Part 3

Gale and Madge both raced up the stairs and found the bat circling in the second floor hallway. Because of the low light, it appeared as a blurry movement that eventually landed on top of a large bureau in the hallway. Gale set the broom quietly on the carpet and pulled his jacket off.

"Open a window," he ordered Madge.

She disappeared into one of the rooms off the hallway and a few seconds later he heard the squeal of wood against wood. "Got it," she called.

Holding his jacket like a hand-held net, Gale crept toward the bureau where the bat was resting. When he was close enough, he lunged. The thing made a horrifying combination of clicks and squeals, wings thrusting out from the confines of the jacket but he had it. He ran into the room where Madge had gone and tried to disentangle the bat from his jacket but it was thrashing too violently and he didn't want to risk getting bitten or clawed so he finally just chucked both out. The bundle rolled down the gable below the window for a few seconds before the bat managed to free itself and flap off unsteadily into the night.

Gale slumped to the floor beside the window, pulling it closed with one arm. He was exhausted. But he also had a spark of the satisfaction he used to get after a successful hunting trip, the type of tired he actually liked as opposed to the sore muscles and raw-from-coughing-coal-dust fatigue the mines left him with.

Madge sank to the floor a few feet away. "Thank you," she exhaled.

He shrugged but mentally willed her not to ask him again why he did it. Because in the stillness of this darkened room it was starting to sink in just how strange it was to be in her house. One second he'd been walking home from the Victor's Village and then there was a blur that ended with him sitting on the floor in a room in the second story of the mayor's house. Madge's bedroom, most likely, judging by the small army of toy animals guarding the shelf next to him. He knew he should leave before her parents returned from wherever they were, but sitting on the floor of this room felt like a much-needed time out from his life. And Madge wasn't bothering him or making him talk; she was just quietly looking out the window with a thoughtful expression.

As he scooted back to lean against the end of the shelf, his thoughts drifted to a memory of something Katniss had said when he asked why she was friends with the mayor's daughter. "She's easy to be around. She doesn't always need to talk. But when she does, she's nice." At the time, Gale had been irritated because that same type of ease was a quality he and Katniss appreciated in each other. He'd taken it as more evidence of Madge edging him out as Katniss's best friend, especially since Katniss spent so much time with Madge after becoming a victor and had skipped out on their Sunday hunting trips when she first got back. That hurt. But he generally considered Katniss a pretty good judge of character… Even Peeta and Haymitch, who he didn't actually like, were halfway decent people, at least in their dealings with Katniss. So there was a possibility that he'd been too hard on Madge…

She turned to face him, and he thought the light from the streetlamp outside her window made her tousled hair look even more pale than usual. He braced himself as she opened her mouth to speak.

"You know the old story about lone Swarmer Bats we heard in grade school?"

He was so relieved she hadn't asked anything awkward it took him a moment to realize what she was referring to. "You mean the old superstition?"

She nodded.

"It's nonsense," he said firmly. He'd given this same speech to Vick recently. "Just a story the upper grade kids tell to spook the younger ones before the first field trip to the mines."

"I know… But superstitions are usually based in reality in some way, aren't they? I mean, that thing dove at my head, like it was targeting me. Just like in the story."

"That bat," he gestured out the window, "did not want to fly into your house. There's probably a nest nearby and it got confused about where it was going. It doesn't mean something bad is going to happen to you." He squinted at Madge in the dark. Her bat-attack hair was mussed in several different directions at once and she still had flour smudges on her face. She looked like she'd been doing battle with baking ingredients, and obviously hadn't been near a mirror recently, which he didn't think was worth mentioning. "The bat probably wanted that flour in your hair. Can you blame him, with the prices lately?"

He was glad to see Madge smile lightly at his lame joke, but then he wondered if she had any inkling how much flour cost. Considering how much of it had been on the floor of her kitchen, he doubted it. He felt a snide comment bubbling its way up his throat, but it fell back when he saw the sadness creeping into Madge's expression. She sighed and hugged her legs to her chest, resting her cheek on her knees as she gazed at him.

