Title: Behind the School

Summary: Missing moment fic set on Reaping Day in Catching Fire, starting with Katniss and Peeta's family and friends waiting to say good-bye to them in the Justice Building. Gale/Madge.

Rating/Warnings: Teen. Some swearing.

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

Author's Note: Continuation of "Happy Birthday, Katniss." See that story's Author's Note for more background. And actually, that story was originally a flashback to this one, but it grew so I decided to split them into two separate fics.

Everyone else looked as queasy as Madge felt. They were all waiting in the Justice Building for the Peacekeepers to escort Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch inside for their good-byes after the least suspenseful reaping in District 12 history. Madge also considered it the most horrible reaping she could remember. Sending victors—her friends—back into the arena was a new low, even for the Capitol.

Madge shifted in her uncomfortable plastic chair and watched the rest of Katniss and Peeta's family and friends, everyone suffering privately and individually. Nobody spoke. Aside from the muted sound of Gale's pacing, the room was as eerily quiet as the town square had been during the reaping; the district's citizens had conveyed their disapproval of the entire spectacle with their silence. Madge felt her chest clench at the sight of Katniss's mother and sister huddled together on the edge of a bench across the room. Next to them sat the rest of Gale's family, lined up in apparent birth order except for the little girl, who was on their mother's lap.

Gale's pacing circuit brought him in front of Madge again. He glanced at her for the briefest of seconds, but it was still enough to spur the familiar fluttering in her chest whenever his eyes met hers. She quickly redirected her gaze to her lap.

"Hey. Madge."

Madge looked in the direction of the speaker. Peeta's middle brother Emery glared at her from across the room where he sat with his parents and other brother. His blond hair stood in uneven spikes, the product of his nervous habit of running his hands over his head when stressed. She hated that she remembered these details about him.

"Where are they?" he asked.

Madge fought the urge to make a rude comment. She didn't have a telepathic link into her father's brain. She had been marched into the waiting room at gunpoint by the Peacekeepers just like everyone else and Emery knew that perfectly well.

Ever proper, she limited her response to a terse "I don't know."

"They should be here by now," he said.

She didn't appreciate the implied accusation in his tone. "The Peacekeepers told us they would be brought in through the side door in the secured zone," she reminded him.

Emery watched her expectantly.

"The secured zone is secured. I can't get in." Not unless she wanted to get shot or thrown in the district jail. These new Peacekeepers didn't know her from Delly Cartwright. All she got for being the mayor's daughter lately was people like Emery wrongly assuming she knew more than she did.

"You could do something," he muttered with a glare.

"Back off," Gale snapped. He paused his pacing to glare at Emery, who returned the expression for a tense moment before slouching against his bench. Gale continued to stare him down and then resumed his pacing without, Madge noticed, so much as a glance at her. Biting Emery's head off probably had more to do with Gale's dislike of everything Mellark than any interest in defending her.

Mrs. Hawthorne smiled weakly in Madge's direction and then turned toward Katniss' mother and Peeta's parents. "I'm sure they'll be along any second now. Probably taking more of those publicity shots."

Peeta's father nodded stoically and turned to look out the window. Katniss's mother didn't shift her blank gaze from the door, but did hug Prim again.

Madge wished there was something she could do other than just sit in the stupid waiting room. Three Peacekeepers guarded the waiting area and she had no idea where her father was. He'd been swept up in a swarm of Capitol people as soon as the reaping had concluded. Madge leaned forward in her chair to rest her head on her hands and blinked back tears. Emery's questions left her feeling like it was her fault Katniss and Peeta were delayed. He'd robbed her of the right to feel as frustrated as everyone else.

Distantly she heard Peeta's friends quietly confer with his family about who would go into Peeta's good-bye room first. They decided it would be wisest to let his parents and brothers go first, and then friends. Nobody said it aloud, but Madge knew why: if the Capitol was sick enough to force victors back into the arena, it could just as easily cut off their good-bye time. Like last year, when Gale's time with Katniss had been cut short and Peacekeepers had dragged him from the room. Madge remembered enduring renewed ferocity in his glaring afterward, his attempt to be sure she knew he regretted letting her go ahead of him.

The door to the room clicked and swung open. In unison, everyone turned to watch the victors enter but all they got was Mayor Undersee. Madge could tell from his clenched jaw that he had bad news.

"I'm sorry." He tugged nervously on his cufflinks. "They're on the train already. Change in procedure this year. Security concerns. Apparently."

