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. It's all hers.
Stars shining bright above you (Always)
AN: So, all my gadge week thingies for tumblr were set in the 'A World Apart' Universe, sorta. I decided to use the week to jump start my mind thinking about the follow up for that story. Basically, just like I used the first and last of the three 'Madge in the Games' stories to give me the framework for 'A World Apart', these stories will (someday) give me a basic framework for the sequel. I waited to put them up here because they're all fairly short and it just made more sense to wait. They're more or less in chronological order, but a couple of them are ambiguous enough they could switch I guess.
#######
Gale has always been the one to take care of his family. At least that's how it feels.
When he'd been small he'd begged his dad to take him into the woods, teach him everything he knew, so that he'd be able to be as good a father and husband as he was. He hadn't realized at the time he'd have to use his skills before he'd even had his first girlfriend, but life in District Twelve was unpredictable like that. Always had been, always would be.
So when Madge comes home from the Games, frightened and broken and needing someone to take care of her, he'd taken up the mantle of protector without a second thought. It was as natural as breathing for him.
That's how it's always been.
As much stress as it is, continuing to support his family and then sneaking out to hold her through the night, he loves it as much as he loves all of them. It's his reason for existing, his entire purpose in life. He can't imagine it being any other way. Part of him doesn't want to.
"You don't have to come," Madge told him when he'd crawled through her window one night, exhausted from a day in the mines and then an evening playing with Posy.
He'd given her a dark look before pulling her into a tight hug, pressing his sweaty face into her sweet smelling hair. "I want to."
He wants to be her constant, the one person in her life that's always there for her, never falters.
"That's a lot of pressure," she'd said when he explained his need to help her, to be there for her. "You shouldn't do that to yourself, Gale. I can take care of myself."
"It isn't pressure." Pressure would been the anxiety of not seeing her, being able to make sure she's sleeping, that she isn't crying herself sick, that she's okay.
Haymitch and her parents can only do so much, or at least that's how it feels. It's probably all in his head, but he thinks he's gotten through to her in a way they can't, in a way they never will.
Every time she leaves he's there to see her off. Each time she comes home he's waiting behind her door. It's the only gift he can really give her, to be always be there for her when so much in her life is uncertain.
"You're my guiding star," she says one night as they sat on the stretch of roof outside her window, staring up at the sky broken by pinpoints of diamond light. "Always leading me home."
"Stars move," he points out. He doesn't like being compared to something as fickle as a star. "That's why the constellations change."
"Everything has to change a little, Gale." She lets her head rest against his shoulder. "Change is a constant too, you know?"
It's a strange concept for him, to think of change as being a cyclic, but he supposes it's true enough.
Seasons came and went, the same but different, and night follows day. Always the same and always different.
"Variations on a theme," she explains when he points what he feel are painfully obvious observations. She doesn't laugh at him though, at what must be a childish concept for her. "That's what we call it in music. Similar, but different enough to be unique."
Her eyes glow with the moonlight, the slivers of gray catching and brightening.
"Someday then," she whispers, leaning over, warm breath ruffling the hair by his ear and sending a chill up his spine, "all this will change too. The Capitol won't control us. We'll be free."
That's a pleasant concept that he can support. Even if he hates being called a star, he doesn't mind it so much if it gives her hope for change.
"I hope it's sooner rather than later," he murmurs back, forcing his eyes to stay steady on the twinkling stars overhead. "And I hope whatever 'variation' comes next is better than the one we have now."
He's happy to be her guiding star, if that's what she needs, until then and always.
#######
…and tell me you'll miss me(Surprise)
Gale shifts uncomfortably in his boots as he stares at the back door of the Mellark bakery.
He'd already come by with Katniss, traded a few squirrels with Mr. Mellark for a loaf for each of their families. The fact that Katniss was there, practically chatting with the dopishly grinning Peeta Mellark, had kept him from doing this earlier.
With a sigh, Gale pushes down creeping anxiety and lifts his hand, knocking solidly three times.
I'm going to regret this.
To his relief Mellark answers the door looking a little too excited. He frowns when he realizes it's Gale and not Katniss returning and having realized the idiot is head over heels for her.
"Oh…hi Gale."
Gale grunts and sucks in a long breath.
"I need to make a deal with you," he says before he can lose his nerve. "I, uh, want you to bake me something."
One of Mellark's eyebrows rises and he crosses his arms, waiting.
Pulling a carefully packed jar of strawberry preserves from his game bag, Gale thrusts it into Mellark's chest. "With these."
With a snort, Mellark takes the jar, eyeing the contents before looking back at Gale. "What exactly are you wanting?"
What he wants is something nice. A cake or cookies, maybe some bread. Isn't picking these things supposed to be dough boy's job?
