Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too.
AN: Many thanks to Nursekelly for all the help.
And the stars burn out, pt 2
When Madge wakes up it's to the sound of her own sobs and screams.
She thrashes around, kicking and swinging her open palms out, her knuckles and knees making harsh, painful noises as they slam into the wall and the barrister up the stairs. Her mind is spiraling, she isn't sure where she is or why she's there, only that she wants to leave.
There are eyes on her, watching her, waiting for her to entertain them, for her to make a mistake.
It isn't until her hand collides with something rough but not hard that her eyes open.
Someone pulls her tight, keeping her from hurting herself more, muttering soothing things in her hair and rubbing gentle circles on her shoulders.
"Daddy," she hears herself blubber. "Dad, please help."
What she wants her dad to do she isn't sure. There's no saving her, even in her half asleep state she knows that, but she wants him to try.
Her eyes, wet and stinging, focus, finding the unfamiliar front door hanging open, lightening bug glowing on and off out in the strange lawn.
After a few minutes, her mind gets sluggish again, drifting back to the edge of sleep. Slowly, her breathing evens out and her eyes get heavy, and finally she drops off again.
The next time she wakes, it's much more calmly, almost as though she'd only just closed her eyes for a moment, nothing more than a blink, and she's in a bed.
It isn't her bed, though this time she has enough alertness to remember that she no longer has 'her bed'. This is the bed the Capitol has provided her.
Despite that, it's nice. The mattress is comfortable and the pillow is like a cloud. Running her fingers over the comforter, she realizes it's silk, a material she's only seen during her time in the Capitol. Nothing but the best for the newest Victor. They at least owe her that much.
Her fingers, she notes dully, are scuffed up. Bruises have already formed on her knuckles and there's a gash on her forearm.
Sitting up, she winces. Her right knee is throbbing, and she wonders what she hit it on for half a moment before he eyes catch on something slumped in the corner.
She's seconds from screaming when she realizes just who is sleeping in her new rocking chair.
He looks pitiful, scraggly and exhausted. Even in the dark, Madge can see that Mr. Abernathy is uncomfortable. His shoulders are hunched and his head lolled at an odd angle, a sure way to make it sore tomorrow. Still, he's there, just as he'd promised to be.
Easing out of the bed, Madge's feet make a soft plodding noise as they touch the cold wood of the floor.
Quietly, she pads over to him, a pillow in one hand and a quilt that had been tossed over the end of the bed in the other, intent to cover him up and prop his head a little.
Before she can even finish draping the quilt over him though, he startles awake, his snore catching in his throat.
"Pearl?"
"Shh," Madge whispers. "Go back to sleep."
Just because she can't rest doesn't mean he should suffer.
He runs a hand over his face, pulling the sagging skin under his bloodshot eyes down before squinting up at her. "Nightmare?"
Madge shrugs. She doesn't remember if she'd had a nightmare and startled herself awake. She doesn't remember sleeping at all really. There was a stretch of nothingness between moments of consciousness and nothing more, if anyone could call that sleep.
"Go back to sleep," he tells her, settling back down. "I'll be here."
Shaking her head, Madge's eyes fall to the ground, studying her now chipped toenail polish. "I don't think I can go back to sleep."
Despite feeling exhausted, like she hadn't had a wink at all, sleep seems as distant a possibility as it had on the train. Especially in the new house, she doubts she'll be able to get any kind of rest at all. There are eyes on her in this new Arena, just as sure as there'd been eyes on her all the time in that forest, and just like then, she can't get truly comfortable knowing someone is watching her.
He stares at her for a minute, then pushes himself up, popping his back loudly. "Let's go make some tea."
Lacking the energy to protest, she doesn't want tea, she doesn't want anything, she lets him steer her into the hall and down the steps, then into the kitchen.
The kitchen is stark white, crisp and clean and sterile. The tile shines under the white light when Mr. Abernathy turns it on, and the metal of the new appliances seems to glow. On the table, someone has set out a bowl of fruit and several generic looking placemats, there are delicate looking tea towels draped over some of the drawer handles, and there's even a small vase with sickeningly perfect flowers setting cheerfully in it.
The staging of it all turns her stomach.
