Author's Note: Sorry for the delay in posting! My life has been extremely stressful and busy over the last couple of weeks—this chapter has been written and edited and I only had to a few tweaks to make before posting but didn't even have time for that until now. :( Thanks to everyone who's been reading and reviewing, and for being patient.

Part 4

On hearing her father calling up the stairs for her, Madge's first thought was: Go Away!

But as she watched Gale not so subtly scan their surroundings for an alternate exit, her thoughts shifted to the fact that her parents must have discovered the living room torn apart and flour strewn all over the kitchen. The way she and Gale looked would also probably not go over well: she was wearing her rattiest shirt (which, thanks to Gale's wandering eyes, she now had confirmation as being embarrassingly thin) and Gale was clad in a similarly ratty undershirt. And neither of them had shoes on.

Gale swore. "What will they do?"

"No idea."

"Madge!" Her father sounded more urgent. "Are you home? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine! Upstairs!" Madge hollered. To Gale she whispered, "Don't say anything about the morphling to them!"

"Shouldn't I thank them? Isn't that polite?" Madge marveled momentarily at his talent for turning nice, ordinary words into insults. Then his face grew slack. "Oh shit… Did you steal it?"

"No! My mom let me take it." Her mom just might not remember saying yes because she'd been under a pretty hefty morphling dosage of her own when Madge asked… "My dad doesn't know. He'd be… alarmed."

Gale frowned and then glanced longingly at the nearest window and swore again. Madge put her hand on his arm to soothe him. "We'll just explain about the bat," she said.

Gale ran his hand through his hair and then let his fingers travel over the bandage on his forehead. "They'll never buy that; it's ridiculous. They're going to think we were—"

"It's fine, it's the truth," Madge said. "Let's go."

She led the way downstairs. Her parents were starting to walk up the staircase but stopped when they saw her and Gale.

"Margaret," her father said in a warning tone. Her mother simply stared in mute horror.

Madge decided it was time for a charm offensive. "Mom, Dad, this is Gale Hawthorne," she said calmly as they joined her parents in the entryway. "Katniss Everdeen's friend. Um, cousin. You might remember him from the interviews or other events we hosted when Katniss came back." Events that Gale skipped; she figured her parents would assume they'd forgotten him. Just one of the many miners and Seam dwellers of the district, worthy of compassion and protection but not necessarily a name. "Gale graciously helped me get a monstrous, vicious bat out of the house. He saved us all from the diseases it was probably carrying."

Mrs. Undersee glanced down the hallway toward the kitchen. "A bat? The kitchen… It looks like the place was ransacked!"

"I tried to cook," Madge said, "but I couldn't figure out the oven." She smiled innocently. Getting her parents off her back was more valuable than her pride. "I guess I need more lessons. I burned some biscuits and the bat flew in while I had the door open to get the smoke out. Gale saw me in the yard after the bat drove me out of the house…" She trailed off as she realized just how quickly he'd appeared. What was the difference between walking past at the right moment and skulking around in the alley? Was his timing really that good? She'd seen him in the alley before, never stingy with the glares he flung towards her house.

Mrs. Undersee's eyes swept over Gale, cataloguing every hole in his T-shirt and stain on his canvas pants.

Gale crossed his arms and held his ground against the inspection. "You might have a bat nest nearby," he said in his know-it-all voice that Madge recognized from when he bossed everyone around during the Seam dance. "Brown Swarmers like nesting in eaves; I'd check there first."

Neither of Madge's parents responded, probably still too shocked, but Madge hid a smile, strangely proud. All the merchants sucked up to her parents, and here was Gale Hawthorne in a T-shirt and no shoes, telling them what to do.

Apparently Gale interpreted her parents' silence as willingness to listen because he continued with his lecture. "And you should all be more careful about keeping your doors locked. I wouldn't underestimate the number of angry, desperate people in this district."

Mayor Undersee fixed one of his most intimidating glares on Gale. "Are you threatening my family?"

"Of course not!" Madge moved a little closer to Gale to shield him from the hostility. "He's warning us. He helped me. Look, he got injured!"

She pointed to Gale's forehead, which her father barely glanced at.

"Yes, he's the picture of altruism."

Gale seemed to be game for a staring contest with Madge's father, and Madge saw that she needed to intervene so she gently tapped Gale's arm. "Your shoes," she murmured, pointing to where he'd abandoned his boots in the hallway. Madge faced her parents and smiled tightly. "I'll clean up the kitchen."

Stand-off sufficiently defused, Gale headed down the hallway to his work boots, which were as out of place in the Undersees' hallway as Gale himself. As he slipped them on, Mrs. Undersee walked to the banister and picked up what Madge recognized as Gale's jacket.

