…

— Interlude Two: A Piano —

When Madge Undersee is six years old her father takes her by the hand. She remembers his hands, later. Warm and large and soft like new bread. He looks at her with gentle eyes, and it makes Madge grin.

He brings her into the formal living room, and Madge feels special. She is not allowed into this room unless the strange, beautiful people from the Capitol are visiting. Mother and father are always tense and distant during the visits, and Madge finds she can't enjoy her best dresses or prettiest shoes with bows when everyone is acting so strangely.

But today her father is smiling and holding her hand softly, like it is precious to him. He leads her to the grand piano, nestled by the large windows. It is sleek and black and daunting. He lifts her up to the bench, and her feet dangle above the floor.

"Alright, Em. It's time you start learning to play music. Would you like that?" He asks her. His voice is kind and his hand on her back is warm. Madge nods eagerly.

He smiles at her, one of their secret smiles, and Madge glows.

"In that case sweet girl, let me tie your hair back. You can't have this golden waterfall blocking your view." He pulls back her hair with his large hands, laughing when the shorter pieces in front just won't stay back. Madge laughs too. She loves when her father laughs.

He teaches her some scales, and Madge tries her best to pay attention. On the third try she repeats the scales perfectly, and her father laughs again, his teeth flashing.

"I have to get back to work, but keep practicing, Em. Nice and loud so your mother can hear you upstairs. " Her father squeezes her shoulder and gets up from the bench. Madge nods eagerly, pushes her hair back, and plays the scales again and again.

Out of the corner of her eye, Madge sees that her father doesn't leave the living room right away. He stands in the corner listening to her and smiling. Madge bangs the keys nice and loud. Maybe her mother is upstairs listening. Maybe she is smiling too.

Madge plays the scales a few more times, and then peeks at her father again. He is whispering with Uncle Haymitch. Madge had not noticed him come in. Her father isn't smiling anymore.

Madge keeps playing. Maybe if she plays loud enough, she thinks, they will notice her and smile.

...

— Five And a Half Years After the War —

Rain always reminds me of Twelve.

Our lives were dictated by its sprinkles and storms. A heavy rain meant full-bodied streams, overflowing with slippery silver-flashing fish. Relentless night rains soaked the dark earth, mushed and loamy, and within a day mushrooms brown and grey and white would push through the soft ground, plump and inviting. A warm spring mist signaled juicy red strawberries in summer, heavy and fragrant on the bush.

The forest was lush in the rain, cool and quiet. The gentle pat of the drops were fat on flat leaves. The air smelled earthy and alive.

Katniss hated the rain. She would blink angrily, drops beading on her lashes, scowling and squinting, trying to aim at squirrels or geese through the grey curtains of drops.

And I would smile secretly, fondly, at the thunderclouds in her gaze.

Rain meant water and food. It meant Posy burrowing tight into my chest at night, clinging to me with her hot breath and sweet, sticky fingers as the rain clattered against the tin roof.

It also meant Ma running in from the back, piles of laundry clutched in her arms, trying to save her day's work from the storms.

Rain meant sopping wet shoes. It meant icy trickles sneaking through every hole in my worn shirt and jacket and winding down my neck. It meant soaked hair and cold toes and our clothes sticking to our bodies as we went home to home, trying to sell whatever we had collected for the day.

It meant laughs and rueful complaints and warming ourselves by the fires at the Hob. It meant warm soup and hot water with mint leaves when there was nothing else to eat.

It meant sneezes and colds and the desperate need to hunt more, sell more, work harder to afford medicines and blankets and bones for broth.

But now mixed in the drops and scowls and cold hands on warm mugs, rain reminds me of Madge Undersee. There are faded memories of squelching up her back stairs, hunched over in the cold, handing her a bag of berries as she handed me coins with a satisfying clink, wet hair plastered to my forehead and blinking through clumped lashes.

And there is a nearer memory, her face drawn and her eyes pained, raindrop shadows flecking her cheeks like globed pearls as she whispered her deepest secrets.

It hardly rains in the New Capitol. When it does, socialites and dilettantes flood the streets, shrieking and soaked, delighted for any excuse to party, to experience something new.

I prefer watching from inside. My home is in one of the tallest buildings in the city, all glassed in. As far from the streets as I can get. Close to the sky.

