Chapter 11: Forest Date
"And then Zipper jumped on the kid, knocked his ice cream cone to the ground, and ate it," Gale recounts grimly as he leads Madge by the hand across the surprisingly fast-moving mountain stream they're fording. "The kid and the mom both started carrying on like it was the end of the world so I bought him another cone, but the jerks at the newspaper only ran the picture of me handing it over, making it look like I just go around buying treats for people."
Madge laughs at how insulted he sounds, and how he blames the newspaper rather than Zipper for the incident. "How terrible. You should train Zipper to bite any reporters who think you're nice. He could be a reverse guard dog."
Gale makes an amused sound and then grips her hand more tightly. "Watch out, there's a dip here."
They had to take off their boots to cross this stream and even though her feet and legs are currently in danger of going numb, Madge has been relishing every moment of this trip. Zipper has been, true to his name, zipping back and forth over the slopes, enthusiastically sniffing the rocks and trees as though each one exists for his personal delight. Gale has seemed equally as absorbed with the plants and birds, pausing periodically to count numbers of leaves and look up species names in a book he brought along.
Madge wobbles slightly as she steps into the low point Gale pointed out, sinking deep enough that the water hits the hem of her shorts, but he helps steady her against the current. And even though she finds she can manage on her own the closer they get to the opposite bank, she doesn't let go of his hand.
"Oh, look," she breathes once they reach the other side, pointing across the valley with her free hand. A rugged mountain has crept out from behind the ridge, its avalanche chutes seemingly close enough to touch. "Can we have our picnic here?"
Gale drags his eyes from the mountain back to Madge and nods, and then studies her face for a few seconds before scanning the rocky stream bank for a place to sit. Zipper is still frolicking in the shallower water, ducking his head under the surface occasionally in what Madge assumes is an attempt to catch fish.
They pick a rock near the water with a view of the mountain, where they can dangle their feet in the stream and keep an eye on Zipper. The shadows from the trees are lengthening and Madge doesn't realize how hungry she is until Gale passes her one of the sandwiches they packed.
"The view here reminds me of a painting we had in the parlor at home," she says wistfully as she takes a bite. "It didn't occur to me until now that my dad probably brought it with him when he moved to 12."
"I remember it," Gale says. "A big mountain?"
She nods and smiles sadly at him, appreciating that at least one other person remembers that painting—and that life. The painting had dominated the interior wall of the parlor, and Gale probably saw it when Lulu used to have him wait for her when he arrived for one of their walks/strategy sessions.
"I didn't like that room because everything was so frilly and white," Gale admits. "So I'd look at that mountain and wish I could be there instead. But it was the same way I'd wish we could get rid of the Capitol. Like I knew deep down it would never happen."
It's hard for Madge to believe it did happen, especially on the mornings when she wakes up wondering why she's not in her bed in District 12. She can feel the tightness in her throat threatening to overwhelm her and tries to swallow it, not wanting to let this wonderful, sunny afternoon turn gloomy. Thankfully, Zipper chooses that moment to start a game and drops a partially mangled, disgusting stick on Gale's sandwich.
Gale makes a frustrated sound and hurls the stick into the stream, sending Zipper bounding and splashing after it. "I swear he does this on purpose," Gale says angrily as he inspects his sandwich. To Madge's horror, he brushes off the debris and makes a move to take a bite.
"You can't eat that!" Madge shoves the other half of her own sandwich into his hands. "Here."
She can tell he's holding back a comment about her being a prissy mayor's daughter and is strangely comforted by the familiarity. Hopefully he doesn't guess that she's been thinking about what it would be like to kiss him again and that the idea of him eating a dog slobber-infested sandwich interferes with those thoughts.
Gale accepts her sandwich with narrowed eyes and then pushes his tainted sandwich into the food bag in his backpack.
"Are we doing all right on time before the sun sets?" she asks to change the subject.
"Should be." He twists to glance at the horizon and starts eating the new sandwich. In the meantime, Zipper trots back over with the remnants of his stick and drops it on Madge's legs this time. She picks it up gingerly and tosses it a few feet to the side, where Zipper pounces and sinks to the ground to gnaw it. Then she notices Gale looking at her quizzically.
"What?" She hopes she doesn't look too sweaty and gross; her hair must be a disaster.
