Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.

In the Looking Glass

AN: This is the sequel to 'Down the Rabbit Hole'. Many thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing for me.

#######

Madge wishes the Victory Tour had never happened.

The disaster in District Eleven had been edited to nothing, barely a whole half hour of television in total. Then it had become monotonous.

She'd caught a glimpse of District Ten and Nine, dressed in all reds, yellows, and oranges, a human wall of fire in the blazing sun, and Madge wondered if the clearly unfocused Peeta and Katniss had even noticed the show of solidarity

The rest, other than the Career Districts, save Four, were predictable. Happy to see the Victors, rambunctious, but cautious enough not to repeat Eleven's mistake.

It wasn't promising for District Twelve's two newest Victors. The spark their act of rebellion, whether calculated or not, had started, was beginning to burn a little too brightly, a little too hot. Madge had only the barest information, but she worried that Katniss' months long lack of interaction with Peeta wasn't going to help convince the people in charge, those watching her every move, that it was simply overwhelming love that lead her to that path.

It kept her up at night, and she prayed either one or both of them would realize what they may have started. Madge wished she'd noticed the signs before. Noticed that Peeta was only ever with his brothers and that Katniss would disappear into the woods, something she and Gale should have known not to do. Their vanishing into the woods, even alone, bred rumors that barely needed legs, rumors that might not be rumors as far as anyone in the District was concerned.

Even though Madge had let her own curiosity about what existed outside the fence get to her, had Katniss take her out in the woods a couple of times and quickly known it was a terrible mistake.

It was damp and cool under the canopy of the ancient trees as Madge trailed behind Katniss, step for step, keeping up with her.

"Stop making that noise," she'd told Madge each time she flinched and squeaked after hearing a bird or wild creature scurry away.

It was impossible though. There were too many noises, too many new smells and shadows lurking around her. Each animal Madge watched Katniss kill, which she suspected was far fewer than when Madge was not underfoot, made her pale a little.

"This is for Gale's family," she explained as she tucked a rabbit, a glass-eyed little creature, into her bag.

"He'll take it?" Madge remembered, the moment the words passed her lips, who she was talking to. Of course Gale would accept Katniss' gifts. She was Katniss.

A small smile flickered up Katniss' lips, "Why wouldn't he?"

Madge bit back telling her about the chocolate she'd gifted to Vick and Rory, about the little spat she and Gale had in the cafeteria over it. Katniss wouldn't understand even if she had, might even have taken up for him. They came from the same place after all.

"It's amazing," Katniss smiled, genuinely smiled up at the bits of blue sky peeking out from behind the roof of leaves overhead. "Isn't it?"

Though she hadn't thought so, the woods were terrifying, Madge simply nodded.

Unlike Katniss and Gale, Madge didn't see any wonder in the trees. The woods were dark and empty, but at the same time full of danger, more things that could kill her. Perhaps, she thought, that was the draw of it to the other two; maybe they thrived on the danger of it, the supposed freedom. It bound them together.

There was no freedom in it though. Madge could sense the eyes on her, the ever present gaze of the Capitol trained on her, carving out holes in her back as they watched her from some distant room.

Despite what Katniss and Gale believed, the woods weren't a safe haven, they were a snare set and waiting to trap them, and Madge had the terrible feeling, as she watched the Victory Tour drag on, that it might have already caught them.

"Be careful, Madgie. Eyes open, pay attention."

Madge had let herself be blind to the disaster that was brewing right under her nose.

Katniss seemed to be trying, almost desperately to Madge, to make up for the missed months with Peeta. A false smile everytime she appeared on the television. It was probably too little too late though. While the tittering crowds in the Capitol might buy her doe eyes and kisses, Madge knew the people that mattered had probably already seen the signs, knew it was as much an act as the programs that filled the Capitol airways. The only hope Madge could find was that, like with the rule change, the crowds insistence on having their 'Star-crossed lovers' would keep everyone safe. Or at least give them time to find a way to crawl out of the way of whatever the shadowy figures in charge had planned.

Her father had already been on edge. He'd been given stipulations, impossible to hold to, but that, he told her was the point.

"Probably get a new Head Peacekeeper," he'd sighed. Cray and his useless band were under just as much scrutiny as the Mayor it seemed.

His television had blared a warning cry, telling all the District officials about the uprising in Eight.

Every few hours it would go off, scream, and terrify her mother. They'd show another suspected rebel executed on live television, a bloody caution to those in the uprising, though it seemed to only add fuel to the fire. The troop presence appearedto grow with each broadcast, an indication that the Capitol was losing control.

