Chapter Ten

"I want to die as myself. Does that make any sense? I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not."

The clang-clang of the bars echoes in the room, and boot steps fade away.

"Peeta?"

It's Annie's voice, quavering and tentative. A voice I had never thought to hear again. "What?" I answer, my mouth dry. Every muscle in my body, every tendon, seems stretched tight. I scratch at my prosthetic leg, where my skin is sore. I claw at my face. I scratch the brick wall next to my bed until the crumbles accumulate in my fingernails. None of this satisfies my hungry need to claw, to bite, to destroy something.

"You've been gone for three days," says Johanna wearily.

I grunt.

"Annie and I had a little bet running. I said they took you to the mansion, showed you off to the sponsors, then shot you in the city circle. Annie's bet was - well - not that."

"Looks like you lost."

"Where have you been, then?"

I blink. "I don't remember."

"Shit, dude - what do you remember?"

I don't answer.

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asks, harshly.

Remember? I search my mind and memories shuffle like cards, then scatter like cards when the house falls down. "District 12 is gone," I say.

Johanna's breath catches. "What do you mean?"

"She burned it down. It's gone - there's nothing left of it. And no one. She burned it down."

"Peeta," she says. And then she sighs. "Try and remember."

"What's the point of remembering?" I ask. "We're never going to leave here. This is all there is."

I feel a sudden rising desire to claw at her mouth until she shuts up. And Annie, too, whimpering again in the cell at the end of the row. I think they must be keeping them alive just to grate on my last nerves. But I keep my anger to myself. There is only one real enemy, and that is Katniss - the mutt who looks like a girl, the creature so bent on destruction, she is not content to kill and destroy, but also must break hearts and minds. She persuaded me to save her, over and over again. She persuaded me to love her, and then feasted on my heart. I let her in to 12. I was a party to its destruction. And she can never be forgiven for that.

"Only, I keep wishing I could think of a way to show the Capitol - they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games."

"But you're not."

And that should have been my warning.

I jerk awake into darkness, and I can hear my heart monitors start fluttering. I sigh to myself. It feels like I only just got to sleep. There was a lot of chaos at the end of the broadcast, which was cut off right after Katniss was shot. After a while, Haymitch came running in, out of breath and sallow, to let Prim and her mother know that Katniss is still alive, that her armor protected her; she was just knocked out. She had some sort of emergency field surgery and was being returned to District 13.

I didn't expect anyone to pay attention to me, although, once they were reassured about her condition, I thought I detected some side glances my way, as if they were subtly watching for my reaction. My reactions had been muted by the morphling that shot through my system about a fraction of a second before she was shot. Whether my body was starting to tense, or the drug was induced courtesy of the medical team behind the glass, I really don't know. I was calm enough and I said good-night to them as they left.

I really didn't even spend much time thinking it all over, just listened to my breathing in the darkness, until slipping away into the dream - or, memory, maybe? It feels real; or, at least, close enough to the me who woke up in 13, confused, angry and terrified. Not that all that is quite gone, of course. With morphling replacing venom, it's in the background now - an aftertaste, rather than a mouthful, of bile.

Something is bothering me, now, though. "I'm tired of being a piece in their games." Was that originally my line, or was it hers …?

"Why did you do it, anyway?"

"I don't know. To show them that I'm more than just a piece in their Games?"

Some of my memories - all of my memories of her - are fragmented like this. As if someone had ripped up our conversations and tossed the scraps into the air. Having done that, they then wiped any context I have, any way to make sense of anything. How did the rest of that conversation go? Even if I did remember more scraps of it, would I be able to connect the two pieces together? Impossible. I still don't know why they are trying so hard. Why they don't just let me go - find me some room here and let me start over again from scratch, making new memories. What they are trying to do is hopeless.

Since she doesn't love me, what is the point in making me remember why I loved her? It's cruel, really. I already put myself through that enough. I don't need to do it again.

I can't sleep. The lights are turned down for a change, but still I can't sleep. My eyes stare fixedly up at the camera that is above my head. I am always performing for their cameras. But tonight I have no script, so I just start to whistle instead.

It's dry and tuneless at first. I'm not sure what the song is that is stuck in my head. It seems very simple - a folk song from home, maybe. Something I learned as a child.

"What the fuck?" says Johanna. "Shut up, I'm sleeping."

I stop for a minute. But then, almost without meaning to, I start again.

"Are you kidding me, Mellark? I will literally kill you the next time I have the chance."

I don't answer her, just start rhythmically tapping against the wall in time with the song.