"We're actually farther than I thought we'd be. You've been keeping up with me."
"Oh. Good." She smiles, relieved she didn't slow him down. Katniss probably never slowed him down… Katniss also probably never gave him grief about nearly eating something vile, though.
Madge notices his eyes lingering on her legs, stretched out in front of them on the rock and dangling partially in the water, the fragments of Zipper's stick resting on her thighs. She brushes the stick pieces away and is surprised when Gale says, "And your legs are more muscular now than they were back home."
"You used to look at my legs?" She's flattered to know he spent energy thinking about her body when they were in 12, but Gale ruins the compliment by rolling his eyes.
"That's not news, Madge. My point is: you're in good shape for messing with computers all day."
Oh. That's where he was going.
He leans forward to pin her with his eyes. "That's what you said you did: worked with computers. Right?"
"I said 'mostly.'"
"What's the non-mostly part?"
She bites her lip, not sure what she can say and not wanting to give him any reason to worry about her. Her hesitation must not be much comfort, because Gale's expression sours.
"Look," she says levelly, "I'm fine. I've never been caught."
Gale looks over at Zipper, still busy chewing his stick into smithereens, and sits quietly for a few moments before speaking. "You said that on the night of the bombing: that you never get caught. Afterward I thought that was why you hadn't made it—you'd jinxed yourself." Madge stills, surprised he's talking about the night of the bombing. The pain in his voice is a reminder that he thought she was dead for nearly a year… Gale sucks in a breath and turns to face her. "You did get away, though. So maybe you're right that you never get caught. But maybe you're also a little too good at disappearing."
The hint of accusation underlying his words makes Madge bristle, aware that Dusty and Perri don't like it when she's embedded either. Simon can reach her if there's an emergency, but as she studies Gale she thinks about the non-urgent things that she'd like to talk to him about… She wouldn't mind listening to him gripe about the Reconstruction Committee members the way Perri does to Dusty over dinner, or for him to tell her about newspapers committing the unspeakable crime of portraying him as too considerate. And wouldn't it be nice to eat dinner with him, the way she does with Simon when she's in town? Gale probably isn't as elaborate of a cook as Simon, but he could probably pull something together Madge would enjoy. And Gale probably wouldn't harass her about always crashing on his couch.
She blushes when it occurs to her that she might not be sleeping on Gale's couch, and quickly checks to see if he noticed. No, he's pulling his feet out of the stream and reaching for his boots, apparently preparing to continue their hike. There's a hunch in his shoulders suggesting that he feels slightly defeated and Madge realizes that even if he doesn't like how she disappears for work, he would never ask her to quit Covert Intelligence: the whole basis of their friendship has been them each working in their own way to fight the Capitol. His fight has transitioned into standing firm in the public eye for the ideals the rebels fought for, while she's ensuring that nobody is covertly betraying those ideals.
But maybe she could find a way to do that work without enduring so much isolation and secrecy. Maybe she should consider downgrading to an analyst position like Simon had suggested… Although with her luck, Gale would probably pick that exact moment to reconcile with Katniss and flit off to District 12.
#
"I think this is it," Gale announces, looking up from the map as Madge joins him in the middle of the meadow and shrugs off her backpack next to his. He hands her his canteen and gets momentarily entranced watching her drink.
"Is it just me, or did that hill go on forever?" Madge asks. Her lips are still glistening from the water and a stray drop is sliding towards her chin. What would she do if he tried to kiss it away? She doesn't seem to be repulsed by him anymore, but he probably can't just kiss her out of nowhere because she looks cute drinking water. Or walking. Or throwing sticks for Zipper.
"Sorry," Madge says quickly. "I didn't mean to complain. I know you're probably not used to… your hiking partners… complaining."
He decides she's also cute when she's anxious about manners. And of course she would figure out a way to import manners into bushwhacking their way up a mountain. "That hill was long," he allows. Longer than he estimated based on this shit map, one of the government's old copies that hasn't been updated yet.
"This doesn't look like a future quarry," Madge says, looking around at the meadow.