This isn't a kitchen, it's a set for the show that will be her life.
While she's studying this new stage of the play of her life, Mr. Abernathy is banging around in the cabinets, looking for the cups and muttering to himself.
Finally, he finds them, pulls a pair of matching cups and clangs them on the counter before he begins his search for a kettle and spoons.
His noisiness is a relief. When there's clattering going on it overwhelms her senses and she can't think, which is nothing short of a blessing.
How long it takes him, she isn't sure, but suddenly there's a steaming cup set in front of her, the smell of mint filling her nose.
Her mother likes mint tea, claims it helps with her headaches, but Madge is skeptical.
Still, she sips it, making a face as she does.
They stay settled in silence, sipping the tea neither of them really seem to like, for several minutes before Madge can't stand it anymore.
"Does it ever stop?" She asks, her voice breaking, like she's some small child.
She half wants him to lie to her, tell her that the screams and the explosions, the heat and light, will slowly fade from her mind, tell her that she'll be able to fall asleep easily and make it through a night again eventually, she wants him to tell her she isn't going to feel eyes on her every moment for the rest of her life, and for a second, she thinks he might.
His mouth pulls taut and his eyes settle on his cooling cup, setting half drank in front of him, and Madge can tell he's considering doing her a kindness, telling her a lie. Maybe someone had done him the same favor years before and he'll return the blessing on her.
When he looks up though, she knows he won't.
He may not always tell her everything, all the things she's so desperate to know, but he won't lie to her.
"Sorry, sweetheart."
Nodding, Madge puts her cup down and crosses her arms before resting her forehead down against them as silent tears begin leaking out her eyes again, trailing down her cheeks and dripping onto the pristine counter.
She can feel the cold radiating off the tile and then moist warmth as she sighs.
A chair scratches and she feels Mr. Abernathy drop onto the stool beside her, then a rough hand begins smoothing her hair down.
It isn't a comfortable position and her body is sore from her earlier meltdown, but the cold seems to sooth her and the tea seems to have a easing effect, causing her burning eyes long to close.
Finally, she can't fight the exhaustion off anymore and her eyelids drop close.
When she wakes again it must be several hours later because bright morning light is pouring in through the window, creeping across the floor to the bed.
Mr. Abernathy is gone, or at the very least he isn't in her room. Judging from the noise coming from downstairs, he's back in the kitchen.
Despite not having wanted him around the day before, it's a strange comfort to have him near. He's the only person who truly understands the demons running through her head. He won't judge her for shattering to pieces.
After that, days and nights bleed together.
She isn't sure if she sleeps or not, though she thinks she must, at least a little. What sleep she must get isn't enough to shake the weariness from her bones and blood. It's only enough to keep her from dropping dead.
Her body aches constantly and her mind races. Every noise is a warning, every unexpected shadow a threat, even smells set her on edge. There's no rest for her, not now, maybe not ever again. She's in a game against phantoms that can materialize any moment, they're watching her, and she has to be ready.
Most nights she sits up, reading book after book, playing music on the ancient radio, trying to drown out the images and the screams still haunting her. It doesn't help though, and she usually goes to bed for Mr. Abernathy's sake in the early morning.
He doesn't leave her, even when she tells him to.
"You need rest too," she tells him each night.
Shaking his head, he pats her cheek. "I'm staying until you don't need me to, for real this time, understand?"
Most nights he stays on the couch downstairs, but when her nightmares get too bad, cause her to accidentally fling herself off the bed and bruise her shoulder, he moves back to his rocker to hold his vigil.
She supposes it's his penance for wanting her to win.
Instead of getting up, most days she stays limp in the bed. Hours pass, the sun gets higher and the shadows move across the floor, before her mother comes up, she's there everyday without fail, an airy smile fixed on her face.
"You need to get up and eat, love."
Madge thinks she tells her she isn't hungry, each and every day, but her mother is persistent, always manages to drag her down and forces at least a few bites down her. It's enough to sustain her at least.
Her mother and Mr. Abernathy are there every day, trying to liven her, but she only manages to disappoint them, she's certain of it. No matter how badly she wants to pretend to be a living being, it just isn't in her. She's a corpse, no more, no less.
