Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
In the Looking Glass, pt 8
AN: Thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for beta'ing.
#######
Thread tears Birdy's room apart after finding nothing in her pockets but more nightlock. He dumps both of her bags, uncovers nothing but dresses and undergarments, a few women's hygiene products that he hurls at the wall.
He moves through each room in the house, emptying drawers, pulling clothing from the closets, stripping the beds.
Madge isn't sure what he's looking for, in fact, she isn't even sure he knows what he's looking for. Even when he rips through her father's office, breaks every bottle of expensive liquor in his cabinet, growing more agitated with each fruitless search, he's directionless.
He finally rounds on Madge and her mother, both of which he'd forced to watch his quick destruction of their home.
"Where did she get the nightlock?" His eyes are bright and wild, but his voice is a rough whisper.
Backing up to her mother, shielding her from Thread's instability, Madge shakes her head, "I don't know."
"Don't lie to me, girl."
"I'm not lying," Madge tells him, her voice breaking despite her best efforts to keep it even.
Thread grabs her by the arm, yanks her from her mother's grasp. "Where did she get it?" When he huffs a rough breath in Madge's face he smells like the harsh detergent Mrs. Oberst uses on the rugs and mint. "Tell me."
She shakes her head again. He's squeezing her arm so tightly tears begin welling up in her eyes. "I don't know."
With a growl of frustration he pushes Madge away, sending her to the floor.
Madge feels her mother's cool fingers on her face. She's dropped down next to her and begun examining her for injuries.
Her surprisingly clear eyes turn up to Thread, narrow at him. "There's no nightlock in the District. Please leave my home."
A harsh, humorless laugh bursts out of Thread's mouth. His cold smile replaces the wild expression. "You think you have any authority here, Mrs. Undersee?"
It's abundantly clear she doesn't by the tone of Thread's voice.
He stares at the pair for a minute, the twisted cogs of his mind turning, and then he turns to the two Peacekeepers.
"Take the girl to get her father." He doesn't even spare a look at Madge and her mother. "He's the Mayor of this forsaken hellhole. He'll either know where the nightlock came from or he'll watch me rip his darling family apart."
Again, Thread grabs Madge, hauls her to her feet, and pulls her to within an inch of his face, "Be quick or your mother will miss you."
#######
When they get down the stairs Madge's stomach is in knots. She's positive her father has no more of an idea where the nightlock came from than Madge does. Her mind begins racing through all the possible outcomes, and none of them are good.
The male Peacekeeper picks up Birdy's body as he and the girl escort Madge to get her father.
The girl, whose skin is darker than anyone Madge has ever met, brushes Birdy's hair out of her face, takes a cloth from her pocket and wipes the purple juice from mouth. The boy's wide brown eyes droop, the deep color of his skin seems to drain of blood, pales unnaturally.
Madge frowns at the pair. Why are they being so careful with her?
For a second they seem frozen, just staring at the limp body of the former Victor. Then the girl wipes her cheek.
"Let's go. Not gonna make her any less dead looking at her," the girl sighs.
She motions for Madge to follow her, holds the door open and presses her finger to her lips, warning Madge to keep her questions to herself. At least for the time being.
Once they're outside, just outside the line of sight of Madge's home's windows, the girl, who is apparently in charge of whatever confusing thing is going on, stops them.
"Jessup, you take Birdy. We're not leaving her here." She presses her lips into a line, blinks a few times, then sighs. Her wide eyes, a soft golden color, turn to Madge. "You'll come with me. We need to get your daddy. This is going down tonight."
"What's going down?" Madge feels her heart pounding harder. "Who are you?"
The girl gives her a soft smile. "We're Birdy's friends. Or we were. We're the one's got her the nightlock. Brought it to her this morning." She sniffles. "She didn't want to go back. Said she was tired. Didn't want to have her last moments filmed for posterity."
The air seems heavier, it gets harder to breath.
It made sense. These were the Peacekeepers thathad been in her house just that morning, and out of all the people in the District, Peacekeepers could certainly leave the fence without drawing much attention. They could've easily snuck the berries in.
