Authors Note:

Thank you all again for reading (you probably getting tired of reading that, but I don't get tired of saying it - I mean it more and more each time). This was very difficult to write. I'm generally very precise with my writing as a rule, but this chapter was especially demanding. I'm still not quite one-hundred-percent satisfied with it, so please let me know what you think. Reviews make me happy! (And help me fix typos).

She didn't…. I frown at my mother because she cannot possibly have said what I think she did. She ignores me, apparently because she doesn't think she was in any way unclear. Madge stops in the doorway and looks back at us, and the expression on her face says she is expecting an argument.

"But –" I begin.

Mom pauses in her conversation with Mrs. Everdeen and raises her eyebrows as if she is surprised that I have anything to say, which immediately shuts me up. She stares me down for a few seconds, and when I remain silent she gives me that Yeah, that's what I thought look that means I chose wisely not to argue. But it's a clear night, she came all the way here by herself, what would she have done if we hadn't been here?

I look to Madge again, but she turns from me and steps out the door so I can't see her reaction. Still, there is something sad about the way she does it. I don't expect it to sting the way it does.

"Can I come, too?" Posy asks excitedly.

Oh, please, please, please…

"No Posy," Mom says, "you're going home and going to bed. It's getting late." My sister pouts her bottom lip and bats her eyes, but my mother doesn't take the bait. I'm impressed. It usually works on me.

Shit. I don't want to be stuck with Madge alone. Because… because then I might… end up arguing with her again. Yeah. Mom waves me away impatiently, and I try to think of a good excuse not to do what I'm told. In a weird, uncomfortable way, I don't feel like I'm trying very hard. With a deep breath I start for the door and hope she's started without me. Oops, sorry mom, she's already gone! That would get me in a lot of trouble, but let's face it, it wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

Outside, I find my hopes are dashed to pieces and strangely enough I don't quite find it disappointing. She's still there, but from the looks of it she's having a hard time at the moment. It takes me a second to figure out what's going on because she's twisted around awkwardly and there's a goat involved.

Posy must have left Lady's pen open. And Lady must like Madge's laundry soap. Madge drops her basket and tries in vain to pull the hem of her skirt out of Lady's mouth; the effort only encourages the goat, who chews up ever-larger mouthfuls of fabric. Madge notices that I'm watching the ordeal, looks horrified, and tugs harder at her dress. She makes a timid attempt at pushing Lady's head to one side while she pulls the other way, and when the animal nudges back at her hand she snatches it back ridiculously as if expecting to be mauled.

"Um, some help please?"

I roll my eyes at her. Good. She'll finally lose it on this one for sure. "She's a goat, not a rabid wild dog."

"Maybe not," she says as she staggers sideways, "but she's doing a number on my dress – I don't want to accidentally get a finger in there."

I sigh and shake my head and decide that the right thing to do is to rescue the Mayor's daughter from the Everdeens' killer livestock. I'd rather sit on the fence and watch, though, because I've officially decided that this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my entire life. I wedge myself between girl and goat to take a handful of material, and note with a faint twinge of resentment that though the dress itself is rather simple the fabric feels luxuriously expensive. Eat up while you can, I think, you're never gonna get a meal like this again. Lady puts up an unexpectedly fair fight, and I nearly knock Madge over as the skirt gives with a loud rip. Lady munches away at the shred hanging from her mouth, and I hold up the piece still in my hand. "Do you want this back?"

She looks from her chomped skirt to the slobbery fabric in my hand to the smirk on my face that I don't bother to hide. "Not… really."

I bite back a sarcastic reply because my brothers walk outside. "Rory, tell Prim Lady's out."

Prim comes out to retrieve her goat and gasps when she sees Madge's dress. "She did that?"

Madge gives me a pointed glance. "Gale helped."

Prim tugs at Lady's collar and slaps her flank to get her moving toward her pen around the side of the house. Madge takes a nervous step back as the animal passes by. "I'm so sorry, Madge, I'll-"

Madge waves a hand at her and forces a smile. "Don't worry about it. It was an accident. I'll just… hem it up or something."

