Breathe. Just remember to breathe. Slow breaths in and out. Slow breathing allows me to maintain somewhat of a normal heart rate and that permits me to regain a fragment of my self control… And I am going to need every bit of self control in me to get through my upcoming encounter. Meeting Katniss is a horrible idea, every part of me knows it and my brain screams at me to tell my medics that I have changed my mind, but I don't. I know deep down that I have to see Katniss, and there even is a part of me that wants to see her. I want to encounter in person the girl who went with me into the 74th and 75th Hunger games, the tribute that won sponsors for us that helped us survive, who along with captivating the nation also captivated me. I want to meet the girl who appeared to so many as my lover, the girl who I was willing to die protecting, the girl I was set to marry, my fiancée. It's hard to wrap my mind around it, how can one girl apparently be so many things to me? But if the people here are telling are being honest with me, and I really do believe that they are, it's the truth and Katniss really is someone whose life is so closely entwined with my own that not knowing her is not knowing myself. To say that I have high expectations of Katniss in person is definitely an understatement, seeing as this girl apparently has so much of an effect on everyone, including myself; it's safe to say I am expecting to be completely swept off my feet by her. I try and construct an image of her in my mind, I imagine her to be a strong and powerful presence with a certain charm about her that makes you want to do anything she says. I imagine her to be tall and gorgeous, enough to cause any man to be wrapped around her finger. She must be naturally good with words and a born leader for so many people to stand behind her in this war. So yes, I have high expectations to say the least.
I also have this underlying hope that as soon as I lay eyes on Katniss everything will fall back into place, I will completely understand the person that she is and have more than just a list of adjectives to describe her, and with the understanding of the person that she is I will also begin to understand more about the person I was. I am still burdened with a mind full of conflicting memories of Katniss so I desperately hope that interacting with her in person will clear up any uncertainties and make me know which of the memories in my head are real. There is so much importance riding on this meeting that I am once again reminding myself to breathe and remain calm because I cannot lose control, I can't start lashing out at Katniss because she is a victim of these horrible circumstances the Capitol has created as well.
Though I am doing my best to take mental precautions to ensure I don't become a threat to Katniss' safety, my team of medics have done their work in ensuring I have physical precautions as well. I am reunited with my arms restraints and the tube in my arm that can administer a drug to knock me out if need be. My bed is positioned so I am sitting upright but I have absolutely no room to more in my restraints and I know that's a good thing. Haymitch left my room with the promise that he would personally deliver my request to Katniss so all I can do now is wait for her to arrive. Then the thought crosses my mind, maybe she won't come to visit… maybe she has no interest in seeing the person that only months ago tried to kill her. I have spent so much time lingering on whether or not I was ready to see her I never gave a second to think about whether she had any interest in ever seeing me again. I guess all I can do is wait, wait… wait to see whether the door to the room opens and reveals her, and wait to see if I mean anything to her at all anymore.
I can't put a time to how long I have sat and stared at the door to my room, waiting for it to open but for so long it doesn't. Usually I am occasionally visited by medics but since they left after fitting me with restraints and the tube I have been completely alone. Perhaps no one is game enough to enter my space, knowing full well that I am expecting Katniss as my visitor, maybe they aren't willing to take the risk of coming in as I might misinterpret them as her and attack them…. I am still dangerous, I am still considered to be a threat, that is why I have leather straps pinning down both of my arms, holding me still against my bed. With nothing to do to occupy my time waiting I listen attentively to the noises made outside my room. I never hear people talking or any sort of commotion outside my door, the only time I can hear anything is when someone is approaching the entrance to my room. So now I strain my eyes to listen for any sort of sound and after a couple of hours I hear it. The last 4 steps against the ground outside my door, then a long pause, and then two more steps and the mechanical noises of the opening mechanism in the door coming alive. I actually feel my heart stop beating and the breath get caught in my throat as the door opens slowly, everything else in the world around me disappears and there is nothing but me and whoever is about to enter through the doorway. My eyes seem to be the only part of me still with the ability to move, they spot her instantly as she appears and then move to lock onto her grey eyes. She stares back with equal intensity, her eyes studying mine. My earlier reminder to myself to breathe is immediately forgotten and once my heart remembers that it is required to beat it does so rapidly. I feel dread pool in my stomach, I can't help it, the slight of her unnerves me, I feel my palms begin to sweat and I have to fight to remain calm. A part of me, the part that's screaming at me to break free of my restraints and lock my hands around Katniss' throat, is still convinced that at any second she will bare her muttatious fangs and go in for the kill. No that's not true, she's not a mutt, she's a person, she's a person who is very important to me, I have to remain calm, I have to get through this. Just as I manage to relax some of my muscles she decides to move towards my bed until she is no more than a meter away from me and the proximity to her causes me to tense up once again. Just breathe, remember to breathe.
Katniss crosses her arms over her chest and I can see the tension in her shoulders as she raises them slightly, "Hey." She says plainly.
I take in her voice, there is musical quality to it that didn't come through on the audio from footage, though she sounds short and uncertain there is something smoothing about hearing her speak.
"Hey," I respond, the hint of uncertainty I identified in her voice is evident in my own.