"I wish there was something more I could do for Katniss," she said softly. "Peeta and Haymitch, too. It's so… wrong."

"It's beyond wrong." He spoke with such force his words felt like an arrow, seeking out a target. Unfortunately, this arrow thudded uselessly to the thick carpet.

"At least you have useful survival and fighting skills to teach them. I can't do much more than watch them train."

"The newspapers are a good idea," Gale said, much to his own surprise. "Being in the arena is so mental, they'll need every advantage they can get."

Madge studied him, and he wondered why he'd gotten it into his head that if Madge was friends with Katniss it somehow took away from his own friendship with her. Katniss needed all the friends she could get—old friends like Gale, and other friends like Madge who didn't have to spend all their time underground and had access to things like newspapers. There was also the possibility that Katniss liked… nice people. Peeta was sickeningly nice (more so to other people than Gale, which Gale actually appreciated). And maybe Madge qualified as nice too.

"I just saw Katniss," he volunteered. "They're meeting with some wrestlers Peeta knows tonight."

"Good." Madge beamed and lifted her head off her knees. "I remember Peeta talking about setting something up. Was Haymitch going, too?"

Gale scowled and picked at a thread in Madge's carpet. "Yeah."

"You don't like him."

"What's to like?"

"You don't like Peeta, you don't like me…" Madge scooted forward so he'd have to look at her. "Isn't that hard on Katniss?"

Gale was about to point out that facing twenty-two other people trying to murder her was what was hard on Katniss, but then the memory surfaced of Katniss's face when she'd stepped between him and Haymitch on the street. Madge had a point. He'd been consciously making an effort to not say mean things about Peeta to Katniss, out of respect for her confusion over her own feelings and the comfort she clearly got from the guy (and, fine, also to make himself look better). Peeta was proving his dedication to Katniss day after day with all their training efforts, not to mention his obvious plan to sacrifice himself to keep her alive in the arena. So he was probably all right, but Gale didn't have the same concern about making nice to Haymitch, who was rude and usually deserved whatever Gale threw back at him. And Gale knew he had a whole separate set of issues when it came to Madge.

"It's probably not making anything easier for Katniss," Gale acknowledged stiffly. "I hadn't thought about it like that." Then he looked at Madge. "And you're… okay."

Madge stared at him for a few seconds, which made Gale feel like he'd said too much. But then she smiled, and thankfully didn't say anything that would make him regret sort of complimenting her. Her silence was starting to make him fidgety though, the comfort of their quiet moment together earlier long gone. This was why he couldn't just hang out with Madge Undersee. Because it was too easy to remember what she felt like and smelled like and how curious about her he'd been that night and still was—

He sprang to his feet. "I need to get home."

Madge caught up to him in the hallway as he was starting to descend the stairs. "Wait."

"What?" He paused on the second step.

"You're bleeding." Madge gestured toward his head.

He reached up and felt an area of raw skin on his forehead. He forgot he'd banged his head on a door downstairs. Then he held out his arms to make sure the bat hadn't broken any skin when he'd wrestled it into his jacket.

Madge gingerly inspected his arms as well. Her hands were soft and warm, without even a hint of calluses.

"All clear." She smiled and he felt frozen, confused by what made her eyes so fascinating. Was it something about the blue color or just that it was so easy to see what she was thinking? Because he could tell she was concerned about him, which felt… good. Unfamiliar. He was used to being the one taking care of people. She tugged on his sleeve. "Come on, there are some bandages in this bathroom."

He wasn't keen on lingering, but walking around the district dripping blood from his face would practically be an invitation for the Peacekeepers to interrogate him, so he followed Madge into a room dominated by blindingly white porcelain and more bottles and soaps than he'd ever seen in his life, including at the soap store in town. He leaned against the doorway and watched her paw through a narrow closet filled with towels and even more bottles.