"Shut up!"

"Leave me alone -." But then I do shut up, because I hear something, too. Some tip-tapping - not in the room with us, but not far away either. We rarely hear anything at night, let alone anything so distinct and rhythmic.

I sit up in my bed, and I can hear the bars rattle slightly in the cell next to me as Johanna grips them. We both fear the same thing, I guess. The late night visit. Dragging one or all of us out of the cells, where it would be messy - maybe out to an alley behind the Training Center, or outside the city lights, to whatever scrubland surrounds the Capitol…

"Shit!" says Johanna, suddenly. "Cover your nose and mouth, Annie! You, too, asshole."

"Wha-?"

"Gas, idiot," she says, starting to choke already. Then I see what she sees, a dense mist crawling into the cell room. The odor is semi-sweet.

I pull off my shirt and bunch it up over my face. But the smell persists, and with it, some strange sounds in the background - shouts, a burst of gun shots. This makes - no - sense. But to panic is to breathe too quickly, and I have to hold my breath. So I push down my alarm and keep my head buried. I don't know why - what is the point of it anymore? - but I try to resist the lure of the gas, the sandy, silky, sleepy feeling that comes over my eyes. But, eventually, I give in.

- And when I wake up again, it is to find the mutt waiting for me. I have been brought directly to her.

And I leap reflexively for her throat.

Haymitch is my only visitor the next morning. I expected the others to be preoccupied, so I don't ask where anyone is or what we're doing today. He says, "Just came by to see how you are."

"Bored. Look - Haymitch. Isn't there anything I can do?"

"About what?" he asks in surprise.

"Like - do. Around here. It's not helping me to sit here, day after day. I might as well be back in the Capitol. I want to - draw - or bake. They never have any good bread here, or at least, they don't give any of it to me. I can - at least I think I can - do something about that."

Haymitch gives me a weird smile. "They won't give you free reign around knives and fire, you know."

"Can't anyone - supervise me? Seriously, Haymitch." I push my hands up over my face and through my hair. I'm surprised by its length. "I don't think I can do this anymore."

"I'll see what I can do," he says, dubiously.

And I have little hope for it myself, so I'm surprised to find myself being escorted, a couple of days later, out of the medical ward, for the first time, and taken to the kitchens. These are large, industrial - green-painted chrome and steel surfaces. It's a bit depressing, but there's a whiff of my family's home to it, and I try to hold on to that.

The many cooks - prepping the District's lunch in giant bowls and vats - stare at me when I enter, but a place has been set aside for me in one unoccupied end of the kitchen, complete with bowls, spoons and ingredients. I'm vaguely aware that one of the cooks working here is someone familiar from District 12 - someone I associate with Katniss. This throws me off for a moment and - as I am without my semi-permanent morphling feed - I can feel my anxiety shoot up in a disheartening way.

I stare down at the ingredients - some coarse flour, some butter, eggs, baking soda and powder, sugar, salt. No yeast. Anyway, I think I should keep it simple and make the drop biscuits of District 12, so plain and comfortable and easy to make. I close my eyes and try to remember, but it doesn't come immediately to me - the steps and measurements. So, with my hands already starting to shake, I try to let them remember on their own, and I pick up the flour and a measuring cup...

... And I am on two knees, head ringing - from the blow, yes, but also the surprise. There is pain - and then there is pain, some things hurting far worse in the depths than they do on the surface. My brain has to quickly detach from my mother and concentrate on the urgent task - getting the bread out … to … the … out to the - mutt … to the girl, the girl, the girl. I don't have time for the feeling - and so it gets buried, deep, deep down - of betrayal, and a certain kind of loss. A profound sense of loss.

But she's dead now. So it is never to be recovered - the thing that I lost. I'm not sure what chance there was in the first place, but it is gone now. And loss piles on loss...

...I have a vague memory of mounting frustration and a sense of the room closing in on me when I abruptly wake up in my hospital bed, hooked up to machines.

Haymitch is snoozing near me in a chair. As the machine starts gently beating in time to my elevated heart rate, he sighs and stretches awake.

"I blew it, didn't I?" I ask.

He throws me a wry smile. "What do you remember?"

I shake my head.

"So you don't remember painting dough on the wall and throwing the bowl across the room?"

I slump down. "No. What do you mean 'paint?'"

"Well, smeared may be a better word."

"What?"

"Some - words, maybe. Dough's kind of hard to read against the wall."

In what he's not telling me, I know I must have written something he's too kind to repeat. I rub my eyes. "So, I guess that's that," I say with a sigh.

