Trigger Warning: PTSD and the beginnings of an eating disorder.
Ramona
It took me a week to find the gap in the fence. It took another week before I judged I was slim enough to slip through. I haven't been eating much. The food here is nice but I don't have much of an appetite. I can't get myself to relax.
Every day, I'm allowed to walk around the gardens for exercise. There are peacekeepers watching me but, if I start running while they're distracted by something, I can probably get away. They have guns but I know they won't shoot me. I'm too valuable.
If they were allowed to shoot me, I'd be dead already.
I wait for my moment. Then it comes. A bird flies over the hedge and the peacekeepers turn to look at it.
I dive into the hedge.
The hole is right in front of me. It's exactly the right spot. I remember finding it last week. The peacekeepers let me play catch during my exercise period and I threw a ball into the hedge by 'accident'. After a few minutes of searching through the hedge, I found the opening.
I start crawling, ignoring the soil staining my hands and the front of my dress. I begin to force myself through the hole. I need to get away, fast. I have no idea what's awaiting me in the city outside. There's no way I can plan that far ahead without seeing it and there's no way I'll be let outside the mansion's grounds.
I just need to get out and run as fast as I can.
Suddenly, there's a sharp pain in the back of my leg. It immediately feels numb.
Panic fills me.
The peacekeepers have tranquilliser guns.
I try to keep moving but the numbness spreads through me. Suddenly, I can't move anymore. I feel something tug my leg back just before the world goes black.
I wake up remembering everything. I tried to escape. I failed.
I'm still trapped. I can feel something digging into my arms and know I'm strapped to a chair. I can't even move.
The light burns my eyes. It takes a few moments of blinking to recognise the man in front of me. He's wearing a suit, which throws me off a little because I'm not used to seeing him in a suit. His dark hair is slicked back where it used to be wild. But then he opens his mouth to reveal a set of too-white teeth, most likely replaced by the finest Capitol dentists after the morphling and the alcohol made all the old ones fall out, and I recognise him.
President Lobos. I can't call him by his first name anymore. I can't think of him as my friend anymore.
"I never expected you to do that, Ramona," he says.
"You never expected me to try to escape?" I ask. "What did you expect me to do, just sit in my cell and wait until the war ends?"
"It would be the smart thing to do," Lobos says. "This is the least likely place in Panem for there to be fighting. As long as you stay here, you'll be safe from the war."
"I don't want to be safe from the war," I say. "I want to see my friends again. Right now, I don't know if Lumas and Binah a-"
"Don't talk to me about Binah Katayanagi," Lobos snaps. "Actually, maybe you should've. Maybe you should've told me she was sleeping with my boyfriend before we'd even broken up. Marcus tells me he found them on the sofa. They weren't even hiding it. So you must've seen them, Ramona. Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want to get involved in Fawkes' love life," I say. "He wasn't even my tribute."
"Well, one day, you will be," Lobos cries, eyes full of fury. "Because everyone will be involved in Fawkes' love life one day. Trust me, he's probably cheating on Binah with your boyfriend right now. Or Binah's cheating on him with your boyfriend. It definitely involves cheating."
I gasp. I've spent weeks worrying about my friends. Lobos won't tell me anything about them. But now he's accidentally given something away. It's a tiny piece of information - I don't even know if they've escaped the Capitol - but I cling to it.
"So they're still alive?"
"I never-" he gives a sigh of exasperation. "Enough about that. Where were we? Ah yes, you tried to escape. I'm not going to punish you for that. You helped me find a hole in the fence that I didn't know existed so now I can have that fixed. Keep trying if you want. You'll never get out of here and you'll help me find more security risks."
"Why am I strapped to a chair like you're going to torture me?" I ask.
"You've been starving yourself, Ramona."
"So?"
"If the rebels win and put me on trial and you've starved to death, it's not going to make me look very good," Lobos says. "I'm giving you food from my kitchen for a reason. Because I expect you to eat. Let me show you what will happen if you keep skipping meals."
Someone standing behind my chair shoves something metal into my mouth, prising my jaws open. A tube is fed down my throat, making me gag. I feel like my throat is closing up. I can hardly breathe. Something is poured down the tube and pain explodes in my chest. My body strains against my bonds but I can't move.
Finally, it stops. The tube is pulled out of my mouth and the device holding my jaws open is removed. I gasp for air. I feel sick. There's something burning inside me.
"Are you going to make me do that again?" Lobos asks.
I shake my head, lips pressed together. I'm scared to open my mouth in case I vomit.
"Good. Take her back to her room."
