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 3
Gale stares at the glass of Madge's front door, watching her retreat back into the house.
She was a bit like a wounded animal, frightened and panicked, with her mind set on getting away from any and all perceived threats.
And at the moment, Gale is the threat.
Still, she hadn't tried to gut him this time. He considers that a win.
When the lightening bugs begin making their appearance, he shakes the sting of being brushed off away and starts to leave, shooting the door one last disappointed look before hopping off the last step and into the grass.
Slapping at a mosquito, he half jogs down the gravel toward the Town. He's going to be late for dinner, but he doesn't care. Going to see Madge, on his own, without anyone else to ease his discomfort, was long overdue.
By the time he gets home it's dark, only a few stray strands of sun are still streaking the sky.
Kicking off his boots, he jumps the broken down steps onto the porch and opens the door.
Vick is entertaining Posy, probably under threat by their mother, and Rory is helping their mother fold laundry at the kitchen table.
She looks up, relief flooding her face.
"You're late," she scolds him, the fire immediately back in her eyes. "You had me worried to death."
Chewing his tongue, he hates worrying her, Gale slumps into the seat across from her and pulls his now cold plate of almost week old rabbit toward him. "I had something I needed to do."
"And you couldn't come home and tell me first?" She seems to deflate. "I know you're a grown man now, but you're still my son and there's so many awful things that can happen."
For all she knew he was arrested for poaching or being somewhere he shouldn't.
Wincing at her tone and frown, Gale gives her an apologetic glance as he chews his food. "Sorry."
Folding a towel a little more forcefully, his mother fixes him in a narrow look. She's getting ready to interrogate him, he can feel her sharpening her senses with every second that ticks by.
"What was so important that you couldn't even warn me you'd miss dinner?"
Quietly, Gale chews his rabbit and tries to decide what he's going to tell her, but Rory is already full of ideas it seems.
"Is it a girl?"
He almost chokes. "What?"
Rory, who'd been flicking his eyes back and forth between them, as if they were tossing a ball over his head, grins. "See, mom? I was right."
Gale gives him a dark look and wipes some of the spittle from his near choking from his mouth.
He wants to say that no, it isn't a girl, but that isn't quite the truth.
The situation with Madge isn't about some fling, which is exactly where Rory's filthy mind thinks it's about.
It had started out simply as Gale's need to unburden himself. Now though, it's so much more.
Madge is shattered into a million little pieces, and he'd made light of that possibility.
She's coming apart at the seams, and while he's sure her family can see it, he isn't sure they know how to help her. He isn't sure how to save her, but just like her parents, he's going to try.
"Who is she?" His mother asks, her eyes bright, probably already planning his toasting.
He's never been secretive with his so-called girlfriends, so she must think him hiding a girl away is a sure sign he's finally being serious about someone.
"Must be ugly if he's keeping her away," Rory adds unhelpfully. "Thom doesn't even know about her, and his standards are low."
"Why would Thom know anything?" Gale grumbles.
"I sent Rory over to see if you'd gone to hang out with him when you missed dinner," his mom explains. "Now tell me who she is, Gale. Is it that Shumard girl?"
Gale would rather eat his boots than have a date with either of the Shumard sisters, and his disgusted expression must let his mom know just that.
She laughs. "Alright, then who is it?"
Vick, who has somehow managed to distract Posy and escape, leans onto the table beside Rory, both looking as though they're about to hear Gale divulge some dark secrets.
When he gives them both weary looks, his mother stands up and gestures for Gale to do the same.
"Rory, Vick, stay in here with Posy."
Rory looks offended. "You just don't want us to hear."
Their mom smiles. "Exactly."
Following his mom, and listening to Rory and Vick grumble behind them, right up until they step out the front door and onto the porch.
Dropping onto the edge of the deck, his mom pats the spot beside her.
Popping the last bite of rabbit in his mouth, Gale plops beside her.
"I wasn't on a date," he tells her softly, certain his nosy brothers are trying their hardest to listen at the door. "I went up to the Village."
Her hopeful expression deflates. "Oh, sweetie."
He'd told her about he and Katniss' catastrophic visit to take the strawberries, and she'd been horrified.
"That poor girl's been through so much," she'd shaken her head, "but you should leave her be. She's dangerous."
After that, discussing any ideas he had about another attempt at talking to Madge had been out of the question. She was his mother, and his safety would always trump anything else, even his desire to help someone.
Cutting his eyes back do the patchy grass below them, Gale picks at a hole in the knee of his uniform.
"It went good." He glances over at her. "Better than last time."
"That just means she didn't try to stab you."
Gale laughs. "Guess Thom isn't the only one with low standards."
His laugh dies and the smile fades from his face though, when he sees his mom's grave expression.
