"Why, why-" Madge growls beneath her breath, "Why do they keep coming back?"
For the tenth time this week, Madge hurls herself on the forest floor when Hovercrafts screech overhead. The taste of soil is familiar in her mouth. So is the dull thud and boom of exploding bombs. First, the bitter acrid taste of dirt makes an appearance on her tongue. Then the salt of tears. Running down her cheeks as she imagines her parents getting blasted into pieces. Again and again. They'd be flecks of dust by now. So often the hovercraft have returned. So complete is District 12's destruction.
A nagging fear latches itself onto Madge's spine: it's like they're not satisfied you made it out alive. Constantly returning to flatten the remaining ruins. Bombs seeking out a ragged, light-haired girl who made herself in the image of dirt and dust and slithered out of the ruins. And against all odds, refused to die.
The weeks turn into months. Temperature drops off a precipice and it flogs her mercilessly like Gale on the whipping post. Gnawing through flesh no matter how many layers of bedraggled clothes she can salvage. Her day to day existence becomes a simple, brutal exercise in maths. Calories in vs calories out. Hike to the other side of the woods in search of food. Sure. Burn a thousand calories and watch her body eat itself from the inside out until she can score a clean hit on a Groosling with Katniss's bow.
She clings onto the weapon like an extension of her arm. The only thing that remained from her past besides the tattered remnants of her life. At night, in the howling wind - it becomes an extension of her soul as well. The memory of her arm bending the solid wood and Katniss's fingers digging into her back. The bitter tears that followed and the sweet taste of her lips after. Her fingers trace the wood - so thin and fragile. Not unlike herself. Yet as essential to her survival as the hollow bite in her stomach and death's call on her footsteps. Forever chasing her into another sector of the woods. Away from the hovercraft and ghostly whispers that haunt her dreams each night.
Perhaps Katniss really did die and left her soul in the bow. A soul which guided her throughout this never-ending ordeal of survival.
Madge refuses to believe it. Choosing instead to name this instinct: What would Katniss do?
A guiding question that parcels her day into chunks of time and forces her choices when exhaustion paralyzes her. Katniss wouldn't build a fire at night. Katniss would stalk her prey just a little longer. Katniss would dig beneath that tree for tubers. Katniss wouldn't mind the blisters on her feet. Katniss would watch for Peacekeeper patrols before slinking back into the Victor's village for another supply run.
The entire game holds up until the very depths of winter when she doesn't know what Katniss would do to fight off the incessant cold. Pants and boots and three jackets count for nothing when Peacekeepers start probing the woods. Roots and fruits wither into the frozen soil. The animals go into hiding. Even daytime fires become a luxury now and she feels the scraps of hope slowly slip themselves away from her grasp. Replaced by the ache in her belly which gradually grows into desperation. She imagines Katniss before the games during the harshest of winters. Endlessly walking the woods. Knowing there'd be two more bellies at home going hungry if she went home empty handed. And here she is struggling to feed only herself. The shame burns her face, but at least that's another minute of warmth she wouldn't have to struggle for.
The days slow to a crawl. Sunsets take forever to come. Just a few more. Madge has taken to lying to herself. A few more sunsets and the grass will appear again.
The days will warm.
None of it matters, though, will it? Katniss is forever gone. So is her family and the rest of the fucking district. There's nothing left for you. Nothing but the harsh elements wearing you down and eroding her resolve like a rock in the stream. The persistent tug of despair and hope frays her nerves into wispy threads.
When she finds the smouldering remnants of a fire she swore she hadn't started, she feels every single one of those threads snap. Leaving her hanging inches above the chasm of her impending death. The incineration of all hope of ever seeing Katniss again burnt to ashes like the smoking heap beneath her feet.
Voices ripple the fabric of her hunger-induced delirum. Just whispers of the dead, again. She dismisses them with a lazy wave of her hand. Further fanning the smoke into her nostrils. Acrid stench burns through the edges of reality and alerts her to the harrowing prospect of a patrol. Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Weeks of stumbling around in maddening hunger weigh her feet down like rocks. She scampers away from the voices. They could be refugees. Someone looking to save you.