The peacekeepers start to undo the straps keeping me bound to the chair. I sink to my hands and knees, vomiting. The smell of it is overwhelming. I can't breathe. I barely have the strength to life my head above the ground. My hair trails through the puddle on the floor.
I blink and it's full of blood. Just like every time Haymitch had too much to drink or Mercedes lost a tribute in a particularly gruesome way. That old reminder, like a knife to the heart.
You volunteered for this, Ramona…
I can hear screams in my ears. My victims haunt me as I feel my life drain out of me. I'm destroying myself again. Of course they'd want to watch.
This is the first time it's my blood. This is the moment where everyone I've poisoned watches me poison myself.
Two peacekeepers grab me from either side and haul me to my feet. They try to push me out of the room but my legs aren't working. They drag me to my room and shove me inside. I sprawl on the floor as the door locks behind me.
I don't know how long I lie there, too weak to move. Frozen. I feel like I'm trapped in my own body. There's vomit on my face and in my hair and all over my clothes. But I can't wash it off. I can't move.
I'm going to die! I'm sick! I'm going to die here!
Then I remember something from a year ago. Lumas' hands on my shoulders. His voice in my ear.
"It's okay. I'll get you back to the Control Centre. You can get cleaned up."
That was the night I realised that I loved him. The night some drunk Capitolite vomited on my shoes and he missed his train to take me back to the Control Centre and make sure I was okay.
He's not here. I haven't seen him for weeks. I don't know where he is. All I know is that he's alive. I wonder what he'd do if he were in my position, if Lobos forced him to eat meat or covered him in spiders or locked him up in the dark underground.
Lumas would fight his fear.
I grit my teeth. All I need to do is get up and walk to the shower. It really should be simple.
I struggle to my feet. My legs are shaking but I manage to stumble towards the bathroom. I smudge the doorknob with vomit when I open the door. I ignore it. Once I've showered and changed into clean clothes, I'll pound on the door and scream until Lobos gets the servants to clean everything. I know he has his own weaknesses.
I don't even bother closing the door behind me. I tear off all my clothes like they're coated in poison and collapse into the shower. For a second, I lie there, exhausted, until I realise I have to turn the water on. Somehow, I find the strength to stand and press the right button.
As the scent of mint shampoo hits me and most of the vomit starts to swirl down the drain, I feel my strength return to me. I wash myself carefully and thoroughly, shocked by how skinny I've become. Maybe I've been eating less then I thought.
I felt like this after Alexander died and I was so focused on mentoring Binah that I forgot to eat. I could've made myself really ill if Lumas hadn't been looking out for me. He managed to convince me to eat something.
But Lumas isn't here. I don't know if I'll ever see him again. He's alive today but I don't know how long the war will last. I could fight my way through every day until the day I'm released only to find that he's dead, or he's been tortured so badly that he doesn't remember me anymore.
Every day here is going to be a struggle. It's going to be hard for me to wake up every morning knowing that I'm going to achieve nothing, I'll just spend another day in captivity. It's going to be hard for me to force myself to eat knowing that I won't be able to enjoy a single mouthful because I'm still here, in this awful room. But can I struggle through it for Lumas when I don't even know he'll still be alive when I get out of here?
I know I can't. I need to know he's okay. I need someone to tell me every day. I know that nobody will.
It'll be fear that keeps me going. Fear that Lobos will hook me up to that machine again if I don't eat every mouthful of food I'm given. I can't depend on Lumas anymore, only my fear. Because that is the only thing that's certain and constant.
It's just like when I'd first won my games and Snow tried to intimidate me. I just did everything he said, certain that, if I kept my head down and stayed out of trouble, he wouldn't hurt me. Now I realise that I need to do it again. Lobos could do anything to me. He could inflict any torture on me. I don't want to give him a reason to.
I sink to the floor of the shower and cry. I'm pretty sure I'm clean but I don't want to venture out into the terrifying world of my room. Here, I can close my eyes and pretend I'm in my room in the Control Centre, the one where I can unlock the door if I want to, walk out if I want to.
I can pretend that it's the day I fell in love with Lumas and everything's okay.
Ramona's in a really dark place. She has no control over what happens to her or contact with the people she cares about. There's only one thing Manel can do to stop her torturing herself and that's let her go. I didn't want to make Manel the villain of this story but it took about three chapters for him to start doing villain things. He was sort of caught between a rock and a hard place, since his options were to let Ramona starve herself to death or force feed her (awakening her trauma over vomit). Next chapter, he'll get a POV so we'll see if he enjoys being the bad guy.