"I know you want to help her," she says, reaching out and smoothing out his messy hair, "but I don't want to see you getting hurt."
Gale starts to grumble that he isn't going to get hurt, but gets cut off by his mom's sigh.
"You can't save everyone."
Swallowing thickly, Gale nods. "I know."
He doesn't want to save everyone, just Madge.
#######
Madge drifts through the next day, just as she had the day before, and the day before that.
Each day is indistinguishable from the next, not that it matters much. She has nothing but time on her hands, most of which she wastes except when Mr. Abernathy insists she practice.
There are sweeping classical pieces, jazzy ones that she tries to avoid, and her mother's favorite, nocturnes.
She finds herself playing the nocturnes more than most of the others, maybe for her mother or maybe they just reflect her best.
"You should go home Mr. Abernathy," she tells him when he nods off again on her couch as she finishes the moonlight sonata.
He rubs a hand over his face. "Why can't you play something cheerful, sweetheart? Everything you pick is putting me to sleep."
A small smile twitches up on her lips. "You could use the sleep."
A wry smile forms on his face.
"So could you." He stands and stretches. "Tomorrow can you try something with a little more umph? Please?"
Even though she doesn't plan on a happy song, maybe ever again, she nods.
It seems to make him happy, so Madge thinks it's worth the lie as he comes over and gives her a kiss on the head and tells her he's just next door if she needs him.
"I won't. I'm better," she lies.
He needs to be in his own space, needs to rest, needs time away from her. She exhausts herself, she can only imagine what her company is doing to him.
The fib doesn't fool him, only earns a grunt and a dark look before he leaves, his eyes already heavy with sleepiness.
Turning back to the piano, Madge begins tapping out the sonata again.
Just as her fingers dance over the last note, she hears a gentle tap, tap, tap.
At first she ignores it, something she's learned to do more and more. Every sound is a painful siren and she's been practicing blocking them out. It's a skill she'll need, she thinks, when she's sent back to the Capitol, when her Victory Tour rolls around.
She has to learn to ignore the noises, ignore the eyes.
But the tapping is insistent though, refused to stop, and her head begins to throb.
Dully, she wonders if this is how her mother so often feels, as she gets up to investigate.
There's dust in the air, floating in what's left of the sunlight filtering in her front door, but no figure cuts a shadow across it.
Frowning, she walks into the kitchen and the knocking gets louder.
The white curtain is up, and through the glass she sees him.
Gale is back.
He's in his mining uniform again, dusty and dirty, though he's apparently run a rag over his face, watching her carefully.
Uncertain if she's fallen asleep and is about to wake from what she can only imagine will be a horrifying dream, she steps toward the door and stares out at him.
She isn't sure why he's there, he'd told her he was sorry, for all the good that did either of them. He was free. There was no reason for him to come back.
Hand shaking slightly, Madge reaches out and unlocks the door, opening it just enough for her face to peak out.
"Hello?"
He nods, a little tense. "Hi."
They stare at each other for a few minutes, at a loss for words, before Gale clears his throat.
"So, uh, you play really well."
She frowns. Had he come all the way up to listen to her play?
When she doesn't respond, just gives him a blank stare, he rubs his neck and glances around.
"Your garden is coming on good." He turns to look at the plot of earth her mother had been tending to. "Squash is putting off quite a b-"
"Why are you here, Gale?"
It sounds terse and more than a little rude, but he's making her anxious, more anxious, and he has to want something.
He actually looks a little hurt, his eyes falling to the smooth wood of her back porch then dance around, searching for something else to talk about.
"I just-you didn't-" he lets out a long breath. "I was worried. You seemed a little sick."
Madge almost starts laughing.
Gale Hawthorne was worried about her.
It's a ridiculous notion. Gale doesn't even like her. Him being worried about her is proof this is some kind of twisted dream that'll soon turn to a full-fledged nightmare in a heartbeat.
She half expects him to start laughing, tell her it's part of a joke. A bet he'll get paid for.
Go talk to the crazy girl and get enough money to buy a steak for his family. That has to be it.
Tears begin welling in her eyes and she starts to shut the door, but he catches it, holding it open.
"Madg-"
Giving him a small shove, she pulls the door shut, cutting him off.
Quickly she pulls the curtain shut before sliding down the door and covering her mouth in a vain attempt to hold the sobs in.
She isn't sure why she's crying. It's stupid.
Before the Reaping, she'd have been a different kind of mess if Gale had shown her attention, worried over her. Now though, she wishes he'd go back to ignoring her. It would make things much simpler.
She's poison and he has a family to protect. She doesn't want the lives of more innocent people in her violent hands. She doesn't want his pity.
This life is hers to own, after all. She made the decision to win instead of walking into a nest of tracker jackers or letting one of the other Tributes kill her. This is her punishment and she has no desire to drag anyone else down with her.
