Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
In the Looking Glass, pt 4
AN: Again, thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for the beta.
#######
It had never happened before, being denied a final goodbye to the Tributes.
Gale is furious and it takes his mother and siblings all telling him to calm down, holding his hands, to get him out of the Justice Building.
"Gale, there's nothing we can do," his mother tells him in hushed tones.
Prim and her mother are a sobbing mess, clinging to each other outside the train station.
Madge wishes her father had some kind of authority, but Thread is the law now. Judge, jury, and if he so chooses, executioner.
"Don't worry, you'll see her again."
Madge pushes Vick and Rory back, blocking them from Thread. He'd appeared out of thin air, a specter of death and evil. His cold eyes flicker over her yellow sundress.
"District Seven makes excellent pine boxes."
Gale makes a threatening noise, a low growl, and Thread sneers at him.
"I'd mind your manners, boy, or the Everdeens won't just be losing a sister and daughter during these Games."
His gaze refocuses on Madge. He reaches out and pulls a strand of her hair from her ponytail, twirling it between his fingers. She tries desperately not to recoil.
She's suddenly pulled back. She tumbles into Gale's chest as he wraps a protective arm around her waist. He's giving Thread a dark look, daring him to touch her again.
"Gale!" She hisses. It's almost a repeat of last year, when Birdy Alameda had come to prepare them for the 'friends and family' interviews. He's challenging someone dangerous, someone with power, and this time, someone who has already hurt him.
Gently, reluctantly, she frees herself from him and stands her ground in front of Thread.
"I'm sorry, sir." She thinks quickly, "He's just upset about his cousin. Emotions are running high. We're all very sorry for any insult."
His thin lips stretch into a smile that sends chills racing down her back. He takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, "See? Good breeding. Good manners. They could learn a lot from you, Miss Undersee."
He lets her go, with a little more force than was necessary then casts a warning look to the Everdeens and Hawthornes before marching off, undoubtedly to darken someone else's day.
Madge turns back to Gale; his mother is already chastising him.
"Gale…"
"I know," he grunts through gritted teeth.
She can see it in his eyes, he knows how deadly stupid it is, challenging Thread.
"He shouldn't touch you," he growls.
If only this were simply some stupid boy at school paying her unwanted attentions, then Gale's chivalry would be much more desirable. Although, wholly unnecessary. Madge is positive she could take out any of the boys in District Twelve, Gale included, with a strategically placed jab and an uppercut. This is the Head Peacekeeper, though, he's pushing them, testing for sore spots, goading them into doing something stupid.
"I know, Gale, but there's nothing I can do."
The entire group looks disgusted.
"Your dad-" Vick starts.
"-has no power over Thread." She looks sadly at the Justice Building. "He's a law unto himself."
#######
They watch the recap of all the other Reapings in the Victor's Village.
Madge is horrified by the matronly woman in Four, so fragile looking, Volunteering. Then thereare the monsters from One and Two…the mad looking pair from Six…the mother in eight…
"Her hair isn't green, Momma," Posy points to the small figure on the television.
Four women and one man, stand behind a metal railing meant to keep cattle in line.
They could have been anyone, but certainly not Victors, as plain and uninteresting as they are.
Birdy's hair, her lips, her eyes, are all desperately normal. Dirty blonde hair and a faded green dress. She and the others are meeting their fate, whatever it may be, as they had when they were Reaped the first time.
The names are read, neither one Birdy's. Still in their pen she and the remaining women stand at the fence and shake small rattlers, tails from a poisonous snake like the one Madge's father keeps on his desk. It's a farewell to their friends of many years and a warning from a bettered people.
"I'm glad it wasn't her," Prim says quietly. "She wasn't so bad, really."
Madge forces a faint smile.
It bothers her that Birdy isn't the Tribute. Madge had thought she'd worked out a pattern, a reason for the choices. The Reaping was rigged, she knew that, and she'd assumed that all the Victors selected would be problem children, like Katniss and Haymitch. This Quell is the Capitol's chance to rid itself of so many of its troubles.
She'd assumed Birdy, with her warnings and her gift of the bug finding compact, was on their side. Now though, she isn't so sure.