Even when her father shows up, on the too sunny weekend, she can't muster up so much as a smile.
Every inch of her soul has been infected with a cold dread that keeps her expressions empty and her mind awake, ready for the next attack. It isn't an if it will happen, only a when.
"Pearl," he sighs, taking a bowl of melting ice cream from her hands and setting it on the porch below them, under the swing Mr. Abernathy had put up for her, "you can't give up."
She almost screams that it isn't giving up, it's accepting the cards that have been dealt her, but keeps it in. He probably already sees her as some kind of wild animal, she doesn't want to run him off. She loves him so much and she feels so close to losing him. He's slipping through her fingers and she can't bear it.
Something cold slips down her cheeks, and before she knows it her face has crumpled and her father has pulled her over, smoothing her hair.
"It's okay, Magdalene, it's okay."
She shakes her head, tries to tell him it won't, she doesn't know what the Capitol has in store for her, but she has a fair idea, and she's certain she won't be able to handle it. She's going to get them all killed.
None of that comes out though. Just like during the Games, she keeps her thoughts to herself. She can't let anyone know what's going on in her head, can't risk them tripping her up. Someone might be listening, waiting.
It isn't just her life on the line now. She has to be twice as careful.
Just like she'd done in the Arena, she has to keep using her head. She has to stay alive. Her family is depending on it.
#######
Gale squints up at the house in the Victors' Village Madge moved into only the weeks before.
He's crouched down in the bushes, hidden in the tree line, safe from anyone's eyes, a handwritten letter folded and clutched in his hand.
It's a coward's way out, he thinks, apologizing through a letter. Telling Madge that he truly never believed she'd be Reaped, not in his wildest dreams, and that he's sorry for making light of the possibility in a letter is pathetic, he's well aware of that. He isn't sure he can handle seeing her up close though.
Even just from snatches of seeing her, glimpses if that, he knows she's a wreck. In the short time she's been home, she already looks thinner, paler, gaunt even, compared to the dazzling beauty the Capitol had shown over and over again.
She's turning into a ghost, and Gale is pretty sure he can't handle seeing the specter that had been Madge Undersee up close. He has enough rage against the Capitol without seeing how it's ripped the light from her eyes.
Much as he'd like to go up and slip the letter under her backdoor, he can't. He's frozen by his own cowardice.
"Are you going up to see Madge?"
Gale nearly jumps out of his skin.
Gritting it teeth, he turns and his expression relaxes.
"Oh, hi Mrs. Undersee."
How she snuck up on him, he isn't sure. He doubts she practices stealth or even needs to, but here she is, quiet as a mouse and smiling up at him.
Normally he sees her and the Mayor walking up each Sunday since the move, but she must've come up early today, on her own like she does the rest of the week. Either that or Gale had been so absorbed in staring at Madge's back porch he'd just missed seeing them through the large gap between the houses that leads to the gravel road.
She holds out her hand. "You can come with me, if you're afraid. Madge has been in a little state the past few weeks."
He nearly bristles at being called afraid, but forces the irritation down. He is afraid, but not for the reason she thinks.
Gripping the letter more tightly in his hand, he forces a small smile for her.
"Uh, no, that's okay, ma'am." He stuffs his hands and the letter in his pockets, shrugging. "I thought I'd have time, but I, uh, I don't."
It's a lame, transparent excuse that even airy little Mrs. Undersee has to see through, but she just nods, looking slightly disappointed.
"Oh, okay, dear." She steps past him, over the bush Gale had been hiding behind, then turns back to him with another soft smile. "If you change your mind one of these days, you can still come up with me."
How many days she's seen him skulking around her daughter's new house and ignored him, he isn't sure, but it's clear this isn't the first time she's seen him. It's embarrassing, and he wonders if Madge and Haymitch have seen him too.
He doesn't ask her though, just watches her glide away, back through the increasingly tall grass of Madge's backyard and then up the back steps to the house.
Feeling filthy, like he's been doing something much worse than trying to force himself to make a half-assed apology by letter to a girl that deserves better, Gale slinks off into the trees, back toward the Town.
He'd stored his game back near the meadow, and after retrieving it, sneaks under the fence, which has been mercifully off since Madge's return, and into the woods.
