Mockingjay from Peeta's perspective.
CHAPTER 1
I haven't spoken for days. Or possibly weeks. Maybe even months, I really don't know anymore. All that I know is Katniss Everdeen has been taken by the Capitol, and I'm not there to protect her. She could be being tortured, raped, abused; she might even have been killed. No, not killed. The Capitol wouldn't be so merciful to the one they call 'The Mockingjay', the one that started this whole rebellion.
Not a word has escaped my lips since that day. The day they 'rescued' me. Well, maybe one word. Katniss. I screamed it over and over as the claws from the hovercraft lifted me into the air. I reached out my hands, my arms, every limb I had at the chance that maybe she would grab a hold, and be lifted to safety with me. 'Safety'. 'Rescued'. The words used to describe my being ripped from the arena of the quarter quell. I don't feel safe. I haven't escaped from the danger, the fear, the pain. I've taken them all with me, in the wounds that cover my body, in the scars I will forever keep, and in the constant guilt, agony and crippling self-loathing I feel about the unknown state of Katniss Everdeen.
I'm sure I must be in great, paralysing pain. I have several broken ribs, a broken collar bone, a scar on my head that's about six inches long (from an injury I obtained whilst on the hovercraft, trying to escape to confines of a hospital bed) , and a multitude of other injuries that I'm not quite sure the extent of. Some surgery was done to fix up internal damage, but I don't care. Have they not realised yet, that I don't care about me anymore? That all I've ever wanted from an early age is for Katniss to be happy? To be healthy, safe and most importantly, alive?
No. They can't understand it. She can't even understand it. Always trying to save me, always trying to pay me back for some favour that she was convinced I had done for her, when I helped protect her in the 74th games. I had to protect her. How can she not realise, I am her. She is all that I care for in this miserable, cruel world in which we live.
A nurse comes in to change my IV. She says something, but I'm not sure what. Some meaningless drivel I suppose, a greeting perhaps, an empty hope that I might be feeling better today. I respond the way I always do, stare blankly ahead, and not even register her presence in the room. She leaves as soon as her task is done, and I continue on as before.
Katniss Everdeen is being held in the Capitol. I am here, safe in District 13. Something has gone wrong, and Panem, as hideous as it was to me before has lost its single glowing spark in the darkness. I cannot, will not live in a world without Katniss Everdeen. At that moment, I regain the will to move again, slightly shaking my head back and forth, slowly at first then gaining speed, until I become manic with it. I will not live in a world without Katniss, even if that means I don't get to live at all.