3. The mayor's house
After saying goodbye to Katniss, Gale went straight to the woods, unable to face the pitiful looks of his mother or the pain in the Everdeen faces. He spent most of his afternoon there, deciding that for a few hours he would allow himself the luxury of feeling desperate, hopeless, and scared. He screamed into the valley. He punched a tree until his bloody hand felt numb. He turned into his fourteen years old self as he cried, unable to see pass the grief, wondering why the weight of the world was suddenly at his shoulders, wanting nothing else but to wake up from this nightmare, wishing he could hide in the forest forever. He couldn't, and he knew that. And he wasn't fourteen anymore, and Katniss wasn't dead. She had a chance. In the meantime, he would provide for her family, as they had agreed. Rory and Prim were both smart kids, he could teach Rory to hunt and Prim had her goat. Maybe she could learn to gather plants for food and medicine, as Gale knew Katniss had failed in getting the little girl to hunt without crying.
He told himself all of this to collect his feelings before leaving the woods in the evening, starting to make his way home. But as soon as he was inside the fence, he felt so trapped again, he suddenly thought that going home wasn't an option anymore. And then, something that had been nagging him for a while came to the front of his mind, and he clung to that thought as a way out of the dread building again inside him.
That's how he found himself crossing the Seam in the shadows, through the solitary secondary alleys, avoiding any living creature towards the mayor's house. It is a crazy idea, Gale reasons. Only if someone finds out, a voice in his mind says. He slowly approaches the first row of the town, thinking he can still back out and go home. But he can't, not really. His mind won't let it go. And go home and do what, exactly? Take comfort with his mother, which he hadn't done in years? Awkwardly avoid Rory and Vick, who will have to face years of reaping without him being able to volunteer for either? Or envy Posy, who is still too young to understand what is happening?
When Gale reaches the mayor's house, he realizes he didn't think this far. The front door was never an option, but the back door doesn't seem like a good idea either. What is he going to say if it's the mayor who opens the door? Still hiding in the shadows of the neighboring house, Gale looks down and sees his reaping pants dirty with some mud and leaves from the woods. Not to mention the hand, which has some dry blood and it's starting to swell. The doubts creep on him until he notices in the far corner of the house, facing the small part of the woods that reach the town, one room in the second floor with the lights off. There is a small balcony outside that room conveniently close to a huge tree. If he sneaks in the house, maybe he can find her. He doesn't know much about the mayor, just that his wife is usually sick in bed… maybe this is their room. Well, if she is asleep, she won't notice. And once he is inside the house, he can find the mayor's daughter.
He surveys the deserted streets. It's still too early for the Peacekeeper rounds. The seconds pass, and Gale knows that the more he thinks about it, the worse this idea is going to look. So, he stops thinking and goes for the tree. He is not as good climber as Katniss, but he manages. At the thought of her, the dread quickly returns, but he knows he must remain focused if he wants to pull this off. He lands in the balcony with little effort, but louder than intended, and he remains still for a while. His spot in the balcony is not visible from town, and he is fairly certain no one would be at this side of the woods, so he only has to worry about who inside the house could catch him. However, there is no movement inside the room, and he thinks maybe it is an empty room after all.
Looking through the glass, he sees a bedroom inside, around half the size of his house. He cannot distinguish a lot of colors or shapes beyond the square of light that comes through the balcony, which he is partly blocking now. A cream carpet in the floor, a massive bed leaning against the left wall and a trunk at its feet. He thinks there is someone in the bed and goes back to thinking this is the mayor's room, but what he can make out of the room doesn't fit with the idea he could have of a mayor's room. Not that he would know much about it.
He tries the handle and finds the door open, which is a relief, and, holding his breath, walks into the room. His eyes quickly adapt to the darkness and he confirms there is someone in the bed. As the figure shifts in the bed, he cannot believe his luck. He actually found her with little effort. Well, not absolutely everything could go wrong in the same day.
However, he realizes he is now in another dilemma. How can he wake her up without startling her? She doesn't give him time to react, because she suddenly sits up startled, looking straight at him. For a second, Gale thinks she will scream and curses himself because this was really a terrible, terrible idea from every possible angle. He prepares himself to start running, maybe even jumping out of the balcony, but nothing happens. In the darkness, he can see the fear in her expression quickly replaced by confusion. Clinging to the hope that maybe she is too surprised to react, he decides to speak first.
"Undersee", says Gale with a hoarse voice, realizing it's the first time he has spoken since leaving Katniss in the Justice Building, that is, if you don't count screaming in the forest as speaking. As the seconds pass, and Madge doesn't move or speak, Gale starts to feel she might turn him in at any moment now.
But then, as suddenly as she woke up, she leaves her bed and walks past him to shut the balcony door.
"What the actual hell, Hawthorne?" Madge whispers, dissipating his fears of being handed to Peacekeepers. Then, the fact that he just heard the mayor's daughter curse renders him momentarily speechless. He recovers fast though and turns to face her.
"Don't worry, I'll leave soon. I came here because I had to know". It's a lame excuse, he is aware, but what else can he say? 'I can't keep it together, so I had to do something extremely reckless because I needed the adrenaline to wipe out everything else'? It doesn't sound right. Before he can voice the question, Madge interrupts him.
"You are bleeding", she says, staring at his hand. Gale rolls his eyes because she is probably worried that he will stain the carpet. However, she has the upper hand right now, so he doesn't want to sound feisty. Not too much.
"I was, it's dry now". He wants to go straight to the point, but then she starts walking towards a door on the other side of the bed, and the certainty that she is going to turn him in makes him ask something else instead. "What are you doing?", Gale speaks a bit louder than what would be safe.
