Disclaimer: I'm just playing with Suzanne Collins' characters and her world. They're hers. Not mine.
Sirens
AN: Many thanks to FortuneFaded2012 for correcting my sleep deprived grammar by beta'ing this for me.
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Gale finishes snapping the ends from the beans. He tosses the last one into the colander, before he stands and stretches. Madge, who had been cleaning a mess of them in the sink, has abandoned her post and gone down the stairs to the street front with Katy-Jo Lewes.
It had been hot, sweltering and sweaty, for the past day and a sudden cool wind had swept in, which if Katy-Jo Lewes was to be believed, was an ominous sign.
"Storms will be coming soon," she told him.
He didn't know about Ten's weather as well as her, so he'd just shrugged and gone with Madge to the market.
They'd had a small disagreement when they'd gotten to the tomatoes.
"Don't you have to get back to Two for your appointment?" Madge had asked as she'd dug through the red fruits.
"No," Gale answered evasively. She didn't need to be memorizing his schedule.
She'd stopped, looked back at him with her nose wrinkled. "No? Did they change your time?"
They hadn't. Gale had been going to the same therapist, to work through the traumas of the war and even before, for several years. They'd decreased his visits to once a month during the last year, but Gale felt that was too often. He'd made giant leaps with his so called 'issues', the therapist had even said so. Gale wasn't about to cut his visit to Madge short just to make a meeting he didn't need.
"I'll just go next month." He'd told her as he handed her a large tomato.
She hadn't liked that answer. "You can't just skip those appointments, Gale. They're important for your health."
He hadn't responded to that, just refused to talk to her other than to grunt his approval of her vegetable choices. She'd given him several dark looks, but those had dissipated when the weather had started to change.
Now both girls were out, standing on the wooden walkway, staring at the sky.
Gale jogs down the back steps, weaves through the store to the front door, which they've propped open. He leans against the door frame, notes a loose nail down by the threshold, and squints out at the pair.
"Look at that sky," Katy-Jo Lewes shields her eyes, wrinkles her nose as she peers up at the hazy sky. It's dusky, a kind of faded green almost, and she doesn't seem to like it. She shakes her head. "They'll be telling us to get down soon."
Madge seems to understand, nods slowly. She's been in Ten for several years and isn't as confused by their cryptic messages as Gale.
He's just opened his mouth to ask her what she's talking about, something silly he's sure, when he hears it.
It's a high wail, almost muffled by the distance, but Gale recognizes it.
A siren.
He hasn't heard one in years, not since he'd left Twelve, but it isn't a sound he will ever forget. It's the sound that flooded the air when his father was killed. It's danger and death, and it drowns everything else out.
The world seems to slow. People begin running down the street. Katy-Jo Lewes gestures for Madge to come and grabs for her hand, but Madge dodges it and grabs Gale.
Her mouth is moving, she's saying something pulling on him, but he's rooted in the spot. When he doesn't budge she begins frantically tugging on him, squeezing his hand harder.
How she got him to move he doesn't remember, all he knows is that they're several blocks down the road and her face is tear streaked. She continues to pull him down the increasingly windy road, toward what he isn't sure, yelling back at him to 'Keep moving, Gale!'
Their destination becomes clear when they take a final corner.
Several men are holding up a large metal door, urging people down into the pit below.
Gale's mind immediately tells him to turn. There's a siren blaring and these idiots are going underground.
He starts to turn, run as far from the deathtrap as he can, but Madge catches him. Shebegins tugging him toward the hole, but much less forcefully than before. She's talking, screaming and crying, but all Gale can hear is the siren.
Her terror must get him to move, because the next thing he knows is dim yellow light and the coolness of a crypt. Madge is windswept and red-eyed when she finally pushes Gale to the ground. She swats at her eyes, keeps talking to him, but he can still only hear the siren.
Gale doesn't respond when she asks a question and Madge stumbles around to his side, drops to her knees and takes his face in her cool hands. Shemakes him look at her.
She's saying his name, he can read is on her lips, but everything else is drowned in the dull hum of the swell of bodies around them and the incessant screaming of the siren.
