Author note:
I have not done this before, so I may have screwed up some of the format/rating/whatever stuff. I'm sure I'll get an earful soon enough if I've done so, but just as a heads-up. There's nothing really naughty in here, but I thought I'd be safe and go with an M rating so I wouldn't have to worry about saying "fuck" as much as I wanted to. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Since my first playthough, I was curious about the gap in narrative between the end of Fugitive (if you don't get caught) and Madison/Ethan being back in the hotel room (which technically occurs at the beginning of Jayden's Blues). Also some other plot oddities that are, I think, common currency. I put this together for my own pleasure. The biggest way I've changed from the original is to alter the timeline pretty dramatically, lengthening the time until Madison/Ethan make it back the hotel. I figured this didn't matter too much, as the "appointments" that Ethan (The Shark) and Madison (The Doc) have later in the day with their respective encounters are very flexible, and either episode of mad killin' fun could easily be pushed back a few hours. (Actually, now I'm wondering what Ethan does for like ten hours after The Shark in the game; surely he doesn't just sit and cry the entire time?) The first encounter after Fugitive that really needs to happen at its originally scheduled time is Madison's (Sexy Girl) at 11:00, so that she can get to the Blue Lagoon before Norman does. Am I being too analytical? I am probably being too analytical.
Madison Paige counted her blessings, killing time as she kept watch on the front door.
Sam had come through for her again, and he didn't even know it yet. He really was an invaluable source, though she wasn't sure she ever wanted to know just where he got some of his information from. Thanks to her quick chat with him the previous night, and his routine perusal of the police scanner frequency, she already knew the cops were scouring the streets for Ethan Mars, and why. Thanks to dumb luck, she knew where Ethan was staying, and thanks to her own contrariness, she knew more or less where he was this very moment. And just think, she reflected, I thought those nightmares weren't doing me any favors. I guess it just goes to show that it really is all relative. Like time.
Following Ethan to the house on Marble Street had been pretty standard work for her; she was used to tail jobs. She decided to hedge her bets and simply wait down the street for him to emerge. It looked pretty small from the outside, meaning that if she went in, she ran a fairly high risk of him spotting her. But based on what he'd looked like after his previous expedition, he might need a helping hand after this one, too. She was so intent on watching the house that she almost didn't notice the first cop car. When it finally registered for her, time immediately slowed down to a crawl. Maybe it's coincidence, she thought, and she was still clinging to that hope when the second one crept by, but the sight of Carter Blake's hated square head through the side window of car number three dispelled the illusion.
It seemed to take hours for the police to pass and get into position, and it must have been days for Madison to bring herself and her motorcycle reluctantly into motion, longer still to realize, I am actually doing this. I am going to walk past all those cops, and I am going in that house to find Ethan. Why am I doing this? Time was so stretched out that it felt dreamlike as she tried to mentally record the position of every policeman she could see as she rode past, and scanned their faces to see if any of them recognized her in return. No one seemed to care, and she did a double-take at Blake's car and the pale, thin face in the passenger seat. That's not Ash in there with him, Ash is over there. Who is that? Have to keep an eye on him until I know if he's a screwup, too.
It was at least another week while she got off her bike, removed her helmet, and walked up to the front door, ducking her head and its distinctive pixie haircut in a half-hearted attempt to make herself inconspicuous. She couldn't help noting Blake's reaction in her peripheral vision. Oh, he knows I'm here. He knows, and he is not happy. There was still, however, no flicker of recognition on his angry face. That arrogant jerk never did like to look me in the eyes during those Q&A sessions. That's it, I'm going in. It took an eternity for that metal door to swing shut behind her.
Then an unsteady and bleeding Ethan was lurching towards a tattered couch, she was tearing apart the boarded-up windows on the first floor, and the two of them were moving through mazes of cars and people with what seemed like painful slowness, ignoring the cops' repeated orders to stop – all in a patch of time that had sped up so dramatically around them that she was sure she must be missing chunks of it. By the time she was pushing Ethan onto the subway tracks and jumping down after him, she only barely had time to wonder, How, exactly, did I get myself here? Then they'd made it onto a train, the car doors closed behind them, time righted itself, and she answered herself, crazily, Depends on who you ask. It's all relative.
When the SEPTA train shuddered into motion, Ethan wasn't aware enough to react and either move against it or hang onto something besides her; as a result, his sodden inertia was almost enough to jerk them both off their feet. Madison had to keep one arm wrapped around him and hastily brace the other against the nearest metal pole to keep them both upright while he belatedly fumbled to keep his balance.