Madge can easily imagine Birdy not wanting to be another Capitol display. Her death, which seems like it would be inevitable given the circumstances, would be one more centerpiece to the Capitol's Game.
"We don't have time for you to ponder this over, hon." The girl finally says, an edge of irritation in her voice. "We need to get this District moving."
"When the time comes, you go with my boys, understand?"
Madge feels the anxiety creep further up her back. The end, whatever it is, is near.
#######
The boy, Jessup, runs off, carrying Birdy and telling the girl he'll be back with help as soon as he can.
"We would shoot off the flares but that would alert Thread," the girl tells Madge as they run to the Justice Building.
As they run, despite being breathless, Madge asks, "I didn't think District Ten supplied Peacekeepers."
The girl smiles, takes heavy breaths. "We don't. We killed a few of the newbies then had some friends in Three doctor up the paperwork. This is a long con, Madgie."
They jump up the step to the Justice Building, two, three at a time, burst through the heavy doors and into the main hall. Madge is in front, leading the girl down the hall to the end, where her father is working late again.
Madge slams into the door, her sore arm taking the brunt of the force, and grunts, turns the handle and pushes it open.
"Dad!"
He's not at his desk and Madge feels her stomach drop.
"Madge?" Her father comes from behind her, one of his heaviest paperweights hoisted high over his head. It drops to the ground with a thud and he grabs her, pulls her into a tight hug. He must finally notice the girl. "Who are you?"
"Katy-Jo Lewes," the girl finally introduces herself. She frowns, looks out the window. "We need to be quick, sir. Birdy's dead and Thread has your wife. I got that covered though."
The color drains from his face as he swallows thickly. "It's ending then."
"'Fraid so," Katy-Jo makes a face. "I hope you know how to get the power down."
His eyebrows knit together, "I was waiting on one last resort."
Madge remembers the paper, crumbled and sweaty in her pocket. Hand shaking, she pulls it out and passes it to her father. "I'm supposed to give this to you."
The room gets very quiet as he studies the intricate drawing, his eyes rapidly scanning over each piece of the puzzle. Finally, he sighs.
"No way around it then."
"No way around what?" Madge doesn't like his tone, the defeat in his eyes.
Her father takes her hand, kisses her knuckles. "No way around what I have to do."
"What do you have to do?" He's scaring her, more than she already had been.
A small smile, a hopeless one, forms on his worn face. "They have the main breaker for the electricity in the District fixed. We can't turn it off without triggering a defensive measure."
Madge feels her features fall. 'Defensive measures' sounds ominous.
He must read the worry in her eyes, because he answers the question before she can ask it, "The building, the one that houses the electrical circuits, is set to explode if it's tampered with."
Though he doesn't say it, Madge already knows her father is going to be 'tampering with' the electrical unit.
"That's why you've been studying electricity?" Tears start slipping down her cheeks. "You've known this whole time?"
"No," he shakes his head. "We kept looking for a way around it. There isn't though. This," he holds up the paper, "was the last hope."
Madge feels her body start to shake. Her father is going to die. He's had some vague idea that his death was a possibility for months, at least, and he'd kept that information from her. Not telling her mother Madge understands, but Madge's father has always confided in her. It burns cold in her chest, even if she understands it. He's saved her from the burden of knowing what terrible things were coming.
He was shielding her. The last time he'd ever be able to do so.
"Daddy, no," she whispers. Her knees buckle under her and she falls into him. His arms, the same ones that had rocked her to sleep when she was little, picked her up when she fell, gave her hugs when she'd had a bad day at school, were giving her one last comfort before vanishing from her life entirely.
"I have to, Pearl."
She knows he does. He's drilled it into her for a lifetime. Help others before yourself.
This is the ultimate sacrifice. The final one for the District he's been trying to save Madge's entire life. A part of Madge suddenly hates everyone her father is about to save. They've never cared about all the hardships her family has endured to keep them even minimally comfortable, and they'll never know that her father gave his life for their chance at safety.
She feels him shift, look up at Katy-Jo. "You'll take care of her?"
"Like she's my own sister."
#######
Madge stays wrapped in the comfort of her father's arms as they make their way out of the building and down the back steps.
