As of now we are nearing the Holidays and I couldn't be more excited. Maybe the closer we get I might make a christmas themed chapter. I hope you guys enjoy what I am doing so far with the story. Make sure to review so I can hear what you think of my story. This is gonna be a long one.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
(Katniss's POV)
While the knock at the door gets my attention, the voice that says, "Open up brainless!", brings a smile to my face. I throw open the door and dive into the open arms of my guest. Before I know it I am crying. We slowly slide to the floor, and she rubs my back, comforting me. "Hey" She she says and I look up to meet her eyes. "Are you okay?" I open my mouth but I really have no answer. I look down.
"I miss Peeta." I meet her eyes, and she nods, having been in my situation when her boyfriend left her.
"Have you called him since that day?" She asks not meeting my eyes. I
"No." I say. She sighs.
"How about you call him and if you need me I'll be right here." I grin and nearly topple her over in my hug. I stand and end up running to the phone, grab it and bring the phone to the sitting area, where Johanna is now sitting. I dial the number, wringing my fingers together, my anxiety growing which each ring.
"Hello?" I let out a sad laugh at the voice of my husband.
"Peeta? It's Katniss."
He lets out a chuckle, "I'm well aware, is everything okay?"
"I would like to ask you the same question." He sighs and that only makes my worry grow.
"Katniss I don't know, she keeps crying and Finn really needs to get back to training. She's been having flashbacks and she keeps screaming for Finnick." My heart aches at the pain in Peeta's voice. "Annie, she passes out from crying, and when she wakes up she thinks we are still in the capitol. I can barely hold myself together, and- you know Katniss I don't want to worry you." He says, and I can hear that he started to tear up.
"Tell me Peeta, what happened?" He makes a sobbing noise, and Johanna hands me a tissue, making me realize that I am crying.
"Katniss-" He starts.
"PEETA! Please tell me!" I am close to a breakdown.
"Okay, I had to knock myself out yesterday, because Annie was screaming saying that she was hearing the Avox's screams. She kept going on, probably talking to Jo in her flashback, she said 'Johanna, there're going to kill him! He can't survive another round of the knifes and the electric shocks! Why aren't Katniss and Finnick here?! WHY?!' I felt myself slipping, so I slammed my he- uh I knocked myself out." He coughs to cover up his crying. I sniffle. "Oh Katniss, I didn't want to upset you. I'm sorry..." I shake my head, but he can't see me if he's on the phone.
"No it's fine, I wanted to know. I want to talk to Annie." I say, casting a sideways glance at Johanna.
"Are you sure, I don't want her to have a breakdown again?"
"Yes." I say, I need to make sure Annie is okay, plus I haven't spoken to her in a while.
"Okay." I hear rustling and Peeta talking to Annie, his kind voice, a whisper on the phone.
"Hello?" I hear from the phone after a moment.
"Oh Annie, how are you?"
"Katniss, I could be a lot better at the moment. Poor Peeta, I feel like I am slowly driving him insane." I chuckle at her statement.
"Trust me Annie, he knows how to deal with crazy, I mean he's married to me." We both chuckle at my attempt to lighten the mood. I press the speaker button so we can all talk. "Annie, you're on speaker, Johanna's here."
"Hey Annie." Johanna says, not knowing to be gentle, or her regular snarky self.
"It's okay Johanna I'm fine, at least at the moment." All three of us sigh, and I see Johanna ot of the corner of my eye brush away a tear. I give her palm a squeeze, and she looks at me reassuringly.
"Annie, I have a question."
"Yes?" I gulp and take a slow deep breath.
"Do you think Peeta will tell me what happened in the capitol?" I hear Annie's sharp intake of her breath, and I feel Johanna tense up beside me.
"Katniss, what they did to us, especially Peeta, well, it's a part of our lives that we would rather not revisit. Nearly every night I see Peeta being brutally tortured, or Johanna being shocked, and I can never forget.. um wha- what they did to me..." Annie's words are filled with so much pain that I am flooded wit guilt for asking that dumb question.
The Johanna pipes up, "Maybe little by little, you might get bits and pieces of what happened, but we could never tell you all of it." Her voice is stern, but both me and Annie her the shakiness behind it.
