Katniss Everdeen has a secret. A dirty, malevolent secret born out of vengeances and pain. Gale killed her sister. And, so... Katniss may have done something that she could have one day decided to regret.

It was all too easy, really. When The Capitol fell, a legion of soldiers swept the city for prisoners missed in the original incursion made by Gale and the other Mockingjay soldiers. A week later, Katniss was still in the hospital, a hallucinating mess after losing Prim.

That's when the soldiers brought her in.

Madge Undersee.

No, Katniss had to remind herself as she watched the young blonde's body get tossed like a ragdoll on a cot a few paces away, Madge Hawthorne. That shivering, convulsing mess of a human being is Madge Hawthorne. It's a miracle that Katniss recognized her at all. The near-lifeless girl looks like she's been thrown in a pit of spikes and mud and left their to die. Maybe she was; Katniss wouldn't ever know.

"Nurse," the Mockingjay croaks.

The noise strikes the walls, but the neither the blonde nor the soldiers surrounding her cot give any indication that they're paying attention.

"Nurse," Katniss commands.

This time, a uniformed woman strolls up, intimidation marking her face as she looks at the hero of the revolution. Nurse Ivory, she's called. Her interested eyes are tense as she asks Katniss what she needs.

"What's happening over there?"

Nurse Ivory knows she shouldn't tell the younger woman the truth. The entire thing was meant to be kept hush-hush. But...Katniss lost her sister and has not stopped suffering since. The nurse has watched as people keep secrets from the woman to whom they all owe their allegiance, and she thinks she's helping when she sits on the edge of Katniss' bed and says,

"They found her in the Capitol. Wasn't kept in the prison with the rest of them, but the basement of a private residence near the President's House."

Madge is alive. Alive. Katniss is trying to process through that information, constantly interrupted by flashing images of bomb's and Gale's tortured face.

"How did she escape? From Twelve?" Katniss asks.

Lowering her voice, Nurse Ivory makes herself busy so as not to attract attention. There is something about her voice that says she doesn't quite believe the theory that has been pieced together by her superiors, but she knows she can't question it.

"No one knows. They think she made a sweet deal with The Capitol. Information that could be used against the Rebellion in exchange for her safety. A deal that went South after they got her out."

Katniss feels the sudden need to defend her friend. Even after all that has transpired, she knows that there isn't anything Madge could have sold to the Capitol. Everything she passed along from the Mayor came in code. Madge wouldn't have understood a word of it, even if she managed to figure out that what her father told her to tell Haymitch was code at all.

"Madge didn't know anything about the Rebellion."

The very same girl they are talking about, the girl who rose from the dead, struggles against the arms of her captors who are struggling to brace her body to the bed with rough leather straps.

"Weren't her parents killed for turning against The Capitol?" Nurse Ivory asks.

Neither of them look over toward the other patient.

"Yes."

The woman is attempting to piece together the picture and explain why it is that they assume Madge has the information.

"And wasn't she married to-to-"

That's when she remembers just who it was who put Katniss in the hospital in the first place. Suddenly embarrassed, Ivory blushes and stammers. It takes Katniss a while before she steels herself and finishes the sentence.

"Gale Hawthorne."

There's something about Katniss' voice that signals the end of the conversation.

"Yes, well, she must have known more than she let on."

She begins to walk away, ashamed for having brought up the man who may have killed Katniss' beloved sister, when a hint of panic strikes Katniss as she watches the buckles of Madge's restraints tighten and tighten until they pucker her damaged, dirty skin.

"What are they going to do with her?" Katniss asks.

Ivory doesn't turn back around toward the Mockingjay. She just shrugs and makes a show of pouring more water in the basin atop the bedside table, trying to look as busy as possible.

"Take her in for questioning."

Questioning. Katniss knows what that means. They're going to see how much she told The Capitol.

"Look what they did to her. She couldn't have told them much."

Madge looks worse than Peeta did when he returned, and that's a fact. Katniss has seen more prisoners of war than she can count, but... None like Madge.