Madge is gone. Off on her so called Victory Tour, being paraded around like some dolled up pet for the Capitol to drool over and Gale's had to watch her in the evening recaps, vacant smiles and wide empty eyes, waving vapidly at the crowds forced to meet her. It makes him sick just imagine what could be happening to her and being helpless to do a single damn thing about it.
"But they get all the foodses they want," Posy had said, completely confused by Gale's hate of the recaps and their detailed log of all the things Madge has been showered with in each District.
It was all foreign to him, names he can't pronounce and tastes and textures that would settle unpleasantly in his stomach. He doubts even half of it actually appeals to her. Probably, explaining how thin she's started looking. Hopefully explaining it anyway, any other explanation is unthinkable.
They aren't her foods, not Twelve's foods, and they aren't a comfort to her, even if they are keeping her full.
So Gale had set a few extra snares, caught a few extra rabbits and shot a few squirrels, traded them off for a small jar of strawberry preserves. It's quite literally the least he can do, have something familiar and comforting waiting for her when she gets home.
He had planned on surprising her with it, but then, as he'd toiled away in the dark mine, doubt had crept into his mind.
It was only a small jar of preserves, and what if she didn't even like preserves?
The only option was another trade, improve his little surprise. Mellark was decent enough; surely he'd make a reasonable deal.
When Gale falters, too wrapped up in deciding what comfort food Madge would want after her long, unhappy trip, Mellark smiles.
"She likes pies," he says. "And I could use scraps from other crusts to make it. No muss, no fuss."
Gale nods. "Okay, and I'll bring-"
He's about to say as many squirrels as it takes to get the pie, his dad likes them so surely so does Mellark, but he's cut off.
"Don't bring anything." He gives Gale a stern look. "She's my friend too."
It finally registers with Gale that Mellark knows who he's going out of his way for and he gives him a narrow look.
"How do you know who it's for?" It could be for Gale's mother. Mellark isn't as clever as he thinks and Gale is about to let him know it.
"Katniss told me about the…strawberry incident with Madge." He shrugs. "She said you haven't been back out since, but Madge still had strawberries in her house all summer."
And clever Peeta Mellark had put two and two together. Bastard.
"I won't tell Katniss," he says, rolling the jar between his hands. "Madge needs all the friends she can get. Even you."
Gale chews his tongue at that comment before growling. "It's going to be from me."
He isn't sure why that's important, but it is. This was his idea for Madge's homecoming, his gift to her, he's done all the heavy lifting so far, and he doesn't want it tainted by a debt.
Mellark nods. "Trust me, she'll know. But if you're going to be a complete ass about it then you can promise to bring me some fresh strawberries next summer and we'll call it even."
That's more like it. Gale nods sharply.
"I need it when she gets home."
"Of course," Mellark smiles. "Don't worry."
#######
Gale shuffles his family home from the Harvest Festival before telling his mom he's going out with some guys.
"I just need a break."
The Festival is for families and it's well known that the Seam has a much less family friendly after party. Gale's never attended, but he's eighteen now, it isn't be a shock for him to go.
She gives him a concerned frown but nods. "Be careful."
Instead of cutting through the Seam, to the party near the slag heap, he heads back to Town.
Mellark is waiting by the door when he arrives, pie in hand and the most obnoxious grin Gale's ever see plastered on his face. He doesn't even want to know what he's so happy about. It's probably something annoying.
"Wondering when you'd show up," he says, bright grin still in place. "It's still warm."
Gale grunts a thank you and a promise to bring the strawberries next summer before turning and starting off only to be stopped by Mellark's voice.
"Tell her I said 'hi'."
Gale doesn't turn and acknowledge him, just grumbles a 'sure' and starts walking again.
#######
She isn't back from her parent's house yet, but Gale has a key and knows she'd left the electric security system off when she went on Tour.
"In case you need anything," she'd told him quietly. It had been her silent offer of food, a tiny attempt to keep him and his family from starving if the winter woods didn't yield enough during the one day of the week he can go out, but pride had kept him from taking her up on it.
He lets himself in, sets the pie out carefully on her counter and gathers up plates, forks, and a knife to serve with, then settles into one of the tall stools lining her bar to wait.
Just as he's getting antsy, getting up to stretch his legs, he hears soft footsteps on the back steps.
He can see her outline, a soft shadow on the glass of the door into her kitchen. She's got something in one of her hands, it looks like her shoes, a pair of uncomfortable heels, and she's turned slightly, free hand up in the air.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Mr. Abernathy," her voice says, softly, exhausted.
"You sure you don't need me to stay over sweetheart?" Gale hears Haymitch ask, sounding genuinely concerned.
