I open my left eye. The light is so bright it hurts. I try to open my right eye as well, but I'm not able to. I blink several times. Slowly, the world comes into focus.
Everything is white. Clean. Shiny. Quiet.
It smells strange.
Haymitch sits on a chair next to my bed. He's sleeping. He's snoring quietly, the only sound I can hear besides the persistent beeping of some medical equipment to the right of me, but I can't see it because of my eye.
My throat is so dry. I try to ask for some water, but all that comes out is something unintelligible. It's enough to wake Haymitch, though. He jumps up from his chair, and looks startled. Close to tears.
"Katniss, you're… awake," he says. I've never seen him looked worse, and that says something. He's unshaved, dirty, his hair tousled. I try to motion for some water, and he seems to understand what I mean. "I'm not sure if I should give you anything," he says hesitatingly, "the doctors…"
"Please," I croak, and he looks around quickly, pours me a cup of water, and helps me drink. I nearly choke on it, and the pain when the water goes through my throat is excruciating.
A nurse quickly comes to my aid, scolding Haymitch for giving me water, and makes a call. Soon, there are two doctors and two nurses by my bed, along with Haymitch.
"How long was I… asleep?" I ask.
"You were unconscious for four days," one of the doctors, a young woman, answers me. She performss a quick examination - asks me some questions, shines a light into my only open eye, listens to my chest. I don't know if I pass the test or not.
"Where's Peeta?" There is no way I can avoid asking the question.
A tear is rolling slowly down Haymitch's cheek. I don't think I've ever seen him cry. "He's… safe."
"What do you mean?"
"He's hospitalized. Not here," he quickly reassures me, "in another ward."
"He's in the psychiatry ward, the older, male doctor explains to me. "He's under surveillance around the clock. There was some confusion as to where to keep him, here in the hospital or… in jail."
I take a deep, shaky breath.
The door opens, and Dr Aurelius comes into the room. He looks disheveled too, like Haymitch, as if he hasn't gotten a lot of sleep lately. "So good to see you awake, Katniss," he says, sitting down on my bedside. I have never really had a very close relationship to Dr Aurelius, I've never accepted his help unless I was forced to – but then again, he did save me from a death sentence once. And he knows more about what Peeta and I went through than anyone but Haymitch.
Peeta.
That's why he's here.
"Do you remember what happened?" Dr Aurelius asks carefully.
I close my eye. The image of Peeta descending on me is burned into the inside of my eyelids. "Yes," I whisper. "Up until I… passed out. He was choking me."
Dr Aurelius nods. "Yes, we've seen the… bruises. And the bite marks." I shiver. Bite marks, that sounds so… savage. "Can you please tell me what you remember?"
I tell them, haltingly, my throat raw and sore, but I'm not crying. It's as if I'm watching myself from the outside, my voice is almost… detached. My voice trails off as I tell them of the last thing I remember – Peeta's burning eyes as I pass out, thinking I'll die.
"It's what I expected," Dr Aurelius says, and I can't understand why he'd say that. Why would he expect anything? I want to ask questions, but I'm so tired. The nurse is injecting something into my arm, and I fall asleep again.
The next time I wake up, my right eye also opens, if not fully.
It's evening. I don't know if it's the same day or another. Haymitch is still sitting by the side of my bed. He's reading a book on raising geese, but I don't know if he's actually reading – he's holding the book upside down, so I guess not. He puts it down when I sees that I'm awake again.
He reaches out to take my hand, and flinches when I quickly, instinctively pull it back.
"Sorry," he says.
"What happened?" I whisper.
He looks worriedly at me. "I'm not sure I… You're not strong enough yet. Dr Aurelius says to wait."
I want to ask what's so terrible that they can't tell me, what can possibly be more terrible than what I already remember, but I'm falling into darkness again.
After a few days, they allow me out of bed. I take a few, careful steps, supported by Haymitch on one side, and my mother on the other. My mother came from District four to be here. It tells me that this is pretty bad.
That evening, Dr Aurelius comes to see me. Haymitch is there, as always. He's barely left my side.