Madge pulled out a washcloth, wet it under the tap, and turned toward Gale, suddenly much closer to him than he'd anticipated. She dabbed at his forehead and he wondered again why she was wearing so few clothes. The white tank top undershirt she had on was so thin he could see her bright blue bra underneath. He'd never seen one that color before, and he had some experience with bras. Not recent experience, regrettably. Was it a rich girl thing?

Too late he realized she had paused and was looking at him—and that he hadn't averted his eyes quickly enough. He took a fast step backward and mentally thanked his parents for not passing along any blushing traits to him. Madge was doing enough for both of them.

He reached for the washcloth in her hand. "I can do this on my own."

Madge quickly relinquished it and immediately stuck her nose back in the closet. "Okay," she said in a high-pitched voice. "I'll find the bandages, I know we have some."

Gale moved over to the sink to use the mirror hanging over it, which turned out to be a pretty good angle for him to check out her ass in those little shorts, and—

Maybe he didn't need to use the mirror. He focused on the sink.

"Where are your parents?" he asked, partly just so they could both stop thinking about what had just happened. He hadn't had a girlfriend in over a year now and it must be getting to him more than he'd realized. Maybe it was the blood loss from the head injury. He must have lost at least… a few drops.

"Dinner with friends," Madge said, sounding a little calmer but still buried in the closet. "Well, sort-of friends. People they tolerate because they have to."

Tolerating was the attitude Gale adopted in dealing with most people, though it was strange to think he had something in common with the Undersees. He was glad Madge couldn't see his amused expression and was impressed with her bluntness.

A few seconds later she emerged from the closet, holding a small basket of bandages. "Why are you asking about my parents?"

"Just wondering when they'd be back." As soon as the words were out, he couldn't correct them fast enough. "Not because I thought we should… I was just…" He set the washcloth on the counter of the sink and stared at it, horrified at how much worse he was making the situation.

New rule: no more talking. Without looking at her, he held out his hand for the box of bandages, which Madge wordlessly passed over. As he dug through it, she hurriedly explained, "I think this type will work best, but we also have others in the closet if you think you need something else. I don't usually deal with this type of thing so I don't really know."

"Thanks," he mumbled.

"I think you can figure it out, help yourself to whatever else you might need, I'm just going to run downstairs and close the doors. Don't want another bat to fly in, right? You said there might a nest nearby—"

"Right. Good plan."

She bolted out the door and seconds later he could hear her descending the stairs. As soon as he was sure she was an entire floor away, he covered his face with his hands as if he could block out the last few minutes. What a nightmare. He felt completely validated in having avoided her for so long. Because the cold hard truth was that he had some kind of weird attraction to Madge Undersee, and there could honestly not be a more inappropriate person for him to be thinking about in this way. He blamed his body for its betrayal. It felt like a betrayal of Katniss, too, which made him feel even worse.

He splashed water on his face to try to clear his head, and then grabbed the basket of bandages. The quicker he left, the better. He didn't want to interact with any of the Undersees, parents or daughter. He quickly attached a bandage to his forehead and then opened the closet door to put the basket away.

A small cardboard box caught his eye. He'd seen something like that before… At Katniss's house after he'd been whipped. Lifting the lid of the box with his finger, he confirmed it: morphling.

Just seeing the clear glass vials reminded him of the swift relief they brought whenever Mrs. E filled that syringe. At the time, he hadn't known what the liquid was and had just gratefully assumed Mrs. E had better medical supplies now that Katniss was rich. He'd asked Prim one day what it was and all she said was, "Strong medicine." Later he'd looked at the box to learn the drug's name—morphling, which he recognized from Hunger Games broadcasts—and figured Prim hadn't told him out of fear that he'd reject it or raise a fuss about how expensive it was. He wondered why Madge's family needed this type of medicine. Were they scared they would get whipped too, with these asshole new Peacekeepers, and kept it around as a precaution? The idea of anyone in the mayor's family being whipped was absurd, but so were these new Peacekeepers…

He could hear Madge coming upstairs again, and seconds later she walked into the bathroom. She froze mid-step in the doorway and turned bright red.

