I do not own the hunger games
If you see any errors please let me know.
This story is rated M for many reasons so please keep that in mind when you proceed. Multiple dark themes are coming.
This story is once again following Gold. There will be one more chapter that follows her after this one and then it'll go back to Katniss for a while. Katniss isn't close to the victors and won't be for quite a bit so this is the most you'll see them for a while.
-Gold-
They've been waiting for hours now, everyone's on edge thinking about what she told them earlier. The tension in the room is palpable.
Cashmere and Gloss spent a few hours out. They're now cleaning up in the adjacent room, it's not much but it has a toilet, a sink, and a shower with a curtain. No one complains. Haymitch and Johanna haven't left the bunker since the moment they came in and Mags takes it a step farther by not leaving the princesses side. 'Bones' brings more food and Gale left without a word nearly two hours ago, if she didn't know better she'd think he really was an avox. Gold wonders how many words he's spoken out-loud in the past seven years.
Finnick had pointed out the blood in the princesses hair. They found the gash on the back of her head, thankfully not infected. They push the cart holding the princess into the bathroom, after the twins vacate the premises, and Mags cleans and closes the injury.
She and Diamond sit by the door with loaded guns. They've never felt so useless. So fucking useless.
A Little after one Dolly returns with twice as many Mutts as she left with. Of course she brought Rave back too.
He looms in the doorway, eyeing down all the victors, not the least bit intimidated. She can't say the same for the rest of them. "The air ship has been in camouflage mode for three days on the other side of the capitol wall, the inside is covered in blood matching our dear princess. Our Dear Princess who has been MIA for the past three days officially, unbeknownst to the the rest of the world of course. Where is she."
He hasn't even raised his voice but she can't breath can't bring herself to speak. He makes her hands shake.
"You're the man who helped me a few months ago at the party..." Wherever Rahella's thoughts were going get halted when he meets her eyes. Even Haymitch and Johanna, who seem to have no self preservation, step back from him.
Thankfully no one has to answer him when Mags, bless her heart, pushes the cart back through to the other side of the room.
He doesn't push his way through to her, he doesn't have to, no one stands in his way. He's looming over the princess staring at Mags, obviously expecting her to leave. She doesn't.
She knows the princess already looks dead, she's pale enough, the only thing indicating she's not is all the machines she's hooked to. Her chest barely moving.
Gold starts to tell him about her condition when she's interrupted.
He pulls her sheet off, then rips her shirt open, leaving her chest bare with no regard to the fact he's touching the princess inappropriately. Gold has never been so uncomfortable. She's pretty sure everyone feels the same, and she knows Finnick and the twins are prostitutes. He stares at her chest unblinking.
Ridmen is moving to touch her when Mags buries a scalpel in his hand. Bless her heart. It freaks them all out that he doesn't move away, just jerks the handle from her hand and stares her down. He's as tall as Gloss and nearly as big.
Johanna and Cashmere are holding Finnick down.
"It's... okaay." How long has the princess been up? Both her mutts have laid down across the floor in front of her cart, separating her from the rest of them. "I need.. talk, alone."
There's only so much privacy you can give someone in a 14x8 bunker but they try. Everyone moves to one side. Cashmere even escorts Mags by the arm to Finnick who holds the not so frail, frail woman.
He's touching her chest now, talking quietly to her. Gold knows he's touching her wounds but it doesn't stop the chill she feels, every part of her body telling her to rip his hand off. Haymitch is holding a bottle like a weapon. She's never felt more in-tune with the drunk. The princess doesn't seem to mind the intrusion. His meat fingers probing at her private parts.
"Don't lie to me now."
Minutes pass like hours, Ridmen is growing agitated with each that pass. He leans down for the princess to whisper in his ear, promptly stands and heads for the door.
"Wait! Please," She's grunting to push up against the metal cart. She's louder and sounding more alert then she has in the last week and a half. "Night.. honey..102... Roses, you finish?"
"No. You can." He's opened the door and is almost through it when he addresses the rest of them. "I will be back at the same time tomorrow night. If the princess is dead when I return, everyone in this room will follow her."
Dolly follows after him with the mutts. Gale doesn't return.
They had estimated the princess to pass within two hours.
The night starts out hard. Rahella and Mags stay up while the rest of them try to get a few hours of peaceful shut-eye, but Rahella falls asleep along side them and when the princess starts seizing Mags can't wake them up. The sound of her body hitting the floor is what stirs them out of their slumber. The drunk gets to them first, despite the fact he was the farthest away. He gets her head in his lap.