No no no no, she thought with panic. We're already enough of a spectacle. At least let us not end up on the floor.
As soon as she felt steady enough, she guided Ethan's downward momentum into the nearest empty window seat and slid down to sit on his right side, moving her left arm around him protectively while she risked a glance at the other occupants of the now-moving car.
God bless city folks, Madison thought with slightly hysterical relief. The two of them were already lucky in that the car wasn't particularly crowded. But even though they were both panting and Ethan was clearly blood-spattered and barely conscious, everyone else on the car was studiously focusing on anything but them: posters, newspapers, paperback books, each other. Nobody wants to make eye contact with the crazy people. She mentally crossed her fingers, hoping the other passengers would keep it up, and turned her attention back to Ethan.
He was definitely still gasping, quick and hard, his wounded hand curled awkwardly in towards his chest. His eyes were unfocused, gazing out into some infinite space.
"Ethan," Madison hissed into his ear, "What's wrong?" Maybe people weren't looking at them yet, but if he just straight-up passed out, there were definitely going to be some problems. He leaned his head back and made a strangled noise deep in his throat, but no clear words escaped. His jaw gaped desperately to admit more air. "I need you to calm down," she continued in an increasingly loud stage whisper, and as she said it, it struck her: Is he just . . . having a panic attack? Is that what I've looked like all those times I've woken up in the middle of the night? Well, desperate times . . .
She set her teeth in anticipation, wrapped her left arm around his neck in what was almost a wrestler's hold, and clapped her left hand over his mouth. Oh, she had his attention now – she had him gripped so firmly that he couldn't turn his head, but his right eye, in profile, widened and rolled wildly towards her like a panicked animal's. He grabbed feebly at her hand with his unmutilated one, his back arching.
"Shh!" Madison snapped, a whisper so loud it was practically a scream. She could sense heads flickering briefly in their direction, then away again, uncomfortably. Talk about not making a spectacle of ourselves; now I've added assault. All we need is the dancing girls.
She held Ethan's gaze, his dark right eye darting frantically back and forth between both of her own, as she brought her right hand up, pushed his right nostril closed, and kept it there. They struggled tensely, almost motionlessly, while she willed him to cooperate. She dropped her volume level again and leaned in even closer, drawing out her words to breathe in his ear, "This . . . will . . . help!" Well, not if he's having a heart attack, probably. I don't think I'll mention that to him.
He blinked rapidly, then he stopped fighting her, and it slowly began to work. His right hand dropped to his lap, his visible eye closed, and he soon began drawing long, shuddery breaths, each one whistling faintly in and out of his left nostril while his ribcage jerked erratically. The measured intakes came more and more slowly, until he nodded decisively against the pressure of her arm and reached up to pull her hands away again. This time, she let him gently detach her fingers, and he melted back into the seat, eyes still closed, as she released her grip.
"It's all right," said Madison, still whispering, "I think you were just hyperventilating."
"Yeah," he wheezed softly, recovering, "Crowds."
"All right, good," she said, relieved to get confirmation of her diagnosis, and a split-second later thought with equal irritation, Could've used that bit of information before, Captain Let's-Take-the-Subway. She brushed the emotion aside; it didn't matter, now.
"Your doctor never taught you that trick?" she asked.
He shook his head wearily; "Paper bags."
"You've got a terrible doctor," Madison said venomously, and meant it. She'd learned the one-nostril trick from EMTs just after her first panic attack, when she'd thought she was dying. One of the few things that gave her comfort was that, after one of her terrifying dreams, she always already had the tools to control her own breathing. Ethan didn't respond to this statement, but it hardly mattered; Madison was looking furtively around the car again and realizing that while the good news was that no passengers getting on or off had confronted them in the last few stops, the bad news was that she had absolutely no idea where they were.
"Ethan, you listening?"
"Yes," he said, without opening his eyes. He was still gasping slightly, but it sounded like pain, rather than panic.
"Okay, we're still in a corner, here. It's not going to take them long to figure out how we got out of there, and they're looking for you. Hard. Maybe looking for us hard, now. We need to get off this train pretty quick, and to get you attracting less attention. Make sense?"
"Yeah," he replied, and grimaced expressively as he sat fully upright.
"Let's look at that hand, first, then." She knew they had to take care of it, but she still couldn't help a sharp, sympathetic inwards hiss as she focused on it. Ethan gingerly pulled it away from his chest, his blood-sticky hand making a little vrrrrt noise as it came loose from his shirt, like Velcro with the volume turned down all the way. Madison tried to block the sight of his hand from the rest of the passengers with her body, and stared at it with unwilling fascination. God, it looks like hell, but at least it's just a finger. "What happened? Is . . . is it burned, too?"
