Chapter 1: Crimes
Chapter Text
Madge didn’t know where she was, but it was dark. Dark enough that she couldn’t see her hands in front of her face, or see if the place she was in had walls, or simply went on forever.
Given what she last remembered- screaming, a crash and then nothing but heat- she thought it might be the latter.
The Afterlife didn’t need walls after all.
She hoped this wasn’t it- not forever. She wanted to find her parents, meet her Aunt Maysilee-
No. That wasn’t what she wanted. It was what she wanted from the Afterlife, if she wasn’t granted oblivion. But what she wanted was beyond her reach now.
She wanted everything they’d taken from her. The sunroom where her piano was kept, afternoon’s spent making melodies to songs Katniss had learned from her father. The library, where her father read grim tales and legends that were almost lost because they were never thought of at all. Her mother’s bedroom, her sickroom in soothing cream and lavender with morphling bottles in a box on the sill.
The woods where she’d been able to think she had friends. The songbird with Aunt Maysilee’s pin, quiet and strong like an oak tree, but so brittle in ways she didn’t seem to know. The artist with the sharp mind and strongest heart she’d ever seen, caring even when it hurt. The hunter forced to be a miner, burning so fiercely in his desperation and hatred and even his love. Even their trainer, who couldn’t look her in the eyes for fear of seeing her aunt, but tried to anyway.
The Capitol had stolen them. Stolen her. She wanted them back but…
“Not as much as you want revenge.” A voice crooned, almost in the back of her mind. “Not as much as you want to watch them bleed and burn, hurt them the way they’ve hurt everyone else.”
Madge looked around wildly, but there was only black.
The voice continued. “All those years of keeping your head down, smiling when spoken to, and staying out of the way. They didn’t stamp out your fire, only fed the flames. You hate them, the painted and decorated men and women who smile as your people die. Who laugh at the slaughter of children, and think they bestow an honour when they call out the names. You hate beautifully, Madge Undersee.”
“It seethes inside of you, but does not devour you. Their words are sparks in the wind, and your obedience ash in your mouth- but between that is the fire. Kept out of sight, never allowed to rage for fear it would consume all that you loved- burning steadily, glowing embers clinging to life for the chance to incinerate all that you despise.”
“That which you loved is gone. There is no reason to hold back any longer. Seek that which you hate, the justice that no one will grant your family- and let the fire rage. Let the fury burn.”
The darkness changed. Madge drew a breath of air and coughed on old smoke. Her eyes opened to a night time sky- and the ruins of her district. There was no sound except the wind and crumbling building.
Madge stood up- far too easily, she’d never been able to move that way even before the bombs had fallen. She ignored it, stalking towards the nearest pile of rubble- her home. The bodies had been removed- she’d woken up lying next to the half destroyed half rotten corpses, as if still one of them. Mother, Father, Mrs Oberst and Col all lined in a row.
She didn’t know what she hoped to find in the rubble until she found it. A simple tin box- dented but not destroyed- and inside were her treasures. A book of music, all her favourite songs noted down in her own hand, and all of the Donner family compositions. A piece of jet her father had bought illegally, paying a coal miner to smuggle it out. Before she’d given it to Katniss, the Mockinjay pin had stayed in this box too.
The last item in the box was the most important at the moment. It had been a birthday present from Haymitch Abernathy when she’d turned ten. Her last year of freedom before she could be reaped.
It was a simple compact, with two mirrors inside. She opened it- and stared.
Her face was covered in grey and black ash, the ashes of her life and her grave. The black spread out around her eyes, like feathers. Like wings. Her hair was the same pale gold it had always been, but wild and streaked with the same ash. Her eyes were fever bright against the grey.
In the reflection, she saw black wings against the sky and was therefore unsurprised to feel the weight upon her shoulder.
She turned to face the bird- black feathers, black beak, black eyes. A crow.
“Hello Crow.” She said, feeling a dark smile play on her lips. “Do you want to see it burn too?”
The crow cawed in agreement. Her smile grew and she stood, closing the compact and putting it back in the box.
“We’d better get going if they’re going to pay for their crimes.” Madge thought to herself, placing the box where her body should be. Imaged flashed through her mind. “All of them. Every single bomber and everyone who passed on the order. Including Snow.”
Chapter Text
No one had it easy in the aftermath of the bombings, not even their only female Victor Katniss. So no one even made a note of Gale Hawthorne’s restless sleep, deep in the ground that was District Thirteen.
His siblings assumed he dreamt of The Girl on Fire and her many televised scrapes with death. His mother assumed he was unnerved by their own narrow escape from their home- less than a thousand people had escaped the district that was now the tombs of over seven thousand more. He wouldn't be the only one struggling with that knowledge.