Katniss would watch from a distance first. Probably from a tree.
She avoids the pile of leaves. A patch of ice. Opting for the softest patches of snow where her footsteps leave barely a whisper. Hauling her freezing ass up a half-dead oak tree. Hoping whatever sparse foliage left on its branches and her brown jacket would be enough to hide her from the-
-Peacekeepers.
All her breath vents in a foggy gasp she forces back down her throat. Three of them. Wandering the forest like they owned the place. She flattens herself on a branch, neck craning at a painful angle just to watch their lazy footsteps kicking up leaves and snapping branches. Weird. Rifles hang limply from their shoulders, not like the poised, purposeful movements she's seen patrols in the past. They wore civilian jackets over their uniforms. No kevlar in sight. Heavy packs weigh the men down - forcing them to an agonizingly slow pace through her field of vision. And just when she thinks they've wandered past.
They return.
Walking back and forth across the shore before sitting by the ashes and starting another goddamned fire.
Her throat twists in horror when they lean against some trees and start doing nothing at all.
Smoking and joking.
Chewing on beef jerky that makes her mouth water.
The tallest of them, occasionally takes out a pair of binoculars and peers across the lake. It wouldn't be long now before he swivels his neck and sees a pasty-white, emaciated girl shaking with fright behind them.
The harrowing realisation wraps its thorny fingers around her neck and strangles the shit out of her. She's utterly trapped.
She might as well be dead now.
A spate of silence from the breeze carries bits and pieces of their conversation across the thin air.
They miss home.
They're avoiding the other patrols.
Their CO is a bitch.
They'll just wait around until the rebel lines close in and they'll just surrender.
Madge pieces the words together and realises they are deserters. Her brain spins into a slow start, wondering whether they could help her. Or if being discovered by deserting peacekeepers, with no authority to control them, would be worse than being found by normal peacekeepers. Ice pumps through her veins as she imagines, in sweat-inducing detail - what three men with nothing to lose would do to her. A single, shaking girl alone in the woods with no one to help her for miles.
No one to hear her scream.
She slaps a hand over her mouth, afraid that the slightest fog would give away her position.
This is how I'm finally going to die.
Torn apart and violated by three men. Gruff and unkempt from what must've been weeks on the run.
Madge's brain unravels with panic - suddenly she wishes she were back in Katniss's house hiding under the bed. She wishes she would've met her end there. Getting dragged out and killed with a gunshot to the head would be better than this, surely?
The faintest reminiscence of Katniss's scent in her blankets throttles her back. It's not over. You must survive this. You have to see her again. Katniss made it through 18 days against 22 other tributes and here you are giving up at three men who don't even know you're here!
She clenches her fists around the bow. And thinks. Scouring her memories for every challenge she's overcome. Every near-death moment in Katniss's games. The narrow escapes. The kills. She looks back down at them, realising with horror the deserters have retained their discipline and set up watches while the others take turns to sleep.
Snowfall stops conveniently when her throat goes bone dry. The countdown of her hunger has already started ticking to zero before she got cornered in the tree.
Think. Think. Think.
One bow. Arrows. The immediate thought of shooting them all from her perch presents a tempting prospect. Tempered by the automatic rifles by their side. They'd blast her out of the tree before she could even reload.
The pitch-dark nightfall gives her clarity to think. New moon. Great.
Behind their campfire, she makes out the faint silhouette of a man sitting watch. Head upright as he gazes off into the lake. Years of keeping watch on barracks under harsh penalties must help him to resist the natural instinct to nod off into the blackness. It's now or never.
Madge reaches above her head and gingerly breaks a branch. Edging it from the bark; careful to avoid making so much as a creak. She rehearses the plan in her head, before hurling it as hard as she can away from herself.
Weakened with hunger, the sudden movement leaves her winded. But it lands in the leaves and echoes a crack through the still silence.
