Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too. It's all hers.

A World Apart, pt 8

AN: A thousand thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for the beta.

#######

Madge doesn't remember much from the days after they pull her from the Arena.

There was a lot of poking and prodding, she had an infection in her leg from the tracker jacker stinger. They did surgery on her, sedated her harshly with something that stung, burned in her veins, and dragged her into darkness so that they could cut her leg open and dig it all out.

"It's encapsulated," the doctor had told her cheerfully. "Lucky you."

It hadn't felt lucky.

When she'd woken up, hours or days later, she wasn't sure, someone had forced water on her, told her to drink, drink, drink…

The world faded in and out, blurring at the edges, and she slept.

Light, sunlight, finally filters into her room, cuts across her eyes and pulls her from the wild dreams, dark thoughts and screams that had consumed her sleep.

At first she thinks she's at home, that her dreams had only been just that, dreams. The sun is warm and she smells pancakes. The housekeeper, Mrs. Oberst, must be in a good mood for once.

Her eyes flutter open, and the illusion is broken.

She's in her room at the Training Center, covered in the expensive, heavy comforter. The sun is breaking through the enormous window, slipping through the middle, where the thick curtains meet.

Sitting up, a little too fast, her head spins and she falls back onto the too soft pillow.

"Take it slow, Pearl."

Mr. Abernathy at the side of her bed, sitting with his back to the wall. From the looks of it, he's been there a while.

His hair is a mess, as if he's run his hands through it a hundred times over. There are dark circles under his eyes and he hasn't shaved in what looks like a week.

With a groan, he sits forward, scrubs his hands over his face and looks over at her.

"How you feeling?"

Slower this time, Madge forces herself up, back to the headboard, and shrugs.

Her leg doesn't hurt, she can hear and see, the pounding in her head has stopped, she supposes she's as good as can be expected.

"I'm hungry," she finally rasps. Her voice is raw, broken. Which she supposes makes sense, she hasn't had anyone to talk to since the start of the Games. Her voice is out of practice, unused to working.

Mr. Abernathy nods, gets up and pops his back before leaving the room and returning with a plate of pancakes, several layers high.

Stomach growling, Madge eagerly takes the plate, lets him drown her breakfast in syrup before she begins cutting into it, taking hazardously large bites.

For several minutes she just stares at the gap in the curtains, at the sliver of light breaking through, trying not to think as she mindlessly eats. There's nothing she wants more than oblivion and sugar.

That's not possible though.

All her dreams, nightmares, seep in, turning the syrup to sand in her mouth.

The tracker jacker nest. The boy from One. The berries in her pot. The explosion.

There's screaming and blood and heat. Instead of the sweet smell of pancakes, all Madge smells is death, oozing out of her pores.

She's a killer. Five people are dead. Five familiesare one member short, all because of Madge.

The pancakes, all the butter and syrup, start to rise in her throat and she bolts from the bed, sending the plate and its contents across the comforter and onto the floor.

She barely makes it to the bathroom before everything makes it back up.

Tears and snot and bits of half digested pancake drip from her nose and mouth and she reaches blindly from her spot over the toilet for a towel, some tissue, anything.

Something wet presses to her hand, and she peeks over and up, through her filthy, greasy hair, and finds Mr. Abernathy, wet washrag in hand. He gives it a small shake, encouraging her to take it.

Feeling worse for being seen, she takes the rag and tries to wipe her face, but another wave of nausea hits her, more breakfast forces its way out of her.

She wonders if the boy or girl from Two would be hunched over their toilets. Would the boy from One have been trapped in bed for who knows how long? Are all Victories so bitter in the harsh light of day?

Every bit of energy she'd had has vanished with her sprint to the bathroom and she crumbles over the bowl, sobbing.

A warm hand comes to a rest on her back, begins trying to brush the tangles from her face, but Madge bats it away.

"Go." All she wants is to be left alone.

She's disgusting. She's a murderer.

If she'd thought she'd been alone before, when she'd been the Mayor's daughter, it was nothing compared to what she was going to be now. With the adrenaline gone, all the fear and anxiety of the Games evaporated, she can think more clearly.

Her life will exist in a limbo, trapped between the Districts and the Capitol, belonging to both and neither. Why hadn't she thought of that before?

No one will want to associate with her. Not Katniss, not Peeta, not Gale, maybe not even her parents. Who would want a killer for a daughter?