Despite the woods always being his sanctuary, he feels worse being there. Madge can't escape the prison she's won for herself, and being able to breathe free air and do what he loves when she's trapped makes every moment bitter.
He and Katniss work almost in complete silence, which isn't something that's never occurred, but there's a heaviness between them that normally isn't.
It isn't until they find themselves in front of the heavily laden strawberry bush, the one Gale's been picking on his own for the Undersees, the one they'd picked off of for Madge the morning before the Reaping, that she finally speaks.
"Peeta thinks me and him should go see Madge," she finally says, her eyebrows pulled together.
Gale nods. "Probably should."
She picks a strawberry, inspects it for a moment, then bites into it. "I don't think she'd want to see me."
When Gale doesn't say anything, just begins picking strawberries and dropping them in the sack he'd brought, she sighs.
"I didn't even tell her 'goodbye' or 'good luck'." Her mouth draws into a line. "At least Peeta saw her before they took her."
"She's still your friend," Gale points out.
Katniss had been her lunch mate, her silent partner during class, the closest thing Katniss had to a friend aside from Gale. Madge would want to see her, he's sure of it.
"Friends tell each other 'bye." She swallows loudly. "I didn't."
"She'll understand," he mutters, more to himself than to her.
Madge is someone who sees more than she lets on. She'll understand that Katniss couldn't take the strain of saying what they'd all thought was a final goodbye.
"She has to," he adds lamely.
Another silence settles over them, swallowing up their conversation as they pick berries, ignoring the heat and the uncomfortable reality that Madge Undersee doesn't have to do anything.
The kind, quiet, brave girl that had gone into the Arena has been tortured on national television, dressed up and paraded around for the entertainment of people who'd have easily seen her killed. She doesn't owe Katniss understanding or forgiveness, and honestly, Gale wouldn't blame her if she didn't give it to her.
Still, he hopes the girl that had tossed his jibe back at him so easily, who'd never been cruel or taunted anyone, was still there. He hopes under all the glitter and diamond dust, Madge is still Madge.
"Next Sunday," he finally says, swallowing down panic at his own thoughts, "you and me'll go up to the Village, early, and we'll take her some strawberries."
She loves strawberries. It'll be a peace offering, a reminder of the bond, even if just of seller and buyer, they had before the Reaping.
Maybe with Katniss there, Gale will be able to hand her his letter. He can leach off her bravery a little.
Besides that, if Madge throws their gift back in their face, Mellark will still have a chance to see her without being tainted by Gale and Katniss' cowardice and faithlessness.
Rolling the offer around in her head, Katniss considers it.
"Yeah," she finally says. "That way if she's mad at me, Peeta can still try."
For the first time in days, Gale's smile is genuine. They still think on the same lines.
He'd been worried about that. She's been spending more and more time with Mellark since the end of the Games and he'd been afraid their connection that had served them so well for years might be undermined by the other boy's softness. Katniss hasn't lost her edge though, and she and Gale haven't lost their connection. They're best friends, and not even Mellark and his cheese rolls are going to change that.
Lighter, like a weight has been lifted from his back, Gale tosses a strawberry at her, laughing.
He's going to make his amends to Madge. Now the only question will be if there's enough of the girl that existed before to accept it.
#######
The days don't become easier as they stretch into weeks, moments blending together, some real and some imagined, until a month has slipped by.
The heat sizzles the dew from the grass that Madge hasn't had the energy to trim. There's a garden, fledgling and sparse, that only has a chance because of her mother's attention. Her house itself, is only dusted and picked up because of her mother's never ending cleaning.
Madge lazily wonders why her mother's neatness had never spilled over into cleaning her own house. Another mystery she has no desire to investigate.
Mr. Abernathy finally begins to trust her enough, after she stops screaming and flailing in her sleep, to go back to his own house, telling her repeatedly that he's just next door.
"Anything you need, you yell," he tells her again and again.
Madge only nods. Part of her wants him to stay, but another part of her tells her she doesn't deserve to have him continue to babysit her. He needs rest too, and without drinking he isn't getting nearly as much as he used to, especially when he's up the whole night keeping her from falling out of bed.