Up here, I can pretend to be free.

I watch the rain, and it reminds me of home.

Home. The thought stabs me with longing. Love for my family, an ache in my chest. A mixture of happiness and struggle and loss. Something bitter but also sweet.

And as the drops trickle down the windows, an intricate panoplied network, I think of home and the kids and Katniss and now somehow of Madge too. A piece of home that isn't quite home. Something new and bitter, but also sweet.

I remember when the war was first over and people started moving back to Twelve. Everyday we would get news of dead bodies they had found. Old friends from the Seam, merchants from Town. The Mayor and his wife and daughter at home. Each one was like a knife, swift and sharp and surprising.

The news from Twelve arrived slowly, each new death tearing my heart to pieces like it was paper. Madge and her parents—their deaths were no more jarring to me than any other, each one a sudden, painful loss, filed away to be dealt with later.

But then when I found her...I'll never forget how my heart stuttered when I recognized her in that prison. Thin and bruised and terrified, but somehow still Madge.

I do not recognize that girl in Madge anymore —or in Em or Margaret, or whatever name she goes by now. I cannot reconcile the heavy lashes and lazy drawl and perfect hair with the girl I knew back home. And after our last conversation, well I don't try talk to her again. I don't know what I would say.

I don't fight it anymore, though, the urge to check up on her. To make sure she is safe.

I've added her to my list I suppose. Ma and the kids. Katniss, Peeta, and Mrs. E. Annie Odair and little Finn. And now Madge. All those I need to keep safe, though none of them have ever asked.

When it rains, I remember Madge. And then I risk a meeting with one of my spies, cash in a favor I should save for later. And they tell me what Madge is doing and how she is— each time somehow still alive, still singing her throaty songs and injecting her very real drugs and balancing her life on the edge of a knife.

Each time, I feel relief liquid in my gut.

Just one less thing to worry about.

And at odds times, not always when the rain falls, what I feel for Madge rises up unexpectedly, like a patch of thorns in the woods. Thick and tangled and complex.

Impossible to fucking escape.

The war has changed her in ways I did not suspect. But then again, it changed me too. It changed us all.

And sometimes…well sometimes I think I might go back to the bar to see her sing. Imagine I'd maybe buy her a martini and reminisce about Twelve for a few careless minutes. And if she thanks me for saving her from that prison again, maybe this time I imagine I'd say something back.

I'd say something about how I want…I want…

I want to stop thinking about her.

That is what I tell myself as I watch the rain.

...

— Six Years After the War —

There is something wrong with me tonight. I can't seem to wrap up my paperwork. My eyelids feel gritty with fatigue, my gaze constantly drifting to the windows, taking in the night sky. Often I try to imagine I am looking at an inky sky full of stars and sweeping galaxies rather than a blanket of fractured city lights.

The knock comes as a surprise.

I pad to the door, bare feet on the hardwood. I crack the door and see a girl.

She looks…like Madge.

Like Madge from District 12, I mean. No jewels and strappy shoes or perfectly curled hair. She looks natural and so young. She wears a casual white top and denims, no makeup. But it is her lopsided ponytail, a few strands refusing to stay tied back that take me straight back to Twelve. How we would meet at the threshold of her door, her uniform slightly rumpled after a day at school, just like this.

Katniss and I used to stop there at least once a week. It startles me to think we saw each other so often.

She bites her lip, and I realize that I have been standing here like a complete dolt and have not said a word.

Her eyes dart left and right, never quite landing on me. I hate how she does that.

"I brought you a drink," she says suddenly. She thrusts a bottle toward me, her cheeks pinking.

"Huh?" I manage to grunt. It has been almost a year since we last met, and she brought me a drink? She won't meet my eyes so I can't tell if she's joking.

"It's what you used to order, I remember." I almost think she is babbling.

But…she remembers?

I look at the bottle, and it's true. It's the same brown liquor I had ordered all those months ago. Rich and amber and inviting, with the same sprinkle of spice and gold leaf refracting in the light.

"I didn't know what else you might like…and I just thought…Well I didn't have anyone else to share with…and…"

She is babbling. I feel my mouth fall open in shock.