"We don't get to say good-bye?" Prim asked. Her voice wavered and she sounded even younger than she looked.

Mayor Undersee shook his head. "I'm sorry," he repeated uselessly.

"What security concerns?" Mrs. Mellark demanded.

Mayor Undersee dutifully recited whatever the Capitol liaisons had probably barely even bothered to tell him, while Madge nurtured her internal flame of anger at the Capitol. On top of everything else, they put her father in this position time and again—taking the blame for decisions he had nothing to do with. It seemed to be his job description.

While her father spoke, Gale walked toward the window and pressed his hands on the glass pane as though it was a prison wall. "Train's gone," he interrupted. Over his shoulder Madge could see the cloud of dark smoke already moving westward, away from District 12. The conductors hadn't even used the train's whistle.

Prim lost it, her sobs muffled only by the fact that her face was buried in her mother's chest. Madge felt tears prick her own eyes as she watched Prim cry, and blinked quickly. She didn't feel as entitled to sorrow as Katniss's mother and sister. After a few seconds, Gale's mother moved to sit next to Mrs. Everdeen to provide whatever comfort she could, but then Posy started to cry as well. Madge doubted the little girl even understood the situation and was probably just responding to sorrow choking the room.

Peeta's friends clustered briefly and Madge overheard them mention going over to one of their houses. Not one of them even looked in her direction. She hated that she still noticed and got bothered by these types of oversights, especially when there were so many other, more serious wrongs than Madge Undersee once again being ignored and excluded by her classmates. The choking feeling clenched her throat again as she remembered how Katniss was always so above all this, sitting blithely at their lunch table without paying the slightest attention to the shifting loyalties of the cliques and alliances of their classmates.

Her father stood over her chair and placed his hand on her shoulder. "You need anything, Button?"

She shook her head and focused on a piece of lint on the carpet. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Peeta's family following his friends out the door.

Madge's father leaned over so she had to look at him. "I need to take care of some things here. Mom's sleeping but I'll meet you both for dinner later."

In other words, Madge was on her own. Again. She didn't respond to her father and instead watched Gale's family leave with Katniss's mother and sister. It looked like their whole extended "family" was going to be together. Gale's youngest brother lingered to study Madge and her father, so Gale tugged gently on the boy's sleeve. Gale glanced at Madge for a microsecond before herding his brother out of the room.

After they left, only Madge and her father remained. She crossed her arms and focused all her energy on not crying. Her tears always flustered him and she didn't want him to feel even worse about today than he already did.

"Dad?" She tried to keep her voice steady. "Can I wait in your office with you?"

He blinked in surprise. Madge hadn't wanted to spend time in his office since she was little, when she would put her coloring books in his old briefcase and walk to work with him on days when her mother was "sleeping." She could stretch out on the couch in his office and color quietly for hours. But there was no way she was going home today. Not until she could be sure that Capitol creep was gone.

Her father nodded slowly and then put his arm around her as they walked down the hallway to his office.

#

Madge waited in the alley until the Peacekeepers marched past on their patrol, and then made her move. She walked purposefully through the schoolyard gate toward the storage building behind the main classroom building. Without looking behind her—checking for witnesses would make her look guilty and she intended to use the "I'm not doing anything wrong!" excuse if she needed it—she quickly approached the door, found the right key, and let herself in.

It had been easy to "borrow" the keys. Her father's assistant kept them in the top drawer of his desk, and since it was a district holiday nobody would notice the missing key chain before she returned it. After her father had been sucked into a long videoconference with the Capitol and told her to go back home again, Madge really had no choice other than to take the keys.

Inside the building, she tripped over a rolled up rug and fell to the floor. A small explosion of dust particles rose into the dark air, illuminated briefly when they crossed into the shaft of pale light coming from the lone window. The storage building smelled as dank as she remembered from the other times she'd used it as a retreat. Her family's housekeeper would have some choice words if she could see the way the school officials "stored" things during the summer. But the disorganization was fine with Madge—it made it easier for her to stow her own supplies.

Weaving through broken desks and chairs, outdated textbooks, and deflated sports balls, Madge made her way to the back of the building. As her eyes adjusted to the low light, she located the dilapidated shelves where she usually left her playing cards. Mindless distraction was exactly what she needed today.

