"I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story…"

Dust gathered between the piano keys. After the annual Procreation, a week ago, Madge hadn't felt much like playing. She sat on the bench, hands twisted behind her back, gazing out the window, towards the seam. Gale Hawthorne was on her mind again. She couldn't keep him out, though she tried. What was he doing? Thinking about her?

They hadn't spoken since that night, the last night, and the three times she'd seen him at school, he quickly changed direction to keep their paths from crossing. Now that he was avoiding her, she realized it wasn't an accident how they used to crash into each other daily. Only now, she realized he'd been seeking her out all these years. Why? Just to argue, to torment, to vent? Soon Gale would be done with school, go the mines, and Madge didn't expect to see him again after that. It was a day she'd long dreamed of. But now...now…

Old dreams and fresh nightmares boiled in her brain. She pressed her palms against her stomach. A folded square of lined, yellow notebook paper crinkled under her blouse. A letter she should have burned, but instead kept in the waistband of her skirt, or at night, inside her pillow case. She'd read it so many times, every word scratched into the insides of her closed eyelids, but she still couldn't bring herself to burn the letter, needing physical proof of its existence.

Lately, reality and dreams overlapped. The letter didn't always help. Sometimes it made things worse and she stayed awake whole nights searching for answers to half-formed questions. Funny that there's an us. Funny you can know someone most of your life and not know them at all. Madge had thought she knew Gale Hawthorne. Hot-headed, cruel, self righteous. But then, locked together inside of a white-walled room, with nothing to look at besides each other, she saw patience, kindness, humility. It had been like looking into a mirror, everything reflected in opposites, and she didn't know which image was flesh, which was glass. Now she never would.

Madge abandoned the piano, left the cover open, not caring if dust clogged and choked the ivory keys. She retreated to her bedroom, to re-read the letter, or maybe burn it, like she'd promised she already had, but it was too hot to light a fire.

Gale couldn't remember the girl's name. He wasn't sure he'd even asked. Evie? No. Robin, maybe? He knew what her name wasn't. Madge. The girl, whoever she was, clearly knew his name. She screamed it. Gale clamped his free hand over her mouth, even though the slag heap was miles away from civilization. It was past curfew. He didn't want to risk being overheard by some zealous Peacekeeper, the rare sort who took patrol duty seriously.

Not-Madge was close. About damn time. Either she was just a tough nut to crack, or he was losing his touch, or a combination of the two. He was just glad it was almost over. For him, it had ended in lackluster release about fifteen minutes ago; but if he couldn't remember the girl's name, the least he could do was not leave her hanging.

Not-Madge finally burst. He withdrew his hand and wiped it clean on his socks, the only part of him not completely covered in coal. Not-Madge was already on her feet. "Thanks," she said, straightening out her skirt.

"You're welcome," said Gale, without ego, without pride. No smug grin. No job well done. No satisfaction. He felt like he was at the Hobb, trading squirrel for eggs. Sex and bartering had become the same to him, a means of surviving, scraping by on scraps.

Madge woke in a sticky, cold sweat from a nightmare, the same one she had every night, of being split down the middle by a bolt of lightning. She didn't wake screaming, crying, clawing at her belly this time. Familiarity took the drama out of things, but not the taste of dread in her mouth. Her subconscious wasn't exactly subtle. Interpreting the dream was no trouble. I don't want to be pregnant. Mind and soul unanimously agreed. It was only her body she had to worry about.

And right now, her body needed to pee. She waited for her heart to stop racing, before crawling out from under the tangled sheets. The third floor hall was long and lightless. She felt her way along the wall through the dark, her shuffled footsteps muted by thick carpet. Her hands grazed over crystal doorknobs, leading into empty guestrooms. Mr. and Mrs. Undersee had their own separate rooms on the second floor. Madge used to relish in having a whole floor of the house to herself. Not anymore. There was something sad about the empty guestrooms now, something ominous, an endless stillness that reminded her of the hall in the Justice Building. She imagined people behind the doors, trapped.

Madge locked herself in the bathroom, even though it was the middle of the night, there were no guests to walk in on her, no one be afraid of. I'm losing my mind, she thought, as she dropped her panties and perched on the edge of the toilet, the porcelain seat cool against the backs of her thighs, even on a warm night like this one. She pushed on her bladder to hurry things along.

Mid-stream, the flow stopped when she noticed a rust colored stain in the crotch of her cotton underwear. She blinked a few times, to make sure the stain wasn't a sleepy-eyed trick. Then she kicked off the panties and brought them to her face for closer inspection. Blood. Definitely blood.

Madge burst out laughing from relief. For the first time in her life, she was grateful for her period, proof that it was over. For this year, at least. As Gale said in the letter, she was smart and there was time to find a way out before next Spring. For now, she just stared at the rust stain like it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, a bloody winter sunrise over white snow.

Gale took off his boots on the front stoop, before entering the house. He tiptoed across the living room, careful to avoid the floorboards that creaked the loudest.

"Another late night," said Hazelle from behind. Gale froze. He sighed through his nose, still tender from its recent break, and turned slowly to face his mother, standing in the kitchen doorway.

