I don't own the Hunger Games.
They don't know I know. They don't know that I know what they are going to do to her, and it's all my fault. I shouldn't have said all those stupid things on camera. I should have been more careful.
"Do you have any parting thoughts, Peeta?" asks Caesar. "For Katniss?"
I gasp in effort. Katniss. Hold on to that thought. I desperately force myself to think of Katniss. She's been slipping away from me lately—I find that I can't remember certain things about her. That I can't remember...
"Katniss..." I wheeze, "how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you... in Thirteen..." It's hard to breathe. "Dead by morning!"
"End it!" yells Snow, bursting into the studio. His voice quiets. "Are you—are you an idiot?"
"Idiot," I repeat, nodding. "Yes."
"Obviously!"
I inhale, fighting for breath. "But I'd take being that... over being evil... any day." I watch the camera get knocked over as the men rush into the room.
I scream in agony as they hit me. I try to take a breath, but before even that can happen, there is another blow. Blood splatters the tiles in front of me.
…
I didn't know much about the tracker jackers aside from what they made a person look like. I'd seen it happen often enough in the Hunger Games. I'd seen how disgusting and repulsing they made a person—to the point where I didn't even care about preserving life, which is saying something, since I'm usually supportive of that philosophy. The people who tracker jackers attack should be dead. Tracker jacker victims should die; once they've been stung, they should have that mercy.
They lock me in a room with mirrors for walls. I see myself in all angles. I see what I have become: ruined, broken. The floors are padded. I am scared. So, so scared.
I woke up here. I should have seen it coming.
"What do you have for me?" I whisper. "What will you do to me?"
I sit down.
It feels childish, but I ask, "Will it hurt?"
As the ceilings cave above me, as I look up, I think—stupidly—that nothing will make me stop loving Katniss. Nothing.
She is my last thought as I am engulfed in a sea of gold. I know what they're going to do with me, and desperately, I remind myself of what I love most. Maybe it is a stupid thing to do.
You love her. Katniss Everdeen.
She's a hunter. Her favorite color is green. She loves her little sister Primrose more than anything else in the world, and she is surer of little else. She lost her father in a mining accident. Her father had the voice of an angel. She learned how to shoot a bow and arrow from him. Nobody has a better shot than she has. She gets the eye, every time. She scowls all the time except in her sleep, when, although she looks more agreeable, she is not the Katniss I know and love. She's a hunter, cold and calculating, or so she thinks. Her voice. It's beautiful.
Little stabs shoot through me all over. My knee, my ankle, my arm, my sides, my neck. Everything disappears.
…
That Everdeen girl brought some squirrel for us, says Father.
Tom, my second-oldest brother, gags. I was sick for a week after she brought us that hare.
Well, what do you want me to do with it? Father asks, holding up the squirrel.
We can't very well throw it out, says Mother with an irritated sigh. That's a waste. That gives us a whole meal.
And we'd lose a whole meal from how sick we'd get from eating it, I say suddenly.
The girl probably poisons it. Mother gives the squirrel a wary look before snatching it from my father. I'll cook it as well as I can, but... there's not much else...
…
I see her. We're only eleven at the time. She rummages through our garbage. But the cans have just been cleaned out. She carries a bag full of food. Then she gets into our kitchen. For some reason I'm frozen. I watch as she wipes out our entire store.
Mother comes in when she leaves. What happened to the food?
I—I—don't know, I stammer.
I sleep with a bruise that night.
…
At the reaping, she thrashes when she is chosen. She fights the crowd, trying to run away, hurting everyone that gets in her way.
You can't take me! she screams. Take someone else! Not me!
They have to hold her down when she's on the stage.
When I am chosen, and I have to shake her hand, she squeezes it so hard I feel like my fingers might break.
In the memory she does. Like she tells me, You're going down.
…
On the train, she scoffs at my ability to fight. She labels me as a weakling, a wuss, a lover, not a fighter. She says that I won't survive a second in the arena.
Afterward she apologizes. I am suspicious. I am right. She kisses me passionately—roughly. I kiss back. It feels like the moment lasts forever. She unbuttons my shirt—I push her away. No, I whisper.
…
In the arena, she poisons me—but Haymitch gives me a something to stop it.
She drops a tracker jacker nest on my head. I burn for days. I am overcome with hallucinations
…
She's a mutt, Haymitch says to me. My family. My girl. She killed them.
A mutt? I ask. I thought she was just...
No, says Haymitch, shaking his head. She's a real mutt. The Capitol made her.
I turn to her, where she eats her lunch. She seems normal, but my heart rate quickens with fear.
I am scared. I am so, so, scared.
…
Have you seen Tia? I ask one of my friends. His name is Cassel. I haven't seen her in ages.
Cassel looks startled. His voice lowers. You haven't heard?
About what?
Tia and her family died, he whispers. Two days ago. They found them dead. They bled to death.
They were stabbed? I ask, startled.
Cassel shakes his head. He looks over his shoulder nervously. I see her. Shot.
…
My house burns. It is glowing. Fire engulfs it, eating away at my home and the people in it.
No! I scream. No! Why? My home! WHY?
I see a face in the shadows.
They call her the girl on fire.
She spreads the flames.
Review, please!
You know, I figure, he's mad. The visions don't have to make sense.