For the last time, Madge's father presses a kiss to her forehead, gives her one last hug.
"Be good. Stay safe." He cups her cheek. "I love you."
Then he's gone.
Though she wants to do nothing more than stare at the empty space he's left, remember his words on an endless loop in her mind until the end comes, Katy-Jo has other plans.
"I'm sorry, but we gotta go." She casts a sharp look toward the horizon. "We gotta get your momma then get as many of these fools outta here as we can."
Wiping her eyes, Madge nods. Her father is counting on her. She has to get the people up, out of their houses and to the fence. She has to save her mother.
They run, Madge several yards ahead of the other girl, to the house.
"Hold up, Madgie." Katy-Jo says harshly, catching Madge by the back of her blouse. "I'm the one with the gun, remember?"
They creep up the steps, Katy-Jo in front, her gun, a sidearm, up and ready to shoot Thread.
The house is dark; Thread must've turned the lights off.
Uncertain where Madge's mother and he are, Katy-Jo Lewes quietly opens the door, keeping Madge an arm's length behind her. Then she stops and stands up straight, a puzzled look on her face.
"What the hell happened here?"
Cold terror floods Madge's veins and she pushes past her self-appointed protector. She stops dead in her tracks.
Thread is on the sofa, pale and slumped over, unmoving. Madge's mother is in her favorite chair, a cup and saucer in her hands, daintily sipping tea. It's not a scene Madge had ever expected to walk in -Jo, looking more than a little confused, walks around the couch, checks Thread's pulse. He doesn't have one.
"Mom." Madge runs across the room, grabs her mother in a tight hug, knocking her tea to the ground. "What happened?"
Her mother sighs, tilts herhead and gives Thread's dead body a vague look. "He threatened to do terrible things to you, love. So I made him tea." She gives Katy-Jo an airy smile. "I put some of your berries in his drink, dear."
Madge's heart, which had been beating faster than she'd ever felt, came to a sudden stop.
Her mother, her loopy mother, had killed Romulus Thread. He probably hadn't thought she was any kind of threat. She'd used his lack of perceiving her as a possible danger to poison him.
Grabbing her hand, Madge tries to pull her mother from the chair. "We need to go, mom."
She doesn't budge though.
"I can't, love."
"Yes, you can. Come on." Madge gives her another tug.
Then she notices it. Blood on both their hands.
Her mother takes her pale, cool hand back, looks at the blood, black in the moonlight and sighs.
"He was so angry when he realized what I'd done. Pulled out his gun."
She gestures to her stomach. There's a patch of black, wet and sticky, on her white gown.
"Oh, mom." Madge feels bile rise in her throat, burn as she swallows it back down. She turns to Katy-Jo. "Help me get her up."
When she doesn't come, Madge turns again, tears rolling down her face, "Please!"
"She'll be too slow," Katy-Jo says. She puts a hand on Madge's shoulder. "We move her too much and she'll bleed to death."
"I'm not leaving her!"
Katy-Jo's golden eyes widen, jump between Madge and her mother. She nods.
"Okay, let's get things moving then come back for her."
Madge feels pressure on her fingers and turns. Her mother gives her a weak smile.
"I've not always been a very good mother, but you've always been such a good daughter." She presses Madge's blood soaked fingers to her cheek. "I'm so proud of you."
She knows what she has to do, but Madge can feel her heart falling to pieces at the thought of leaving her mother.
"Mrs. Oberst is coming to keep me company," her mother tells her. "I won't be alone."
It's cold comfort, knowing their hateful old housekeeper is getting up to come sit with her dying mother, but Madge understands. It's permission to do what needs to be done.
Leave.
Quickly, tears falling hard and fast down her cheeks, Madge leans in and presses a kiss to her mother's forehead. "I love you."
"I love you too."
#######
Madge is still crying, heaving in sobs, when she follows Katy-Jo out the door.
"I'm sorry."
Madge forcefully swats the tears off her face only to have them replaced by more as she nods.
Taking a few deep breaths, she finally settles herself enough to speak. "We need to get to the foreman's office."
Katy-Jo frowns. "Why?"
