Leilani POV

"Cayden." I whisper with the bug tightly enclosed in my good hand as I walk to his bed.

"Mmhm?" He responds while his eyes are still closed. I gently shake him until his eyelids groggily lift up to reveal his gorgeous blue orbs. Cayden was about to open his mouth, but I placed a finger to my lips to quiet him. He cocks his eyebrow up questionably before I opened my tiny hand and showed him the bug. I know he has never seen one before so I just mouth the word 'bug' and he understands immediately.

'Get rid of it!' Cayden mouths back to me; his eyes displaying worry. I shake my head and he looks at me like I'm crazy. I just grab a pouch and drop the bug in and zip it back up. Then I pick up a bigger pouch and enclose the other pouch in it. After doing this process two more times, I open a desk drawer and lock it in a metal box. Now I am aware that the Capitol is very advanced (technologically speaking), but I'm sure that a bug can't work that well in those circumstances.

"Who do you think would bug me?" I ask while stuffing a pillow inside the drawer for good measure.

"No clue." He's still staring at the drawer I just closed. "But given your past, it could be anyone."

Well that is reassuring. Thanks a lot Cayden.

He reads my mind (as usual). "Come here." He pats his lap and I don't hesitate to walk into his arms. Forget trying to distance myself from Cayden, it's impossible. He's my anchor and vice versa.

"What I meant to say was no matter who it is, I won't let them even touch you." He whispers into my messy hair. "And I really am sorry I lost control. Please forgive me."

I nuzzle my face into his chest and sleepily reply. "I could never live without my Big Bro."

Cayden laughs softly and hugs me tighter before laying me down next to him on the bed. Me with my head resting on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat and him with his strong arms around my waist helps me fall asleep. With comfort like that, who can possibly get nightmares?

Me.

I'm lying in a soft bed of grass surrounded by a plethora of colorful flowers. The trees above me sway and shimmy their healthy green leaves as if they're celebrating the unmistakable arrival of summer. I breathe in the fresh pine scent of the forest; a place I used to consider my home.

Next to me a figure shifts and I realize the comfy pillow my head was using is Cayden's huge bicep. I roll over to rest my arms on his strong chest with my chin resting between my hands and stare into his loving blue eyes. He twirls a strand of my curly hair and I can feel a smile growing on my face; a real happy smile. Okay, so it's obvious I'm dreaming.

Twang. I snap my head toward the familiar sound of an arrow sent flying. The source of the noise came from a determined looking Katniss, a large bow in her hand. Her face breaks into a genuine smile too, which even confirms more this is just a dream. A little head with long golden hair and wide innocent eyes pokes out from behind Katniss. Prim giggles and runs down from the little hill they were just standing on to play in the grass. Katniss surprisingly joins her and they spin in circles with their pretty braids flowing through the air.

Then I saw something that brought tears to my eyes. Two boys and an older man are splashing and play wrestling in a nearby lake. They all have jet black hair and dark brown eyes just like mine...my family.

"Leo? Leland? Daddy?" I say out loud. I'm about to get up when all of a sudden everything goes still. The trees stop dancing, the birds stop chirping, and a large dark shadow looms over us. I look up to see that it's a Capitol hovercraft right above where I am. Cayden picks me up and Katniss and Prim start to run away with us. But all of a sudden we're frozen in place and get lifted in the air straight toward the hovercraft.

It's all a blur then. Flashes of images appear before me; memories that are actually real and probably memories that will be real soon. The sounds of bloodcurdling screams and death are the only things that fill my ears, blood and torture is the only thing I see, and pain is all I can feel.

I watched everyone- my brothers, my father, Cayden, Katniss and Prim-get tortured and murdered brutally with their lifeless eyes staring right at me. I'm trying to scream, but no sound comes out. Instead, tears threaten to flood out of my eyes.

'Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry. It's just a dream don't cry.'

Laughter echoes everywhere; cold evil laughter that makes you cringe in disgust and slight fear. "I told you I'd make you pay Leilani."

I squeeze my eyes shut and desperately attempt to escape this dream. I don't want to listen to what this monster has to say. I've already heard this so many times in both nightmares and in reality.

"Now you have nothing!" President Snow cackles maniacally. "You will always have no one and will turn into the monster I am now."

"NO!" That's all I can shriek before I am enveloped into darkness.

That wasn't a nightmare. That was a partial replay of my hellish childhood.

