Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Endgame
A/N: I tried to be original, but there are so many people out there that are way more clever than me that I'm sure someone has already done every variation of the 'brilliant ways to use the parachutes/gifts/pots'. I know there's a post about using the parachutes to trick Tributes with nightlock, so I didn't want to do that exactly. The person that wrote that post is a genius, though. Anyway, hopefully this comes off as relatively smart instead of crazy stupid.
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This is a mistake.
How Madge has managed to stay alive this long, she doesn't really know. It's nothing short of a miracle.
She's followed Mr. Abernathy's advice up to this point, 'Use your head, stay alive'. Why she's followed it is something she's pondered every chance she's had, few and far between as those chances had been.
"Mr. Abernathy," she'd been fighting off tears in her compartment on the train, "please, I don't want to win."
That was a lie, though. A part of her did. A stupid, foolish part, wanted to go home to see the looks on their faces when the pitiful little Mayor's daughter gets off the train, a Victor.
The smarter part of her, the part that knew a Victor's life was anything but a pleasure, kept telling her to put an end to her life before someone else could do it for her in a messy fashion.
Victors were lost to their Districts. Lost to themselves. Anyone who thought different was fooling themselves. It wasn't the glorious prize, a life of luxury and ease it was portrayed as, but a gilded cage.
Madge had no desire to be the next broken toy of the Capitol, tossed around and pieced back together, but never whole again.
Mr. Abernathy had taken her by the shoulders, shaken his head, "Don't talk like that. You have to win. I can't let you die."
Even now, far into her Game, she doesn't quite understand his desperate need to bring her home.
No one would miss her back in Twelve, she's positive of that.
Peeta, who has only ever been kind to everyone, had been her only visitor, aside from her father in the chilly little room in the Justice Building. Of course her mother hadn't come. She wouldn't even be told until the evening, when her morphling wore off, that she would shortly be burying her only child.
Madge had hoped Katniss would come, though. They were friends; at least Madge had thought so. Katniss, it seemed, felt differently. She hadn't so much as poked her head in to wish Madge a painless death.
She'd also hoped Gale would do her the courtesy of apologizing. A small part of her had wanted to look him in the eyes, make him see that it didn't matter that Madge was the daughter of an official, that she only had her name in the bowl five times; she still didn't have the odds in her favor.
Winning these Games will only isolate her further, she knows that, and her stomach turns at that thought.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why Mr. Abernathy wants to bring her home. He's tired of being alone too.
Mr. Abernathy's voice, his sad plea, 'Use your head, stay alive', keeps echoing in her head. Much as she would like to, she can't bring herself to let him down, leave him with another young death on his conscience, leave him more isolated.
Madge, though, is fairly certain her little plan is about to put a strain on the 'stay alive' part.
Whether or not she's using her head is also questionable.
From the moment she'd come out of her tube, into the bright sun in the forest of the Arena, she's been fighting for her life. What she's about to do is a little more than fighting. What she's about to do is an all out assault that will either win her a crown or cause her death.
Her first few days, after scooping up an outlying backpack and running from the Cornucopia, had been spent finding water and a hiding spot. She'd tried to form an alliance with her own District Partner, a boy from the Seam, but he'd jumped head first into the Bloodbath and quickly been killed by the little terror of a girl from Two.
Water had been tricky. For an entire day she'd roamed, positive she'd be one of the 'death by elements' Atala had spoken of, but then she'd found the tracker jackers.
"Bees never make a hive far from water," her father had once told her, when they'd had to have a wild, papery looking hive removed from the large tree in their back yard.
Tracker jackers used more water than normal bees and wasps so they would be closer to a source than either of those. Even though they were placed in the Arena artificially, tracker jackers wouldn't have their basic nature toyed with. They would still be very near water. They had to be.
So carefully, quietly, Madge had searched the area until she found the little stream. Quickly, she'd filled her canteen, purified it, and drank until her weakened body felt revived. She'd decided not to venture far from the hive after that, which had proved to be a wise choice.
The Careers, cheerful after capturing and, as the cannon's fire told Madge, killing the boy from Ten, had come into her haven.
Madge had practiced climbing during training, having the high ground was always adventitious, and it certainly was as the group closed in on her. She just barely made it up, into the thick foliage of the tree, when they came out of the bushes, laughing at the boy they'd just killed and his limp.
A flare of indignation on his behalf lit in Madge's chest. She zipped up her coat, grabbed some matches, and pulled the jagged knife that had been in her backpack out.
They were so loud, so absorbed in their own supposed superiority, that they didn't hear her sawing the branch. What they did hear was the satisfying snap of wood and the crashing of branches as the limb fell on them.
District One's female, Glitter or Glamour or something as equally ridiculous, and the girl from Four were killed by the ensuing swarm of angry, buzzing tracker jackers.
Madge just barely escaped being stung herself. The only thing that saved her was quickly lighting a branch, using the smoke to subdue the few tiny killers that tried to follow her as she bolted off a far branch and fled from the scene.
After that, she'd made herself scarce, certain they'd seen her and would hunt her down and make a grisly display of her murder.
They hadn't though. Whether because they didn't know who'd dropped the nest on them or because they thought it was only a freak, or Gamemaker created, accident, Madge didn't know.
District Eleven lost both its Tributes the next day. Madge imagined, hoped, that the giant boy had been with the small girl and gave her a little comfort when their ends came. She couldn't believe he'd been the one to kill the girl, but she didn't know.
Now, several long days out, Madge is perched, hidden, high in a tree on the outskirts of the open area surrounding the Cornucopia.
It had taken her longer than normal, probably the side effects of hunger, to figure out why the redhead from Five had done a dance up to the pyramid before stealing a few parcels and disappearing. Seeing the boy from Three, an unusual alliance with the Careers, and the little piles of dirt had helped Madge piece it all together.