"But The Capitol protected her all the same. That makes her our enemy."

They think because she was saved from District Twelve, she's somehow a traitor. It does all seem a little... convenient. Her being taken the day that the bombing happened. But Katniss doesn't believe that Madge helped The Capitol. She hated them too much. And, as much as it sours her stomach, Katniss knows she must ask the inevitable question.

"Has anyone told Gale?"

Gale. The man who may have murdered Prim and who married Madge to save her from a fate worse than death, a fate he wasn't actually ever able to save her from at all.

"She's an enemy of the state, a conspirator of the Capitol. She doesn't get spousal rights."

Katniss ceases fiddling with the edges of her blanket. Her muscles tense as if preparing to be struck.

"I don't understand."

"We're keeping her dead. As far as anyone knows, we never found her."

Katniss watches in silence as the curtains are drawn around Madge's bed moments later. In the hours that follow, Katniss hears many screams. Feminine, agonized screams. But she simply pulls her pillow over her ears and blocks the noise, humming a song she remembers from the Seam as tears trickle down her face, one right after the other.

Katniss sees Gale many times after her release from the Hospital. But not once does she mention Madge. Not once.

There is something interesting about the human heart that Gale has realized over the last few months. It's about the human heart. In his time as a soldier, he's seen plenty of dead bodies. Men, women...children, even... with their insides turned out. So, he's seen more human hearts than any human being would ever have to see. And it's occured to him that the human heart has been wildly misrepresented. When Posy doodles a heart on the homework he checks over for her every afternoon, they look like two little commas, pushed together roughly and haphazardly. It's cute and sweet and Gale now knows after seeing so many human hearts crushed beneath the weight of war and stone and his explosives that the human heart is ugly. It's a slab of meat. Good only when it knows its place and is kept there. And that knowledge puts Gale's pain in perspective. After Prim, after Madge, he only has to remind himself that his heart is little more than a butcher's cut and he can turn himself into stone once more. The heart doesn't mean anything. His pain doesn't mean anything.

And life is like that for a while after the war. Katniss retreats further and further from the truth and Gale lives three stories above where is wife is being held, completely and totally oblivious. But then, the one year anniversary of the rescue of Peeta, Annie, and Joanna rolls around, and with it, a celebration of power. Gale hates this day. It was the first successful incursion into the Capitol and, while the history books will remember it as a great day of Victory for the rebellion, Gale will always consider it to be one of his many failures.

They are all crammed into a vast multi-purpose room in District Thirteen. There is bunting and excess the likes of which this District is unused to. Everything, in general, is done by the book. Everyone gets rationed and accounted for to the slightest fraction of a degree. But today, the celebration is almost Capitolian in manner. It makes Gale's stomach turn when he sees his uniformed reflection in the medals he will be presented with. They are made of gold and bronze and have been embossed with emblems of the new government, but all Gale sees is the people he's killed. So many people. When he stands on the stage, he doesn't smile or even manage to look grateful. He is stone.

He carries Madge's ring in his right pocket. It is the only thing that can keep him balanced with a heart so heavy.

Then as Gale walks back to his seat in the front row facing the stage, Commander Paylor stands, that authoritative air of hers calming the easily excitable crowd. They watch her, enraptured, as one would watch a shooting star or a lunar eclipse. She led an uprising, Gale reminds himself. She knows that this isn't all bunting and cake. And her speech merely confirms that fact.

"My fellow citizens of the Republic of Panem," she begins, taking her time as she pulls her shoulders back, looking as regal as anyone has ever looked, "War is not easy. I don't have to tell you that. You are all here because you are survivors. Because you all have gone through a bloody and terrible conflict."

Gale feels the room shift around him as the Commander looks... Conflicted.

"Today, we celebrate the safe retrieval of some of Panem's most celebrated citizens. Annie Cresta. Peeta Mellark. Johanna Mason."

In succession, their faces flash up on the screens on the walls behind her.

"They were tortured by a corrupt government. We all know that."