Cayden POV

I'm suddenly jerked awake by a sharp pain in my nose. What the hell? When I finally regain my wits, I realize it's Dusk violently thrashing next to me. Even in her sleep, she has a solid punch that probably just broke my nose.

I manage to grab her arms and pin her down, but she won't stop shaking. "Dusk? Dusk, please wake up."

A few drops of blood from my nose fall and land on her pale face. She flinches at the contact and snaps her eyes open. At first, they are wild and filled with agony and despair. But as I gently coax her, those beautiful brown eyes are no longer wracked with insanity; just pain and tears. I notice that I'm directly on top of her, so I move over into a sitting position. Thankfully, she didn't see me turn red. I pulled her close to me and held her while she convulsed from dry sobs. Tears never seem to spill from her.

"It's okay, Dusk. Everything is fine. I'm here and I'll never let Snow harm
you again." I coo to her softly. After a few moments, the vulnerable, almost crying Leilani is replaced by the usual emotionless Dusk.

"You're nose is bleeding." She states blankly. "Here." Dusk takes a cloth and cleans my face thoroughly. This just makes me want to punch myself in the face. She injured me, yet she stays and takes care of me when I didn't even help her after wounding her myself.

I am such an idiot...

"Mr. Hunting?" A voice snaps me out of my trance. I am so exhausted from staying up all night that when Dusk brought me to the medic center, I could barely keep my eyes open.

"Yes?" I focus my blurry eyesight on the person in front of me.

It's a female nurse with blue eyes like mine except that hers are more lifeless and bore uncomfortably into my very soul. She seems middle aged, but stress must have caused some of her once golden hair to turn dull or even gray from the looks of her tight bun. The lady also has a few worry lines and wrinkles on her extremely pale sunken face. Even though she appears like this, I can still distinguish that this is Prim's mom.

"Your nose has a bad break, so we do need to set it. Also, you can not participate in any training until it completely heals." She asserts in a monotonous tone.

I sigh exasperatedly. "How long will it take to heal?"

"Judging from the severity of the break, I'd estimate around two months or longer."

'WHAT THE F-'

"Can you explain to me what happened...to both of you?" Mrs. Everdeen asks with her eyes flitting between me and Dusk. She probably thinks we were abusing eachother. That's actually true to an extent; accidental beatings on eachother. It's been quite the twenty four hours...

"Freak accidents." I shrug indifferently. "She accidentally hit my nose and I accidentally injured her during training..."

I can see the doubt in her eyes, but she doesn't question it and just finishes tending to me with a bandage. "There you may leave now."

I glance across the room and see a sleeping Dusk in a chair. She must have drifted off the same time I did. I stared blankly at the small cast around her wrist for a few moments.

"Do you know when she will be completely healed?" I ask earnestly. I do not want her to miss too much training otherwise she'd probably go crazy.

"It's a bad sprained wrist, but will take around the same amount of time as you to heal. The concussion will take about ten days of rest." She answers in her mechanical voice. "Unfortunately, the wound on her cheek may bring infection and scarring due to the deep penetration of skin."

I tensed up and inhaled sharply. Infection? Scaring? Dusk will have that wound forever...all because of me. I will always look upon her pretty little face and always be reminded of the damage I caused.

"Oh." Is all I can say.

Mrs. Everdeen, finally done with packing the materials in the medic kit, begins to scribble down random notes about me on her clipboard. "You may return to your rooms. It's best if a medic saw the both of you before resuming training again." And with that, she exited the room to deal with more patients.

Dusk mumbles in her sleep,"Leave him alone...please." Her voice breaks at the last part so I decide to pull her out of another one of her nightmares. Luckily, I remembered to take a wooden clipboard and place it in front of me to prevent further injuries. I barely laid a finger on her before she just freaks out. She instantly whacked the board and broke it in half; the force of that causing the clipboard to smack me in the jaw.

Ouch. Why is she so violent in her sleep?

Dusk is in a fighting stance with fists clenched and ready to punch until she gathered her senses. Her eyes widen when she realized she attacked me yet again.

"S-Sorry Cayden. I thought you were Snow." She splutters.

"It's fine. Nightmares again?" She nods slightly with her once dilated pupils going back to normal. I just sigh and say,"C'mon, let's go back to our room."

Dusk stops me and reaches to gingerly touch my jaw. I flinch from the contact which tells me I'm going to have a nice bruise there soon.

"Guess we're sort of even now, aren't we?" She gives me a sadistic smirk-a career smirk- and I just chuckle.

That's her way of saying she completely forgives me.