Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
It is a foreign world, pt 1
AN: The title is from 'All Quiet on the Western Front' by Erich Maria Remarque. It seemed fitting, considering all the characters have been through. The second part with Haymitch will be up...eventually. Sorry.
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Gale hadn't had a good night.
Madge had known he wouldn't. Being in Twelve, even for the few hours to see the new cemetery, the memorial, is stressful for him. Even with his string of good nights, nights without whimpers and tears, this trip was bound to drag up the dormant monsters in his mind. After the long, restless night, she's more sure than ever of their decision to keep their stay short. The phantoms that plague his mind in the darkest part of the night are a little bit nearer to him while he sleeps in the newly built hotel, the only hotel, in District Twelve, and that's too close for comfort.
He'd been worried about Madge having that problem. The hotel was built directly over the now crumbled and crushed, brushed away ruins of her childhood home. Their room, a tiny, plain thing just big enough for the bed and a small dresser, sits in the exact same spot as her mother's bedroom. Looking out the window, Madge had the same view of the square she'd had the day Gale had been whipped, the day she'd sobbed, begged her mother to help and she'd given Madge some of her morphling.
Instead of distressing Madge, it comforts her.
District Twelve isn't dead. It will probably never be a booming place like Two or Four, but it will grow back. Like the fields of Ten after they'd been burned, Twelve will break through the ash and return to life, a peaceful, hopeful place. There's no reason to leave the piles of debris around, a grim reminder to everyone. People had died so others could live, and building over the ruins is just another step toward ultimate healing.
Carefully, she unwraps herself from Gale's arms, crawls out from under him and begins getting dressed. She'd spotted a man with a cart overflowing with fruits on the walk back from the cemetery the evening before. He's already out, Madge can see him standing in the cobbled square, waiting for customers, from the window. She hopes he has some strawberries, maybe even some from the land beyond where the fence used to be.
From behind her, she hears a grunt.
"Come back to bed," Gale groans, just barely lifting his head and reaching out for her.
Staying out of his reach, he'll pull her back into bed if he can, Madge smiles and finishes straightening her blouse. "I'm going down to get us some breakfast."
He doesn't look as though he cares much for breakfast as he shakes his head and replaces Madge's body with a pillow before flopping, face down, into the wallowed out spot she'd been sleeping in.
Snorting, Madge rolls her eyes and makes her way past him, whispering, "I'll be back in a few minutes."
Gale just grunts another acknowledgement at that.
The stairs are a little narrower than the ones that had been in Madge's house, they creak a bit when she hops down them. The carpet isn't as luxurious, but it's newer. The entire hotel has a freshly built smell. Wood and fibers all mixing together in the cool spring air blowing in from the open windows.
Madge jogs out the open double doors, past one of the men that runs the hotel, a former miner that gave Gale a discount despite Gale's insistence that he not.
"I have money," he'd told the man, Sanderson, Madge thinks is his name.
Sanderson just shook his head. "You saved our lives. I can't charge you full price. You're a hero."
Gale hadn't looked particularly happy at that, had shot Madge several weary looks before they'd gotten to their room.
"You deserve some of the credit," he'd told her.
"A lot of people deserve some of the credit," Madge had corrected him simply. Her father and mother, Birdy, and dozens of nameless faceless men and women that are dead because of their efforts to save Twelve.
He hadn't argued with her. She hasn't been able to tell him, even after all this time, what had happened the night Twelve had been bombed. Katy-Jo Lewes tells her it's a coping mechanism, avoiding that dark chapter in her life. It's too much to think about, and even though she knows she'll have to face it eventually, that eventually hasn't come yet.
Crossing the square, she comes up to the cart and gives the man a small smile. He barely returns it over the top of his paper.
"Do you have bags?" Madge asks.
He sighs, reaches under the back of his cart and pulls out a small paper bag. Without so much as a 'help yourself', he hands it to her and returns his attention to the newspaper.
