(Author's Note) Thanks for sticking with me. Updates will be further spread out from now on what with school and all. Feel free to review, especially if you feel I have made an error. I promise I don't bite... Usually!
I was falling, falling into the abyss but I never seemed to hit the bottom. Perhaps there wasn't a floor to this pit that was consuming me? It was a peculiar thought, but it was something reasonable to consider when you were stuck in a sort of limbo like this. I tried opening my eyes wider to have a better look around, when I realized they had been shut. Awakened truly this time, the stark ceiling of my hospital room, I mean, cell stretched above me.
As I slowly came to, the dull pain that had been ebbing began shouting its presence along my neurotransmitters. So the restraints were actually still there or at least around one wrist. The others had been loosed sometime while I was knocked out. Was it still today? Or was the today I was thinking of really yesterday? There were no windows in my little box, so I couldn't even tell if it was evening or morning. So that was all a dream?
Pulling up my shirt I saw no scars, hold that thought, no additional scars to indicate a puncture from such a knifepoint as I had imagined. I proceeded to mentally cuss out my subconscious before realizing how idiotic that was. Collapsing back down onto my flattened, drab pillow, I sighed in exasperation. Checking over my freed left wrist, I noted the peeling skin separating over my raw, chewed up flesh. Did they realize who they had been abusing? I am not the threat here; I am not the monster, not the mutt under the Capitol's control. However, she had all those positions covered.
I shifted uncomfortably in the starched sheets at the thought of her being nearby at this moment. Had she been lurking through the hospital while I slept? Was she biding her time to do away with me? I decided that I must not allow myself to fall fully asleep. I was momentarily confused as to why I had slept so long and deep in the first place, and then I remembered the sedative. So I had to behave myself or else they would knock me out. I couldn't afford to be vulnerable like that; I was impaired enough already.
Out of boredom, I took stock of my hindrances. Possessing only one human leg, caged in a box so I was unaware of anything going on in the outside world, provided with almost nothing to eat, having no chance to do more exercise than sit up and oh yeah, being tied to a hospital bed; I was pretty sunk. I chided myself not to despair just yet; I had plenty of time to work off my remaining cuff, hadn't I?
I was jolted from my thoughts to see one of the white-coated Thirteen doctors. He said they had something special for me today. That phrase always seems like a threat coming from a medical professional. I shrunk back when they wheeled in a rickety cart with an old television set wobbling atop it. Disturbing flashbacks were trying to resurface, and I felt an outburst boiling up inside of me. Hurriedly I forced it down and ordered myself to at least first see what they had planned for me. When the fuzzy image appeared on the small screen, all my paranoid feelings started to drown me. The tape was of her, with me, in our cave we shared during the games.
The doctor switched back on my I.V. drip which he had been fidgeting with. I felt suddenly distant, like there was a sickly sweetness holding me away, safe, from the world. Morphling, something inside me suggested. It was a pleasurable unawareness that stole me away quietly through my numbed veins. I didn't exactly know what was playing out on the television once the drugs set to work on me, but I tried hard to stay awake and watch.
I see Katniss prattling on telling a story, and for once I don't know what I feel about her. I am left with the unusual sense that wherever my consciousness is, swimming in morphling dreams far from Panem, she can't reach me to harm me. I caught a few sentences of a gift for Prim, a wounded goat so mangled the butcher refused to buy it. The world was fading in and out then, or perhaps really I was the one fading. Did it really matter which? I was somewhere apart from the cold hospital/prison, sinking into the peaceful softness of pleasant sedated sleep.
Swaying back and forth gently, an easy swinging motion like I used to experience when I was small, sitting with my mother on her old rocking chair. The movement I had been feeling gradually receded and I turned over in my hard bed. A dull pain shot through my arm as I accidently smacked it against the metal bed railing. I was painfully aware of my presence in the world once again. Pulling myself up to a halfway sitting position, I noticed Delly sitting across the room from me, smiling sunnily.
"Good morning, Peeta," she greeted me softly.
I blinked, still a little groggy, and then it was Katniss perched in the flimsy folding chair.
Was this just another nightmare, or was she really before me this time? Panic was rising in me now, and I knew my adrenaline was flying through the roof when I spoke.
"You mutt! Traitor!" I attempted to shout, but my body was still in a fog somewhere and my words came out in a harsh whisper.
A look of hurt crossed her face as she moved in closer to me. She was so near I could reach her; she must have decided I was too incapacitated to try anything. "Peeta," her face was pained but she spoke so calmly and quietly. Perhaps the drugs were still blurring my perception. "Peeta, you know that isn't the truth. You know it if you trust your heart." She placed her hand lightly on mine, and I recoiled back from her touch. I could see now she was fighting tears back from her stony eyes. "How can you not remember me? How could you not remember us?" Her voice was wavering so I could tell she was more upset than she usually allowed herself to become. "Peeta, if you are the real Peeta, you know what they have made you believe is a lie. You know I wouldn't hurt you. Remember us, me and you." She slipped out quietly before I could come up with any reply, threat or otherwise. My eyes followed her to the door, then fell back on the empty chair – where Delly was sitting. I groaned in frustration. Reality, dreams, truth, lies. Was anything as it appeared anymore?
"How are you today?" Joyous as ever, Delly was.
Another thought crossed my mind at that time. Prim's birthday present. What had happened after the morphling took over my body? "Did the goat live?" I asked imperatively.
Delly didn't seem to know what I was getting at, and replied in question. "What goat are you talking about?"
"Prim's goat," I insisted. "Did the goat live?" I petitioned once more. She paused a moment, giving the impression my inquiry was unnoticed. "Well, did it?" My voice was possibly raised unnecessarily, but today was off to a confusing start.
"Y-yes, I think it did" she stuttered out. Her sudden nervousness puzzled me, but not enough to stop my asking.
"How did they mend all of those wounds? It doesn't seem possible. Why did she want a runt of a goat anyways?"
"I'm not really sure, Peeta." Delly's voice always sounded honestly sweet, free from ulterior motives. A buzzer went off as the door to my chamber opened. A drably outfitted Thirteen worker motioned to Delly. "I'm sorry, I have to go now. I'll try to come back later, ok?" She beamed a smile at me, but I was exasperated at her leaving.
"What about the goat?" I hollered after the swiftly closed door.
Let me know what you think! More to come eventually