Throughout her life, whenever hiding failed - Katniss typically charged head-first into her problems. Standing against the tide when Prim's name was pulled. Backed into a corner, pulling out the nightlock and choosing to end her life made more sense than playing the Capitol's games. She dived into the Quell with all the prowess of a Victor with death as her last name. Walked straight into the Capitol with Snow's name on her bow. To Katniss, fighting tooth and nail against the things she couldn't hide from worked.
Hence, sitting on a train with the Capitol and Madge and that teary mess left behind her footsteps, felt like a void carved out of her soul. A hollow, gaping wound with wind whistling through. Only filled by that tear-stained manuscript on her lap and a million unspoken words she hadn't found the courage to say. Another few dozen she couldn't take back. It singed her to no end. Train rides back from the Capitol were always broken affairs. Their tracks filled with the memories of the dead: her shattered conscience after the first games, the broken promises to Snow after the tour, Prim's corpse somewhere in a coffin following the war.
This time, Katniss nursed an aching heart. Wounded by the sight of Madge's ugly crying. She wouldn't shed tears if you didn't mean anything to her. Because obviously, once again - she'd ruined everything with her loose mouth.
Not one of them ever mentioned you.
She forced herself to view things from Madge's angle. Waking up without a name in her head. Forgetting Prim and her mother, even her father. She shut her eyes amidst the train's grumbling. Touched her lips and felt warmth where Madge had kissed her years ago. Had she forgotten all of that? The quiet company in the woods. How she could touch her soul with a song, flutter her heart with the lightest of smiles. Her chest clenched as she imagined Madge throwing herself at vapid Capitolite women in an attempt to recreate the intimate moments they had together. The warmth boiled into burning rage.
It blazed even more ferociously when Katniss realized she didn't have a goddamned right to feel this way.
Seeking a distraction, she looked down at the wad of bound typewriter-paper. She remembered suggesting that Madge write a book. A flippant remark years ago based on how many books she read. It felt like she'd planted a seed in the girl that weathered every hurt and abuse that'd been flung her way and now bore fruit on her lap. She flipped to its first page.
"Throughout the history of time we've had our values and beliefs rendered immortal by stories and legends of old. One may consider them myths, but no falsehoods exist in the way they've shaped our societies. The hero's journey. Standing against hubris and villainy of the gods. Always a lesson of morals one may extract from their tales. Bravery and kindness and selfless sacrifice.
When one considers the state of Panem as it is - what stories will we tell in a thousand years when there exists nothing of this nation but broken stone? What morals will our descendants extract from us after the last Cornucopia becomes a moss-ridden ruin? Will we glorify the ones who emerge victorious from the games? Or will we sanctify the dead - thrown into a maelstrom against their will?
Panem knew a girl once. The heroine of its legend. It was fate that her qualities had not faded into obscurity. Bled out into the limelight before the nation's spectacle of madness. Flung before a tyrant's will. It were these same morals that rendered her a legend. But before this myth passed into the immortality of time, she was merely a girl with no one to tell her story.
Except myself. I am Madge Undersee. A survivor in my own right.
And I survive to tell her story."
Katniss froze on the foreword. Fingers traced each line with held breath. This can't be real, can it? An inexplicable knot lodged in her chest and she flipped to the first chapter. The words fluttered through her eyes, sweeping over each line. A tale of a fictional girl who grew up in the depths of poverty. Julia, district 7. Persistently absent father sent off to cut lumber in far-flung workcamps. A disabled mother and a squealing baby sister at home. Katniss hadn't read much growing up besides the scant English lessons at school, and Madge's flowery prose took some getting used to. Still, the parallels were plain to see as daylight.
Her intense friendship with another girl which teetered on the edge of romance.
Volunteering at the age of sixteen when the reaping hand came for her friend.
