Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
In the Looking Glass, pt 5
AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing, and for all y'all here in the States, have a fun and safe Memorial Day.
#######
She spends the next day with her mother, hiding in her room. Madge reads stories out loud to her, simple things with faded pages and happy endings.
It isn't a certainty that they'll survive this, whatever this is going to be. Katniss and Peeta's deaths, which are hard to think about but are an almost inevitability given the circumstances, might earn them their place of the country's ignored child back. That's doubtful though, too much has happened, is happening, for them to allow a District like Twelve to continue on.
They'll be made an example of.
Madge falls asleep on the chaise in her parents' room, doesn't wake for dinner or to put on her nightgown, just sleeps straight through to the next morning.
"Wake up, love, you need to get ready."
Her mother comes into focus, her pale hair floating around her head and a vague look still floating in her eyes.
"The Hawthorne boy is here to see you."
Eyes flickering over to the little clock on her mother's bedside table, Madge tries not to groan. It's only eight thirty. Why is Vick up so early?
She runs a hand through her hair, tries to smooth out the tangles that have formed during her too long sleep, before getting up and wandering out to the hall.
Still yawning, she goes down the back stairs, into the kitchen.
"Nice look."
A deep voice, most definitely not Vick's chuckles from over by the door.
Madge's eyes snap open; all traces of sleepy fog evaporate from her mind when she spots Gale.
He's wearing his boots, the ones he normally wore when he and Katniss dropped strawberries off to her a lifetime ago. There's a little smirk on his lips as he takes in her doughy eyed, bed-headed, and rumpled appearance.
Fighting the urge to run back up the stairs, Madge slowly walks to the counter, makes sure the little island is between the two of them.
She isn't certain, but she guesses he's here because she missed the scores, scores she had advanced knowledge of last year. He'll know she knew them again this year and he'll be angry with her, she just knows it, for not getting to the Everdeens', not giving them warning.
"Prim said you were supposed to come by for the scores." He says it calmly, but his eyes flicker.
"Something came up." She hopes he catches her tone, the anxiety in her voice and eyes.
They can't talk, she can't tell him that they're tumbling further down the hole Peeta and Katniss had started digging when they won their Game.
His eyes narrow, glance around the room. He gets it and she's instantly relieved he isn't going to argue with her, make her show her cards.
For a minute he gnaws on his cheek, likely coming up with his own veiled question. He doesn't seem to be able to, though, and lets out a long sigh.
"You coming to the interviews tonight?"
Of course she is. It's mandatory.
She nods.
"Come stand with us," he forces a small smile. "Vick missed you last night."
Despite the dire straits they're in, she laugh, and laughs, and laughs…
Her chest starts to hurt, she laughs so hard. The past two days worth of anxiety, fear, anticipation, bubble over at his little joke about his brother's little crush on her.
Suddenly, Gale's arms are around her, crushing her to his chest, fingers running through her hair as he murmurs soothing noises to her, trying to calm her, though she doesn't know why.
His shirt is damp against her cheek and she realizes why he's holding her. She's started crying again. Damn.
"It'll be okay," he tells her, a breathy whisper into her hair. She can smell his breakfast, something spicy, on his breath.
It won't be okay, though, she knows that. They've fallen over the precipice and it's only a matter of time until they hit the bottom. Everything is so complicated now, there are too many players in this Game, and as much as she's trying to understand it all, she's just seventeen. Part of her wants to curl up, next to her still slightly oblivious mother, and let the world burn around her. It isn't as if she owes any of it her concern.
Besides, what difference can one person make in the world?
Unless they're Katniss, Madge thinks the answer might be 'not much'.
Madgecertainly won't make much of a difference.
Her head shakes, silently trying to tell him it's all a lost cause, that they're all doomed. He doesn't seem to catch it though, just holds her tighter, rubs soothing circles on her back.
"Stand with us tonight, okay?"
Gale doesn't know any of that though, has only his blissful ignorance of all the machinations floating in the air around him. At any rate, he's got his anger and his family to fight for, to make a difference for. He has a purpose, a place in the world, at least for now. Madge never will, and she knows it.
She pulls back, wipes the tears from her face, and nods.
Why shouldn't she have a few more hours or days of what little happiness she can muster?
#######
Gale leaves after Madge promises to meet him and his family for the viewing. There's no point in him staying, she can't tell him anything, and that's what he wants, information.
A little bitterness settles in her mouth. That's all she's good for, information.
For Katniss and Peeta. For Gale. For her father.
Hot tears begin trailing down her cheeks again, stinging her eyes.
