Present Day — Five Weeks After The Bombing of District 12
Location: District 13
...
"How long have you known?" Gale asks tiredly.
Bristol scratches the back of her neck and glances at Thom. "Uh, ever since we saw her running into the Everdeen house with the morphling?" she finally answers though her voice seems doubtful. Her hands dart up to scratch the back of her neck. "Gee, Gale. I thought you already knew."
Thom tips his head into a slow nod. "Yeah, we figured you'd find out sooner or later."
"Guess it was the latter," Gale snaps.
Bristol exchanges another glance with her cousin before lifting her hands in surrender. "I'm sorry, man, but I'm not exactly understanding why you're getting so worked up over this. A girl who cared about you brought you medicine. Big deal."
"I had the right to know, Bristol," the sullen boy growls.
Thom rests a hand on Gale's shoulder, leaning over the open textbook between them. "Buddy, even if we'd told you, do you think it would've changed anything. Hell, knowing the kind of idiot that you are, you'd probably resent her even more. You'd feel like you were her charity case or some shit."
"Besides," Bristol says with a shrug, "She asked us all not to tell you. I'm guessing for the reason Thom just said. You'd misunderstand the situation."
Gale rustles his hair with his hands and exhales sharply. "I feel like I owe her everything. She saved my life, and I didn't even know. And now she's dead and gone, and there's nothing I can do to repay her."
...
His mother knew about the morphling, Gale comes to find out. When he asked her about it, she looked guiltily at the dishes she was washing.
"She asked me not to tell you, Gale," she had explained, "And who was I to refuse the girl who saved your life?"
He knows he shouldn't be angry with his mother, but he can't help but feel a little irate. Thoughts about a particular blonde and morphling plague his mind as he sits across from Beetee. As it turns out, Beetee is a genius in every sense of the word. And Gale finds himself enjoying the older man's company. He kinda... kinda reminds him of his father in a way.
"Any updates?" Gale asks, glancing over the blueprint of a bomb Beetee's designing. "In regards to Katniss, I mean."
Beetee gives a nod. "We're still trying to get Katniss to work with us. We're thinking of sending her to District 12 later this week. Hopefully, that'll spark something in her."
"Yeah," Gale says with a nod, "Hopefully."
Present Day — Five Weeks After The Bombing of District 12
Location: District 12
...
Madge grows more used to the throwing knife as the week progresses.
She spends most of her time in the woods, attempting to learn how to use both weapons: the knife and the bow and arrow. With the throwing knife, her aim is getting better and even grows to like throwing the blade. The sense of accomplishment she feels when she throws the knife and it strikes the target rivals the sense of accomplishment she felt after playing a piano piece void of errors.
Unfortunately, learning archery yields poorer results. Katniss had once told her that the most desperate people are the quickest learners, and somehow her words only anger Madge more. Isn't she desperate enough? Yes, by all accounts, she is desperate enough. Not many people go from having more money than you could ever need to being able to count every single one of your ribs.
So if she's desperate enough, why is it that every time she attempts to fire the damn thing, the arrow goes flying wildly in the wrong direction and lands several yards away from her intended target?
There's not a single person in this world more hopeless at learning archery than she is, she thinks to herself as she pulls the string back. With a small movement of her fingers, she releases the string and the arrow is flying...
flying...
flying...
straight into the mud.
With an irate grunt, she goes to retrieve the muddy arrow, grumbling under her breath all the while.
"Stupid arrow... stupid bow..." she mutters like an immature child.
Her mind is completely and entirely consumed with frustration regarding her lack of progress. Madge was always good at everything she tried her hand at. School, piano, art, even knife-throwing. Okay, maybe not knife-throwing. Not yet, at least.
So, as she wanders deeper in to the woods in search of edible berries (thank the universe for Katniss' herb book), Madge is distracted. The number one rule of surviving in the woods: don't get distracted. Anything can happen in the blink of an eye, so always remain alert.
Yet somehow, as Madge places the arrow back in the quiver and slings the bow over her shoulder, she forgets this key rule of thumb.
So she continues walking, not noticing the crunch of leaves from behind her. Not hearing the soft growl approaching her. And when Madge finally does notice it, it's too late.
She spins on her heel sharply, only to see a wild dog snarling at her from a few feet away. The animal is large, so large that Madge wonders for a fleeting second if it was a capital mutt. Its teeth glint in the sunlight and its eyes are narrowed at her. She doesn't even have time to scream before it lunges at her, its jaws clamping around her leg and throwing her to the ground.