He comes back though, the next day, and the next, sitting on her back porch when he gets off work, in his filthy uniform.
He doesn't knock again, she knows he's there and he knows she's aware. All he does is sit in the swing his hands in his lap, like he's waiting to get called into the principal's office.
On the third day, Madge opens the door again.
"Don't you get tired of coming up here?"
He gives her a small smile. "Haven't got much else to do."
She stays just inside the door frame, peering out at him, a little frown on her face.
"Oh."
Reaching in his pocket, he pulls out a piece of dried meat and offers it out to her pulling it back when she only stares at it.
"Did you, uh, hear about Chenille Shumard?"
#######
Gale comes by everyday after that without fail.
He tells her about things in Town and the Seam, gossip really, stuff she had never had interest in before. She doesn't leave the house, only hovers just inside the doorframe watching him as he talks for the first few weeks, then finally drifts to the porch, then the spot beside him on her swing.
She won't let him in, inside is a place of danger, a place for friends. The porch is where they'd always made transactions before things had gone so terribly wrong, it's a place of business.
Business is safe. Friendship isn't.
Even when Peeta ventures up to see her finally, she doesn't let him in. He's safer on the outside, in the sweltering heat. Even if he brings her little delights to coerce her into eating more.
She wishes he wouldn't. Madge isn't sure how many cakes and pies and cookies she's let go to waste since he started coming to see her.
"You're too thin," he tells her, eyeing her frame critically. Which isn't fair, she's actually managed to put on a few pounds since he'd first come to see her.
"I just don't have much of an appetite."
He pats her hand in a brotherly way, smiles wanly, but doesn't say anything more.
Both their visits become a strange kind of comfort. Since she can't make herself leave the house, not any further than her back porch, it's like hearing tales of a far off land. They're her bedtime stories, her entertainment.
"Mellark and Katniss are, uh, dating, I guess." Gale tells her one day as he picks at the coal dust under his nails. "He said something about not putting things off, you know…after you were Reaped. Asked her out the next day."
Madge reclines lazily on the swing, lets it rock her gently. Peeta hadn't mentioned it, but then, she doubts he thinks she probably cares since she'd half tried to kill Katniss the last time she'd seen her.
"Were you upset?" She asks.
He loved Katniss, Madge had sensed it, known it was coming ages ago. Surely he'd been upset.
She watches as he makes a face, begins rubbing at the stubble on his chin. "I was, a little, but I think she's better off with him." He frowns over at her. "She and me are too much alike. We'd exhaust each other."
That's true, though she never thought he'd have noticed it.
"She hasn't been back to see me." Madge picks at a loose thread on her dress. It isn't any wonder Katniss doesn't want to see her, though, Madge had tried to gut her last time. It's for the best she stay away.
Closing her eyes, she smiles for Peeta. He'd never mentioned his crush on Katniss to her, and she wonders how long he's had it.
Katniss, Madge thinks vaguely, could do worse than Peeta. He's calm and gentle, the opposite of his horrid mother. Plus, he's an excellent baker; she'd go so far as to say he's better than his dad.
Remembering he'd brought her a box of iced lemon cookies on his last visit, Madge has a sudden brave thought. Standing, she gestures for Gale to follow her.
Hesitating for a half second at the door, she takes a breath and opens it.
Cold air hits them, mingling with the thick air outside as Madge steps over the threshold and into the kitchen. For the first time, she lets Gale in the house.
He stops a few step in, his gray eyes tracing over every surface, all the spotless counters and her mother's immaculately set table.
The sight of him standing in her kitchen, dirty and oversized compared to all the dainty accoutrements makes the situation suddenly dire, terrifying. Her heart begins the thrum against her chest and her breathing begins to shorten.
Scooping up the box from the counter, she offers it out to him, hands shaking as she trys to hold it without dropping it. "Give this to your siblings."
Instead of taking it, he eyes the box skeptically.
Madge gives the box a small shake as she begins to feel her body tremble more violently."Please. They'll just be thrown away."
She feels tears coming to her eyes, which is stupid, they're cookies. Why is she crying over cookies?
The box slips from her hands, sending yellow cookies and crumbs scattering in every direction, ruining her mother's perfectly clean floor.
It's the final straw, making the last thread of her composure snap. The tears begin falling and she crumbles to the floor, knees pressing into sticky icing.
Gale drops down in front of her and pulls her into a hug, rubs his coal stained hands up and down her back to soothe her, mumbling soft things into her hair as she blubbers and sobs into his shirt.
There's nothing to cry about. Not dropped cookies or a boy in her kitchen, but she can't stop.
Eyes stinging, Madge just buries her face in his shoulder and lets her arms wrap around him.
Even if he's only there out of pity, he's there, and she needs whatever little bit of comfort he has to offer.
