**Trigger warning: This chapter may contain themes of torture, psycological abuse, sexual harassment, and/or suicdial thoughts or actions**
(Somewhere in the Capitol, during the first week of her imprisonment)
Katniss
I wake up, really actually regain full consciousness, after an indefinable period of time. The first thing I notice is my shoulder doesn't hurt anymore. And my neck feels better too. Then a memory surfaces. A nurse, a Capitol doctor….a needle…. I try to jerk upright, only to find my arms, torso and legs restrained by thick metal bars that pin my body against the hospital style bed. I struggle for a minute, my heart making the medical machines beep rapidly, but no one comes in to check what the problem is.
I remember now. And I wish I didn't. I'm back in the Capitol being held prisoner. Probably underground in the training center. I have no idea why they decided to fix my injuries. It's unsettling. I look over my body and find that not only have they treated my wounds, but my skin feels light and new...like I've just gotten a full body polish. That is definitely a troubling sign.
I repeat the mantra I've been using to calm myself down since I felt the hovercraft touch down.
Nothing that happens to you from this point matters.
They are safe. They are protected.
Disconnect.
Turn it all off.
Find the pain that makes it easy to slip away….
I run over the list of people in my head. Those that have gone before me, to pain, and to death at the hands of the Capitol.
Rue. Thresh. Maisy Evans. Leed Turner. Mira Relle. Peeta's father. Laurel Mellark...who had almost been...my family in a way…
The tears are easy to find today. And I let them come, knowing that once they do, they will carve a path to the numb emptiness that I seek.
That precious apathy that was my only ally, my only friend here in this dark place where I would live out the remainder of my short days.
I owed it to myself and to Peeta and Haymitch and everyone else to find a way to die, with as little self pity as I could. I doubted I could control my reaction to the pain that was sure to come, but I could undoubtedly retain some measure of composure over my feelings.
A swift death.
My only other goal now.
So when the door opened and the red headed avox girl came in with two peacekeepers I was as prepared as I could be. They released the metal hold on me, and allowed me to sit up. And I felt perfectly and totally healthy. Not an ache or pain anywhere, except a little stiffness in my limbs from being restrained for so long. But they just instructed her to help me into a white uniform. White cotton sweatpants with a drawstring tie, and a plain thick cut white shirt. The two peacekeepers remained in the room though, and when I frowned at their presence, the red headed girl shook her head almost imperceptibly. I told myself to breathe.
The avox girl eased me into the pants under the privacy of the hospital gown. My hands shook a little, and for her part she tried to shield me with as much of her body as she could when the gown had to come off. But I at least had been given a bra to wear and underwear while they had me medically sedated. I turned around so that only my back was visible and she helped me change so quickly, that I felt relief wash through me.
It was short lived.
As soon as I was changed, they led me barefoot out of the room between the two of them down the hallway and into another elevator. I hadn't even gotten the chance to thank the red headed girl with my eyes before they carted me off.
The elevator descended to a floor labeled only CL3.
And when the door opened I felt it like an ominous wind. The hallway was dimly lit. The rooms didn't have regular doors, only thick plate glass walls that could be looked into. The doors it seemed were automatic and controlled by a complicated looking control pad. The rooms were tiny. There was nothing in them but a small concrete slab that jutted from the wall that probably served as a bed. And a small toilet in full view.
Cells.
I clutch the dark comforting numbness around me as I feel the edge of fear, real unimaginable fear creep into the corners of my mind.
The first few cells or so were empty, but when we got to the other end of the room I saw people inside them.
A youngish man who looks haggard and guant, with yellowing skin and dark rings under his eyes. His arms are a patchwork of needle scars….
Recognition sparks. Deen's victory tour...somewhere in District 6. Yes. I had met him once, briefly. He had been a victor from district 6, something like 11 or 12 years ago...I couldn't remember his name. Peeta was always the one who remembered people's names. In my mind I had just referred to him as the 'morphling'. Him and one other woman, older than him, were the only living victors from 6. They were both drug addicts…
HIs over large eyes in this thin face stared at me incredulously as I passed his cell.
I wondered for a second what he had done to get imprisoned. The cell directly across from him was also occupied. By someone who's name I did know.
"Chaff?" I asked out loud, and the dark skinned man pounded on the thick glass as the peacekeepers yanked me away before I could get a really good look at him.
But it had been him. How many other men were missing a hand, with distinctive claw marks down the side of their face?
Chaff...from 11...oh...no….this was bad. Very very bad…..
The next cell contained Seeder and when I saw her I knew without a doubt that it had been Chaff in the other cell. My knees felt weak. Seeder's sad eyes looked out at me as she sat on the bed of her cell, a hopeless gaze that burned into my brain. Across from her I saw Mags, the oldest living victor in Panem. She sat quietly on her cot, braiding her hair over and over again. When she looked up at me, she gasped, put her hands over her eyes and began to cry in that garbled unintelligible way she did.
I felt my precious numbness beginning to crumble. Oh god, what were all these victors doing here? Were they being punished because of Peeta and I's escape? I had met these people over the years sure, some of them I even liked a little bit, like Seeder or Mags. But I couldn't understand why Snow would use them against me, they weren't family or true friends of mine. Maybe if Haymitch were here in my place since he had been a victor longer and knew everyone and had been friends with them for years.
But I just wasn't that close to any of them. I mean we all tried to get a long decently enough while we were in the Capitol for the Games, but I had mostly stuck to Peeta and Haymitch over the past two years as mentors. My responsibilities as a mentor were difficult enough to handle without adding to it the pressure to try and 'make friends', something I didn't like doing even when I had the time or energy.
"Oh that's just FUCKIN' GREAT! Stupid bitch got herself caught! Great! Just really balls up terrific!" The voice was screaming so loud that I could hear its shrill screaming even before I reached the next cell.
Joanna Mason.
Ok, if Snow thought that Joanna and I were friends, he was definitely barking up the wrong tree. We hated each other. Could hardly be in the same room after the first time we met and she literally stripped naked in Peeta and I and Haymitch's elevator and proceeded to try and ask Peeta if he would be willing to paint her portrait. I had disliked her immediately, for being so aggressive and crass. She seemed to really enjoy provoking me. And I had refused to let Peeta stay in my room for three days after he had told her he'd consider her offer.
Looking back now...I can see how maybe I had been sending mixed signals for a while….
Her appearance here in the cells only confused me more as we passed to the next pair of cells. One was empty, the other was occupied by none other than Finnick Odair.
Finnick, another victor I hadn't gotten along too well with. He had always struck me as vapid, shallow, arrogant, and...well, overly provocative and sexual. The first time we met he had made a lot of jokes and insinuations about Peeta and I, and our inexperience, as mentors and also….as virgins. He had made some underhanded comment about how two people who were really sleeping together didn't go to so much trouble to draw attention to it, as with Peeta and I sneaking off into coat closets.
His comments had annoyed me, and embarrassed Peeta. And his overall focus on sensuality and innuendo had rubbed me the wrong way. I avoided him whenever I could on our trips to the Capitol.
What was going on here?
"Katniss?! Oh no! No! NO! SHIT!" He exclaims when he sees me, and runs his hand through his hair.
"Katniss! Where's Peeta? Is he alive? What about Deen and Haymitch?" He's shouting at me and I can feel my eyebrows pull down in confusion. How had Finnick known about how many people were part of our group?
I'm about to ask him a question, when one of the guards beats the glass with his metal baton threateningly. But Finnick doesn't back away.
He keeps asking me questions. And then the guard is getting out an access card like he's going to open Finnick's cell. And I don't want to see this. I can't see this, not on the first day. I had thought I would die alone, and isolated in a Capital dungeon somewhere. I had no idea that there would be other human beings with me.
Damn it.
"Finnick! Shut the hell up!" Joanna screams from her cell, and I look into Finnick's eyes, trying to ask him to stop, to just calm down.
He lifts up his hands in surrender to the guard when he sees my look, and turns around to go and sit on his cot. His leg starts bouncing rapidly, nervously, and he keeps glancing my way as the guards work quickly to open the cell across from him.
Great, my two closest cellmates are Finnick Odair and Joanna Mason. The playboy sex symbol of Panem, and a psycotic axe murderer with a pechant for nudity and curse words.
The guards toss me in when the door is opened and I fall to the floor in an ungraceful heap. The door swishes shut and then they retreat with one last menacing glance at Finnick.
I sit up, and look around my cell. It's the same as the others. I get up to go and sit on the cot, and tuck my legs up under me, drawing into myself as much as possible.
How had Finnick Odair known that Peeta, Deen, and Haymitch and I had all been together in our escape? I peered back at him, and he was pressed against his glass wall, having moved back in the time I moved to my cot.
I wondered what he was doing for a moment before I saw what he intended.
He used his breath to fog up the glass, and write one letter and one symbol.
P?
I studied him for a moment. He looked...different. Gone was the snarky attitude. The pervasive arrogance he wore almost like armor...and then remembered Haymitch and Peeta had spoken about reaching out to their contacts in the Capitol…. So maybe...
I scrambled off my cot, and raced over to my own glass wall. I mimicked his move and fogged up the glass quickly by pressing my mouth just over the smooth surface and blowing as much warm air as I could.
13
I wrote back, hoping that I wasn't giving too much away with even this small amount of information. I mean the Capitol probably knew this by now anyway.
The look of relief on Finnick's face is almost palpable. I find myself reliving a little of the relief as I nod when he writes the letters, H, and D next. Then he writes the letter U, with a question mark and holds up his index finger in a universal symbol for the number 1.
And I understand he's asking me if I was the only one captured. I nod to him quickly and he frowns, in a clearly sympathetic way.
But I'm curious to find out how all this happened...so I fog up my glass and write back a mirror of his question.
U?
"Tried to make a run for it when you all did. But they found us. I gave myself up to save Annie...they got Mags too." Finnick says in a really heartbroken way, and I think that maybe I've misjudged him. I feel like I'm speaking to a stranger right now. I know who he's speaking about. Annie Cresta. She won her Games 7 years ago. One of those flukes, where the Gamemakers go a little overboard with their destruction. She had been the lone survivor after a flood wiped out pretty much every other tribute. She was mentally unstable, and I had only seen her a few times in passing. She never spoke much, and avoided the Capitol if she could, sometimes skipping the Games entirely if they allowed it.
I bit down on my bottom lip, thought of Peeta and felt a pain of anxiety. He was always reminding me not to chew on my lips. I closed my eyes, and looked up to the ceiling with its flat fluorescent light.
Had all these people been part of Haymitch's secret network of rebel conspirators?
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense on some level.
Who suffered the most at the hands of the Capitol, but lived to tell about it? Victors were both naturally inclined towards independence and self-reliance, something the Capitol tried to strip from them...as they did with Peeta and I and Deen, and as they must have done with Haymitch before we met him. Victors were at the forefront of public life, so while there was an enormous risk involved, they were also in the perfect position to spy on Capitol Elite, and the like. They went to the same parties, the same ceremonies, hell, Finnick had probably slept with half of the richest sponsors in Panem by now…
And after what Haymitch had told us this year, about what happened to Deen in the Capitol after his tour...and what usually happened to most victors after the Games…
Suddenly I felt like a huge idiot and a complete jerk.
All these years I had thought Finnick was shallow and vain and disgusting. Joanna and some of the others by extension who turned to drinking and sex and drugs to cope with the trama of the Games. I had always felt...a tiny bit superior to them...in a way. But looking at the whole picture I could see that most of these people had been manipulated just like Peeta and I. Worse, they had been forced to do things for the entertainment of the Capitol that would make Hunger Games nightmares seem like child's play.
And that fear was back.
And gaining ground inside of me.
I tried to stomp it down...but..
Why had they healed my injuries?
Why had they fixed my skin?
I looked into Finnick's sea green eyes. Asking a question that I didn't know if he would even be able to interpret much less answer.
He looked away from me. There was something fearful and troubled in his gaze that I think he didn't want me to see.
"Finnick, why are we still alive?" I finally ask out loud. The first real words I've spoken since I got off the hovercraft. My voice sounds hoarse from disuse, but I know he heard me. He turns away, his back towards me as he shakes his head. I feel my eyes widen.
"Why do you think, Brainless? Stop asking stupid questions and shut your mouth, about all of it. Don't give them a single thing, do you hear me?!" Joanna shouts from the cell next to mine, and even though I can't see her, I can picture her face contorted in anger.
I close my mouth. And I turn around and sit back on my cot. She's right. There's no use in asking these kinds of questions. What was the point?
I had known. When I took Deen's place.
Nothing that happens to you from this point matters.
They are safe. They are protected.
Disconnect.
Turn it all off.
A swift death.
That is all that matters now.
I take comfort in the aching despair that settles around me. Once the panic and terror have passed, I will be able to reach again for the indifference.
I repeat the mantra over and over.
Hours pass. Joanna kicks against the glass every now and then swearing and demanding to be given food or water.
Finnick paces back and forth around his cell.
I lay on my cot, curled inward, trying to sleep, trying to rest if I can.
Sleep deprivation probably won't make torture any easier.
I think I drift in and out of consciousness after a while.
I have this faint feeling of dreaming of Peeta's arms around me. I can almost smell the cinnamon and the dill, and the warm delicious unique scent of his skin. His lips are just out of my reach...but I stretch out trying to capture his mouth…
The sound of banging, metal on glass, sharp and loud jolts me awake. The dream recedes, slips out of my fingers and I feel cold and bereft when it goes.