"And…well…it is tradition to exchange gifts. Not that I expect anything…"

Her eyes are fully trained on the floor now, her fingertips white around the neck of the bottle as she clutches it out to me still. There is a blush spreading along her cheeks and down her neck, and something really is wrong with me because I can't make sense of anything she is saying.

"And well…you were the only person I could think of besides Haymitch, and I can't very well buy a drink for Haymitch." She is still going.

"Anyway…" She steels herself and pushes the bottle into my chest. "Happy Harvest Festival."

She jostles the bottle into my chest again, as if she really wants me to take it, her shoulders already half turning away from me and back towards the elevators.

Finally it clicks.

And for the first time in my life, I do something that actually isn't completely idiotic.

"Madge. Do you want to come in?" I push the door open wide.

Her breath hitches.

"No…I couldn't…" I can see the blood in her throat pounding.

"Madge. Come in."

Her eyes shift. She is nervous, and I grin.

"It would be a shame to drink this alone." I try. She is still half turned, but her eyes flit to mine. I smile. "I haven't shared a Harvest Festival drink in years. Come on."

I take the bottle, ice cold and making that lovely clinking sloshing sound, and I step back to let her in.

I'm surprised when she actually follows.

I don't tell her that exchanging gifts for the Harvest Festival was more of a Town tradition, not Seam. The grownups all might split a couple sips of something Sae brewed in her washbasin, and I would always try to get something nice for Ma and the kids if I could. But I know in Town the Harvest Festival was a chance to dust off a bottle of something special and share slow sips on the porch with neighbors.

I know because Townies were always willing to spend more when they were tipsy.

It was a good time of year for business.

But I don't say anything to Madge because she is here, and she doesn't have anyone to share a drink with this year except me. And also, this brown liquor looks delicious.

I pull out two glasses from the bar and push a button for ice. Madge looks around curiously. My place is probably nothing to her, but the size feels egregious to me. Paylor explained something about a perk of the job when she gave me the keys to this penthouse and even hooked me up with a decorator. I didn't know anything about decorating at the time, and I especially didn't trust the blue skinned, blue haired monstrosity of a designer she sent. I just told him to remove all the digital screens. I couldn't breath with all the flashing lights and moving pictures.

He did me one better with warm wood tones and soft leather couches. So different from Madge's place, all cold clean lines and gleaming, priceless art. Even her books were collectibles, with one section of her shelves chained off and secured with a silver padlock.

She examines my walls and counters that are so unlike hers— the table strewn with maps and papers, the walls and counters cluttered with photos of the kids and Ma, Posy's brightly colored art projects and Vick's delicate sketches.

I see Madge stare at a framed picture of Annie Odair and her son before turning to my bookshelves. I cringe, wishing I had some artsy books, something rare or interesting she might like instead of the military history and statesmanship books I pilfered from Snow's collection. She runs her fingers over the books on my shelf, delicate, like she's touching skin. I shiver.

She stares out of the windows, floor-to ceiling like hers. The sizzle and glitter of the city lights are laid out for her like a carpet.

I wonder if she likes it. My place.

I hand her a glass, the ice clicking gently. She smiles at me and thanks me, and we toast to the Harvest Festival.

"You have a fireplace," she says. The column of her neck twists back to me. "I haven't seen one in years."

I pause. Take a sip.

"Yes. It reminds me of home." I hold my voice steady. Now I am the one that cannot meet her eyes. It is silly, I know, but I asked the decorator especially to add a fireplace. They aren't needed in the New Capitol with the heating and cooling automated. But every home in Twelve had a hearth. A place for heating water, cooking food, a place to gather when it was cold outside.

And a place…well a place for Toasting. A place to start a new family. The foundation for a home. Madge is staring at the fireplace. I feel my neck warm.

"Do you ever go back? Home I mean." Madge hasn't noticed my discomfort.

"No." I take another sip. My answer is short. I don't want to talk about going home.

"Really?" Madge is looking at a picture of my family on the mantle. It was a gift they sent for my birthday five years ago. Ma is holding Posy on her lap on the stoop of their new house. Vick is the artistic one, likely behind the camera. And Rory, well Rory wouldn't be caught dead in a photo meant for me.

I swallow and don't answer.