What had she done so wrong in life to earn such a lowly position? Didn't she matter for the sake of being herself?
It certainly didn't seem so.
"Don't cry, love."
Her mother drifts in, settles down on her comforter and gives Madge a soft smile.
"Things will get better," she says with an airy sort of certainty.
"No, mother, they won't," she snaps. Instantly she feels her heart sink. Her mother is only trying to comfort her, and she probably honestly believes things will improve. She only has the vaguest idea of what is going on.
"I suppose you're right," her mother sighs.
Madge frowns, "What?"
A small smile tugs up on her mother's lips, the traces of her faded beauty flickering through, "Haymitch isn't coming home. He told me goodbye." She picks at a spot on the comforter, "Or maybe he is and I won't be here. I'm not sure."
It always amazes Madge how much her mother picks up. Or perhaps Mr. Abernathy had told her something, he had an inside track, though it would be a stupid move to tell someone as constantly hazy as her mother anything.
Either way, she's hit the truth of their numbered days on the head. They won't be seeing him, probably ever again.
#######
"She burns so well doesn't she, Val?"Madge's mother sighs airily.
She's managed to leave the house to accompany Madge to the interviews, smiles and laughs at the plainly furious Victors. It seems she understand their anger so much better than anyone else, nods in agreement to each of their treasonous speeches. Madge wishes her father had been allowed to come, help her brush off the odd stares her mother receives, but Thread had 'asked' him to help one of the new officials go over some paperwork to open up some of the closed mine shafts.
"He's just trying to catch us in a lie," her father told her that morning in the garden, just barely a whisper. "He won't though."
When Katniss comes on stage, dressed in her gown for a wedding that will never happen, she seems to anticipate the disaster brewing under the beautiful surface.
"What? I don't understand," Prim frowns, turns to Gale. "What happened to her dress?"
Madge's mother smiles serenely, doesn't take her eyes from the screen, "She's a mockingjay."
And she is. Just like her pin, the pin Madge had given to her, not anticipating what danger it would create.
The crowd starts moving around them, murmuring with confusion. They don't understand the significance of their Victor's transformation, but they sense something.
They're still shuffling, confused, when Peeta takes the stage, drops a bomb no one could have anticipated.
Katniss is pregnant.
Madge is almost positive it's a lie, something Peeta has concocted in his brilliant mind to throw off the Capitol's stride, its plan to end its Victors. Instantly, almost involuntarily, Madge's eyes flicker to Gale, wondering if he knows it isn't true, that the girl he's so in love with isn't carrying another man's child. He simply stares, though, his face giving away nothing.
The crowd, both on the screen and in the Square, are in shambles. There's yelling on the screen, the Capitolites are in hysterics, a larger scale version of what the little troop that had been in Twelve last year had done. The people of Twelve seem poised to follow suit. Madge gets pummeled, pulled from the group.
Katniss, their Victor, is pregnant. To send her back into the Arena is unthinkable, cruel, even by Capitol standards.
People are yelling, screaming, something flies through the air, glass shatters, sprays out. Madge feels tiny shards hit her, tastes blood on her lip.
Then a shot fires off, silencing them.
"QUIET!"
The flood of people, just moments earlier in a whirlwind, are instantly silent, still.
Thread is up on a platform. He has a gun lifted high above his head as he glares out, a cold smile on his face, eyes glittering in the dying sun.
"Everyone will return to their homes," he tells them coolly, his voice never rising. It's as if he's having a conversation with the entire District. "The Mines will remain closed until after the bloodbath."
He fires another shot, letting them know he means what he says and that if anyone steps so much as a toe out of line he won't hesitate to put them down.
Madge turns, desperate to find her mother.
She tries to push through the crowd, now flooding out of the Square, when a hand catches her as she gets pushed down one of the off shooting roads.
Turning, she finds Emmer, pulling her from the crush of people, over to the bakery.
"I have to find my mo-"
Before she can finish the sentence her eyes land on her mother, clinging to Gale's arm.
They're all huddled in the bakery, in the front room. Posy has her face pressed to the glass case with the display of cookies in it.
"You okay?" Emmer asks as he hands her a cloth, motions for her to wipe her mouth.
She's too stunned by how things have gone to say anything, just nods.
"Oh, love, look at your lip," her mother lets go of Gale, comes to Madge, reaches out and dabs her lip with the cloth.
"He really knows how to get a party started, huh?" Rhys says. He's by the window, watching the still frightened crowd disperse.
Emmer nods and glances at Gale, probably expecting him to say something, but he only receives a glare.
For a moment Madge doesn't know who they're talking about, and then it hits her.
Peeta.