Madge hesitates for a moment, then Gale sees her hair shift as she shakes her head. "I'm fine. Really."
Whether Haymitch believes her or not he leaves, stomps off to his own house. Much to Gale's relief.
The key clicks in the door and the handle turns before Madge steps in, light from the moon spilling in with her.
She freezes almost instantly, blue eyes wide and frightened until they focus, adjust to the increased dark of her kitchen.
"Gale?"
Before he can answer she's dropped her shoes with a clatter and launched herself at him, begun sobbing on his shoulder. He's too startled to speak, just wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her hair which smells of sickly sweet Capitol shampoo and floral perfume.
"I didn't k-know if you'd c-come," she sputters into his chest. "I th-thought you'd see m-me on the television and hate-"
"You were just playing the game right?" He cuts her off. That's what she always says, it's all part of the Game. "It was just acting."
She pulls back, leaving a patch of wetness in the middle of Gale's shirt, squinting up at him, searching for any trace of insincerity.
Her mascara is smeared, she's probably left some in his shirt, a fun thing to explain to his mother, and the thick makeup, blush and lipstick and eye shadow, are faded. Despite that, she's still beautiful.
He forces a smile for her before gesturing to the pie, still waiting to be noticed on the counter. "I, uh, got you a surprise."
For a minute she doesn't seem to understand, just stares at the pie thoughtfully before turning her watery eyes back on him.
Tears drop off her jaw and she smiles weakly.
"Thank you," she whispers before leaning back in, squeezing him to her again, gentler this time.
Gale lets his chin rest against her stiff hair. "You're welcome."
#######
"I had to eat some really awful things," she tells him, her voice gaining strength as he cuts the pie and pushes a slice her way. "You wouldn't believe it."
Hours slip by as they eat the pie, slowly devour the entire thing before Madge's eyes get heavy.
She nods off sitting up, cheek propped up against her hand, elbow to the counter, reluctant to go to bed and miss out on every moment with him she can.
The comfort food had done its job. She's not completely better, but then she never is, she may never be again, but she isn't shattered like she had been in the direct aftermath of the Games. There's a weak smile here and there, little snorts of laughter, shimmers of the girl that had been piecing herself back together before being carted off for another show.
It may not be the pie that did it, but her favorite food packaged in a sweet treat, certainly hadn't hurt.
As he scoops her up, cradles her in his arms and carries her up the stairs to tuck her in, he smiles to himself. He doesn't regret knocking on Mellark's door.
Not at all.
#######
While I'm alone...(Need)
Madge sets the little box on the counter and gives Gale a small smile.
"It isn't much. I didn't want to draw any attention, you know, by taking anything big," she tells him as she takes the lid off.
Inside, settled in a sandy bed, are dozens of seashells.
During her Victory Tour, when she'd been in District Four, she'd snuck out onto the beach just outside her suite's door and carefully picked them out. She made sure there was a wide variety, spiraled and flat ones, pale browns and evening sun pinks which she's certain Posy will love. Gale's said pink is her favorite color after all.
"They're a surprise," she adds as he picks up a dulled piece of sea glass and examines it, "for your brothers and sister."
It had been Annie, one of Four's Victors, a girl the Capitol has deemed mad, that had given her the idea.
She'd been sitting on her porch, a wooden deck overlooking the sea, stringing shells on a line.
"They make music when the breeze hits them," she explained when Madge stopped and stared as she'd taken a walk along the beach after the official dinner.
"Do you make other things?" Madge asked as she carefully held Annie's sea born wind chime above her head to better examine it. A soft wind caught it and made the shells clatter against one another in a gentle, lonely song.
Annie had smiled, no as airily as Madge's mother's often was, but with the same trace of defeat at its core.
"Sometimes," she started, her gaze drifting to the waves as they lapped the shore. "Sometimes necklaces."
When Madge had seen Finnick Odair, who she hadn't particularly cared for when he'd been introduced, wearing a necklace adorned with a shell, simple and beautiful, somehow she'd known he wasn't as awful as he seemed. He couldn't be if he was willing to wear Annie's work, which probably wasn't particularly fashionable in the Capitol.
Maybe there's something more between them, but she can't be sure. She doubts they'll ever tell her, admitting such a thing is dangerous. Trinkets, little symbols, are all they can afford to show.
So she'd gathered up her own shells and packed them away. No one would ask her why she was taking them, just like no one asked Finnick why he wore Annie's necklace. They were unique but at the same time seemingly mundane. The perfect keepsake of such a beautiful district, and just the thing to take back to Twelve for Gale's siblings..
"They're beautiful," Gale murmurs as he rolls one of the narrower shells between his fingers. He looks up and grins. "They'll love them."
