Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
He deserved his misery, he knew that, but Madge didn't.
Come To Roost
(Small warning: Little bit-o-language, one word really, and some less than veiled talk of past actions. Not bad, not explicit, and only a teeny tiny bit, but had it pointed out that if you squint it might make some uncomfortable.)
Gale had known, had a gut feeling, that he shouldn't have taken Madge to District Seven. Their relationship was still so new, she'd been so hesitant to take that next step, and he didn't want to expose her to his less than stunning immediate post war life. But he'd taken her with him to every other at this point, he couldn't avoid it forever, much as he would've liked to.
The District itself wasn't the problem. It was heavily wooded and full of game for hunts, not an expanse of emptiness, and no smog as was the norm in the more industrial Districts.
There was only one real problem with District Seven, and it was drinking heavily at the bar.
After the Rebellion, after Katniss' trial, and after she and Mellark were sent back to District Twelve, he'd been in a bad way. Drank too much, lost himself in his work, left his family in Thirteen while he traipsed across the country…
His biggest mistake, though, had been with Johanna Mason.
She was combustible and he was fire, and they'd exploded when near each other. It had culminated in a few horrible months of fights and angry not-quite-make-ups, which he whole heartedly regretted.
Finally, after a particularly bad day, he'd gone home to find his mother and siblings on the doorstep of his pathetic and filthy military issued apartment in District Two.
"Gale," his mother had sighed. "You can't keep doing this to yourself. Please. We still love you."
His family needing him had pulled him from that place. They didn't deserve to be neglected, and he had to, he had always had to, watch out for them, keep them safe. What would happen to them without him? His mother was strong, but she'd had him for so long, helping. He couldn't abandon them.
Eventually he'd found Madge, and she needed him too, in a different way. She'd needed him to pull her back and show her the world was a little more bright, at least for him, with her in it. To show her that being alive was a gift that so many had snatched away from them, that she was a miracle.
Breaking things off with Johanna, though, had been messy, to say the least. He'd done it over the phone, out of necessity and out of fear, he had no doubt she could and would kill him if she had the opportunity. There'd been a lot of yelling, screaming, hurtful things said on both sides. They had been a mistake, every moment of them…
"Fuck you, Gale Hawthorne."
Then she'd slammed the phone, leaving him with nothing but the dial tone and guilty relief.
It had been a long, painful process, but his family needed him and he wouldn't fail them like he'd done with so many others.
Now, with Madge on his arm, his biggest mistake was eyeing them, like a wild dog catching the scent of a wounded animal. Normally she avoided the galas; she'd told him once they were too much like the days of her Victory Tour, flashing cameras and dirty old men.
Gale had understood, had commiserated, he'd become one of the faces most associated with the Rebellion and then in helping set up the new government. He'd enjoyed it for a short time before craving his anonymity again.
While he eventually was able to escape the spotlight for the most part, Johanna never would.
Which is why he'd hoped she would once again spit in the faces of the new District Seven Mayor, not show up. Clearly, he wasn't that lucky.
Johanna stood and straightened her back before beginning an unmistakable, if weaving, path toward Gale.
He pulled Madge to the dance floor, kept her there for as long as possible, hoping Johanna would give up whatever it was the glint in her eye told him she wanted. They end up in a far corner of the floor, Gale hoping for some private time, when his fears became reality.
"Well, hello handsome."
Madge looks over his shoulder and he can see Johanna's sneering face reflected in her wide blue eyes. She knows Johanna, knows of her, but doesn't know of she and Gale's shared past.
Johanna strolls around him, running her finger along his shoulder before her hand snaps over and catches his chin, "Avoiding me?"
He jerks from her grasp and gives Madge an encouraging little nudge, away from Johanna's claws. Johanna's eyes widen when they settle on Madge, flickering from the top of her head, along her expensive, if borrowed dress, to her plain heels, then back again.
"Who the hell are you?" She sneers, not impressed with what she sees.
Madge's bottom lip puckers slightly, but she quickly fixes a perfunctory smile on her face, "Madge Undersee."
She offers her hand, but Johanna doesn't take it, only eyes it with a vague look before ignoring it completely and turning to Gale.