The tones became less blaring after the first day, settled into a beep, but it still wore at her and her mother's nerves.

"Can't he stop that?" She'd asked Madge. "It just wears on my head."

Madge felt terribly for her. The television in her father's study was too close to their room and the noise was probably more than overwhelming to her already worn mother. Her morphling supply had been diminished. The nebulous 'they' that supplied it from the Capitol told them there was a shortage at the lab that created the substance. Madge had the sinking suspicion, though, that this was simply one more jab at their weary District for producing the 'Star Crossed Lovers' that were being such a nuisance.

Even Madge's piano was too much noise for her mother's head to take at times, without the morphling to dull her senses.

The only bright side had been that her mother was more focused, no longer in her continual haze of forgetfulness and confusion. At one point, she even managed to carry on a conversation with Katniss without sounding like a lunatic or dissolving into tears. Madge almost called it a blessing in disguise.

She was relieved when the Victory Tour finally ended and Katniss and Peeta were to come home. Until the proposal blindsided them all.

The dark and crooked path they had been set on all those months ago had just gotten a little more twisted, and much darker.

#######

"So Katniss is going to marry Peeta?"

Vick sits at the counter. Over the past few months he'd grown like the weeds in Madge's now overrun garden. Despite being only just now ten, he's easily at her shoulder, though he's still painfully thin.

Madge just nods.

The proposal should have shocked no one. It was the only logical next step in the Game. Yet somehow it seemed to have caught much of the District, Katniss' friends and family, off guard.

They have to keep playing the Game, though, in whatever way would keep them and their families safe. Madge also knows, though it's never said, that the District itself is at stake.

Her father stays later and later at the Justice Building. More and more new Peacekeepers are trickling in, replacing older, more complacent ones. Things are tense, like a wire pulled to the load weight. Taut, ready to snap at any moment, and woe betide is the person that adds the final stone to the bucket.

"Do-do you think she wants to?" Vick's innocent eyes flicker up to her, "Do you think she loves him?"

Madge bites her lip.

Truthfully, no, she doesn't. Katniss probably has never given marriage much consideration, especially not to Peeta. As for loving him…she feels, hopes, Katniss cares for Peeta, at least in some manner, however that may be.

"I think she cares about him, very much. In her own way."

They'd survived a horrible experience together, they had a connection. She has to care about him at least a little.

It doesn't matter though. They are all dependant on Katniss and Peeta's relationship, whatever the nature. Without it, things will only get worse. Judging by the current state of things, though, the Capitol, those in charge, aren't buying into the continued love story. It's a romance destined to have a tragic ending, just like their namesake.

Vick turns the cup of hot chocolate in his hands, staring at it. His voice is low, just a breathy whisper, "Do you think she loves Gale?"

Madge doesn't want to answer, but then, she really doesn't have to. Vick already has enough of the pieces to figure it out.

It takes several minutes, but Madge finally manages to get her voice to work, "I think he loves her."

Again it's just a breath, just barely audible, a mimic of Vick's.

Vick looks up and catches Madge's eyes. They stare at each other, across the kitchen island for a long moment before he sighs, "Guess I should get home."

She walks him to the fence, as is their routine, and he gives her a hug goodbye.

"Gale's gonna be in a bad mood again," he mutters into her shoulder. She gives him a little squeeze.

"I'm sorry." She pulls back, straightens his hair a little. "He's stressed. It isn't easy in the mines."

Vick pales a little and Madge has a sinking feeling in her stomach. The mines are his future as much as they're Gale's present. She pulls him back into a hug, a little tighter this time.

"I-Just don't be too hard on him. He's worried. He doesn't have time like he use to, to, you know, do things."

Like hunt and trap food. Like ensure you and your brother, sister, and mother don't freeze or starve to death.

She hates that she still defends him, still defends him and his sour attitude to his brother, but she can't stop herself. She feels the pull, the aching need to lessen his burden at any chance she gets.

Gale Hawthorne hasn't muttered much more than a thank you to her when dropping off strawberries for her father in the past few months, yet he still holds her heart in the palm of his rough hands.

Vick pulls back, gives her a small smile, a funny half thing. "See you tomorrow night."

Then he runs off for the Seam.

#######

The Harvest Festival is an awkward affair from start to finish.

Katniss had asked about the pin, which in itself wasn't awkward.Madge's feigned obliviousness to the meaning of the Mockingjay, however, was.

Only songbirds…she wished.

"They're miracles," her mother had sighed once, her empty eyes staring at the golden pin,"They're lucky."