#######
"I don't think you should," Madge tells Gale as he attempts to walk her home.
The less time he spends near the Town, near Thread's base of operations, the better. He's too volatile for her to be letting him walk with her when the slightest thing might set him off. Best he stay with his mother, she at least can exert some semblance of control over him.
She's already shaken off Vick and Rory, Gale is much more stubborn though.
"What if you run into Thread again?"
"Exactly."
His jaw sets and his eyes narrow. He's swallowing a very bitter brew.
She doesn't want to be responsible for Gale receiving another whipping, or being hung.
He hurls one of Prim's drying roots from the corner of the porch in frustration. "It's such bullshit!" His fists clench, "How can he push you around? You're the fucking mayor's kid! He shouldn't even look at you like that!"
Madge reaches out, puts her hand on his tense arm and he relaxes a little.
"That's it, though. No one is safe. That's the Game, Gale. We're all playing whether we know it or not."
Some are pawns, while others are more active, more destructive players. The real trouble is figuring out who is which.
"To hell with the Game, Madge."
That's where it probably ends, she thinks bitterly.
"Stay here and stay safe, Gale," Madge finally says before she walks off, toward the town.
#######
Gale turns up at her window that night.
"I just wanted to make sure you made it home."
He climbs in, sits on her bed, plucks up her book and flips through the pages. Fittingly enough, Catch-22 this time.
"It's almost one am," she points out. She'd been home for hours. He'd put himself in far more danger checking up on her than she'd been in making the journey home.
He puts the book down and wanders to her book shelf.
"What do you think they'll put her in this year?"
So that's why he's here.
He wants to pick her brain about his lost love.
A little disappointed, Madge takes a deep breath, trying to detect liquor on him. He would have to be a little drunk to have left the safety of his home just to question her about Katniss' fashion this year.
It's there, but much fainter this time. She's seen the old woman that sold most of it in the District in the stocks, so maybe it's getting harder to come by. Mr. Abernathy has been weaseling, less than covertly, her father's stock for weeks.
Still, he's drunk enough that she doesn't feel safe sending him out, where he can potentially get in trouble with Peacekeepers and Thread.
She flickers her eyes to her compact, flipping it up while his back is turned, still green.
"I don't know, Gale."
Something amazing she's sure, something that'll make the man in her room love her just that much more, make Madge a little duller in comparison. Not that it matters, Madge knows she's nothing more than a fading light in his life no matter what.
He wanders back to her bed, then past her to the window, before turning back to her. His eyes are hazy, he's too relaxed, alcohol and exhaustion are quickly folding in on him.
His fingers, thick and clumsier than they normally are, reach out and tug on the end of her ponytail. He winds it around his finger, runs the pad of his fingers over it.
"Your hair's soft," he mutters.
She isn't sure if it's meant as a compliment or a tipsy jib at her status. Suddenly, both his hands are on her head, tugging the ribbon from it, before weaving his fingers through it. It's so gentle, much gentler than she thought him capable of. Her eyes involuntarily flutter closed and she fleetingly wonders if he'd ever wanted to run his finger through her hair before this moment.
He pulls her to his chest, fingers still combing through her hair, "What if she doesn't come home?"
Hesitantly she pulls her arms up, wraps them around him.
"Don't worry. She will."
She's certain she's lying.
#######
She puts him in her bed again, face down and softly snoring into her pillow. She has the presence of mind to pull his boots off this time; last time she'd had a hard time explaining the dirt to Mrs. Oberst who'd yelled for nearly an hour before making Madge clean her own sheets.
The whole night she tries desperately to stay up, sitting in her little chair, determined to not miss him leave this time.
The sun has just peaked, streaking through her window with hints of pinks and oranges and yellows when she feelshands on her, under her knees and across her back.
Her face presses into his chest, inhales his sleepy scent, as he lifts her up and carries her to her bed. She stirs just a little when he sets her in the bed, somewhat upset with herself for having fallen asleep.
"Shhh," he whispers, smoothing her hair. "Go back to sleep."
It's so soothing, so soft; she vaguely wonders if it's the tone he uses with his siblings. Her eyes blink blearily up at him before drifting back into oblivion.