As she inched back toward the light at the front of the building, the sound of the knob twisting on the door made her freeze. Had she locked it behind her? No! She ducked behind the nearest old desk, heart pounding. I was on an errand for my father, she mentally rehearsed. Then why was she hiding on the floor? Drat. I was on an errand for my father and I tripped on all this clutter, she revised. Totally stupid. How about: I fell asleep. Even worse. Who would sleep in this dingy, dirty place?

The door creaked open. Madge held her breath in an attempt to be as silent as possible.

"Madge?"

Someone had seen her! But... she recognized the voice. Her heart started beating even faster, which she wouldn't have guessed was possible.

"Madge. I saw you come in here."

Now she was going to seem cowardly and weird. He knew she was hiding. She was trapped, though, and wasn't that his specialty? Trapping?

Madge slowly rose to her feet, trying to brush the gray mixture of coal dust, normal dust, and cobwebs off her formerly white dress. The outline of Gale Hawthorne stood in front of the door, backlit by the direct sunlight.

"Shut the door before someone notices it's open," she scolded.

He turned and shoved the door closed, returning the lighting level to the same grayness before he'd arrived. He still wore his formal Reaping Day clothes, though the shirt had become wrinkled and untucked. And even in the low light, the pain in his eyes shone through. The steely pacer she'd watched in the Justice Building, storing up his strength for Katniss's sake, now looked deflated and spent.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. "What are you doing in here?"

Madge wondered if there was a way to explain it that wouldn't sound strange. Probably not. "I didn't want to be at home."

"This place is usually locked."

She held up the keys.

Through the dimness she could see Gale's suspicion. "Why does the mayor's daughter get to have keys to the school's old storage building?"

"She doesn't." Madge thought she saw a flicker of grudging admiration cross Gale's face. Before he could confirm that she stole the key, she asked, "Did you follow me?"

"No." He sounded almost offended. "I saw you when I was walking home from Katniss's house and thought you might have more news."

Madge shook her head sadly. "I don't know anything else. My father told us everything he knew."

Gale peered at his feet for a few seconds, and then looked around the room. Madge didn't say anything else, waiting for him to leave. By mutual unspoken agreement, they had both made a point to not be alone with one another after... what happened after Katniss's birthday party. Surely Gale would leave any second now. But he just kept inspecting the room, making Madge feel like a hostess being rude to a guest. Which was absurd: she was hiding in a scummy storage building, not serving tea in the formal parlor at home.

"Everywhere I go, people look at me," Gale finally said. "Like she's already—like it's already over."

Madge knew what he was talking about; people looked at her strangely too. As though they wanted to provide condolences to her as Katniss's friend. Gale probably got it worse than Madge did. She took a step forward to hug him—she wanted to scramble across all the broken furniture and junk and make it so he wouldn't feel as much pain—but stopped herself. Besides being forbidden, it wouldn't help. He would still have to wrestle with the likelihood of Katniss dying a gruesome death on television, and with the awareness that he could do nothing to stop it.

Madge could, though, help him avoid the watchful eyes of the rest of the district. If he couldn't retreat into the forest anymore, he probably didn't have many options.

"You can wait here if you want," she offered. He looked up and studied her. She could see the skepticism in his weary face. "We don't have to talk," she said. Then she held up her playing cards. "Do you know how to play Wild Fives?"

Gale didn't move for a few seconds, and then nodded and wove his way through the room's debris until he reached Madge. They sat on one of the rolled-up carpets like it was a fallen log in the forest and Madge dealt the cards. Wild Fives was an easy game that nonetheless required concentration; it worked as an alternative to thinking about Reaping Day or the upcoming Quell. But after only one round of exchanges, Gale abruptly threw his cards on the floor, following them by angrily slumping off the carpet roll.

"I can't believe those fucking sadists wouldn't let us say good-bye. No, I can believe it because they get off on that kind of thing. Sick, twisted..." He trailed off and glared at Madge. "Aren't you going to make excuses? Your dad is basically one of them."

Madge knew he was deliberately picking a fight with her, and would have been surprised only if he hadn't. "He's not one of them," she said calmly, sliding to the floor next to Gale. "Things would be much worse if not for my father. Who do you think used to let the fence be off so much of the time? And let that black market trading shack stay open for so long? Why haven't the Peacekeepers whipped anyone else since March? Because of things my dad does behind the scenes."

She stared back at Gale, vaguely frustrated that he acted like he had more of a right to be angry at the Capitol than she did. "The people in charge of Reaping Day are from the Capitol, not here," she said emphatically. "And you're right: they are sick. Why do you think I'd rather hang around in a dirty old storage area than go home?"