"Maybe not." At my expression, he smiles a little. "Molina thinks it would help you to have less of an audience."

I ponder this. "Yeah - yeah, I think that did make me feel anxious."

"We might need to hook you up to the morphling."

"Do we have to?" I object. "I want to learn to do without it before I become … addicted." I frown to myself.

"What is it?" asks Haymitch, looking at me closely. I've learned to recognize that look, that tone, the anticipation that I've remembered something, but I shake my head.

"Nothing, really. Finger paints. I don't know." Probably something about the second arena, one of two periods of time my brain actively refuses to remember. "So, what's up, then? What's the plan?"

"We need a cake frosted."

I raise my eyebrows in disbelief. "In this place?"

"Yes, wedding, District 4 style."

It takes me a moment to work this out. Then … "Finnick and Annie," I say, softly. I have to wonder if Annie is truly in any state of mind to go willingly into marriage - especially to that playboy, the sex symbol of Panem, who I mostly remember from TV screens and gossip shows.

But I know not to say so out loud, as that will only invite an insistence that I try to watch the clips from the second arena. That still hasn't been approved. I've sat in twice with Molina in one-on-one sessions, and all his poking into my vaguest memories - either those of my tracker jacker therapy or those of the Quarter Quell - have turned up nothing more but a vague worry that I've given up too soon on the concept of Katniss as a mutt.

"Yes," says, Haymitch, eyeing me carefully.

"A wedding cake will take some time to frost."

"You have a few days," he says.

And I need every one of them. First, I'm refused paper and pen to draw the cake design - District 13 doesn't waste paper for that sort of thing. So I draw it in my head, and I practice the motions before I'm ever let into the kitchen.

This time, I'm taken to a smaller kitchen attached to the school and drive both Haymitch and my guards crazy with the things I keep forgetting that I need. Here is where Delly is helpful, as she's recruited to help in non-school hours, running back and forth for sugar, sifters, and the best substitute I can come up with for a flavor extract, which is almonds. (When I asked for white liquor to make extract, Haymitch laughed long and hard in my face. So I just finely shave the whites of the almonds for flavor.)

When I am finally left alone with the wedding cake, I feel strangely calm and focused. I talked Haymitch out of the portable morphling dispenser unit that he wanted me to bring with me. I have the snow-white frosting and a utilitarian rubber spatula, and I approach the cake like a canvas, letting the picture painted in my mind be the guide for my hands. I breathe and breathe, willing myself to do this one thing - this one simple thing - without going insane.

By the end of the day, it's flawless - window perfect, I think to myself, with the closest thing to pride I have felt in a very long time.

The next day, I have to work on food coloring - which 13 does not, of course, have in stock. I return to the main kitchens for this - and this time not just a guard but Haymitch comes with me. I've scared the other cooks off, anyway, and they stay away from me and the staring is fairly minimal. This work takes all my concentration, anyway. I have to get as many colors as I can out of three vegetables - carrots, beets and red cabbage, which after boiling, pulverizing, straining and more straining become extracts of solid yellow, red and blue. From that starting point, I carefully mix greens and purples and oranges, and then blue-green, pink and lavender. Between all the different tints and shades, I end up with 12 vials of coloring and by the end of that, I barely even acknowledge the open-mouthed stares of the people in the room with me. Sae - the refugee from 12 I vaguely remember - helps make piping tips for me of different sizes and shapes.

It takes two days - all the way up to an hour before it's needed - to complete the decorations. It's like the entire world has collapsed into myself, my tools and this cake that is anchoring me to reality. What do I know of District 4? Pictures in books. A conversation with a now-dead tribute that I force myself to watch three times, listening to her describe her harbor-town and deep-sea fishing expeditions. The tape of me and Katniss on the Victory Tour, standing on the beach together, heads bent in low conversation. I take all of that and amp up the color. Blue-green waves, purple fish, flowers in every color. A dull orange color - faded almost down to beige - makes a perfect color to pipe tiny shells, a fishing net draped down from one layer of the cake to the next, a boat.

The day of the wedding, the cake is brought into the main kitchen for me to put final touches on before it is taken out into the big auditorium where the wedding and reception will take place. Haymitch saunters in and eyes it - then me - thoughtfully. I can barely register him, just stepping back and walking around the thing, erasing smudges, fixing piping, adding something, here, there. Like all art - like life itself - there is no perfection to be had - just the process of getting it as perfect as possible until time runs out.

"Well," he says, after a while. "That's up there with your best work."

I shake my head. Now that it's done, some anxiety is starting to return. I'm too exhausted for a complete meltdown, though. All I want to do now is sleep. "I don't remember ever seeing you at the bakery." He tended to order for delivery.

"Do you really not remember your cakes being in the window that faced the town square? Hard to miss."

"Oh, yeah, I guess that's true," I shrug.

"You should try harder to remember 12," he says unhappily.

"Why?" I counter. "Why are you always insisting that I remember lost things? I know these things are gone and what else do I actually need to know?"

He sighs. "Well, it's almost time for me to go. You - going back to your room?"

I was not invited to the festivities, for obvious reasons. "Yes."

He nods. "Any word you want to pass on to Annie?"

I shake my head. Johanna visited me once, wry and insulting and damaged as she ever was. Her hair is growing out, but the buzz of it reminded me painfully of her torture sessions, and I didn't have much to say. We just squeezed hands for awhile and she took a few hits off my morphling, which she called disappointingly low-grade.

But I haven't seen Annie - and she was such a strangely removed figure in the whole thing, anyway. And my only advice to her would be to run as far away from Finnick as possible.

"No," I say, then my mouth twists on the unexpected words that come to me. "No, but I want to see Katniss, if I can."

"What?"

"I'll be restrained, of course, and drugged. I just - I'm at this state where right now she just exists in my head in all these weird and different forms. If I saw her - if I talked to her - maybe some of that would clear up."

He is silent for a long moment. Probably weighing - once again - whose side is best served by my request, hers or mine. I wish he would hurry, because I feel so tired, so ready to let my tight muscles relax into quivering sleep. "I'll ask her," he says, finally.

Maybe it's the smell of the kitchen still on me, or maybe it's the nature of my request, that spins me backward in time to the very beginning of our - association. When I go back to my hospital bed, I fall asleep right away, and in my dreams I can see it again - the bread with the burnt end, getting soggy in the downpour. I see myself throwing it to her - not a mutt lurking on the edge of nightmares, but a gaunt little girl, on the verge of death.

The sound of my door opening wakes me up, and I stare blurrily at Haymitch, who has entered with a couple of the medics. Usually, they're more careful than to approach me in groups, and for a second, I fight to sit up and fend them off, but Haymitch raises his hands and says, "whoa, whoa."

"She's agreed to see you," he says, and my mouth dries immediately. I'm about to recant - say that maybe this isn't a good idea. I've woken up feeling weird and I'm troubled by my dream for some reason I can't even figure out.

But if I back out now, I have a feeling my next request won't be taken seriously. So, I tamp down my panic and hold out my arms for the numerous tubes I know will be inserted in me. "Now? Really?"

"Yes," he replies, with the ghost of a smile. "Unless you want me to be here, I'm not going to be in the room with you. I'll be - in the next room," he adds, pointing at the one-way glass.

I find this an irrational statement. It's like they want the trappings of a private reunion without the danger of one. And I thought I had Haymitch pegged with his cynical dismissal of the "chivalrous, romantic crap." Clearly, another lie. I shrug my indifference one way or the other.

Knowing what will happen when she comes in, I take as many slow, relaxing breaths as I can after Haymitch leaves. Sure enough, her entrance, soft and tentative, causes my muscles to tense and my lungs to freeze as the old fear comes rushing in. The wolf, free to destroy me. But I also refuse to give her the satisfaction of seeing what a wreck she can make of me, just by her mere presence. So I will my lungs to move, my heart to be calm, and not set off the beeping and the drugs.

She's dressed in everyday clothes - khaki pants and a light blue t-shirt. Under her shirt, I can see the bulky wrapped bandages over the wound she received in District 2. It all makes her look smaller - much smaller than the Katniss who filled the screens in the Capitol, or who lingered over me in a dark room, with her needles and clamps. She's thin - too thin - gray-faced – nearly as small as the eleven-year-old girl in my dream. She walks into the room until she's a few feet away from the foot of the bed, then she crosses her arms and looks at me, palely.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey." That's when I realize that this was a mistake, that it is too soon. That when I look at her, these are the things I remember: her lies in the arena, her distance in 12, her kissing Gale.

"Haymitch said you wanted to talk to me," she says, forcing the words out.

"Look at you for starters," I say. I find myself staring for a long time at her gray eyes, waiting for the shift to occur, for the shiny glow to emanate from her, from her eyes, the dangerous shivering that precedes the attack. But they look like ordinary eyes. Somewhat more attractive, I'll admit, than the average. But ordinary and human, really. It's … weirdly disappointing. "You're not very big, are you? Or particularly pretty?"