Falling back, slamming into the glass of the shower, Madge covers her face with the rag, sobs into it.

How could she have been so stupid?

Mr. Abernathy slides down to the floor beside her. She can feel him watching her out the corner of his eye.

He doesn't tell her it'll be okay, promise her things will get better, just wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her to his side.

#######

Mr. Abernathy gets her another day to pull herself together, but she'd apparently already gotten several days to recover, more than most who hadn't received major body modifications.

"Mental anguish isn't something they understand," he tells her sourly.

Madge only nods, examines herself in the mirror.

Even before her prep team had arrived, in a flurry of feathers and glitter, she'd thought she was in pretty good shape-physically anyways.

The doctors that had cut into her leg hadn't so much as left a scar. Every bruise, every nick and cut, every blemish had been erased while Madge had been in a stupor.

She wishes they hadn't. All the wounds would've made the Games more solid, not phantom snatches of color and light, heat and pain, that have no foothold in reality, making her head swim and almost everything she eats reappear.

They don't care about that though, they only care that she can stand, smile, talk. They only care to see their prize.

And that's exactly what she is.

Her prep team have buffed out every last remaining imperfection, however small and however imperceptible, made her skin a smooth sheet of silk. Every hair is curled, polished, pinned to the sky.

Portia had outdone herself with the gown. With every movement Madge makes the light catches on it. She isn't wearing diamonds. She is a diamond.

It almost makes Madge believe what people keep telling her, that she's won.

But the closer the review comes, the more Ms. Trinket trills and gives her pointers, the more Mr. Abernathy's face settles into an uneasy expression, the more certain she is that she hasn't won anything.

She'd hoped, naively, her last move, destroying the Careers, would move her into a new position, promote her from a pawn to a queen, give her a new set of skills to play with, end the game. They left Mr. Abernathy alone, after all, why shouldn't she be the same?

It had been a foolish, childish thing to believe.

All she'd done it seems, is restart the game.

She isn't a queen anymore than any of the other Victors, no matter how clever she'd thought her victory had been. Madge is a pawn still, and she's back at the starting square.

#######

The Madge on the stage for the review of the Games is a shell.

She smiles and laughs, her eyes are open and she's breathing, but there's no life in her, Gale is certain of it.

It's her first appearance since the Games ended almost a week ago.

They've washed her, shined her up for their viewing pleasure. Her skin is velvety smooth, almost ethereal, and they've replaced her tattered clothes with another fancy gown and painted a smile on her face, but they can't force the life back into her eyes.

"At least they didn't do any modifications," Mellark whispers. "Wonder why not."

It's a small mercy. For as long as Gale can remember, most Victors have come back without some kind of modification. Only Finnick Odair had escaped, and that bodes ominous to Gale.

She watches the recap of the Games, each death with the same vacant expression, wide eyes and a forced smile, never breaking. Not even when they show the deaths she'd missed, the girl from Eleven crying and the anguished screams of her District partner or the bloody death of the boy from Three, does her expression falter.

Gale sees her eyes shine though.

Madge doesn't let the tears that most would miss fall, and he isn't sure if it's a new skill she's acquired or her lifetime as a politician's daughter that trained her to never let them see her cry.

"She's still in there," Mellark finally says, glancing over at Gale and Katniss. "She's smart."

Whether Katniss knows what Mellark means or not, Gale isn't sure, but he does.

She's out of the Arena, but she isn't, not really.

The Game hasn't ended.

#######

"She seemed sad," Vick whispers as he sits at the edge of his bed, peering across the small, dark space over at Gale. "Did she seem sad to you?"

"She killed people, Vick," Rory groans, covering his head with a pillow. "I'm sure she feels bad. That probably makes her sad."

Vick shoots him a dark look and turns back to Gale, eyebrows scrunched together.

Gale pulls his shirt off, throws it onto the dresser and flops down on his mattress. He might as well be sleeping on the floor for all the cushion it provides.

Glancing over at Vick, he sighs. "I don't think winning is all it's cracked up to be."

Especially not from what Gale has seen. Not from what Alameda had said before flying back off to the Capitol.

Nodding, Vick draws his legs up, crosses them under him and stares at the ground.

"It should be."

Gale nods. It really should.

#######

Mellark drags them all to the front of the crowd that's waiting for Madge's triumphant return.