Madge failed to see how an anomaly bornof rejection could be considered lucky, unless it was just lucky the Jabberjays had enough genetic similarities that the Mockingjays weren't sterile and so able to proliferate as they had.

"They shouldn't exist." Her father had explained.

"At least not in such numbers. When creatures like them reproduce, say you have a horse and a donkey, they mate, the offspring-a mule-is usually sterile. See? Mules are bred for, generally. These birds, though, they've taken off without human intervention. They shouldn't exist."

Like Katniss, Mockingjays shouldn't have survived. Unlike Katniss, they weren't causing the Capitol trouble.

Later, Madge wishes the Festival Dinner had all been carried out on the lawn, where she could avoid the heavy oddness that permeated her house during it.

Gale's family, being considered Katniss' family, had come of course. Gale should have had no choice but to sit in the Mayor's formal dining area and watch Katniss and Peeta seated side by side while he watched in all his surly and glowering glory, which wouldn't have been all that different than he normally is, at least in Madge's opinion. Yet, she'd hoped he'd at least put on a good front. There are more eyes watching than usual, after all, surely he would know that.

Gale isn't there though.

"He's sick," Vick tells her as he helps carry ice cream to the table.

It's probably a lie, but Madge doesn't question it. He deserves a little peace, or at least someone does.

At the dinner there are reporters and distinguished guests, not the same ones that had come during the Games, Madge wishes they were. These guests were more guarded, they don't give her tidbits of Capitol life as freely as the others had, though the information she'd gained from them hadn't always been useful. Copernicus' beloved designer's favorite food and Cordia's bizarre bathing rituals, though educational in their own way, weren't particularly helpful. The only thing she'd learned from the current group was that their music chips weren't up to date because of a shipping disruption and that they wished there was going to be seafood at the dinner because it had been absent from the Capitol due to a bad weather in Four.

Both are odd and seemingly unconnected, but with the battle being waged in Eight, she doubts that the reasons for their lack of their favorite luxuries has anything to do with weather or simple shipping disruptions.

She'd also hoped Birdy Alameda would be allowed back. The Victor was abrasive to a degree, but she was also kind, in her own strange way. She was also possibly homicidal. Madge had thought her suggestion to kill Gale during her first prepping of Katniss' mother and sister was a very odd kind of joke. After reading through her father's Capitol paper, though, and seeing that Plutarch Heavensbee, a man Birdy had mentioned in connection with the Games, had bought the apartment of the recently (and under what Madge felt was very odd circumstances) deceased Glaive siblings, Madge wasn't quite sure.

Vick and Rory have eaten everything placed in front of them. Madge's mother has been in a particularly good way, helping them spoon heaping servings of the odd foods brought straight from the Capitol for the Victors' enjoyment.

Madge picks at her dinner. She isn't particularly hungry so she listens to her surprisingly coherent mother talk to Mrs. Everdeen.

"You're looking so well these past few months, Matilda."

Her mother gives her an airy smile, "Haven't I?"

"Yes, I-You've been downstairs this whole evening, and Katniss says she's seen you up and around when she's been to visit Madge."

Her mother's pale hair is coming down, floating around her head as she nods, "Katniss? Your daughter? Yes, I've met her. She's a nice girl…Friends with Madge…Poor thing was trying to learn the piano, but it's been giving me a headache lately." She sighs, "Madge gave her May's pin, did you know? I didn't realize it until the other day. Saw it on her when she was on the television."

Madge blinks. Her mother hadn't said anything, which was odd. Madge had assumed she would be furious at her for gifting a family heirloom, her precious sister's pin. The way she was talking though, it was as if Madge had done nothing more interesting than hang a picture on the wall.

"Yes, Matilda, I knew."

Her mother gives Madge a faint smile and pats her arm before looking at Mrs. Hawthorne.

She lets her hazy gaze flicker between each of the Hawthorne children, the gears in her mind slowly turning. "Are you short one?"

Mrs. Hawthorne's brow crinkles a bit; her mouth turns down, "Yes, I am."

Madge's mother seems to contemplate the missing element for a second before sighing, "He reminds me of Haymitch."

Mr. Abernathy, seated next to her, makes a grunting noise, "Not even close, 'Tilda."

He gets up shortly after, disappearing from the bright lights of the dinner, probably to the wine cellar.

#######

"We seem to have lost Haymitch," her father sighs as the last of the guests are finally put to bed.

They want to be off as early as possible in the morning. The District simply doesn't agree with them.

