Note: This multiple chapter story recounts what Peeta went through with the Capitol, from the torture he had to endure to the highjacking. I may also write a bit from his rescue to after when he's brought to District 13.

Note 2: Re-uploading this since for some reason some edits will not upload properly on the site. Sorry about that!

Please review and comment. Ideas are always appreciated.

~ Maria

Chapter 2: Talk To Me?

God.

Devils and harlems and evil doers but God all the same. The Capitol, for what it was to the rest of Panem, to the Districts, was God. It came and went and did whatever it wanted, however it willed it. It was a fragile God however, one that could be tipped if done right. One that could be burned at the stakes if captured in the right net. After all, Gods had come and gone since the beginning of time. None were truly invincible.

And that was why Peeta was here. Down here. In the belly of the Capitol. Within the machine, consumed, broken down by its teeth and spit, swallowed. And now it digested him little by little. First with their reference of unknown time, then with the screams of the innocents in cells around him, then with the death of Lavinia. It sucked him dry, that God, like it sucked the rest of the world into a shriveled mass, took everything from them, from their food to their very dignity, that which they already lacked a plenty.

Peeta closed his eyes as he thought those very thoughts - opened them at once. The sight of Lavinia seemed imprinted in his brain, carved there with a red hot iron rod. It left its trace, burned itself into the deep recesses of his mind. Her voice, her screams, her shrieks, they laced with his consciousness and wouldn't leave him. Even days later, weeks later - again he couldn't tell - it clung to him with raw intensity, cutting through his core as the knives had driven through her flesh. Even the sound of Katniss' voice couldn't cut through those screams, no matter how much he tried to bring them forth, shield himself with her strength.

Across from him, dark eyes stared, liquid, almost globulous in the dim light allowed for the Capitol prisoners. He glanced back at Johanna Mason, his back pressed to the metal sheet, by the metal bars which kept them apart. He'd drawn his knees back to his chest, made himself smaller. Maybe then they wouldn't notice him. Maybe then the Lavinia who haunted him would lose him somewhere in the depths of his bruised consciousness - get lost and never return. It was a terrifying thought only because it meant that while she could get lost among the pillars of his deteriorating psyche, then so could he.

His hand reached the side of his head, tapped it. Tap tap tap. It didn't make Lavinia's shrieks diminish. Not even slightly. He whined; made a child like grimace as you would biting a lemon.

"It won't ever go away", Johanna told him in a voice too merry to fit in any of this. "Learn to live with it."

"You don't even know what you're talking about", he spat bitterly. Already it was unlike the kind, thoughtful, easy going Peeta all of Panem knew him as. Already he wasn't alright.

She snorted. "Think so, blondie?"

Peeta decided he didn't want this conversation to continue. Not just because he couldn't stand Johanna's little remarks, but because Lavinia only screeched louder in his ears to make sure he didn't forget about her. Slowly, like a small animal, he crawled to the dark corners of his cell where she wouldn't see him anymore. Couldn't reach him.

This had a surprising effect. Johanna's voice gained intensity, grew panicked. Suddenly she sounded like a small child herself, dumped into a pot of boiling oil. From the shadows, he noted how she gripped the iron bars, how she rocked her body with the sense of a caged ape. He noted how her lips pursed over her teeth and blistered gums. He noted how her eyes grew wide and slick, how much more they suddenly reflected light: bright white spots like cataracts.

"Don't ignore me! Don't you fucking dare ignore me! YOU COME BACK THIS FUCKING INSTANT! YOU TALK TO ME! YOU TALK TO MEEEE!"

He didn't. Her voice, like a wounded and terrified bird, made him want to stay right where he was and cover his ears... only to hear Lavinia's shriek of laughter - at least he thought it was laughter - once Johanna had been discarded.

It wasn't long after that four peacekeepers showed up at his cell. He remained concealed in the dark corner of the barred room until he was forced out of hiding. By then Johanna had stopped her tantrum, thankfully, but it was only because she was as frightened as he was to see the white suits. She watched as they dragged him out of his confines, holding his arms behind his back, forcing him to look at his toes by curling a hand at the hairs of the back of his neck. He didn't fight them. It was futile. He didn't fight them, but his body reacted nevertheless, suddenly soaked in sweat and taken by tremors as you would a fever.

He thought the corridors were too clean, too bright, too white, for a place that harbored so much pain and despair. They brought him to a different room than the last where he'd witnessed Lavinia's gruesome death. At least from the sight of his feet - the sight of broken nails, bleeding where cracks had scattered into thin blisters - this is what he was able to deduce. He was hurled forward - slammed his face into an invisible barrier.

What now, he wondered, fighting a panic that was becoming all too familiar.

When he was able to get back into focus, he cast his gaze all around him, his fingers pressed against the glass which now surrounded him. He was trapped in a glass cylinder. A fleeting moment of confusion brought him back into the tube that would bring him into the arena. He would see Katniss. He would die, protecting her and seeing her. Her grey eyes and the smell of woods and earth and -

- a movement at the corner of his eye brought him back to this reality. He found himself standing in his transparent prison, wearing only cotton underwear and not understanding how and why that had happened. His jaw clenched at the vision he got, hands contracting with the thought that he may have been running out of air somehow.

It was Effie Trinket he saw, who'd donated her multicolored wigs for locks of golden natural hair - dirty though, so dirty and matted they were nearly brown in retaliation - her face still wearing traces of harlequin whites in large blotches like Peeta would sometimes wear after kneading dough from flour, her eyes surrounded by dark and purple paints, her lips, once bright red, smeared everywhere around her mouth but mostly up her left cheek as though it was meant to point at her ear. If she'd looked freakish before, it was nothing compared to now as she mewled terrible sounds of fear. The clothes were ripped from her, leaving her bare and vulnerable. She keeled, an attempt at covering herself while a fresh set of tears slipped down her cheeks. That one bold move of having her darker then expected skin exposed for the peacekeepers, for Peeta, revealed, was already affecting her. She was humiliated.