Ignoring his curtness, Madge begins picking through the strawberries, filling her little bag with only the juiciest looking ones.
Just as she's about to ask him how much for her bag, Madge hears something drop a few feet behind her, make a cracking noise against the cobbled ground, and turns to see what the splattering had been.
She just barely has time to register the mess of eggs, all in a broken pile of yolk and shells at a man's feet, when she hears a voice she hasn't heard in years.
"Madge?"
It takes her a second, but not any longer, to look up and see the now weathered and worn face of Peeta Mellark.
Just like Gale, Peeta is beaten by the terrors that had been brought upon him.
He looks so tired, so much older than he had. His hair isn't quite as bright as the last time she'd seen it, Madge is sure she spots a gray hair or two woven through the blond. There are scars on his arms, probably more that Madge can't see, that she doesn't want to see.
His eyes are wide, disbelieving, not the kind blue ones that had twinkled up at her during class assignments when they'd been children. Gray shadows are under them from long nights and an emptiness in their depths from dark dreams overshadow the warmth that had once filled them. It's a haunted look that Madge knows will probably stay there for the rest of his life.
The war, the torture, has made him almost into someone she almost doesn't recognize.
Despite the changes, the hollowness of his being, Madge can still sense Peeta. Just like with Gale, Madge can still see the good person that had come so close to being destroyed peeking through the broken exterior.
She smiles sadly at him. "Hello Peeta."
Over the past few years Madge has written him, Katniss, and Mr. Abernathy, several times, but never received any sort of reply.
"They aren't who they used to be," Gale had told her as she'd fretted over the lack of response. "They probably just don't have anything to say."
Madge thinks he's secretly happy none of them have ever tried to connect with her. Gale still thinks he doesn't deserve happiness, despite Madge's efforts to help him see otherwise. She knows he's certain that if Madge were to hear Katniss and Peeta's story she would shun him. It's ridiculous, she's seen him at his worst, but the Rebellion had damaged something in him that Madge knows she may never be able to fix.
Peeta stares at her, blinks rapidly, as though trying to rid himself of some horrible phantasm, and it occurs to Madge that maybe he is. There's no telling how many ghosts haunt him. After what the Capitol did to him, maybe visions of the dead are something he deals with daily.
Finally, he takes a step forward. "You-you're real?"
Madge's mind vaguely recalls Gale mentioning playing a game called 'Real or Not Real' to help Peeta ground himself. It's unimaginable to her, the thought of not being able to trust your own mind, memories, never knowing what is real or not. A sharp pain shoots through her chest for Peeta. He'll probably always be trapped in the unreliable world of his mind.
Taking a deep breath, Madge nods, hoping it's what Peeta needs.
He makes no move of acknowledgment so Madge takes a step back, bumps into the cart and knocks her bag of strawberries to the ground. The little cart owner doesn't say a word, and out the corner of her eye Madge sees that he's vanished. Maybe Peeta's had a fit near him before and he doesn't want to be around for it, Madge doesn't know, but it bodes ominously to her.
"Peeta," a rough sounding voice calls for him from somewhere behind him.
When he doesn't respond, doesn't drop his eyes from Madge, someone jogs from across the square. Madge doesn't see them; she can't tear her own eyes from Peeta. She's preparing herself for an attack, deciding how best to hit him without hurting him too badly, when a hand comes to a rest on Peeta's broad shoulder.
"Peeta, what's the matter?" Katniss appears beside him, concern etched into her features. She follows his eye line and makes an odd noise when she finally spots what has him so tense. "Madge?"
Katniss looks every bit as battered and scarred as Peeta, maybe even more so. She's thin, too thin, her clothes don't hang well on her and Madge wonders if she simply doesn't eat or if she runs herself into the ground to battle her own nightmares, like Gale had done for so long, and all she takes in burns away on her bones. Her gray eyes, just as hollow and darkened as Peeta's, seem to look right through Madge, expecting her to evaporate into the dust she's supposed to be.