"So much dust," they'd complained.

It took considerable self-control not to point out to them that digging in the ground created a rather large amount of dust. They probably wouldn't have understood her anyway as they seemed completely baffled by the thought of manual labor.

Madge sets out to find Mr. Abernathy. She assumes he's with Katniss, but the lone female Victor had apparently left earlier, according to Peeta as he put on his coat to walk his family home.

"Do you need help looking for him?"

She shakes her head, avoiding Mrs. Mellark's irritable stare and poor Mr. Mellark's forlorn frown. Peeta gives her an affectionate pat on the shoulder, and Emmer and Rhys offer a quick nod, before the Mellarks depart.

Madge checks the garden, the shed, the wine cellar -which is missing several bottles, and finally all the downstairs rooms. When she's finished the search of the upper guestrooms she decides to take off her shoes, they're killing her feet.

She's just crossed the threshold into her room when the overwhelming stench of liquor hits her.

"Mr. Abernathy!"

He's sprawled on the floor in front of her dresser, passed out drunk. Madge shakes her head. She'll have to get her father to help her drag him up, it certainly isn't the first time he's drank himself into a coma at their house. But seeing as the house is full of reporters and guest until the morning, she isn't sure where they're going to put him up for the night.

She's contemplating just leaving him there and sleeping on the little divan in her parents' room for the night, when she sees the top of a head on the other side of her bed. Dark hair, mussed and tussled, leaned back against her gray bedspread.

At first she thinks it's one of the guests, her heart stops at the thought, remembering the Glaives and their propensity for going through her things, then he leans back, his head resting on her bed, and she catches a glimpse of his face.

Gale.

Quickly she marches around the bed and looks down at him. He has the missing wine bottle, opened, in his hand.

"You missed the party." Madge frowns at him, confused at how he got to her room in the first place. He's friends with a couple of the older Peacekeepers, she supposes one of them might have let him in, or perhaps he's just that stealthy. He does regularly sneak into the woods; it wouldn't surprise her if he'd simply snuck in her house like he did into the land beyond the fence.

"Did you drink all that?" She asks him, a little horrified at him consuming so much alcohol.

"Haymitch drank it," he tells her flatly, tossing the bottle onto the floor at her feet.

Good…well, not good. Haymitch really ought not drink that much either. His liver can't be in the greatest shape at this point.

Madge squints down at him, he's a mess. His hair is uncombed and he's in a filthy, dingy shirt. His mother would be appalled, she's certain of it. Dull gray eyes flicker up and down her, take her in, "Pretty dress."

It's the same damned dress she'd worn the day of the Reaping. The day Prim's name was called and Katniss volunteered. The day their lives had changed. He'd said the same thing then and she'd hated him just a little for it.

She has no more control over her life, less really, than Katniss, yet she's the one bearing all his contempt. Heat rises up her face.

"How did you get in my room, Gale?"

He doesn't answer, just turns his eyes from her, back to her bookshelf and shrugs.

Looking around the room, she sees her curtains are wrinkled, obviously he'd come through the window.

"Why didn't you come to the dinner?" If he was going to bother breaking into her room he might as well have come and eaten, reaped the reward of having not just one but two winners.

His lip curls, "And watch the star-crossed lovers make eyes at each other? No thanks."

Her heart breaks a little for him. None of this has been easy, she knows that, watching the girl he's so clearly and painfully in love with fall farther and farther from his grasp.

It suddenly makes perfect sense why he's there. Even if he can't stomach watching the two supposed lovers over dinner, he can't stay completely away. Katniss has an invisible pull on him, she has no idea the effect she has on him, and it had drawn Gale from his self-imposed exile for the night.

Gale pushes himself up, stands by her bed and stretches. The bottom of his shirt is untucked and a little short for him and it raises up above the tops of his pants, exposing a small expanse of his stomach, every bit as olive as the rest of him. She catches a glimpse of dark hair, even.

Madge quickly pulls her eyes up, focuses on his face, tries to keep her own expression impassive as her heart thrums so hard in her chest she's positive he'll hear it.

"I'm a bit sick of them too," she admits quietly. The last thing her wounded heart needs is to be confronted, day in and day out, with a love story for the ages. Especially the love story that's causing the object of her affection so much distress.

He looks at her, as though he isn't sure of the words coming out of her mouth. His hand reaches up and grasps a strand of her hair that has escaped the golden ribbon, he twirls it in his fingers.

"She and Mellark are getting married." He leans in close, she can smell the last traces of whatever he'd eaten for dinner on his breath. Spicy and pungent, and she wonders if it's one of Katniss' rabbits. "Is that part of the Game, Undersee?"

