Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine. Any lines from the books are hers too.
Safe
AN: Kinda a follow up to 'Because', waaay back in chapter 3. Someone wanted cop!Gale and my obsession with Law&Order took over again. Sorry.
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Gale parks his car and sighs, sending a puff of air into the warm night air.
"This is your apartment?" Madge asks, leaning forward and squinting up into the dull light from the security lamp.
It isn't exactly impressive, ancient and rough looking, but the area around it is fairly well lit and the crime rate is lower than where her crappy apartment is located, so he thinks as far as living arrangements go, he's ahead.
She needs to be safe, and as far as he's concerned, the only safe place is with him.
He wouldn't have brought her here if it hadn't been for the second shooting.
It had only been a few hours ago, just after lunch. He'd been with Katniss, picking up lunch at the crappy deli down from the station house, when they'd gotten the call.
"Abernathy's been shot," Chief Paylor told them. "Guy walked right up to the DA's office and opened fire as he was leaving for lunch."
"How bad is it?" Gale asked, tossing the greasy meatball subs into the back of the car before buckling in and urging Katniss to just 'drive already' and he would 'tell her in a minute'.
Something wasn't right and he wanted to get moving, he had a feeling they were about to head to the hospital, either because DA Abernathy was the newest victim of Snow's violent fall from grace, killed as a warning to all those finally fighting back, or because their beloved DA hadn't been killed, but pissed off the hospital staff and they needed to cart his ass to jail.
He didn't expect what he got next.
"He's a stubborn bastard," Paylor muttered, the sound of her sigh mixed with the dinging of her car as she apparently got in. "I'm going down to the hospital to get a better picture of what's going on." She waited a beat, apparently preparing herself for what she had to say next, before letting out a long breath. "ADA Undersee was with him at the time."
Gale's heart had stopped so quickly that a sharp pain cut across his chest, stalling his breath and blurring his vision.
"What?"
It wasn't that he and Madge had advertised their fledgling relationship, but Paylor had noticed that he had warmed up to her and felt he needed a warning about whatever awful thing had happened.
Trying to keep his voice from shaking, if Madge had been killed he didn't know what he'd do, go after whichever of Snow's lackey's did this probably, Gale took a breath and waited for the news.
"She was walking with Abernathy, going to a meeting apparently. Working on that internal affairs case against Precinct Two," she began carefully and Gale nodded to himself preparing for the worst.
Precinct Two was full of dirty cops.
Chief Brutus, Madge had told Gale, was among the extensive list of names being investigated as being in Snow's pocket, helping him cover up all the murders and drug rings he had his fingers in.
At least half the detectives were on paid leave pending the findings of the investigation.
"Detectives Clove and Cato weren't happy," she'd told him and Katniss when she'd swung by to drop off some paperwork to them just a few days prior. "But what did they expect was going to happen? There've been more suspicious deaths of suspects in custody in that station house than in all the others combined."
Gale hadn't really cared if Cato or Clove were upset by the supposed slight against them, which was probably the truth if he were being completely honest. He only cared that Madge stay away from that station. It was tight-knit and even the clean cops, if there were any, weren't going to take kindly to having their entire department cast in a bad light.
Plus, Cato was a grade A asshole. He'd been hitting on Madge since the second she'd started working for the DA. Any excuse to keep him away from her for even a few months, or more if Gale were lucky, was entirely welcome.
"The gunman was aiming for Abernathy only, though. From what I've been told, she's shaken up, but okay," Paylor finished, her voice distant to Gale's ears.
"She's okay?" Gale repeated. "She wasn't hit?"
Paylor sighed. "That's what I said."
"We'll head to the hospital," he told her, hanging up before she could tell him to go to the DA's office and start taking statements or looking for evidence.
He'd do that, catching the bastard that put Madge in danger was high on his list of things to do, but getting to the hospital and checking on her took priority.
"Hospital. Now."
Katniss hadn't asked questions, just nodded before taking off.
They broke a few traffic laws, Gale is certain of that. They'd forgotten to turn on the lights until they were halfway to the hospital and the siren had died, something it had been threatening to do for a while now, so they looked like a couple of assholes in a Crown Vic speeding for the sake of speeding, but Gale didn't care.
