"Don't worry.
I always channel my emotions into my work.
That way I don't hurt anyone but myself."
-Cinna
Catching Fire
Author's Note:
Warning! Although this story is not particularly graphic, a lot of it can be very intense and scary. I'm dealing head-on with the concept of prolonged physical torture, as well as a great deal of emotional suffering and fear. That's not because I like these things. I don't. It's because I think they're inevitably what Cinna would have been facing after he was arrested. When you're a hero of the rebellion in a world as savage as Panem, it can get pretty rough.
If you've read the books, you shouldn't have a problem with the depictions of violence per se in my story. I don't think any of my descriptions of physical injury are as bad as what they said about Cato's torture by the mutts, for instance.
But on an emotional level, and especially if you've only seen the movies, please be careful. I am not playing around here. My purpose with the scary scenes is to throw you straight into Cinna's experience. If I succeed... it could be kind of hard to read.
It's hard for me to write.
Still, I hope you'll decide to read this. I'm telling a story that's important to me. And I'm doing my best to tell it in a way that is no more painful than it needs to be.
No more, no less.
And it does have a good ending. Please trust me.
I love Cinna and Katniss far too much to write any other kind.
Dedication:
For Holly,
for knowing what I meant when I described my concept of Cinna.
For seeing what I saw when I showed you my drawings of him.
For your reaction to my sketches of his work.
For taking one look at my sketch of him and saying,
"He's that simple."
And more than anything,
for watching the Catching Fire movie and then saying,
"He better not die."
You get it, Holly.
Thank you.
Part 1: "Design"
~ [Cinna's POV] ~
"Cinna! Cinna!"
I can hear her screaming my name as if the glass wasn't there. Even though there's no actual sound, I hear her panicked voice in my mind as Katniss pounds frantically against the inside of her cylinder and throws herself against it so hard I'm afraid she might break her bones.
Her silver-gray eyes lock desperately on me. I barely feel my own pain as the Peacekeepers continue to beat me with their spiked gloves.
It only lasts a few seconds. I'm looking at Katniss, but I can't think of anything to say or do before I lose my awareness.
I wake up in a square white room. I am chained to a hard chair with my hands behind me. There is a man standing in front of me. He's wearing the white uniform of a Peacekeeper on his body, and a hard gray glint in his eyes.
I blink, fighting disorientation. I shake my head slightly, and a slamming pain strikes the side of my skull as if they're hitting me again. But it's just from the earlier blows and my own movement.
Carefully, I hold myself still. Moving is not a good idea right now.
"Hello, Cinna," the Peacekeeper says in a cold voice. He doesn't introduce himself. "You made quite a stir at the interviews."
He's talking about the Mockingjay dress I made for Katniss. At the thought of her, a cold pain shoots through my heart. Katniss! I expected to be arrested. I expected to be tortured, probably killed, for my part in the newborn rebellion. What I didn't expect was for them to inflict it on Katniss too.
I remember the agony in her eyes when she saw them arrest me and beat me. I know that's why the Gamemakers delayed her launch into the arena. I know they did it this way just to hurt her.
A hot rage fills me. Still, I answer calmly. "Yes, I thought it was spectacular myself."
The Peacekeeper grabs my right shoulder and shakes me. The seemingly simple action sends waves of pain shooting through me. I gasp, then make an effort and contain my reaction.
"Don't play games, Cinna!" he snarls. "You don't have to tell me anything. At least not now. You'll tell us everything soon enough."
I see the glint of silver as a syringe with a long needle appears in his free hand. Before I can react, he plunges the needle into my left arm and I slip away.
It's all sort of fuzzy when I start to be aware of things again. I'm not sure at first what's going on. But I feel a subtle sense of unease. This is not quite right.
Cautiously I look around. My mind is slowly starting to ask questions about what's happening. Where am I? This is not my home. I'm not waking up in my own bed.
A cold sense of alarm touches my heart as I start to remember. I was arrested by Peacekeepers. Katniss had to watch. I'm...
I'm suddenly completely awake. I have been taken into custody for questioning about my presentation of Katniss as the Mockingjay.
It's starting.