It is. Madge just knows it is. It may be the only thing that saves them. She gives him a pained smile.

"Gale, we don't always get what we want. People make sacrifices."

"You think I haven't made enough sacrifices?" He snaps.

Madge takes a step back, uneasy with him. He might grab her. He's been rough with her before, even if he is contrite after. He seems to sense she's getting nervous and drops the strand of her hair, tucks it behind her ear.

Her heart cracks a little more.

"I'm sorry, Gale."

Sorry he can't get what he so desperately wants. Sorry he has to go into those horrible mines every day. Sorry he's spent his whole life starving. Sorry for his father. Sorry he's wishing she were someone else standing just a breath from his lips.

She's sorry for all the things in his life she has no control over.

"Bet you are," he practically growls.

That's it.

"Get out of my room, Gale." She crosses her arms over her chest in an attempt at appearing intimidating. Just because no girl has ever tossed him out of her room before doesn't mean it wasn't a long time coming, and Madge is glad to claim the title at the moment.

He's going to work himself up, get angry, and not only is her house the worst place to have that meltdown, she isn't in the mood to take his abuse. He's been ignoring her for months, just because he's in a mood doesn't mean he could come back to her and cry his heart out on her shoulder.

No matter how much she wanted to provide that shoulder.

He brushes past her, over to her window, pulling it open and crawling through.

"You should lock your window," he tells her gruffly, not even bothering to look back at her as he clambers down the shingles, to the edge of the roof before jumping to the ground below.

She starts to call out that like the doors in her house, the windows have no locks, but she decides that's probably not information she wants to broadcast to him and whoever happens to be near her house during the darkest part of the night.

He disappears from her view, swallowed up in the darkness of the small hours of the night without so much as a wave goodbye.

"Your friend's cousin is a real gentleman, huh, Pearl?"

Madge glares at Mr. Abernathy.

"Have you been awake this whole time?"

He chuckles and rolls himself face up, grinning at her.

"I should pour a bucket of cold water on you," she tells him as she helps him set up. Heis still drunk after all. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and she tugs him into standing.

"You're too sweet for that," he chuckles. "Otherwise you'd've slapped the crap outta dear cousin when he started playing with your hair."

She has half a mind to knock him down the stairs as she helps him into the hallway, but doesn't. She doesn't have the upper body strength to drag his dead body into the garden to hide it.

Her mother appears, she's changed into her nightgown. Mr. Abernathy tries to right himself a little, appear less like the inebriated man he is.

"'Tilda."

She eyes him a little sadly, "Haymitch." Her hazy eyes flicker behind him, to Madge. "Why were you in Madge's room?"

"Passed out." He tells her, as if that explains it all, and really it does. Haymitch is notorious for passing out in all kinds of strange places. They'd found him under the kitchen sink once, when they'd thought they had him secured in one of the downstairs guestrooms.

She blinks at him, gives him a sad sort of smile, then kisses his cheek, "Get home safely, Haymitch."

Her hand trails down his arm, her fingers linger at his wrist for a second. Then she glides off.

Madge is glad they're on better terms. The 50th Quarter Quell had broken them both so badly, and only the two of them really understood just how badly that really was. They'd mended ways, as much as a drunk and a veritable drug addict were capable of doing, over the many years since Madge had been very small.

Haymitch rubs his cheek and mutters about 'mad women' before leaning back onto Madge.

When she gets him outside he stands on his own, perfectly steady.

"Why did you make me help you if you could do it yourself?"

He grins, his grizzled face creasing with premature lines, "To see if you would."

She always did, and he knew it. It drives her a bit crazy, how he and her father are constantly testing her.

"You watch yourself," he squints off in the direction of the Seam. "That cousin is trouble."

He takes her by the shoulders, pulls her into an awkward hug. She can smell his harsh breath, feel the scratch of his unshaven, scraggly cheek, as he whispers, "I mean it, sweetheart, he's no good for you. He and that girl, they're more trouble than you need, you hear me? Understand?"

"You just don't want me to upset Katniss," she whispers back.

He shouldn't worry about that. She doesn't want to hurt her friend. Whether Katniss loves Gale as simply a friend or more, Madge knows he's off limits to her.

Besides, he hates her.

"I don't want you getting your heart broken."

She doesn't expect that, for him to be concerned with her emotional well being.

In a fit of affection she kisses his cheek, as her mother had done. "Don't worry, I won't."

Because it had already been broken months ago.