Challenge: Kids
Title: Never in your favor
Author: godsdaisiechain
Fandom: Hunger Games
Type: Fic
Characters/Pairing: Katniss Everdeen; Madge; Maysilee Donner; Haymitch Abernathy; Peeta Mellark; Rue; Primrose Everdeen
Word Count: ~400
Rating: PG
Summary:  Katniss and Madge after the 74^th games and before the quarter quell is announced.  Five questions.  Five answers.


Question 1 (Madge)
Katniss sat across from Madge, nibbling cookies Peeta had baked that afternoon. “I know I shouldn’t ask,” said Madge haltingly. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but maybe you do. How bad was it?”

Katniss shuddered.  Then she fingered her pin, reminding herself that it had once belonged to Madge’s aunt, a young woman killed in the arena.  She did not know yet that the young woman who died in Haymitch’s arms, just before everyone else he loved was killed. Madge had never told her the history of the pin, never mentioned it. This question was a gift, like the pin.

Katniss wondered why her mind drifted to Haymitch again, to his family. Stolen from him?  Just as Madge’s aunt had been stolen.  Killed.  Murdered. “About as bad as this,” she said grimly. Just as I have been murdered and forced to live through it. Just as my family might be murdered.  Or Gayle, who everyone knows is my family, too, even if he is not my cousin.

Question 2 (Madge)
Madge’s eyes grew wide. “But it’s over now, isn’t it?”  She so desperately wanted this to be true that Katniss was tempted to lie.  But that was what they wanted.  The Capitol. The Gamemakers.  So she told the truth.

Tears welled up in the dark grey seam eyes as Katniss silently shook her head.  “No.  It will never be over.  I understand now why that girl from four went mad that one year.”

For the second time, Madge surprised Katniss.  She nodded.  “I’m sorry. My mother said that, too.  It’s never been over.  She still lives in the arena.  Hoping to get her sister back.  I thought maybe it would be different for you. You are so strong and brave.”  She had no way of knowing that Prim had said the precise words to Katniss on the day of the reaping.

Question 3 (Katniss)
Katniss shook her head again, the cookie tasting like sawdust in her mouth. “Does the morphling help?”  Would it drown her pain?
Madge snorted.  “Nothing helps.  It just gives her something to do.  I had just hoped…”  Neither of them said any more.  It wasn’t much use to speak of such things.

Question 4 (Katniss)
The subject had gotten too uncomfortable to continue. Katniss rose and shook herself, wondering how much Madge had learned over the years, how much she was hiding to protect people. “I need to get some bandages for my mother.  Would you like to come?”

Madge shook her head.  “It makes my mother nervous when I am away from home too long.  She had such a bad night.  I’d better stay with her.”

Question 5 (Unspoken)
Two girls, seventeen years old, looked at each other.  A question hovered between them and their eyes answered each other silently, fuelled with a bitter knowledge.

That night Katniss dreamed of Rue in the arena and she wept because the little girl was free, but her own sister, Prim would be scarred forever.  In the mayor’s house, Madge sat by her mother’s bedside until the early hours of dawn, listening to the broken weeping and realizing that perhaps her aunt Maysilee had been the lucky one after all.