She shakes her head, blinks at the ground, trying to cast Madge away, back to the land of the dead, but when Katniss looks up and sees she's still very much there a pained smile forms on her cracked and dry lips.
"Madge?"
Biting her lip, Madge nods again.
It happens so quickly Madge almost screams. Peeta lunges at her, and at first she thinks he's going to strangle her just like he'd tried to do with Katniss all those years ago, but instead he crushes her in a hug.
Bewildered, Madge lets out a shaky breath against his shoulder. He smells like vanilla, and Madge instantly wonders if he bakes still. She hopes he does. Tears begin soaking the shoulder of her blouse and she feels Peeta shake against her.
"You're real."
Madge nods into his shoulder before realizing he might just think she's wiping her nose on him.
"Yeah, I'm real," she tells him quietly.
Finally, he pulls back, holds her at arm's length and studies her with a smile. A smile like the old Peeta often gave her after a particularly hard day at school. He gives her shoulder a squeeze. "Why are you here?"
Not missing the dark look Katniss gives her, Madge quickly takes Peeta's hand and squeezes it before taking a step back.
"I came to see the cemetery," she tells them softly. "I needed to see it."
Peeta's smile dims, fades into a somber upturn. "I understand."
"Is it nice?" Katniss asks, looking genuinely curious.
Madge starts to ask why she hasn't gone, but when she notices Peeta's expression, just as eager to hear about the newest addition to the District despite the fact that it's just a short walk from them, it occurs to her that there might be too many ghosts haunting the memorial for them. If seeing living breathing Madge had caused Peeta so much distress, seeing the cold stones with the names of their loved ones, their dearly departed, firmly underfoot might only have served to wake the demons in their minds that they work so hard to keep at bay.
"It's lovely," Madge tells them. She doesn't elaborate, doesn't describe it. Whatever they have it built as in their minds is what they need the memorial to be and she won't be the one to break that image.
Katniss nods, frowns at the ground, splattered with yolk and egg shells. "Good."
"You should come out to the house," Peeta says as he crouches down to pick up the few strawberries that have rolled near to him. "I made some cheese rolls and Katniss has some stew on. You could tell us about where you live now, what you do, how you got out. You didn't say much in your letters."
Madge takes the berries from him and holds them loosely in her hands.
She hadn't expected to run into them. Not that she had planned on avoiding them, but she'd assumed they would side step her, especially since the snubbing of her letters.
Gale and she had come in the afternoon before and had a departing ticket on the train that leaves in only a couple of hours. Less than a day in total.
"The less time there the better," Gale had told her. After last night, with some of his worst nightmares in a very long while, Madge is inclined to agree.
Peeta's expression is so hopeful, so bright and like the boy she remembers, that Madge hates to tell him 'no', but there isn't much choice.
"I'm leaving in a few hours," she explains. "I'm sorry. There just isn't time."
A small frown takes the place of the eager expression on Peeta's face, but he recovers it quickly, forming a sad smile. "Maybe next time then."
There won't be a next time. This is a singular trip, once in a lifetime, for both Gale and Madge. It's the closing of a chapter and once it's ended there will be no going back. There can't be.
Katniss seems to pick up on Madge's wariness, crosses her arms over her chest and sets her tired eyes on some fixed point beyond Madge.
"You won't be coming back, will you?" She finally asks.
It almost brings a smile to Madge's face, that Katniss and not Peeta has picked up on her thoughts. Peeta, the old Peeta, has left his mark on her.
After a minute of quiet, Madge nods.
"I don't want to," she finally says. "I was happy just knowing they remembered us, but…"
"You needed to see they were telling the truth?" Peeta finally supplies.
His astute observation of her sentiment is a little rattling. Peeta knows what lies the government is willing tell just to placate its citizens.
Madge nods and feels a few tears slip down her cheeks, wipes them away with the back of her hand.
"Must be nice," Katniss says, a little sharply, "to have the option not to come back."