"I couldn't sleep," he said. "Needed to take a walk."

"Nice try," said Hazelle. She looked him over from head to socked feet. His clothes, his hands, his face were all streaked with coal dust, giving him away. She knew where he'd been. The slag heap, again, for the ninth night in a row. "You're grown enough," she said, leaning against the doorframe. "Your business is your own. I trust you're being careful."

Gale looked to his feet. He hoped it was too dark for her to see the flush spreading across his cheeks. "I am," he muttered.

"Good," said Hazelle. "Because you know what will happen if you get one of those girls pregnant."

Yes, he knew. Even though Procreation was over for the year, any unmarried woman under twenty-one who became pregnant would meet the same fate as an official breeder. Panem was desperate for labor. "Don't worry," said Gale. "I know what I'm doing." He wasn't exactly new to this. Sure, he was visiting the slag heap more often than ever before, but he hadn't lost complete control of his wits, just partial control.

"Leave your clothes out here," said Hazelle. "I don't want you tracking coal all over the place." She retreated to the kitchen, to continue her work. It wasn't unusual for her to stay up all night, sewing, straining her tired eyes over neat stitches in weak candlelight.

Gale stripped off his dirty clothes, set them on the hearth, and headed for his room; but changed his mind halfway there. He wasn't tired. He was always tired. When he slept, he dreamt of Madge, so he tried not to sleep.

Gale joined his mother in the kitchen and pulled a pair of slacks from the basket of clothes on the floor. Without a word, Hazelle nudged a spool of black thread across the table, which he caught just before it rolled over the edge. He threaded his needle and set to work patching a hole in the knee of the pants. Sewing was a dull, tedious chore, one he used to hate, but now he found the repetitive motion soothing. The needle went in and out, in and out, of the gray cloth.

But no matter how many nameless girls he took the slag heap, no matter how many stitches he made, awake or asleep, the mayor's daughter snuck across the back of his mind. If only he could physically tear her from his thoughts. Nothing else seemed to be working. Not fucking, or sewing, not hunting with Katniss, or hunting alone, not trading at the Hobb, not spending time with his family. He tried so hard not to think about her that he found himself always thinking about her.

Madge waited alone for the results in the same sterile room where she'd had her initial check-up three weeks ago. She didn't know if it was the same Capitol medic. Most of them looked the same to her. They always kept their white-masks on, like they thought everyone in Twelve was diseased. I wish we were, thought Madge, then they'd stop coming here. She lay on her back, on a stainless steel examination table, wasting time.

"I'm not pregnant," she'd told the medic right away. "I had my period a few days ago."

It didn't matter. She might as well have said nothing. Maybe I should've brought the underwear as proof. But they would've test her blood anyway. Procedure had to be followed. She didn't mind the needle in her vein, it was the waiting that killed her, this slow dragging out of the worst moment of her life. I'm not pregnant, she reminded herself, repeating the words in a silent mantra. I had my period. I'm not pregnant.

Madge shot up when the door opened and Effie Trinket marched into the room, wearing an irradiate smile that hit Madge like a nuclear blast. Where was the medic? Effie shouldn't be here. This was all wrong. But Effie was here, smiling. There could only be one reason for it.

"Congratulations," said Effie. "You're-"

Madge leapt from the examination table, both feet hitting the floor with a solid, simultaneous thud. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, I can't be."

Effie's smile flickered, but she managed to hold it in place. "Well, you are. We don't make mistakes."

"This time you did," said Madge, unable to stop herself. She was pushing her luck, breaking protocol, or as her mother would say, causing a scene. It took all of her effort to keep from screaming when she spoke. "I had my period, so there must be a mistake."

Effie Trinket made a nervous tittering sound. A giggle, maybe? Or a speck of coal dust at the back of her throat. "Oh dear," she said, glancing at the door. "Perhaps I should fetch the medic and let him explain."

Yes, do that, thought Madge, afraid to open her mouth again, in case she said something she'd really regret. Even though she knew she was right, that there'd been a mistake, she didn't want to become a problem. Everything that happened in this room went back to the president. Even the smallest moment of unwillingness, of insubordination, could be branded treasonous.

Effie didn't make it two steps, before the medic entered, as if he'd been listening the whole time on just the other side of the door. "Is there a problem?" he said, addressing Effie.

"Yes," said Madge, resisting the urge to wave her hands in the air, jump up and down, and yell, look at me. She managed to speak calmly, if strained. "I already told you, I can't be pregnant. You must have mixed up the tests, done them wrong, or something."

The medic finally looked at her. His eyes were flint gray, clinical, cutting. "The bleeding you experienced was not from menstruation," he said from behind his mask. "We call it implantation bleeding. It's not uncommon after the fertilization of an egg."

The room began to spin, faster, faster. Madge gripped the edge of the examination table for support. There had been a mistake, her mistake in believing that this nightmare would ever end.

AN: And so the sequel begins...You probably saw the whole pregnancy thing coming. Buckle your seatbelts, dear readers, because this is gonna be a hell of a ride :)