I'm certain that my mother is seconds from walking out the door, and the very last thing I need is to be standing here with pieces of the Mayor's daughter's dress in one hand. "Come on," I say, "let's get you home where you don't have to deal with goats and coal dust and-"

"Oh, stop acting like I'm some kind of snob," she hisses as she brushes past me and down the walk.

I follow her, catch up to walk side by side. She drops her head just enough so the stray waves of sun-colored hair that escape her ponytail fall in the way of her face. "What was I supposed to think of the look on your face?" I grumble.

She snaps her head up at this, blue eyes ablaze and beautiful. "Nobody would like a goat eating their clothes, Gale. Especially while they're wearing them." Her strides pick up pace. "What did you expect?"

To be fair, she handled everything – from my temper earlier to Lady's appetite a few minutes ago – with admirable grace. I have to give her that. But I'll never tell her. We turn a corner down a narrow street and I stop when I feel her fingertips touch the sleeve of my shirt.

"What?" I sigh.

Her eyes close for a moment, and when they reopen they look tired. "Look, I knew exactly what to think of the look on your face. I know you don't want to bother with this. I'll just go from here. You can just…" she waves a hand vaguely, "do whatever until it's time for you to get back."

There she goes being nice to me again. Something about the way she speaks makes it clear that she makes the offer for my sake, not because she'd rather not have me come along. Take her offer, take her offer, take her…. "No. She's right. I should go." I pause a second, and then the admission spills out before I can stop it. "I don't want anything to happen to you." I want to turn and start walking again, but the way her eyes narrow at me keeps me pinned. There is no suspicion or anger in it; no, it reminds me of the way Katniss had watched with such intensity the first time I showed her how to fashion a wire noose. Like she is trying hard to get her head around something intricately difficult. Comparing the two of them is uncomfortable in a way that I cannot quite define.

"Then why are you being so awful to me?" she asks plainly, more puzzled than accusatory.

I slouch a little and look away because this is not a discussion I want to have with myself, much less with her. What happened to that old rule? The one that made my life easier by reminding me to keep my mouth shut? Why do I break it, willfully ignore it when Madge is there? Because I like her better ferocious….

"After everything I've done you still act like I'm…. Oh…." Something subtle in her face changes, as if she has just solved an impossible puzzle but she doesn't quite believe it. "It's everything I've done, isn't it? You still think you owe me something, don't you?"

"Don't I?" I answer with a snort as I start walking again, though I'm struck by how perceptive she is. I could break my back and work my hands bloody and do every favor she could possibly ask of me for the rest of my life and never fairly pay back what she did for my sister, and that's only one thing on the list.

I hear her shoes scuff the pebbles in the street as she hurries to catch up to me. "I don't expect you to pay those things back, Gale –"

The words tip me back over into anger. "So I'm a charity case now? The last thing I want or need is your pity," I snarl. The thought of what I'd rather have from her dances dangerously close to the edge of consciousness, and but it trips up on the fact that I can never have it.

….

I want to strangle the man I love. While I feel one eye twitch involuntarily, I imagine both hands wrapping around his neck and squeezing, squeezing… shaking him violently… squeezing again. For the first time, I start to truly pity him, ironically enough. Is he really so badly broken that he sees my kindness as condescension? I'd been trying to keep my temper in check, but his remark pulls me over the deep end like a spinning top off the edge of the table.

"How dare you put words in my mouth?" I say slowly, icily, with effort. My tone stops him in his tracks again. At this rate we'll never get back to town, but I don't particularly care; no punishment my parents could ever impose on me could ever make it worth not putting Gale Hawthorne in his place and cramming a piece of my mind down his throat. "When did I ever say or act like I felt sorry for you? Everything I've done for you and yours – everything – has been because I admire the fight in you. And the pride, even though it seems to get the better of you most of the time. And the fact that, no matter how badly the odds are stacked against you, you will not lay down and die. You're stubborn and bullheaded and defensive but you're defiant and honorable, too. You risk your life for the people you love and you're still willing to do the right thing for the people you can't stand. Like make sure I get home safe. I respect you too much to pity you, Gale. The things I've done for you aren't the kinds of things you pay back. Friends don't keep a tally." I decide at the last second to leave off an especially nasty so get over yourself.