Madge puts the lid on the box and glances up at him through the mess of her bangs.
"I've got something else," she says softly, reaching her hand into her pocket. Her fingers wrap around something cool and she lets out a long breath as she pulls it out. She needs to give it to him.
It looks stupid in the harsh light of day, but the evening before, when she'd been thinking about Finnick's necklace, planning on making one for Gale, it had seemed like a strike of genius.
Sea shells mean nothing to Gale, he's never seen the ocean, and he probably never will. He's a product of the Seam, a miner, a survivor.
So instead of binding a shell, attaching it to the length of leather she'd pulled from one of her dresses after the Tour ended, she'd pulled her pin from her dress.
It was her mother's sister's, her aunt, though to be honest Madge doesn't much think of her as an aunt but more of a ghost that's haunted her since her birth. Despite that, Madge likes the pin. It's simple, but powerful.
"Mockingjays are amazing creatures," her Poppa had told her. "Able to mimic everything, even human voices if they like them enough."
He'd thought they were amazing because of the noises they could make, but Madge saw them as her father always had, as consummate survivors.
Mockingjays shouldn't have existed. Jabberjays should've died out in the wild, but they hadn't. They were impossible birds, an adaptation that defied the Capitol.
They reminded her of Gale.
In the dark of the evening, after the Harvest Festival, Madge had taken her pin and fastened it to the leather and fashioned a necklace. It was a bit more showy than Finnick's shell one, but then, Gale isn't in the spotlight of the Capitol. Madge thinks he can afford to have something a little more personal, and besides, he can keep it inside his shirt.
She'd thought it was brilliant in the high of the night, the wake of making it through the Victory Tour without a mistake. Now though, it seems silly.
Gale plucks it from her fingers and lets it settle in his palm, his normally stormy eyes strangely calm as he turns it over.
"Your pin?" His eyebrows scrunch together.
"For you," she almost trips over the words. "I want you to have it."
He doesn't seem to understand, just stares at her like she's lost her mind.
"I can't take this, Madge," he tells her gently. "It's too much."
Madge shakes her head and pushes his hand back towards him, tears already forming in her eyes.
He doesn't understand. She doesn't just want him to take it, she needs him to.
Like Annie needs Finnick to wear her necklace, and even how Finnick probably needs to wear it, Madge needs Gale to have a physical tether. She needs him to have something to remember her by if the worst ever happens.
"Please, Gale," she sputters as tears start to leak out her eyes. "I-please take it. I need someone to- I need you to remember me..."
Because he's one of the few people that talks to her without expecting anything in return, with out disgust.
People in town are mechanically nice, smile and exchange pleasantries with her, because she has money. It isn't much of a change from how she was treated before, when she'd only been the Mayor's daughter, but now there's something else in their eyes. Not contempt for her wealth like it had been, now it's fear.
They've seen her kill, know what she's capable of, what kind of animal she is in the dark.
"I would've been worse," Gale had confessed to her, when she'd had a particularly ugly meltdown. "I would've hunted them down, made them suffer, and I would've felt justified. At least you waited them out, gave them quick deaths."
It had taken going into the Games for Madge to find the measure of her soul. Gale doesn't need it. He knows exactly who he is and what he's capable of.
Gale reaches out and pulls her to him as the tears start to drop off her chin, tangling one hand in her hair and letting the other trace comforting circles on her back.
"I don't need your pin to remember you, Madge," he murmurs into her hair.
She nods. She knows he doesn't, but she'll feel better if he does. It'll be a piece of her against his heart when she's away, reminding him that she's not the false smiles and empty eyes he sees on the television.
"Please keep it, and...if something happens," she whispers. "If something happens you can sell it and feed-"
He pulls back, his features set in a scowl. "If you give it to me it's forever. I'm not selling it. You're more important than money."
"If you need food-"
"I'll find it in the woods," he tells her firmly. "If you give it to me I'm keeping it. If something happens to you that'll make it that much more precious, do you understand?"
It'll remind him to keep fighting. To not let what's been done to him make him into the thing he knows he could be.
Madge nods, sniffles and lets her head rest against his chest as she wraps her arms more firmly around him.
She hears his heart, strong and steady, and she closes her eyes.
Madge knows she's a monster, but Gale knows he could be too and helping her might just keep him from ever turning if the winds shift just right.
She needs Gale, needs him to hold her and keep her demons at bay, but maybe, she thinks, he needs her too.
#######
…and blue as can be (Leaving)
Madge doesn't really need to pack anything for her trip to the Capitol, but she does anyway. It makes it feel less being carted off and more like a vacation.