His heart, which had been pounding painfully in his chest, begins to slow as Madge's thumbs rub over his hot cheeks. She's covered in dark shadows from the poor lighting, but he can still see she's a mess. Her hair is in tangles, bits of debris, dirt and grass, are woven in it. Her cheeks are flush and her eyes are bright, shining in what little light they can absorb. He still can't hear her though.
Gale doesn't know how long they sit down there, several hours he's sure, but at some point, with Madge's tiny patch of warmth curled up into his side, he nods off.
#######
He wakes when someone slaps the side of his head.
Bleary eyed and with a throbbing headache, Gale blinks his eyes open, squints up at whoever has so rudely interrupted his nap.
Katy-Jo Lewes, darker than usual in the poor lighting of the underground room, is looking down at him. Her mouth is turned down and her eyebrows are pulled together disapprovingly.
"We let you sleep 'til we got everyone else out. Now you gotta get a move on, boy."
The twang of her voice is grating on his already frayed nerves and he's tempted to close his eyes and go back to sleep. He jerks awake, though, when his body notices the conspicuous lack of warmth beside it.
His head whips around, searching for any signs of Madge, but he only finds a cold, empty spot beside him.
"She went to the medical tent," Katy-Jo Lewes answers his question before he can even form it.
Gale stares at her, his foggy brain slowly registering what she's said.
Finally, the wheels turn, sluggishly, but he grasps her words.
"Medical tent?"
She nods, slowly, like she's explaining something to a very dull child. "Yeah. Medical tent, sugar. For her leg."
What she's saying still isn't making much sense. Gale blinks again, trying to focus on her and what's around him. She must see that he's still confused, because she sighs and begins tapping her foot as she waits for him to catch up with her.
Gale runs his hands over his face to try to rub the haze out of his eyes and mind. It takes a minute, but the last few hours start to piece together in his head.
It's a mess, fragmented and dull, but he gets the general idea.
Sirens and running and cold panic.
Struggling to his feet, he stumbles and nearly tumbles over Katy-Jo Lewes. She catches him and rights him, shoots him another disapproving glare.
"Will you calm down?"
He shakes his head and the room swims a little. Katy-Jo Lewes grabs his arm, keeps him upright.
"I need to get to Madge," Gale tells her as he pushes her away. His mouth is almost too dry to form the words.
The room is too dark. Someone had turned off most of the naked bulbs that had earlier illuminated it. Gale can't see the floor and nearly trips over several discarded shoes and a clump of blankets
For a minute it seems like she might just let him stumble around in the dark room. Her arms are crossed and her expression is tight. Finally, though, she sighs.
She stomps over, wraps her fingers with sharp little nails around his upper arm and pulls him with her.
"You're going the wrong way."
With her nails cutting into his skin, she tugs him through the dim room until he sees the faint glow of fading daylight breaking through the ceiling, making the room around him that much darker.
He almost starts to run for it, but his feet still can't quite move fast enough and he almost trips again.
Katy-Jo Lewes leads him up a ramp, he faintly remembers Madge pulling him down it earlier, and into the early hours of evening. She lets him go when they reach the night above.
The air is cooler, cleaner than it had been before. Looking around, Gale finds the ground littered with debris, leaves and branches and shingles from the buildings and houses. Several fences along the backsides of the shops on the main road are down, flattened and in some cases in pieces.
"Just a little one," Katy-Jo Lewes tells him when she notices his wide eyes.
He arches his eyebrows, "A little what?"
"Tornado," she answers simply. Her mouth forms a line, "Or maybe it was just straight line winds. Don't really know. They use to have people that studied the weather, but that was before the Dark Days. You should talk to that President of ours; see if we can get us some weather watchers again."
Gale nods numbly, only half registering what she's saying. His mind comes to a sudden, painful stop.
Medical tent.
He rounds on Katy-Jo Lewes. "Why is Madge in the medical tent?"
She rolls her eyes. "I told you, for her leg."
Something has happened to Madge, and it's Gale's fault. Katy-Jo Lewes' sharp attitude and narrowed looks tell him that.