I can hardly believe I have the nerve to speak to him like that, and specifically to call us friends aloud. First because it's a stretch at this point, but more because it feels a little presumptuous, too. It seems to have thrown him a little, though, because he just stares at me blankly for a moment, eyes like hoarfrost on Midsummer Day.

"That's the thing - we aren't friends, are we?" His tone says this is somehow my fault. I want to strangle him all over again. Or cry. But I won't do that. Not in front of him.

"Why aren't we?" I demand. "When you're not picking a fight, we get along!"

He shakes his head ruefully, and his lips quirk into a heartbreaking ghost of a smile. "You don't get it, do you?" he says softly, some of the sharpness worn from his voice. "We're not friends because I'm walking you home to town tonight, and I have to come all the way back here. You have everything to give and I have nothing you need. You come down here all superior like you think if you just pretend that's not how it is, it'll just go away. But that isn't how it works. We're night and day, you and I. The sun rises and sets, whether you acknowledge it or not."

I frown at him, frustrated. "Our lives are night and day, Gale, but you and I – we're not so far apart," I say, pointing back and forth between us. I think of the things I'd almost told him earlier, the plans for the Games, and ultimately for the Capitol that put us in this position, and I come dangerously close again. And then the other thing I nearly tell him: you have everything I need…. But I'm not ready to make that confession. Might never be. Instead, I hold up part of my skirt. "Besides, I'm standing here covered in goat spit. And I've been a pretty good sport about it. How superior can I be?"

I hope to coax a more genuine smile from him with this, and though it works it is not as well as I hoped. "That's not the superior I meant," he says. "You aren't the only one that counts. Just because it doesn't matter to you doesn't mean it doesn't matter." He starts walking again.

"Why not?" I say, relieved that both of us are calming down a little. We're less locking horns and more playing tug-of-war. "Who cares what anybody else thinks?" I shrug.

"Alright," he says, "so what happens if your father answers the door when you get home? What's he gonna think about you being escorted back to town by a rag-tag Seam poacher?"

I give him the first honest answer that springs to mind. "Probably the same thing you'll think when boys start walking Posy home. He'll hate you no matter where you're from."

Gale turns so I can't see his face, and then his shoulders start to shake. Finally he lets his head fall back as he starts to laugh uncontrollably. It's contagious, and I join him. Suddenly, miraculously, we are no longer at odds. "Okay, so that wasn't a very good example," he concedes. And then, just as we reach the edge of the Seam and turn onto the road to town, the power goes out.

There aren't many streetlights here, not like the neighborhood I live in, but there's enough to see where you're going. We seldom lose electricity in town, and if we do, I'm never outdoors at night for it. I am amazed and disoriented by the inkiness of the night, so thick and absolute. It's not like turning the lights off to go to bed at home; somehow the blackness of the wide-open space here is closer, heavier, like it's leaking over my skin and weighing me down. "Damn, it's dark," I say, and I hope that my voice does not betray how irrationally nervous I feel.

"Ha, she swears, too," he teases. "Give your eyes a second to adjust. The moon is bright tonight. You'll be able to see fine."

I'm on the verge of vertigo when things come into focus in grays and blues. The road is tinted lighter than the dirt and grass on either side, the houses a shade between those two. I see a window here and there turn amber as candles and lamps are lit. I turn a slow circle to find that Gale has moved behind me somehow, or maybe I just got myself turned around while trying to get my bearings.

"Better?" he asks.

I feel unsteady again, but for a whole new reason. The low light suits him, makes his eyes look brighter than they do in sunlight, gives the shadows that fall across his features an enticing depth. The cant of his shoulders and spine are less aggressive than before, more at ease. This is not the same predator that I'd seen days ago; no, this is a snare. I find my voice. "Yes," I say, and I wonder if he can tell that I'm answering more than one question.

If he can, he doesn't let on. Gale tilts his head in the direction he means for us to go and I follow. I keep my eyes on the road in front of my feet, telling myself that it's to make sure I don't trip on something or step in a hole because the real reason is that I'm not sure I can look at him. At least the darkness hides the deep blush that I can feel creping across my face, but I almost wonder if he can hear my heartbeat in my chest. As hard as it bounds he must. I take a deep breath and let my head tip back as I try to bring myself down again.