#######
She doesn't see him again until that night, the Tribute Parade, when his question is answered.
Peeta and Katniss are smoldering, glowing, beautiful.
They're going to be drowning in Sponsors, Madge knows it. She's been keeping an eye on the Capitol papers and there's already so much sympathy, something she hadn't thought the Capitol capable of, so much outrage for the 'Star-Crossed Lovers' that she can't imagine them not. Especially with this little display.
The commentators are beside themselves.
"Amazing!"
"Really outdone himself this year, hasn't he?"
There are several former Victors, more than usual, none look very happy. None are the glowing glittering beauties they'd been known as for so long. They're dull, faded creatures, all the shine has been rubbed from their faces and clothes.
A very old man from One growls about Katniss and Peeta's advantages. "Star crossed lovers! Best marketing in years!"
"Everyone wants them to have their happy ending," the moderator titters.
"These violent delights have violent ends," one of the Threes says. The panel's chatter dies, as if in a sudden vacuum.
"And in their triumph die, like fire and powder. Which, as they kiss, consume." Birdy Alameda finishes, not a green hair in sight.
"Romeo and Juliet, were a tragedy, and so too will these two be. One way or another," a Nine adds with a certain downturn of her mouth.
Prim looks to Madge, frowning, "What are they talking about?"
The high of Katniss and Peeta's entry, their majesty, is suddenly consumed by cold fear. While she isn't certain it's a warning as opposed to some strange act, it certainly isn't reassuring.
Madge's mother has come out of the house and to the viewing with Madge and her father. She's staring at the screen with uncommon focus for her.
"They're going to explode, dear."
At first they think she's referring to the outfits.
"No, Matilda, it's just a trick," her father reassures her.
She shakes her head, still focused on the screen, "No, not that. Powder and fire, they explode together. They're destroyed."
Prim and Mrs. Everdeen pale.
Madge takes a deep breath, "It's Shakespeare, 'Romeo and Juliet' the star-crossed lovers. That's all."
She hopes that's all.
Gale tenses; maybe some part of his mind remembers Madge telling him about the tragic end of that story. His eyes focus on Madge's mother. "It's just a stupid quote. It doesn't mean anything."
Her mother's face flickers as she turns to Gale, trying to bring him into focus with a vacant smile and wide eyes. She doesn't sense she's upset him. "I wish they'd have shown Haymitch…"
"Fire is a tricky thing, Mr. Hawthorne, it consumes and destroys, yes," Madge's father says, steering the conversation away from his wife's chatter, "but it also cleanses. It can cauterize a wound, sterilize a tool, or cook. They burn fields sometimes, destroy the old growth, so that new life can take root."
Madge likes her father's interpretation of fire better, though she doubts he even believes it to be the meaning behind the message. They hadn't received a call from Mr. Abernathy, it may not have been a message at all.
With a sigh her father takes her mother by the hand, "We'll see you at the house, Madge."
As they walk away Prim, wide eyed and frightened, asks again, "What were they talking about?"
Madge shrugs. She wishes she knew, but there is so much happening, she's certain of it, that neither she nor her father are privy to. Mr. Abernathy's plea before he left, the Shakespeare, the drastic wardrobe change for the commentating Victors, all point to something. She just doesn't know what, and she almost doesn't want to know.
#######
"I'm sorry I showed up at your house again."
Gale comes by after work to find Madge and his siblings making ice cream, which he'd somewhat reluctantly shared in. His friend, Thom is playing some kind of game with Rory and Vick up ahead while Posy dozes, covered from head to toe in purple juice, on Gale's shoulder.
Madge shrugs, "It's okay."
He shakes his head, "No, it's not. I shouldn't just show up drunk at your house all the time."
He hadn't been as drunk the last time though. She's certain she wouldn't mind him showing up at one in the morning every day, inebriated or not.
Stop that! She scolds herself.
She had changed the sheets before Mrs. Oberst could get to them this time, though they'd only had traces of the coal dust from his skin on them. Her pillowcase, though, has still yet to be washed. It still holds the scent of his hair in it.
I'm some kind of stalker.
