Chapter Text
“Your match was supposed to be here, right?”
The question came from Cheri, the woman anywhere between one and four decades older than Madison. The hard eyes and slight drooping features—which somehow gave an impression of cutting sharpness— made it impossible to gauge.
Madison nodded, returning back to the numbers before her. It would be easier if she had a computer or tablet, but those were not the types of things to be wasted on the likes of her. Sgt. Harris had told her that, with a booming laugh and a touch that streaked down her cheek. She did not complain or make requests after that. She could do this duty, or she’d earn her keep on her back.
She tried to imagine what it was like years ago. People ragged on the government all the time, she remembered. But it was never thought to be quite like this. Then again, she and plenty of others had been under the misguided understanding that the United States still existed. If she hadn’t gotten a job here, she wouldn’t have known any different. Maybe she'd never known anything at all, even before the outbreak.
“It ain’t Harris, is it?”
Madison lifted her gaze, taking in the petty officer—Young, she thought his name was—in the corner surveying the work but too far to make out their quiet conversation. She shook her head when his gaze was turned away. It was one of the few rules that all officers abided: if you request a match, you are not involved in the picking.
She suspected another requirement was that all officers required someone capable and willing of bearing children. Sanctioned rape in the match program was not quite a thing yet, apparently, though that didn’t mean that the officers had to keep their hands to themselves.
“Small miracles,” Cheri murmured, which caused the slightest twitch at the corner of Madison’s mouth. It was best not to encourage Cheri; it did nothing to aid her goal of flying under the radar. She never had much to say, anyway.
And flying under the radar was more important now than ever. For the past several days, she had felt like a live wire, endeavoring to stay on the good side of whomever supervised if she couldn’t stay invisible, worried about far more than a denial of a meal for once. Who knew if they could cancel her match? But now that it looked like her match wasn’t going to show up, she figured it would mean Harris would stop holding back if he ever noticed her again. She was deemed off-limits as soon as the match was announced, and he’d distracted himself with some poor barely-legal girl who grew more haunted by the day, but sometimes he looked at her like his favorite toy had been ripped away, and it was the toy’s fault. Like he was ready to crush her remaining functional limbs so that no one would want her.
As the hours ticked by, Madison’s half-sailed hopes sank. No, her match wasn’t showing up. He was supposed to be here hours ago. Although, just meeting him wouldn’t guarantee any safety, just survival if he picked her. But he was one man, with property and supplies. He was not a building full of people who switched from kindness that reminded her of the old times to empty-eyed danger in a moment’s notice.
Her twelve-hour shift ended, and as usual, a headache pulsed behind her eyes. It was always rough working on the accounts, but at least it was better than the physical work. As she organized her files, passing them down the row in a way that reminded her of long-gone school days, a knock came from the door. An officer—one whose name she’d never bothered to remember—came to Young, murmured, and then stood by while Young called out, “Pearson, your match is here.”
The room, full of the rejects of society, turned to her with inscrutable looks on their faces.
Madison blinked, tired mind trying to return to a functioning pace. Her match. She glanced toward the reinforced windows, taking in the darkness. A flutter of something ascended in her chest before she squashed it hard.
“Now, Pearson,” Young barked.
Cheri gave her a half smile, half smirk. “Good luck, honey. Can’t be worse than here if you take him.”
Madison grabbed her crutch and her backpack that she had packed that morning—far lighter than what she used to carry around before she ended up here. Her dry mouth opened, then shut as she instead took Cheri’s calloused hand and squeezed, unable to look her in the eye before limping toward the door.
Down the winding halls, she tried to keep her face stoic, her eyes respectfully downcast, all while her heart thudded in a heavy way that seemed to rattle her insides. It was a matter of survival, she reminded herself, even while a piece of her argued back that it was a matter of the devil you know versus the devil you don’t. The flimsy mattress and thin sheet in a cell shared with three other women, which until that morning had seemed unappealing except for constant internal reminders that it was better than nothing, suddenly seemed enticing in a way that made her want to rush back to it, shut herself in, and never come out again.