She's never been on a vacation, no one she knows has, but she doubts they're as numbing as her trips to the Capitol to show off her talent are. Concerts for days on end, shoes that make her feet bleed and dresses that make it hard to breath, making her so dizzy she's nearly fallen on more than one occasion aren't what she imagines to be part of a real vacation.
Gale sits on her bed and watches her as she gathers her things, feet moving like lead across the floor and hands fumbling as she tries to fold her nightgowns.
She's so focused on trying to fit all her things in her bag that she doesn't notice him scooting closer to her. It isn't until he reaches out, places on of his large, dark and scarred hands over her shaking ones that she realizes he's stood and wrapped an arm around her.
For a minute he just steadies her hands, holds them in his warmth, then he lets them go and reaches up to her cheek and brushes his rough fingertips over her skin, smearing something wet just under her eyes.
Tears, again.
It's stupid, she thinks, to cry over going to the Capitol just to play them a few songs for a few days and then come home, especially when there are worse fates that could've snatched her up after her victory, but still, there were the tears. Just like all the times before.
"I'm sorry, Gale," she whispers.
He shouldn't have to wipe up her tears every time before she goes only to have to help her patch herself back together when she gets home too. Either coming or going, she needs to be able to make it through an evening without tears.
Making an irritated noise, Gale pulls her to his chest and crushes her to him. "Stop apologizing."
I want to. That's what he says to her every time she tells him he doesn't have to put up with her and all her demons. He doesn't have to hold her through the night, risking being thrashed by her flailing limbs. He doesn't have to make sure she eats; she has her parents and Mr. Abernathy for that too. He most definitely doesn't have to let her cry on him over something as trivial as a weeklong trip to the Capitol.
"I wouldn't do it if I didn't want to," he always says. "I want to."
Snaking her arms around his waist, Madge presses her ear to his chest and closes her eyes, trying to memorize the sound of his heart, steady and strong and real.
If she could pack Gale up in her little suitcase she would. He's the only thing the Capitol can't really provide her, even though he's the only thing she really wants when she's there.
Not for the first time, she wishes winning the Games really were a victory and not just the gateway into another Arena. If she really had won then she wouldn't be dreading the knock on her door and having to walk with Mr. Abernathy to the train station, saying goodbye to her parents, and leaving for the Capitol.
If she'd won she could pull Gale down to the bed with her and snuggle into his warmth. There'd be no trip to worry over, no music to look over, no knot in her chest. She'd stay in bed with Gale for days on end, because if she'd really won any kind of prize he wouldn't have to sneak out of her bedroom before the sun even thought of waking or be lowered into the mines day after day.
But she hasn't won, because no one does. Every Victor is trapped on their train, endlessly going to the Capitol. Even when they get home, it's only a respite before leaving again.
"It's going to be okay," he murmurs into her hair as his lips brush against her scalp.
It isn't true, but she nods anyway. He's trying to make her feel better so she at least owes it to him to pretend that he's succeeding.
They stay like that until someone bangs heavily on the door downstairs.
Time to go.
Gale reluctantly unwraps his arms from around her, takes her by the shoulders and forces her to look him in the eyes as he brushes the last traces of tears from her face.
"It's going to be okay," he tells her again, maybe thinking that if he repeats it enough then it'll be true.
He doesn't wait for her to nod, just reaches over and grabs her bag, zipping it up and handing it to her.
Before she can mutter a 'thank you' his lips are on hers.
Gale doesn't do many things halfway, kissing is no exception.
Madge's hands, her nails with their chipping polish, dig into his arms, then his neck, and finally up into his hair as he deeps the kiss, his rough lips imprinting themselves into her memory. She has to cling to him for a moment longer, once he finally stops for air, her legs have stopped working.
"It's going to be okay," he whispers into her ear, pressing a kiss to the patch of skin just under it.
Finally the knocking downstairs gets insistent, possibly a bit irritated, so Madge gives him a disappointed smile before dropping back on her heels. "I have to go."
He nods and smoothes out her hair, gives her one last kiss, a quick ghost of a thing against her lips, before she steps around him and head to the door to the hall.
"Madge," he calls out to her.
She turns, almost reluctantly. He's making this harder on her.
A little half smile forms on his lips and she almost thinks he's going to tell her for a final time that 'it's going to be okay', but he doesn't.
"I'll see you when you get back."
Madge feels her heart stutter in her chest. It isn't some vague piecrust promise that she can't hold faith in, it's a certainty. She's gone before and she'll go again, but she always comes back and Gale will be waiting when she does. He can't make his 'it's going to be okay'-s true, but he can see her when she gets back. Nothing will stop him, she knows that.
Nodding, she turns and heads out the door to get to Mr. Abernathy before he pounds down her back door.
This isn't a vacation, but it isn't forever and that's what she'll hold onto until she sees him again.
