Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
In the Looking Glass, pt 7
AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.
#######
Tired, right down to her bones, Madge goes to her room and finds a shadow casting in from outside her window.
Quietly, she pads over and pulls it open.
"Gale?" She squints at him in the moonlight. "What are you doing here?"
His eyes are red rimmed, blurry, and there's an all too familiar droop to his face.
"She's going to choose him," he says finally. His face turns up to the moon, bathes him in a silver light. "She's going to die for him."
Madge gestures for him to come in; she doesn't want any prowling Peacekeepers to find him sitting on her roof.
A little clumsily, exhaustion and drink again she assumes, he tumbles in, but doesn't make a sound when he rolls onto the floor.
Once she gets him up, walks him to the side of her bed, they both sit.
"Gale, Peeta will get Katniss to fight for her life, not his."
"Doesn't matter," he shakes his head. "Did you see how she acted when she thought he was dead?" He snorts, "Throwing herself on him." Gale makes a noise and Madge almost laughs. "If Odair and the old woman hadn't been there who knows what we'd have seen."
"Not much," Madge assures him. "They have special pay channels for that kind of thing. Wouldn't want it on national airwaves and not get compensation."
She's trying to get a smile out of him, but it doesn't work. He just stares at the wall across from them in stony silence.
Finally, when Madge takes his hand, gives it a reassuring squeeze, he snaps out of it. He turns and gives her an almost desperate look.
"Can I stay here tonight?"
He's exhausted, but as far as she'd been able to tell, her initial guess that he was also a little drunk isn't true.
"It isn't fair to ask…" He runs a hand over his face, rethinks what he's saying. His gray eyes seem to glow as he settles them on her. "I just sleep better when I'm here, and I need sleep."
Gale is seeking some kind of affirmation of his worth as a person, she supposes. Katniss, at least in his mind, is passing him over. Her clear affection for Peeta, whatever form that may be, is putting a strain on him, breaking his sense of self worth. Watching her sob over Peeta's lifeless body, her panic, and then relief at his revival has cost Gale something deep within himself. It makes his baiting Birdy a little more understandable. He might've thought a fight would bleed out some of his hurt. Apparently he was wrong.
Madge can't turn him out though, and not just because of the Peacekeepers. Somewhere, in the cruel recesses of his mind, he knows that. He wouldn't ask otherwise.
Even if Madge isn't the warm body he's seeking at his side, the one he wants, she's the one there. He could've sought any girl, gotten more than just a night's rest, but he's come to Madge. She's his security blanket, and she's far too happy for that title.
Getting up, she takes a chair and props it against the door. Birdy may already know about Madge's midnight visits, might even know about this one, but Madge has no desire to have her run in, knife held high, and flay Gale where he sleeps.
"Take off your boots," she tells him.
Her bed is big enough for the both of them, but when Gale gives her a tug to the bed, less roughly than he had months before, she shakes her head again.
"Please," he whispers. "I'll stay on my side. I promise."
Madge sighs, rubs her hands over her face. She doesn't have time for this. "Why Gale?"
He swallows. She watches his Adam's apple bob, sees his eyes close. "I can't see you when you're over in that chair." His lips press into a line, "I wake up and wonder where you are…You make me feel safe."
A sharp pain stabs at the back of her sternum. She can't tell him 'no' now. Damn him.
Carefully she positions herself at the far edge of the mattress; lets Gale have the other half of the bed.
It only takes a few minutes to fall asleep. She's exhausted, emotionally and physically, and her mind shuts down.
She wakes, though, when she feels an unfamiliar weight on her body.
Her eyes fly open and she finds dark hair in her face.
Gale's cheek is at the top of her sternum. He's almost stomach to stomach with her, arms wrapped tight around her, one hand between her shoulders and one resting on her waist.
Madge almost pushes him off, he'd lied about staying on his side of the bed in brilliant fashion, but doesn't. His face is so much more relaxed than it had been. He looks far too peaceful for her to ruin it.
Instead, she presses a kiss to his forehead and drifts off to sleep again.
#######
Madge sits up in the earliest morning light and finds Gale gone. She hadn't expected him to stay. He wouldn't want his family knowing he'd been out all night.
He comes back, though, along with his family, and the Everdeens. They show up, a few hours after the sun rises, same as the last Games, pressed and dressed in their finest. Gale doesn't breath a word of his previous night's sleeping arrangements. He doesn't so much as give Madge a bigger smile, and she feels a stone settle in her stomach.
She knows she shouldn't have expected him to, but it still stings.
Birdy slowly comes down the stair to meet them, but doesn't make them over, doesn't so much as take a comb to their hair.