"Not yet," he agrees. "Although there's a rocky cliff over there… Maybe once they clear all the vegetation and topsoil it will look like a quarry." He can't tell what type of rock is underneath the meadow, which he now recognizes as a serious flaw in his plan to double-check the quarry's land request. He had assumed the area would look like the quarries he's seen in District 2, bare rocks already exposed. But he doesn't even know for sure if he's in the right area—it was unclear from the application, and the man in the quarry's office had also been vague. Still, he might as well record as much as he can about this area since he's here.
Sitting down on a nearby rock so he can make handwritten notes on his map, he feels Madge sit next to him, leaning slightly into his side to look over his shoulder as he works on the map. If it were anyone else, he'd elbow them in the gut to get them to back off, but all he can think about is that even this close to Madge still seems too far away.
"What now?" she asks.
He can feel her breath on his ear. If he twisted his head, he could kiss her—she'd melt into him, he could pull her onto his lap, and he's pretty sure he could coax one of those noises out of her—
Get a grip. It's always been too easy to slide into kissing her, but it also has always resulted in complications and they've both been purposefully avoiding talking about the heavier issues… Like making sure she truly understands how different he is from who she thinks she remembers, or how they could be together when she vanishes into what he can only assume are dangerous situations for days or maybe even weeks at a time. They don't have enough time to get into any of that if they want to get back to the car before the sun sets. There's also the little matter of this having been one of the best days he can remember and he doesn't want to risk wrecking it by bringing up all the more painful topics.
He tries to ignore how much her nearness affects him and concentrates on his map. "What now? First, I need a worthwhile map. The company re-surveying these lands hasn't done this area yet. Then I'll ask the quarry company to give me coordinates."
Madge makes a sound that he knows means she's skeptical of whatever information they would submit. Suspicious little thing.
"Can I look at these?" she asks, reaching for the maps and papers he isn't using. He pushes the pile toward her and then returns to making his notes, grateful she's so engrossed in whatever she's looking at that he can focus on turning this old map into something vaguely useful. The contour lines just barely align with reality; if it weren't for the abandoned mine shafts he's been using as landmarks as they hiked, he wouldn't even know they were in the right valley. Unsurprisingly, the Capitol only cared about this area for what ores could be extracted from it. He draws in the streams they've passed and some of the other features that stood out, trying to think about what would be useful as reference points when he compares this map with the aerial photographs in his office...
"Gale, can you show me Mount Madge?"
He freezes, realizing which of his handmade maps she must be looking at. Is it too late to swipe it back and reverse time so she won't have seen that he named a mountain after her? He was feeling especially nostalgic that day and had also named a string of lakes after his parents and Rory, Vick, and Posy. And included Hob Valley, Catnip Creek, Primrose Peak, Ripper Ridge, Sae Saddle…
"It's in a different sector," he says evasively, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye and pretending to study the map he's been improving. "We won't be near it today."
Madge shifts so she can focus on him more intently, her blue eyes boring into his. "What's it like?"
He smiles slightly as his initial embarrassment starts to fade and shifts into recognition that she successfully cornered him into admitting this. Fine. This is a trap he doesn't mind being caught in.
"It's beautiful," he says, turning fully to face her. "I wish I could see it every day."
He might as well have flipped the 'Madge Face Red' switch. Her eyes widen at his boldness and she sits back slightly. He likes knowing he can get this kind of reaction out of her, and really, isn't that what she wanted to know? Her shock is a little surprising, though—has she really not understood how he feels about her? With a suppressed shudder he remembers telling her he couldn't see her anymore; yeah, maybe she would be a little confused.
"Madge." He reaches for her hand, but she stands up abruptly and inwardly he groans because he knows what she's going to say.
"Do you hear that?"
"Trust me, it's nothing." He catches her hand this time and tries to pull her back onto the rock with him. Frantic dog barking in the background won't deter him from kissing her.
"He sounds like he's injured!"
"He's not. Madge, he's not!" Too late: he's calling out into the air because she's already running toward the base of the cliff to check on Zipper's latest freak out. Gale seriously doubts Zipper is injured. At least not yet; no guarantees Gale won't wring his little canine neck.
Resigned, he picks up their backpacks and follows Madge toward the cliffs and the sound of Zipper's barking, where he finds Madge hugging the idiot dog in front of a boarded up mine entrance. When Zipper spots Gale, he has the gall to start wagging his tail proudly. Bad dog. Why didn't any of the training books have instructions on how to avoid this?