My physical surroundings are coming into focus. I am lying on my back on a hard table. My hands are restrained at my sides. I can feel that some kind of hard cuffs around my ankles are also holding my feet in place. There's a stiff band of some material running across the front of my shoulders and my upper chest, holding me flat on the table.
It's a surprisingly vulnerable feeling, being trapped in this position. I feel a sudden fear rising in me. I can't get up. I can't do anything at all to protect myself. Of course I knew they were going to hurt me, but the actual feeling of being restrained like this is surprisingly terrifying. It was one thing to imagine being tortured, but now I'm face to face with the reality that I won't be able to move my body to avoid the pain they're going to cause me. It seems obvious now, but somehow my mind never prepared me for this.
I stare up at the blank white ceiling, fighting to calm my thoughts and slow my racing heartbeat. It's been years since I've felt this scared, if I ever have. Maybe in some nightmare as a very small child.
All right, I think. I am here. I need to face this. The first thing is to focus on something other than fear. I lift my head, turning my face to look at the strap across my shoulders. It's black and shiny, about two inches across and fairly thick. Probably some kind of plastic.
The movements of my head are not causing me any pain. I remember the sudden, slamming agony when I shook my head to clear it before. That earlier savage blow was hard enough to be probably very dangerous, and certainly did me some serious damage. Now there's no sign of the effects.
The Peacekeepers weren't doing any of this at random. They've kept me under long enough for my head injury to heal. Probably with the help of some expensive medicines to speed it up. Apparently they want to hurt me when I can concentrate on feeling it.
Does it matter to them that now I can also concentrate on resisting them?
Probably not. I suspect they feel very confident about this. But maybe it should matter to them. It does seem that they have all the power here, and they do have a great deal of power. But they're only looking at one side of it. I can bring my own kind of strength to this challenge.
I decide to start now.
"All right," I say, breaking the silence in this ominous room. "You may as well come in now. I'm ready."
My voice sounds quiet and calm. I'm pleased to hear that. At the same time, I realize that I don't feel as much fear as before. Thinking about these things has helped me to regain my usual calm and confidence.
No one comes into the room. I'm guessing they didn't like my small demonstration of control. I have no doubt they'll be here soon, though.
I raise my head again, looking along the length of my body. My comfortable black clothes have been exchanged for some thin, blue-white garment like a hospital gown.
I suppose that what is convenient for medical procedures would also be convenient for torture.
The thought brings my fear seeping back into my mind. I find myself shifting my arms, trying to pull my wrists free of the unyielding cuffs. It's no use, of course. They're meant to hold me against any attempts to escape.
There's the sound of a door opening behind me. I try to twist around and look, but I can't turn that far. I only have to wait a few seconds, though. I hear the heavy footsteps of a man wearing boots. He's coming around me on my right.
A uniformed Peacekeeper steps into view. Not really to my surprise, he's the same one who briefly questioned me before.
"Feeling better, Cinna?" he asks in a slightly sarcastic voice. But there's nothing remotely amused in his set expression or the hard look in his eyes.
I consider what might be the best way to answer.
"No," I say finally. "You and I both know that's not the point." I look him in the eye. "My head is very much improved, though. Thank you for the medicine," I add with a slight touch of irony.
"Good," he says shortly. "Now we need to talk." He's dropped all pretense at humor. He told me before not to play games. Apparently he's done playing them himself. At least for now.
"You'll find that unproductive," I tell him coldly. "I have nothing to say that you'll be interested in."
At that, he smiles cruelly. "Oh, you have plenty to say, Cinna," he tells me in a tone that implies he's correcting my statement. "You just aren't interested in saying it. Yet."
I shake my head. "I have no problem with telling you the truth," I answer him. "Especially since you already know. Where would you like me to start? I've spent my life watching our government hurt people. I got sick of it years ago. I finally found something to do that I thought could make a difference. No matter what you do to me now, there's a chance that what I've done may inspire people to fight hard enough to break free. I'm okay with paying the price for that chance."
The Peacekeeper slowly shakes his head, chuckling quietly deep in his throat. It seems I've amused him again.
"Very nice," he says. "A full confession, right off the starting platform. But you know that's not what I'm looking for. Rebels never work alone. I want to know what else you know about what's going on in Panem."