They were both wrong- but each opinion held a kernel of truth. It was dreams that disturbed his sleep, when worry didn’t keep him from it. And it was related to someone who didn’t escape the Capitol’s wrath.
The girl he dreamt of was even on fire. But she was peaches-and-cream where Katniss was olive toned, and her hair was a straight ash blond instead of sooty black curls.
In his dreams, Madge always wore her reaping dress. Sometimes she was in the sunroom he’d only been in once during the 74th Hunger Games, before Katniss and Peeta became two of the final eight. Those nights she’d sit in front of the piano, hands resting on the keys as if thinking about playing, her head bowed as she waited.
Sometimes she was sitting on her porch steps, knees hugged to her chest in a way she’d never have done in life. There were times she was surrounded by drab grey figures in their old school, and times when she lay down in the forest clearing they’d spent so much time, just looking at the targets.
It always ended in fire.
Tonight was a sunroom night- except Madge was playing this time. Even aware on some level that this was just another dream, another night that would end with Madge Undersee burning away in front of him, he listened. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
“Katniss taught me this one.” She spoke, her head bowed to the keys. “Do you know it?”
“No.” He said, unthinkingly. There was no point in elaborating to a dream, so he didn’t mention the sense that the words were on the tip of his tongue, if only he knew where to start.
Madge continued playing. “You’ll have to ask her for the words then. I wrote them in the book, but I can’t remember them.”
“The book?” He repeated, taking a step forward. Madge and her piano were no closer for it.
“Where my grave was.” The beautiful dead girl answered, not even turning her head as her fingers moved across the keys. “I hope someone finds it. It’s all that’s left of the Donners now.”
“There's still the Mockinjay Pin.” Gale rebutted, taking another step forward. Once again, there was no effect.
“No. The Mockinjay belongs to Katniss.” Madge stated firmly, the melody under her hands beginning to repeat itself. “Symbol of rebellion and songbird both.”
Gale kept walking forward, but he never moved closer. Madge fell silent, except for that hauntingly familiar melody.
This time when the song ran its course, she shut the lid of the piano with a sense of finality. “There won’t be any songs for me now.” She said, not quite sadly. It wasn’t resigned either, but it wasn’t happy.
“What, no piano’s where you are?” Gale asked, barely paying attention to the familiar movements of his legs.
“I’m sure I could find one, somewhere.” Madge assured him, standing from her piano stool easily. “But that’s not what I’m here for.”
She turned to face him and he froze in shock. Her face was coated so thickly in grey ash that he couldn’t see her skin underneath it, and the area surrounding her closed eyes was a thick black in the shape of outstretched wings.
“Then,” Gale began, swallowing nervously. “Then what are you here for?”
The smile on her lips should have been bittersweet, but the dust turned it into something sharp and terrifying.
“Tonight, I’m here to warn you.” Her eyes opened a crack.
He was still frozen where he stood, so very far from the girl in the pretty dress with the ash-covered face.
“You always burned so fiercely Gale Hawthorne.” The girl mused (not Madge, not Madge Undersee who occasionally overpaid for strawberries and stared him down coolly, her every soft-spoken word spent more carefully than coin). “But you don’t know how to use it. You survive on hate for the people who’ve hurt you and love for those who depend on you and passion for the cause you’ve found. What are you going to do when this is over, and you’re left standing in the burned out ruin of your life? When the people you hate are beyond your reach, your family no longer need you to put food on the table, and the rebellion becomes something to read in history books?”
He stares at her blankly, not sure what he can say or even where to start with it.
She hangs her head. “I was afraid of that. Be careful Gale Hawthorne, only one of us need burn.” Her eyes snap open and Gale recoils- her eyes now fiery in every sense of the word. “I would hate for you to follow this path after me.”
He opens his mouth to scream in horror or denial as the room catches fire, the flames racing across every surface- the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the windows- until there’s nothing but the inferno, and the girl is only a black silhouette in the flickering light, a girl then a bird and then gone.
He wakes up screaming.
Notes:
I had Adriana Figueroa's Hanging Tree on repeat while writing this- frantically trying to get it written and posted before it was officially March and too late. I'm sure it was still March somewhere in the world- I was only ten minutes late!
Chapter Text
A whirl of dramatic white and black should have been out of place on the kaleidoscopic Capitol Streets- but the black make up spread thickly around her eyes and the feathers in her hair kept her from being anything other than a daring fashion fad, shunning the colours that others favoured. The girl was young, probably experimenting with monochrome. It wasn’t uncommon. No one paid any attention beyond the first glance.
The girl stepped into the store with a slight spring in her step, as if she’d been looking forward to this all day. As if she had every right to be there.
Thankfully, it was empty. She stepped up to the cashier with ease, drawing her Identity Card to pay for her purchase.