"I take it this is yours, as well?" she asked in her most aloof tone, holding the jacket as though it had fleas. "We found it on the walkway outside. I thought it was a dead animal."

Madge snatched the jacket out of her mother's hands. "Thank you, Mother."

She was rewarded with an icy smile. Madge pushed the jacket into Gale's torso, nudging him so he'd walk down the hallway. She needed to get him out of her house as soon as possible; her mother was just getting going and Gale didn't seem like the type to take it. They skirted the dusting of flour in the kitchen on their way to the back door. Once on the porch, Gale practically leapt down the stairs and perched on the lowest step to tie his shoelaces.

Madge sat next to him and watched his fingers fly through the knots. "Sorry," she said.

"Don't be. That could have been so much worse." He finished tying the laces and then looked at her out of the corner of his eye and winked. "Think your mom's regretting giving me that morphling now?"

Flushing, Madge wondered which would be more mortifying: admitting she'd taken advantage of her mother's semi-conscious state, or that her mother was so frequently in that state? At least Gale already suspected the morphling delivery had been Madge's idea, not her mother's. That particular embarrassing admission was out of the way.

"Well, what do you say we're even now?" he asked as he stood up.

Katniss was like this, too, Madge thought—obsessed with balance, even on friend-level things like whose house to spend time at.

"Unwanted animal removal services for that medicine," Gale continued. "Although I think I got the better end of the deal."

Madge stood too, amused he felt the need to negotiate about activities they'd both undertaken voluntarily. "Really? You think that—" she gestured toward her house with her head, "wasn't painful? Having to deal with angry parents counts for more than you think it does."

"Your parents were nothing. I've had other girlfriends with much worse—" He cut himself off and looked even more embarrassed than when she'd caught him staring at her chest. Madge felt her face growing warm again, partly out of embarrassment but also a little out of excitement that he'd accidentally confirmed what they were both dancing around. "Sorry," he said stiffly. "With the parents thing it just felt like it…I didn't mean anything."

Madge nodded like she had loads of experience evading disapproving parents with boyfriends and searched desperately for a subject change. "Um, what you were just saying to my father… Are people really that mad?"

"Yes," he said without hesitation, his relief evident from his answering speed. "When I saw you outside I thought…" He paused and exhaled. "You need to be careful."

"What have you heard?" she asked quietly. Maybe he would forget he was talking to the mayor's daughter. Maybe he would be so eager to paint over his slip-up that he'd accidentally divulge something…

"Nothing specific. A lot of bluster."

Madge thought she detected some regret in his tone. Before she could think much more about it though, Gale shrugged on his jacket. It made him look so much like a miner that she started picturing miners huddling together in angry knots deep in the dark tunnels, conspiring and plotting. So many people recognized her as the mayor's daughter, she was on the receiving end of more than her fair share of hostile looks. Maybe she did need to be more careful…

She realized Gale was talking again. Something about getting home to give some medicine to his brother. Shaking herself out of her worries, she smiled in his direction. "Thanks again, Gale."

It seemed like she'd caught him off-guard, but after a few seconds he recovered and said, "Thank you. For the morphling."

He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked at Madge for a few long moments, which made her feel like a bubble was expanding in her chest. Whenever he focused his unique brand of quiet intensity on her, she forgot what she was meant to be doing. Were they having a conversation? Was she supposed to respond? All she wanted to do was keep watching him. Well, all right, she wanted to do more than that…

Gale swallowed and looked like he was struggling to find words. "So. Katniss's birthday is coming up," he finally said. "Prim and my brother have been talking about throwing a surprise party for her, which I thought was a stupid idea and would just annoy her, but… Maybe they're onto something. The distraction and being with people she cares about could be good for her."

"Making happy memories is always a good idea," Madge agreed. Katniss could probably use more. Madge herself was still haunted by even her spectator's experience of Katniss and Peeta's Hunger Games. Sometimes when she couldn't sleep at night and the terrible images crept in under her eyelids, she would consciously try to re-live her own favorite memories, like dancing with Gale at that Seam dance and sneaking beyond the fence with Katniss to explore the forest. Her mind frequently returned to that night with Gale, actually.

She realized she had been staring wistfully at him again and promptly switched on a smile. "A party would be great. I know you know how to have fun when properly motivated." She remembered how competitive he'd gotten about proving to her that Seam dances were better than any entertainment town offered. Madge felt bold for mentioning that night since she generally got the sense Gale preferred to ignore that they'd ever done anything more together than occasionally barter on her back porch.