#######
I'm longin' to linger till dawn dear (Choosing/Rebellion)
"It's up to you," Madge tells Gale softly, her eyes focusing on the dirt at her feet.
It hurts, confessing to him that she's more a danger than she'd ever let on. She has to do this though; she can't let this thing between them carry on. It's going to get him killed and she can't live with that. She's already got her parents' lives in her blood soaked hands, she can't have his too. He needs to know the ugly truth of Victory.
"Gale….you can't come up here anymore," that's how she'd greeted him after getting home from her first official concert in the Capitol where she'd met other Victors and seen that Mr. Abernathy was the rule and not the exception when it came to their kind.
"I've been being selfish," she carried on, her voice catching and raising a level. "I knew I couldn't have you in my life, I knew it wasn't safe, but…"
Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she closed her eyes. Looking at him made it harder. Her nerves were already shot from a week in the Capitol, fending off leering eyes and wandering hands, avoiding a fate that, despite Mr. Abernathy's assurances, she's sure is going to catch up with her.
"They'll use you to control me, Gale. They'll know I'll do anything to keep you safe, keep your family safe."
It was bad enough she was in a constant state of worry that she might say the wrong thing and her mother would have an 'accidental' overdose of her morphling or that her father would be accused of treason, a possibility that she's certain may have a very real foothold in reality. Now she's potentially putting Gale's family in danger, and they haven't even committed the sin of being related to her.
"If I make a mistake, if I slip up just onetime, they'll do something terrible to you, your brothers or Posy, even your mom." She felt her chin begin to quiver.
"That's what happened to Haymitch, isn't it?" He'd asked.
Madge just nodded, unable to tell him just what Mr. Abernathy had done, or not done, to lose his family.
"There are others," she told him, her eyes still focusing on his feet.
There's poor Finnick Odair with his big heart, saving Annie Cresta from his fate before he'd even really known her and having to cut himself off from his family.
"They call me a snob. A traitor," he'd confessed to Madge as she'd helped him up the stairs in the Training Center only a few days before. "I walked away from them after my dad was killed in a fishing boat 'accident' and didn't look back, at least in their eyes."
But pretending not to give a damn was the only way his family could be spared from the grim reality of his life.
"I refused Snow and got my dad murdered. It wasn't something I wanted to repeat. But, I couldn't let my mother see me like this," he said, grimacing and dragging a washrag over his grimy face. "They wouldn't understand. They'd tell me to say 'no' or they'd try to expose it and then what?"
They'd all be dead, that's what.
Madge isn't as strong as Finnick though, or maybe she just knows her parents are already aware of the horrors of Victory. They've been friends with Mr. Abernathy for years after all.
There's no cutting them off, no saving them.
She can save Gale though. She's going to save Gale.
"I can't kill you too," she'd whispered as she started shaking. "Just go."
"Don't I get a say?" He asked sharply.
Madge finally looked up and found his stormy eyes focused on her, pinning her in place and tried to shake her head. She'd frozen though.
They'd stood there, Madge's bare toes digging anxiously into the soft earth at her feet, preparing to run from him the moment he saw the real her. The dangerous monster that she's become.
His gaze burned through her and she'd finally dropped her eyes back to her feet.
Finally, after a shaky breath, she nodded, felt the tears drip onto her nightgown.
"It's up to you."
After an endless eternity of a gentle wind rustling the leaves around her and cutting briskly through her nightgown, she hears him move.
She wills him to just go, the quicker the better, and his feet seem to be following her silent command, but in the wrong direction.
Before she can process that he's in front of her, that he's come towards her and not turned to leave her to her misery, he's grabbed her and pulled her to his chest.
"I'm not going anywhere," he almost growls, his hot breath only inches from her face.
"Gal-"
He silences all her protests with his lips. Every stricture against herself she's come up with over the last few days since talking to Finnick and learning just how far Snow is willing to go to keep his Victors in line dies on her tongue as she melds into him.
I'm weak.
There isn't enough fight in her to argue with him, even though every sensible part of her mind is telling her she should. This thing between them is going to be the death of him.
When he finally breaks the kiss, Madge has his shirt clutched in her fists, holding him in place.
"If they find out-"
"They won't," he assures her.
Madge shakes her head. The Capitol always knows.
Gale takes her face in his hands, makes her hold his gaze.
"This is my choice, Madge. I'll figure this out."
Sniffling, she nods.
It's his choice after all.
#######
…leave all worries behind you (Playing)
Madge never plays her piano anymore. Not for him. Not for anyone. It's become part of the Game she's playing.
She spends her trips to the Capitol smiling and waving, sitting on a perfectly lit stage and playing the classics of a world that doesn't exist anymore, but her piano in her house in the Victor's Village hasn't been touched, not in months, to Gale's knowledge.