Madge grunts, feeling blood flowing down her leg. She reaches for the throwing knife just as the beast lunges for her once again. Its teeth dig into her flesh and Madge cries out before rearing her hand back and stabbing the knife into the dog's thick skin. She rears her hand back once more and stabs the mangey creature twice more before it howls and releases her leg.
Madge stands to her feet, attempting to run away, but quickly realizes that her leg wouldn't cooperate.
As the dog looks at her once more and growls, the blonde yanks out the bow and quickly positions an arrow to be fired. The next series of events happen quickly. In a matter of seconds, it's all over.
The dog lunged. Madge fired. The arrow lodged through its skull.
As the dog slumped to the ground, Madge quickly does the same, her leg no longer able to support her weight. She looks down at the carnage and nearly vomits. The pants she had been wearing now has one side completely shredded, the skin under it also meeting the same fate. Her left leg has blood spurting out of it wildly, and the grass underneath her quickly becomes stained red.
Her other leg has a single bite wound just above her knee, but it isn't nearly as bad as her left.
Madge groans, propping herself up with her elbow. With the adrenaline rush slipping away from her, she is suddenly in a world of pain. Pain, pure unadulterated pain, blossoms from her leg and makes her dizzy. After taking another glance at her leg, she realizes that you can see the white of her bone amongst the ripped flesh.
This time, she can't help but retch at this sight.
I need to get back to Victor's Village.
So Madge stands and starts hobbling out of the woods, each step sending sparks up her leg. When the air hits her left leg, she wants to scream out. She finally reaches the fence and barely crawls under it without dissolving into tears.
I need to get back to Victor's Village.
She hobbles through District 12, gritting her teeth. She feels a few tears slip down her cheeks. Finally, when Victor's Village comes into view, it's all she can do to keep on her feet. By the time she's taking her last few steps to Victor's Village, her left leg has completely given way and she's barely managing to drag it along. She pushes open Katniss' door and nearly collapses once she's inside.
She pulls herself to the kitchen-turned-apothecary and attempts to wash off the blood with a damp rag. At this point, her hands are stained red and she's not sure whether it's her own blood or the dog's. Turning to her leg, she rinses it under the tap and winces as the water makes contact with her skin. When the blood is as cleared as it's going to get, she yanks open the medicine cabinet and retrieves a first aid kit.
Placing the first aid kit down, she takes a look at her leg once more.
She rips off the torn fabric of her pant leg to get a better look at it.
"Fuck," she hisses.
Her entire leg, from just above her knee to her ankle is covered with bite marks and punctures. The flesh is shredded in some areas, and she's not even sure of how to fix that. However, other parts of her mangled leg, she knows she needs to stitch it up lest she bleeds out in the Everdeen's kitchen.
Her hands are shaking and she wishes that there was someone to do this for her. She reaches for the first aid with trembling, pale hands and extracts a sterilized needle and thread from the kit, hovering it over her mutilated flesh. She's never done this before with human flesh, but her mother did teach her how to patch up small tears and rips in her clothing.
As she hovers a trembling hand over her wounds, she realizes the only other alternative is bleeding out. And Madge isn't ready to throw in the towel yet. She's survived too much to die because of some mangey mutt.
With shaky hands, she plunges the needle into her the edge of her wound and nearly screams. Before she could chicken out of it, she presses the needle out through the other side and draws it back to her again.
And slowly, with shaky hands and lots of tears, she begins to stitch her wounds up.
By the time she's done, her hands are red and her vision is blurry. Looking around the Everdeen house, it looks like a murder scene. There's blood everywhere. She's lost so much of it, and she's starting to see double of everything.
Her head feels woozy and her mouth is suddenly very, very dry.
And Madge starts feeling herself slipping. She hits the floor with a grunt, but can't find the strength to lift herself back up. She attempts to though, trying her damn hardest to prop herself up with her elbows. She can't go out like this. She's not ready. How had everything escalated so quickly? She was in the woods, trying to learn how to defend herself. She was foraging for food. She was supposed to be out of danger. Oh, she's not ready to die.
I can't go like this. I can't, I can't, I can't.
But fate doesn't care whether you're ready or not, Madge would come to learn several years later. So, almost without warning, her eyes flutter close and she's suddenly falling into a world of black.
A/N: So we know that Katniss' visit to District 12 is coming up soon, hopefully, Madge can make it until then. I'm kinda iffy with how this chapter turned out, and I hope the dog attack didn't seem too rushed. And, wow, I'm so sorry about how late this update was. It's almost embarrassing in a way. The very kind reviews that you've left behind (especially the one from 12/10) have truly been my motivation to finish up this chapter.
