As the viewing screen shuts off, there is a moment of fast silence. I can't bring myself to move my head. I feel like if I move even a little bit this will all just turn out to be another demented dream.

Katniss is alive. Coin had told me that much, but until just now I always had that sneaking suspicion that even if she was dead, there's no way Coin or anyone else in District 13 would tell me about it. There's no way they would risk me abandoning the rebellion.

I'm pushed out of my stupor when Delly gives me a light tug. "Um…Peeta…" she says tentatively, "are you all right?"

My hands come up to feel my face. I must have been crying ever since she came on, but it was so light I hadn't noticed. Now I feel a soft wetness running in lines all over my body. Some of it gets into the suits, too. I can't remember the last time I really cried. This whole time I've been so focused on not showing any weakness, not having any feelings- I didn't even cry when I found out my family was dead. It feels good. It's been so long since I was in a position where I could just feel vulnerable for a minute without worrying that I was going to screw everything up.

Prim's voice pops up, clearly concerned. "Peeta, it's…you know it's all right. We already knew."

Delly suddenly lets go of me. I turn to look at her and she's blinking confusedly. "What…what do you mean? Is it true? Is what she said really true?"

Now all three of us, me, Prim, and Mrs. Everdeen are looking at her, caught off guard. I hate the Capitol powerfully right now. Delly's been my best friend ever since we were little kids, but of course she had no idea what was going on. I've hardly even gotten a chance to see her over the last year. Everything she knows about me and my life has been a complete deception.

"I don't understand," she said, deliberately avoiding looking at any of us. "There was footage of you sneaking into each other's bedroom in the middle of the night. Weren't you..?"

"No!" I said sharply, quickly. "That was…" I can't think of any way to react.

Delly puts her arms around me. "It's all right. Don't get upset. I guess it makes sense, after everything that happened. I'm sure you have your reasons. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

I do want to tell her. I really do. First the crying and now this. I remember the nightmares. I remember the way that Katniss would thrash about, terrified for her life. Now I'm scared, too. I don't want Delly to get the wrong idea. She never has before. But I can't talk to her like this, not in front of Prim and her mother. Maybe not even out of here as long as Katniss is still being tortured. I can't violate that trust.

There's a sudden strong rapping at the door, but it seems to be a formality. Two soldiers quickly make their way inside. Delly quickly lets go of me.

"What's going on?" asks Prim. "What do you want?"

They have grim looks on their faces. It makes it hard to tell them apart. One of them looks at me. "You're supposed to be in your room right now, engaging in reflection. What are you doing here?"

Prim interjects. "He just came to get these suits at all. He was just about to go back."

The soldier stares coldly at Prim, and she stares right back at him. She has a much stronger glare than I would have expected from someone her age. The other soldier looks around the room, and I follow his gaze. This must all seem very peculiar to him. Delly's arms were around me when they crashed in, there's wet marks on my face, my clothes, and the suits I had just come to get, and it looks like Mrs. Everdeen is whispering to herself, though she's taking care that neither the soldiers nor anyone else has any idea what she's saying.

Finally, the first soldier breaks off from looking at Prim. "We need to take you back to your room," he says to me. "Take everything you need here and come with us."

I hadn't come for much in the first place, so I agreeably get up and walk back with them to my room. The first soldier orders the second (I guess he must be subordinate) to stand guard. When I ask for an explanation I'm waved off and the door closes behind me. I take a deep breath, just to make sure that no new crisis will suddenly arise. Once I feel assured of that, I decide to look through the paper I received at the meeting with Plutarch's propos meeting this afternoon. These look like ideas for propos campaigns. I have trouble reading the smaller writing, but the ideas don't look like they're much good anyway. Mostly because they all seem to be written for interior stages. I really have had quite enough of making speeches indoors at this point, and I don't really care for anything else like that now. I decide that my number one suggestion for the moment is long camera shots, outdoors, with people surrounded by things that aren't trying to kill them.

It's at this point I realize I don't have any kind of writing implement. I sit dumbly, trying to figure out what to do next, when there's a knock at the door.

"Soldier Peeta," he says. It's the first guard again. "I've brought you your dinner." He slides it under the door. Very flat food, whatever it is. I don't know what it's called, but I'm sure I've seen a version of it at the Capitol, where all foods needs to be bright, pretty, and appetizing. This doesn't look that nice, but it at least seems edible.

"Hey," I say.

"What is it?" This voice is different. It must be the second guard.

"I'm supposed to be doing some writing in here, but nobody gave me a pen or pencil. Could you help me out here?"

There's hesitation on his end. "I don't know if I'm allowed to give you something like that. You might hurt yourself or something."

I roll my eyes, even though I know he can't see me. I look over my food and grab a utensil. "Look," I say, "if I wanted to hurt myself I would just use this-" I stop. What exactly is this thing? It looks kind of like a fork and kind of like a spoon, and it seems to be made out of plastic. "If I wanted to hurt myself I would just use this foon," I say, guessing.

There's another pause, but this time I get the feeling it's because whatever this thing is it's not called a "foon". "That's ridiculous," he says. "No one's ever hurt themselves with a…foon before."

I roll my eyes again. This is clearly someone who hasn't watched decades of Hunger Games footage. "Look, unless you want me to start trying, get me something to write with. I need this done by tomorrow."

After another silent spell, I hear some rustling and a pencil creeps in underneath my door. With it I start to writing, taking bites of food intermittently. I thought analyzing this paper was going to be fairly straightforward, but I keep rethinking the way certain ideas would play out and end up erasing most of what I write about half a dozen times. By the time I need to bathe and get to bed, I'm mostly satisfied with the quality of my work, but I'm especially relieved when I remember that today I finally got some confirmation that Katniss is still alive. The nightmares aren't so bad that night.

When I get my tattoo the next day I'm surprised to find that it's incredibly short. It just says "All Day – Reflection". I look under the doorway, and see that the guard is still standing there although for all I know it might be a different one by now. I quickly find myself settling into a routine. There's this constant stream of papers running underneath my door. I read them over, mark my comments on the back, and slip them back under waiting for a new set to get back. The ideas are more to my liking as time goes on. Plutarch's committee seems to have quickly seized upon one idea I gave strong approval to- one of the large print suggestions on my first sheet of paper was to show propos that memorialize tributes that died in the more recent Hunger Games. I remember how Katniss reacted when I tried to give part of yearly allotment to the families of Thresh and Rue. I think she would approve of this idea.

In between all the notes being slipped back and forth I bide my time between eating the flat meals slipped intermittently under my door and doing simple exercises in my room. We had to go through a lot of work getting into shape for the Quarter Quell, and I would hate to let that go to haste when there might actually be somewhere for me to be any day now except for sending back copies of meeting papers.

After a few days I finally get my chance. After reading over a fairly routine paper I seize on something at the very end. In large print, there's this suggestion- "bring Peeta and Johanna to District Eight battlezone. Film them interacting with the wounded." There's more on the list than that. There's also a suggestion of what approved scripts to use, which of us should use them, and who will be available for camerawork, but I figure I can deal with that later. I hurriedly draw circles all over the statement, emphatically endorsed the plan on the back, and slide it back under. If I'm going to be the face of this war, it's about time I saw what was going on.