She's a Victor. They'll get extra food, maybe enough food, and they owe that to her. The very people that had laughed at the thought of her in the Games, getting gutted or worse, are cheering as her train glides into sight.

Prim and Katniss have the best position, but Gale is tall enough that it doesn't make any difference to him. Grunting, he hoists Vick up on his shoulders. He's glad Posy stayed with his mother, he doesn't have enough shoulders for two siblings.

Anxiety begins creeping in, the kids, Katniss, even Mellark all have tense expressions fixed on their faces. Gale feels it bubble up even more in his stomach.

The sun beats down, and combined with Vick's weight, Gale quickly begins feeling perspiration beading up and rolling down his back.

He wipes some off and smears it across Rory's face.

"Gaw! Damn it, Gale!" He furiously begins scrubbing his face on the bottom of his shirt, shooting Gale disgusted looks as he does.

The tension, too thick and too taut, snaps as Prim starts laughing. Then Katniss. Then Mellark and Vick.

Gale snickers as Rory turns his back on all of them with one last filthy glare.

Vick crosses his arms and rests them against Gale's head, still chuckling at Rory's annoyance.

Their momentary break, their one second of oblivion, is punctured by the train's whistle.

As it slows to a stop, windows catching the sun, Alameda's words drift through Gale's mind, harsh and hopeless.

"No one comes home from the Games, not really. Some get sent back in caskets and some in crowns, but in the end? Only the dead really get the prize. The rest are just in a well furnished hell."

Squinting at the train, polished and perfect, Gale hopes she's wrong.

Madge is back, she's alive and outside the Capitol's grasp for the moment.

Everything is going to be okay.

That's what he tells himself anyway.

He doesn't believe it for a minute.

#######

They give her a choice for her dress.

"You'd look darling in purple," Ms. Trinket coos, running her hands over the velvet and silk of the gaudy dress. "And with your crown? You'd look like true royalty!"

Madge turns it down instantly, pushing it into Ms. Trinket's hands and telling her it's a gift.

"Please, for all your help."

She cries over if for nearly an hour, until Mr. Abernathy tells her to take her blubbering to her own room so Madge can change and stop fussing over her.

"You could try being nice to her, you know?" Madge mumbles as Ms. Trinket, still sniffling, takes the dress out the door.

He rolls his eyes. "I could, but I won't."

Too exhausted from Ms. Trinket's crying to argue with him again, Madge collapses onto the bed.

She wants to sleep, more than anything, but she can't. Screams and blood haunt her, mockingjays and tracker jackers, spears and mines, there's no escaping them.

Ms. Trinket had offered to get Madge a sedative, but Mr. Abernathy had lost his temper over that.

"They'll help her get some rest," Ms. Trinket had told him loftily. "She's dead on her feet, the poor dear."

"She'll sleep when she's ready," he snapped, adding several colorful insults after. Madge still isn't certain what some of them even meant.

"Why can't I have one?" She wanted nothing more than a dreamless oblivion and Ms. Trinket had assured her the little pill, a mauve square, would give her just that.

"I'm not drinking, you're not taking some damn pill," had been his answer.

She'd nearly snapped that she wasn't a drunk, not an addict, but then she glanced in the mirror, saw her glassy eyes and lank hair.

If she'd added a few wrinkles, an airy, empty smile, she might've been her mother.

It had stunned her into silence, and she hadn't argued with him after that, didn't so much as breath a word to Ms. Trinket about sneaking her a pill.

He was saving her from another unfortunate fate, even if he wouldn't put it in so many words, and Madge tries to be grateful.

It's hard though, when she's been running from the ghosts that haunt the space between her and rest for days on end, to feel anything but irritated.

Mr. Abernathy gets up, runs one of his heavy hands over the dress closest to him, picks it up by the hanger and hands it over to her. "Wear this one."

Eyeing it, Madge considers telling him no, just to be stubborn, but the fight is gone from her. All of it had been consumed in the review show, in her forced smile and strained laughter.

She'd used every ounce of energy she had left from her long days in the hospital, in the induced sleep, to make her opening move in this new game.

The Arena is different, but no less dangerous, and her competition is more skilled. She has to be wary every move that she makes, because unlike her last game, the outcome of the new set isn't fixed, and she doesn't know what to expect.