Dr Aurelius asks me a few questions, and seems content that I can tell him basic information such as the day of the week and my birthday. "You took quite a few hits to the head," he says simply. He hesitates. "Do you feel strong enough to… hear what we've found out about Peeta?"
I don't know whether to shake my head or nod. Finally, I whisper: "Yes." I want to hear it, and I don't want to hear it.
"As you know, he's in the psych ward. He's been put on suicide watch. Someone is checking up on him every ten minutes."
"Is he psychotic?" I ask, remembering what he was like back in District 13. A danger to himself and others. Remembering what he was like during the thunderstorm.
A danger to me.
Dr Aurelius shakes his head slowly. "No, he's not. He's perfectly lucid. He remembers everything." Dr Aurelius looks down at his hands. He's holding some papers, but doesn't show them to me. "I just talked to him, actually. He told me to tell you that… he's sorry."
I can't keep the tears back. "He's sorry?" I cry. "He's sorry? He…" I can't say it.
"He raped you." Dr Aurelius finishes my sentence. "Then he tried to kill you. It's completely out of character for him, of course. And everything both you and he have told me about what happened, supports the same conclusion - that he's been hijacked."
"Yes, but it doesn't… it doesn't fit. If he was hijacked, why is he… lucid now? Why does he remember everything? Why isn't he psychotic and mad? And who hijacked him, now, I mean, he's been in District 12 the whole time?"
"As you know, Peeta has undergone extensive therapy since he came back from his captivity in the Capitol," Dr Aurelius explains. "It seemed very successful. He improved tremendously, going from being a psychiatric patient who we at times thought would never live outside a psychiatric hospital, to functioning normally, both in his professional life and in his marriage to you. But what we didn't know, was that Snow had planted something in his mind as part of the hijacking. The call it a ticker. It's basically a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off into someone's head. It's hidden, not noticeable for anyone, including the person in question itself, until it's triggered and is activated. This usually occurs at a set time or as a response to a certain stimulus. Peeta was programmed to find you and molest you. He wasn't programmed to kill. If he had been, you would've been dead now. He was programmed to hurt you badly, but just not badly enough to kill you. You were supposed to survive, to be broken. And Peeta was supposed to remember it all, to know that he had destroyed you." Of course. It's what Snow would do. He always knew how to strike where it would hurt the most.
"Snow wanted him to remember everything he'd done," Dr Aurelius continues. "He wanted him to fully understand what it meant. It wouldn't be a proper punishment to you if he'd been psychotic afterwards. Or a proper punishment to him." I feel the taste of vomit in the back of my mouth. Snow. Even from the grave he manages to come back and haunt us.
"Ever the manipulator," I whisper. "But… Why now? We've been together for years, what… What brought it on? Was it the thunder?"
Haymitch shakes his head. "No. We didn't understand it at first, but... Did you know which day it was? The day he assaulted you." I shake my head. "It was exactly ten years after the final day of your first Hunger Games." He pauses, allows it to sink in. Ten years after the berries. Ten years after Peeta and I, but most of all me, made the Capitol and Snow look like fools. We manipulated the rules of the Games, and I should've known it was something Snow would never forget or forgive. "The police found some… writing on the wall of the kitchen. It was written in blood. It said "Happy anniversary"."
So that was it. Snow thought of everything. When Peeta was freed from the Capitol, they'd said that it had been a bit too easy. We had thought it was because they wanted to break me by allowing me to see his state, and perhaps it had been – but he'd made sure this ticker was planted in Peeta's head. Just in case something went wrong, and we both survived the war.
It was Snow's final revenge.
Dr Aurelius is looking down at the papers he held in his hand again. I know somehow that they aren't regular medical papers I wouldn't understand. "What's that?" I nod towards his hands.
He hesitates, then hands them to me. "Peeta asked me to give them to you," he says carefully. "They are divorce papers."
At the bottom of the last page is Peeta's signature.
I'm going on holiday soon, so I don't know when I'll have time to update again... Sorry to leave you hanging. ;) I might post one more chapter before I go, I don't know yet. Thank you for your reviews and follows!