Her mind has slowly become clouded, sluggish with lack of sleep and not enough nutrition, but she doesn't care. The less she's aware of the better she feels.
Every chime of the clock, every buzzing insect, every creak of the house sets her on edge, and not even her dazed exhaustion can dull that. It becomes tolerable though.
The weekends are more time with her parents than she's had in her entire life, but she's grateful for it. Like her hugs, she doesn't know how much more time, how many more lazy conversations she has left with them.
They are all she loves, and even her sleep deprived mind can't dull the ache of wanting them around.
Despite the fact that it's an almost unbearably tense existence, one filled with phantom eyes watching her and noises stalking her, Madge settles into it. She doesn't need sleep. She doesn't need food. She just needs to keep using her head.
She just needs to stay alive.
Everyone is depending on her.
On a lazy Sunday, a knock comes on her back door.
Why are they coming in the back? Why are they knocking? She wonders vaguely.
Madge has nothing to hide from them. Normally they just come in, make themselves comfortable in her kitchen and start breakfast. They want her to eat, keep telling her she's too thin, and have it in her head that if they keep making things that had been her favorite she'll eat.
Food has no appeal to her though, and she thinks that starving to death might be a fitting end to a Victor of Twelve.
So many people in her District have starved to death because of the Capitol, what's one more?
Slowly she comes down the stairs, turns into the kitchen, stopping just short of the door.
There's a white curtain up, obscuring the view of the back porch, but Madge can tell the figures aren't her parents or Mr. Abernathy.
Both are a little taller than her, dark, unmoving.
Slowly, she reaches for the paring knife she'd left on the kitchen table the night before, beside the now empty bowl, she'd let the fruit rot, clutches it in her white knuckled hand before swinging the door open.
With the door out of the way Madge sees it isn't a pair of government thugs come to drag her off to a more miserable fate.
Katniss and Gale.
They stare at her, watch her warily. Probably because she's still holding a knife out at them. She doesn't lower it though.
They aren't her friends. They can't be anymore.
For several minutes they stand in her doorway, staring at her, like she's some animal in a Capitol menagerie, before Katniss clears her throat.
"We brought strawberries."
She holds out the pail, filled to the brim with red berries.
For a minute Madge doesn't understand. She's stepped into the past and is watching a moment that has long since past and died. Then the horrid clock in her front sitting room chimes and she shakes the feeling off.
"I don't want any."
Madge doesn't need anything from them. Either of them.
"Take them," Katniss says again, holds the pail out a little further. "It's a…gift."
Suddenly she isn't in her too bright kitchen in her hatefully cold house. She's in the Arena, tricking the boy with her little pot of nightlock.
They aren't her friends and they're trying to kill her.
Katniss and Gale are trying to kill her.
She hadn't hurt them, but they'd seen her on the television her mind frantically reminds her. They'd seen her kill people. Now they're trying to rid the world of her.
Maybe she should let them.
It would make for a spectacular special event, 'The Death of a Victor'. The ratings would be astronomical.
Instead of eating their berries, probably laced with nightlock, they'd know what they look like after all, she knocks them from Katniss' hand. They fall, hit the wood on the porch like the stones had hit the upturned earth around the Careers' pyramid. The bucket makes a harsh noise as it slams into the wood, rolls emptily off and into the bushes beside the porch.
"You're trying to kill me."
Even to her own ears it sounds ridiculous, but her mind keeps twisting it, making it true. She knows they aren't there to hurt her, but they might be...
Katniss takes a step back when Madge juts the knife at her, threatening to slash her across the face.
"We aren't trying to kill you," Gale says. He's stepped between Katniss and Madge, ready to take the blade for her if Madge completely loses control.
He looks nothing like her District partner, but for a second, he does. It isn't Gale's angry glare that blazes at her, but the boy she failed to ally with, the boy she'd failed to get Mr. Abernathy to pay even the slightest bit of attention to. There's a stern accusation in his dead eyes, blaming Madge for his death.
She'd murdered him, maybe not with her own hand, but with her weak will.
Madge's hand goes limp. When the knife clatters to the ground, bounces off the unblemished tile of her kitchen and onto the porch by Gale's boot, she snaps back to herself.
