Chapter Text
Katniss couldn’t fight the tears that pricked her eyes when Madge walked into her hospital room. She wanted to smile, but she was pretty sure her face just sank into relief.
Madge carried the same sad, distant expression she usually did as she sat down onto Katniss’ bed and took her hand.
“You survived,” Katniss croaked out, and Madge stroked her palm.
“So did you,” she said, voice quiet.
“I shouldn’t have,” Katniss said, and the tears came back as she remembered Peeta, Johanna, everyone who didn’t make it out of 12. “I shouldn’t be here. I should have died in that arena. I should have died in the first one.”
Madge shook her head. Her hand was now clenching Katniss’ is. “Don’t say that. I–” Her voice cut off, and she looked away. “I only have you now. You’re the only person I have from 12.”
“Your family?”
Madge sucked in a breath, still looking at the wall. “I watched the Quell at home. My dad was at a meeting. When the screen went black, I was confused, so I went to find my dad to ask if he knew what happened. On my way down the street I bumped into a kid from school, and he said that people were trying to make a run for it, because the Peacekeepers were fighting. I told him I wanted to go back for my mom, and maybe my dad, but he kept pulling me, so I just went with him, and we ended up running. My family never caught up.” She shrugged, looking back at Katniss. “They never showed up, so I have to assume…”
Katniss chewed on her lip, trying to think of something, anything to say. She thought of Madge’s mother, frail and a bit broken, her father, who also smiled warmly at Katniss and Gale.
She was surprised to realize she’d miss them. She thought she couldn’t miss anyone more, after her father, and Rue, and Mags, and now Peeta, but she would miss the man who bought her strawberries, the woman who knew her mother, even if she didn’t know that until recently.
“I’m sorry,” Katniss said. She didn’t know what else to say. She knew it really wasn’t enough, and that Madge probably had heard it from hundreds of lips already, but she had to say something .
Madge shrugged again. “And I’m sorry about Peeta.”
“You know?”
“News travels fast.”
Katniss sighed. “I guess it does.”
They sat in silence for a long time after that, possibly for hours, until Finnick came into Katniss’ room, agitated, and wringing his hands through the rope. When he saw Madge, his eyes widened and he started to back away, but Katniss beckoned him in.
Madge smiled at Katniss and picked herself off her bed.
“I’ll visit you,” she promised. “Feel better.”
Katniss wasn’t sure if she could, but she nodded anyway. And it was enough for Madge.
Madge made a habit of visiting a few times a week. It was like most of their time together before the Games. A lot of quiet. Madge brought something to knit sometimes, and tried to teach Katniss, but neither of them were very good at it. She once brought a piece of paper and two pencils, but Katniss couldn’t look at the supplies without thinking of Peeta and his sketches, and it was like Madge understood, because after ten minutes she walked out of the room, and came back with the scarf she had been working on.
As Katniss’ condition seemed to improve, it became clear her stay in the hospital was ending. She felt guilty, knowing Finnick would be left alone. They didn’t spend a massive amount of time together, but she knew he found comfort in her being a few rooms away, because she did. They reminded each other that even if they were crazy, they weren’t alone in their insanity.
Madge realized this too, and one day she had a more anxious energy about her as she sewed a light purple sleeve. Katniss waited for her to speak, perfectly content at staring at the ceiling and contemplating reality.
Eventually Madge spoke. “When you’re released, would you live with me?”
Katniss blinked and turned to her. “With you?”
Madge’s fingers twisted the blanket on Katniss’ bed. “Yeah. I have a compartment to myself right now.”
Katniss considered. She always expected to go back to living with her mother and Prim. Prim had begun excitedly talking about all the games they could play together during Reflection. And it would be nice to be in the same space as her, and even her mother, again. A sense of normalcy.
But as she looked at Madge, alone, orphaned, with no friends other than Katniss, she found herself nodding.
“But I have nightmares,” she warned.
Madge shrugged. “After all of this, who doesn’t?”
Katniss woke up, disoriented, until she recognized the throbbing around her neck and remembered. She was in the hospital. Peeta tried to kill her. He’d been hijacked. He hated her.
She was about to fall back asleep, just to avoid whatever twisted reality her world had become, when she sensed another presence in the room. She lifted her neck, despite it aching, and in the place she expected to find Haymitch was Madge.
They stared at each other for a long time, until Madge said, “Looks like you’re still stuck with me as a roommate.”
Katniss couldn’t reply to that, couldn’t even confirm the deep seated desires she had of Peeta’s arms around her waist every night again. And even if she had the words to say it, her throat ached too much to try.
Johanna and Madge got along about as well as Johanna and Katniss did. Maybe a bit better, because Madge was always more patient than Katniss.
Katniss could tell that Johanna didn’t like having a complete stranger near her, though. Katniss told her hundreds of times that Madge was completely harmless and had done nothing but leave Johanna be since she had moved in, but Johanna was still determined to be frustrated by her existence.
In a twisted way, Katniss understood. She didn’t know anything of what Johanna had been through at the Capitol (though that wasn’t her fault, Johanna was particularly tight-lipped about the subject), but Katniss had been in the arena with her, had to have conversations with Snow, and basically lost Peeta to him. Johanna probably saw Madge as getting out of the whole thing easy, with her parents most likely killed on impact from the bombs.
But eventually, as the weeks went on, Johanna adjusted to the extra presence. The three of them didn’t talk much, and it suited all of them just fine, but just having people near themselves was like a safety blanket. The last thing any of them needed was alone time, because at least in Katniss’ experience, that always ended with her locking herself in a closet and spiraling about how when you really thought about it, everything was her fault.
When Johanna and Katniss were at training one day, Johanna spoke up.
“Really, you’re lucky, Katniss.”
Katniss stopped herself from doing pushups to stare at Johanna. Johanna stared back, and shrugged.
“What? At least you have some people left. And Madge isn’t half bad.”
“She’s your friend too, you know,” Katniss said. “I remember what you said in the Quell, about everyone being gone. But you have her.” She hesitated, grimaced, then added, “And me.”
Johanna grinned. “Aw, you love me so much.”
“Sure.” Katniss resumed her pushups, rolling her eyes.
Johanna followed suit, but Katniss could tell she wasn’t done thinking about it, because her eyebrows were furrowed.
“Madge and I aren’t friends,” she said, finally. “All we do is sit in silence.”
“That’s what I thought before she visited me before my first Games,” Katniss said. “But I was wrong.”
When Greasy Sae showed up on the third day with Madge in tow, Katniss practically hissed.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.
Madge helped set the table, not even bothering to look at Katniss.
“Where else was I supposed to go?”
Katniss didn’t reply. Madge kept coming back with Greasy Sae. She found out she was in the front lines of rebuilding 12. Katniss thought about how Gale had run off to 2, after all that talk about Madge being nothing more than a privileged town girl. How ironic, she would think, until pain constricted her chest so hard she had to lock herself in the closet again.
Peeta coming back did wonders for Katniss in many ways. For one, she took a shower. She fed herself, voluntarily.
After a week of his return, when Madge came with Sae to the house for breakfast, she smiled knowingly at Katniss when she saw Peeta at the table.
“Hi, Peeta,” she said.
He looked surprised to see her. “Madge?”
She nodded, then looked at him with thought. “You know, we’re trying to create a community food bank. We could use some bread.”
Peeta’s face grew into the widest smile Katniss had seen in a long, long time, and she sat at her table, wondering if she would ever be able to pay back Madge Undersee.