Interlude: Peeta
Then
Johanna is screaming again.
They're so precise that I can time it: 8 seconds, then a scream. 10 seconds, then a scream. 12 seconds, then a scream. 14 seconds, and then a scream so loud that I have to jam my pillow over my head and hum until my ears are full of static noise and my vision has gone white, until I can pretend the hot streak of my tears is only a trail of sweat.
Who was the first person to tell you about the rebellion?
If you don't tell us, the next time we're going to burn your face.
Who was there when you found out they were going to blow up the arena?
Every second you delay is another finger a person you love is going to lose.
They either don't know enough about us to differentiate their routine based on what would hurt us the most, or they don't care. Johanna always suffers the full scope of their pain. She doesn't have anyone left for them to hurt.
Neither, I've learned, do I.
14 seconds and then she shrieks loud enough that my eyes start to tremble, that they overflow and I can feel the heat on my cheeks.
I can't reach up to wipe it away. Every tip of every finger is singed, and salt only irritates the burns.
The first few days I survived by losing myself in Katniss. I thought about the scent of her hair when she let it out of its braid at the end of the day, how it always smelled like clean sweat and pine and fresh air and lemon. I thought of the pewter color of her eyes in the rain. I thought of the elegant lines of her body when she dove off of the pedestal and swam for the cornucopia.
For the first few days. Weeks. Months, even. Long enough for me to save her life. Long enough to add another scar to the battleground she has turned my body into.
Now, maybe for the first time in my entire life, I see her clearly.
Clearly enough to know that they can kill whoever they want, and they're still not going to get to anyone I care about.
I've seen the shocked look on her face when I confessed my stupid crush to Caesar Flickerman. The way she pinched her lips together until they almost disappeared even as her eyes filled with disgust and she shook her head no in three rigid movements.
I've seen the way she cut the nest off of the tree, uncaring that I was one of the targets huddled at the bottom.
I've seen the way she kisses him in a way she never kissed me, their teeth almost clashing together from the force of their lips, his hands locked so tight around her waist that I'm surprised she could still breathe. The way she spilled my secrets like so many handfuls of berries, and the way he laughed.
I see her swathed in silver and laughing at me when I tell her I love her.
In the cave, bathed in starlight, telling me I'll never have a chance.
On the beach, the light of the water shading her skin like a thousand diamond pinpricks, pointing to the picture of him and sneering about how he kisses her better than I ever have.
It is a constant ache that fills my lungs and makes me feel like I'm drowning. I thought I had an ally in Johanna, who called to me on the twelfth night through the bars in our doors and stayed awake with me as the dead roll of night drizzled into the hazy almost-mist of morning. She told me story after story after story, until my cheek was numb from the press of metal and I knew every lilt and turn of her ruined voice and I still didn't know which one of us she was trying to save.
Katniss loves you she tells me over and over and over again, and I want to press my hands against my ears and scream like a child, scream at intervals shorter than eight seconds for her to leave me alone, for the lies to stop.
She loves you. She loves you. She loves you.
She doesn't. She never has. She never will.
An ache so big it seems sometimes like the world will open up into it and I can fall through, be lost forever.
How do I make it stop? I beg them over and over.
How do I?
Make it stop.
Kill her, they suggest. Do it. It will all be over, it won't hurt anymore. You can be free, you know. It's so easy. Wrap your hands around her throat and you can see the light leave her eyes.
She loves you. Like a ghost, Johanna's voice is a waft of steam that hisses from her room and intrudes into mine.
She loves you. She loves you. She loves you.
What does Johanna know anyway? She doesn't even know how to head them off before they burn her.
She doesn't know how reality gleams around the edges, as silver as lying eyes, as shiny as the surface of a pearl.