"Get used to surprises," I tell him. "Study my career a little. I never do anything according to the book. My idea was mine. That dress I made for Katniss? I made it by myself. Not even she knew about it. Didn't you see how surprised she looked?"
I'm lying, of course. Except for the part about Katniss not knowing. That much is true. I would never have allowed anyone to put her at risk by giving her that kind of information ahead of time. I've been working closely with Haymitch and Plutarch and the other rebels, though, and even with District 13. But there's no way I'm going to let him find out any of that.
At least, I fervently hope there isn't. I still don't know for sure what will happen when my pain starts.
"Enough of this," the hard-eyed Peacekeeper says. "I've heard this kind of talk so many times I can't keep track. I've never failed to get someone past it. Now how difficult do you really want to make this? Wouldn't you rather just tell me now?"
My heart is pounding. I think I still look reasonably calm, though. There's nothing I can see a point in saying to him at the moment. I just stare him in the eyes and hope he can see how unimpressed I am with his air of mock-civilized brutality.
Mock-civilized brutality... That, I reflect, would also be a very good description of the Hunger Games.
The Peacekeeper searches my face for a moment. Then he turns and walks to a part of the room I can't see. I hear a key turning in a lock, then the sound of what must be a metal drawer opening. There is some ominous clanking. After a minute, the man walks back into my view.
I can't tear my eyes away from what he's holding in his hands. It is a drawer, a small flat one; he's pulled the whole thing out of its cabinet or wherever it was. The steel is enameled a dark, hard green. It looks like something from a tool chest. Maybe that isn't so far from the truth.
The drawer is filled with all sorts of horrible, terrifying items. They're carefully laid out on an ironically bright, crisp-looking white cloth. Like fancy utensils in a kitchen. But there's nothing fancy or pleasant about these items.
It's nowhere near being a surprise. Still, it's horrifying enough to take my breath away.
These are instruments of torture.
I can't even guess the purposes of some of them. Others are obvious enough. There are sharp, curved and deeply serrated knives, there are awful things that look designed to crush and keep crushing, there are... I shiver and look away. I don't even want to know what else there is.
There's a terrible sound of satisfaction in the Peacekeeper's voice when he speaks again. Too late, I realize that I've shown him my fear.
"This is what I meant by making things difficult," he says. He's trying to sound reasonable, but there's an undercurrent of cruelty in his voice that makes any such attempt impossible.
Fighting my terror, I look back at him. I try to avoid seeing his torture weapons again, but my eyes keep being drawn back to them.
He can see that far too clearly. He smiles. His hard, cruel mouth looks even harder and crueler that way. "I'd really prefer that we didn't have to use these," he says.
Liar, I think, but I don't say it. I can read the look on his face. You love your job. How can someone actually like hurting people? It's incomprehensible to me. Apparently this man loves it enough to build his life and his career around it.
Suddenly I find myself thinking of Clove, the fierce girl from Two who threatened to torture Katniss in last year's Games. If she had lived, would she have ended up with this man's job? Would the Capitol have taken her and trained her to coldly hurt others for a living? The thought makes me inexpressibly sad. She could have been such a sweet girl, but instead she was trained from childhood to be cruel. Then she died.
I look up at the hard-eyed Peacekeeper with the cruel smirk on his face, the drawer full of horrors in his hands. For a moment I lose my fear in wondering what kind of childhood he might have had.
"Are you sure, Cinna?" he asks me, bringing my mind back to the terrible danger I'm facing right now.
I swallow hard, staring into his eyes. "I don't have anything else to tell you," I say. I feel sick with fear, but I'm proud that I've managed to keep my voice from shaking.
"Then we'll have to see if I can change your mind," he says with a cursory attempt at a tone of regret. He tilts the drawer of weapons toward me, drawing my eyes more than ever. "Which do you think?" he asks me in a cruel voice. He's toying with me. "Which would you use?"
That was not an effective thing to ask me. I have a clear answer, and it steadies my thoughts. I raise my chin a little and look at him, completely ignoring the awful drawer now.
"None of them," I say firmly. "I would never hurt anyone this way."
He frowns. "I see," he says slowly. "Well, it's fortunate that I don't have that problem. Very well. Let's see if I can be done with this job by dinnertime."