"Oh, Okay." I say quietly. The tension is thick, I and have to excuse myself for a moment. I run to the kitchen and decide to make some tea for Johanna. I pour the steaming liquid, and the kitchen door gently swings open and Johanna walks in. "I was just making some tea, sit." She sits gently and holds out the phone, and I slowly take it. "Um hello?"
"Katniss I needed to tell you one more thing." I hear Annie say.
"Yes, what is it?" I say maybe a bit to anxiously. I hear her take a deep breath which really doesn't help.
"Peeta lied, he doesn't know that I know that on multiple occasions he had to knock himself out, not just once like he told you." She says so quickly that I almost didn't understand her. Key word almost.
"A-A-Annie are you sure..." I say my voice shaking so much I can't control it.
"Katniss, Peeta is not very good at hiding it. I can hear him, he runs to the beach at night and flails around in the sand. I let him, of course keeping an eye on him."
"H-Ho-How many times Annie?!" I am close to having another anxiety attack, and I see Johanna come up behind me and lets me lean on her. If she hadn't done that I swear I may have fainted right then and there.
"Katniss-" Annie starts.
"HOW MANY TIMES ANNIE!" I am now screaming, and I feel guilt rising up in the pit of my stomach for yelling at her.
"Ka-Katniss, I'm sorry." I hear she is staring to tear up, but I don't relent.
"Annie... tell me...NOW! PLEASE!" I yell into the phone. Johanna tries to grab my free to calm me down but I swipe it away. I get no answer to my question for a least a minute, then I hear a sniffle.
"Seven Katniss, it's happened seven times." I gasp, and search for my voice.
"But it's only been three days! How could it have happened seven times in three days?!" I yell, allowing Johanna to lead me to a chair.
"I don't know, what I also don't know how he has been taking such good care of me, while still dealing with his own demons." I have officially can't speak and after a long pause Johanna sighs and takes the phone from my hand.
"We'll talk again soon Annie, Katniss has a lot to process." she tells Annie. Her words are the last thing I hear before my hands slip off the counter and my world goes black.
(May's POV)
The shinning sun beams through the broken window, and I look over and see Ali thrashing in her sleep. I leave my spot in the corner and go to comfort her. I wake her up gently and see she is sweating profusely. I sit her up and slowly rock her.
"It's okay Ali, shhhh, it was just a dream."
"I know." She says wiping her face with her sleeve, and she looks up at me her face splotched with red. "I keep seeing them, the innocent children lying there, dead, on the valley ground. They did nothing to deserve it May! NOTHING!" Her screaming wakes up Lars and soon he is leaning over and whispering comforting words in her ear. Once again I am taken back with jealousy. They both seem so loving towards one another, in a way that isn't normal between people who are just friends.
No, I tell myself. I can't think like that, it's not fair to them for me to jump to conclusions. "Ali, I know you're upset but I really need to watch more of that tape." I tell her, earning a glare from Lars.
Ali shakes her head and looks up at me. "No I'm fine, go ahead it's okay." she says and crawls away from Lars to her spot on the floor. I look to her for confirmation and she nods. I start the tape and sit down in my own spot in between Ali and Lars.
The tape starts up again and we are greeted once again by the two announcer men welcoming us back, I'm guessing that when this was on T.V. there was a commercial break. We cut back to the games and I see and group of kids laughing and chatting. I see the tributes from one and two and the girl from for and...what?!
"WHAT!?" I scream, when I see my dad with the group of murderous children. "ARE YOU FRIGGEN KIDDING ME?!" I look around at my friends, my vision blurred by my anger. Lars's eyes are wide with confusion, I notice, instead of anger. Ali's jaw has dropped to nearly the floor and her face reflects complete shock. I look back at the screen and the look on my dad's face confuses me. He looks like he really doesn't want to be there. He also looks...afraid. This bizarrely soothes me. Let's see where this goes then I'll make judgements.
It's night time now and I watch the group of kids look at a dim flickering through the trees. A fire. And where fire is that usually means there's a person who lit it. They obviously are thinking the same thing as me because they go into the area. The camera follows them as they taunt the weak looking girl. The girls hold her down and the tall boy hands the other his sword. The muscular boy then...oh god. My shoulders hunch over and I feel like I am going to hurl when I see the boy from two I remember as Cato stab the weak girl in the chest.