Not waiting for elaboration, Gale takes off, leaving Katy-Jo Lewes yelling at his back. His feet and mind are working again and they both urge him forward. The medical tent will have to be in an open area, most likely the patch of land to the west.
He's just turned the corner, slipping in the loose gravel on the road, when he spots a large white canvas stretched from the lowest point of a battered looking old building out to several heavy looking poles. There are no sides, Gale can see people, all dressed in florescent yellow jackets, tending to wounded at little tables and beds set up under the canvas shade.
His feet start up again, quickly carrying him to the outer edge of the tent where he starts scanning each table and chair for Madge.
There are too many people, too much florescent moving in front of his eyes.
There's too much medical chatter echoing around him. It's too much like Thirteen when he and the other District Twelve refugees had arrived. Poking and prodding and testing.
Panic starts building up again, but he takes a breath and fights it. He has to find Madge.
An old woman, translucent skin and shockingly white hair, comes up behind him and taps him on the shoulder with her boney finger. When he turns and glares her ancient face wrinkles up in a smile. "Do you need attention, dear?"
She's holding a clipboard; he can see names and numbers on it. Another horrible flash of Thirteen shoots through Gale's mind, but he manages to nod, mumble out a name. "Uh, Madge Undersee."
Her smile widens, making her wrinkles more severe, and she holds the board up to within an inch of her face.
"Undersee?" She seems puzzled for a minute before making a happy noise. "Oh, here she is. Magdalene Undersee. Table twelve. She'll be in the main building."
She waddles in the spot, turns to the building and raises her weathered hand.
"Go through those doors, second hall to the right and straight on 'til you reach the end. Big twelve on the door. Can't miss it."
Gale barely grunts a 'thank you' before taking off again.
He barrels past a line of people getting shots from a harried looking woman, down the hall the old woman had directed him to, and to the door. Taking a breath, he pushes it open.
Madge blinks at him, clearly she hadn't expected visitors. She's sitting on a wooden table; it reminds Gale a bit of the worn table Rooba used to butcher on. Madge's skirt is hiked up on the left, exposing a deep gash running from just above her knee up to the upper edge of her panties.
Quickly she pushes her skirt down and gives him a scandalized look. "Gale!"
Before she can berate him for not knocking or something equally as minor, he rushes in and slams the door behind him. She makes to get up, but he catches her. He pushes her firmly back on the table and wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair.
She makes a little noise, a sort of muffled squeak, but doesn't pull away. Her hands, as cool as ever, give him a little pat on the back and she murmurs softly into his shoulder, though he has no idea what she could possibly be saying.
When he's finally satisfied she's real, not a figment of his desperate mind, he pulls back.
His hand immediately falls to her leg.
It's bloody and starting to bruise, but not as deep as he'd originally thought. There's a bottle of something, the salty compound he remembers being used to clean his burns in Thirteen, sitting open on the tiny rolling table beside Madge's seat, a wad of bloody gauze is tossed haphazardly beside it.
"It's not too bad," she tells him as he runs his fingers over her leg, avoiding the torn flesh. "They say it'll just take a few stitches."
Gale remembers Mrs. Everdeen stitching people up, getting out her needle and thread and pulling their ripped skin together. He remembers bottles of whatever drink was available and gnashing teeth as she mended skin. Madge is going to have to go through that, and it's his fault.
A sharp pain hits his chest again. If he'd just run, instead of being frozen in place and slowing her down, Madge might not be sitting in the cramped room in a back hall of some filthy medical building.
It could've been worse, though.
What if she wasn't able to get him to move? What if they hadn't gotten to that horrible shelter before the storm hit?
Madge could've died and Gale would be responsible.
The room echoes with a garbled noise. In the back of his head, Gale remembers the gurgling of dying animals and he turns his head to see what wounded creature has stumbled in.
His face is caught though, taken by the chin and turned back by Madge's delicate hands. She has one of the clean gauze out and runs it over his cheeks, smearing moisture across his face.
At first he thinks she's cleaning dust off of him and he starts to tell her not to bother. It isn't until she starts shushing him that he realizes he's crying.
