A/N: Okay, my loves, Haymitch is going to be extremely vulnerable in this chapter and then I think we're overdue for a tone shift. Poor Haymitch, it's been pretty much doom and gloom since the end of Catching Fire. Things are about to just go well and be nice for a few chapters!
They give Peeta a break after injecting him with morphling and showing him the story of Katniss talking about Primrose's goat. The doctors say he's definitely improving in lucidity, but any mention or remembrance of Katniss causes him to go almost catatonic again.
He tells Primrose the doctors think he's making progress, and asks the doctors to keep her out of Peeta's room.
Peeta is in a hospital room in Thirteen. It looks just like a hospital room in the Capitol. He was certain that's where he was, that the Capitol was staging some elaborate show for him, and when the Katniss-mutt walked in, he had been certain. They had removed her, thank god, but then they had tied him down.
He still hadn't doubted he was really in the Capitol until Delly had shown up. Then, what the doctors and his torturers had told him seemed like it must be true. Twelve was gone. His family – his dad, his mom, his brothers and his sister-in-law – were all dead. Because of the Katniss-mutt. A creation of the Capitol, built to drive the districts (and him) to extinction. And no one believed him! Every time he tried to warn them, they knocked him out.
One day, they shoot something into his arm. He tries to prepare himself for what comes next, knowing no preparation is sufficient, and soon he will be scared out of his wits. Instead, he starts to feel happy, almost sleepy. A television screen is brought into his room. They show him Katniss and himself in their first arena. He doesn't remember much after that.
They try again a few days later. Something in the arm, a feeling of vague contentment, and then someone rolls in a television.
It's Katniss again. His heart picks up its rhythm and his face feels hot. Katniss. She's singing. She used to sing when they were little. Is that true? Or is that something they told him in the Capitol?
He's in the bakery, cleaning a glass case. His ear hurts. Mother had boxed it this morning when he knocked over a glass of milk.
He hears singing, and runs to the window. Mr. Everdeen is out there, Katniss's dad, and he's walking along singing something about a tree.
"When he sings, even the birds are quiet to listen," he hears his dad say in his memory.
Peeta runs to the bakery door and opens it, listening closely. He just hears Mr. Everdeen's voice. "Are you, are you, coming to the tree, where they hung up a man, they say who murdered three. Strange things did happen here -" He's getting further away, and Peeta can't make out the individual words. Once the deep, sweet voice fades entirely, there's a moment of silence. Then the mockingjays in the square pick up the song and bounce it back and forth. It's a little eerie, coming from so many mouths at once. Peeta lets the door close.
He's really in the hospital, of course, but where? The Capitol? Thirteen? Somewhere else? They'll ask him questions, for sure, and he'll have to answer, but his answers will depend heavily on where he is. He closes his eyes, repeats what the doctors told him to say when he's confused.
My name is Peeta Mellark. I come from District 12. My parents are, no, were bakers. My mother hit us. My father was funny.
They do ask him questions. He assumes he's in District 13. If they're Capitol, they'll torture him no matter what he says. They don't torture him at all, even when he mentions Mr. Everdeen.
Later, Haymitch enters the room. It makes him feel like his hospital gown is suddenly alive, like it's made of ants, tickling and itching his skin at once.
"Would you like me to leave?" he asks.
Yes. But Peeta is shaking his head.
Haymitch closes the door, but doesn't come any nearer.
"Do you remember?" Peeta asks him.
Haymitch cocks his head. He doesn't understand the question.
"That night. The night they announced the Quell."
Haymitch shakes his head. He leans back against the closed door, arms folded. "I remember…some parts of that day. Why?"
Peeta shakes his head. "Doesn't matter," he says. He supposes it could be an altered memory anyway. It's hard for him to tell.
"Why are you here?"
Haymitch looks down at the floor. "Maybe I miss you. We were friends, you know? Or as close to friends as I've ever gotten."
Peeta nods. What he knows of Haymitch makes him believe that's true. He probably hasn't made friends with many of the people in Thirteen, unless there are alcoholics here, too.
"Why did you…leave me?"
He can't believe it. When Haymitch lifts his eyes from the floor, they're full of tears.
"Because we would all be dead, or captured. I begged them to turn around. The Capitol got there seconds after we did."
Peeta can't think of anything to say. He remembers that first week in perfect, hellish detail. Being picked up by a hovercraft, arriving back at the Training Center, and learning radicals had kidnapped Katniss, Haymitch, Beetee, Johanna, and Finnick. They told him if he called for a ceasefire, they would rescue Katniss.
Rescue Katniss? He had called for the ceasefire, he remembers that, and he did it to rescue Katniss. Why would he rescue someone who had tried (and sometimes succeeded) to eat him in the arena?
"Can you please leave? I'm getting confused."
Haymitch's face turns a nasty yellow color, as the blood leaves his face, but he nods, his lips pressed shut tight together.
"Can I just tell you one thing? Because I never said it, and I want to say it."
Peeta thinks.
"Is it about Katniss?"
Haymitch says no.
"Then I guess that's all right."
Haymitch sighs. "I love you, Peeta."
Then he leaves, and Peeta's eyes also fill with tears.