#######
Gale thinks they stay sitting on Madge's kitchen floor, broken bits of cookies scattered around them, for the better part of an hour.
The sun sinks behind them, the last rays finally melting away and leaving them in a cool darkness.
His mother is going to be worried again. She knows where he is, he's gone home and cleaned up a little each day before coming out, but he's been consistent about coming back before nightfall since that first try. There's no way he's leaving Madge there by herself though.
Slowly her sobs ebb, turn to little hiccups, and her breathing evens out while her body relaxes into him.
She looks so peaceful in sleep that Gale hates to wake her, but his back is beginning to ache, days in the mines and the awkward position catching up with him, so he gently shifts her.
A little half mutter crosses her lips as he moves her, one arm across her back and the other under her knees, but she stays asleep.
Carefully, he carries her deeper into the house.
He considers going up the stairs and depositing her in her bed, in whichever of the many rooms above contain it, but quickly squashes that idea. His luck, Haymitch would stumble in and think he's doing something indecent with her. Walking past the stairs, he squints into what looks to be a formal sitting area, the couch looks stiff and uncomfortable though so he continues past it.
When he comes across the smaller room, he steps in.
It's less than half the size of the front room, which is still probably as big as his house, with rich colors and much more comfortable looking furniture than the other room.
Stepping over what looks to be a pile of books, he walks to the couch and gently eases her onto the couch.
She whimpers for a second, but when Gale smooths her hair she calms and her expression softens again.
Standing, Gale starts to work out his apology to his mother, but stops when he notices a trail of dirt, coal dust, and cookies coming in from the hall and ending at him.
Scolding himself for not having taken off his boots, he pulls a blanket from the back of the couch and drapes it over her before heading to the kitchen and looking for a broom.
It doesn't take him long to sweep up, first the trail his boots had made, then the cookies, dumping the entire mess into a shiny metal container she clearly uses as a trash can.
Glaring down at his socks, there's a hole growing in the right one, he can see his big toe through it, he goes back to check on Madge one last time.
He freezes in the entry when he hears loud sobs again.
Running, he skids on the floor and nearly collides with the arch into the room trying to get back in and see what's happened.
She's still on the couch, curled into a ball, body shaking, and Gale instantly drops down beside her to see what's wrong. Despite the crying and the thrashing, she's still asleep.
He's never known someone to cry this hard for so long, but he supposed it isn't so much crying as it is all the things she keeps bottled up finally boiling out. There's only so much a person can hold in before they explode.
On instinct, he scoops her up and settles into the couch holding her, anything to keep her from hurting herself.
For a few seconds she struggles, still fighting whatever demons are infecting her head before she stills.
Afraid to set her down, Gale slumps over on the couch, keeping her tight to him, a reassuring contact that she isn't alone, as he gets more comfortable.
He's already late, he reasons as he rests his head against a decorative pillow and shifts Madge's weight on his arm, what's another hour or so?
Trying to keep his eyes propped open, he studied the brick on the fireplace, then the endless books on the shelves, before a day in the mines catches up with him and he drifts off to sleep.
#######
Madge wakes on the couch, more rested than she has been in months.
There's salt on her face, the last traces of exhausted tears and she instantly wants to wash it off. It's proof of her weakness, something she isn't allowed to have.
When she tries to set up though, something holds her in place.
She recognizes the hands, stained fingers, broken nails and rough skin, clamped at her waist. Gale is still softly snoring behind her, keeping her held close with a powerful grip.
It almost startles her into screaming, but she doesn't.
Slowly, the evening comes back to her.
She'd had another meltdown, made a mess of herself, more than she already had, in front of him. She's an embarrassment.
Rolling over, she feels tears prickle at her eyes again, though if she has any tears left she isn't sure.
He looks so calm, peaceful even, despite the wreck she'd dragged him into. The dark stubble on his chin and cheeks is thicker than she's ever seen it and there's a small nick on his jaw. Probably from shaving.
Eyes dropping, she lifts her hand and traces his name, embroidered on his uniform in color that only the person responsible would know now through the grim and dust.
Sadly, she wonders if his time in the mines has given him nightmares, if it's made sleep half as much a terror as hers is. His dad died down in those pits after all.
She doubts that. Gale isn't like her, not weak.
The mines probably wear him out, they'd do that to anyone, but all that probably earns him is a hard night's sleep.
The clock chimes one in the morning, and she knows she should wake him, but he looks so comfortable that she can't force herself to.
Even if all he feels for her is pity, she still feels she owes him something for all the time he's wasted on her porch. A good sleep on her couch is the least she can do.
Yawning, she lets herself have the luxury of his strength and calm to keep the nightmares at bay.
Burrowing a little more snugly against his chest, she closes her eyes and drifts easily back to sleep.