With a massive effort of will, I keep my eyes focused on his face. I can see his hand moving at the edges of my vision, reaching into the drawer. I won't look at it. My hearing tells me that he's picking up and setting down several of the nightmare devices, considering which one to choose first. Still, I won't look. When I see his arm moving to hold up the weapon he's chosen in front of my face, I close my eyes.
"What?" the Peacekeeper asks, sounding actually a little bit surprised. "You don't want to know what to expect?" I hear what must be the sound of him setting the drawer down on the floor. Then his left hand comes down heavily on my right shoulder. "I think you'd better look, Cinna."
I can't decide if it's a good idea, but I'm feeling such a strong urge to look that it doesn't seem worth resisting any more. Trembling inside, fighting to keep it from showing, I open my eyes.
It's a short, viciously sharp knife with a jagged blade. He's holding it half an arm's length in front of my face. I can see every point, every valley, of the serrations. I imagine that I can already feel them cutting into my body.
"You see?" he asks. "Wouldn't it be easier to just talk to me now, without all this?"
"I do not," I say quietly, "have anything else to say to you. I told you. I made that Mockingjay dress on my own. I'm proud of it. I would do it again. It doesn't matter what you do to me, because I've already done my best to help Panem believe it can be free."
He nods, looking totally unsurprised. He doesn't say anything else. I guess he feels that there's no need. He walks around to the other side of the table and stops, standing beside my left leg.
I can't decide whether to watch or not. Both choices scare me so much it's hard to even breathe. Finally, I decide not to look. I can always change my mind and watch later, if it helps.
I close my eyes.
There's a sudden sensation on the front of my lower leg, halfway between my knee and my ankle. I twitch reflexively in anticipation of pain, but it's only his big, callused left hand touching my skin. His thumb moves quickly, searching, then finds a spot and presses down. With cold horror, I realize what he's doing. He's using that pressure to slow down how much I'll bleed.
At least that gives me a second to prepare by knowing where the pain will be. But when it comes, it's so sharp and savage that it catches me completely off guard.
I clench my teeth against a scream of pain. Before this moment I never thought about it, but I'm suddenly determined not to let him get a sound out of me. I'm not sure why. It just feels important somehow. I think it has to do with my dignity and with the question of how much he has the ability to control me.
Maybe when he isn't hurting me so badly I'll be able to figure it out. Right now it's taking all I have to keep my teeth closed and my breathing somewhat even.
My leg jerks involuntarily, fighting on its own to be free of the pain he's causing. It's no use. The hard metal cuff holds my ankle firmly in place. The movements caused by my body's reflexes only add to the pain by making that jagged knife dig in more deeply. My torturer is surely well aware of this, and I imagine it pleases him greatly.
This is very bad. He's barely started, and I know he's going to escalate his violence as time goes by. And it's already very hard for me to stand it. So what am I going to do when it gets worse?
I don't know. I can't think about that right now. All I can do is focus on enduring this pain, this minute that I'm experiencing now.
It feels like half an hour later when the Peacekeeper pauses in his attack. I suspect it has really been less than five minutes. The small injured patch on my leg is sparking and sizzling with pain, even now that he's lifted away the knife. I can feel the little crisscrossing cuts that he made so slowly, carefully placing each of them to cause me as much pain as possible. I feel the small, cooling droplets and tiny streams of blood on my skin around the cuts.
This man is very good at his job.
He looks at me curiously, holding the knife loosely and casually in his hand. "A silent one," he says with a certain amount of interest. "I've heard that before too, believe it or not. It doesn't usually last very long."
I take a deep breath, in and out. I think my control is steady enough to let me talk without compromising myself. "Get used," I tell him icily one more time, "to surprises."
He laughs. It's a hard sound. "You're an interesting one," he tells me. "You might be a challenge. That's good. Sometimes I've been feeling that my work is too easy, of late."
The sheer unfeeling callousness of his words makes my heart twist inside me. How can anyone be like this? How, no matter what he's seen or faced or been taught in his life, can he be so very cold and cruel?
He starts cutting me again, and my breath hisses sharply between my teeth. He didn't give me any warning. I'll have to watch out for that, I decide, making a mental note. He's going to use surprise to attack me, too.