I am trying my best to ignoring the screaming voice in my mind that is now warning me to run from the room and escape from her presence but the more I stare at her the more the voice is muted.
Katniss takes a deep breathe and continues, "Haymitch said you wanted to talk to me."
"Look at you, for starters," I admit, for the first time I take my eyes away from hers and absorb her image.
She looks remarkably familiar to the Katniss I watched in the footage from our games, but with the distinct difference that she now wears an expression that matures her. Her face is still young but there is something in her eyes that reveal that they have already witnessed too much evil in the world, and I can only imagine the same quality lies in my own eyes as well.
"You're not very big, are you?" I say out loud without thinking, it's the truth she is probably the same height as me, and though the look in her eyes ages her she still looks young, nothing like the tall, powerful war heroine I pictured her to be in my mind. "Or particularly pretty," I continue before I can stop myself.
I scold myself for my choice of words instantly… that came out completely wrong. Katniss is striking; there is no doubting that because my eyes take pleasure in each detail of her. But my comment comes due to the fact that once again she is not in person that I pictured her to be in my mind, the girl who would turn heads from miles away. The Katniss in front of me has beauty that might be overlooked from afar but up close you can experience every inch of it, her olive complexion, her perfectly proportioned face and her remarkable grey eyes. Those very grey eyes that now blink in shock and a brief flash of hurt takes over Katniss' expression, it's a quick slip of her composure but I am observant enough to catch it.
"Well, you've looked better," she retorts coldly.
I wait for a moment, sensing that she is teasing be but from the daggers she is staring at me I know she means what she just said. I laugh in disbelief, shocked by her nastiness… how dare she say something so cruel to me? My observations of her were not meant to be an offensive, I didn't have any desire to insult her but she obviously does not share the same intention.
"And not even remotely nice," I throw back at her with a slight bitterness, "To say that to me after all I've been through."
Well, this wasn't going the way I expected. She has caught me completely off guard, I don't really know what I was expecting from this meeting but it was definitely not her being so cold and dismissive to me like this.
Katniss looks at her feet momentarily, "Yeah. We've all been through a lot. And you're the one who was known for being nice. Not me."
And just like that, the hope that was being extinguished inside of me is ignited again. She was giving me something, some small part of information about the both of us that I can use to help my understanding. She might not be this beacon of kindness, strength, beauty and influence like I had expected but she was still here with a sense of familiarity about her and most importantly she does seem to have a very clear understanding of the person I once was.
"Look, I don't feel so well. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow," she says quickly as she begins to move towards the door.
I panic as I hear her words, I don't want her to leave just yet and I struggle to find the words to tell her. She is reaching the door so I think fast and bring up the one connection I can remember between the two of us that I am sure is real.
"Katniss," I say, it took me long enough just to be able to say her name in conversation but calling out her name to her is a strange sensation; it causes her to stop so I continue. "I remember about the bread."
I see her shoulders relax so I can tell she remembers it too, she turns around slowly to face me once again and there is a certain sense of relief that comes over me as I get to look at her face once again. Despite the coldness and hesitation towards each other I can feel that there is a deep underlying connection between us, I just can't tell whether that is a good or a bad thing.
"Thy showed you the tape of me talking about it," she asks moving slightly closer to me.
"No. Is there a tape of you talking about it? Why didn't the Capitol use it against me?" I ask confused, it's unlike them to leave me with an untouched memory.
"I made it the day you were rescued," Katniss explains, once again my attentiveness allows me to catch her give a quick wince of pain, and just as I am about to ask if she is okay she speaks again, "So what do you remember?"
"You," I begin softly, "In the rain. Digging in our rubbish bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."
It feels so long ago that this memory came to my mind, and I remember now why I close to not disclose my revelation of this event to my medics, something about it felt too personal… The moment felt as though it belonged only to Katniss and me.
"That's it. That's what happened." Katniss says with a slight edge of sadness in her voice, she looks me in the eyes before she continues. "The next day, after school, I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how."
From the moment Katniss arrived in my room it was evident that she was putting up a wall of defense around herself, the same way I was… but now, I can see that she is slowly lowering it and revealing herself so I decide to retaliate the favor.
"We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then… for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion," I say reminiscently.
Something changes in Katniss' eyes and she nods to confirm my memory. I sigh with relief, it is the first memory that actually feels confirmed in my mind, it's the first piece of the puzzle that has fallen into place.
"I must have loved you a lot," I say honestly. I believe it now, what everyone has been telling me for so long… I was completely in love with this girl.
"You did," she says looking at the ground as her voice breaks, she tries to cover it up with a cough but fails miserably.
My heartbeat begins to quicken again, but not due to anger. This was progress, this is what I was hoping this meeting with Katniss would bring, she was letting me in and as a result of that my trust of her was being restored.
"And did you love me?" I ask the question that has been playing on my mind for a while now and I feel completely vulnerable, I have lowered all my defenses for her.
"Everyone says that I did," she says, her eyes not moving from the floor. "Everyone says that's why Snow had you tortured. To break me."