It was brilliant, but dangerous. Just like what Madge is planning to do.
She looks at the spear, heavy in her hand.
It had been her first conscientious kill. It hadn't been a spur of the moment action, like dropping the tracker jackers, but cool and calculated.
Over the course of two days Madge had studied the remaining Careers. Their patterns, when they hunted, when they slept, when they woke, everything.
She'd gathered up nightlock, berries she recognized from the training center, and placed them in the little pot that had contained her lone hot meal of the Games. A last meal if her plan didn't work.
If only I had a parachute.
It would be so much simpler if she did, so much less risky.
The parachute was ruined though, easily recognizable as having already been dropped from the sky. This was her only option.
Madge had waited for the boy from One to pass by her as she crouched down, concealed in a thick bush by his path. He was painfully predictable, took the same path to and from his tree of choice to urinate on, almost exactly every four hours. He was clockwork, and it would be the end of him. At least she hoped.
When he was a safe distance away, he wasn't particularly fast, Madge could definitely outrun him, she fell out of the bush.
He turned, a look of triumph and hunger glinting in his eyes.
With a squeak, Madge pretended to fumble with her pot before running off, outpacing him by several yards. While he was good with a spear, he had the unfortunate need to be still when throwing it. A definite disadvantage.
When Madge reached her point of no return, she made a show of dropping her pot, looking devastated at the loss, then sprinted into the distance, to where she knew a flock of mockingjays were nestled.
Either the boy would stop and take Madge's bait or he would pursue her.
She had a plan for both possibilities. A politician is never without a backup plan, and Madge was the daughter of a Mayor.
Glancing behind her, Madge saw the boy growing smaller. He'd stopped for her gift.
Ducking into another bush, under several sleeping mockinjays, Madge watched as he greedily opened the pot and began eating the berries without consideration for the others. Just as Madge had hoped he would.
When he started to slump, fall to the ground in the last seconds of his life, Madge let out the most bloodcurdling scream she could muster. The mockingjays send her pained cry out, across the arena, hopefully making the others believe the One had finally rid them of one last obstacle.
They wouldn't be curious why he didn't come back, if they thought their numbers were down to five. It wasn't uncommon for Careers to part ways at this point in the Game.
She'd wondered, sadly, if any of his pack would care that one of their own had just died when they saw his flickering image in the night sky to alert them that he was gone and not one of the stragglers from the outer Districts?
It did her no good to dwell on that, though; she had a plan to put into motion.
Now, in the last flicker of light from the fading sun, Madge watches the last Careers, all so certain they're safe, finishing celebrating their kill of the day before bedding down for the night.
They'd caught the redhead, apparently.
Taking a deep breath, Madge puts on the goggles she'd taken from the One. They'd been useless during the day, which meant, she hoped, they would be a nighttime resource.
To her great relief, they are. The darkness is bathed in a green light, illuminating the growing night.
She takes her sack, fashioned from the tattered parachute that had brought her the pot she'd used to trick the One, and examines it. It's sloppy, Mrs. Oberst would be appalled at the craftsmanship, but Madge is fairly confident it will do its job.
Madge places several stones, just heavy enough that they should trigger the mines, in the fabric before looping it around the spear.
She'd had moderate success throwing spears during training, and she hopes she remembers enough to make her mad plan work.
For a minute she bites her lip. This is a mistake, she knows it is. Only bad things await her if she wins this Game. Things she isn't certain she has the fortitude to handle.
She bats the thought away. Mr. Abernathy is counting on her, and she's come too far to give up now.
The Twos, Cato and Clove, Madge thinks, are nearest the fire, heads together, probably plotting against the Three, who has stupidly decided not to run away. He probably believes he's safe until they kill the One.
When the Anthem begins, the One's face lights in the sky above, Madge crawls out of the tree, creeps closer to the pyramid, just enough that she's confident that as the spear flies through the air its cargo of river stones will begin to slip out, triggering the mines just under the surface of the overturned ground. If Madge has any luck at all, the stones will hit with enough force that their mass will set off the mines, and, hopefully, set off a chain reaction.
If she's truly lucky, the explosion will kill the last three.
The three are too distracted by the Anthem and the presence of their missing 'friend' in the sky to notice Madge throwing something at the land just beyond their high pile of food.
She watches it soar, less than gracefully, through the air.
As she'd hoped, the parachute-sack buoys up, falls apart mid-air, expels the stones. They scatter in the wind, fall to the ground like a heavy rain, make the ground explode with fire and earth as they hit.
Madge has to toss the goggles away. The explosion is too bright with them on.
For several long moments all she can hear is the landmines, filling the night with thunder and air with debris and heat. She wonders, as the air begins to suffocate her, if this is how the men in the mines of Twelve felt during a cave in.
She plugs her ears, clamps her eyes closed. Her head is going to explode from the noise of it all. There's a throbbing at the back of her head, and she suddenly feels more sympathy for her mother than she's ever had before. If this is a headache then Madge knows why her mother prefers to live in oblivion.
The darkness of the night settles back in as the explosions die behind her, the blasting stops filling the air and shaking the ground.
Faintly, almost inaudibly, Madge hears the thunder of cannons.
Three dull thuds in her now muted world.
Then, still muffled, she hears a voice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, from District Twelve, Miss Magdalene Undersee!"
Madge wonders, in her last seconds of consciousness, if Peeta will greet her when she steps off the train. Will Katniss want to be her friend or will she leave Madge to be one more ghost haunting the long empty Victors' Village with Mr. Abernathy. She wonders if Gale will tell her she has a pretty dress when she comes home, and if this time he might actually mean it.
Winning, staying alive, will definitely prove to be a mistake, but there's no turning back now.