The watch bites. His shadow rises. Head cocked towards the noise. Soft enough to leave the other two in slumber. For a second, Madge sits paralyzed in the fork. Frozen off her wits and still heaving with exertion. She quickly realizes she won't get a second chance.
Move.
She scratches her hands on the bark when she clambers down. Biting on her tongue to stifle the cry. Her mouth floods with metal. Force of habit nocks an arrow before her feet even hit the ground. The slight yellow glow from the campfire fades into nothingness the further she stalks him.
Breathe.
Her breath hangs in the air, but she scarcely makes out the fog. Only the faint outline of a man between the trees. Starlight sparse on his hair. The tightness of her shoulders as she draws. Fire chews through her arms. Stand upright. Lean into the bow. She feels Katniss's breath in her ears.
Creak.
He whirls around in time to feel the thud of an arrow between his eyes. The sound pierces through her chest as though she had been shot. It robs all her breath. She crumples to the ground a second before he does. Clutching herself and heaving with the realisation of what she's done within a breath's span. Dead. She'd barely aimed. And yet the harrowing act of taking another life had struck without mercy. It's less glorious than she thought. She struggles to collect her spilled senses, before the shadowy heap can sprout another ghost to chase her-
"Kent?"
A holler shatters the darkness. Every hair on her limbs bristles and she lurches into a blind panic.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
"Kent? Where the hell are you? If you're off taking a piss, I swear to god-"
Her hands shake violently, struggling to nock another arrow. It's useless. She'd never hit anything shaking like this. Still she tries. Still she shuffles away on her hips. Wide-eyed gawking at the shadow barreling towards her. Her breath seizes with fright. Eyes falter under the weight of her impending doom. Right when his hands appear poised to strangle the life out of her. She shoots. It misses by a mile.
"You cunt,"the voice blasts through her eardrums. Crows flutter away. Squawking death-call echoing her ominous fate.
"What is it?"
"This bitch shot Kent, some scraggly kid," he hollers back, "I'm gonna gut you like a fish-"
Gut. Fish. Knife. The blade glints in his hand. She finds hers. Pulling from the sheath at the last second when his shadow falls over hers.
Cold bites through her cheek, before a flood of warmth gushes upon her face. She frantically tries to register some pain above the roaring adrenaline pouring through her veins. None comes. Gurgling noise floods her ears and crimson blooms across her eyes. She wipes the dull stench of iron from her face and sits up in time to see a blade sticking from his throat. It's the straw that breaks her back. Months of hapless survival. The starvation. Cold. Grief over her parents. Rage at the Capitol. Endless pining for Katniss's presence that never comes. Every injustice and desperate endurance of the elements bursts through her lungs in one long scream that voids her lungs of air and wakes every single animal in the forest.
Tears stream down her face. She drags herself from the deadweight of his body. Still twitching in his death throes. Another visceral scream vacates her when her hands slip upon his face. Slick with blood.
"No, no, no," Madge pleads. With that last deserter's shadow stomping towards her. With the angel of death to come and deliver her from this evil before something worse happens. With the ghosts of her parents, to save a place in the afterlife. With Katniss's soul to tell her what to do. With her own wits, because Katniss has abandoned her to her own devices.
"You fucking shit," the voice slices through her ears, "I'm going to rip you to pieces."
All strength deserts her legs. Her senses waft away one by one. Leaving her stricken body to crawl through the snowy leaves. Panting in exertion while her stalker rapidly closes. Bile retches up her throat with each yard she drags herself through. She longs to cover her ears. Plugging out her hearing against the taunts. The vile acts he's going to do to her. Or the stench of blood still festering in her nose. The reminder that death's merely a finger's twitch away.
Her eyes fog. Fingers close around cold steel. She feels the outline of the slain peacekeeper's rifle a second before registering the shadow's nearly closed upon her. Fuck this. Years of trudging to school behind ranks of peacekeepers in the square. Staring at their guns out of boredom and trying to make out what each little lever or button did. Only to find out when Thread lined up a firing squad one day.