The slim odds. Hiding. Allying with a young boy who fell into a gamemaker's trap. Persistently riding out each Career's pursuit and each Mutt sent in cold blood. Heartbreak and despair when the careers got to her ally. Gnawing hunger Katniss was all-too familiar with. Nail-biting tension and violence and drama that kept her on the edge. At the end of it all, standing toe-to-toe with a Career on the Cornucopia's roof woven from straw and reeds. Wheat shifting in the afternoon breeze and the same inevitability fluttering through Julia's mind. That the very essence of the games was an exercise in futility. A machine of injustice that spun round and round each year. Feeding off children and spitting out hopelessness and oppression. Julia had decided to throw the proverbial wrench into its workings.
"What if we didn't kill each other?" she'd announced to her opponent, more to Panem.
"I'm not here to play games with you, little girl-"
Julia promptly backed away when he swung. Only for his foot to get caught in a preset trap she'd laid the previous night. The career boy from 2 fell over. Limbs ensnared by netting. She kicked away his sword and saw rife terror flash within his eyes. The same eyes that each and every child in Panem between 12 and 18 bore. Her axe laid inches from his neck. Gleaming white and cold. That monster raged within her, uncaged beast roaring to take her place as Victor. And yet, Julia only heard the brook's trickling waters. The bird call of Mockingjays. And wondered why people had to take this away from her. For this spectacle of madness. She tossed her axe into the field and walked off the Cornucopia. The gamemakers wouldn't dare call her over the speakers to finish him off. Nor could they send in the Mutts. Instead, the hay and straw structure caught fire untended and killed her opponent. Leaving her the winner of Madge's yet-unnamed Hunger games.
Katniss jerked upright at the conductor's hand on her shoulder. The train had pulled into District 12 for an hour and she hadn't stirred from Madge's book. Her back was stiff from hours of motionless reading. Still, when she trudged back to the victor's village, her soul fluttered free from its cage. She could look upon the meadow's graveyard and see light in the leaves instead of tombstones marking the earth. Peeta wasn't home from the bakery - so she stretched out on the couch and continued reading.
Julia's journey had taken a harrowing turn. The Districts went riot-wild that she had stood against the games. The Capitol went after her. What little joy she could have from her reunion had been shattered by the incessant questions why she had volunteered for that girl in the first place. Surely feminine friendship could only go so far? Katniss felt her heart race as Madge described their first kiss in poetic detail under a pine tree. Allegorical meaning behind the woodland songs they sang to each other. A warmth brewed in her belly. Stolen only by the dreadful war that shattered their idyllic lives. A forced victory tour that derailed at every turn when the Districts quickly figured what a puppet she'd become. The Capitol came for Julia's lover. Message clear to her family: denounce the rebellion or we'll kill her.
Katniss gasped at the horrifying cruelty wrought upon her eyes.
A trail of blood and destruction ensued as Panem fell on the brink of destruction. When dust settled and Julia held an axe to a dictator's head - she saw the same eyes that looked back at her on the Cornucopia. A Citizen. Another human. She wondered how far she'd fought only to reach the same point.
"Do you know that I was once like you, with a name in the reaping pot?" the Dictator told her.
I'm not the same anymore, Julia said aloud, my innocence is stolen
It was that dearth of innocence that brought her axe down.
Katniss hadn't expected a happy ending and she received none of it. Julia's lover had been tortured horribly and returned in pieces. A splintered wreck barely hanging by the joints. Hardly resembling her past self. As bittersweet as their reunion was, it was a drop of honey in an ocean of acid. Right when she reached the last page, Katniss's eyes widened at handwriting on the paper instead of neat, type spaced font.
Dear Katniss Everdeen,
I was wondering how to end this book. The cliche "happily ever after" wouldn't do here; because neither are they happy, nor do they live ever after. Even if they do piece themselves together, death comes for us all.
I hope this meant something beyond just words on a page.
I too hope we will mean something to each other beyond the all-too-short meeting we had.
-Madge Undersee
P.S.: I got it! They found a measure of peace in each other, in a new world built with bleeding hands.
Guilt wracked Katniss in tight, sobbing waves. She downed the book on a side table and covered her face. Tears seeped through clenched fingers. Not even caring that Buttercup had taken an interest in Madge's manuscript and started pawing at its pages. She felt trapped in a cage of her own swelling emotion. Too heartsick to bear a moment apart from Madge. Too desperate to chip past the stone veil of her lost memories. And here this manuscript mocked her to no end. Feeble strands of her own story hanging so tantalisingly close she could reach out her hands and miss it by a hair's breadth. She remembers. Bits and pieces barely fitted together like a jigsaw.