He'd run into the emergency room, yelled at a girl at registration, flashing his badge and telling her to give him Abernathy's location or he'd arrest her for some bullshit charge, scaring her to tears and making her directions incomprehensible.
"You have such a way with ladies," a gentle chuckle had come from behind him.
Mellark, Katniss' asshole boyfriend from the FBI, had handed the girl a cup of coffee.
Of course he would be there. He'd probably been going to the meeting with Madge and Abernathy. Helping them with higher level government crap, or so Katniss would claim.
"Don't worry, miss. I'll take Detective Hawthorne to DA Abernathy's room," he told her, smiling warmly before giving Gale a not-so-gentle shove away from the desk. "And he apologizes for yelling."
Gale did not apologize, but nodded anyway.
"You know," he began before Gale could begin interrogating him, "not everyone is a suspect you need to rough up to get information out of. A 'please' and a 'thank you' will take you miles in life."
Gale had shot him a nasty look, striding a little faster in the direction Mellark was taking him. "She's an idiot. It was a simple question."
"Right," Mellark sighed.
"Is Madge okay?" Gale asked, not even slowing his pace.
Mellark didn't answer for a minute, then pointed to a waiting room to the right. "She's frazzled, but okay."
Gale's eyes instantly fell on Madge.
She was wearing one of her simple little white blouses, only it wasn't white anymore. There was ruby and crimson, mixed sickeningly across the front, smeared and splattered. Little flecks smattered on her unnaturally pale cheeks and in her flyaway hair, making her look like an extra in a horror film.
Even her dark skirt was stained, dark patches just barely visible in the afternoon sun that filtered through the windows of the waiting room.
She didn't notice him for a few seconds, her wide eyes focused on the cracking vinyl of one of the chairs, wholly absorbed in breathing.
"Madge," he barely managed to rasp out, relief and terror finally stealing his normally strong voice.
Her eyes blinked, looked up hazily, then settled on him.
Before he could even take a step, Madge had stood and raced across the room, lunging at him.
Despite the fact that she was probably smearing Abernathy's blood all over him, ruining one of his nicer shirts, Gale held her, wrapping his arms around her and pressing her to him, reassuring himself that she's was alive and unharmed.
He soaked in her warmth, her breath, her smell, the feeling of her tears as they soaked through his shirt and the way her fingers dug into his back. She was alive and he had no intention of letting that change, ever.
He was going to keep her safe.
They stayed at the hospital for hours, waiting for Abernathy to get out of surgery.
He'd lost a lot of blood, mostly on Madge's shirt, if Gale were to guess, and when they rolled him into his room he had blood infusing.
"I'm too much of a bastard for Snow to kill," he mumbled sleepily, as Mellark and Madge looked him over, assuring themselves he was indeed okay.
Gale and Katniss barely managed to hide their laughter at that.
"That's was probably true." Chief Paylor told him. "You'll live forever out of sheer stubbornness."
She'd left shortly after, complaining that she needed to go do the work her two best detectives were neglecting. Gale would've felt bad, but he could sense the tease in her words. She'd give them hell for hanging up on her later, but for tonight, they were off the hook.
"That's not funny," Madge had told him, tears trickling down her cheeks, dripping off the edge of her freshly scrubbed cheeks.
A detail of cops, plain clothes and uniforms, were assigned to watch him, keep Snow's people from coming back and finishing the job, but that wasn't good enough, not for Madge anyway. Everyone was suspect.
"I'll stay with him tonight," Mellark had told Madge when she'd insisted that she was going to stay with him. "You need a shower and a few hours of sleep."
"I'm not going to sleep," she'd muttered, rubbing her pink and red eyes. "I don't think I'll sleep ever again."
Katniss huffed. "Peeta's right. Go home, shower and get some rest. We'll stay with Abernathy."
Finally, when midnight finally hit and the nurse was hanging something, plasma Gale thinks it was, he finally convinces Madge to go home.
"I'll drive you to my place, it's closer, you can get cleaned up and a few hours of sleep, then we'll come back, okay?"