"Yeah," he said faintly, and she looked up to see him staring at the ceiling; it appeared he was having trouble looking at his hand at all. Well, that was fine, with any luck, he wouldn't have to. "I . . . my finger got cut off, so I burned it. The end of it."
It took a couple of blinks for that to sink in for Madison, while she tried to decide if she was more horrified, or more impressed by Ethan's gruesomely boy-scout-ish creativity. She gently grasped his left hand in both her own and tried a follow-up question as she looked it over. "That means you almost definitely can't reattach it, you know. Do you still have it? The, uh, your pinky?"
"No. It's still back there." A glance upwards indicated that his eyes were shut again now. Madison heard this with some resignation. Even if he'd brought it with him, and even if he hadn't burned the stump, he'd probably still refuse to go to a doctor, even now. Especially now. She also decided that the cauterization was amateurish enough that she was primarily horrified – it looked like he'd done it with an improvised tool poorly-suited for the job, so that it was still oozing in places.
"All right," she said, thinking fast. For the first time in her life, she was mentally kicking herself for not turning into her mother, who'd always carried one of those purses the size of Montana. Mom probably would have had an entire clinic with her. And a disguise. And a subway map. Madison had always liked the freedom of being a keys-and-wallet clip girl – only the necessities of her job had convinced her to regularly carry her cell phone and notebook – but here was a drawback she hadn't expected. "Ethan, do you have a handkerchief?"
"No," he said.
"Pocketknife?"
"No," he muttered through clenched teeth. "I used the axe."
". . . what?" Did I hear that right? Taken aback, she looked hard at his face. "Ethan, what did you say?"
"Not the knife." His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, tendons standing out in his throat, and his voice sounded distant.
Oh my god, she thought, either he did this to himself, or he's going into shock and not making any sense. Or both. Anyway, girl, that was kind of a dumb question. The guy doesn't even own any clothes right now that aren't full of bloody holes, and I'm sure the cops just took his car. He's lucky if he has anything at all in his pockets, and I know he doesn't have any magical secret compartments under what he's wearing.
Then, of course, she remembered what he did have on under there.
"Okay, Ethan, lean forward," she whispered, pulling him gently to guide him. She let him lean against her slightly and slid her left hand up his back to feel for the butterfly bandages she'd used to keep the wrappings for the burns on his chest pinned in place. She smiled incredulously at her own ingenuity. "We are going to rob Peter to pay Paul."
It was an awkward position physically, they had nothing with which to cut off a length of gauze, and it certainly added to their crazy-people-on-public-transport vibe, but Madison carefully worked one end of Ethan's chest bandages free under his shirts and unwound a length of it. Within the concealing shadow of his coat, she wrapped the loose end carefully around the stump of Ethan's finger and then his hand; he grunted and flinched a few times, but cooperated as best he could. Now that they were so close and she wasn't completely panicking, she could smell alcohol on his breath. In fact, he fairly reeked of it. Has he been drinking, too? That's probably not helping. Doesn't shock mean you're cold? He doesn't feel cold.
"Actually," added Madison contemplatively as she ran out of loose bandage, unwilling to unwrap his burns completely, "just keep your whole hand under your shirt. Sort of hug yourself straight up the right side." He obediently tucked it in out of sight, rucking his shirts up slightly to accommodate its position and wheezing in pain as he did so. She fastened up his coat around it as best she could, both to cover up the awkwardness of what he was doing and to hold his arm in place. God, now he looks like some sort of terrible Napoleon impersonator. Definitely not someone who should be allowed to dress himself in the morning. It's still better than having all that blood and gauze hanging out. Probably as good as it's going to get. At least his clothes are all so dark. Fortunately, tying off the bandages had gotten the worst of the blood off her own hands.
That was definitely necessary, but it took up way too much time. Or time went too fast again, whichever. I can't even tell any more. There must be a map of the subway line somewhere in the car. She surreptitiously studied the other passengers, all of whom were still ignoring them, with the exception of a brightly curious little girl picking her nose and eying them thoughtfully. Madison tried not to make eye contact. "Okay, Ethan," she said briskly, "Sit tight." She thought she caught the barest nod from his strained-looking face as she helped him lean his body away from hers. She left him shuddering against the window and found a scratched map posted over the sliding doors, which she began to study hopefully. Please, please let us be near a transfer point. Some way we can get back to the hotel. Forget it, whatever the next major stop is, we're getting off.