She suddenly feels like a very poor friend, so wrapped up in her own sorrows, her own broken heart that she hadn't done much checking up on the Mellark boys. Just like she'd missed the cues with Peeta and Katniss' faltering relationship, she'd missed the pain Peeta's brothers had been suffering through.
"It isn't true, you know?" Emmer says suddenly, his eyes still on Gale. "She's no more pregnant than Madge."
He's never been the most comforting person, Madge knows that, but he's making the attempt. Like Peeta, he's trying to comfort, but in his own way. Emmer, like most of the District, knows Gale loves Katniss, and his good heart won't let him allow Gale to think something so untrue if it's going to cause him pain.
Madge shoots him a small smile, a flicker of laughter at the little joke at her expense.
Gale just nods, crosses his arms over his chest and glares out the window, watching for an opening to leave.
"Why would he say she was knocked up if she isn't?" Rory asks, plopping down at the little dessert table chair next to where Madge is standing.
For a moment Madge is quiet, unsure if this is a safe topic to discuss. The people who matter, the ones that had fixed the Games, the Reaping, the ones who are listening in, are probably already perfectly aware that Katniss isn't pregnant, that this is a ploy by Peeta. Nothing Madge says, none of her conjectures, or in their eyes affirmations, will make any difference other than to make it look like she had a hand in concocting the lie. Somehow Madge doesn't think any of it makes a difference to her now.
"Because," she begins carefully, "it'll create outrage. Those people in the Capitol were already upset about losing their beloved Victors, add onto that not getting their much anticipated wedding and now a baby, they'll be beyond inconsolable. There'll be trouble."
That's the only way to change things, upset the citizens of the Capitol, and Peeta has fanned the flames under them to make them boil over.
"They might change the rules," Prim perks up, her blue eyes shining. "They'll change the rules and send them all home?"
Madge shakes her head, "No. They've already been proven fallible once." Katniss' trick with the berries was a hard slap in the face. An insult beyond all the revolts. "They won't let anyone, especially not Peeta or Katniss, get them to blink again."
Vick flops next to Rory, turns his wide gray eyes up to Madge, "Then why bother?"
That she can't say out loud.
She's finally pieced all the letters she and her father had burned together, all the notes and papers, Peeta has helped her paste the disjointed puzzle into a picture.
This isn't about saving the Victors, it's not about saving the Districts, it's about taking the Capitol down.
"Two Victors would prove they can be manipulated, even by the lowliest of us. They won't stand for it."
And the Capitol most certainly isn't standing for it. It isn't going to go down without a fight. Katniss and Peeta had shown the Capitol's weakness and now those really in charge are lashing out.
Sacrifices will be made, and Madge is fairly certain Twelve and its Victors will be offered at the altar, perhaps as martyrs, a rally point for the others. Katniss is already the face of rebellion, she gave her fire to the battered people of the Districts. Now they're going to burn her, Peeta, all of Twelve, to feed the flames and keep the fire blazing.
All the plans, years, perhaps decades, in the making, are being pulled out, dusted off and read. Anyone with a rebellious bone in their body, that's had the ability to connect with those outside their District, is readying themselves for a fight.
#######
There is no recap of the interviews. Madge wouldn't be surprised if they destroyed every copy of the show in existence.
Madge's father is 'allowed' to attend the bloodbath. Seeing as the District was no more well behaved in his absence than in his presence, Thread must've realized her father isn't the one moving the pieces in the District. No one is.
Prim is pale, clinging to her mother and Gale as the screen flickers to life.
"It's an ocean," Madge's mother sighs.
"Have you seen the ocean before, Mrs. Undersee?" Vick asks, squinting up at the cool sun overhead.
She shakes her head, pale blonde hair floating with the motion.
"Then how do you know?" Rory frowns at her, giving her a scowl worthy of his older brother. "It might just be a lake."
Madge's mother gives him one of her serene, infuriating smiles, "No, dear, it can't be."
Gale must hear them. He doesn't turn, doesn't take his eyes from Katniss on the screen, but he voices his own question, his tone edging with irritation at her vagueness. "Why can't it be, Mrs. Undersee?"
"Because," she sighs, "they won't be able to drink it if it's the ocean."
Saltwater. It's so simple, so devastating. Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.
The lack of water, or the abundance of undrinkable water, is quickly pushed to the backs of their minds, though, once the fighting starts.
It seems to go by in a flurry, which only makes sense. These are seasoned killers, not children with shiny toys. Madge loses track of who is killed and who does the killing. She honestly doesn't want to know.