Madge stops with her hand in the doorknob, glances at him and smirks when she catches the fear in his face. Without another word she opens the door and Gale holds his breath moving towards the shadows, when he realizes that, instead of an angry mayor, there is a harmless bathroom behind the door. He then registers that there is another door in the room, in the wall across the balcony, that must be the one connecting with the rest of the house.
She disappears inside, and now is Gale's turn to recover from the shock. Madge turns on the light of the bathroom and starts going through some cabinets.
"Come here and wash that" says Madge, making Gale snap.
"Do you think you can boss people around just because you are the mayor's daughter?" he says in a harsh whisper despite his attempt at keeping his voice down. Gale doesn't make any movement towards the bathroom.
"I think I can boss you around because you broke into my room while I was sleeping, which is not only illegal, but also extremely creepy". Madge goes back into the bedroom with something that looks suspiciously similar to a flask, but Gale assumes it must be some kind of special soap that would cost his entire house to buy.
"That wasn't exactly my plan. I would never think you'd be in bed this early, but I guess you can have that luxury" he glares at her bed, which is twice the size than his, and then at the recipient in her hands. "I don't want any of your fancy Capitol shit, Undersee".
"Do you think you are in the position to be talking back to me like that?" says Madge, clutching the bottle.
Gale stares at her, realizing this is the longest interaction they have had, and she is being far harsher with him than ever, which throws him off. Who would have thought she would be something else than a quiet and barely noticeable girl that spent most of her time inside her house? Not Gale. Not that he wondered about her before. She only appeared in his thoughts when he came to sell strawberries, as the maximum representation of the inequalities he hated so much. He knew it wasn't her fault but picking on her every time he noticed her privileges was an instinctive impulse for him, like ranting about the Capitol to Katniss when they were in the woods. Tired of having no answer, Madge brings him out of his thoughts.
"Fine then. Leave. Or better yet, I'll scream and leave my father decide your fate. He usually looks the other way, but breaking into my room? Something tells me he will use the full weight of the law."
Even though the threat of running off to tell her daddy calls for another retort, he realizes she is somehow entitled to be angry because he probably scared her badly. He hadn't stopped to consider how she would feel about him showing up at her house, let alone in her room. He will allow her to win this one, not that he has too much of a choice if he wants any kind of answer to her earlier behavior, and he rises his palms in defeat.
Gale follows Madge into the bathroom without another word and she closes the door behind them. "To muffle our voices", she explains.
The bathroom is not as big as he would have expected, consisting of a sink with an oval mirror framed in golden flowers right in front of the door, a toilet seat to the left and a bathtub next to the furthest wall with a small window. Madge nods to the sink, so he washes his hands. The bizarreness of the situation is starting to get to him. Despite her threats, she didn't seem eager to snitch on him, and she was even offering to help with his hand. What was going on with this girl? With the light coming from the bathroom, Gale studies her face. It looks very different from the girl who bought strawberries from him earlier. She seems older, and, even though she is probably the best fed person in the district, her cheekbones mark her face and her pale face hints small purple bags below her eyes.
When he finishes washing the dry blood from his hand, she opens the flask and pours a transparent liquid into it. Gale winces a little as the liquid encounters the raw skin at his knuckles and then the smell hits him.
"Is that white rum?" Gale asks, confused.
"If that's what Haymitch drinks, then yes."
"How did that come to your possession? Or why?" a hint of a smirk plays in his lips, momentarily forgetting the stinging of his hand. What else was the mayor's daughter hiding?
Madge shrugs.
"You'll have to take that to Mrs. Everdeen. There are some splinters in there. You don't want an infection" she says after a closer look. She then brings a piece of fabric out of her robe and wraps it in Gale's hand, tightening it up a bit more than necessary. "Now, what are you doing here? Do you have a death wish?"
"Why did you go into the Justice Building?" Gale finally asks, prompting Madge to roll her eyes.
"Really? Is this the important thing you absolutely had to know right now in the middle of the night?"
"That you have been sleeping all afternoon doesn't make this the middle of the night, you know" says Gale, defensively.
"Look, Hawthorne, I'm going to pretend this is not something completely insane and cut you some slack because this has been a hard day. You do have to learn some boundaries, though. Never do this again. Ever." Madge gives him a stern look from across the sink. The expression doesn't fit the soft features of her face, but the evident lack of sleep adds some sort of dramatic flare to it.
"There is absolutely no reason why I would do it again" says Gale, smiling ever so slightly at the attempts of the mayor's daughter to appear severe. Of course, he is not planning on making this evening visits a routine, it's was only and definitely a one-time thing.
"Yeah, well, I would have thought there would be absolutely no reason why you would do it once." Madge looks away exasperated.
"Fine. Never again, I give you my word" says Gale, starting to feel annoyed. Was she actually thinking he would be here if it wasn't an extremely exceptional situation? And if she was, what use was his word, anyway? Although, given the fact that she hadn't turned him in when she had the chance and was somehow willing to answer his questions, she must have had some level of trust in him. She seems to be thinking the same thing as him as she evaluates him carefully. He must have passed the test, because she sighs and sits in the edge of the bathtub, looking even more tired.
"Also, stop with the bad attitude and the mean remarks. That's the least you can do." Gale refrained his impulse of rolling his eyes and decided that a compliant attitude was the faster way to get the mayor's daughter to cooperate with him. He wasn't the only one throwing bad attitude today, though.
"Okay, but it goes both ways."
"I know how to behave" Gale snorts at the clear example of the type of attack Madge was complaining of a second ago. "Fine, that was the last one."
Hesitating, Gale sits on the edge of the bathtub by her side and they fall silent. Madge seems to be finding the words to start answering his question about the Justice Building when a knock in the door sends a wave of fear towards them.