He almost doesn't remember when he cried last. During the Games he supposes, frustrated, angry tears for and about Katniss.
The tears coming now, that won't seem to stop, are different. They aren't desperate sadness, like when his father died, or even relief, like when he'd caught his first rabbit in the shadow of many long, hungry weeks after the mine accident.
There's no pinpoint in his mind for why he's suddenly started sobbing, and that makes him cry harder.
"It's okay," she whispers. A little smile forms on her lips. "You're okay."
She pulls him into a hug, rests her hands on his back and rubs gentle circles on his shoulders.
He can feel the fabric of her dusty shirt getting increasingly wetter where his eyes continuously blink out forceful tears. As much as it irritates him, he can't stop.
For several minutes he just holds her, cries on her shoulder and soaks in the warmth of her body.
Madge isn't fragile, but she's human. She could be snatched from him so quickly and so senselessly, and that causes an ache to run through him down to his core. He's hurt too many people, lost too much, some by his own doing, and he can't add Madge to that list.
"I'm sorry," he tells her thickly. It barely comes out, sounds wet and sloppy to his ears when it does, but she understands.
#######
Gale holds her hand as the doctor, a pinched looking man that starts their introduction by telling them he's a veterinarian, stitches her up.
He doesn't watch, he can't. All he can do is study Madge's expressions as she scrunches her face with each poke of the needle. When it's over he offers to carry her home, her leg needs rest after all.
"Haha," she snorts, pokes him with the walking stick the veterinarian had given her. "I think I'll make it."
They pass Katy-Jo Lewes, who'd apparently come and immediately gotten in line for a shot from a tall, dark, and obnoxiously smiling man. Gale doubts she needs it, those shots are for the people down in the nails and metal, Madge's insane friend just wants to flirt. It's her favorite pastime.
When they reach the gravel road Gale scoops Madge up, despite her protests. He's the reason she's hurt and he won't let her injure herself more just because she's armed with a large stick.
She stops struggling after it becomes painfully apparent Gale is stronger than her. Her arms, nicked and scabbed, catch Gale's attention as she wraps them around his neck and his heart stings a little more.
"Will you promise me something?" She finally asks as her apartment comes into view.
Seeing her cut and bruised, filthy with dirt and debris, there's very little Gale would deny her at the moment. He nods.
"Go to your therapy appointment."
Should've seen that coming.
Madge bites her lip, peers up at him through her eyelashes. "Please. I know you're doing better, probably more than I even know, but-"
"I know." He isn't great. There are still things he needs to work through and avoiding his stupid therapist won't make those things go away.
As he's about to tell her he'll leave in a couple of days, just enough time to make it to Two and to his therapy session, he feels something warm and moist press to his cheek.
Madge's face, every inch of her pale skin and pink tinged cheeks, pulls back after Gale nearly knocks his nose into hers. His face tingles where she'd put her soft lips to his stubble covered jaw.
"I'm proud of you, Gale."
He scowls at that. She shouldn't be. It had taken getting her hurt for him to realize how far he still has to go. Still, her praise makes the stinging in his chest lessen fractionally.
Her face is so close, and for a second he wonders what her lips taste like. Something in his stomach flops over and he nearly jostles her, nearly leans in and closes the gap between them and gives in to his curiosity.
Madge's eyes are dark, just barely lit in the pale starlight, and Gale thinks she might let him.
A strong, cool wind blows up though, rustles her skirt, and the moment is broken.
She shivers in his arms and he quickens his pace.
"Think there's still time to cook those beans?" He asks, hoping to avoid an awkward lull in the walk.
Her nose wrinkles. "I think the power is out."
Gale chuckles. "Who needs electricity? I know how to build a fire. You get that bacon ready and we'll have dinner done in no time."
She shoots him a slight look. "I don't like touching the bacon." Her nose scrunches up. "It makes my hands all…ick."
"You are such a Town girl."
Her eyes roll and she mutters, "Whatever."
Gale laughs again.
It'll be hard, leaving early for his appointment. Leaving Madge and her squeamish tendencies and her soft lips, but if that's what it'll take to get better, keep from getting her hurt again, Gale's willing to do it.