"Where are the reporters?" Prim asks.
Madge had wondered that too. She'd expected them to make a racket, roll in, inebriated and loud, in the early morning. None came, though.
"They aren't coming," Birdy tells her. She waves absently at herself, "I'm it."
"Great," Gale mutters.
"Don't worry Dorothy, I'll be sure to use proper lighting on you and only shoot your good side," Birdy smirks.
Gale's mouth turns down, "I hate you."
"Hate you more," Birdy tells him cheerfully.
She produces a small camera, no bigger than her palm, does a few short shots, then goes to her room, telling Madge to 'give her a holler' when the Mellarks come.
"She's less help this year than last," Gale mutters.
"She's doing all she can," Madge snaps. She won't let him criticize what may be her only real friend in the world.
Everyone quiets, Madge guesses it's because she so rarely is harsh with them, but she doesn't care. They're careening to a messy end and there's nothing they can do but wait.
She sinks to the couch, lets her eyes fall to the floor and over to the television.
Katniss and Peeta have teamed up with the pair from Three, one of which is the woman Birdy had mentioned, Wiress. She's more of a disaster than Madge's mother, talking nonsense and annoying the other woman, who it turns out, is Johanna Mason.
Gale watches in interest for a few minutes before turning back to Madge. He doesn't say anything else, though.
Vick drops into the seat next to her, leans his head on her shoulder. He's exhausted. They all are.
There are bags under their eyes, shadows of long, restless nights. Prim is thinner, despite her now steady diet. Compared to last year, they're all much worse for wear.
Mrs. Oberst comes in, leading the Mellarks to the back living area Madge, the Everdeens, and Hawthornes occupy.
"I'll get Phoebe," she tells them, without so much as giving any of them a glance.
They all stand, in thickly awkward silence, for several minutes before Rhys breaks the tension.
"You, uh, studying circuits?" He picks up one of Madge's father's book, earmarked and battered, he'd left on the table.
"Oh," Madge shakes her head, "no. My dad."
He nods, swallows thickly. "This is a very tense room." His eyes cut to Emmer, "Has someone elsedied?"
He probably means it as a joke, but it's painfully unfunny given the circumstances.
"Okay…" Rhys flops against the wall. Emmer rolls his eyes, mutters 'idiot', not quite under his breath.
Mrs. Mellark has her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looks put out at the whole ordeal, as though she's being inconvenienced at being asked to possibly help her own son.
Madge's heart almost breaks for Mr. Mellark though. He's too sweet a man for this to be happening to. He has his hat rumpled and twisted in his pale hands. His wide eyes, red rimmed, are fixed on the television, taking in the last visions of his youngest son that he may ever get.
"Hello, Kolach," Madge hears her mother's airy voice float over her.
She glides down the stairs and looks around the room, seemingly shocked by the abundance of people in her living room. "Should I make tea?"
"They're fine, Mrs. Undersee," Birdy jumps down the stairs, taking them two at a time. "Save your tea. Never know when you might need it."
She puts a new chip, some new recording device, into the camera and points it at the Mellarks.
As she'd done only a few hours earlier, Birdy does a few shots, asks a few harmless questions, then dismisses the Mellarks.
She dashes back up the stairs, presumably to edit and send her snippets back to the Capitol, and Peeta's brothers both frown at her back.
"That was much less…intense than last year," Rhys says, giving Madge a quick look.
"Well, they aren't coming back," Mrs. Mellark snaps. "No reason to waste her time."
Emmer shrugs weakly, keeps his eyes on the ground, and Mr. Mellark goes a little paler at her statement.
"I'll see you out," Madge hears her mother tell them shortly after. She gives Mrs. Mellark a small look, just north of irritated, as she passes her.
When they've gone, Mrs. Everdeen sighs, "I suppose we should go too."
"I was hoping she'd come back down and tell us something," Prim tells Madge quietly as she stands to go.
Posy is just untangling herself from one of Madge's mother's afghans when the screaming starts.
It's faint, and at first Madge thinks someone is being tortured in the Square.
"Who is it?" Mrs. Everdeen runs to a window in a panic. She makes a frustrated noise when she realizes that despite being very near the Square, she can't see it without being in one of the upstairs rooms.
Visions of someone, a young girl by the sound of it, fill Madge's head. She sounds terrified. She sounds familiar.
Madge looks at the television. They've missed several hours, haven't been giving it much attention other than to note that Katniss and Peeta are still alive. It's turned down low, just barely audible.
With a flick of her wrist Madge turns the volume up and the scream fills the air.
"It's you, Prim."
The scream is familiar, it's a scream she'd hear just last night when Birdy had attacked Gale.