I gasp when I open my eyes skyward. In all my nearly seventeen years, I have never been outside town after dark. Maybe I am a spoiled, sheltered little brat, I think when I frame my amazement with Gale's perspective. I have to stop moving because I make myself dizzy walking while looking straight up. Distantly I am aware that he stops also and looks at me, and I force myself to meet his gaze for a moment.

"I've never…. You can't see this many stars in town," I explain. I expect a snide comment, but he only lets his eyes drift upward. "I never thought –"

"Too much light," he says flatly. "The bright ones you can still see, but you miss a lot of the rest. Like there, you could probably see most of the Bear" - he points to a spot in the night sky – "but I bet you didn't realize there was so much other stuff around it."

I try to find what he's looking at, but the canvas above us is overwhelming. "No idea." I shake my head. "It's beautiful."

….

I watch her stand there for a minute, maybe two, wondering what to do with the girl that has everything under the sun except the stars. The girl with the goat-eaten dress who gets so angry at talk of pity and hurls not insults but praise at me in the heat of an argument. The girl that wrangles me into laughter when I'm so set on despair. It was so much easier when I could put her in a box and set it on the shelf. When she was just a pretty girl I could never have.

"C'mon. They're not going anywhere," I say. "The later it gets, the less likely I am to survive dropping you off."

This makes her laugh, and she trots behind me until she catches up. We don't speak until we get to her home, but for once the silence between us is not hostile. Under the porch light at her back door the color returns to her complexion, her eyes are no longer washed out by the moon. The hair that falls around her face when she bows her head to look for the key in her basket almost glitters. As I watch her hand twist the key in the lock, I decide that I'll be spending some time in the meadow again tonight. Maybe sleeping there.

She turns to face me when she steps into the doorway, leans against the jamb, looks at me shyly from under veiled eyes. "Thank you for your trouble," she says quietly.

A quick glance confirms that there is no one behind her in the kitchen, so I let my eyes trace the curve of her lip, the angle formed by her neck and shoulder, the graceful line of her collarbone. My fingertips itch to touch her skin, and without thinking I raise one hand.

….

For half a second I think he's going to touch me, kiss me, even, and I tip my head back in a subtle invitation. But Gale just leans against the door frame and shakes his head a little. "No," he says, "thanks for yours."

"No trouble at all," I say with a small smile that I hope conceals the absurd disappointment that flashes through me. As if he'd ever do that. Not even in my dreams. So I decide to tease him a little to make light of it. "Well, maybe a little."

He smiles just enough to show the point of an eyetooth as he pushes himself off the door jamb. "You're not half bad, Undersee," he says with a mischievous lilt to his voice.

"You're worse than I thought, Hawthorne," I deadpan, and he laughs aloud as he walks away.

There's no way I can go to bed wound up so tight, so against my better judgment I carefully lift the cover on the piano. I choose a nocturne; if I'm going to make noise this late, it might as well be soothing, and if I wake someone maybe it'll lull them back to sleep before they complain. Still, I play the keys as softly as I can, so softly that I even skip a few notes. No matter – my mind replaces the missing pieces as my fingers dance over the notes and I think of the darkness and the stars in the sky. Still the sound of it is melancholy, and it is all too easy to fill the gaps in the rise and fall of the rhythm and melody. The end I play slower than it is written, because this is when I think of Gale and how he walked away from me moments ago, as if it were the easiest thing he's ever done. And I know, with crushing clarity, that this is how it will always be.

Footnotes:

The Bear to which Gale refers is, of course, Ursa Major (the Big Dipper). Not that it really matters for the purpose of this story, but I imagine that he sees the "handle" end of the constellation as the bear's head, rather than the traditional orientation where it is an anatomically incorrect tail. Just my two cents. For those of you who prefer tailed bears, more power to you.

In case anyone is curious, the song that Madge is playing at the end of this chapter (at least in my head) is Chopin's Nocturne 20 in C# Minor. Not an exceptionally original choice, I admit, but it is incredibly fitting in my opinion. Look it up and listen to it if you have three or four minutes of free time. It is lovely, and worth the effort.