"Not even…not even to see Katniss?" Madge is looking out of the window again. The fireplace, the mantle, the windows. Looking everywhere but me. I lift my glass and am surprised that my drink is finished. Just some sweating ice cubes and gold dust left behind.

"No. I haven't been back to Twelve. I'm getting a refill." I turn and force myself to walk steadily to the bar. I pour myself a top up and am surprised when I see Madge has followed. She hands me her glass silently. Her drink is finished too.

Madge accepts her drink and takes a sip. Katniss liked that about her, I remember. She was always quiet, never pushed or pried. Katniss always hated the other kids in Twelve and their mindless chatter. But Madge's silence has always put me on edge, made me feel uncomfortable and unsure.

And she brought up Katniss. I can't remember the last time someone talked about her with me. The last time I really thought about her.

"It's too painful." The words fall out before I can stop them. I take a drink to cover up my slip.

"Yes I can imagine," Madge answers and turns back towards the windows.

She can imagine? A surprising flash of rage licks through me.

"I don't think you can imagine, Undersee," I growl. I take a vicious satisfaction in using her surname, her father's name. How many times did I rage against old man Undersee in the woods? Until his name became a profanity.

Katniss was my right hand. A lung I needed to breath. No one knows how many times she saved me, how much I depended on her. Not Madge. Not any damn person but Katniss and me. I feel myself shaking, fist clenched around my glass until I feel the sharp edges of crystal digging into my skin, and I'm surprised how hard I have to try to hold it together. Madge is staring at a spot over my right shoulder.

There is something building inside of me. It swells up like rage, but it is not rage. It is something more painful, something sharper.

Madge has no idea what I felt hunting the forest alone, watching Katniss get hurt, watching her fight for her life. How helpless I felt.

I was there for all of it. I had to watch Katniss slowly break apart, watch Snow fracture off a bit of her at a time, pry her apart piece by piece by piece until she was a shell, her heart cracked like an egg and her mind soft and scrambled. Something is snapping inside of me. And Madge's eyes are on that damn spot above my shoulder.

I wonder what is back there that is so fascinating.

The feeling keeps building, higher and higher. It feels like grief or anger.

"You don't know anything about me and Katniss. You have no damn idea— "

Anguish. The feeling crests through me, and I can feel it stab my heart like a knife.

I break away from Madge and turn to the window. The pain squeezes my chest. My breath sounds loud in my ears.

"You still love her." Madge meets my eyes in the reflection of the glass. She says it like it is fact.

"Love her?" My laugh comes out on a jagged puff of air.

Katniss. I had loved her for so many years. My best friend and hunting partner. What did I even imagine would happen with us? We'd marry and have a few kids, teach them to hunt and mine and take tesserae, just like our parents taught us? Teach them that chewing on mint lives staves off hunger and that stewing dog for a few hours makes the meat tender enough to eat. Did I really dream of having a family with her and having them live the same painful, intolerable lives we lived? It was a childish dream, and idiot's dream, what I longed for with Katniss.

And when I needed my friend most, she betrayed me. I should have known she would choose her own survival over mine. I remember getting captured, the Peacekeepers squeezing back my arms, slugging me in the face, the pain and fear sour in my mouth, hot breaths and panic and fucking shoot me Katniss. All she did was stare at me, eyes wide. And I remember thinking—now you love me too much to hurt me? Now, when I need you to be ruthless.

"Madge, I don't love Katniss— I kind of hate her." I take a long pull from my glass. "Damn, did you slip a truth serum in here or something?" I try to lighten the mood.

She ignores my joke. "You hate Katniss?" Her eyes slide towards me.

"There was a moment, Madge, when I needed her. Needed her to... kill me." I hate how my voice chokes. "The deadliest, coldest girl I have ever known, when she needed to be. But when it came to me… when I needed her... " I had been screaming at her, as loud as I fucking could, across that Capitol street. It was the only moment in my life I had wanted to die. It sounds foolish when I say it aloud though. I don't know how to convey the gravity of Katniss's betrayal.

"You hate Katniss because she didn't kill you?" Madge asks, her eyes calculating. "Most would say she did you a favor."

"I was being dragged to a Capitol prison. I think you'd agree that death is preferable." I tip my glass back again.

It is not until I look back at Madge and she is utterly still that I realize I have said something cruel.