They watch, listen, all frozen in horror as each of their voices, Prim, Rory, Vick, Posy, Gale, and even Madge's fill the air, amplified to create the most blood-chilling effect possible.
"How?" Mrs. Everdeen asks no one.
Gale, however, has already caught on to the source of the screams.
He's already heading for the stairs, simmering with disdain, when Birdy comes bounding down.
She stops a few steps up, just out of his reach, and arches her eyebrows.
"Are you constipated?"
Gale's arm jerks, he jabs his finger in the direction of the television. "You recorded our screaming the other night." His face is darkening. "You made us yell on purpose so you could send the audio back to the Capitol."
Birdy's head tilts, her eyebrows scrunch together, as though she doesn't quite understand. When one of Prim's screams reaches her, she brightens.
"Oh, that." She nods. "Yeah, I did that." With another hop she jumps down the remaining steps, nearly knocks Gale over. "I was asked to get sample screams. More realistic feel to them than audio alterations. I'd planned on popping out of doors and hiding snakes in toilets, but you provided me with such a golden opportunity that I didn't have to."
Prim has started crying, wringing her hands at Katniss' distress on the television. She sinks to the floor in front of the television.
Vick takes Madge's hand, gives it a squeeze as he watches Gale teeter closer and closer to homicide.
Birdy's green eyes take in the room, hovering on each occupant. "By the way, I hope everyone in here likes snake fry, because I have several that I really don't have much use for now."
No one pays her much heed.
Once Katniss and Finnick escape the Jabberjays the two families leave.
Gale gives Birdy one last threatening glare before he goes.
"I hope you get what's coming to you someday," he tells her roughly.
Birdy simply smiles at him, "I hope you do too, Dorothy." Her features twist into a scowl, "And I hope it's every bit as bitter as mine."
She doesn't apologize, just turns the television down, goes to the kitchen, and makes herself a cup of coffee.
"The wranglers back home survive on this stuff," she says as she takes a drink. "My dad certainly did."
"That was cruel, you know?" Madge doesn't understand how she can be so cavalier about all of this.
"I know," Birdy says as she adds some sugar to her coffee. "I don't care, but I know." She sighs, "Madgie, there is still a Game on. I can't stop playing until the end."
#######
Madge, her parents, and Birdy stay up late watching the Games.
Birdy laughs, a mirthless, cold thing, when Peeta gives Katniss the locket.
"He would've been so good with us," she mumbles to herself.
When Katniss and Peeta start kissing Madge decides to go to bed.
She's relieved to find her room empty. No shadows from her window, no boys sitting beside her bed.
Her sleep is dreamless, but cut off by bright sunlight.
After washing up, brushing her teeth, and getting dressed, Madge slowly makes her way down the stairs. It's nearly midday.
When she enters the kitchen a pair of Peacekeepers, new ones, ones she has never seen before, are bidding her mother and Birdy goodbye.
Madge lets the backdoor close on them before she steps through the entryway from the hall.
"Who were they?" She asks. Peacekeepers aren't in the habit of making stops by her home. Or they hadn't.
"They were just bringing me a delivery," Birdy tells her.
"Since when are Peacekeepers your personal couriers?"
"Since always," Birdy smiles sadly. "I've have the gift of making friends with people that I shouldn't."
They finish off their lunch, check to make sure Katniss and Peeta are still alive, then head out. Birdy wants to see the fence for some unknown reason.
"Few of your pickaxes and this could be down in a minute or two," she says, eyeing the wire. "Anyone with any sense can see that, right?"
She's gnawing on her lip and Madge gets the impression she isn't asking a rhetorical question.
"Should you-"
"They got the bread from Three," Birdy cuts her off. "It's moving quick."
"I don't-"
"They'll be coming for me soon," Birdy begins rubbing her arms with her hands, as if she's cold. "They're gonna kill me, but I'm not gonna let them. I'm not gonna be part of the show."
Her head jerks, gesturing for Madge to follow her up the fence line.
"Mr. Haymitch has a drinking buddy," Birdy tells her. "We got him schematics of your fence here and asked him to give us the best way to get it down."
She pulls a roll of a shimmering florescent tape out, begins marking the poles.
"He told us that while it would be easiest to cut the wires, it would be quicker to push over the poles." She cuts off a piece of tape with her teeth, crosses it into an 'X', then puts it at the base of one of the support poles. "You tell that boy to have his buddies wear those helmets of theirs when they come out here. Use the lights on the tops and this tape will reflect back, tell them where to hit with their picks."
"What about the electricity?"
"Don't worry about that. It won't be an issue when the time comes. That's why they'll need lights."