Shaking, barely able to stand, she swallows down bile.
She's a killer and a monster. She should've died in the Arena. Katniss and Gale should kill her, even if that isn't why they're here.
She's nothing short of a wild animal that needs to be put down before she hurts someone.
"I-I'm sorry." She grabs the door, she needs to close it, protect them from her. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
The door slams, shaking the entire house, and Madge slumps to the ground behind it sobbing.
Mr. Abernathy comes a few minutes after that, and Madge thinks maybe Katniss and Gale ran into him and warned him she'd lost her mind because he finds her instantly.
He's back on her couch after that, his reprieve from her madness snatched from him in one frightened moment. She's a small child, not trusted to be alone.
She doesn't blame him.
They start forcing food down her. Then they threaten her with morphling to make her sleep when they realize she's been up for far too long. Unlike on the train, Mr. Abernathy doesn't argue with them, though she isn't sure if it's because he sees she won't really rest on her own, or because they're her parents.
She can't sleep though, and her nightmares only intensify after the debacle with Katniss and Gale.
So she pretends to, using what's left of her Capitol makeup to cover the dark circles under her eyes.
It's part of the Game, she supposes, to act the part of a sound mind for her parents and Mr. Abernathy, and anyone else who might be watching.
A few days after her meltdown, which she thinks is putting it kindly, her father shows up with several men and her piano in the back of a rusted truck.
"I believe you need a talent," he tells her as he steers her away from the men so they can move the piano in. "You already know how to play. You just need to practice, and you won't be able to if it's down at the house."
She knows he means well, that he's trying to calm her mind, but somehow moving it out feels like he's trying to distance himself from her. Madge is too unpredictable to be allowed in her old home.
Still, she forces a smile and kisses his cheek. It's part of the act. "Thanks, dad."
"You have to be top-notch, Pearl," Mr. Abernathy tells her, once the piano is carefully moved into the back room of the bottom story. "Practice makes perfect."
She starts to ask him why her talent is so important, half the Victors she's watched over the years are mediocre at their 'talent' at best, but stops short. He won't tell her, and she has the sinking feeling it has something to do with whatever deal he's made to save her filthy soul.
So instead of trying to puzzle out just how sheet music and old songs are going to save her, she practices.
It's not like she has anything else to do.
#######
Gale doesn't try to convince Katniss to go back up to the Village after the run in with Madge.
"She was going to kill us," she'd told Haymitch when they'd run into him after their escape.
"You scared her," he'd snapped before rushing off.
While Gale doesn't feel like they'd been threatening, standing in their dirty clothes with a bucket of strawberries, Madge clearly had thought so.
Her mind was a mess, much more so than her frail body, that much is clear.
He'd thought that maybe time and distance would help her to start healing, that was obviously not happening. She's worse than he'd imagined.
Still, she'd come back to herself. The Mayor's soft-spoken daughter with clear blue eyes and a sad smile had reappeared and pushed the frightened creature the Capitol has turned her into back, even sputtering out an apology before locking herself back behind the doors of what Gale is seeing more and more as her prison.
No one, not in the Seam or even in Town, seem concerned about her though.
Despite the fact that no one, except himself, her parents, Haymitch, and now Katniss, have seen her since the train brought her back, not a soul is concerned.
"People didn't see much of her before," Mellark points out one evening when he runs into Gale as he's coming home from the mines and he's leaving dinner at Katniss'. "Even when she was right in front of them."
That had caused Gale's stomach to roll. He was probably one of those people.
He wonders if Madge knows how little her presence or absence makes on people. Probably. She was a smart girl, is a smart girl. He wouldn't doubt that she's always known just how little she matters to people, and that makes him a little ill.
"Are you going to try to go up and see her?"
Mellark shrugs.
Gale wouldn't blame him if he didn't venture up to the Village. After Madge's fit, which Katniss had clearly told Mellark all about, it might not even be advisable for him to try. Even if Mellark is about as intimidating as a wet pup, Madge's mindset isn't likely to recognize that. If she interpreted a basket of berries as a threat, Mellark's pastries might be just as badly received.
Picking at a loose thread on his uniform, Gale sighs.