“Strawberry bread.” She smiled. “Two slices.”
Bread acquired, she left the shop with a whish of her skirts. No one looked at her twice, and thus no one noticed when she abruptly vanished into the shadows.
“Did you see enough?” She enquired pleasantly when she reappeared in the forests, crumbling one piece of bread in her hand. She held it up to the Crow that landed on her shoulder.
The Crow, who she’d taken to calling Grip, cawed in affirmation, before helping itself to the bread. The girl who had once been Madge Undersee frowned at her own piece. She’d only had strawberry bread once, for her fifteenth birthday. Her father had taken the strawberries bought from Katniss and Gale, given them to the Mellarks and told them what they wanted. Peeta had delivered it personally, a small smile on his face as he’d wished her a happy birthday.
It had been sweet, but it had been bread, albeit bread with chunks of strawberry in it. Nothing like this strange Capitol creation- was there anything they wouldn’t alter? It was definitely some sort of baked item, although more like cake than any loaf of bread she’d ever seen. It was a soft pink all the way though.
Taking a bite, she scowled. The bakers in the Capitol were one of the few things she could say with certainty were inferior. Doing her best to ignore it, she ran over the information Grip had given her.
“We’ll take care of them tonight.” She told Grip, who just cocked his head at her. “And then we find the next one on the list. We’d best wait until late though, we don’t need to kill the children.”
It was good fortune to have two of her enemies in the same house, married even. She had expected she’d have to go through the list one by one, hopefully before the Rebellion killed off too many of them.
Thirteen down, every man and woman who had dropped the bombs were dead. Of those who had passed on the orders, there were only ten more to go. And then Snow.
Notes:
Strawberry bread. No Gadge, once again. I officially fail at Gadge Month. Grip is named for the Raven of London Tower- at one point, according to wiki, there were only two left after WWII- a mated pair. One flew away- and the last Raven, Grip was left alone and heartbroken.
Given that legend says that there must be 6 Ravens in the Tower or the Kingdom will fall, this was bad.
And really really symbolic for this fic, no? But the real reason I picked the name was for the idea of the crow 'gripping' Madge's shoulder. Seemed logical.
Chapter 4: Promise
Summary:
A bit late for April, but it's here.
Chapter Text
Promise
Sometimes, Madge catches glimpses her reflection. In the glass panes of the city and the shiny metal that is as common as the concrete under her feet. In the mirrors of the homes of the murderers she’s hunting.
It’s not something she’s spent much time on, except to check that she passes muster as a Capitol Girl. That there’s no sign of blood or ashes on her face.
It’s as she’s waiting for the last bomber, settled into a hotel room that is marked as empty for the night, that she finds the time to look, really look at herself.
Her face is bare, and she studies her features, looking for some sign of change. She still looks like her mother- a washed out golden girl, frail and uninteresting. A true Townie. There’s something of her father in the shape of her eyes, and in the curve of her mouth- dozens of tiny little pieces that make her look like her mother, instead of her mother born again.
There should be a sign somehow. Of her death, of the things she’s done and the total lack of regret for those things- but all she can see is herself. Good old Madge Undersee, same as always.
Grip flies to her shoulder, and Madge reaches up to pet the raven. She keeps watching her reflection, even as the ashes coat her skin.
“Hey there Grip.” Madge quirks a smile. “Don’t suppose you could do me a favour next time you fly between?”
The raven- the crow, the pyschopomp, her guide in this life and to the next- tilts his head. Considering, watching, waiting.
She wets her lips, out of memory for the nerves she should feel. “Tell them I only have a few more to go. That I’ll be there soon. I promise.”
Grip keeps watching and waiting- even as the target finally arrives in the secure hotel room next door, to wait in protective custody for her. Mells Redyna thinks that she is waiting for the peacekeepers to catch the killer- the murderer of all those poor men and women who were just following orders and doing their jobs when they lay waste to District Twelve.
Mells Redyna is a fool- but a sharp one. She’s been the hardest to find of the grunts, not solely due to the Peacekeepers either. She’d been the one to realise what the ‘victims’ had in common. Self-preservation is truly a wondrous thing- but Madge is dead. She doesn’t need to avoid the bullets, she just needs to get passed the gunmen to the woman they’re guarding.
After Mells is dead, and her guards with her, Grip lets out a caw and nods decisively. He’s agreed to her request- he’ll pass on the message when he gets a chance. Madge smiles brightly at him, even as they make their escape and consider their next target.
There’s not many left now.
Lady_Boldly on Chapter 1 Fri 10 Jun 2016 10:44AM UTC
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wildfleurs on Chapter 4 Tue 27 Dec 2016 11:48AM UTC
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