She takes a short break, wipes a line of sweat from her forehead. Dropping to the ground, she starts picking at a few blades of grass, letting them catch in the wind and blow away.
"Now I'm going to tell you something, and you need to listen really closely to me, okay?"
Madge nods, drops to the ground facing her.
Birdy frowns at the ground in front of her, her eyebrows knit together and she sighs.
"When all this goes down, District Thirteen is going to come in and gather up whoever is left." Madge starts to interrupt, but Birdy holds up her hand. "You heard me right. Thirteen, bunch of dirty cowards. They've been hiding underground like a bunch of Mutt-prairie dogs. They've been hiding for decades while we suffered, and now, after we've done all the dangerous shit, they wanna sweep in and 'help'." She rolls her eyes. "I don't care what the others think. I don't trust them, and you shouldn't either." One of her unmanicured finger juts out, to the horizon. "When the time comes, you go with my boys, understand?"
It's all completely insane, but at the same time it makes perfect sense in the mad world Madge is increasingly living in.
"How soon?"
"Soon enough I want to get every pole marked as quickly as possible," Birdy answers as she pushes herself from the ground.
She holds out her hand for Madge, offering to help her up. Madge stare up at her.
"Why are you helping me?"
Birdy shrugs. "Why shouldn't I?"
"I'm serious." Madge gets to her feet. "Why?"
It takes her a minute to gather her thought, but she finally sighs. "You remind me of my siblings. In different ways." She makes a face. "And honestly, there aren't many people who like me."
Madge snorts.
"Shocking, I know," she chuckles. Her expression falls. "I haven't been able to save many people in my life. I want to save at least one."
#######
Madge, in an effort to feel useful, plays look-out, but no one comes.
It's late evening before they're done, though Madge gets the impression Birdy is stalling. She doesn't know why though. Madge can already imagine the Anthem about to be played and the dead of the day's pictures being prepared. She wonders, sadly, how many are dead now.
As they come up on Madge's house, only a few steps from the backdoor, Birdy stop and pulls out a piece of paper, among other things. It has several intricate looking drawings on it.
"Got this last night, came from Five." She rubs her eyes. "Give it to your dad."
"Why don't you?" She'll see him when he gets back from the Justice Building.
Birdy jerks her head, inclines her chin to the house, "I'm not gonna be seeing him."
Not understanding, Madge frowns, squints up at the backdoor. Just inside the window, she sees three white uniforms.
#######
Hesitantly, Madge and Birdy enter the backdoor, letting it gently click shut behind them.
"Miss Alameda, so good of you to join us," Thread gives her a cool smile.
"Well," she shrugs, "where else would I go?"
He ignores her question, makes a motion with his hands.
Madge gets pushed out of the way as a pair of Peacekeepers flank, Birdy.
"You were called, several times, Miss Alameda," Thread tells her. "Why didn't you answer?"
"Turned off my communicator," she tells him simply. "It kept alerting me when my friends were killed, live and in living color. Got a bit sick of it."
"Turning it off isn't part of your terms. Surely you remember that?" He narrows his eyes, daring her to feign ignorance.
Birdy's only response is an unconcerned shrug.
"You are being called back to the Capitol," Thread tells her, his cool smile widening. "Post haste."
Birdy's eyes roll, she lets out the sigh of someone long suffering in the presence of complete fools.
Before anyone can stop her she reaches up, puts something small and dark in her mouth.
Then she bites down.
It isn't until a little juice, so purple it's almost black, dribbles out the side of her mouth that Madge knows what she's done.
Thread realizes it too, lunges at her, knocking her to the ground, tries to get his fingers in her mouth, to pull the deadly berries out. It does him no good though, she's swallowed them already.
Jumping to his feet, Thread pulls out his gun, aims it at Birdy's head. "Spit it out girl!"
"Go ahead," she smirks. "I'm reallyscared."
He cocks his gun; Madge feels her mother's cool fingers gripping into the back of her dress at the metallic sounding click.
"I will kill you!"
Birdy shakes a little. It takes Madge a second to catch it, but she's laughing.
"Oh no! Not that!" Her breathing quickens. The pupils of her eyes seem to overtake the green of her irises. She gives Madge a small, purple stained smile, "His drugs work quickly."
Something like peace, or maybe just exhaustion from her life of constantly playing Games, comes over Birdy's features.
Despite Thread's threats, despite having made it this far in whatever Game she's been playing for so long, Birdy closes her eyes.
Madge imagines a canon firing for the last Tribute of a long ended Game.
#######
*Birdy's last words are from Romeo and Juliet. She just wanted to quote something classic in her final moment.