Except that wouldn’t be allowed, would it? Not in this place of rigid routine for the rejects and power flexes by those in charge.
That was what kept her walking.
She was brought to a small meeting room which she guessed often functioned as an interrogation room. She was alone for now, which eased her anxiety just a little as she moved to the chair that faced the door. She would be boxed in, but it wasn’t as if she could escape anywhere, and at least she could see who entered before they could see her. In the few breaths of peace she had, she felt like she was prepared.
Then Harris entered. Before she could do more than tense up, before she could shut herself down as she tried to do whenever Harris turned his gaze toward her, another man entered behind him and took a seat in the chair across from her. The table was small, the size of a diner booth, and his knees bumped hers before he excused himself and adjusted so they weren’t touching. It was such an oddly polite thing to do—especially in a room with Harris in it—that Madison immediately felt disoriented. Kindness, politeness...those were things that had gone extinct long ago, as far as she was concerned. As had the removal of a hat in front of a woman. That wasn’t something that existed in her experience even in the years before the pandemic. But there he was, hat in hand, brown hair speckled with a hints of premature gray even though he wasn’t much older than her. His skin was tanned heavily, face scruffy but not bearded, hands thick where they clutched his hat.
One of them released it to stretch toward her. “I’m Grayson Fields, Ms. Pearson.”
The Ms. was more of a “miz”, a heavier accent than she was used to, and once again more polite than she expected after one year of being either a bland Pearson or some derogatory term, and several years of being addressed almost never at all.
She outstretched her hand, ready to try and be polite herself, if she could remember how, before she suddenly refocused on Harris over Grayson Fields’s shoulder. His gaze was sharp on her, annoyed. Sitting ramrod straight again, her mouth fell closed, but she forced herself to shake the man’s hand. It was rough in a way that suggested he knew hard labor well, and it made her heart sink. She’d read his file, known he had a little farm of sorts and worked other jobs when he could, but now that it was real and within her grasp, she realized it was all pointless. He would want someone to help on the farm, not a ghost of a person lurking around and taking up needed resources—an idea that was at first conjecture, then made certaint by the way he surveyed her with a deepening frown. She pulled her hand back with a jolt.
“You don’t speak?” he asked.
Madison licked her lips to answer—
“She’s a quiet one. She speaks, but rarely.” Harris’s answer was more of a drawl, and somehow, more than the other things he’d done, this was the worst, treating her like a horse or a pet up for adoption in the old days, like he knew her, like ever piece of her was familiar and obvious to him.
“I talk.”
Her raspy but firm voice surprised herself, and apparently both Harris and Grayson Fields. Harris gawked, given that it’d been months since he’d heard her, and Grayson blinked before settling in a hesitant smile. “You have any questions for me?”
To speak by accident out of sheer irritation toward Harris was one thing. To speak with purpose was another. For not the first time, she wished the workers here were allowed water bottles. She looked down at the table, at his cowboy hat that seemed incongruent with the region, and took in a slow and deep inhale.
“Your…” Madison cleared her throat. “Your application. You meant it?” She didn’t dare try to say more, both from her limited abilities and the fact that Harris was listening to every word.
He seemed to know what she meant, because his smile went away and a firm line replaced it. At first, she thought it was out of frustration, and she readied herself for the blow of sharp words. Instead he told her, “I meant every word. And if either of us change our minds, we don’t do anything unless we both agree.”
She had no reason to believe him. She barely even saw him as a person, just a blur of features and traits that she tried to decipher: did they belong to salvation, in an incredibly loose but true sense of the word, or further despair? Eyes lied. Smiles deceived.
But he didn’t crush his hat. His fingers rotated it, fiddling with the end, but in a careful way despite his lack of focus on it. She thought of the power those hands held, and the decision to not use it. The nervous movement.
One man, she told herself. One man instead of dozens.
One man instead of Harris.
She could wait for another match perhaps, but instead she asked, “Do you have questions for me?”
The man searched her gaze, which she kept on him despite the urge to look away and hide from both him and Harris. After a minute, he said, “Wanna marry me?”