"She isn't good," he finally says. "They broke her."
And Gale feels at least a little responsible. He'd made light of her chances and then the worst had happened. It was like he'd tempted fate and lost.
"She's tough." Mellark gives him a small smile. "If anyone can play the Capitol's game, it's Madge. She's gonna glue herself back together."
Nodding, Gale looks up at the sky.
"What if she can't?" He asks, hoping Mellark can drum up some of his obnoxious optimism and thumping his mining helmet on his thigh. "You didn't see her. She's-dammit she's a wreck! Like she's-she's...I don't know."
Even if he thinks he does. Madge has the look people in the Seam got right before they curl up in the coldest part of the winter and let the elements take them. She's dying, letting herself die, and he feel like maybe he's the only one that really sees it.
"You mean what if she won't," Mellark finally clarifies, his expression slipping.
When Gale nods, he sighs.
"I don't want to think like that," he tells him. "I have to believe she's going to snap out of this."
He starts to walk off, stuffing his hands in his pockets, but stops when he's at Gale's side.
"I'm going to go up and see her." He chews his lip for a moment. "I'll do my best."
Gale nods.
He knows Mellark will try his best, but for some reason, that isn't enough for Gale now.
He's never been very good at letting other people fight while he stands on the sidelines. Letting Madge wither away while everyone else tries to help her has been eating him up.
It's time for him to go see her, without a safety net this time.
#######
It's almost two weeks later, in the earliest part of the evening twilight, when Gale comes again.
Mr. Abernathy has fallen asleep on the sofa, listening to Madge's playing, and she's just closed the cover on the keys when she hears the knock.
He's on her front porch this time, in his mining uniform, covered in gray dust from head to toe.
She hadn't thought about it, but she supposes he must've been packed off to the mines early. Maybe to make extra money for his family, otherwise he would've avoided it until the fall like some of his classmates will.
It's a strangely sad thought, Gale, who she's always seen as the epitome of free and wild, trapped underground. It feels like another joke by the Capitol. Another bird locked away by their hand.
Madge considers not opening the door, afraid she might have another fit, but takes a few deep breathes and chews her tongue. She'd nearly cut him last time, she owes him the courtesy of at least opening the door, and maybe an apology.
Definitely an apology.
Slowly, she unlocks the door, with each click taking a breath to keep herself calm.
Finally, she opens it, letting the cool air of the entryway mix with the muggy air outside as she looks at him, waiting for him to make the first move.
They stare at each other, he might be afraid to talk to her again, especially after her meltdown last time. His eyes glance down at her hands, probably to see she hasn't got a weapon in them, then up to her face.
"I, uh, came by to tell you I'm sorry," he finally says, his voice deep, rumbling over her and mixing with the humid air.
Madge shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry. I-I just-I get confused sometimes."
All the time. She isn't even sure if the moment she's in right now is real. For all she knows, she's fallen asleep at her piano and this is a dream that'll dissolve into a nightmare. It wouldn't be the first time.
"Not about that." He taps his helmet on his thigh, something like a nervous habit. "I meant about saying you wouldn't be going to the Capitol. That wasn't fair."
He wouldn't be saying that if she hadn't been Reaped. Would he be saying it if she'd died?
Madge wonders if Gale would apologize at her grave, put flowers on her stone. Would he whisper an 'I'm sorry' to a dead girl?
Maybe he already is. Madge increasingly feels like she's being sealed in her casket.
"You don't mean it," finally tells him as she starts to close the door. She doesn't have time for lies, even pleasant ones.
He catches it, his palm leaving a sweat and coal dust handprint on the white paint and etched glass. "I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."
There's something like sincerity in his eyes, and Madge wants to believe him.
But he's doing what Mr. Abernathy hadn't had the stomach to, telling her something just to comfort her.
"People say things they don't mean all the time." She gives the door a push. He doesn't budge though.
His gray eyes squint in at her, dance over the dark circles under her eyes, the increasing sharpness of her features, and frowns, his expression tense, almost worried. "Are you okay?"
Madge forces a small smile and gives the door a final push, quickly locking it behind her.
He might not say things he doesn't mean, but she certainly might, she would, and she can't bare it.