Katniss' barb stings in Madge's chest. She and Peeta weren't given the choice of not returning to Twelve, and don't have the option of leaving. It's the beginning and the end of their sorrows, and their trapped there for the rest of their lives.
It's not fair to them, and Madge almost asks where they would go if given the choice. It's a hopeless question though. There's nowhere void of ghosts for Katniss and Peeta. Their ghosts live in their heads much more than even Gale's do.
"I'm sorry," Madge finally manages to say, voice a little shaky. She curses her own weakness. Katniss would never be so fragile, she's been through so much worse than Madge and she's still standing. It's no wonder Gale loved her first.
A thousand old doubts flood Madge's head, whispering hateful things at her as she stares at Katniss' feet. She'll never be as strong as Katniss, never an equal enough partner for Gale. Madge will only ever be a consolation prize, a warm body to seek comfort in during the cold nights. Gale will never love her as much as he had Katniss.
"It isn't your fault," Katniss finally sighs.
Slowly, Madge pulls her eyes from the ground, focuses on Katniss.
She's beaten down, a hollowed out version of her former self. A small, sad smile forms on her lips, and for a second the old Katniss, the Katniss that had sacrificed herself for Prim, ventured into the woods to feed her family, sold strawberries to the Mayor, peeks through.
The Katniss that had been is still there, buried deeply under the scars, slowly healing. But just like Gale, she'll never be the same. Time and suffering have altered her forever.
The girl Gale had loved is gone, just like the boy that had loved her has been consumed by the ravages of a costly war.
Madge takes a step forward, holds a strawberry out to Katniss. "I'm still sorry."
It isn't much, but an apology is all she has to offer them. The most sincere thing she can bring to the table. She can't offer to help them, Madge has no more power now than she had when she was the Mayor's daughter. The only difference is, now the illusion is gone, the only thing left is the girl that was always there and her heartfelt need to try to make things better, even when she knows she can't.
For a minute Katniss stares at the berry before finally taking it, gently hodling it in her palm.
"Thank you," she says, just barely audible above the gentle wind.
Her eyes catch Madge's, both a little shiny, and the ghost of a smile floats over her face. All Madge can think to do is return it with a watery feeling one of her own.
"Will you keep writing?" Peeta finally asks.
A frown forms on Madge's lips. "Do you want me to? You never write back."
Peeta and Katniss exchange a look.
"Haymitch didn't want us to," Katniss finally says, stuffing the berry in her bag. "He thought it would encourage you to come back."
A chuckle escapes Peeta's chest. "He's got such flawless logic."
Clearly.
Madge nods, tries not to roll her eyes. Mr. Abernathy had been trying to help her move on, in his own strange way. She supposes she should thank him, even if she mostly just feels annoyed with him at the moment.
"That's why I didn't plan on seeing you," Madge tells them. "I'd almost convinced myself to stop writing, actually. I thought I might be wearing you out, or that you just didn't want any reminders of…anything."
Peeta smiles, reaches out and places a warm hand on her shoulder. "Reminders aren't a bad thing. We like your letters. We don't get to see for ourselves what our sacrifices have won. At least we get to hear about them, a little anyway, when you write."
"You could be a little more cryptic though," he tells her with a wink.
Madge grins back. "I'll work on that."
"You came out here alone? That's brave of you," Katniss asks, squinting into the distance for a person she's sure exists.
It shouldn't catch her off guard, but it does. Of course Katniss wouldn't think Madge was capable of traveling by herself. In her eyes, Madge is still just the Mayor's daughter, not the girl that warned the District to run before the bombing started, not a girl that had watched her District burn, certainly not a girl that had helped fight in District Ten during the Rebellion.
It stings that despite the fact that Madge is standing in front of her, Katniss doesn't see her, and Madge wonders if she ever really did.
She may not bear the scars Katniss, Peeta, and Gale do, and she knows she hasn't suffered like they did, but she certainly hasn't come through to this point unscathed.
"I went through a lot all by myself," Madge answers evenly.
