Disclaimer: Trigger warnings - self-harm and suicide.
Madge weakly pushes Enobaria's dead body off of her as the cannon booms.
She's covered in blood, and her startling blue eyes look crazy. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding in. She did it. She's won. She's coming home.
The announcer comes on quickly, "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the winner of the 75th Hunger Games, Madge Undersee!" Madge starts to cry again and the only way that they can get her onto the hovercraft is if they shock her. I shake my head and Johanna sighs.
"She's lost it. That's exactly how Cresta... you know." I nod and she pushes me up. "They'll want you in the Training Center for when she comes in. The rest of us," she looks around at the few remaining Victors, "we're going home. Make sure you're there when she wakes up."
I nod and let the Peacekeeper lead me to the hovercraft landing. Apparently Madge is in a high-speed one so she'll get here faster, and nearly as soon as we make it out there, her hovercraft lands.
I'm already scared when I see her. She's beat up. Madge has an oxygen mask around her, and already so many tubes in her arms. It scares me how thin she is. She's bleeding everywhere.
They wheel her into some room and push me out of it so they can perform some operations. So I pace. And I pace. And I pace. Effie eventually meets me there after several hours.
"She's going to be alright, dear. She's a strong one." I nod and run my hands through my hair. "They want to do more interviews."
Interviews, interviews, interviews. That's all I've been doing since Madge got out, and it's been two days.
She hasn't woken up yet. Usually, according to Effie, people have woken up at this point.
Finally, a doctor tells me what's going on. "Ms. Undersee has gone through a lot of traumatic and emotional stress since the beginning of the Games until now," he tells me, looking at her vitals, "I'm very sorry to tell you, Mr. Hawthorne, but..." he sighs, "we could not save her and the baby both. Her body was giving everything to keep the child alive, and... yesterday morning she miscarried. I'm so sorry, Mr. Hawthorne."
My entire body feels like ice. I cannot move forward, or anything. I'm frozen.
"No," I force out, shaking my head, "you're lying."
"I'm sorry," the doctor says again, "there was nothing that we could do. It happened... it happened very fast. When she wakes up you need to..." I shake my head again, no, this can't be true. This can't be happening. Tears blur my vision. The baby's gone. Just gone. How does something like that even happen? My eyes burn.
"Can I see her?"
The doctor sighs. "She's not awake, but... of course." The doctor lets me in to her room quickly and I nearly collapse when I see her. She looks so small and weak. The announcers are on the television in her room. They're talking about the baby, and I know that within the hour the country will know. I choke back my sobs and carefully cross the room to her.
She's still naked from her cleansing. Madge is no where near ready to be presented to the world again. She hasn't even woken up once. I run my hand over her flat stomach through the thin blanket and rest my head on the uncomfortable bed. It's... it's just gone. Just like that. The baby that... we both created. Just gone. It's over. Tears leak out of my eyes and I wipe them away quickly.
I stay in the room for an hour, holding onto her hand tightly. It's about two in the afternoon when the announcers make the announcement. "Folks, we've... we've received some bad news. Miss Undersee, yesterday morning," one of them sighs, "this is very hard to say, everyone. Miss Undersee miscarried yesterday morning. We don't know how Gale Hawthorne is taking it, he's been in her room since he found out. She has not woken up."
I can't help but break something. The shattering of the glass makes me feel a little more satisfied.
This is so hard. So goddamn hard.
Madge slips into a coma at some point. The doctors say that she lost a lot of blood, and the trauma of what happened to the baby caused it. She might not consciously know what exactly happened, but her body is definitely feeling it. Most of the doctors have concluded that she's insane.
They have to feed her through a tube and her body rejected it at first. All of the doctors are worried that she'll die before she can wake up. Either that or she'll wake up and then die. I've barely leave the room, only to go on some of my appointments. Even though the secrets out that Madge and I are basically together, Snow still manages to find clients for me. And it makes me sick.
They say that she's lost it because of what happened to Haymitch. He died a gruesome death, it made me want to hurl. He was destroyed, every bit of his body was bloody when he was pulled out of the arena. One of the doctors told me that if, when, she wakes up, she won't be the same. Madge will be a shell of a person.
And when she does wake up, boy are they right.
She doesn't speak. Ever. She gets lost in her own mind every time they try to get her to speak. They ask her question after question and she doesn't respond to any of them. Her name, age, everything. She doesn't respond. She's pale and she's weak and her eyes don't have the same sparkle that I know and love.
When I told her about the baby, she was stolid. Madge didn't say a word about it. I don't even know if she actually heard it or not. I couldn't stay in the room after I told her.
They start treatment on her and it doesn't go too well. As soon as they put her in the bathtub where she needs to be cleaned off, she starts thrashing around and screaming. "Miss Undersee, we're using this to work on your triggers."