Taking the dress, she goes to the bathroom, slips it on and examines herself in the mirror. She rubs the creams and paints on, just as Portia had told her to, covering up the dark circles that have grown under her eyes. It smoothes out the imperfections, makes her glow, makes her shine.

There's nothing to be done for her eyes though. They give her drops that clear them, but to Madge it makes no difference.

No drops or makeup can cover the emptiness there, the vacant spot her soul had occupied before the Games.

When she step out, hair up in a simple ponytail, a silver ribbon tying it, she forces a smile. "How do I look?"

She hopes the Capitol's magic is enough to cover up all the rips in her, all the frayed edges and torn seams she's trying to hold together.

He takes a step, tucks a stray strand of hair over her shoulder and smiles.

"Like a Victor."

If she had any tears left she'd cry, but she's down to dry sobs in the night.

She certainly doesn't feel like a Victor, like she's won anything but another round in a new game that she isn't even sure how to play.

"What's going to happen to me?" She'd asked Mr. Abernathy as they'd waited for the start of the review.

Her voice had sounded broken, small and pathetic, and she hated herself for it. She needed to be strong, but she wasn't, she never had been.

"Don't worry about that," he'd assured her, holding her in a tight hug. "I'm taking care of it."

She'd gotten frantic after that, after spotting some of the former Victors as she'd peaked out onto the stage, glossy and plastic, trapped in the coils of the Capitol crowds.

"They're-I'm-" she sputtered. The room was too small, the air was too thick, she couldn't breathe. "I can't-"

Mr. Abernathy had made her sit after that, given her a glass that she nearly dropped her hands were shaking so badly.

"Nothing's going to happen to you," he told her, taking her face between his hands. "Understand? I'm taking care of it."

There had been such certainty in his eyes, so much conviction in what he was saying, that Madge wanted to believe him.

He would protect her. He wasn't going to let anything bad happen to her…

"How?" She whispered. If he had some special gift, some way to save her, she wanted to know.

"Don't worry about it."

The fragile hope that he had some power crumbled when she'd had to go out on the stage and watch the falls of each of her fellow Tributes. If he'd had any sway at all, she wouldn't have been there. Not on the stage, not in the Games.

She'd shouted at him when they'd gotten back to the apartment, thrown her shoes and dropped down into a shuddering mess.

He'd stood in the door, watched her warily for several long minutes before speaking.

"It's part of the game, Pearl." She heard him softly walk across the room and drop down onto her bed with a groan. "You have to play, no choice in that, but we can chose how we move, understand?"

She hadn't at the time, too tightly wrapped up with fear and fatigue to appreciate what he was trying to tell her.

Now, as he stands in front of her, digging in his pockets and fishing something out for her, she understands.

He knows the rules to this game, he's been playing it for almost a quarter century after all, he's bound to have picked up the finer points of it by now.

Participation isn't optional, there's no backing away from the game, but they're still in control of the moves they make, where they place their pieces, no matter how weak their status may be.

After a few seconds he pulls something small and golden from his pocket, her pin.

"They brought it to me when they pulled you out." He starts to pin it to her top, but seems to think better of it and takes her hand, presses it into palm.

Madge turns it over in her hand. They'd cleaned it, shined it, just as they'd done to Madge. There isn't so much as a scratch or sign of dust on it, only Mr. Abernathy's clumsy fingerprints.

She pins it to her dress, straightens it, then looks back up.

He takes her face in his hands and presses a kiss to her forehead, a little scratchy, he's either been too preoccupied to shave or has given it back up for the return home; she isn't sure.

"Be brave, Pearl."

When the train starts to slow, the scenery's blurred edges begin to smooth, they leave her room, go to the exit and wait.

Mr. Abernathy gives her another once over, smoothes her hair and tells her to adjust her top, as a band starts to play and the sun cuts into the narrow windows on the doors, bouncing off the dust hanging in the air.

When the doors start to open, Madge fixes a smile on her lips, widens her eyes and lifts her chin.

The game is still being played, with its mysterious rules and uncertain ends, and she can't afford a misstep.

She isn't the Mayor's daughter anymore.

She's a Victor.

#######

AN: And that's all, thanks to everyone for reading. This story is wrapped up, for now at least. Once I finish up the 'in Thirteen' story I plan on following up this story. It's planned out, but it's going to take some time to write. Again, thanks for all the support y'all.