"Madge—," I start, feeling myself flush.

"Yes." She says; her voice is hollow. "I would have chosen death."

"I betrayed Katniss too." The words just slip out. "We were shit friends to each other, in the end." A bomb goes off in my mind. I see a flash of Primrose smiling and stop. I won't go there tonight. Not ever again.

I turn to Madge and drain my drink. "Katniss and me. That's just a long line of mistakes and what ifs. There is nothing for me in Twelve." Nothing but regret.

"What about your family?" Madge is there with the bottle. When did that happen? She refills my glass and her glass, and I feel dizzy.

"My family?" I repeat, and my heart clenches.

Madge hums and lays back on the couch. Her eyes are glazed and she is starting to blur around the edges. I stumble to sit on the chair opposite and think maybe I should quit drinking.

"Don't you miss your family?" Her smile unfolds lazy and catlike, relaxed. She is drunk too.

I squeeze my eyes closed, as hard as I can.

"I used to—." I don't know how to say it. I look down, and the hand holding my drink is shaking. "They don't want me back, Madge." I hate how my voice cracks, and I take a drink to cover up that I'm drunk.

Her eyes flick to mine.

"I've tried everything." My voice is shaking too. "I call, write. They answer, talk to me. But never ask me to come. Never visit."

When I was a kid Ma would brush my hair back, her calloused hands scratchy and comforting. She used to smell like laundry soap and flour, and she would wrap me tight in my blanket before I would sleep at night. My first born, she used to say. You'll always be my baby son.

I don't understand. I don't understand what I did to make her leave me.

"I used to let Plutarch dress me up. Put me in propos and on the television, anything to get them to see me, think about me. But they never asked me to come home." There is something hard building at the back of my throat. I swallow it down. "They don't want me back in Twelve. No one does."

I drain the drink. Some of the gritty gold leaf catches in my throat, and I cough wetly. I reach for the bottle, but it is empty.

"Do you hate them too, then? Like Katniss?" Madge sounds hesitant. I am shaking my head. I feel like I've been cut open, and all my insides exposed. Like I have no skin left.

"I love them so much it hurts, Madge."

It does. Like a physical weight on my chest. How much more should I drink to make it go away?

"It must be lonely." Madge is looking at me, and her eyes are sad.

Of all the cold looks and biting comments, all the clever little snipes and half truths and hiding, Madge looking at me, with her eyes sad like that— it is the most pain she has ever inflicted. Piercing through me and finding the truth.

"And your parents?" I don't know why I keep asking her. That bastard Undersee. That's what we would call him in the mines.

Madge looks stricken. And I swear her eyes are wet.

What is wrong with me? Why can't I stop being cruel to her?

She is the only one here after all these years, the only one who has come to see me, and I keep hurting her. It has been six years, and I still only know how to cause pain.

"Shit. Madge— I shouldn't have asked." I try to go to her and stumble hard, my knees hitting the wood floor with a lancing pain.

"Don't. Don't do that." Madge's eyes are closed. Her lashes tremble. That sadness I felt earlier clogging in my throat, I see it in her.

"What?" What did I do now? Everything is spinning.

Madge is taking deep breaths in and out. It is some kind of monumental effort. She swallows. Her lashes stop trembling. She opens her eyes, and they are dry.

"Don't be nice to me." Her voice has iced over.

"How do you that?" I suddenly feel so tired. My head falls back onto the seat of the couch.

"Do what?" Madge blinks at me.

"Turn off like that. Shut down." She can turn off her pain like flipping a switch. I wish I could do that.

I am so tired that I feel heavy, my brain is fuzzy and slow and sloshy.

The pain. How do I hold it back now, with my defenses down? I wish she would tell me.

"You don't want to know." She whispers.

"Tell me anyway," I whisper back. I have never wanted anything so much in my life.

"Close your eyes. Slow your breathing. Concentrate." Madge is murmuring.

My eyes drift closed. I feel exhausted. Maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight.

"I want you to imagine a soldier. The biggest one you can." Madge's words hum through me.

I don't want to think about soldiers or bombs, that's the last thing I want to think about.

Her voice is smoother than the alcohol, and just as drugging. I feel loose and tingly drunk. I can't hold on to her words, I don't want to anymore. I just want to sleep.