Her scalp still tingles when she thinks of his fingers running over it, and she wishes he would reach out and do it again. He's not drunk now though, stone sober and bone weary form work. There's no hope of any slip of mistaken affection from him today.
A group of the new Peacekeepers wander by, giving Rory and Vick a warning for being too loud and Thom a glare for encouraging them. They're cold and young, eager to prove their worth against the rabble of District Twelve.
Several of them leer at Madge, whispering to one another and tracing her with their eyes. She crosses her arms over her chest and instinctively takes a step toward Gale.
"You need to get home," they tell Madge and Gale as they come to them. "Man shouldn't keep his pretty little wife and kid out at this time anyway."
She nearly corrects them, but hesitates. The Peacekeepers words and his eyes warn herthat admitting such a thing would be a bad move. Instead she takes Gale's hand and prays he understands.
Her heart stops when he drops her hand almost the instant their palms touch. It starts again, though, when his hand slides around her waist, pulls her flush to his side. His hand flattens, palm to her stomach, as he nods to the Peacekeepers.
They pass, slowly, continuing to leer at her.
Gale presses her tighter to him even once they've passed. "Bastards."
"Don't do anything," she warns him quietly.
After Darius disappeared following Gale's whipping even the kinder, formerly less rigid Peacekeepers that had preceded Thread are distancing themselves. They don't want to be spirited away, never to be heard from again, so they've lost their friendliness.
The new ones are violent, handpicked by Thread probably specifically for that particular trait. Upsetting them has landed more people in the stocks than Madge can even count.
"You shouldn't have walked with us," Gale tells her when he finally lets her go.
A little frown forms on her face. He's right, but she'd just wanted to be around them, bask in the tiny flicker of warm happiness they'd created with the ice cream for a little bit longer before going back to her headache consumed mother, missing father, and hateful housekeeper.
"Yeah," she finally says.
Gale looks like he wants to walk her back, but he's got his arms full of a sticky child and his brothers and Thom are watching him, waiting to be back on their way.
Vick and Rory come tumbling back, skid to a stop in front of them, and Thom, all arms and legs, nearly trips over them when he comes up after.
"What's the hold up?" Rory asks. He's got a glob of blueberry in his hair that he continues to pick at.
Madge gives them one of the smiles she uses during formal functions, real enough, but fake to the core, "I'm going to let you all head home from here." Vick tries to take her hand, but she hides both behind her back, "I shouldn't have come this far and you aren't walking me. I'll be fine."
They look unconvinced, but Gale gives them a stern look before turning back to Madge, "Be careful."
Her fake smile flickers up, into something a little more genuine, "I'll just run."
#######
Prim invites Madge to watch the scores.
She almost turns the request down, but can't when Prim gives her the sweetest, most hopeful smile while standing by Madge's now empty locker. The school year is over early this year, another way to save money and another way to keep the already minimally educated District away from knowledge.
The next day, after making her mother help in the garden, she takes a quick shower and changes into a dull blue dress, putting all her now unneeded school supplies away, and starts to fill a basket with squash and tomatoes as a gift for the Everdeens.
Then she hears the phone upstairs ring.
A cold dread fills her, makes her stomach clench, as she slowly makes her way up the stairs then into her father's office.
"Hello?"
"Staying safe, Pearl?"
Mr. Abernathy doesn't sound drunk, but then he's drank for so long he often seems unaffected. She hopes he's staying clear headed though, for Katniss and Peeta's sake.
She nods, remembers he can't see her before saying, "Yes."
"Good girl." He seems distracted, like he's doing more than one thing at a time, "Danny boy have you doing secretarial work?"
"They closed the schools," she explains. His scowl is almost audible over the line.
"Of course they did." He sighs, "I haven't got much time. You tell Danny boy to ready his bird cage."
Swallowing down a dozen questions, Madge manages to mutter out an, "Okay."
The line is quiet for a minute, she thinks he's hung up, or maybe passed out, then he coughs, "You stay safe, all of you back in Twelve, okay?"
It takes a second, a long second, for the oddness of his words to form in her head. Then, before she can say anything, let a question pass her lips, he's talking again.