"I thought you had a fetish for brunettes with bad attitudes, not bubbly blondes with more boobs than brains?"
Madge's hand slowly drops and a look of hurt flutters fleetingly across her features before she leans into Gale and whispers, "I think I'll-I don't think I'm wanted here. I'll go wait by the bar."
Gale catches her hand. "No." His irritation with Johanna's treatment of Madge making him almost shake as he turns to her. "Johanna, I'm leaving. We don't have anything to say to each other."
He turns, puts his hand on Madge's back, is formulating how he's going to explain how much bigger a mess he'd been in the direct aftermath of the Rebellion to her, when Johanna's strong grip catches his upper arm.
"Nothing to say? I feel like I have a lot to say." Her eyes, full of cold fire, narrow on Madge. "Are you his latest fling?"
Madge just barely opens her mouth to speak when Johanna flips back to Gale, "She's just a tiny thing, how do you have any fun with that? Then again you did like to be on top, she looks like a submissive little brat, probably does every little thing you tell her, doesn't she?"
She's up in Madge'se face, nose to nose, before Gale even realizes it, catching her chin in her hand, squeezing her cheeks unnecessarily tight.
"Look at that tiny little mouth. How does she do anything? Or do you just like the feel of her li-"
Gale is about to push her away, but Madge beats him to it. She gives Johanna a look of disgust before turning to Gale, wide eyed and horrified, shaking her head. He can almost read her thoughts. I've got to get out of here.
She bolts, toward the balcony, Johanna making a popping noise with her mouth to her back.
Gale watches Madge disappear before rounding on Johanna. He deserved his misery, he knew that, but Madge didn't. She hadn't done anything more than show up with his stupid ass.
"What's your problem?"
Johanna polishes off the amber liquid in the glass she'd been swinging around and grinned at him.
"Got rid of blondie, didn't I?" She runs her hand up his arm, onto his chest, "Let's get out of here."
He could smell the liquor all over her, she stank of it. Her eyes were foggy and dark and her stance unsteady. She fell forward into him when he tried to back away.
"One more time?" Her voice was still firm, but muffled by his chest. She held her liquor well, but even she eventually met her limit.
Gale took her by the shoulders and glared at her.
"No." He pushes her along, steering her toward one of the provided drivers. "Get her out of here."
She pushes back, snarling, "You don't get to tell me what to do."
He ignores her, "She's had too much to drink. Get her home."
He turns, leaving her screaming at his back.
###################################################
Madge is sitting at the edge of a fountain, her cheap heels off at her side, staring at the large, colorful fish swimming peacefully below the water's surface.
He knows she'll be angry; she has every right to be. She'll have worked out he and Johanna had a past, and while that itself won't upset her, he'd had several 'relationships', though none with girls as volatile as Johanna Mason, in District Twelve and she knew it, the fact that he hadn't warned her of the possibility of being accosted probably will.
His shadow, from the blazing white lights of the main hall, falls over her and she looks back briefly before returning her gaze to the fish.
Gale drops down beside her, onto the stone bend surrounding the fountain base. He turns his body toward her and studies her.
She looks pale, well, paler than usual. Her expression is still fragile.
He reaches out, runs his hand up her arm, "I'm sorry."
Her face snaps over, odd uncertainty etching into her features. "Why?"
His eyes flicker to the hall, to where Johanna had all but assaulted her. Madge gives him a pained smile, "She isn't your responsibility."
"I should've kept her away from you."
"How?" She laughs, "People will do what they want, eventually."
He doesn't see how it's funny, not in the least. Annoyed, he reaches his hand up, runs the pads of his fingers over the little red patch on her cheek where Johanna had grabbed her.
"She's mad at me and she took it out on you."
It would've been so much simpler if she'd have taken a swing at him, a physical injury he could handle, Madge's bruises, physical or not, were much harder for him to stomach.
"When…" She bites her lip, "When were the two of you…"
Gale drops his hand from her face; he knows he has to tell her, no matter how much he hates it.