"Did… someone tell you what I did?" she asked unsteadily. Her eyes were fixed on the small box as though it were a bomb that might explode at any second.

"Tell me what?"

Madge immediately started backing into the hallway, away from Gale like he was a larger version of the bat that had just been bothering her. "Nothing."

He shoved the morphling box back into the closet and followed her into the hallway, where he found her picking up the broom he'd dropped earlier.

"Something about that medicine?" Her reaction was making him uneasy, and the idea that she knew something he didn't—and wasn't telling him—was infuriating. "Madge. What?"

She met his eyes when he said her name and then immediately bit her lip and looked at the floor. After a few seconds, she mumbled something and then tried to walk past him.

He reached for the broom's handle to stop her. "I didn't hear—"

"I said, did someone tell you I brought it to you that night?" Madge blurted, looking up at him and not looking away this time.

Several loose facts dislodged from wherever they'd been hiding in his head. The first was of Haymitch quizzing him about his contact with the Undersees. Gale had been defensive, annoyed at the prospect of Haymitch having heard about him and Madge together that night in the Seam and making assumptions about something—nothing, really—so ancient.

He also remembered Katniss asking him about Madge. Overly casually. Once she asked whether he'd ever seen Madge in the forest—he'd laughed scornfully, the idea was so absurd, although Katniss later explained that she'd taken Madge out a few times last fall. He hadn't liked hearing that. Katniss had also asked whether he was still including the Undersees on his sales route. He'd thought she was inquiring because she wanted to be sure he was making as much money as they used to make together, but now…

Haymitch and Katniss both read something into the fact that Madge brought morphling to him.

Should he?

It meant she didn't want him to be in pain. That wasn't especially illuminating—he'd seen people after mining accidents in excruciating pain and he couldn't think of anyone in District 12 who wouldn't want to press a magic button that would make the wailing and anguish go away.

More interesting: it meant disobedience. The medicine was no doubt expensive, and she might have taken it without permission. It was risky, too. The Peacekeepers wouldn't have been thrilled to learn that the mayor's daughter was aiding the district's most notorious poacher. They might have punished her family, which could have gotten her father in trouble with the Capitol…

He realized that the girl who'd taken him up on his dare to attend a Seam dance had it in her to do more than just flout decorum and district social divisions.

"No one told me," he said, finally answering her question. He hated being the last to know things. He hated even more thinking that others were… speculating about him. And Madge. Together. That Katniss had been speculating. But not saying anything to him, which hurt for some reason. It also meant that Katniss knew exactly why Haymitch kept making those snide references about Madge to him… She always defended him, but had never explained to him what Haymitch's problem was… With a pang, Gale realized this was one more thing he and Katniss didn't talk about.

Madge seemed paralyzed and watched him fearfully.

"Why'd you do it?" he asked softly.

She swallowed and didn't say anything, which was an answer in itself. The way she was looking at him said it all; he knew why she did it. She felt something for him and wasn't even trying to hide it. Her eyes were locked with his and he was hit by that someone likes me rush, an uplifting and refreshingly normal wave of emotion he hadn't experienced in what seemed like forever. And despite Madge's earlier embarrassment, now she seemed to be growing bolder the longer she watched him.

Then she broke the spell with a small smile and said lightly, "Why not?"

He laughed, appreciating her skill at throwing his own words back at him. And he liked her even more in that moment for not actually turning sappy or forcing into the open something they were both aware of.

Before he could mull that apparent contradiction, he heard the sound of a door creaking downstairs.

"Madge?" The concerned voice of Mayor Undersee floated up the stairwell.