"But...Our hands are not clean either. When the Capitol fell, we took some prisoners as well. Prisoners we treated no better than the Capitol treated us. Perhaps even worse, because we know better. We know better than to intentionally break someone."

Music strikes up behind the commander and the audience holds their breath. Something about this scares them. They're all waiting heavily for what comes next in this speech. They know it cannot be good. Gale rolls his eyes at the ridiculous display of contrition. No amount of apologies and no amount of aching regret can save people. He knows that.

And then...

Then, they bring out the prisoners.

No. It...She isn't... They never found her...

Madge. Madge is paraded out with two gentlemen. All three of them are shackled together, but Madge is the bloody centerpiece. Her temple is bleeding and her skin is caked in mud and poorly scabbed over cuts. She's bruised nearly everywhere and Gale can't breathe. He wonders if everyone is seeing the same thing that he is. He can't control his heart rate and his pulse is racing and he wants to know why. Why did they take her away and why did they let him believe she was dead and why would they ever suspect her of treason and why did everyone let him live his life like this when the one person he couldn't fall asleep without dreaming about was in the same district as he is. Her name passes over his lips in a prayed whisper. With great ceremony, Paylor picks up a key and crosses to them.

"So, today, as a sign of progress, as a symbol of healing, I will remove the shackles from these prisoners."

She does so and Madge nearly collapses. The crowd collectively draws in a tight breath followed by harsh silence. The Commander extends a hand to Madge's shaking form, a hand that Madge takes. She allows Paylor to pull her to her feet.

Gale is aware of hardly anything except that Madge is alive. Madge is alive and she is here.

"You are free. Welcome to the Republic of Panem."

Paylor then releases her and points toward the stairs leading to the center aisle of the audience's seats. The two other prisoners, two men Gale does not know, walk wearily behind her. A wave of sympathy rolls over the crowd as Madge falters on her feet, but manages to bring herself back up to stand on her own each and every time. When she makes her way down the steps, it is then that she sees him.

Gale Hawthorne. Her husband. She takes a few steps closer, as if to make sure what she's seeing isn't some kind of apparition or specter. He isn't. He's the real man.

Gale thought, no, he was certain that Madge would reach out and take his hand. There was just something about her that told him she wanted his contact, an assurance that he is real. But, instead, she stands before him, stares at his familiar features for a while, and then walks on as if she saw nothing at all.

Gale spends the rest of the afternoon on autopilot, bullying and coercing a younger soldier who saw no action in the war until he gave up Madge's file. It was marked confidential, for eyes only. No one was supposed to know she was alive. No one. It details why they took her as a prisoner and the kinds of torture Madge endured under both regimes. Gale would be lying if he said a few of the methods didn't make him empty his stomach a few times. Then, he finds her apartment. Knocks. Waits. And when she finally answers, he just stands there, unable to make himself do much of anything else. Madge is the first to speak.

"Well," she begins.

Speaking like this seems foreign. It's something she's become unused to in her time since the end of District Twelve. The only sort of verbal communication she's had has been to scream and sob things like, "No, please. Don't," or "I don't know anything, I swear."

"How are you?" She continues.

She's unable to think of anything else to say and so Gale responds with the only thing he can think to say.

"Why you?"

Madge furrows her brow.

"Why me?"

Gale's voice is suspicious, but it is the only thing he can bring himself to be right now. If he allows himself to feel relief, he will inevitably drag her into his arms and never let her go. So, he thinks of the gaping holes in the logic of her file and goes from there.

"Did you know something about the rebellion?"

Madge doesn't want to think about this. Madge doesn't want to talk about this. Bile rises in her throat as she commands words to her tongue while still trying to look out desperately over the valley of her memories without attaching them to herself. She doesn't want to feel like these things happened to her. She digs her fingertips into her flesh, crossing her arms over her chest. Trying to keep herself from falling apart and trying to keep herself from opening her arms to him.

"Thread told them I did."

Relief. Gale feels its sweet taste on his tongue, but he asks the question anyway.

"But you didn't?"

