"Sweetheart, it's okay." I rub my eyes, noticing the wires and tubes are all absent. The room I'm in now is darker; the walls are a light shade of gray. My location has changed, but I'm still lying in a hospital bed.

"Who are you?" I address the man sitting across from me. He looks slightly familiar with his shoulder length blonde locks and striking gray eyes. A smirk plays on his lips.

"I know you have a lot of questions. I'll sit here and answer them all. My name is Haymitch Abernathy." Of course. The only living victor of District 12.

"I know who you are," I say, my voice still sounding strained. He rubs his hands together with a small laugh. "I watched your games on the train."

"That you did," he nods. "That you did."

I want to ask him how he knows that, but I'll come back to that later. "The nurse dude said we were in District 13? I thought it was destroyed."

"It was on the surface. We're underground right now."

"Oh." Coughing again, I ask for a drink of water. He hands me a water bottle, and I chug half of it. "How did I get here?"

"You were rescued."

"Rescued?" I question.

"Yep. You were—What all do you remember?" He reads my confusion and clarifies. "What's the last thing you remember? The last thing you are one hundred percent sure was real."

"I, uh, I was in the Games and, uh, I was lying with Ch—another Tribute, and we were eating. But then a bomb went off, and I don't think that was real because if it was real, I'd be dead."

"It wasn't real."

"What?"

"Do you want to know what really happened?" I nod. "Do you believe you were in the Games?" I repeat the action. "I'm sorry, Beca," he pauses, rubbing his chin. "But you were never in the Games." He looks up at me apologetically.

"What? How is that possible? It seemed very real."

"What our scientists have predicted was that your brain thought you were going into the Games, so it was fabricating how it believed the Games would have been like. But, it's hard to tell. You just woke up."

"None of it was real?" My voice is almost too quiet for myself to hear.

"No."

"Well..." it's hard to form a proper question without passing out. None of it was real? It had to be real. It felt real. "What do you mean by my brain fabricated it?"

He rubs his scruffy chin with his hand before dropping it into his lap. "Sweetheart," he looks into my eyes, but his face is blurry now. "You were taken by the Capitol after the Tribute Parade. Do you remember passing out that night?"

My bottom lip is quivering uncontrollably. "Yes."

"The avox who picked you up didn't take you to your sleeping quarters like he was ordered to. He took you somewhere else." I try to swallow, but I can't seem to get the lump in my throat to disappear. "When we rescued you, we found you hooked up to a machine that we believe had the purpose of deleting your memories. Wiping your brain clean. When you were removed, you didn't wake up. We transported you here to District 13 to be monitored and cared for until you woke up. Our doctors and specialists have tested your blood, checked your chemical levels, and kept you under heavy surveillance for a while."

"How long is a while?" I ask quietly. He rubs his chin again, not answering. "How long?" I blink through the tears and stare into his eyes which meet mine.

"Years."

"How many, Haymitch?" I sob. It comes out as more of a scream than I had intended.

"Seven. You've been in a coma for seven years."

"Seven years" I nod my head, trying to process what I've just been told. I thought I was seventeen. Turns out I'm twenty-four now. That's not such a big deal, right? I'm just seven years older. No biggie. I just missed seven birthdays. I've slept for seven years because of something the Capitol did. They stole seven years of my life.

"Do you need a bucket? You're looking a little pale there."

Still nodding my head, I murmur, "Yeah." I take the trashcan from his hands and throw up into it. It's mostly dry heaving, and Haymitch rubs my back until the heaves cease. "Seven years?"

"Seven years. I know it's a lot to take in."

"Well, yeah! No fucking shit." He laughs, moving back to his seat.

"I like you. You've got spunk."

"I'm not sure you'd call that spunk," I chuckle. Settling back into the bed, a thought pops into my head. "You said 'we' earlier. Who's this 'we'?"

"The Rebels. District 13 is the base of the rebellion." I raise my brow. "We are against President Snow and the Capitol and aim to destroy it, like we should have 75 years ago. We're led by President Coin. She aims to take office and restore Panem to its former glory."

"So am I now part of the rebellion?"

"If you so choose to be. I hope you do."

"I just woke up; I'll have to wait a bit until I can decide."

"Fair enough."

"Um," I start awkwardly, "do you by any chance who know Katniss is? I don't know her last name." He almost smiles at the mention of her name.

"Why, yes I do. She's our Mockingjay, our public leader. She inspires the citizens of Panem to rise up and join us." He hesitates before asking me how I knew her name.

"When I was asleep, I guess, I had a dream and she was in it. She handed me a mockingjay pin and disappeared. That was it."

"I guess it worked then," Haymitch says more to himself than me.

"What?"

"I talked to you when you were in a coma. The doctors said it's good for the patient to hear someone's voice, and I thought maybe, possibly, some would get through to you. Whenever something new happened with the rebellion, I told you about it, described it to you. Is there anything else that seemed odd to you in your dreams or in the Games?"

"There was a photograph of my parents I had taken into the arena with me that had a mockingjay on it. It was embroidered on my father's jacket. And..." I question whether or not to mention Chloe's name, and decide it's best to leave her out of this. "And a Tribute I was with told me about the arena we were in. Said it was in a book she read once. It was a University. I don't know if that's the kind of odd you're talking about or not. Oh, and then, in one of my other dreams, a Gamemaker was talking with my mentor about how the girl I was with knew too much and was a threat and some other stuff."

