—Interlude: War and its Aftermath—
That night when I sleep, it is the first night I don't dream of Prim. Her sweet face and gentle eyes and happy smile. And then her screaming. Prim begging me to save her. Begging and crying and reaching for me with this look of betrayal because I fed her and protected her and loved her and why won't I help her.
No. That night I dream of Madge Undersee. Not back home on her porch or at school or sitting on stage next to her father. No I dream of her when I first saw her in that cell. Flighty and afraid, her hair mussed and her throat a necklace of bruises, her pupils wide, the fear flickering on her face like a candle. And her eyes when she recognizes me, dilating with recognition and then dissolving to relief. Oh Gale, the memory of my name on her lips lingering like perfume, and her arms wrapped around me clutching so tightly and this feeling of relief because finally, finally I did the right thing. Finally I saved someone.
When I wake, I try to push her from my mind. Her sobs as she scrabbled away from me, moaning incoherently in fear. Her cell, small and cramped and filthy and flooded with white light.
I can't quite manage it, and I find myself checking her file surreptitiously from my desk. As the days go by, the reports keep coming back the same: No progress. No visitors. The patient won't open up. The patient won't say why she was taken, won't say anything about her parents. Patient won't eat. Patient won't sleep. Patient won't speak.
The reports make me queasy. Where is her family? Didn't she have any friends that survived? There were a handful of merchant families that lived through the bombing, but most of them have moved back to Twelve already; maybe a few have lingered in Thirteen. There certainly aren't many from Twelve in the New Capitol besides me. And if Madge is anything like I am, her loneliness must be agonizing.
It takes me two weeks before I build up the courage to go see her. Battle plans, nasty snares, knifing a man in the heart—I can close my eyes and steel my mind and get it done. But going to see the Mayor's daughter sick in her bed, my heart stutters at the thought. There's something bitter in my memory of her in that cell, the torture embedded in her eyes and gouged into her body. The Capitol's pain written in her skin, a bloody calligraphy of razor-thin lashes and crusty, scabbed over bruises.
When I used to think of Madge Undersee, I always thought perfection.
Bitter, hated, rage-inducing perfection.
But seeing her in that cell— bloody, broken, afraid— I came to the painfully obvious conclusion that she really is just a human being after all. And for some reason, that realization makes me afraid.
And her arms winding around me, shockingly intimate, my name a kiss on her lips, so unguarded…I felt a very strange jolt of something.
And well, that terrifies me.
I despise cowardice of any kind. So it takes me two weeks, but finally with an almost desperate Suck it up, Hawthorne, I make my way to the large government hospital where she's being kept. And I don't really try to think about why I'm going to see her or why I'm kind of afraid of going to see her or why I can't stop thinking about going to see her or why any of this matters at all. Just do it and move on, damn it.
Its mid-afternoon when I finally get there, but the lights are all off in her room, dark and quiet as a tomb.
"Madge?" I whisper in the dark, and with it a silent plea that she won't be there.
"Yes?" A breath so soft, I could pretend I didn't hear.
I toy with the idea for a moment, just turning around and walking away.
But the guilt drives me to stay. And the curiosity. There's some of that too.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. She sits in bed under a nest of blankets, her eyes wide and blinking slowly in the dark. Even now, like this, there is something terribly lovely about her, eyes almost black in the shadows, her cheeks and collarbones a pale gleam, angular and bare as bone.
I think of her cell, flooded with such bright light, and Madge backing away in terror, whimpering and shaking and shrinking in the unforgiving glare. And I suddenly understand the darkness, the pile of blankets. Finally, she has an ally in the shadows, an illusion of safety, a place to hide.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice the slightest of whispers.
I move closer cautiously, unsure of my answer.
"Just wanted to see how you're doing. There aren't many of us from Twelve left." I stop myself. Perhaps bringing up our destroyed home isn't the best idea. I feel frustration rising in my throat. I don't know Madge at all, don't know what to talk about, what will make her respond.
She nods at my answer and drops her gaze. Her fingers are twisting the edge of her blanket ceaselessly.
"Your scars—they're gone," I notice in surprise. And it's true. Her hands are clean and unblemished, like I remember from home, and the bruises have vanished from her neck.
Her hands still.
"Yes. The medicine here is wonderful. If you look at me, it's almost like nothing ever happened." Her tone is mild, and I can't read her expression in the dark.
I shiver.
"Madge. It's freezing in here." My sigh is a frosty cloud of breath. "Let me tell them to turn the heat up."
"No, please," she whispers. "I like the cold. It…it reminds me I'm alive."
I have no idea how to respond. I slip closer to the bed, straining to hear Madge, her voice soft and scratchy, an itch in the dark.
"They kept me so cold." Her eyes scrunch closed. "There came a point…that I… I liked it. If I was cold… I was alive. I dreamed of death, and all I could think is that it would be warm."
I"m not sure what to say or that there is anything I can say, that would be right. I don't know what I expect, but when Madge opens her eyes, they are dry.
"Can I have your hand?" She asks, reaching towards me. I hesitate for the briefest moment, but in this shadowed room, I don't know, everything feels different. Madge isn't the Mayor's daughter, rich and proud and untouchable. She's alone and afraid.
And she's a piece of home, unexpectedly returned to me.
I expect her hand to be icy, barren and cold. But she's surprisingly warm, pulsing and alive. She takes my hand gently, her touch as delicate as I remember. She examines my hand intently, running a curious finger over my knuckles, her touch no more than a sigh over the ridged planes and rough callouses. She flips my palm and traces the soft pads of my fingertips and the jagged white lines of old scars, the remnants of long-forgotten hurts. The room is quiet, nothing to disturb its hush but the sounds of our breathing, soft in the dark.