Gale seemed caught off guard. "They're at your house?"

Madge nodded. "We have a lot of extra bedrooms," she said dully. "Though apparently not enough that they won't keep out of mine."

"What? Are you saying they messed with you—"

"No." Madge caught the dangerous tone in Gale's voice and quickly corrected his assumption. "I caught one of them in my bedroom this morning when I wasn't there. I came back upstairs after breakfast, and he was standing in the middle of my room... reading my diary. He didn't even apologize or act like he'd done anything wrong. They think they own us. And they essentially do."

Gale looked nauseous.

Madge felt ill, too, remembering finding that creep in the lime green suit flipping through the private pages of her innermost thoughts. She knew they routinely searched her father's office, but this was the first time she'd seen them in her bedroom... It wasn't hard to guess why.

"I think he was looking for stuff on Katniss," she said. "They know we're friends."

Gale's head shot up again. "What did you write about Katniss?"

"Nothing," Madge assured him. "It was a diary from when I was 12. Before Katniss and I were friends." Lime Green Creep-o probably got an eyeful about her old, embarrassing crush on Emery Mellark, which she didn't feel inclined to mention to Gale. "I haven't been keeping up with a diary lately..." Fortunately, since now it would be filled with gushing and ranting about a certain off-limits Seam boy. "As soon as the guy left, I burned all the rest of my diaries, just in case…"

It had been heart-wrenching. Sure, her childhood thoughts were immature and trivial, but they were a record of her life and to destroy everything... She'd had to use the furnace fire in the basement so nobody would ask what she was doing. At least she'd been able to cry in peace.

Gale slowly breathed out and watched her closely. After a few seconds, he said, "What did your dad do when you told him there was a creeper in your bedroom?"

Madge reached down to pick up the cards she'd set aside. "He wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Why remind him?" She didn't look at Gale again, not interested in witnessing his disapproval. Gale was even more powerless than her father.

Gale seemed to understand that he couldn't do anything to solve Madge's houseguest problem because after a long pause he started to pick up his scattered cards. Madge looked down at her own cards to think about her next move, but then she noticed that Gale had scooted closer to her and was pulling her cards out of her hands. She was so startled at his nearness, she didn't even protest that he'd taken all the cards without asking. All she could think about was that he smelled impossibly good—like she remembered, but with more soap.

Then she realized that Gale hadn't moved away. He was watching her face closely, eyes bouncing back and forth between her eyes and lips. Madge felt her heart start to beat faster, fueling her to reach her hand out to his cheek. Unlike the last time she'd touched his face after the party, his skin was smooth... He must have shaved right before the reaping. Her movement seemed to be the encouragement he was waiting for, because seconds later he leaned in and gently kissed her.

He was softer than she'd expected for such a rough person, but mostly she was surprised that they were really doing this, after having danced around it for so long. Her surprise quickly shifted to relief: they were finally doing this and it felt as good as she had imagined.

Then Gale stopped, and moved his head back a few inches to watch her. He seemed to be gauging her reaction. A series of questions bubbled up into Madge's mind — What was that for? Do you just feel sorry for me? Am I an okay kisser? But she swatted the questions away and tried instead to think about the situation more simply: he was miserable, she was miserable, they each needed a refuge and had nowhere else to go and nothing they could do to solve any of their real problems... Maybe a kiss would temporarily help both of them feel better.

She liked that explanation, actually. And she wouldn't mind feeling better temporarily for a little while longer, so she leaned back toward Gale and looped her hands around his neck. Gale seemed to be thinking similarly—she caught the lightened expression on his face before she closed her eyes and felt his hands travel along her back to anchor her more closely against his chest. It was like that moment after the first spoonful of a bowl of ice cream—when everything is perfect and part of that perfection is the awareness that there's still an entire bowl remaining.

Madge didn't quite know what she was doing but it felt right to follow Gale's lead. He seemed more energetic now; Madge certainly was. She would have thought she was drawing energy from him if it weren't obvious that he was doing the same thing with her, and something about that was thrilling. Maybe she was better at this than she'd expected, if she could keep up with Gale...

She distantly realized Gale was trying to steer them backwards into a reclining posture, and she would have commended his brilliance if she wasn't too busy kissing to talk. But suddenly she felt a sharp object jutting into her back, causing her to yelp.

Wearing an alarmed expression, Gale reached under her and pulled out a broken pencil box. "You all right?"