He nods, letting my words soak in. "Was there anything special about the arena? Describe it to me." I mention how half of the area was blown to bits and ashes were always thick in the air. "That correlates to the bombings the Capitol has done recently to the Districts. That might be where you got that from."

I shrug. This conversation is at the back of my mind, barely holding my attention. All I can think about is Chloe and what happened to her. I know she was real; I saw her at the Parade. I just hope she didn't suffer when she died.

"You said before that you knew I had watched your Games on the train to the Capitol. How?"

"Gail told me. She said you were pretty impressed by how I won. I would be too." His smirk stretches across his features, and I roll my eyes.

"What happened to Gail?"

"She's at the Capitol still."

"And Patricia? I mean, Fat Amy."

"At the Capitol."

I swallow hard, thinking about the dream with Luke making a deal with the Gamemaker. "What about Luke Remming?"

"He, uh," Haymitch wrings his hands uncomfortably. "He's at the Capitol; he's one of our pairs eyes and ears on the inside."

"Have you ever tried to rescue him?"

"We can't. Snow has a tight grip on him. Besides, he ordered us to not worry about him. He's safe enough." I can't help but feel like the deal Luke made was actually real.

I scratch the injection site of the needle from earlier as I ask what was the excuse the Capitol used to have a Tribute disappear without alarm. "They claimed you were 'unfit to participate' and your spot was filled immediately. The mayor of your district had to reap another child and send them ASAP. Her name was Cynthia Rose Holden. She made it to the top 9, which is pretty impressive considering she received one less day of training than the others."

"Speaking of the others, what happened to the boy from my district? His name was Jesse Swanson."

"I remember him. His death was a sad one." So, yes, he did die. "He was running away from the career group and tripped. Fell down a flight of cement stairs and was dead before his body rolled down them all. Snapped his neck."

"That's horrible," I wince, remembering the way the life left his body in my hands.

"I'm guessing he died in your Games."

"Yeah," I nod. "I—I pushed him. It was an accident, but he...he died a similar way."

"Sorry to hear that. You can't let the guilt from that crossover to reality, Beca. It wasn't real. You didn't kill him."

"It feels like I did," I whisper. Wiping a stray tear from my cheek, I continue. "It'll just take time to sort all this out." We sit in silence for a few minutes, letting me collect myself again.

"Who won?"

Haymitch lifts his hand and beckons someone from behind a mirrored wall I never noticed was there before. Someone was watching us this entire time. The nurse from earlier walks through the doors, the female, not the male, and as she makes her way over to us in the dim lighting, I notice her eyes.

It's Chloe.

Chloe Beale won.

Before she even makes it halfway to me, I can feel my heart racing and my palms growing warm and my smile ripping my face into two, and I anticipate her touch and her kiss and her sweet caress and her voice. Oh god, her voice! I thought I'd never hear it again. I thought I was alone. I thought she was dead.

"Hi Beca," she smiles, now at my side, grabbing my hand carefully.

The words bounce around in my brain so I can hear her voice over and over again. Her hair is shoulder-length and blonde, but it's still Chloe Beale. She's just a little older, but it doesn't show. Her smile is the same, her voice is the same, her bright, brilliant eyes are as vibrant as ever, and her skin is soft and warm, just like I remember it.

"She's not listening to me, is she?" I hear Haymitch mutter to Chloe.

"What?" I ask, not really caring about what he said or is going to repeat.

"I said that Chloe here is one of the most skilled nurses we have in District 13, and you're very lucky to be under her care. It was hard getting her here—"

Chloe adds with a slight laugh, "Sure was."

"—but it was definitely worth the trouble."

My eyes never leave Chloe. "Why was it difficult?"

Chloe answers this time. "I had to fake my own death. No big deal," she shrugs.

Haymitch picks up where she left off. "After her Victory Tour, we blew up a hovercraft she was supposedly on and we brought her here."

"I changed my hair, Coin assigned me an occupation, and I was set."

"Her hair was her biggest indicator," Haymitch clarified. I beg to differ; her eyes are her best quality.

Her hand feels loose in mine, like she really isn't holding onto me. I can feel the words on the tip of my tongue. I want to tell her that I promise to never lose her again. I even open my mouth to speak, but the words don't come out. Instead, reality sets in. Horrible, terrifying reality.

I never lost her.

She doesn't know me.

She was never mine to lose.

My mouth snaps shut, and I clench my teeth, squinting to try to stop the tears from pouring down my face. I can't let her see me, a complete stranger, this weak. She is my everything, and I love her. She doesn't know more than my name.

I'm a stranger to the woman I love.

"Chloe?" Haymitch says. Chloe lets go of my hand, and I hear footsteps leading away from me. "She, um. She believes she was in the Games, and I'm not really sure exactly what happened in them. With some therapy, we'll figure out what happened and we can help her cope with reality. Just—just keep your distance until we know exactly how dangerous she is, if she is at all. I don't know how unstable she is. Let's not get too close. I don't want what happened with you-know-who to happen again. I don't need anyone else being choked," the man says in a hushed whisper, but the room is so silent. I hear every word loud and clear.

Chloe is to stay away from me, and I'm to just accept that fact.

I get no say in the matter.

I'm just a patient to her.

To me, she's my everything.

A/N: There will be a sequel! I will add another "chapter" to this fic when the sequel is posted to alert anyone following this fic!