I let her voice flow over me, cool like dipping into a stream. And her words slip away like silk through my fingers.

...

— Interlude Two: A Piano Continued —

When Madge Undersee is twelve years old her father slips onto the piano bench where she is playing a delicate, tripping sonata. Her fingers are nimble now, honed by hours of daily practice. Madge loves when her father comes to watch her play, it is so rare anymore. But still, she wants to please him. Hours and days and weeks of practice, so he might be proud of her for one small moment.

"Play something happy, Em." He pauses. "Something loud…so your mother can hear."

Madge stops. She knows her mother has just had her afternoon dose of morphling. She will be insensate for the for the next eight hours, wrapped in a sleepy pile of blankets and torpor. She cannot possibly hear Madge play.

But Madge has not seen her father in several days, he always works so late and is so tired. So Madge smiles at him and picks up somethings bright and brash and cheerful, and she plays it loudly the way he likes.

"Madge," he whispers, so soft she almost thinks it is her imagination. She fumbles, and the notes clink odd and discordant. She feels her father shift on the bench.

"Keep going, darling." His voice is loud again. "Nice and loud now. Don't hesitate."

Madge feels a nervous energy flutter through her and begins to play, fingers hard on the keys, brows furrowed.

"Madge," her father is whispering again. "Keep playing." His voice is breath, light as a feather.

Madge feels dampness on her palms, unsure of what is happening, suddenly afraid.

"I know what you're doing with Haymitch." The words startle her, and she stumbles over the notes. She darts a look to her father, and his face is stone. She takes a hasty breath and keeps playing.

"The Capitol is always watching, always listening." She feels his body heat next to her, his breath warm on her ear. "You can't let them see. Not ever."

Madge can't concentrate. Her hands are moving, but she can't remember the notes. She presses hard on the keys, her fingertips have gone numb. She thought she had been so sneaky, so clever.

"I will teach you how to hide. Just keep playing."

The song is almost over. Should she play it again? Her underarms are damp. She can't seem to breathe in enough air.

"Is that what you do?" She is ashamed how her voice is shaking.

"Yes." The word evaporates like breath on glass.

The piece is finished. Madge wipes her sweaty palms on her legs and begins again.

"Close your eyes. Slow your breathing. Concentrate." Her father is murmuring.

Madge tries to hold her breath, tries to slow down. Fear is squeezing her chest and she can't get enough air.

"I want you to imagine a boulder." He is still whispering. Keep playing, Madge thinks, I must keep playing. "The biggest boulder you can. All its bumps and crevasses, how large and rough it is, how it smells mossy and cool. Fill your mind with this boulder." Madge has never been so scared in her life. She can't focus on the boulder.

"I want you to lift this boulder. Feel its weight in your arms and the sweat on your brow." Madge certainly feels the sweat.

"Think of everything you want to hide, every secret." Madge thinks of pilfered documents and whispered conversations and a wicker basket of lollies.

"Now put the boulder in front of them." There are too many secrets, and Madge can't focus. Her boulder is too small.

"Now imagine cement. Feel its wetness and grittiness. Feel its coolness on your hands, squishing between your fingers. Feel yourself slathering cement on your boulder, stretching to cover all the sides. Let it be the only thing in your mind." Madge is still a few steps behind. She is still trying to gather all her secrets.

"Take another boulder and add it to the first. Focus so hard you cannot think of anything else, just this task. We are going to repeat this over and over until you can build a wall."

She can't do it. She is too scared and the song is almost over and she can't play it again and breathe and close her eyes and imagine a boulder and process the danger and the fear, and she can't. She wants to be sick and she wants to cry and she wants to stop playing.

The tears come and her fingers freeze. She burns with shame.

"Your piano. I want you to practice every day." Her father's voice sounds loud in the silence. Madge turns to look at him, and his eyes are boring in to hers, trying to tell her something. They hold an intensity she has never seen. "Em, you'll never make it if you don't practice every day." He smiles at her then, a fake, half-sort of smile, and leaves her alone.

Madge bows her head and cries.

Then she takes a deep breath. And another one. And then Madge Undersee spends the rest of the afternoon building walls in her mind.

…

Comments and criticism are always appreciated.

-Fly