Present Day — Five Weeks After The Bombing of District 12

Location: District 12

...

Madge is slipping in and out of consciousness. She doesn't know how long she's awake, and she has even less of a clue as to how long she's out of it. But she does know that when she does regain some semblance of consciousness, she doesn't have the strength to do anything and she's almost immediately pulled back under.

Even when she's slipping, she somehow understands that she's losing a lot of blood. Small things come to her as the hours pass. Or perhaps it's actually days that pass. It's hard to gauge time.

She vaguely feels the warm blood beneath her become cold. She vaguely feels the ache in places that hadn't been hurting before. Her shredded fingertips, her aching joints, her blistered hands. She vaguely hears Buttercup enter the house from an opened window.

She feels tired. She feels cold. She feels weak from the amount of blood she's lost. She knows that she won't hang on for much longer.

When she wakes up for a few brief moments, she uses the last bit of energy she has in her to allow her hand to drift up towards the Mockingjay necklace around her neck.

I'm sorry, Mom.

Her finger traces the cool surface of the pendant, and a single tear slips from her eye before they flutter shut once again.

...

The next thing she remembers, Madge feels someone lifting her up and listens to a female voice shrieking words that she can't quite catch. Another voice, distinctly male and somewhat familiar, barks something back. The voice sounds static.

A few seconds pass — or maybe several weeks; it's hard to gauge time — and Madge feels someone carrying her and running. They — the female voice from before and the now not-static male voice — whisper soothing words to her and she doesn't understand what they're telling her.

But, as she allows her limp body to be carried wherever they're carrying her, she feels an odd sense of security. She feels somewhat safe.


Present Day — Five Weeks After The Bombing of District 12

Location: District 12

...

"Katniss. Should I come down?" Gale's voice echoes through the headset Katniss has on her head.

Katniss shakes her head 'no' before remembering that he can't hear the gesture. "No. I'm fine."

She looks down at her feet then back up, glancing at the wreckage that she once called home. Life in the Seam was difficult, but Katniss misses it at times. She remembers the days where people would dance in the Square. She remembers the sense of community everyone had when they were in the Hob. It was nice. She has a lot of good memories (and a lot of bad ones too) in this place.

But now it's all gone.

Nothing survived the bombings. Nothing at all.

Most of the authorities in District 13 didn't want Katniss leaving the safe haven of the underground district, but the surviving Victors encouraged it. Haymitch, Beetee, and Finnick. All three of them, Katniss can hardly stand. Haymitch lied to her, Beetee manipulated her, and Finnick...

Her throat goes dry. Well, maybe she's not too angry with Finnick. It's hard to stay angry at someone who cries that much.

She begins walking away from her old house in the Seam and towards the Town. Towards her house in Victor's Village.

As she approaches the bakery, she feels a pang of guilt. When Katniss first arrived in District 13, she asked around for information about Peeta's family. They all died. She remembers Peeta's father, the kind man who offered her cookies and financial support for Prim before she had left for her first Games. His wife was a witch in every sense of the word, but the baker and his sons were good men.

In a sense, she feels a horrible sense of relief. Could she have been able to bear the silent, accusing blue glares of Peeta's family? Would she have been able to tolerate them silently blaming them for Peeta's demise?

All of a sudden, it's too much to handle for Katniss. She runs past the mayor's house and thinks of Madge. The girl that has been the subject of Gale's frequent nightmares. Gale didn't talk to her about the night terrors revolving around a certain blonde, but she overheard Bristol and Thom murmuring about them the other day. Of course, she didn't press the subject with the boy.

Walking swiftly past the mayor's house, she begins walking towards the twelve unscathed houses that make up Victor's Village. She runs past the gate, taking relief in the fact that she is no longer breathing in someone's ashes, and starts heading towards the house she lived in for a year.

As she nears the house, something catches her eye. Something on the steps. Her eyes widen as she follows a trail of dried blood into her house. As she follows the blood trail with her eyes, she sees that the front door of her home and been shoved open. Upon further inspection, she sees a bloody handprint on the door.

Katniss immediately snatches the bow slung around her shoulders and cocks an arrow in it. Her headset chimes.

"You need me to come down?" Gale's voice asks.

"Yes. Come slowly," she says quietly. She doesn't know what awaits her behind the half-opened door, but she has the sense not to go into it alone.

The headset chimes again. "I'm coming."

Katniss inches forward, slowly creaking open the door. When she takes a look at what's inside the house, her eyes widen once more. It looks like there's been a brutal murder in the house. Bloody handprints adorn the walls as if someone was leaning on them to support their weight. A messy trail of blood is smudged all over the wooden floors, and there's an abundance of blood spattered everywhere.

"Holy shit," she breathes.

Katniss tries not to make a habit of cursing. Her mother was always very strict about that, and her little sister always looked uneasy when she overheard the occasional drunk minor cursing loud enough for President Snow to hear them. But seeing this...

"What's wrong?" Gale questions over the headset.

"I... I'm not sure."

She inches forward a few more steps, ready to shoot an arrow through the heart of anyone who comes lunging out at her. The air is full of blood. The house smells exactly like the arena did when Cato died. But there's another scent beneath it.

Roses.

Before she could think too much of it, she starts moving forward once more. It is unnerving seeing a place you once called home in this condition. It's extremely unnerving. Katniss follows the blood trail as it gets broader and the blood looks fresher. It leads to the kitchen. She jumps into the kitchen, her bow poised in front of her, ready to strike. She doesn't find, however, the massacre she had been expecting to find.

Instead, she finds one motionless girl sprawled out across the kitchen tiles, lying in a pool of her own blood.

"Found a body," Katniss says into her headset.

"Hold still; I'm coming."

Upon closer inspection, Katniss spots something fuzzy moving from the opened window in the kitchen. Buttercup. The world's ugliest tomcat hops down from the window ledge and lets out an angry yowl. Katniss ignores the cat, and steps closer to the body on the ground. She flips the girl over so that she's facing the ceiling. Blood is crusted to her blonde hair, so much so that it looks red. Her face has a thin sheen of red over it, and her slightly parted, chapped lips reveal slightly yellowed teeth.

She looks familiar, Katniss slowly realizes as she dips her fingers down to check for a pulse. The first few seconds, she's sure that there is no pulse at all. Then, a very faint rhythmic tempo makes itself known against Katniss' fingers.

Katniss jerks her hand back in shock and stares wide-eyed at the motionless — but very much alive — girl. She looks so eerily familiar...

Then it hits her.

"Gale! Gale!" Katniss shrieks into the headset, her voice shaky. "It's Madge! And she's alive!"

"Who?" Gale demands almost incredulously.

"Madge Undersee," she blurts. Katniss moves to cradle the still-alive girl into her lap. "Hurry, we need to get her back to District 13!"

"I'm on my way," is the brief reply he gives.

Katniss dips her fingers down again and feels the very faint pulse once again. Having Madge in her lap like this, bleeding out around her, reminds Katniss so much of Rue's dying moments. She hadn't been able to save Rue, but she will be able to save Madge.

"Just hold on, Madge," she whispers raspily. Katniss was never good with words, but she's managing to find the right ones now. "You'll be just fine. I promise."


A/N: sorry about the short chapter. I'll try to make up for it with a longer one next week. Thoughts on this one? As always, criticism/feedback/suggestions are happily welcomed.