"Few months after the fall." He looks up, squints at the top of the water spout as it bubbles, "It wasn't-not really-a relationship. It was just…"
He doesn't want to say it, it makes him feel filthy and pathetic, to have used and been used like that. At the time, though, that's all he felt he deserved. Something dark and angry, unbalanced.
There were times he still felt he didn't deserve good things, bright and shining things, like his family and Madge, things that hadn't been charred or tarnished by his failures.
She's scoots closer to him, takes his face in her hands and presses her forehead to his.
"I love you, Gale." A sad little smile flickers in her eyes, "The past is in the past. We can't change it, and we shouldn't. We are who we are because of it, for better or worse."
His hands find her waist and jerk her towards him, she squeaks a little in surprise.
"You aren't mad?"
Her eyebrows arch up, "About an ex-girlf-"
Gale covers her mouth, "Not an ex-girlfriend."
Madge pulls his hand away, "Whatever she is. I know you have exes. I think you took half the girls in your grade through mine to the slag heap, right?"
He narrows his eyes, he really hated that rumor. "Actually, I think you're the only one I didn't."
"Oh," she nods, fighting a smile. "Making up for it now then?"
"What can I say? I don't wanna be known as the guy who stopped with one to go."
His lips catch hers and he leans her back on the stone, hands running up her legs and hiking the expensive borrowed dress up to the tops of her thighs.
"Gale!" She snorts into his shoulder, pushing his hands down, "We are in public!"
Who cares?
He persists, nipping at her neck and her jaw. Finally, he kisses the now pink marks on her cheeks, sighing into them.
"I'm sorry she hurt you."
Madge runs her hands through his hair, focusing and thinking, before finally speaking.
"She's hurting too, Gale."
He wrinkles his nose, "She's just-"
This time she covers his mouth, "No, listen. She's lost most of her friends. She stays up here, all alone probably, and I remember her family was killed around the time of her Games. She's suffered. People deal with things in funny ways. Some use drugs, some drink, some work," a hint of a smile flickers on her lips, "some run and hid…"
Gale sighs, nuzzling into her neck and planting a few more kisses as he listens to the soft cadence of her voice reverberate through her chest.
"She's dealing with her issues in her own way. Maybe not the best way, but her way."
##################################################
They pulled up to the ramshackle house in what had once been District Seven's Victor's Village. The yard had long over grown, stumps and wood chips littered the ground. There were several large piles of fire wood scattered about.
Gale sighed. After telling Madge everything, right down to his cutting Johanna off by phone, she'd hugged him, kissed him, murmured soothing things into his hair, before telling him something he'd known in the back of his head for years now.
"You need to tell her you're sorry," she told him as she traced the lines of his scars on his back. "I know it isn't something anyone is really at fault for, things like that happen, it was an extreme situation, but…sometimes people need to hear that the other person is willing to shoulder some of the blame, so they can move on."
Or she'll decapitate me.
Madge stayed in the car as he slowly walked up the dilapidated step and to the front door. He wouldn't have even brought her, but their flight left early and he wouldn't have had time to pick her up, after whatever went down with Johanna went down. He'd warned her to keep her head down, he wasn't sure what Johanna would do if she saw her.
With more than a little uneasiness, Gale knocked on the door.
Maybe she won't be home.
The door began creaking open, of course he couldn't be that lucky.
Johanna peaked out, suspiciously eyeing whoever dared disturb her. When she caught sight of Gale, the door opened fractionally more as she leaned against the frame, arms crossed and a sneer on her lips.
"Come to take me up on the offer?"
"No."
"Good, it's off the table anyway." She swings the door open more and waves for him to come in.
He shakes his head and she narrows her eyes, flickering them over his shoulder, past him, and to the still running car.
"Brought blondie, huh? Not my ideal thre-"
Gale puts his hands up, "Stop, alright. Just let me talk."
Her eyebrows shoot up and Gale takes her momentary surprise as an opening.
"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry I used you and I let you use me. I'm sorry it was so horrible. I'm sorry for breaking it off over the phone, it was cowardly and disrespectful. I'm sorry I avoided you all this time and didn't do this sooner. I'm sorry if I embarrassed you the other night. I'm sorry I hurt you."
He finally took a long breath when he finished. When he looked up she was smirking.