Safety flicks off. She yanks the charging handle.
The shadow halts in time for a flash to spray out his brains.
Ghastly ringing pinches out her hearing. She can't even hear the gaspy, rattled breaths pulsing out of her chest. Can't smell the blood anymore. Can't taste the dirt in her mouth or see the shadows in front of her. Like her senses have been deprived in penance for the sins she's committed tonight.
"Madge, Madge, Madge," she whispers into the darkness. Before she screams her name, alarm bells ringing in her head when she hears silence.
In the pitch darkness, she slowly understands why.
That there's nothing left of Madge. Nothing left of the girl in the white cotton dress.
Only a shadowy animal remains. Living off scraps. Willing to kill at the slightest inconvenience.
She wonders if Katniss will still love her, then.
Madge's still slouched over on the snow when dawn bleeds cherry-pink through the clouds. Feet stretched out before her vacant, hollow eyes. That ghastly rifle still clutched within her vice-grip. She doesn't move. Or open her eyes. Fearing the three dead bodies that'll undoubtedly haunt her for the rest of her godforsaken life. What life? You died in the forest last night. Her soul fails to answer when she calls out to it. The part of her that marveled at snowflakes landing on her fingertips. The voice that sang with each note she played on the piano. The breath within her lungs that kissed Katniss's. Gone.
It starts as a tremor in her chest, before she finally lets go of the rifle and clutches her face. Sobbing into her hands as she grieves the loss of her soul. The last bit of humanity the Capitol robbed from her. Don't cry - shadowy animals don't cry.
Please, she pleads, let me grieve. Let me cry for the loss of my being.
The ghost of old Madge hovers with outstretched palms. Sure. Only until midday. Then you must rise.
She heeds old Madge's instructions and weeps into her hands. Pouring every ounce of her grief towards all she's lost. Her parents. Katniss. Her innocence. She recalls their loving hands. The sound of their voices. Feeling the memories leave her through salty streaks upon her face. Relishing in her brokenness and how it washes away the dried bloodstains on her face. When she thinks she's cried all the tears she has to cry, she forces another round with the thought of District 12. The charm of the merchant section. A good sourdough from Mr Mellark. Her smashed up piano lying in ruins, never to utter another note. Katniss's bow and arrow lying a few feet away from her - once an object that reminded her of affection, now forever associated with death and the spilling of blood.
She's still wracked by dry, heaving sobs when the sun swings overhead. But she made old Madge a promise, and gathers the courage to rise to her feet. New Madge scarcely blinks at the rent bodies on the ground. Instead, she heads straight to their smouldering campfire and loots all the rations she can find. Consolidating whats left of their firearms and ammunition into a neat stack by a collapsed log together with maps and camping equipment. Stony-granite face remains expressionless as she piles their bodies, clothes and all, into a pyre of broken branches and sets them on fire with lighter fluid.
As a last ditch gesture, Madge fishes through their packs and picks out photographs of their loved ones.
Don't, Old Madge's ghost whispers from above, you're heartless.
I lost my heart the instant I released that bowstring.
Her hands teeter close to the bonfire. Sickly stench of charred flesh already burning her nostrils.
To hell with them, she thinks, and moves to hurl their pictures into the flames.
Old Madge stays her hand, will you have any heart left to love Katniss? Will there be any heart left for her to love?
She pauses. She would've thought all the tears had been bled dry by now. But a single one remains. A tear of hope. It's enough to turn her towards the lake, where she casts their pictures off towards the gleaming reflection. Watching the ripples drift them away. And trying to see if a new mirror image of herself emerges when she washes the ghastly blood off her face. The biting cold waters clear the smog of last night's terror from her eyes. For the first time in months, Madge stops looking at the forest floor. Constantly on the lookout for scraps of food. Instead, she lifts her eyes towards the hills. And imagines Katniss one day - returning to her.
Hopefully there'll still be enough of each other left to love by then.