Now that he has her in front of his apartment building, the flaws in his plan are starting to show.
She has no clothes, even if she takes a shower, she'll have nothing to change into.
Thankfully, she's too exhausted to point this out, if she's even realized it yet, and she wearily gets out of the car.
Crossing his fingers that none of his neighbors comes out, they'll think he was involved in a murder by the looks of Madge's clothes, he guides her with a gentle hand at the small part of her back up to the entrance and down the hall.
They go up the stairs, to the small landing at the front of his hall on the fourth floor, then to the end.
He fishes out his keys quickly and throws the door open, flipping on the lights. "Home sweet home."
It's clean, mostly because he doesn't waste his money on crap like pictures and knick-knacks like she does. There's a couch, worn in and threadbare, but comfortable, a battered coffee table with cup rings covering every inch of wood, something his mother complains about everytime she sees it, and a secondhand television.
Spartan living at its finest.
Madge walks in, looking small and broken, her exhausted looking eyes tracing over every inch before settling back on him.
"I guess I should take a shower before I get blood on anything," she says tonelessly.
Nodding, Gale takes her hand and leads her into the bedroom.
He wishes, a little stupidly, that this weren't the way she had to see his bedroom for the first time. He'd had grand visions of a date, kissing and laughing, preceding their first venture into his bedroom.
Life had other plans though, and Gale isn't happy about that. He doesn't want his bedroom associated with blood and misery, by anyone, but least of all Madge.
It's just as bare as his living room, bed with a crappy dark colored comforter and a couple of flat pillows, a dresser in the corner, and a bedside table with a broken alarm clock on it.
Madge doesn't seem to care, just eyes the bed for a moment before looking down at her blood soaked clothes. Her cheeks darken to a faint crimson as she seems to realize the clothing situation.
"What am I going to wear?"
Gale goes to the dresser and pulls out a pair of pajama pants. Of course they're the horrible one's Rory had bought him for Christmas a few years ago with the Grinch on them.
Ignoring the embarrassment that suddenly floods his system-why hadn't he grabbed one of his normal, non-cartoon character pants?-Gale snatches up a dark undershirt and takes them to her.
"Wear this to sleep in. I'll take your stuff to the wash downstairs."
She keeps her eyes down as she takes the clothes, nodding silently.
Going into the bathroom, Gale starts the shower, which is a menace for him half the time, while Madge watches quietly.
When he gets it to a decent temperature, he steps back and waits.
The crimson on Madge's cheeks seeps down her neck and to her chest as she bites her lip.
"Can you step out?" She asks softly.
Blinking, he hadn't even realized he was keeping her from getting in, Gale coughs, looking down and feeling like an idiot.
"Oh, yeah." He steps past her, pulling a towel and washcloth from under the sink and handing it to her. "Just toss your clothes out the door and I'll take them down and get them started."
She doesn't argue, just nods, closing the door behind him.
He tries not to listen, but his hearing has always been almost freakishly good.
He can hear the zipper on her skirt, the sound of fabric hitting the tile, the painfully familiar sound of a bra latch, then the click of the door.
"Here," she calls out, holding her bloody clothes to him.
Trying not to look, Gale snatches them from her and rushes out of the room. He doesn't know if he can handle the sound of her washing up. His body is already having pleasantly unpleasant reactions to what he's heard so far and the warmth of her body still clinging to her clothes isn't helping.
He spends an hour downstairs, but even his mother's expertise with laundry can't save Madge's blouse. Abernathy's blood is too deeply soaked to it, a strange pink is set across the front, forever.
Her bra is a loss too, which is a pity, it's lacey and soft, a push up that he'd have loved to see in action, but the skirt is salvageable, the dark color making the faint stain almost vanish. He'll ask his mother about it in the morning, maybe she has a trick she's kept from him.
There's no panties, but Gale decides not to ask about that. She probably just kept them to save herself from wearing his weird pajamas commando.
When he gets back in the room, Madge is on the couch, curled up with her head against one of the worn out pillows staring at his television.
The news is on, Abernathy's shooting is getting the full treatment.