"I can't," she told him once, when he'd asked her why she didn't play anymore. "I-I play for them and it-I can't play for myself."
Her nose had scrunched up, almost confused by her own words, but Gale understood.
Music, her hundreds of sheet of notes and years of practice in her parent's living room, is one more victim of the Capitol's destruction of her life. They've taken her freedom, her peace of mind, her hope for a normal life, and then her music.
It seems small compared to all the other things they'd chipped from her, but it's still cruel.
Gale has the woods to escape into. Madge had her music, only now she doesn't.
They've turned her into a puppet, a living marionette that they take out and yank the stings on to make her play. Sometimes, when she's away and he catches the smallest glimpse of her on the television, he swears he can almost see the strings. With every forced smile and every half-hearted wave, he sees the life drain from her as they tug her, make her move for their entertainment. They've made music into a chore for her, a mechanical, thoughtless motion in the Game to go through and he hates them that much more for it.
He'd always connected Madge with her piano, with the simultaneously strong and delicate music she played in it. When he'd first started working with Katniss and visiting the Mayor's house with strawberries, Madge had often been at her piano. Sometimes she'd be practicing sturdy, well worn sounding songs, and other times playing what he imagined were her own creations, light and tinkling, reminding him of a refreshing rain.
Back then he wouldn't have admitted that he'd enjoyed it, but he had. In all the ugliness of the District, Madge's music was undeniably beautiful.
He thinks maybe she just needs the right reason to play again, for her own pleasure. A little nudge to remind her that her music is hers, despite what the Capitol makes her do. It doesn't have to be strategic move, a jerky motion forced on her by clumsy manipulators.
So when he hurts his hand on a pick, bloodies it up and has to have Mrs. Everdeen patch it up before he sneaks off to the Victors' Village and Madge teasingly asks what would help it mend faster, he doesn't think when he says the first thing that comes to mind.
"Maybe a song," he tells her as she examines his mangled palm in her lap.
Almost immediately he thinks he's upset her. She freezes in place, her fingertips just brushing against his palm and her eyebrows scrunched together. Finally, she sighs.
"What do you want me to play?"
It's almost mechanical, how she asks, and Gale feels bile rise in his throat.
He's one of them, tugging at her strings and trying to make her play.
With his good hand, he reaches out, tilts her chin up and makes her look at him.
"I don't want to pick," he almost whispers. He wants her to pick, because so many of her choices have been taken from her and he doesn't want to take even one more if he can help it.
It might be just a song, but she hasn't even had that to decide herself since her talent had been harvested and sold, like Twelve's coal, to the Capitol.
She doesn't seem to understand for a moment, then a small light starts to glow in her eyes as she seems to pick up on what he's urging her to do.
Nodding, she gently lifts his injured hand from her lap and stands.
Slowly, the way Gale would approach an animal he's wary of, Madge goes to the piano.
It's the same one she played as a child. Her dad had moved it up to her house the first week she'd been there so she could practice; sharpen the talent she already had for the Capitol's pleasure. It's sat dusty and unused since her first concert though, for all Gale knows, it may very well be out of tune, not that he'd notice.
Carefully she lifts the cover, her half lidded eyes tracing over the keys, hopefully retrieving happy memories. This isn't the grand piano the Capitol makes her play, the keys are yellowed and Gale can see chips in the wood, maybe from the move or maybe from Madge in her younger years.
After studying it, seemingly etching every detail of the battered old instrument into her mind, Madge sits.
Her fingers make little cracking noises, then she sets them, feather light, on the keys.
The music starts so softly that Gale almost misses it, but then it swells, fills the room.
It takes him a full minute to recognize the tune, even though he's certain he knows it from the very first note. He's just never heard it played before, not on anything like a piano anyway. Besides, it's not the kind of song he expects the daughter of a politician to know.
Her hands are playing furiously, but she isn't looking down, Gale doesn't even think her eyes are open. She's absorbed in the music.
As the song peeks, when Gale knows it's about to end, he gets up from her cushy sofa and crosses the room.
He reaches her as she taps out the last notes, a weak few little ones that she seemingly just adds for something to do with her hands for a second longer.
The last tones fade from the air slowly, lingering around then like the dying echoes of a scream and Madge seems to deflate into herself once they're gone.
Gale steps over her bench seat, settles next to her and glances over.
Despite her posture, her face is set, a strange sort of determination, or maybe defiance, etched into her features.
Gale's bandaged hand sneaks over, back into her lap, and wraps careful around her fingers.
"'The Hanging Tree', huh?"
She nods.