"Blondie make you say all that?"
His mouth turns down, "She just told me to do what I knew I should've done a long time ago."
They stand there, staring each other down with heavy unhappiness floating between them. Things would never be good between them, not really, but maybe they could just be not bad. Civil, would even be acceptable in Gale's mind, as long as it didn't result in Madge getting manhandled.
Finally, Johanna shrugs, "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Hawthorne." She makes a falsely sweet face and wiggles her fingers over his shoulder, in Madge's direction, then turns and slams the door in his face.
################################################
While he isn't sure whether his talk with Johanna was a success, he still had his head, so that was always a positive.
He pushed the seat rest up and pulled Madge closer to him, wrapping his hand protectively around her waist. She'd been a little too quiet since the last night, when she'd told him he needed to make amends with Johanna, and it worried him.
He pressed a kiss to her head, "What is it?"
She looked up at him, seemingly confused. His mouth set in a narrow line, she knew what he meant.
He felt her shoulders move in a shrug, "Nothing."
His fingers raked through her hair, soft and loose, letting it fall then brushing it off her shoulders. He could guess what the problem was.
"Is it what Johanna said?"
Madge was a little…uncertain, he wasn't even sure if that was the word. She was uncertain of herself with him, anyway, or so it felt. While he knew she was aware that the slag heap rumors were bullshit for the most part, there was always a little anxiety that seemed to creep into her body when they got too close to tumbling over the edge.
Gale can't see her face from his angle, but he can visualize the little pucker of her lip as she frowns, the downward slope her eyebrows would take.
"Look, she was drunk and she just wanted to get under my skin." And she'd done a damn fine job of it. "I-I'm really impressed with you. If it had been me, some guy getting up in my face and saying that crap about you, I'd have decked him."
Suddenly, she swivels in her seat, so that she's looking him in the eyes. "Are you saying I should've hit her?"
"No," he shakes his head. Madge could hit, and hit well, he knew from experience, but hitting Johanna Mason wouldn't have ended well.
Besides, Madge had more self control than that. He'd only seen her lose her temper a few times, and even then it had been a tightly coiled thing, barely fighting its way out of her. Years of smiling and pleasing and never outwardly expressing herself had made her into something of an enigma to Gale. He let his emotions out, yelled, hugged, scowled and smiled, he had a hard time faking things. Madge hardly raised her voice, had been stiff in hugs until he wore her into them, and her expressions were almost always muted. He'd had to learn to read her, something he still failed at more often than not, to tell if he was on the right path.
She picks at her skirt, tugs at a little loose thread in the hem, won't meet his eyes as she speaks this time.
"You won't compare me will you?"
For a moment, he isn't quite sure what she means. The thought had never even occurred to him, to compare Madge to anyone, especially not Johanna.
"It's just…" She smoothes her skirt, "I knew, I mean, I know you've had a few…you know, and," she closes her eyes, " I don't exactly have droves of former boyfriends."
He realizes, belatedly, how she meant to compare them. It almost makes him laugh, she's ridiculous sometimes, but he loves her for it.
"There's no comparing, Madge."
They were too different, and he needs Madge's calm, her control, more than he'd ever needed anything in his life.
He takes her chin in his hand and forces her to look at him, "I'm glad there aren't droves, I don't thinkI could handle the competition."
She's quiet for a minute, studying his face, when her lips quirk up, a soft little thing, but it's there. Gale grins, presses his forehead to hers.
"You know, she didn't tell me anything I couldn't have guessed," she finally says, a sly little smirk forming on her face.
Gale wrinkles his nose. What?
She leans forward a little, cheek to cheek, whispers in his ear, "About certain proclivities."
He groaned. He loved it and hated it when she talked like that.
"I mean, you practically smother me every nigh-"
In one smooth move he pulls her into his lap, one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees with his hand working under her skirt. He nuzzles the collar of her shirt out of the way and starts nipping at her collarbone.
"I'll show you 'proclivities'," he growled as she laughed and protested that they were 'still in public, Gale'.
Their little trip had at least not resulted in a massive setback in their relationship.
Though he doubted he'd want to return to District Seven, with or without Madge, anytime in the next century.