#conscriptur: peeta.

[forgaeven]

❛⠀she's gone, ❜ madge declares, her own voice a foreign echo to her ears. in all her life, madge hasn't had a need to loudly say anything. no, that's always been more of father's job: his speech succinct each time he delivers it, with just enough of a jovial front that it sates any outside ears listening in.

they're not talking about father, of course. madge tracks whatever space between katniss' victor's house to peeta's own seeing as it is the way to exit the neighbourhood anyhow. she's never liked it here, but it's an opinion she isn't allowed to have. she doesn't like anywhere in twelve in truth, but again, that feels blasphemous, and wrong.

how could madge hates the only place she's ever known ? she doesn't know, but she does.

❛⠀she went out. ❜ madge explains now that she's come closer, trying her best to reel in the disappointment from seeing katniss' back as she joined gale hawthorne towards a track madge wouldn't be able to keep up with, ten minutes ago.

@conscriptur ♡'d !

[forgaeven]

you take the umbrella. i'll be fine. ( from peeta to madge!)

madge regards peeta quietly.

and maybe the right course of action here would be to nod, to concede and agree and make her way back to her house with the spare thought that she owes peeta this favour. madge tries not to think next about what it means that someone would give this to her so willingly, caught between wanting to believe that this is peeta's easy kindness and the expected behaviour one usually extends to another who is, as they'd say, higher in status than you.

madge doesn't think being a mayor amounts much to anything. father may hold the whole of the district's attention if need be, and when the authority permits, he would even lend whatever help he could manage from the meagre power bestowed by the capitol, small and rare as it would come ( mostly, father simply turn a blind eye to any trade that isn't by the books; madge knows that this is enough by the standard of many, though she couldn't help but think that it's minimal, at best. ) — but beyond appearances, father's position, madge learns, exists as nothing else than a symbol of instated bureaucracy.

not everyone could see that. even if they do, not many tends to nitpick it. madge does, but also only in the confides of her head. she wonders, quietly, which one would it fall for peeta. still, she doesn't ask; feels guilty that she's even thinking it. maybe peter was just being nice — people tend to not get in madge's way, but they don't typically offer her things like this either. she contemplates, fiddles with the umbrella until it opens, like flower to the sun. madge judges the size, before she steps in, and adjusts the both of them so neither of their shoulders could, hopefully, get wet.

❛ we'll go together. ❜ she tells him, quiet, but determined.

will they, won't they. — accepting.