They walk away, all of them laughing except for my dad who looks like he might throw up too. "May, it seems like your dad wants no part in this...these games." I nod, but he knows I still feel uneasy. They both scoot over to me and hug me tightly. Then I hear talking from the screen. The kids bicker back and forth about if the girl is dead or not. I realize that we did not hear a cannon. Then my dad steps up and volunteer to go back and check. My confusing grows by the minute when the screen splits into two as we see my dad goes over to the girl and he kneels down, sympathy and pain filling his face."I'm so sorry, you didn't deserve this." The girl looks up at my dad and breaths very heavily trying to stay alive, knowing it was useless. "You shouldn't have to go threw the pain. You won't feel a thing." All three of us have to shut our eyes as my dad presumably slits the poor girls throat. My attention is drawn away from my dad when the muscular boy the girl calls Cato asks why they shouldn't kill my dad. I nearly get sick at the thought.
My dad soon returns to the group and the cannon goes off making all the others seem satisfied. As the group walks away my jaw drops and Lars even lets out a laugh when my mom drops from a tree a smile on her face that I know isn't real. God my mom is just full of tricks.
Goodness, over the next hour or so, lots of stuff happens. I watch my mom nearly die of dehydration, mom almost gets set on fire, and basically everything is out to get everyone. By night in the games we see my mom tying herself in a tree as we hear a familiar group of voices approach the tree she is in. I unconsciously snuggle into Ali as the kids taunt my mom, and my dad looks at the ground obviously not able look at my mom after his apparent betrayal. The tension is slightly lifted from me when the kids try and fail to follow my mom up the tree.
"What idiots." Lars says quietly, and we look a him. "What?" We turn away and I hear him sigh. "I mean they are already murders, but now they can't even climb a damn tree." My nod slowly gains speed when I understand where he is coming from. I can't help but grin when my dad stalls for my mom when he says she can't go anywhere so the group of kids might as wait until morning.
The tape edits out the uninteresting part of the night. It starts up again when we see the little girl from 11 trying to get my moms attention from another tree. When my mom finally wakes I gasp when I realize that the girl was signaling to a giant tracker jacker hive. Even though I now realize that Panem is now a lot better then when my mother was a child, tracker jackers are still a threat. The girl makes a back and forth motion and I know exactly what both her and my mom are now thinking. Ten the anthem plays and the faces of the newly deceased are displayed in the sky
My mom takes the knife that was thrown at her by a girl in the group of kids below her. Conveniently the knife has a 'saw-like' edge. Mom quickly climbs up to the nest and starts sawing away at the branch that holds the hive. The worry on my mothers face changes to pain and I gasp when I realize that she has been stung. The knife continues to cut away at the branch even after she is stung twice more, making me cringe each time.
FInally as the anthem finishes the branch breaks and the hive falls, smashing open as it hits the grounds. The screams of the group of kids fill my ears, and I even let out one of my own when I see my dad among the kids trying not to get stung to death. My dad is obviously the smartest as he yells to head to the lake. But two of the girls aren't so lucky. The girl from four gets away from the tree but won't live long judging by the number of stings on her body. The once beautiful girl, whose name I remember as Glimmer, her body is now deformed with stings. I look over and see my mom stumbling toward the close to death girl. I can't help but wonder why she would chose to go toward the girl instead escaping. The cannon goes of and I watch in disbelief as my mom breaks the fingers around the bow of the newly deceased girl. She take the arrows and bow and attempts to run away, but fails miserably. Then I see a figure emerge from the trees. My dad. I smile again as he pushes her to safety. My smile does not last long.
"Where is she?!" Cato yells on the screen.
"Sh-she got away." My dad lies, the large sword making him stutter.
"Or you let her get away." Cato fumes. I cry out as he raises the large sword. My dad and I nearly have screams identical in volume as Cato's sword slashes my dads leg, and he falls to the ground. It happens too fast to turn away and I see the blood seep out of the wound.
"Oh my god..." I whimper through the steam of my tears. "That must be why he lost his leg..." I say. I look over at Lars and his face is a mixture of disgust, anger, and sadness at what he just witnessed. "What." I say, my voice a whisper.
"You know I greatly respect your parents, especially after finding out about this." I nod. He has told me on multiple occasions that he looks up to my parents. "It's just, I used to think they were invincible. But now, I think your parents are even stronger than I thought they were before."