Before the Rebellion Madge had lived an almost painfully solitary life and during the Rebellion she'd confined herself to only a handful of people, not really wanting to get too close. She's depended on herself for company for most of her life, and as far as Peeta and Katniss need to be concerned, that hasn't changed.
She doesn't mention Gale is probably just now getting dressed in their hotel room. Not because it would prove Katniss right that Madge needs her hand held, can't make the journey across the country by herself, but because as much as Katniss' lack of faith in her stings, Madge knows that telling her that Gale is near, maybe even looking out the window of the room at the moment, might do her damage.
Gale had told Madge about Katniss state after the Rebellion, after Prim's death, about how she would always connect Gale with the bomb that took her beloved sister. Gale, who had been Katniss' dearest friend, possibly more, is now a physical reminder of the anger and desperation, of the lies and violence that took Prim's life.
Katniss needs protected from the memory of Gale, and even if Madge feels slighted, she'll do her part to keep Katniss safe from those demons. She's seen with Gale just how dangerous a person's mind can be and she can't do that to the girl she, at least at one time, called her friend.
For a few seconds Katniss just stares at her, expression as unreadable as ever, then a small smile, just a barely perceivable upturn at the corners of her mouth, forms on her face.
"I know you did," she finally says, shifting the backpack on her shoulders and refocusing her eyes on the ground.
It isn't quite an acknowledgment that Madge is capable of surviving by herself, but it's a start.
Eventually, Madge thinks, she'll tell them about Gale and her. Slowly, in pieces, introducing them to the good man he's become. She can't erase the painful results of his actions, but she can hopefully help them to see that he's learned from them and is making amends.
"You should go see Haymitch," Peeta tells her, pointing to a row of shops in the distance. "He'll be unbearable if we tell him we saw you and he didn't."
"He's always unbearable," Katniss mutters, but there's a hint of an affectionate smile under her scowl.
Annoyed as she is with him for not responding to her letter, and telling Peeta and Katniss not to write back either, Madge feels a pull to see Mr. Abernathy. He's a tie to her past, much more solid than Gale, Katniss, or even Peeta could ever be.
He's an old friend, a warm hug, a gruff pat on the shoulder from a childhood that was often anything but happy.
Peeta pulls her into another tight hug, presses a quick kiss to her cheek. "Take care, Madge. Don't stop writing, please."
Pulling back, his eyes are shimmering and he sniffles, giving her one last hopeful smile.
"Every chance I get, Peeta," Madge tells him, returning his smile.
Katniss eyes her warily, and for a second Madge expects her to simply nod her goodbye and turn to leave, not unlike she'd so often done on Madge's back porch all those years ago.
Instead, she pushes forward, quickly but timidly throwing her arms around Madge's shoulders.
"You were always a lot braver than we thought, and I never meant to say you weren't," she tells her quietly. "I'm glad you made it out."
Stupid, warm tears spring to Madge's eyes. It isn't something to cry about, but hearing Katniss Everdeen, the Girl on Fire, the Spark to the Rebellion, the bravest girl in their nation, tell her she knows Madge isn't as weak as everyone always thought and that she's glad she isn't part of the dead dust of the District, is a bit overwhelming.
"Thank you," is all Madge can manage to say in return, her voice thick and wet sounding.
Katniss pulls back, gives Madge a short little nod, keeping her eyes on the ground as she turns back to Peeta.
He smiles, takes her hand and they walk away, into the slowly growing trickle of people coming out for the day.
Just like Gale, they deserve happiness, even if they don't always think they do. They deserve peace and quiet after all the terror they've seen, all they've been forced through. Peeta and Katniss will grown back, just like the grass and the trees and the shops in Twelve, fresh and new. They'll always have the scars, the bitter reminders of the past, but like the District, they'll survive.
Madge smiles at their backs and hopes that, like Gale, they have more good nights than bad and that they help one another chase the demons away more than they drag them to each other.
If anyone deserves good nights, it's Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark.