((Mrs. Everdeen's POV))
I don't know what triggered it. But she knows. She is clawing at her stomach and her nails are covering in blood. Screams erupt from her mouth, and tears nearly choke her. Somehow, her arms are unrestrained.
It is too late to come up with a controlled way to tell her.
With how she is reacting, I know that nothing is going to calm her down. She is attacking herself as if it will make her pregnancy go away. As if she can simply tear the fetus out herself.
"Sweetie. Please. You're hurting yourself." I gently grab her hands and pull them away from her body.
"You lied! You lied! Peeta is a mutt! He did this to me! He- he's going to hurt Prim. Get it out! GET IT OUT."
The guards come in, and quickly drop their weapons. They begin grabbing at her arms, trying to pin them and keep her from hurting herself any further. But she is a rabid animal, and she will not go down without a fight.
I fish around in the cupboard, trying to find a safe sedative needle. She had torn the IV out of her arm. The gashes she made on her bump are bleeding, but not too bad.
Bless Katniss's inability to resist biting her fingernails.
I have just found the needle when the door bursts open. Primrose and Peeta come running inside, but Katniss is still thrashing against the guards. The cot is close to tipping over.
"He did this to me! The mutt! You lied to me, Primrose. You swore you wouldn't lie. How could you? I hate you! I hate you!"
Just then, I am able to stick the needle in her arm. She goes still and drops unconscious.
((Katniss's POV))
The children that visit me in my slumber are no long dreams. They are nightmares. I am hit with onslaughts of them being tortured as I was. As my family has been.
Reaped. Hung. Whipped. Starving to death. Wasting the rest of their lives away in a mine. Getting blown to bits and never seeing the sun again.
I am vaguely able to process that while the gruesome images are not real, their existence is.
I am pregnant. And I can still feel Peeta's hands on me, caressing me. While I would never admit it, I had reveled in the feeling of him loving me. Of his touch. When he held me not for safety, but for pleasure.
A dream come true, quickly followed by a nightmare.
5 months. In four months I'll give birth… and it scares me more than anything else. More than the Games, more than my family starving to death. Because I am the only one responsible. Not Peeta- he wouldn't have acted on it if I hadn't encouraged it- me.
And what's worse is that I have longed for them in my dreams. For their sweet laughter, for their very existence. But it is unfathomable to me that I did not notice before.
How do you remain oblivious to a watermelon for a stomach?
They knew. They lied to me. They did this on purpose. Peeta's hands on me, Prim's false "not real." My mother telling me it was just some internal issue from my torture. I hate them. I hate them. I hate-
((Peeta's POV))
Another relapse. One much worse than before.
Mrs. Everdeen is cleaning the blood from scratch marks on her stomach, but it doesn't help erase what just happened.
Katniss knows. And she wants to kill me again.
I stand there idly while Prim and her mother clean everything up. By the time they're done, its almost like yesterday when everything was fine.
When Katniss could look me in the eye and let me touch her.
We all stand there and look at her, though there is no way she will wake up. The sedative is good for 36 hours. But it only took 15 minutes for a little over a month of progress to come tumbling down.
March 29th is her due date. We have until then to get her mentally sound and physically healthy. It feels like some sick joke.
Mrs. Everdeen leaves, muttering something about talking to Dr. Aurelius. Prim decides to follow her, but the look she gives me tells me that I should not come with them.
I sit next to Katniss on the hospital bed instead, burying my face in her hair. Pretending that we are not miles underground. That we are back in bed together, cuddling together like we did before the Quell, not out of desperation to escape the endless nightmares.
I let myself fall asleep.
((Gale's POV))
Something is wrong with Katniss. I have not seen her since that day in the meal hall, and the Everdeens seem determined to stay away from me.
Mrs. Everdeen's question has me confused, with an underlying sense of dread that I cannot discern the meaning of. The very thought of her anger turning on me makes me uneasy.
"Have you ever kissed Katniss?"
It was so unexpected and accusatory, though her eyes revealed nothing but exhaustion. Why would she possibly ask me that? And then it hits me. I strain to remember the few conversations I have overheard from Peeta and Prim in the meal hall.
They call it the real or not real.
I only know a few basics of Katniss's attempted recovery.