She nodded and sat upright again, massaging the sore spot while Gale got rid of the offending clutter. Old school supplies had spilled onto the floor from their deteriorating storage box. Madge pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them to watch Gale. He shoved some of the junk aside, pausing as he picked up a half-smashed, small birdcage. Madge recognized it as one of the models the teachers used to show how miners carried canaries as an early warning for bad air. Gale carefully set the cage down and stared at it for so long that Madge felt it pulling him away from her. Had it triggered a memory of his father? A reminder of how different their lives were—miner and mayor's daughter? Something that made him think of Katniss?

Whatever it was, for Madge the silence between them began to fill with all the reasons kissing was a bad idea. By far the biggest one: Katniss would hate them. Whatever confusion Katniss had about her feelings for Peeta and Gale, Madge hadn't missed how territorial Katniss was about Gale's time and attention during those Sunday training sessions. Madge stopped visiting on Sundays so she wouldn't have to endure any more of Katniss's suspicious glances—and because, in Madge's view, Katniss did have reason to be suspicious of Madge. So now it seemed like a betrayal of Katniss to do anything they wouldn't do if their friend were safely still in District 12. There was no way they would have started kissing if Katniss was in the room with them instead of on a train headed toward... horror after horror after horror.

"Gale." He looked up at hearing Madge say his name. She took a deep breath and spoke before she could second-guess herself. "I like you." In case that hadn't been obvious when she'd nearly been in his lap a few minutes ago. "And I feel guilty about it."

He nodded slowly, as though her understood. "I like you, too. And I shouldn't." He looked at her, but didn't smile. It was a confession, not a proclamation. "I can't do anything for her, haven't been able to all year... But you're here and you were upset so I thought..." He leaned back against the rolled up carpet with a resigned sigh. "Never mind."

So he thought he could help her feel better; it was something actually within his ability to influence. And it had worked—she still felt the rush of excitement to have finally given in to whatever force kept pulling them together. He seemed to have liked it, too, judging by his reaction. But was it worth it? A few minutes of making out chased by hours and days of guilt?

"Is this one more thing we're going to feel bad about?" Madge asked quietly.

"I can't." Gale shook his head resolutely. "I have no space left to feel worse. I can't take any more or I'll..." He couldn't finish his thought, but when he looked up Madge saw how frayed he was. Probably not sleeping much. And if he was anything like her, constantly fighting images of the worst moments from all the Hunger Games they'd ever been forced to watch, unable to stop picturing Katniss and Peeta in similar situations.

"I should go," Gale said after a few moments. He shifted to push himself to his feet, but Madge reached over and touched his arm.

"Stay." She felt the buzz of being near him again and quickly retracted her hand. "You're the only person I want to be around right now, and I'll feel even worse than I did before if you leave." The idea of being alone again made her ache, especially after just having felt so connected to him. She grabbed the deck of cards and started dealing a new hand before he could refuse. "We both need a break from... everything out there. So let's stay here. We can play cards and... not do anything we might feel bad about later."

She paused in her dealing to glance up and see what Gale thought, hoping he understood. This newest difficulty—liking one another but feeling too torn to act on it—was minor compared to everything else, but it also seemed less daunting to Madge as long as Gale, the only other person with the exact same problem, was sharing it. That had to count for something, and what else did either of them have to put in the slightly-less-bad-column lately?

Gale searched her face for a moment and then reached for the small pile of cards in front of him. With a half-smile in her direction, he nodded.

"Deal."

A/N 2: Thanks for reading. Please leave a review and let me know what you thought. I love the Gadge pairing for so many reasons, but one of which is the complication here - how can they consider themselves good friends of Katniss while liking one another? It would of course be cleaner if Katniss/Gale were resolved, but that messiness affects a lot of other things.

I do have an outline for how I'd continue this story—an AU version of Mockingjay set in District 13 where Madge and her parents survive—but my fanfic time is really limited these days so I don't know if I'll be able to follow through. I may try to write it during November for NaNoWriMo if I can swing it. Let me know if there's interest.

Title inspiration for this story comes from Gale's answer in Mockingjay when Katniss asked him who else he kissed and where:

"Too many to remember. Behind the school, on the slag heap, you name it."

Of course, being Gadge-focused, I had to insert Madge into his kissing history. She'd probably convince herself that "behind the school" is classier than the slag heap, but I don't know about that. I think she'd be better off doing an actual comparison before deciding. It's best to be thorough. ;)