Don't Stay
"AGAIN," The harsh command was spat by President Snow. He watched as the medics picked up the syringe and walked to the side of the table. The young man was sweating profusely and had a wild look in his eye as he watched the man approaching with the syringe. Snow was reminded of a wounded animal sensing the hunters approach, hoping for a quick death, ah but death was not the goal. Not in this case, no, he sighed, death would be a gift.
President Snow looked with contempt on the young man, his blond hair hung limp with the dampness his body emitted. The young man's breathing was rapid, which meant his heart was in a near panicked state. This was good the poison would spread much more quickly.
He watched as the captured man tried to evade the needle but he was strung out on the table immobilized by the constraints on his arms, legs, and waist. The young man's head was held in place by a brace, electrodes on his temples that interfered with the nerves in his eye lids keeping them wide open. The only thing preventing the man from yelling or screaming was the band of leather strapped across his mouth gagging him.
Snow watched with interest feeling nothing, except anticipation, soon that little bitch would pay.
The screen extended from the ceiling and stopped a few feet from the man's face. Peeta stared up at it, panic evident in his features. Eyes rolling wildly from syringe to screen, and momentarily flinching shut painfully as the medic jammed the needle into his arm. His eyes opened immediately with the effects of the poison, as the room was plunged in darkness and the only light emitted from the screen.
Peeta knows he will soon be reliving it again…
The video of the 74th Hunger Games is showing her, the brown hair in its normal braid. Her face is staring at the young man.
From the observation deck Snow watched the tears leak out of the sides of his captive's eyes. The sounds of gagging are distinguished and Snow observes him a few more minutes. Over the course of the next couple of hours the rest of the film will play out, further maddening the young man from District 12. Their once glorious hero Peeta Mellark, there is nothing left but to leave the observation room.
After descending the stairs of the observation room, outside in the hallway Snow was entertained by the sounds of hysterical screaming coming from the cell next to Peeta's. If the girl did not stop, soon she would end up choking herself.
Sounds of electric current kicking on reached his ears. This was followed by brief silence and then the sloshing and screaming continued. The room would be drained by the time her neighbor's film ended and they would then have their screams for company.
The screams become muffled as he reached the end of the hallway and punched in the code for his personal elevator; the day has been dreary indeed.
Snow rubbed his sore temple while inhaling the refreshing scent of the beautiful rose in his lapel as he waited. The soft ding alerted him that the elevator had arrived; he stepped inside as the door opened.
They would be here any day now. Let them come; he was beginning to tire of his guests. Let someone else deal with them now. Snow observed himself in the full length mirror of his extravagant elevator. What a treat she was in for. The elevator closed on his smiling form.
…
Peeta's head was in agony. That was nothing to the way his heart felt. That organ felt as though it had been torn from his body, mutilated in the most horrible ways possible. Ways left to the imagination of people, such as, his President was trying to protect him from.
The sack of bones and flesh that was his body was reduced to a one track thought, feeling excruciating pain radiating from every pore, his body convulsed and thrashed involuntarily. He was growing hoarse again from screaming, it made no rational sense. He was screaming because of the young woman on the screen. Katniss
Peeta's body was blocked in his attempt to contort anymore by the straps which painfully cut into his malnourished, diminishing, wasted body. Try as he might he could not get away from her.
The young woman, she had been important in some way. At one point, she had been the breath in his lungs, but his mind was screaming, no that was his body, screaming out loud.
Of course, they had un-gagged him when it became clear he would be retching again. The poison, the images, what his once rational mind had tried to tell him, everything mixed together and his body was rejecting everything.
They had tried to explain to him that this woman, the one who was tearing apart Panem, had maliciously used him to keep herself alive during the Hunger Games not once but twice.
At first Peeta had disbelieved.
President Snow had asked him to give an interview…how long ago had that interview taken place…
No, no, no he was so confused.
President Snow had brought him here to reveal the truth. He had said it would be painful and because of that he would be given a shot of medicine to counter act the horror that he would be witnessing.
President Snow explained that the woman had never cared for him not once. He was shown how she was out parading for the rebel causes.
Peeta could not keep anything straight anymore.
He had been searching for Katniss, why? Was that even real?
Peeta focused on the one last memory he had, he had heard her screaming his name but Brutus was coming, the lightning had hit the tree and the arena had been blown apart.
Was that even possible?
His body convulsed from the shock wave emitted by the erupted force field. He felt terror, for a second he thought he had been ripped from his body once again, the force field!
He had died. He wasn't dead. Finnick! Peeta remembered the green eyed champion. That was real; the district 4 legend had saved him.
"That's right," President Snow said. "Why is it that if Katniss loved you, she didn't save you herself?" Peeta looked around expecting to see the man, but it was a regurgitated memory from this present nightmare.