Anything remotely soft about her hardens in an instant. "Well, you've looked better," she replies, stiffly.

I raise my eyebrows at her and glance down at my arms. Then I laugh. Well, it's not kind, but at least it is not dishonest. "And not even remotely nice. To say that to me after all I've been through."

Her lips quiver. "Yeah. We've all been through a lot. And you're the one who was known for being nice. Not me."

Well, that certainly has the ring of truth, I think ironically. That was always my job. To make her likeable. Until I had convinced even myself.

"Look," she says. "I don't feel so well. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow."

When she turns around, I feel a strange rush of both disappointment and annoyance. Drop by? We're not allowed within two floors of each other without special permission. And I'm sure as hell not going to spend another interview strapped up to the bed. This is it – the last and only time. "Katniss," I say, as she reaches the door. "I remember about the bread."

She stops, turns around. And that's when I realize that I lied to Haymitch - and a bit to myself - about my motivations for this meeting. All I want right now is to confront her with the truth the Capitol gave me. To make her understand that I see through her, even if no one else does. For a second I see both of us together in the reflection of the dark glass. Her - small and broken. Me - thin and weak. Shadows of our former selves. And that's her fault.

"They showed you the tape of me talking about it," she responds, dismissively.

"No. Is there a tape of you talking about it?" I call up the memory that came to me in my dream and investigate it for shininess. "Why didn't the Capitol use it against me?"

"I made it the day you were rescued," she says in a much softer voice. "So, what do you remember?"

"You, in the rain," I reply. "Digging in our trash bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."

"That's it," she says, blinking. "That's what happened." A pause. "The next day, after school, I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how."

This prompts more memories, and I rush to get them out before they fade away. "We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then … for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion."

Her mouth opens slightly and she nods, her eyes widening. I think I recognize this look - yes, I've seen it a lot, when I remember something out of the blue and everyone around me waits to see if that was it - the one memory that releases the dam of memories and they all come flooding out. As if memory worked that way.

"I must have loved you a lot," I say, as coolly as I can manage.

"You did," she says, her voice breaking. She puts a fist to her mouth and coughs into it.

"And did you love me?"

The question fills the room, the medical ward, the universe. I already know the answer - she never even said the word in pretense - but I need her to say it, at last; to finally say 'no,' and release me. She looks down at the floor. "Everyone says I did. Everyone says that's why Snow had you tortured. To break me."

"That's not an answer," I point out roughly. Disappointment - and anger - rises in me so swiftly I am almost dizzy with it. Is she incapable of plain truth? I take a different path toward my answers. "I don't know what to think when they show me some of the tapes. In that first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with those tracker jackers."

"I was trying to kill all of you," she retorts, with an edge back in her voice. She looks back up at me. "You had me treed."

"Later, there's a lot of kissing. Didn't seem very genuine on your part." I'm pushing it now. I can definitely feel my heart speed up. And her pale face is lit up by a blush.. "Did you like kissing me?"

"Sometimes," she says, surprising me immensely. She squirms. "You know people are watching us now?"

"I know," I say shortly. I'm fucking very used to being watched. "What about Gale?"

She tenses, and glances angrily toward the glass. "He's not a bad kisser either," she says.

There we go. Again, it's not kind; but it sure as fuck feels like the truth. "And it was OK with both of us? You kissing the other?"

"No, it wasn't OK with either of you. But I wasn't asking your permission."

I laugh at her again, bitterly pleased to have finally got the admission. And surely, at least in some way, it must feel as good for her as it does for me: finally going off script. At last, we can break through all that bullshit romance stuff and tell it like it was: she going along desperately with the Games, with Snow's orders; going along with whatever boy offered her bread, or trapping lessons, or kisses. Anything just to survive to the next day, no matter how dirty or compromised it was. Me - always elevating her, treating my affection for her like some sort of golden object that shone even brighter for being rejected. Trying to make it more noble or valuable or something. Why? That I still don't know. I suppose I never will. But kids do stupid things they can't always explain.

Did she sleep with me on the train and then run back into the woods with Gale as soon as we were off of it? Probably. Yeah - most likely. No big deal - just disappointingly normal and human. "Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?"

And now I've seen her. And now I know.

Her expression collapses just before she turns on her heel and walks out. And that should do it. Now that I've seen through her and she knows it, maybe now we can finally move on. And it won't matter what she does or who she does it with, it will be as meaningless to me as it always has been to her.