Madison waited for the mechanized voice to announce their location – she'd been too distracted to register a single one thus far – and then froze in dismay when it came. Oh, no. We. Are. Nowhere. They were obviously somewhere, and there was only one local stop between them and the next transfer point, but their location was so disastrous that she barely registered their entirely passing that tiny station while she thought frantically.
They were on the completely wrong side of the city. They'd been riding in the worst direction possible – away from the hotel, away from the major arteries that could get them to the hotel, practically away from civilization, towards where only the commuter trains ran. Though the train's route meant they still weren't that far from Marble Street, without their own transport, it would take ages to move back across the city and get the right connections. There was no way they could make it on foot, and no way they could make it that far on public transportation without drawing inevitable attention to themselves. Do I dare call a taxi? Maybe. Whatever we do, we had better get off at the next stop, before we screw this up any further. She turned back towards their seat. Oh, no.
Ethan wasn't "sitting tight," but slumped so heavily against the window that he could only generously have been described to be "sitting" at all. Madison, once again thrown off-balance as the SEPTA train began to brake, stumbled back to him.
"Ethan? Ethan, we have to get off. Please, Ethan." When she pulled him back up into an upright position, his eyes opened alertly, and he was still breathing normally, but something was definitely wrong, wronger than it had been a few minutes ago. He seemed to have lost color in his face, a change emphasized by the darkness of his hair and stubble. He was ineptly trying to get to his feet as she worked his arm over her shoulders and hauled him upwards, but it took him a few tries to keep his right knee from buckling underneath him, and he was once again letting his head sag. Perhaps most worryingly for Madison, he didn't cry out in pain as she forced him along. They barely managed to shamble together off the train before the doors slid shut again.
He's at least as bad as he was when he got on, she thought, as she paused to readjust her grip and glance around the station. Once again, it appeared they were only getting sidelong looks, no full-on stares. Is he just doing this on purpose, now?
As though he could read her mind, Ethan managed to take some of his weight off her and mumble something that might have been either, "Sorry," or "S'all right." Well, thank god for small favors, she thought grimly.
Aloud, she said gently, "Okay Ethan, just keep your eyes shut and let me lead you. It's not incredibly crowded, but . . . just in case." He repeated his mumble and pressed his face into her shoulder. All right, not the most convincing "troubled sweethearts" act ever, but I guess it'll have to do for now. They moved forward painfully slowly, Madison trying to avoid other people as much as possible. It would be disastrous to attract even the attention of a too-helpful Good Samaritan. Not like how fast we're going matters much until I figure out where it is we're heading to. She glared up at the sign naming the station, "40th & Steel," silently demanding that it change. We can't get a taxi like this, she thought. Drivers probably won't even pick us up or let me put him in the car in his state. And if they did, we just instantly became the most memorable fare of the day. Wherever we went, we'd be sitting ducks. The trolleys were out of the question, as well as the buses. Maybe there was a car-rental place nearby? I have no idea. Even if there is, won't they be looking for me by now? It's not like I have a fake ID on me that I could use to get one.
She was so preoccupied that she barely managed to avoid tripping over the bottom step of the stairs upward and give him the verbal heads-up of "Stairs, Ethan." And, of course, they were almost to the top of those stairs when he delivered his most clear pronouncement for a while: "Gotta sit down." Madison could tell through his shifting weight the trouble he was having navigating the staircase; he moved like his joints were working together by accident.
"No, you don't," she said, firmly. "Not here." I'm pretty sure he's not lying, though. She could feel that the arm around her shoulders was losing its grip, and he seemed to be getting heavier by the second. He probably was, as his legs got weaker. "Come on, just a little bit further." Where? Somewhere. God, why did it have to be –
40th. And she actually had to smile again as her second revelation of the day hit.
"You know, Ethan," she said, almost cheerfully hefting him up the top step, "I'd rather be lucky than smart."
Their luck held out for another half-block after they left the station, to the extent that neither Ethan's legs nor Madison's arms gave out before they were able to make it to a bus shelter with a bench in it.
"Okay, Ethan, here we go. Bench." He didn't react to her voice, and, as she lowered him onto the seat, he briefly panicked and grasped her in a desperate headlock, like a drowning man, before apparently understanding that he wasn't falling, but finally being allowed to sit. Madison wished there were room to lie him down instead, despite the attention it might attract, but it was broken up into small sections by armrests. Probably to keep the homeless from doing the same thing. Instead, she propped him up in a corner, left hand still improbably wedged in the depths of his jacket, while he tried weakly to help her position his body so that he wouldn't fall over. Exhausted, she seated herself beside him before she pulled out her phone and forcefully hit the speed dial.