It took Gale a moment to catch her reference, but then a small smile crept onto his face. "You know how to have fun too, Madge." He held her gaze for a few seconds and then cleared his throat in an apparent effort to get back on topic. "This thing for Katniss… It would be small. Her family, my family… I guess we'd have to invite Mellark. And Haymitch." Even saying their names left Gale looking like he'd eaten something rotten, but Madge decided to count it as progress that he'd included them. "You too, of course. If you want to help plan it—"

"I do. I'd love to help." Finally, something she could do besides sneaking newspapers. She also felt a flutter of anticipation—a party with Katniss and Peeta would definitely not fall into the "social chore" category.

Gale smiled slowly. "All right then. Talk to Prim." He glanced into the wreckage of the Undersees' kitchen. "You might want to let Mellark handle the cake, though."

"Fine," she said archly. "But only because he's a professional."

"Whatever you need to tell yourself." He grinned again and started backing away so he could walk home. "Stay safe, Madge. Don't let the bats run you out of your own house."

As she watched him walk off, appreciating the rear view and the fact that he couldn't see her checking him out, she felt infinitely lighter than she had earlier in the evening. She floated up the stairs back into her kitchen. Unfortunately, she was greeted by the mess she'd left.

And her father. He handed her the broom, leaned against the counter, and crossed his arms. Madge eyed him suspiciously and wondered if he'd eavesdropped on her conversation with Gale.

"Where's Mom?"

"Upstairs."

Madge knew that meant her mother had delegated the "talk to your daughter about her scandalous behavior" task to him. All of Madge's less than desirable traits had apparently been passed down through the Undersees, not the Donners.

"Well?" her father prompted. "Were you planning on telling us about this young man?"

"Tell you what? He helped get rid of a pest. He's not someone I would date," she added in her best daughter-of-her-mother snobby tone. Her mother would interpret her statement as disqualifying Gale as a prospect because he was a miner, but her father just watched her skeptically.

"Isn't he the one who used to sell berries to us with Katniss Everdeen?"

"Mmmm hmmmm." Madge concentrated on sweeping in an attempt to cut off the conversation.

"In all my years of overpaying for berries from that boy I've never seen him smile before."

Madge froze. Her father had been watching them. She bent down to sweep the flour pile into the dustpan to hide her blush.

He waited for her to stand up. When she glanced in his direction again, the lines on his forehead gave away that he was about to lecture her.

"Madge, you're getting to the age where… You're seventeen now…" He frowned and appeared to be searching for the right words. "I know you realize that the district isn't the same place it used to be, and there are certain elements…" He pursed his lips the way he did when he was getting ready to chew out one of his deputies. "Madge, you are not to entertain boys in the house when we aren't home."

"I wasn't entertaining him," Madge said quickly. "Entertaining" made it sound like she'd invited Gale over for tea in the parlor and then lured him up to her bedroom. Or that she had somehow seduced him away from the tea table over to the sofa right there in the parlor... She blushed harder as images of what that might entail assaulted her. Something happening with Gale hadn't been entirely out of the realm of possibility, she realized. She knew there were countless reasons why it was a bad idea, but she tended to forget every single one of them whenever she was near him and had a feeling Gale's memory wasn't perfect either.

"Regardless, I expect you to obey this rule," her father said firmly as he pushed himself off the counter. "Do you understand?"

Madge nodded vigorously, eager to end the conversation as quickly as possible. Her father seemed just as relieved to be finished talking because he quickly hugged her and wished her a good night. Then he disappeared, leaving Madge alone in the disaster zone otherwise known as the kitchen. She looked around at the evidence of her attempt to prove to her parents she wasn't a little kid anymore and smiled softly when she realized she'd done just that.

Sometime later when she wasn't so flustered, she could ask her father more about the changes in the district. But for now, as she cleaned the kitchen by herself and before she went back to worrying about her friends, she could indulge in remembering all the highlights of a second surprise evening with Gale. Best of all, he didn't seem like he was going to shut her out of his life this time.

She knew staying home alone was a good idea.

A/N 2: Don't hate me because they didn't kiss! Gale is in Katniss mode in this story, even though he's drawn to certain cute blonde mayor's daughters. This story was more about Gale learning to play nice with others and Madge getting her parents to see her differently. Well, and since I can't help myself, laying the groundwork for future Gadge developments. ;) There's a one-shot follow-up that I won't tack on here because it doesn't fit thematically and because it didn't happen on this same Tuesday night. Gale and Madge needed to be able to talk to each other before anything more could happen. My schedule is still heinous for another week, but hopefully soon after that I can finish the one-shot and get back to "On What Grounds."

Thank you so much to everyone who's read or favorited or reviewed! Extra special thanks to Medea Smyke, Miss Scarlett 05, and Little Miss Mionie for their helpful comments on drafts and for all the support.