Before they know it, the cameras are following Katniss, Peeta, the elderly lady from Four, from a Game so long ago it's mostly been forgotten, and, to everyone's great surprise, Finnick Odair.
They vanish into what Madge recognizes from her childhood picture books, a birthday gift from Mr. Abernathy, as a jungle. It's dark, probably hotter than it appears, full of tangled vines and roots.
There's a tense moment, between Finnick Odair and Katniss, but Peeta diffuses it, easily, succinctly, and they move on to the more pressing issue. Water.
They walk on, deeper into the artificial jungle for what feels like ages, but there's no sign of water anywhere.
Vick and Posy begin to get antsy, as do most of the younger children being forced to watch in the Square.
Any other year and the Peacekeepers would've ignored them. They all had been that age before, knew the limited attention span children had. This year is different though. This year Thread has his cold eyes on the crowd, watching for misbehavior, practically thirsting for it.
They slither through the crowd, little switches in their hands, swatting any children that sit down or begin to drift into such terrible offences as pushing a sibling. Any parent that takes up for them is swiftly carted off to the newly expanded stocks to be taught a lesson on child rearing.
Thread is being petty now, picking on the littlest of the District simply because he can.
"How can he do this?" Gale's face is pulled back in disgust at the sight of the crying children of one of his crew members, clinging to their mother, as their father is dragged away.
Madge's father sighs, rubs his worn hands over his forehead. "He's been given full authority. All I am is a figurehead, for the time being anyway."
It's a bitter pill to swallow, hearing what she'd already known for weeks come out of her father's mouth. They are at the mercy of a madman, and there's no one that can help them.
Their attention is pulled back to the screen when Katniss calls out and Peeta is thrown through the air.
He's dead.
Peeta is limp on the ground as Katniss, in a frantic, terror filled frenzy, screams his name.
Finnick Odair comes into the scene, pushes her, hard, out of the way. Then, in what Madge thinks may be the strangest scene ever played out in any Game, Finnick begins-
"Uh, is he kissing,Peeta?" Vick looks monumentally confused.
Posy begins giggling into her mother's side, "He is!"
Rory, normally quick with an inappropriate comment, is too shocked to even make a face at the display.
Gale's eyebrows shoot up and his eyes flicker from his mother to Madge, as if asking 'What exactly are we seeing?'
Even the Peacekeepers stop their juvenile swatting and stare up at the screen, trying to figure out when the Games became a sordid Capitol program.
"He isn't kissing him," Katniss' mother chuckles. "He's revivinghim."
Prim's eyebrows scrunch together in thought, then her face brightens, "Do you think it'll work, mom?"
The words have no sooner passed her lips than Peeta coughs, comes back from the land of the dead to be assaulted by his supposedly pregnant fiancée.
As Katniss hugs Peeta, reassures herself of his being alive, and sobs a sticky mess all over him, Madge keeps her eyes on Gale.
His jaw tenses, she can almost imagine him chewing his tongue at the display, swallowing down blood and bile at having to watch them. No words pass his lips though; they stay tightly pressed together as he hugs the happily crying Prim.
#######
They're trapped in the Square for several more hours, listening to Katniss make insinuations about the doctors that fixed her ear as the reason for her knowledge about the force field.
Howdidshe know? It perplexes Madge. She doesn't buy that Katniss has magical hearing. Katniss isn't stupid, but she's certainly not as clever as Peeta, and Madge thinks bitterly, not nearly as clever as Madge. How did Katniss know the force field was there?
When the cannons finally fire, eight dead, they let those that haven't been carted off head for their homes.
Gale, his family, and the Everdeens are invited by Madge's mother to come to their house, have some celebratory ice cream.
"Your children helped make it, Hazelle-dear."
Mrs. Hawthorne chuckles, "I noticed."
"I suppose it can't hurt," Mrs. Everdeen says, eliciting a happy noise from Prim.
With Vick and Rory leading the way, they all carefully make their way to the Mayor's house, watchful of Peacekeepers the entire way.
The moment they open the gate Madge senses something is off. The door is locked, she hears the reassuring click as her father unlocks the kitchen door, and nothing has been moved when they enter the kitchen and Mrs. Hawthorne scolds her children as they race to the icebox. Still, there's something amiss, Madge just can't spot it.
Then something pokes her in the back.
She nearly jumps out of her skin, lets out a scream and lunges at Gale, pushing him away from the attack.
Someone, a girl, starts laughing.
Birdy Alameda steps out of the dark hallway Madge had been backed up to, still laughing at the noise that had come out of Madge's mouth.
She turns her mirthful eyes to Gale, gives him a wink, "Miss me, Dorothy?"