Yet - the ending presented a stark reminder of how things truly were between them. Katniss resembled a patchwork doll, burnt and torn apart and put together more times she could count. Mended by bits and pieces of the love she'd picked up from Peeta and Finnick and what's left of her family.
And Madge. That candle in her chest that never went out even when she'd knelt by her grave. A part of Katniss wanted to believe Madge hadn't changed: the same steadfast speech and kindness and the ease of her smile. And yet now she appeared guarded - like she'd worn thorns around her heart to keep people out. Katniss knew this happened to people who've been hurt. From personal experience.
The thought tore at her brain like Buttercup's paws gnawing away at the book's bindings.
"Get away from there, you're going to ruin it!" Katniss chided, moving to shift it away. Only for a hand to descend on it first.
Peeta.
"Sorry, I didn't hear you come in," Katniss looked at his glazed-over eyes, bread loaves hefted within thick arms as he read the cover, "I-I ran into Madge Undersee in the Capitol."
"The Mayor's daughter? I thought she died with the rest of the Undersees."
"She got out," Katniss's heart caught in her throat when he flipped to the first page, before she relaxed when he tossed it aside, "she's living in her dad's house now."
"So Madge is alive and has a house in the Capitol," Peeta turned away and unpacked groceries, "sounds like a miracle to me."
It is.
Buttercup had lost interest in the book and Katniss's first instinct was to hide it from Peeta. Her skin shrank clammy cold, and she caught herself observing him for the rest of the night as they watched TV and roast pork and potatoes. Waiting for the slightest question about Madge. Tensing at every little detail he probed about the concert. And when she finally gathered enough courage to mention that she'd be returning for a series of shows, all the tension billowed out her lungs when he'd simply shrugged and said -
"Sounds like great fun, I hope they pay you well."
They made love that night. Katniss told herself she'd needed an outlet for her pent-up frustration. The cathartic, mind-numbing release of pleasure as Peeta shifted beneath her. She crammed her face into the side of his head such that she could only see golden strands of his hair. And as she rode him, hands on the headboard, Katniss pressed her entire body into the bulk of his chest and slowly let fragments of reality drift away from her.
Until those calloused, large hands became delicate, slender ones. The deep reverberation of his moans became a song-like trill. And the voice within her throat formed a shape she barely snatched back right as she tipped over into her climax.
Madge.
Barely a tremor on her lips - but still she watched Peeta afterwards. Flinching at the slightest murmur and wondering when he was going to wake up and question her about Madge.
Madge. Madge. Madge. A silk-shrouded thorn in her head.
In the morning, she bid Peeta farewell to the bakery and lied that she'd be hunting in the woods. There was absolutely no reason to lie about it, she could've told him she'd be on the couch doing nothing all day and the pure-hearted man would just shrug and tell her to have a good rest. Spring air woke her face anew as she stood on the wooden steps and watched until he disappeared out of eyeshot beyond the fence. She watched and waited for the slightest sign he'd be coming back. Until the sun shifted from its place. Before daring to head back inside and dial Plutarch's number, sitting by the window so she could keep an eye on the Victor's Village gate.
Surprisingly, she got hold of him on the first try. Plutarch clarified details of her appearances for upcoming episodes. She reiterated her commitment. Asked details in as professional of a voice she could muster. But when Plutarch moved to the topic of compensation, Katniss had other plans.
"I ran into the previous District 12 Mayor's daughter in the Capitol," Katniss wrung all trace of emotion from her voice, "Madge Undersee's family passed during the bombing but she made it out and she's living in the Capitol now."
"That girl you were arguing with outside the concert hall?"
"Was it that obvious?"
"Obvious enough to catch my attention. And I had a busy night."
Katniss sighed, "She's run into some problems with the housing authorities about her business. It's a townhouse lot on Veranda Street."