"See? He's fine." Gale can't keep the irritation out of his voice. Just when he was starting to like Zipper, he pulls this stunt… Madge still looks concerned so he testily explains. "He got burned by acid mine runoff on our first hike and now he barks whenever he sees more of it. He thinks he's protecting us. See that discolored water? Don't touch it."
Madge looks distastefully at the foul water pooled in front of the mine's entrance. "I thought we were the coal district. Or used to be."
"Coal's other places, too. Like here. Although these mines could have been for something else, maybe even from before the Dark Days."
Madge walks over to the old mine entrance while Gale glares at Zipper. Now Madge is focused on this boarded up structure instead of Gale having named a mountain after her. He hadn't intended for it to be a romantic gesture because he never thought she'd see that map, but to be missing out on whatever good will or momentum he'd accidentally gained feels cruel. He drops their backpacks to the ground again in huffy defeat.
"Gale? What is this?"
He joins Madge as she peers into a neat cylindrical hole in the soil about a foot in diameter wide. "I don't know. It looks recent, though." He can tell she's latched onto this, so he reluctantly pulls out his map to mark the approximate location of whatever it is as Madge stands up and walks farther along the cliff face. About 100 feet away she calls that there are more holes and then she continues until she's out of view.
"Great," he calls, fairly certain she's not even listening let alone picking up on his sarcasm. Since when is dirt more interesting than him?
He trails behind her, marking the other holes on his map. His guess is that they've been made by prospectors, maybe the quarry people or maybe others, trying to assess what minerals this ground is concealing—he doesn't know enough about prospecting methods or rock analysis to be able to tell. He can ask Milo this weekend. He pauses as a happy thought occurs to him: maybe he'll be busy with Madge this weekend and won't have time to meet Milo for a climb… Madge is taking time off work and they're getting along so well, maybe they could go on an actual date… Her kind of date, like she deserves.
As he rounds the corner of the cliff, the brightness of the metallic yellow stuns him. He's facing a small backhoe so extraordinarily out of place amongst these rocks and trees that he can't even fathom what it's doing here. It had to have been delivered by air—there's no way it could drive or have been hauled up the steep inclines from the staging area.
Madge is sitting in the backhoe's glass-enclosed cab, clearly rummaging for information. Did she break in? Are construction vehicles even locked?
"What are you doing?" he asks warily.
She's squinting at a paper she's holding and then hands it to him through the cab's open door. "Does this map mean anything to you?"
He pulls it closer to examine it more carefully. "I think these are symbols for rocks and minerals. This one means coal." He points to a small black dot he's more than familiar with from District 12. "This area has so many minerals… Whoever this belongs to was probably prospecting, trying to figure out the best tracts to buy."
"Cheating, you mean," Madge says. "Trying to get a head start before the land is even available."
"These mountains are filled with prospectors, Madge. Remember what the woman at the staging area said? People are out here all the time. I don't blame them for wanting to get a head start." He'll be the first to admit how slow and disorganized the new government is.
"It seems suspicious to me," Madge says, defiance in her tone.
"It seems smart to me." Gale pushes the map back at her. "Put it back wherever you found it. We need to head back now while we still have daylight."
Madge ignores him and instead pulls off her clunky bracelet and twists it, transforming it into a mini-camera that she uses to snap a picture of the map before sliding it below the seat.
"You're spying on these people?"
"This isn't spying," she says indignantly. "People who abandon their equipment on land they don't own can have no expectation of privacy."
"But you're not always in public places or respecting people's privacy, are you?"
She ducks his disapproving glare and continues inspecting the interior of the backhoe's cab, her non-answer an answer all the same. "Criminals don't deserve privacy," she says as she pauses to snap another picture.
"We don't know they're criminals—all we know is that they're probably prospectors. Whoever brought this here may not even be associated with that quarry—I can't be certain we're looking at the right area."
"Well, it looks to me like they're planning to unfairly take advantage of the disorder in the country. It's worth looking into."
"What does that mean, 'look into'?"
"I can check this vehicle's serial number to see who bought it, how it was financed, where it was registered… And I can do a more thorough search about the land request now that I have…"
She trails off and he realizes she's holding the quarry company's land request paperwork, which had been mixed in with his maps and other papers. He'd just handed over everything to her and then had been distracted into thinking she actually cared about him. The betrayal hits him like a grenade to the gut and he takes a step backward as though she physically pushed him.