"Never heard it quite like that before." Because as far as he knows there's no fancy sheet music to go with it. It's a song that's survived strictly by word of mouth.
"My mother used to hum it. She hums a lot." Madge lets her hands meld into Gale's. "I had to put it together by ear. It took me ages to get it right."
Gale almost laughs. Of course she did. Madge wouldn't shy from a song just because it was controversial. Even before her Games she'd have surprised him if he'd have bothered to notice.
"I like it," he whispers as he leans over, blowing puffs of warm air into her ear.
He feels her shiver beside him as he presses a kiss just below her ear, letting his lips linger on her skin for a beat before his good hand reaches out and gently turns her face to him.
"Don't let them take this from you too," he murmurs as he dips in and indulges in the taste of honey from her toast still clinging to her lips.
Maybe they can make her play for them, set her up with the finest instrument and force her to play things she has no interest in, but not while she's here. What she plays and who she plays it for are up to her here.
He needs to remind her that she can fight them by not letting them take her music, because if they keep taking all the little things that make her her, hollow her out and fill her with lights and glitter, she won't be Madge anymore. He can't have that, he won't. She has to know that no matter what, there's always a way to hold on to the things they're trying to steal, even if only in a small way.
"I won't ," she breathes against his neck.
He isn't sure if she's understood him, but as her hands tangle in his hair his mind slackens.
Even if she hasn't, even if she still feels like the Capitol has tainted her piano and stolen her escape, she hasn't lost him. He'll be her escape.
He won't let them yank her strings and pull her from him.
This isn't a Game to him after all.
#######
Dream a little dream (Secrets/Remembering)
"So Magdalene," Caesar asks, his perfect teeth glimmering in the blazing light from over head. "What secrets have you been keeping from the Capitol?"
Her heart stops dead in her chest. What is he talking about? Why is she back in the Capitol already? She should be at home, not here.
Caesar's face morphs grotesquely, reforms as President Snow, taut skin and narrow eyes focused on her, the smell of blood and roses filling her nose.
The scene shifts again, back to the Arena and her heart stumbles to a start, racing painfully in her chest as she searches for the Careers…
She wakes in a cold sweat, cannons firing in her memory, tormenting her and reminding her that she's a killer. Families lost their children, had buried them in the dark earth, because of her. Nightmares of what has and what may come to pass are just one of her justly earned punishments for what she's done.
The only thing that keeps them at bay is a person, and not one that she'd ever have expected.
"It was only a dream," Gale murmurs into her hair when she wakes, startled from sleep by phantom mockingjays echoing her scream into the forest of the Arena.
He's up, buttoning up his shirt for another long day in the dark of the mines.
It's early, the sun hasn't even begun to streak the sky yet, but he has to be gone before that happens. That's how this has to work.
"I can only do so much," Birdy had told her when she set out the rules of the new Game. "I can manipulate the bugs, but I can't always manipulate people."
And people are greedy, self-serving, and most importantly desperate. If they found out about Gale coming to the Victors' Village night after night, sleeping in Madge's bed and chasing away the demons that live in her head, they'd have hold of a string the Capitol could use to control Madge.
So he comes after dark, after his mother and siblings are asleep, and leaves before they wake, all for her. She owes him her life for it.
It's their secret, buried between the dusk and the dawn, when Madge can breathe and Gale can rest in a soft bed for the first time in his life, that he loves her, that he's willing to wake at such a miserable hour just for the chance to sleep a few hours with his arms around her, to make her feel safe.
"Go back to sleep," he tells her, sitting on the bed and brushing her hair back from her face.
"I can't," she tells him, for what must be the millionth time. "Not without you."
She wishes every morning, when his warmth and the scent of the woods vanish from her side, that she could be anyone but a Victor. What good is all the money in the world and a big house if there's no one to share it with you? If there's no security to have someone share it with you?
Normally, with Gale holding her, she doesn't toss and turn, cry and scream throughout the night. She must dream, at least that's what she thinks. They must be pleasant, filled with a life she doesn't have, a life she can't have, because she usually wakes with a sense of contentment, a sense that everything will be okay. Someday, maybe, she'll remember them instead of the nightmares.
Gale leans in and presses a minty kiss to her lips, lingering for a moment before straightening up and heading to the window.
"I'll see you tonight," he tells her as he opens the window and lets an icy breeze blow in, cutting through the thin material of Madge's nightgown.
She nods. That's all she can hope for, the promise that he'll climb back through her window and help her remember a life she's never had, a life she never will, one that only exists when he's by her side.
As he disappears out the window, back to his home and his own bleak reality, Madge sighs and rolls over, buries her face in his pillow to inhale the lingering scent of his hair.
If she tries hard enough maybe she can remember her dreams.