"Oh god, Sam," she said as soon as she heard the receiver being lifted, "Please, please tell me you're home."
"Madison? Hello to you, too. You called my landline, babe, of course I'm home. Are you all right?" Relief washed over her at the sound of his voice; she leaned back and draped her left arm over her eyes, shutting out everything else.
"Sam, I need a huge favor."
"Don't you always?"
"No, really huge. Really, really huge. Ridiculously huge."
". . . well, all right, tell me what it is, and I'll see what I can do."
"Okay, I'm almost right by your apartment. I'm at, uh, 40th and, uh," Madison briefly lifted her arm to look around quickly, then recovered her eyes to concentrate on the cover story she was concocting. "Ball. I'm here with a friend, and he's sick, and he can't go to the doctor. Can we please come over? Just so he can lie down for a little while?"
There was a long pause, and Madison thought she knew why: I haven't been over to actually see Sam in ages. I know, I can be such a jerk. Please don't let this be the time it comes back to bite me, even though I just lied to him a little on top of it. And that I'm wishing right now he had a car I could borrow instead of just an apartment.
And then, miraculously, Sam was slowly saying, "Well . . . I guess so. Is this like an insurance issue, or what?"
"I swear I'll tell you all about it when we get there. We're going to start on our way right now."
"Okay, I guess I'll get the magazines off the sofa." He still sounded doubtful, but she knew she had him.
"Thank you so much, Sam. You're a lifesaver!" Madison said hurriedly. She wondered if Sam had bandages handy, and thoughtlessly added, "You might want to put an old sheet down on that sofa, too. Just to keep it clean." Oh, that was dumb, she immediately realized. And if I remember what that sofa looks like, it's probably more important to keep Ethan clean.
Another long pause preceded what was going to be his next question, "All right, but – " at which point Madison guiltily turned her own phone off and sighed, allowing herself the luxury of another few seconds' rest in the comfort of her covered eyes. This will work, she thought. This can happen. This can be fixed. There is a solution to this. Just a few blocks. Jeez, I hurt all over. Her regular small vanity of trips to the gym had not prepared her for anything like this nightmare crawl, and she ached in muscles she'd never been forced to use this hard before for this long.
She reluctantly lowered her arm and turned her head to look back at Ethan. No, no. He'd gone completely slack, and gravity had pulled him into an awkward position. She hurriedly moved to hunker down in front of him. Oh my god, his face is gray. I can see him breathing, but not much else even shows he's alive. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get him back on his feet again. I don't know if I should. "Ethan?" she asked, cupping her hands around his face and noticing that even his lips seemed to have lost their color. "Oh, no, ohhhhhhh, no, of course your temperature's back up again. It would be." She tried grasping his arm tightly and shaking it, then his shoulder. "Ethan! Ethan, wake up!" His face briefly registered discomfort, but that was the only response she received.
For the first time on this plunge into danger, Madison felt absolutely certain that she'd done the wrong thing. She'd had her doubts, lots of them, from the moment they first met – should she really not get a doctor for this stranger? Should she really stalk him? Really help him escape from the police? Was he as guilty as the cops seemed to think, or innocent as her gut told her? But this was the first time she thought, I've done everything wrong. All of it. Ethan clearly needed serious medical attention, and she'd prevented him from receiving it. If he died now and he was innocent, she'd essentially helped to kill him. If he died now and he was guilty, she'd effectively killed his son as well. Why did I think this was a good idea? Why did I think this was worth it? To write some story? To keep him to myself? To play out some weird nurse fantasy?
That was when she started to cry, stopped, and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, because nobody made Madison Paige cry: not the creeps she had to deal with to write her pieces, not the masked nightmares who threatened her, and especially not Madison Paige. And that thought was finally enough to make her reach up, feel through the fabric of Ethan's coat, grab the swaddled lump inside that was his bandaged hand, and twist. Hard.
Ethan's face came alive with shocked agony, his eyes shooting open, and Madison immediately seized her chance. She rocketed to her feet, hooking her hands under his armpits and once again hoisting him up with her into a standing position. They shuffled to the sidewalk and back out into the rain in a parody of an embrace, Ethan trying both to keep up with her and double over in pain. No time for apologies. We've come this far. We're going on. This can be fixed. I'm going to make the worst thing I've ever done into the best.