I wake up screaming, again, the same way every night. I'm still in the hospital, no longer in the Arena, no longer in the Quell, not longer in District 13. I am in a bed in a an empty ward, a dozen other beds with no occupants surrounding me. The drugs they are giving me aren't working, and a confusing patchwork of images always careens through my brain as I try to reorient myself.

Katniss morphing into a half-lion, half human muttation. Katniss holding a pearl in her hand, her head on my shoulder. Katniss holding my parents at gunpoint. Katniss' hair in my lap on a rooftop. And Katniss kissing me, in District 12, in the Games, in the Quell, on the beach, and in the tunnels under the Capitol. Her lips coming toward me, not trying to strangle me or bite me or kill me, and then they connect -

A soft sound, like a cross between a sigh and a cough, knocks my brain off course.

"What?"

A small, slight girl, her blonde hair hanging loose around her face, is standing at the edge of my bed. She's illuminated by the moonlight slinking in through the window. Her are wide open, and she looks as if she is more than a little insane. This is not helped by the fact that she appears to be wearing a pair of root vegetables as earrings.

Katniss would know what those vegetables were. The thought comes unbidden - for once, not a negative or disparaging thought, but one of simple knowledge, that I actually may know this girl whom the Capitol tried to convince me wanted me dead.

"Um, can I help you?"

"You were screaming in your sleep," she says simply, her large eyes, blue with a hint of lavender, boring into mine.

"Yes," I reply flatly. "I do that. That's why I am here in this hospital."

"That's not why you're here. You're here because of Katniss."

I start. "How do you know that?"

She blinks at me, as if I have asked why I have two legs. "You're here because you have no idea what to believe. Because you can't wrap your head around the fact that the memories the Capitol gave you aren't real."

My eyes narrow. Whoever this girl is, she isn't my doctor, she isn't my psychiatrist, she isn't my friend. She's just another lost soul, another crazy person wandering around this hospital until they find someway to fix her. Just like me. She's just like me.

The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. "Of course I can't tell if they're real! Nothing makes sense; they tell me she is trying to kill me, but I've watched her save me. I've felt her hands around my throat and her lips on mine. The kiss didn't help anything, it didn't make me hate her any more, or love her any less - and I don't know if I just hate her, just love her, or if it's a mixture of both. The emotions and fake memories and real memories swirl around and around and around in my brain and I can't stop them. What is real? What is not? Are you real, or aren't you?"

I shake my head. "I'm going crazy."

She cocks her head. "No, you're not. You're just as sane as I am. You just have to sort out your thoughts. Like a puzzle. Put all the pieces back together. When the edges don't match, you'll know they're not real."

I blink, and then she's gone.

The fake memories - the ones with Katniss trying to murder me and my family - have edges that dance with light and leftover venom. She's right. The edges don't match, and I finally have an answer.