"Tell your mother I-Katniss' token is a real hit here." He chuckles, a little bitterly, before saying his goodbye, "Be good, keep your eyes open, Pearl."
#######
Madge runs to the Justice Building, her legs and lungs burn when she flies past the front desk, into her father's office.
He doesn't let her so much as utter a word, not that she would, they'd long ago decided that the Justice Building wasn't safe for any conversation.
Grabbing her by the elbow, he quickly tugs her from the room, down the hall and out of the chilly building.
When she finishes telling him what Mr. Abernathy had told her, he sighs.
"You understood?"
She had. Birdy was coming back, which meant they were going to make Katniss and Peeta's humiliation a centerpiece to the show and wanted their families' reaction on film for all to see. Both had received high scores, probably not for something spectacularly physical. Mentioning the pin had told her that.
When they get to the house he gestures for her to pull her compact out. Her heart stops when it goes solid red.
The Capitol has changed the codes. She can't block them anymore.
They quietly shuffle from room to room, hoping that Madge's compact will flicker to green or yellow, but it only burns crimson.
After hours, after the sun has sunk below the trees in the distance, they finally come to the grim realization that nowhere is probably safe. They're trapped, snared like one of Katniss and Gale's rabbits.
Without speaking, her father leads her to his study, begins pulling boxes of papers out from cabinets and handing them to her. She's heavily loaded down when he finally motions for her to follow him.
They go out, onto the porch, then down and across the lawn, to the little shed Madge and her Poppa had used years ago to store supplies for her garden. Inside, her father pulls a small bucket out. He produces a packet of matches, strikes one, puts it to one of the newspapers, and drops it into the bucket.
His eyes glow in flickering light. He holds up one of the papers, indicates Madge should read, then gestures to the bucket.
Her stomach turns, unsure what she's about to learn in the many boxes.
It starts out mundane enough. She and her father pour over newspapers, searching for something, anything, Madge might've missed when she had been going over them with the others during training. They dig through transfer papers for all the new Peacekeepers, including Thread, examine the updates on the other Districts more closely, hoping to find some clue as to what might be coming their way.
When they can't, only end up with more of the same and a bucket of fire and ash, Madge feels her dread start to overwhelm her.
Then they get to the larger boxes, ones she can't imagine contain anything good within them.
There are maps, diagrams of the mines, letters from foremen discussing possible fixes for unsafe shafts dated just before the collapse Madge knew had killed Gale and Katniss' fathers. It makes her insides turn.
As she picks through the papers she finds maps of the land outside of Twelve, Madge recognizes the mark on a line representing the fence, the point where Katniss had taken her out into the woods. There are trails leading away from the demarcation of Twelve, through the woods, towards an unknown point. An elaborate diagram with almost illegible writing on it, showing what must be a breaker for an electrical circuit of some kind, Madge stares at it for a while before she makes out the words 'no override' in the spindly handwriting.
She finds letters from other Mayors. They seem bland at first, boring even, until Madge's father hands her a scrap of paper with a code on it.
It becomes much less mundane after that.
Discussions that seem to go back years, talks of contingency plans, what would be done should the Capitol decide to wipe one of the outer Districts again, are woven through each letter. Guerrilla warfare, the likes of which Madge has only read about in books her father and Mr. Abernathy had smuggled to her over the years, is encouraged if worse comes to worse.
Then newer letters turn up, talks of the revolts that are smaller, but clearly no less effective, in Four and Three that are making life a little less comfortable for those in the Capitol. They talk of what the other Districts can do, Nine and Ten might burn fields, but not until the very end, to protect Eleven and Twelve, the weakest Districts strategically.
Her father burns the papers, gives Madge a look.
When every last paper is nothing but ash, the fire is smothered out, Madge follows her father out.
"You understand?" He whispers when they reach the halfway point between the house and the shed.
Madge nods.
She's still piecing together some of it, but she understands most of it.
He's giving her the knowledge to protect herself. Things are only going to get worse, and he wants her to know that this is the plan. That it's probably no longer a matter of if but when the Capitol strikes. Like the Tributes, the people of the District will be denied a proper goodbye if the Capitol has any say in it.