Two guards are back, one of them holding something in his hands.
Clothes it seems. The glass door swishes open and they toss the clothes at me, I barely have time to catch them before they fall to the floor. A dressy shirt and slacks, nice Capitol casual wear.
"Get dressed. Quickly." One of them says. But neither of them move away or turn around. They just stare at me. I feel my heart start to pound.
"I'm already dressed." I tell them, the words slipping out more fiercely than I intended through my gritted teeth.
One of them advances on me, baton out, threateningly.
"Hey assholes! That the only way you two cock suckers can look at a girl huh? Like peeping toms? That's fucking pathetic! I bet you don't even-" Finnick starts shouting insults at the guards wildly, and I realize he's trying to distract them.
But I wish he hadn't. Because then, one of the guards is at the door to his cell so fast, and opens the door with his club raised high…
"Just not the face." The other peacekeeper chides his partner, as the man advances on Finnick.
I bite down on a scream when the guard lands the first blow, on Finnick's back. The guard still in my room starts laughing as Finnick tries to ward off his attacker. But Finnick is barefoot, in thin prison garb and the guard has body armor on. He probably doesn't even feel Finnick's blows.
This is just….
The horror of the moment snaps me awake. And I realize that if I don't move quickly, I'll waste the chance Finnick is paying for with blows to his back.
I strip as quickly as I can and throw on the clothes with lighting speed. And when the guard turns back around his eyes are hard and narrow.
"Little bitch." He mutters under his breath. But I don't flinch. The sound of the blows stop, and I look over to see Finnick doubled over in pain on the floor of his cell.
I don't know why he did it. But there's a part of me that is begrudgingly grateful to him.
There's only one person who's seen my body in that certain way, and if possible I want to try and hold onto that….fact, that feeling, that sentiment, for as long as I can. Because when it goes...I know a part of me will go with it. And I'm not ready for that yet.
I'm not ready.
I'll never be ready.
How am I going to survive this?
But then the guards led me out of the cell, and restrained my hands. I was led back to the elevator, and it was a long ride, since the guard punched in the P12 button for the penthouse…
I realize it is the training center penthouse when the door opens. So familiar, it might as well be Peeta and I's home away from District 12. They lead me to the dining room, past all the same furniture, and large windows that show the same cityscape view. It's all the same as it was just a few months ago. Except one thing.
There at the head of the dining room table is President Snow. And if I hadn't already been half out of my mind with terror, I am now.
His puffy lips. His cold eyes. The reek of roses. He looks over at me as I enter, his posture is perfect, a small smile twitches on his lips. He's wearing an impeccable tailored brown suit, with green and gold accents.
"Ms. Everdeen." He says it by way of greeting. And I gulp. He must know then, that the marriage license was a forgery.
"President Snow." I reply, finding it in me somewhere, to not remain muted in silence.
"Take a seat." He says, and the guard behind me pulls out the chair at the opposite end of the table. It's a formal dining room, so he is very far away from me, but I can still smell the faint trace of blood in the air.
"You know, you'd still be on your honeymoon right now, if you hadn't pulled that little stunt with the gas line and the dynamite at Peeta's home. Ironic isn't it, that you could've been on a beach somewhere or on a secluded mountain top with your lover, but instead you chose this. Defiance, betrayal, and punishment that comes with it of course."
"Sometimes the risk is worth the chance of punishment, when the chance at true freedom exists." I reply steadily.
"Freedom? Ms. Everdeen, no, no. That concept doesn't exist anywhere in reality. Here in the Capitol or in District 13. Your lover will come to realize that, as will the family you so nobly sacrificed yourself trying to save. But then again, you have always been so short sighted. Never able to see past your narrowest concerns at the moment. Before you die, you'll come to understand that truth."
"You're just angry that they got away. It doesn't matter what you do to me now. And it doesn't matter what you say. They're safe, as far away from you as possible. And I can die happy knowing that." I tell him as venomously as I can. I've wanted to do this for so long. I've wanted to finally be free of his threats and taunts, and now I almost am. But instead of appearing defeated or concerned, he just laughs.
"Oh, Ms. Everdeen you will die, of course, but in due time. At the appointed time. There are things that we would prefer to know of course. That must come first. Then there is of course the matter of your debt to Panem and its citizens."
"Debt? I'm done being your puppet. I'm done paying to try and keep the peace in the districts. I don't owe you or the Capitol, or the audience a damn thing. There's no Peeta here for me to sell a love story. There's just me, and we both know now that everyone I love is gone. I'll never lift a finger to help you again."