I snap when they put her in a blood-colored shower. "Why the hell are you doing that?" I snarl and a doctor sighs.
"We're trying to get rid of her fears of blood."
"Can't you see that it's not working? Just let her go home!"
I'm kicked out of the rehabilitation center after that.
It's so painful for me to see Madge like this. It's been four weeks since she was plucked out of the arena and she's spoken twice. Once was to tell me to stay with her. Another was when she started crying.
"I want to go home," she sniffles, and slowly, I pull myself onto the bed next to her. I'm the only one she's talking too.
"I know, baby," at my words she cries even harder. Madge finally realized what happened to our baby and she lost it even more. She's retreated further into her mind. Sometimes she's okay, and other times, she doesn't know who she is. "They want you to do your post-Games interview and then you can go home, I promise."
Madge shakes her head quickly and buries her face into my chest. "I know," I murmur, "I know."
Snow has completely stopped my appointments at this point. The Capitol is in shambles because of what's happened to their most recent Victor. No one will do anything with any of the other Victors right now. It's too hard on everyone. Snow's decided that Madge will never have have another appointment, partly because she's neurotic, and because no one would pay for her. I have to take all of hers now, which means double for me when things get normal again.
The next morning, Madge is finally released from the room. Her prep team and Cinna clean her up quickly and make her look pretty again. Right now, I hate to admit it, but she looks dead.
Her Post-Games interview is a disaster. Whenever they start talking about Haymitch or Finnick she loses it again and can't speak. Finally, they pull her away and put us all on the train to go home. Madge immediately disappears into her room and I try to follow, but Effie pulls me back. "Give her space. And time. She needs it."
I nod slowly and collapse into my own bed, sleeping until we arrive home. My heart hurts.
Madge is depressed. Severely. In the two weeks we've been home, she's tried to take her life three times. It started with cutting. I'd find her on the kitchen floor, wrists bleeding severely. Every time it would happen, I'd wrap her wrists and then fall asleep with her. She just continues to do it.
I walked in on her about to stick a knife in her stomach. I didn't leave her house for three days after. Another time, she was trying to drown herself in the bathtub. Once again, I didn't leave for a very long time afterwards.
Everything is hard. Madge doesn't speak to anyone, really, besides me. Losing Haymitch and our baby hit her hard. As soon as we got home my mother pulled us both into a tight hug. Posy kept trying to get Madge to smile, but she couldn't even force one of those. My mom is helping with Madge a lot. Posy comes over to Madge's house almost every day and reads one of her children's book to Madge while acting it out. Sometimes, Madge cracks a smile. Others, nothing.
"Gale?" Madge whispers from her bed. I turn from her dresser and force a smile.
"Yeah, sweetheart?" I murmur.
Madge takes a breath. "Can you lay with me? Please?"
"Of course." I whisper, "anything for you." I tell her, sliding into bed with my girlfriend. She curls into my side quickly and I let out a sigh of relief. This is the first time she's voluntarily touched me since she got home. She hasn't been eating much, or sleeping, or drinking. She doesn't talk, and more than once a day I can see that she disappears into her mind. They've labeled her as mentally insane, but I know she's not.
I press a soft kiss to her head as she speaks again. "Can I have a sandwich?" I smile and nod. "Peanut butter." A chuckle falls from my lips and I nod again, going to stand. "Help me up."
"You sure?"
Madge nods. "Yes," she whispers, holding onto my arm quickly, "I'm tired of being sad."
It's months before Madge can open up to me again. She has her violent flashbacks nearly every night, but I'm always there to help her through it. It's about seven months before I can tell her that I love her.
She's still kind of depressed, and her self-harming problem has gotten better. There are still some days when it's her only option. She hasn't tried to kill herself in a few months, and it makes me so happy.
Madge is recovering from one of her spells and is resting in my lap while I bandage her arms. "You're probably so tired of me," she sniffles.
I shake my head, "I could never get tired of you, Madge. I love you. I'm not going anywhere."
And for the first time, Madge kisses me first.
I end up taking all of the appointments for District 12. Madge refuses to have other people besides me touch her. I hate leaving her, though. I hate going to the Capitol to do this. Madge and I haven't been intimate since before her Games, and it's been almost a year. It kills me that we can't be like that together again, like we were before. She's too scared too, she's scared she'll get pregnant again and lose another baby.
But when we do finally get to that point of being completely vulnerable with one another again, the wait is completely worth it.
A/N: Next chapter is the last. What did y'all think of this one? I'm not too happy about this one, but I don't know. What do y'all think? I was really happy with the response from this chapter, do you think we could do the same for this one? Love you all!