"That's why you're here with me," he says slowly when he recovers from the shock, the knowledge making him feel ill. "You were snooping around at the quarry and saw a way to learn more about what they were doing. You didn't actually want to see me."
"That's not true!" Madge sputters, moving to slide out of the backhoe's cab. "All I've wanted is to spend time with you!"
"Not recently."
"Recently you've been a jerk!"
He scowls at her but doesn't respond, aware that he's no saint when it comes to how he's been treating her. Rather than admit that, though, he storms back to where he'd dumped their backpacks. This hike is over now.
Madge catches up to him as he's pulling his pack on, but he's so angry he doesn't look at her.
"You're suspicious, too, Gale. And how can you let people possibly get away with cheating the system like this?"
"Nobody's getting away with anything!" The suggestion that he might be consciously letting assholes undermine everything they fought the war for infuriates him. "We don't even have a plan to give away the land yet, and I'm not approving anything if I can't figure out what land they want!"
When he sees that she has her backpack secured, he turns and starts barreling through the forest, determined to get back to the car as soon as possible and hoping he's calculating the direction accurately. Zipper does his usual extraneous scouring of the terrain, oblivious to the hostility between the two humans, which makes Gale jealous that he can't be that carefree.
"People like Simon's brother are snakes," Madge insists from a few feet behind him, now annoying rather than impressing him that she's able to keep up with his pace. "And whoever was doing all this up here is engaging in potentially illegal actions, taking advantage of the post-war chaos in the country. They'll figure out some way to come out on top. We have to beat them to it."
He stops walking and turns to glare at her. "Potentially illegal, huh? Not actually illegal? And what are the laws on spying?"
"They haven't been revised yet," Madge admits, not looking at him. Translation: anything goes.
Gale grabs her arm and forces her to meet his eyes. "Those sick bastards spied on your house for an entire year for no reason, and now you're doing the same thing just because you can?"
"It's different." She yanks her arm back.
"Is it?" he asks snidely.
"You don't understand," she says in a low, angry tone.
He thinks he does understand. And it scares him a little to learn that Madge is more like he is than he thought. Not to mention how furious he is that she would try to use him.
Turning his back on her, he returns to pushing his way through the trees and branches so they can get to the car before sunset. They don't have time to debate this; they're flirting with running out of daylight and he's too angry to talk anyway. He viciously whacks a tree branch out of his way.
#
Madge stomps onto the gravel surface of the staging area about 30 feet behind Gale, the same distance she's maintained for the last two hours. Unlike on the hike in, he stopped warning her about backflinging branches so she had to lag behind slightly to avoid being whipped by rogue pine fronds. He's so good at being a jerk it's almost an art form.
There's barely any dusky light remaining and Gale's military jeep is the only non-construction vehicle amongst the now-silent machines parked for the evening. Madge notices the trailer she'd wanted to explore is gone, too. After Gale's hostile reaction to her investigation of the backhoe, she's almost glad for the excuse not to try to get into the trailer. He'd probably abandon her out here, and for now at least he seems willing to still drive her home even if he refuses to speak to her or look at her.
She silently opens the passenger door and sits down, half wondering if Zipper is going to win the front seat for the drive home, but Zipper is already curled up in the back. Gale glances at her for long enough to verify that she's in one piece in the car and then turns the key in the ignition.
Only to be greeted by silence. She sees him frown and try again before registering that none of the other lights are on in the car's interior. They both exit the car and meet at the front hood, which Gale opens to reveal a gaping wound where the car's battery should be.
While Gale starts in on a fit of cursing that would have confirmed Madge's mother's assumptions about the crassness of miners, Madge darts back to her seat and rummages through the glove compartment.
Shit.
A few seconds later, Gale appears, leaning against the open passenger side door and leveling one of his fiercest glares at her.
"They stole my portable work phone," she says, still partially in shock and staring straight ahead out the windshield into the darkening forest. "I left it in the glove compartment because there's no reception out here, but it's useful for emergencies and I could have tried to call Simon once we were within transmission range…" Now she's going to have to tell Simon their phone links have been compromised and he's going to flip out…
Gale clenches his jaw as he stares at her, making her feel like they're back in District 12 and he's the most intimidating person in the schoolyard.
