No one had it easy in the aftermath of the bombings, not even their only female Victor Katniss. So no one even made a note of Gale Hawthorne's restless sleep, deep in the ground that was District Thirteen.
His siblings assumed he dreamt of The Girl on Fire and her many televised scrapes with death. His mother assumed he was unnerved by their own narrow escape from their home- less than a thousand people had escaped the district that was now the tombs of over seven thousand more.
They were both wrong- but each opinion held a kernel of truth. It was dreams that disturbed his sleep, when worry didn't keep him from it. And it was related to someone who didn't escape the Capitol's wrath.
The girl he dreamt of was even on fire. But she was peaches-and-cream where Katniss was olive toned, and her hair was a straight ash blond instead of sooty black curls.
In his dreams, Madge always wore her white reaping dress. Sometimes she was in the sunroom he'd only been in once during the 74th Hunger Games, before Katniss and Peeta became two of the final eight. Those nights she'd sit in front of the piano, hands resting on the keys as if thinking about playing, her head bowed as she waited.
Sometimes she was sitting on her porch steps, knees hugged to her chest in a way she'd never have done in life. There were times she was surrounded by drab grey figures in their old school, and times when she lay down in the forest clearing they'd spent so much time, just looking at the targets.
It always ended in fire.
Tonight was a sunroom night- except Madge was playing this time. Even aware on some level that this was just another dream, another night that would end with Madge Undersee burning away in front of him, he listened. It was familiar, but he couldn't place it.
"Katniss taught me this one." She spoke, her head bowed to the keys. "Do you know it?"
"No." He said, unthinkingly. There was no point in elaborating to a dream, so he didn't mention the sense that the words were on the tip of his tongue, if only he knew where to start.
Madge continued playing. "You'll have to ask her for the words then. I wrote them in the book, but I can't remember them."
"The book?" He repeated, taking a step forward. Madge and her piano were no closer for it.
"Where my grave was." The beautiful dead girl answered, not even turning her head as her fingers moved across the keys. "I hope someone finds it. It's all that's left of the Donners now."
"And the Mockinjay Pin." Gale added, taking another step forward. Once again, there was no effect.
"No. The Mockinjay belongs to Katniss." Madge stated firmly, the melody under her hands beginning to repeat itself. "Symbol of rebellion and songbird both."
Gale kept walking forward, but he never moved closer. Madge fell silent, except for that hauntingly familiar melody.
This time when the song ran its course, she shut the lid of the piano with a sense of finality. "There won't be any songs for me now." She said, not quite sadly. It wasn't resigned either, but it wasn't happy.
"What, no piano's where you are?" Gale asked, barely paying attention to the familiar movements of his legs.
"I'm sure I could find one, somewhere." Madge assured him, standing from her piano stool easily. "But that's not what I'm here for."
She turned to face him and he froze in shock. Her face was coated so thickly in grey ash that he couldn't see her skin underneath it, and the area surrounding her closed eyes was a thick black in the shape of outstretched wings.
"Then," Gale began, swallowing nervously. "Then what are you here for?"
The smile on her lips should have been bittersweet, but the dust turned it into something sharp and terrifying.
"Tonight, I'm here to warn you." Her eyes opened a crack.
He was still frozen where he stood, so very far from the girl in the pretty dress with the ash-covered face.
"You always burned so fiercely Gale Hawthorne." The girl mused (not Madge, not Madge Undersee who occasionally overpaid for strawberries and stared him down coolly, her every soft-spoken word spent more carefully than coin). "But you don't know how to use it. You survive on hate for the people who've hurt you and love for those who depend on you and passion for the cause you've found. What are you going to do when this is over, and you're left standing in the burned out ruin of your life? When the people you hate are beyond your reach, your family no longer need you to put food on the table, the rebellion becomes a thing of history books?"
He stares at her blankly, not sure what he can say or even where to start with it.
She hangs her head. "I was afraid of that. Be careful Gale Hawthorne, only one of us need burn." Her eyes snap open and Gale recoils- her eyes now fiery in every sense of the word. "I would hate for you to follow this path after me."
He opens his mouth to scream in horror or denial as the room catches fire, the flames racing across every surface- the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the windows- until there's nothing but the inferno, and the girl is only a black silhouette in the flickering light, a girl then a bird and then gone.
He wakes up screaming.
The song is Hanging Tree- I had Adriana Figueroa on repeat while writing this.