She's ripped out all the tubes connecting to her medical equipment, blood, water, oxygen mask they had to attach to her, as well as hit her head on both the floor and side of a table. She's vomiting and he has to turn her over to get it out of her mouth. "Come on sweetheart."
Gold is frozen in place. She can't do anything but watch, none of them can. Mags had wandered off to the bathroom and was headed back in with the medical kit. Haymitch comforting her princess who looks like she's fighting a demon. The rest of them watch on. Diamond takes her hand. She takes Cashmere's. Johanna puts her arms around her waist, it's stiff but solid, and when she looks up she's surrounded by victors. Embracing and holding one another. Gloss and Finnick share whispers.
"Come on, come on sweetheart, come back to me." Her body goes stiff. "Finnick I need you."
The princess must have stopped breathing again.
Pump, pump, pump, breath, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, breath. Breath. She's breathing. Gold's breathing.
Haymitch lays her back on the cold metal. Diamond is attaching her back to all their equipment while Mags goes back to work on her head. Johanna sits with Haymitch on one side and when Finnick finishes washing the vomit from his mouth and face he goes to help Mags. His hands are solid. He tells them to rest while he takes the next watch. They lay down but no one settles or closes their eyes again. Rahella cries.
Her fever returns with a vengeance. They've run out of fever pills. She runs out of blood. Gloss and Cashmere go back to donating. "I'm going to get some shit."
"Everything's closed. First aid centers won't open for a few hours and the hospitals aren't going to let you wander through their stock rooms."
She knows that obviously. She'll find a way, this is her princess, her child. "I'll come with." She'd rather go alone but forget telling Mason that.
The buildings two over and they're there in fifteen minutes. "Where do they keep everything?"
"Fuck if I know." She'll find a way.
Twenty minutes pass with no luck. "Maybe we should split up?"
"Not happening. The only good it'd do would be to half our man power and send us going back and forth between the same rooms." They didn't start out on great terms and honestly haven't managed to get on good terms in the last three day, four nights, they've spent together, but Gold is suddenly glad Johanna came with her. Glad the the eighteen year old has taken charge when she couldn't. "There is a way but I need to know how much we need this right now? Can we make do without?"
"We can't."
"Alright, we'll deal with the consequences later then." Suddenly she's reaching around a bend in the wall and pulling a nurse back with her, her axe digging into soft flesh. "Take me to your medical supplies now! Medicine and blood!" There eyes meet. Gold specifies the blood type. "O- blood, If you make a sound they'll bury you with this handle sticking out your forehead."
Johanna drags the girl through the directions until they make it to a door at the back of a small hallway. "Open it." The woman is a crying mess, telling them she doesn't have access. Only doctors can open the supply closets.
Johanna tells her to close her eyes. She doesn't. She breaks her neck.
Gold is still staring at the body when Johanna comes back wearing a white gown and a doctors robe. She had a key card. "You had no idea how you were going to get this shit done, did you doll face?"
They leave the woman nude in a locker. No one questions the doctor and nurse carting out a box of blood and medicine.
When she takes the robe off in the bunker Johanna's covered in blood. She remembers her games, how she took the clothes of her victims. Gold thought it was disgusting how she never even flinched while wearing the clothes that someone had died in. Today she understands. They make the best of what is given to them.
The fever passes in less than an hour. Finnick, Gloss and Cashmere take turns giving blood between bags in order to preserve what they have. They've all given far too much and when they aren't hooked up they sleep. Finnick leaves for a few hours in the middle of the day and smells like woman and sweat when he returns. Gloss takes both their shifts, lets him sleep.
They don't have any windows but it should be getting dark right about now. Two, three more hours? Four at the most before Ridmen returns. Then what? Then they leave? Come back to get the princesses body and have her buried properly? What are they Waiting for exactly? What does Ridmen want from them?
Her face is wet. She keeps seeing the dead nurse with her head turned backwards. Johanna spoons her back.
Gold will never hurt the people in this room. She knows with confidence though that she can hurt for them.
Ridmen arrives at exactly one in the morning. His eyes are bruised. He's alone.
His hand is wrapped in white bandages where the scalpel had been dug in. The same hand holds a metal pot that looks an awful lot like a game parcel. The other hand holds a very official looking metal tin.
His arrival has woken everyone up and has them moving to the opposite side of the room. Mags stays. It doesn't seem to bother Ridmen today.
The sheet is stripped away followed again be her shirt. He doesn't try to wake her up. He doesn't mention the new injuries that cover her head and face. He just hands Mags the needle and starts putting paste from the parcel into her rotting flesh. Mags sews. Haymitch carries a bottle like a weapon.