There are reporters talking to everyone who'd seen, a man that had been walking his dog, a couple of kids that had been skipping school apparently, and half a dozen others. Experts and lawyers are yammering away, saying this was retaliation, which Gale almost snorts at. He hopes these idiots aren't getting paid too much to point out the obvious.
"I couldn't get your shirt clean," he tells her, holding it out and stepping between her and the television. She doesn't need to immerse herself in it anymore. She'll never get to sleep.
She nods, setting up and placing it in her lap, running her fingers over the buttons.
Quietly, Gale drops onto the couch beside her and clicks the television off before taking the clothes back from her and tossing them onto the coffee table and taking her hand.
"It's going to be okay."
It's a lie most likely. He has no way of knowing if Snow will keep trying, and if he's honest, until that bastard is dead, no one is safe, but she doesn't need that right now. She needs hope, even if it's empty.
Tears start to silently stream down her cheeks again and she sniffles, her chin quivering.
"I thought he was going to die, Gale," she says, voice barely above a whisper. "I thought I was watching him die."
Her eyes drop to her hands, no longer tinged pink, the red gone from under her fingernails.
"He was dying, just like my dad."
For a second she stills, frozen in a memory no one should have, watching her dad die again, just like when she'd been a little girl before she shudders and breaks, dry sobs wracking her body.
Gale instantly wraps her in his arms, pulling her to his chest and burying his face in her hair.
It doesn't smell like Madge, not soft and fruity, strawberries and raspberries, sometimes peaches, but clean, what must be her body's own scent hinting through his shampoo and soap.
"He didn't die," he reminds her gently. "He's going to be fine."
"Maybe we're biting off more than we can chew," she sputters wetly. "Maybe-"
"No," Gale cuts her off. "Snow needs to go down. Everyone he's got on his payroll needs to go down. Brutus, Cato, Clove, those idiots over in Precinct One taking kickbacks, all those people he's been using for years to keep this city under his thumb. You and Mellark and Abernathy, you're the good guys. We're winning this fight. He wouldn't've done something so desperate and stupid if we weren't."
It's scary. They've got an animal backed into a corner and it's lashing out, but they're winning, Gale knows it.
Things are going to get worse before they get better, and all he can do is protect her, keep her close and safe.
Madge pulls back, nodding and wiping her face. "I know we have to do this. For my dad and yours, all the people he's killed, but I just-I don't know how many more lives it's going to cost us, and I don't know if I'm strong enough to survive it."
She's a snotty, tear streaked mess, but Gale dips in, pressing a reassuring kiss to her damp lips.
"You're tough. You'll survive."
A weak smile forms on her lips and she sighs.
Her hands, cold and clammy, take Gale's and she leans her forehead against his shoulder.
Kissing the top of her head, Gale pulls her to her feet. "Let's get you some sleep."
She stays rooted on the spot. "I can sleep on the couch."
"Bullshit," he huffs, eyeing the couch suspiciously. "I let Mellark sleep there a few weeks ago with Katniss after we took her out to a bar for her birthday. I probably need to get it deep cleaned."
Or toss it, which is actually a more appealing alternative. He can live with lawn furniture if it means getting rid of whatever nasty reminders the two lovebirds might've left for him in his cushions.
Madge snorts, her swollen eyes crinkling up at the edges as she looks down at the couch.
He stays with her in the bed, just holds her, his fingers combing gently through her hair and his other hand tracing figure eights along the small patch of skin on her lower back where his ratty old shirt rides up.
He can feel her heart beating through her chest to his, slow and steady, her warm breath ghosting over his arms. The heat of her body reassures him she's alive and all the horrible events of the day haven't taken her from him, and when she finally gives in to exhaustion, he presses a kiss to her temple.
When she gets up, he's going to ask her to move in. He'll never sleep again with her so far away, in her unsafe apartment without any means of protecting herself and Snow's vendetta running like wildfire across the city.
They haven't been together, officially, for long, but he can't imagine his life without her.
Closing his eyes, he tries to get some rest.
He'll need all his energy to make this argument with her in the morning.
She needs to be safe.
Maybe he's being dramatic, thinking the only safe place will be with him, but he doesn't care. He'll convince her, even if it's only temporary.
The city needs her, but he needs her more.