Peeta had no answer to the question.
Vaguely he thought she had once told him that she was not the healing type.
LIES!
Whose lies though?
That had been the first treatment there had been a small sense of familiarity with the poison, tracker jackers. After that reality didn't matter anymore. His body reacted wildly to the fear, it didn't matter that a part of him realized this was no serum to dull the senses.
They bombarded his brain with every moment that he had spent with Katniss on screen. There was no sense of time. Even the name struck fear in his core. He could not get away from his predicament; his mind was filled with so much information, so much fear.
Please, please just let me die! The mental supplication came again and again. He had only been in this kind of mental stupor and pain once, in the games. The blood poisoning, she had done that to him!
No! She tried to save him?
Was she the one who tried to kill him?
No, no, no Cato!
Cato had attacked him and cut up his leg. Katniss had saved him.
Why!?
She left him for dead…
Please let me die. Let it kill me. Let me forget her. Kill me. Let me die.
Katniss would end the world…
Let me…
Let me…
Kill her…
Please let me kill her.
Peeta's brain shuddered from the intense effects of the poison. Everything shimmered. Evil shimmering, like the world reflected off unstill water. His stomach empty for days tried again and again to expel its contents.
The body that belonged to him felt broken, his heart shattered. He had loved her.
Katniss had used him...
He would kill her.
No he mustn't.
Katniss was responsible for his predicament. How could he have ever felt relief for her safety, away from the hands of the Capitol? She left him for dead. Just like she had in the games, she had always had it out to kill him.
However… there were images in his mind he could not explain. It was like being trapped in his nightmares. Katniss would die in his nightmares, but he had cared then. She screamed out in his arms.
Katniss didn't love him. She had used him.
Waking nightmares, what was reality?
Peeta screamed until he was reduced to dry heaves. Nothing was left in his stomach but acid, and a terrible churning. He could no longer pin point reality anymore.
The god awful movie was finally over and the doors had opened, medics unstrapped him and quickly left the room.
Nothing was real, he looked at his hands, the effects of the tracker venom not yet worn off, they shimmered, and he quickly put them behind him. Peeta crawled to the corner where he, now and then, spoke to Johanna. She was screaming at the moment.
Trying to find a comfortable position, he put his hands behind his back and closed his eyes and quickly opening them. Peeta was physically exhausted by the pain, the hunger, and the anguish, but to close his eyes meant seeing her. She was burned to the backs of his eyes, shimmering, and he couldn't take it anymore.
With the lack of sleep, lack of nutrition, his body convulsed on its own, and his subconscious won over. With no will power to wake his body he was locked into the horrors of the images had been subjected to over and over again. Reduced to viewing his fractured mind, fractured by the pain and the torment of the memories he once held so close to his heart.
His heart, every beat labored but could not fight off his brain.
I will kill her.
He had to kill her, to survive he could only get away from her if she no longer existed.
Real?
…
The rescue mission came out of nowhere. It felt like a trip to nowhere. The tall man with the dark hair, dark eyes, from the Seam, Gale, was the only one Peeta recognized. It didn't matter, he was connected to Katniss, he was probably her lover, Peeta didn't know.
President Snow had been to see him just before the rebels from district 13 picked him up along with Johanna from district 7 and Annie from district 4. He never quite understood why they had picked up a girl like Annie he never quite saw why she would be important.
President Snow had one last thing to show him, he told Peeta how Gale and Katniss were happier now. How she would kiss him, and he even had a video that showed them kissing, vaguely he saw her look of surprise but this was only one video.
All Peeta wanted to do was confront Haymitch about everything. That and kill her whenever he saw her next. For that reason alone he was glad that Gale was there, as he would lead him to her. Jealousy burned through him but it was such an insignificant feeling when compared to the terror and abuse he had been subjected to in the last few months. Instead Peeta focused on Katniss' death.
They brought him into a clinic looking room of some sort. Everyone seemed to be relieved that their group had made it back. Peeta sat in the bed waiting. He heard a joyful commotion outside of his room but then the door opened and she came in.
Katniss looked terribly troubled and sad, until she locked eyes with him.
Peeta lost his sanity and she shimmered into the beast of his nightmares, the look that had momentarily brightened her eyes never reached his senses, by that time he was halfway across the room halfway to his goal. He could feel the cold measure of his success close at hand.
Her mouth had moved to form a word, possibly his name?
It did not matter, in that instant he closed his hands around her neck. It was so small, fragile almost, and so very defenseless; she would die in his hands. He soaked in the terror reflected in her eyes which mirrored his own.
And then his world went black.
a/n: This was inspired by Linkin' Park's "Don't Stay" hence the name. Thoughts? Thank you for taking a moment to read.
sah-dah