"There's an alarm, a siren, for when there's a mine collapse," Madge tells her as she starts to run.
"Like a tornado siren?" Katy-Jo asks, already half out of breath.
Madge doesn't know what a tornado siren is, but nods anyway.
She focuses on the burn of the air in her lungs, the pain in her legs and in the arm Thread had grabbed her by. Anything but her parents' impending deaths.
I just have to get the warning out.She tells herself. Then maybe she can get back to her mother. She isn't a lost cause yet.
The office is easy to get to, is just off the way from the path to the Seam.
Katy-Jo breaks in the door and Madge runs in. She knocks several piles of papers over, and few knick-knacks fall to the floor in her hurry to get to the alarm button.
The moment her hand hits it a high noise fills the air. It screams out that a disaster has just occurred. Only Madge and the fake Peacekeeper know different. Madge doesn't stop for long, she can't. She runs back out the door, past Katy-Jo, back on her frantic path to the Seam.
"You tell that boy to have his buddies wear those helmets of theirs when they come out here."
Gale is who she needs. He's the one people will follow, trust, she knows it. That's what Birdy had meant. Time starts to slip by, faster and faster. The burn of her run starts to overwhelm Madge, but she doesn't stop.
When she takes the turn to the row of houses where Gale lives she starts screaming his name.
"GALE!"
People are already out of their houses, confused by the alarm in the middle of the night. Madge dodges and weaves between the people who increasingly congest her path.
"GALE!"
He's out, still in his mining uniform, apparently having started watching the Games and not changed yet. His eyes widen at her wild state, dirty and with blood on her hands. Her panic is overwhelming her so much that she barely registers the people blocking her way.
"GALE!"
He catches her before her legs carry her past him, keeps her from sliding to the ground with her abrupt stop, his hands gripping her arms.
"What happened to you?" He grabs her hands, studying the sticky blood on them.
"They're coming, Gale! We have to get everyone out!"
His head shakes, "What are you talking about?"
"They're-"
A loud, deafening bang interrupts the siren. Madge turns and sees a flash of light in the distance. Then the lights go out.
Her heart stops. Her father is dead.
"Gale!" Rory bounds out of the house. "Katniss shot the top of the arena and then the lights went out!"
The rest of the Hawthornes appear, in the doorway. Vick pales when he sees Madge.
"Your hands-"
She holds up her hand, shakes her head. She's wasted too much time. She can't answer his questions.
"Gale, get your friends, tell them to use their headlamps. We marked the poles, use your picks, hit them at the bases, where the reflective tape is. They should come down."
"Wh-"
"Just do it!" She snaps.
He stares at her, like he's seeing her for the first time. Then he nods.
Katy-Jo comes bounding up and Gale tenses, reaches for Madge, but she shakes her head.
"Bad news. Thread must've known we were up to something. Probably what he was looking for. He told all the Town folks to get in their cellars if the lights went out." She's barely caught her breath from running. "I got some of the other's trying to get them out, but they're having to break into all the shops to get to them."
Madge nods, swallows more bile down. She turns back to Gale, willing him to be brave as she knows he is. Her damp fingers take his hand, give it a squeeze. This is the last contact she's ever going to have with him, she knows it.
If she were brave, she would hug him, throw her arms around him and give him a goodbye kiss.
A last kiss, she's certain of it.
She doesn't though. It isn't in her to do it.
"Be safe Gale."
She turns and runs, back toward the town, leaving Katy-Jo yelling after her. Her mother might still have some hope.
#######
There are a dozen Peacekeepers, Katy-Jo's friends, breaking in doors and windows, yelling for people to get out.
Madge doesn't see many in the street.
Delly Cartwright is one of the few. She runs headlong into Madge when they take a corner.
"Delly!"
"Oh, Madge! The Peacekeepers came and told us the District is about to be bombed!" She looks around fretfully. "My parents are trying to help get people out of the cellars, but they told me to get to the fence."
Madge nods, "Go. Get to the fence. It's the safest place. Get out of the District."
She doesn't elaborate, just runs past the still blubbering and confused Delly.
