstery on the furniture, the carpet, the curtains, all of it. The pain and awkwardness in his expression makes me feel awful for being somewhat thoughtless. "Hang on a minute," I say, and I dash up the stairs and pray that by the time I come back down he hasn't vanished. I snatch a blanket frantically from the linen closet in the hall, bringing down several towels and a set of sheets with it, swear colorfully at the inconvenience, and decide that I'll clean up the mess later.

I shake the blanket free of its folds on my way down the stairs, and am relieved to see that he has not moved from his post at the door. "Here," I say as I drape it over one end of the couch, "if this'll make you feel better, I'll wash it with my dress. I'm not making you sit in the kitchen." I turn back to the piano, and set up my sheet music while I try very hard to pretend that absolutely nothing awkward just happened. For a few seconds I worry that he might have left anyway, but a glance over my shoulder confirms that he has alit silently on the throw and is patiently waiting for me to put myself together.

"So," I continue, "I just – it makes sense to me now. I wanted you to listen, to tell me what it sounds like to you.…"

He rests one elbow on the back of the couch and supports his head with a lazy fist, as if to indicate that he is ready to listen. I start to play and I'm irrationally nervous; the first few bars come with difficulty, but I promise myself not to look at him and to keep my eyes trained on the pages in front of me. It seems like the composition takes three times as long to finish as it should. When finally I reach the end, he is frowning slightly, as if deep in thought.

"Again?" he asks, intent on solving this puzzle.

I begin a second time, and the notes come easier now, my fingers are less unsteady, since he has shown genuine interest. I am nearly three-quarters of the way through the piece when he speaks again.

"Crickets, frogs…." he says, and I pause instinctively over the keyboard, see that his eyes are closed in concentration. "A nighthawk and whip-poor-will?" His silver eyes open and pin me in place.

"Yes!" I finally choke out. "You just – I didn't get it for the longest time, it just sounded so odd to me. And then you took me with you to the meadow that night, and it was this!"

He starts to chuckle at my excitement, and I feel my cheeks warm from a self-conscious blush. "Why are you laughing at me?"

"You're just so…." He grins waves a hand vaguely as if the word he wanted simply evaporated.

I shrug and smile broadly. "It's hard to explain. The name of it is Night Music. But I've played other nocturnes, and this is nothing at all like them and I just couldn't understand it until you. And then it made sense." I look away because I am suddenly embarrassed, like I'm sitting here stripped naked, and I wish I could swallow the words that just spilled out.

"Play another one," he says.

I choose a prelude, glad for something to do and realizing that he does not mean to embarrass me at all. He had, after all, laid himself nearly as bare. Gale guesses rightly that it was one of the pieces that I had thought sounded like the stars in the night sky, and I am amazed all over again. He asks for a third song and I am thrilled to oblige, and when he comments that it reminds him of rain I imagine that this must be what it feels like for him to be mine.

Once I finish, he says that he should go home and as much as I know that he must I still wish that I could stretch the minutes a little longer. I walk with him to the back door, and tell him that he is always welcome to come back because I can't quite find the courage to tell him that I wish he didn't have to leave. He nods and a small smile pulls at his lips, and he lingers on the porch for a few seconds as if there should be something more to say.

"Sorry about your dress," he says, and my heart skips a beat because nothing in his voice says that he's sorry. He lifts one hand and I can't even remind myself to breathe as his fingertips trace the seam at the side of my dress from my ribs to my hipbone. He leans in close, and I believe he means to kiss me – not like the first time he walked me home and it was just wishful thinking, but I truly believe that he might – but he doesn't. Instead, his lips just brush my skin as he speaks softly against my ear: "But, I have to say, you look good in gray."

He melts into the evening shadows, silent as ever, and is gone.

Footnotes:

Nighthawks and whip-poor-wills are crepuscular (active during twilight – rather than day or night – hours) birds that are typically most talkative during the evening. They have distinctive calls – look them up and listen, because in combination with the musical footnote, Gale's insight will make a little more sense. And, of course, both species are found in the area where District Twelve is located.

The piece that Madge calls "Night Music" is specifically Bartok's Out of Doors #4 Night Music. It was written to imitate the sounds of nighttime wildlife. If there is one piece of music that you decide to look up and listen to for this story, make it this one because, again, Gale's lines will make more sense.

And if you are interested, Madge's "star" song is Bach's Prelude in C Major for Piano, and the "rain" song is Beethoven's Moonlight Piano Sonata #14.