She shakes her head and the vertebrae in her neck pop at the movement. Her bones are unused to movement like this, movements so normal as walking and standing and nodding and shaking the head. She almost dreads the moment she decides to smile again. Because her face will feel genuine pain then. She hasn't smiled since the morning she was taken from her home. Her's and Gale's home.

"My dad was very careful. Everything I knew was in code. I couldn't…There wasn't anything for me to know."

She's told them that. She has told them about the codes and about the messages but no one wanted to listen. Something trembles in the back of Gale's mind as he thinks of the instructions for evacuating when the bombs were coming for 12.

"But you knew you were going to be taken?" He asks.

Madge has to think about that for a while before answering judiciously. She's the traitorous Mayor's daughter. Of course she knew she could be taken.

"There was always that possibility."

"Then why…"

Defeat chisels at Madge and finally, her voice clips at Gale's ego, his arrogance, for coming here and demanding answers on the day she is released from captivity.

"Gale, your precious rebellion has kept me locked in a cage for weeks to determine if I've sold anything out to the damn Capitol. I don't need you to give me the same lecture."

She's tired. So tired of this conversation. The cracks within her begin to bleed.

"But you knew you were going to be taken?" Gale asks again.

"There was always that possibility," she reiterates.

They're still standing in the doorway. Madge has not invited him in and Gale has not pushed his way through. They just face off like that, across the threshold of her door, just like they did when he used to sell her strawberries.

"So, that's why you went with them? Because you always knew you would have to?"

Because it was your duty, Gale seems to be asking. But that isn't the reason Madge went with Thread that day and that isn't the reason why she didn't cry out for Gale in the prison hidden away in the depths of District Thirteen.

"No. That's not it."

"You must have been pretty loyal."

No. Not loyal. In love. She was too in love with him to let Thread have him and too in love to let the Rebellion use her as leverage against Gale. She couldn't do it. She went with Thread silently, calmly, because she loves Gale Hawthorne with everything that is in her and she doesn't think she will ever learn how to fix it.

"Yeah. That's what it will say on my tombstone. Madge Undersee. Loyal to the end," she scoffs.

Gale watches her breathing hitch as hot, shameful tears rise up in her. Reaching his arms out for her, he almost has her in an embrace when she frantically steps backward, rushing to brush the tears from her eyes.

"I don't want you to do this. Not again," She protests.

It is Gale's turn to be confused.

"What?"

Madge's water gaze softens and turns tentative.

"The Capitol is gone. You don't have to… You don't owe me anymore. I'm not your problem anymore, okay?"

She runs a hand through her head, revealing several scars along her hairline that make Gale's blood itch.

"What the Hell are you talking about?"

Madge's voice raises in something other than fear for the first time in weeks. Now, she's begging him with an expression of the martyred about her.

"You think I'm so stupid that I didn't see straight through you from the first? You waltz in and conveniently want to marry me right after you found out about me giving you morphling? You think I bought all of that shit about 'I promise I'll love you'? I'm not blind, Gale. You thought you owed me for saving your life. And you've paid your debt, now. So, it's over. There's no one here you owe anything to. Get married for real. Start a family. Go and love someone with that big heart of yours because after everything I can't keep you here. It's too selfish. You don't have to pretend anymore. You're free."

Gale furrows his eyebrows.

"You think that leaving you would make me feel free?"

Madge looks up at him, defenseless now.

"Won't it?"

Her husband can't answer. He doesn't have words to express how painful a simple, two-word question can be.

"Gale, I love you. And I can't let you waste yourself-" She protests.

But Gale does something Madge does not expect. He gently, very gently, wraps his arms around her, closing his eyes as he feels her against him once more. She's alive. The woman he loves is alive and they can be happy if they would only let themselves be.

"I could never waste myself on you. I love you," he whispers.

It takes a while, but sooner or later, he feels Madge relax against him. And shortly after, he feels the warming sensation of two small, scarred arms return his embrace before Madge tucks her face into his neck. And, for the first time in his life, Gale cries tears of gratitude.

The End.