1. She had been hijacked. A form of torture using tracker jacker venom as fear conditioning.
2. When she reunited with Peeta Mellark, she transformed into a homicidal maniac.
3. Extremely confused and disorientated, she had to ask questions to clarify the blurred lines between reality and lies fed to her by the Capitol.
4. Primrose made a "game" they played with her called Real or Not Real.
And the most painful thing: she hasn't asked for me even once. I would think after so long of not seeing her, she would have recovered enough to at least be curious to see me. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Her torture during her time spent in the Capitol is a relative mystery to me. She has been the bridge between our families for a long time, and now we are left awkwardly trying to reach each other.
Or at least, my family is. I know that Mom has made several efforts to check in with Mrs. Everdeen, but she simply evades her. I haven't had any success talking to Primrose, especially after our… disagreement. Vick doesn't seem bothered, but I know that Rory's "friendship" with Prim is still strong. I catch them talking sometimes, but Rory seems determined to keep me out of the loop, too.
I just want to know if she's okay.
Regardless, Mellark has deigned those of us in Command worthy of his presence. But only during meetings, as he avoids my gaze most of the time and leaves Command even faster. I know where he goes afterwards: to Katniss's hospital room. They are hiding something regarding her health, but I can't get my hands on the answer.
It rubs me the wrong way, but I have been denied all access to Katniss and her medical team. It worries me, because they won't even lie and tell me that she's fine.
So I make it my personal goal to find out the truth. And my first step is following Mellark to the medical bay after this meeting.
"Soldiers Hawthorne and Mellark, please join us. We were hoping to discuss a new propo strategy."
((Peeta's POV))
There is something inherently off about Alma Coin, but I just can't seem to put my finger on it. Appearance wise, she looked like one would expect. Well kept and presidential. But if Snow was a snake as Katniss had described him to be, Coin was a fox. There was something about her that warranted suspicion and I simply couldn't find it in myself to dredge up an ounce of trust for her. Or her government for that matter.
It was only a matter of time until she heard of Kat's pregnancy.
Mrs. Everdeen says that it's not too late for her to discreetly give Katniss an abortion with a special tea. But it is so hard to make such a big decision, let alone one about her body. I love her and I can't bear to see her pain, but I am not confident in what she would want.
I don't want to risk taking away her chances of ever having kids. Even if it's not with me.
I have a feeling that 13 would not allow her to terminate it even if she wanted to. It weighs on my conscious, how much they enforce their… democratic rules. Or at least, that's what they call it. But I think it is nothing more than a way to control us, keep us refugees in line. Because we must follow their rules if we are to stay here, and really where else could we go? Especially with Kat's condition and need for their advanced healthcare.
Our dependency on them scares me a little, I think. I can't help but feel anxious since we can't just pick up and leave.
But I can't say that to a room of Coin's cronies (including Gale, might I add). So I often spend my time in these meetings sitting quietly unless it is something I am not willing to do.
This happens to be one of those things.
"Surely Katniss has had enough time to get over her… setback in the Capitol. Everyone is eager to see the star-crossed lovers! Especially with the story spreading of her miscarriage-"
Oh shit.
"But we can use this to our advantage, I'm sure of it. Where is her prep team? If they go now, we could film first thing tomorrow morning!"
Curse Plutarch and his enthusiasm. I'm not sure how to twist the truth to protect her. Which is severely ironic considering it was my idea that got us into the fake pregnancy mess to begin with. And to be perfectly truthful, I am very unsure of how the higher ups do not know yet. Seeing as she was their main propaganda figurehead, it shocks me how little Coin seemed to care of her now that Snow wasn't able to use her against the rebels.
It worries me endlessly.
But alas, there was nothing I could possibly do about it. So I sit and wait for someone - anyone - to give Plutarch a response. His confidence slowly seemed to decrease as the room remained silent.
"We shall reconvene in the morning at 700 sharp and ask Dr. Aurelius to join us to discuss her health and… usefulness to our coming propos. You are dismissed." Coin waved them away, and I leave as soon as the door was open and clear.
I have to go check on her. And beg her doctor not to disclose anything. It felt futile, but I rush so fast that I forget to check for Gale tailing me.
Katniss, Katniss, Katniss, Katniss.