His eyes harden almost imperceptibly. And one of the guards takes a step towards me but Snow raises his hand to stop him.
"No, no. She's quite right. When it comes to real self preservation she is dreadfully lacking. No. The only time the concept fits into her head is when it's demonstrated." He says with a quirk of his lips that could be called a smile, if it weren't so repulsive.
"Bring him in." Snow says, and for a moment I completely panic.
Peeta? Had they captured him? Had he come after me? No. NO.
But the door opens and the guards drag in a prisoner, and it's not Peeta. The man they escort inside has red hair. His faint blue eyes squint at me from underneath the puffy swollenness of two black eyes.
"DARIUS!" I scream, and when I try to stand the peacekeeper near me shoves me back down into the chair I struggle, trying to break free, until the guard punches me hard in my stomach.
I've had the wind knocked out of me before. I've been injured incredibly badly in the Games as well. But I've never been struck like this, by a full grown man. I choke, as I try to get my breath back.
I think I can faintly hear Darius trying to say something, struggling as well, but he's gagged as well as restrained, and soon they are beating him into submission.
I feel tears leak out of the corners of my eyes.
"Ms. Everdeen. Since you refuse to cooperate with us, we'll be forced to employ harsher methods. For every lie you tell, for every answer you refuse to give, this man will pay the price. Your family may be in District 13 as of now. But there are many other avenues we can take to get to the truth." Snow says as he stands up.
"This is just the first installment that will be required from you. It in no way makes up for the damage you have caused, the debt you still need to repay. The Capitol will have what is owed, Ms. Everdeen. You will pay with everything you have before the end." He tells me quietly.
And I look up at him with pure hatred in my eyes. His cold snakelike ones glitter in amusement.
"I'll leave the rest to you Commander Thread. Do whatever you need to to the traitor, but keep her intact for the time being." Snow says as he and his personal guards leave. And then I'm left with the two guards who came in with me, and the one imposing guard, whose voice I recognize immediately even beneath his helmet, as being the one I negotiated with for Deen's release.
"Get him on the table!" Thread commands. And the other guards move to lift Darius up, as Thread comes over with ropes to bind me to the dining table chair.
I try to get up, I try to run, instinctively knowing that whatever comes next, for either Daruis or I, will undoubtedly be one of the most horrid things in our lives. But I don't make it far.
I try to think objectively. I try to warn my mind and brain that this is a no win situation.
If they want information, I don't have it.
I don't have it.
And so that means….
I look over into Darius's blue eyes. I sob, his name once, just once, and he winces. He nods at me, just barely, and I start babbling. I try to tell them that Darius isn't a traitor. He's just a normal peacekeeper. He just likes soup and wild game, and he likes to buy white liquor sometimes, and drink with his friends. And he's really an upstanding person, and he's kind and generous and funny and smart, and..and.. They aren't listening to a thing I'm saying. They're just setting out tools. Metal knives, ropes, and needles, and horrible looking things in rows along the table. And I start screaming at the top of my lungs until someone punches me in the stomach again and my screams are cut off because I can't breathe.
Darius grits his teeth, and looks up at the ceiling as they tie him to the table where Peeta and I and Haymitch and Effie, and Cinna and Portia spent so much time together.
How could I have known that this space, this particular setting would become the background to horrors my mind strained against absorbing even while they happened before my eyes?
Sometime during it all I felt myself lose my grip on reality.
There were only images, flashes, that kept appearing in my mind out of order, randomly, one right after the other.
Darius's head, rolling back and forth unconsciously as they continued to beat him after he passed out the first time.
His blood spilling over the table, like the one time Deen knocked over the pot of melted chocolate...
My chair crashed over once, breaking underneath me and the peacekeeper guarding me when I finally in a mad frenzy was able to break out of his grasp, to try and fling myself onto the table. As if I could cover the distance, and drape my body over Darius's. As if I could take the blows, and the cuts, and the burns, and….
By the time it is all over Darius is dead.
And I think they knew, somewhere in between drowning him and cutting off his ear, that I didn't have the answers to their questions.
I think that maybe they suspected all along.
And that is when I realize that there is no safe space inside my head where I will be able to retreat from this.
They will break me.
They will take away everything.
And I had always thought Peeta and I had paid over the years, more than enough.
It seemed, that in reality, the pain, and the paying, and the darkness that came before this moment was just an introduction.
And when they tossed me back in my cell that night I found myself cursing the gun that had been empty in the clearing.