Just as she's crossing the square, it's littered with debris, glass and wood from the fake Peacekeepers efforts to get people out of their cellars, when the air gets still.
It's a peculiar kind of heat that the Capitol's hovercrafts give off, dry and harsh. Madge looks up, just barely able to make out the dark outline of the first of what she's certain are many, as it glides, soundlessly over her.
She tracks it, follows it with her eyes, nearly tripping as she does so. It comes to a stop, a lazy pause in the sky.
Then the bombs start to fall.
Heat, worse than a thousand summer days, more overwhelming than the kitchen when Mrs. Oberst cooks in the dog days, comes up in a wave as the first bomb hits.
They don't make a sound as they fall, just drop from the hovercrafts and explode in white hot light when they hit their mark.
Madge is knocked off her feet by the force of the blast that destroys the Justice Building. Eyes burning, she squints into the brilliant flames, watches her father's second home crumble in on itself.
Mom.
Struggling to her feet, Madge tries to run, but her legs finally give out. The ground is on fire, hot as a skillet fresh from the stove. The world around her burns, but Madge crawls.
She makes it to the end of the road leading to her house when another silent hovercraft glides to a stop over her home. It explodes, bursts into arches of fire and heat, just like the rest of the District.
And she's alone.
Her tears have dried up in the heat, the hot wind whips the last of them from her face. Madge feels her insides burning, the swelter is going to incinerate her from the inside out, and she doesn't care.
"Madge Undersee?" Someone yells over the cracking of the wood and the explosions.
Madge doesn't turn.
Something large comes up beside her, clomps debris up into the air around her.
"Magdalene Undersee?" They ask again.
Madge finally turns her swollen eyes upward, to a dark skinned man on horseback. He holds a hand out to her. "Come on, dear. We gotta make a quick exit."
She doesn't want to leave. She wants to sit where she is and burn.
Her mother and father's 'I love you' drift through her mind. Mr. Abernathy's insistence that she stay alive. Birdy's desire to save at least oneperson.
She owes it to them not to give up.
Her hand reaches up, takes the older man's work worn hand, and he pulls her up with ease, practically tossing her onto the back of his restless horse.
"Hold on!"
They take off; the searing wind cuts at her raw skin as they ride through the blazing remains of the Town. Behind them, Madge can hear more explosions.
I hope Gale got enough out.
Heat and exhaustion start to take their toll and that's her last thought before her world goes dark.
#######
It takes several days of hard riding before they reach District Ten.
It's flat, an expanse of endless grass as far as Madge can see from her spot behind Katy-Jo, who insists on being called by her whole name.
"There are a dozen 'Katy-Jo's'," she tells Madge after she's helped her tend to the raw burns on her arms, legs, and face. "But there's only one 'Katy-Jo Lewes'."
That, Madge decides, after several days of riding in a rickety wagon beside her, is probably for the best. Katy-Jo Lewes, though nice, is just as crazy as her former best friend.
Jefferson, the wiry haired man that had ridden into the fires to rescue Madge, keeps an eye on her. He's quiet, but firm, the leader of the young group.
"They started burning the fields," he tells Madge when they spot black smoke filling the sky ahead of them and filling Madge with anxiety. "Trying to make a smoke screen. Obscure the hovercraft operators' views."
Madge just nods, her throat is still raw from the heat, making talking painful.
Her still sore and swollen eyes take in the empty frontier. She's in the center of nothingness, and it makes her chest ache at the unfamiliarity.
Madge doesn't like the sensation of being lost. She isn't adventurous.
But there's no option this time, no going back. She's fallen down a rabbit hole and through a looking glass, into a strange new land, a strange new life. She's riding along on a path every bit as foreign as the one she'd started on when she went into the Seam just over a year ago.
All she can do is hope this path leads her to a less dangerous place than the last.
#######
A/N: And that's it! This story is done. Madge and Gale's story picks up again in 'Possibilities of a Life', which is just the mishmash of one-shots that encompass the times from when they're both children to when they have children. I try to only do one 'chapter' story at a time and at the moment I'm working on a a story for Haymitch and Matilda (Madge's mother), after that I'm not sure what I'll do.