Oh, my dear, my darling, I hunger for your touch.
From where I am held, I can only see her legs.
"Sir?" she called out, soft and clear.
"Yes?" he replied.
"May I stand?"
"You may not." His voice is clean and male.
There is silence.
"Please Sir, my knees are aching. I entreat you, please let me stand." Her voice rises a note as she speaks, but her voice remains soft and clear.
"Even if you begged, I would not."
"Sir!"
"Silence."
There is silence.
I know that I cannot move. She hurts when I move, they showed me that very quickly. She is kneeling across the room from me, there is a screen between, but I can see her legs. Her feet are bare and the floor is wet.
He is sat in a chair by the screen. He is a Peacekeeper and he maintains the silence.
In time, the girl is removed, and I can move.
I stand, and walk to the sink. I wet my hands and smooth my hair back over my head and I rinse my mouth. Water spills over my lips and they glisten, and I watch the beads forming in the mirror. Those lips, I have seen those lips before, I have felt those lips and kissed those lips. I lean forward and kiss those lips, soft and cool. The mirror returns my kiss with humid condensation and cold glass and my reflection is clouded as I exhale.
The fog evaporates and two eyes stare back at me. I stare back, blinking and not blinking and the reflection starts to fade, and change, and the skin morphs and alters, waving in and out of perception and then I blink and my face is whole again.
I make my eyes blur, and enjoy the softened edges of myself. Nothing is solid and everything is indistinguishable, and my face is symetrical when my eyes blur.
The door opens and a voice hisses at me. I have not heard a hissing voice in a long time. It is not a little girl. It uses my name.
"Katniss!"
I turn my eyes to the door, but not my head. It is dark behind, and although I see the figure of a man, I do not recognise the profile.
"Katniss! Quick!"
I turn my head. The voice is familiar, although it is a long time since last it entered my head. I remember Gale.
"What are you doing? Come on!"
He is crossing the space. He had wedged the chair in between the open door and the door frame. His hand is on me.
"What have they done to you?"
He is looking in my face. I would say that he is looking for something. I don't offer to help him.
"Katniss! Oh.. I can't believe this."
He is crouching now. He has opened his rucksack. I look at the screen where the girls kneel behind. There is a stab in my neck and that's all I can think of.
"Peeta said you had been taken."
I awoke in a forest, lying on the floor. There is a fire in front of me. The floor is brown. Gale, but older, is sat opposite me. He is looking at my face.
"I got a call from Peeta, saying you had been taken, he's terrified Katniss, and no-one knew who had taken you - just that a hovercraft had appeared and you had been snatched."
He stopped talking, but doesn't take his eyes off my face. I remember this. I had been in the forest, and then I was not.
"What happened to you?"
I don't know. I shut my eyes and pretend to fall asleep.
On the third day of walking, I hear a voice that isn't Gale's. Gale stopped talking to me when I didn't reply. I don't know why he's here. But then, Gale says I can sit a while, so I sit by a tree, and fall asleep.
Something is touching my face. It wakes me. A touch that is light, and starts at my forehead and curves along the edge of my face. It ends near my chin, and disappears, and reappears at my forehead, and curves along the edge of my face, and disappears. It appears again. It is soothing. I resist opening my eyes.
When I awaken again, the touching has stopped. My eyes are open and it is night time. There is a figure sat beside me- a male figure. I can see the ghost of light hair in the fine light cast by the moon. He is close to me, my body resting against him. He gives off a lot of heat. There is a blanket tucked around me, and it is also around him. I realise now that I am cradled in his arms and I can smell him and I realise, although I cannot see well, that it is Peeta.
"Wake up!" I whisper, suddenly freeing my hands from his grip and twisting towards him. I have to touch his arms, his chest, the hairs on his forearms and the scratch of his jaw on my palm, and the softs of his hair and the stretch of his eyebrows and the curve of his cheek, wake up, wake up, "Wake up! Wake up!"
He looks at me, and there is a moment where I can see that he is realising something, and suddenly I am engulfed in his arms, is his smells and his words and I can feel warmth and that ache in my heart is suddenly there again, and I have to be closer to him and I want to climb under his shirt and nest in his chest hairs. He holds me and holds me and he kisses my hair, and my eyes and my knuckles and he inhales the scent of my arm and nothing can satiate my yearning to be closer and closer to him, and to re-familarise myself with every plane of his body. He is never to be away from me. He holds me, and I hold him, and he is saying things and I am saying things and my chest feels tight but I don't let go.
When I awaken, I am lying on my front, on his front, whilst be lies on his back, on the forest floor. Every breathe he takes, I rise. He is talking quietly.
"She is so small."
"She has lost a lot of weight," Gale replies
"I never realised how delicate she could be,"
"I have seen her smaller"
"You saw her grow up"
"Only since she was 12."
"She was small then.
"She was. You know"
"Yes, I saw her at school."
He had given me bread. I was smaller then.
"What do you think they did to her?" Peeta asks.
"I don't know."
"She didn't say?"
"She hasn't said a word to me."
There is silence.
"I'm not sure she'll make it back to District 12. Not like this."
"What?" Peeta asks. He sounds alarmed.
"The walk here, it took us three days. It should only have taken us one. She is ill."
"She is weak."
"She is ill." Gale says. His voice is clean and male.
"Well what should we do?"
"I think we should make camp here for a while."
"Here?"
"Yes, it's a sensible place."
"I'll take your word for it."
"You don't have to take my word for it, you're the man who survived two hunger games. What can you see?"
Peeta inhales, making me rise again. I feel him shift. "There is a stream a hundred meters east, and large caverns in the crag behind us, and I presume sufficient game for us to eat. There are trees for cover and I recognise some of these plants."
"You don't have to take my word for it."
"No. Here would be a safe place to stay."
"Fairly safe."
I choose to wake up then, and Gale walks off.
The afternoon rains, and Peeta and I sit in a shallow cave. He is weaving a mat, like the mats Finnick and Mags made in the arena. He is telling me that they can keep out the rain, and we can have room in the cave beyond that of the stone walls. I listen to him.
That night I fall asleep alone, for Peeta is speaking with Gale some distance away, and the muddy earth is soft around my body.
In the night I hear Peeta sounding irritated and he picks me up and carries me to the shallow cave, with the mat leaning against the entrance. He lays me on the floor. The mud had been softer, but I don't complain because he's there, and he is holding me.
In the dawntime, he takes me to the river, and washes the mud and dirt of my skin and out of my hair. He strips me of my clothes, and cleans them against a rock as I stand naked in the middle of the stream.
He doesn't know what happened to me. He doesn't know where I've been. He doesn't ask. Why doesn't he ask?