And had it broken her? From the look in her eyes and from what Prim told me of her needing to leave the district after our reunion my guess was that it had. However she didn't give me the response I was looking for.
"That's not an answer," I tell her she seems to be distancing herself again so I continue with more honesty, "I don't know what to think when they show me some of the tapes. In the first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with those tracker jackers."
"I was trying to kill all of you," she admits, "You had me treed."
She was straying away from the subject so I press on, "Later, there's a lot of kissing. Didn't seem very genuine on your part. Did you like kissing me?"
"Sometimes," she says and that bring me the closest I have been to a smile in a very long time, "You know people are watching us now?" she asks eying the mirror with concern.
"I know," I say dismissively, those people barely exist in my mind right now all my focus is on our conversation. Then I decide to address the other matter pressing on my mind. "What about Gale?"
"He's not a bad kisser either," she says bluntly turning he head away from me.
I am taken aback by this comment completely; the words hit me like a slapped in the face. My question was purely to find out what kind of relationship was between Katniss and Gale. My scattered parts of memories were enough to imply that there was unique bond between the two of them and I was curious to know the extent of it. But I definitely was not expecting this kind of information about her and Gale and now that I have been hit with it, it changes everything… Here I was beginning to think there were genuine feelings between two of us and she goes and throws this at me.
"And it was OK with both if us? You kissing the other?" I press on, trying not to let the anger rising within me come through in my voice.
"No. It wasn't OK with either of you. But I wasn't asking your permission," Katniss say plainly.
I frown at her in disbelief, what kind of person says something like that? How in the world could I have been so taken by this person when I obviously wasn't even worth a moment of her consideration? The anger simmering inside of me burns hotter and I clench my fits to stop them from shaking. Katniss Everdeen may not be a muttation, she may not be the bloodthirsty monster that haunts my mind but she is also definitely not the patron saint everyone portrayed her as.
"Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?" I say dismissively with a laugh, completely appalled by the cold, inconsiderate and selfish person standing in front of me.
With my last comment lingering in the air she gives me a final stare before she turns her back on me and storms out of the room. What the hell just happened? I recount the past ten minuets or so in my head and vile builds up in my mouth as I begin to come to terms with the horrible things she said to me. I feel my heart begin to palpitate and my chest begins to tighten as my breaths become more and more rapid.
Here I was thinking that I was some type of expert in handling disappointment but seeing as I can currently feel myself falling apart apparently not. I was so sure that if I managed to get through this meeting with Katniss then things might go back to a state considered as normality… that I'd be able to see her as this wonderful person once again and she would get over the fact that I tried to kill her. If she can't show the slightest bit of consideration towards my feelings then how the hell am I supposed to believe that she ever cared about me at all? She exploited my vulnerability, both today and back in the arenas when I was obviously so blinded by my infatuation of her to see. I think of all the footage I saw of the two of us and it is so clear now how she used me, turned me into a piece in her game against the Capitol. I was nothing to her, nothing but a means to aid her survival, nothing but a burden to bear when she had to convince the nation she was deeply in love with me. She is probably disappointed that the Capitol didn't finish me off for her; though I may have accepted that she is not a mutt I am still not convinced that she wasn't trying to kill me in both of the games. She probably only visited me to determine whether or not I might still be of any use to her and now that she has concluded that I am not she will probably tell the medics to stop wasting their time on my recovery. They will probably throw me out of the district so I no longer waste their valuable resources, they will leave me out in the woods where I will eventually destroy myself and make everyone's life a hell of a lot easier. The burning anger within me fuels a scream that builds from my core; I clench my teeth and open my mouth to let it out the sound and I thrash around in my restraints to let out my frustration and rage.
"What the hell were you thinking?" I bellow through my shouting, my voice is so deep and unnatural that it does not sound like my own.
"You're so stupid!" I spit out in disgust of myself as my nails dig into my bed and claw at the fabric.
The room is no longer filled only with the sounds of my yelling but it is accompanied by the sound of Katniss singing, I scoff… they are trying to calm me down with that repulsive person's voice.
"TURN IT OFF!" I demand as my head jerks violently towards the mirror, my eyes wide and deranged starring furiously through the one-way glass.
They do not obey, the noise continues to fill the room and it only infuriates me. The sound I once found soothing now only acts as a screeching reminder of defectively poison association I have with Katniss Everdeen.
"TURN IT OFF!" I repeat louder with more ferociousness.
"I don't want to hear her voice. I don't want to see her face. I don't want anything to do with her!" I roar at the ceiling as I continue to pull against my restraints.
With all my strength I attempt to lift my arms away from the bed and I can hear the leather restraints giving in, slowing starting to rip under my rage fueled strength. With a growl of satisfaction my right arm breaks free of two of the bounds and then I see the tube in my arm begin to fill with liquid. I feel the drug enter my veins and before I can let out another scream my vision begins to fill with dark spots that eventually spread until there is nothing but darkness.
Well there you are guys. I really hope you all liked the chapter :)
Sorry that I took a bit longer to upload it but I have been working on the chapter everyday and I wanted it to be perfect, and I finally got it to the stage where I was really happy with it.
I poured my heart and soul into this chapter so please let me know what you thought of it!