"Theft?" he asks tersely. "Or just meant to look like theft?"
"Those phones are valuable, and we used to steal these types of batteries when I was in District 7," Madge says, remembering how cold it would get and how the batteries in the Capitol's vehicles were compatible with their generators. Now these same vehicles belong to the new government, and anyone who wants a battery would know that. "That construction woman said there are people coming and going all the time here…" All very convincing arguments for a run of the mill theft, but as she's talking she reaches under the seat and with a sinking feeling realizes that her folder of notes on the quarry is also missing.
"What?" Gale demands as he takes in the worried expression on her face. "What else aren't you telling me?"
She looks up at Gale and tries to calculate what she can actually explain. He did sign that confidentiality paperwork, but that was so she could tell him she works in Covert Intelligence and where she had been during the war, not so she could divulge details of her investigations. But they might be in real danger tonight and if whoever took the car battery did so for sabotage purposes, that could be interpreted as an act of aggression against the military which might justify involving him…
"I've been looking into something bigger than Simon's brother possibly trying something sketchy with the quarry or the land request, although that might be related," Madge admits, attempting to stay vague about the details. "I think it spans multiple districts. And whoever took my phone took my notes, too."
Gale winces and then walks away from her and returns to the front of the car, slamming the hood down. She's never seen him this mad at her. The Capitol yes, but not her. Zipper jumps out of the car through Madge's door and trails behind them as Gale moves to the back door of the car.
He pulls out a bin she hadn't noticed before, hidden behind the spare tire. "Get your backpack," he says without looking at her.
"What are you doing?" She's bewildered and a little scared. What if he's so mad he abandons her here in the dark forest?
"We can't stay here," he snaps. "Whoever did this to the car could come back and we don't want to be here if they do. And this car isn't getting us home, so we have to hike back."
She obediently retrieves her backpack from the front seat and hands it to Gale, relieved he's not abandoning her. She watches him angrily stuff additional gear into her backpack until it's full and then work on his own backpack, attaching things to the outside with cords and hooks.
"What's all this?" she asks hesitantly.
"Emergency gear. You never know when someone you trusted is going to trick you into a trap."
"I didn't trick you," she says, getting angry. "You wanted to come out here."
"You didn't tell me everything you know, and you still haven't." He violently zips up an external pocket on his backpack.
"It's classified, Gale," she snaps. "I can't tell you. And you don't tell me everything, either. Like why you wouldn't go back to 12 with me. Or that you designed horrible weapons during the war."
Gale flinches slightly and then pauses packing to glare at her. "That's totally different. None of that was your business, but you can't resist getting into other people's business, can you? And me not telling you things isn't dangerous."
She's so angry she wishes momentarily she were stranded here with Simon instead, who would understand all of this perfectly and not make these unjustified accusations. Gale, on the other hand, always thinks he knows everything about everything, even when he totally doesn't. As he turns his attention back to the gear, she first crosses her arms and then aggressively grabs the flashlight he holds out to her.
Zipper had been sitting on the ground next to Gale, but stands up abruptly, ears alert. Gale and Madge both notice and freeze, straining in the silence to hear what Zipper hears. Madge notices a faint glow on the road before she hears the crunching of tires on dirt and pebbles. A vehicle is driving toward them. Someone they could get a ride with? Or whoever broke into the car, returning?
Gale has already sprung into action, closing the trunk of the car door and tossing Zipper's leash at Madge. "Take the packs and Zipper up the hillside," he says, crouching to pull something out of his backpack. "Stay in the trees."
"What are you—"
"We need to know what we're dealing with." To her surprise, he's loading a handgun that she didn't even know he'd brought, though his attention is split so he can monitor the pale glow from the headlights of the approaching vehicle.
"I should stay, I might recognize them—"
"No. Get out of here and take Zipper so he doesn't give us away."
He has a point: they can't stake their safety on Zipper behaving. Madge shakily attaches his leash and loops one strap from each backpack around her shoulders, anxious about Gale staying behind by himself, but he's already walking toward the bulldozer, probably to wait behind it. She must be hesitating for too long because Gale turns briefly toward her, eyes stormy.
"Go, Madge!"