"The Suburb Veranda? Paylor's rezoned that neighbourhood for medium-density housing," Plutarch chimed in, "I'm assuming that's what her problem is. Some vultures are probably looking to throw her out."
"Could you, I don't know, help her with it?" Katniss asked, a lump hardening in her throat, "I mean - you don't have to pay me for the appearances. I was just wondering-"
"The Great Mockingjay, Katniss Everdeen. Asking me to untangle a residential zoning dispute," Plutarch huffed out a laugh, "this Madge Undersee must mean something to you."
She does.
"Please?"
"I'll see what I can do."
Wordlessly, he hung up and transferred her back to the Capitol operator. She hesitated before asking to be connected to Madge's address. The exchange with Plutarch had drained all words from her head and energy for conversation. Sunlight baked her face where she sat. She'd expected to hear Cassia's giggly voice which would've bought her a minute or two before she could think of what to say. But Madge picked it up after barely two rings. Far too short.
"Hey," Katniss whispered into the speaker.
A five-second pause that dragged on like an hour.
"Katniss?"
She twirled the phone line within her fingers, half-expecting Madge to slam the phone on her. When a few more seconds passed and it was evident she wouldn't, Katniss still hadn't found the words.
"I read your book."
"You did, huh?" the edge in Madge's voice hadn't left.
Katniss sighed, "It's good. Like, really - really good. You should get it published."
"I don't know if it's good enough," Madge countered, "also, I don't know if people really want to hear about the games anymore."
"They should," Katniss emphasized, "especially not from the angle that glorifies them. This. The truth behind Julia's hardship and how sickeningly evil it all is and her broken memories-"
Katniss caught herself mid-sentence at the word. Memories. Ones she didn't want to hold onto. Ones Madge never had to begin with.
"Last I recalled," Madge breathed heavily into the phone, "you whaled on me for not holding onto my memories. Like I had a choice to begin with."
"I got mad at you because I cared," Katniss's voice broke, face burning like the sun, "I didn't want to lose what we had-"
"W-we must've been really good friends for you to feel that way."
Katniss blinked. Nodded. Felt a tear splash her windowsill. The throbbing pain in her fist drew her attention. She'd wound up the telephone wire until it resembled vines sprouting from a branch.
"We were."
A sigh over the line. In the background, Katniss heard a baby crying. Seconds ticked by like hours as she waited for an answer.
"Is this good friend of mine coming back to the Capitol to guest judge on Panem Forever?" Madge breathed into the phone, "Or is she destined to end like another one of my lost memories?"
"I-I never wanted what we had to end, Madge," Katniss held back a snivel, "But if you could - would you want to come to the show again? I've already put your name on the guestlist."
"You can just ask me out - y'know? We're not girls anymore."
"Fine, yes - I want you to come," Katniss sighed, "it's just that I don't want to push things too far and hurt you."
"You've already hurt me enough for one lifetime, but apparently I'm not very good at bearing grudges. So yes, I will come. Not because I'm interested in your show - but really because I'm interested in you."
Katniss's heart skipped, "Me?"
"Yes, you. I'm interested in you. Everything there is about you. And if it's true we were dear friends. I don't see how difficult it could be for us to be friends again."
She couldn't resist a smile creeping on her face, tugged by the sound of Madge's voice a hundred miles away, "Always the optimist, Undersee. At least that hasn't changed."
"A realist," Madge corrected, "too much time on the beach taught me that no matter how dark the night, the sun always rises the next day. Maybe we haven't seen each other for awhile. Days. Months. Years. But here you are again. The sunrise. And I want to bask in it as long as I can."
"Very generous words," Katniss smiled, resisting the swell of emotion in her voice, "I look forward to seeing you again."
She bid farewell and lowered the phone with shaking fingers. The sun had left tears caked on her cheeks. Ribs felt like cracking with how a few simple words had bloomed in her chest. All of a sudden, Katniss was thankful they'd been uttered over a phone call. There was no way she could've resisted hurling herself into Madge's arms and kissing her silly.
Because, as much as she wanted to - Katniss silently promised not to let the sun set on her second chance with Madge.