Again, I find myself having to fight hard to keep from making any sounds of pain. Then, much sooner than I expected, the methodical cutting stops again. What is he thinking?
The swift, sudden pressure of his thumb warns me a fraction of a second before the pain starts again. My resolve not to cry out is tested by the unexpected new slashes of agony - in my right leg this time.
He's switched sides.
I'm having an alarming amount of trouble keeping myself even outwardly calm and quiet, and my heart is racing again. For some reason, coming out of nowhere like this in an unexpected spot, the new wounds he's inflicting seem to be even more painful.
There has to be something I can do to distract myself from the terrible slicing pain. Some way to make it easier for me to get through this. I need to think about something else...
I find my thoughts reaching back to my last meeting with my fellow rebels. It was a few days ago, as far as I can tell without knowing how long I've been kept under sedation. The day before the interviews for the Quarter Quell.
We were gathered in Portia's sitting room, one of the only places in the Capitol where we could feel confident that there wouldn't be any cameras. Portia has far too much sense and perceptiveness to allow anything like that to go unnoticed in her home.
It was a small meeting. Haymitch, Plutarch, Portia and I were the only ones there. Anything larger might have raised too much suspicion. And we didn't have too much left to discuss. Most of the plans were already in place. I'd given my book of Mockingjay uniform sketches to Haymitch a week earlier. The uniforms themselves had been smuggled out to Thirteen, a few at a time, over the past month.
My prep team was set to leave the next day, right after their final session with Katniss and definitely before the interviews. I wasn't going to risk them. It was a great relief to me, knowing the danger I myself faced, to know that they would soon be out of harm's way in District 13. I wouldn't be able to bear the idea of anyone hurting my innocent, kindhearted, somewhat naive team over my personal acts of rebellion.
"Are you sure about this, Cinna?" Portia asked me with deep concern. "You're really putting yourself on the line here. We could still pull you out of the Capitol right after you present Katniss as the Mockingjay."
"No," I said firmly. "Thank you, Portia. But there will be too much attention on me after the interviews. I have to stay here. Any attempt to move me out would put the rest of you at too much of a risk."
Portia's eyes were sad as she looked at me. What about the risk to you, Cinna? I imagined her saying. But she respected the dignity of my right to choose, and didn't say it aloud.
"I think that's a good strategy," Plutarch said soberly. "I hate to say it, but you're right. I can't see any other realistic way of pulling this off than by you staying here."
I nodded. "Right. This is what we decided, and I think it's still what we need to do."
Next, I turned to Haymitch. "What about Katniss?" I asked him. "Are there any plans to help her in the arena?"
"We can't tell you very much, Cinna," Haymitch said bluntly. "Not about that, and not about any other details of our plans for the larger rebellion from here out. Because you're going to be tortured for information."
I had been trying not to think about that. Leave it to Haymitch, I thought, to hammer the obvious down onto the table at every opportunity.
"I understand," I answered calmly, not letting my apprehension show. "I don't think I would tell them, but I can't be sure. We can't take that risk. The less I know, the better."
It felt strange to be coldly discussing my own torture and whether or not I would break. It feels even stranger now, remembering it while this hard-eyed man is actually torturing me.
At least so far, I was right about one thing. I haven't broken yet. And I'm still determined not to tell him anything.
But I didn't expect it to be anywhere near this hard to endure. Being tortured hurts a lot more than I was able to imagine.
Author's Note:
I'm committing to post one chapter of Into My Work at least every two weeks until it's finished. I've never done something like that before, but now NaNoWriMo has taught me how to write for a deadline and love it.
This story will be novel-length. I don't know how many chapters it will be, but I'm guessing at least 30. Still, I already have (thanks to NaNo) 45,850 words of it written out of order, and I expect a lot of my chapters will come much closer together than two weeks.
Chapter Two is already finished. I'll be posting it this weekend.
Don't worry. Cinna's in for a rough ride, but I love him and I won't let him be anything but all right in the end. Katniss too. I love her just as much. And - in my story, anyway! - they love each other, and the only way either of them can be all right is if they both are.
So they will be. You'll see.
"Everything will be all right in the end.
So if it is not all right, then it is not yet the end."
-A verse from the Bhagavad Gita
As quoted in the movie "Life of Pi"