"I remember these hands," she says finally, her eyes meeting mine. "It really is you."
I nod, something thick clogging my throat. She releases my hand.
"I keep thinking I'll wake up and be back there, and all this will be just a dream."
I don't trust myself to speak. I see the pulse beating in her throat, in that pale place where her collarbones meet, angular and arched like the columns of the Justice Building. I have this strange urge to touch here there, to feel her life blood warm and rushing and alive under my hand.
I look up, and Madge is gazing at me, incredibly still, poised at the edge of something.
I find myself leaning towards her, an almost imperceptible shift, and the motion is like the pouring over of a waterfall.
Suddenly her lips are on mine. I tremble with the shock and hear myself make an involuntary noise, low in the back of my throat. And I feel her fingers, those delicate beautiful fingers, a light touch on my biceps. And I don't hesitate. My arms snake around her slim waist, I can encircle her so easily, and she feels like a warm little kitten protected in my arms. She moans, this tiny, irresistible sound, and something within me softens and melts. Her lips are on mine, warm and soft and desperate and moving. I feel my loneliness then, and hers— feel the intensity of her touch.
A part of me knows that it's madness, that Madge is lost and vulnerable and alone. But I don't stop and neither does she. Some part of me — lonely and wounded and lost in a haze of war and ghosts — that part of me needs this, just for a moment, and damn it feels nice.
Madge shudders, and I run a hand up her arm, along her neck, and into her hair. And then suddenly she's gasping, her breath jagged, and she's pushing me away. She ducks her head, her hair curtained over her features.
"Madge?" My voice is a question, trying to gauge what's happening.
She turns away from me, and I hear her, a quick, sharp gasp that she stifles. Then deep breaths, drawn even and slow, a trick so I won't guess she's crying.
"Madge, it's alright," I try again, placing my hands on the bones of her shoulder. I can see the knobbed contours of her spine through her hospital gown.
She doesn't turn around, just keeps facing the far wall, breathing evenly in and out.
I don't understand why should would hide. I've seen enough women cry; it doesn't surprise me, or scare me.
I remember Ma, untangling herself from the snarl of Rory and Vick's limbs and slipping under the covers with me after Dad died. She would cling to me and sob, muffling her cries in the rough blankets, not wanting to wake the kids, and I'd rub her back, bright with heat, and gulp back my own pain until my throat scraped with the effort.
Or Posy, how many times did I hold her as she cried? First, as a baby, red-faced and indignant, feverish and sweaty and shrieking in my ears. I'd rock her until she went limp with exhaustion, a sweet bundle warm in the cradle of my arm. Then later, as a girl, complaining over a scraped knee or one of her brother's teasing or the hunger burning deep in her little belly.
Or Katniss once in the forest, angry tears stabbing her eyes when she found one of her father's bows snapped with frost, and then again after her first Games, flying into my arms and sobbing and choking against my chest.
Or Prim. The memories still haunt me. How she would curl up against me on the sagging sofa, silent tears dripping along her cheeks and soaking through the rough fabric of my shirt as she watched her sister compete for her life, quiet cries so she wouldn't worry her fragile mother.
But maybe a part of me can understand Madge. There's a certain vulnerability you need to be able to cry in front of someone else. And that openness, that defenselessness, well it can feel more intimate than any kiss.
"Is there anything I can do?" I ask, one last try.
"No," Madge whispers, and her voice is surprisingly steady. She turns back to me, and it's hard to see her tears in the dark. "You don't have to do anything more."
She reaches for me again, her fingertips brushing my arms, just for a second.
"Now we're even," she breathes out, her hands falling away.
"What do you mean?" I whisper back, wishing I could understand what she's thinking.
"I'd like to be alone now," she answers. A ghost of a smile flickers across her face. "I think I'd like to sleep."
"Alright," I answer. There's nothing else I can say.
There is a soft shuffle, as Madge nestles into her blankets, and I ease myself out of the room, wondering if I should return.
The hallway is bright, and sunshine streams in through the wide windows. I shake my head stupidly, feeling the strangeness of her shadowed room fall away, like shaking off the webbing of deep sleep.
As I walk away, I decide I will come back. There's some mystery stirring in me, something I can hardly name. And Madge…well, it's the first time I've felt alive, felt useful, in a long while.
I come back the next day around the same time, but her room is empty, the curtains drawn wide, the bedsheets smooth and unwrinkled in the bright light. I go to the front and ask the nurse at the desk where Madge has been moved, but after a few clicks on her keypad, she says there is no one in the system named Madge Undersee.
I return to my office and use my special access codes to look in the hospital database. Her name isn't there either. All the files I had looked at before, recording her meals and visitors and the dosages of her sleeping pills, are gone. She isn't in the main government database or any police reports or in the mission summaries we filed after extracting her from her prison cell.
Madge Undersee is a ghost.
I return to the hospital the next day, beg any of the nurses for information. But they all shrug their shoulders, cooly indifferent. They look at me strangely, sure there was no girl in the room at the end of the hall. I scour their files, rip through searches on my computer, even look up the paper archives in the dusty file rooms in the basement of Snow's palace. The last official mention of Madge Undersee was her registration form, water-spotted and sooty with misuse, for the 74th Annual Hunger Games.
As the weeks go on, and then the months, and then the years, I eventually stop looking for Madge—stop scanning the newspapers for a mention, stop the cursory database searches, stop glimpsing through hospital records whenever I pass through an outlying district. At some point, I almost convince myself the whole thing had not happened, that it had been a vivid dream, drawn from place of loneliness and jumbled memories of home.
But that, I know, is not the truth.
And I shouldn't be surprised. Everyone leaves anyway.
...