Peeta watched as helplessly as he had watched Lavinia, the tips of his fingers curling into the glass. They took the whimpering woman to another cylinder similar to his, but she was not settled by his side, instead the one after to his right. The glass prison between them stood empty for now.

The cylinder folded closed and somehow he thought could hear her, clear as day, as though she was standing on the same plate as he. She curled up, knees drawn to her chest, ringing her arms around her legs.

Peeta looked at her and she looked back. Their eyes locked as they had with the Avox girl, but the feeling of guilt, fear, sadness, didn't come. She pressed her hand forward, palm flattered into round, pale shapes - sought his aid. Her eyes, red from crying, pleaded. Simply he stood, but he made no further move to acknowledge her. He let Lavinia's hatred channel through him, his gaze growing dark and accusing. She saw it and recoiled into her own bubble of glass. Suddenly she felt a whole lot safer in the constrained space then she would in a large room with him, free to walk about. The good, kind baker boy, he wasn't taking any hell from this Capitol scum. He was here, not home, here in the claws of a horrible machine, because of her. Because she had reaped his name from the bowl a little over a year ago - or so he thought it was a little over a year ago.

Her fault.

All her fault.

Except it wasn't really. He'd soon regret thinking it was but for now he only stared and accused her. He wasn't so kind and nice and sweet and romantic, that Peeta, now was he? He was human after all. He was no saint. He'd killed too. He'd lied too. He'd manipulated the slum that was Panem. He'd hidden the biggest sneer of his life when the Capitol folks, full of vomited colors and wretched styles of idiots - when they'd gone crazy over sending love-struck Katniss Everdeen with a living belly into the arena. Had he believed it might turn things around? Had he believed he could truly save her from the obvious fate that awaited them? Part of him had. Part of him believed that these things, craving the blood of the poor to satisfy their need to masturbate over the suffering, the pain, the torment of the condemned, just might have enough of a heart to put a stop to the games, or at least keep her away.

And yet they went into the arena anyway. And yet they watched, and he knew, oh he knew, how excited they had all been to watch. Oh poor, poor Katniss, look at her, all in tears. Must be the hormones. Poor thing. And him, oh him... He loves her so. Look at them. They're so beautiful together... well unless they're covered in blisters and his face is slack from chemicals. Not so pretty now, huh? Oh, that's just disgusting. That's so... gross. But they couldn't, wouldn't stop watching, perverted in their need for violence and maybe, just maybe, getting some more private action in there. A little something to get the chastised, prude wives and the dysfunctioned husbands going without needing special pills.

Sick, all of 'em.

He only dropped his gaze when something caught his attention elsewhere again. His head snapped in that direction and already he had an idea of what was to come. What would happen all over again. His stomach clenched. His legs felt like jelly and trembled beneath him. He heard the bones of his knees as they struck through his flesh. Immediately he looked down at his legs, expecting to see bones through sliced meat. Expecting pain. There was none.

Darrius, former peacekeeper of District Twelve, was brought to them as naked as Lavinia, his legs behind him and his feet dragging against the perfectly white floor. The man with the beak and the man with the feathers with his hate and the man with the golden hair - they were the ones who were there again. Maybe this time they would cut him and kill him.

But Peeta knew better. If anything, Lavinia's terrible demise had taught him that much.

Darrius was shoved into the tube between Effie and Peeta. It closed on him. Immediately the softness he'd exuberated as they forced him forward was replaced by a new life. He sprung to his once lifeless feet and like Effie, pressed his hands upon the glass, looking at his tormentor with a fear so strong Peeta thought he could follow the thump thumping of his quickly expending heart through his chest.

The beast like men in white coats stepped bad, admiring their work. Again, the artists at work. The bird man was first to break the stride, getting behind a console a little further off. Peeta watched as he tampered with the console, then looked up at the three test tube subjects. He couldn't smile, his mouth rigid and made of thick calcium, but his eyes held enough malice for the three men standing there. He was getting off on this.

Peeta's lips pursed back, a mask similar to Johanna's earlier, when she'd screamed for him to come back and talk to heeeer. He slammed his hand against the invisible barrier several times. That seemed enough to gather the man with the feathers' attention. He took a few steps forward, stopped an inch or so from Peeta, who stood at least three feet over him in this position. He tilted his head slightly to the right, inquiring, vulture like.

"Aren't you going to ask me about the rebellion", Peeta snarled. He wanted to conceal the pain in his own voice, the fear, the fact that he could not bare watch more people suffer.

He failed.

The man shook his head, grinned a predator grin Katniss may have compared to President Snow's had she been there in Peeta's place. He wore grin of Capitol denizens who watch the Hunger Games on replay and fast forward to the juicy bits, all year long. The grin of a man who dreams of scalps. The grin of a man who watches someone's eyes and wonders what they would look like, dangling from their cheeks, gelatinous balls of puss and fluids. The grin of a mad man, really. And then he nodded toward Darrius; cordially invites Peeta to take a look - made it seem like they were at a fair, a circus : Panem et circenses.

Peeta didn't think. He looked. Again he'll wish he didn't, but then Effie looked too. He'll tell himself it's a valid excuse later.

Darrius gazes back at him, lost, unsure. He pricked his nose, his nose twitching as he seemed to catch a wiff of an unknown smell, then he looked up and his eyes widened in fear. Peeta watched as tendrils of green tinted smoke - no, not smoke, mist - leaked down like fingers, caressing first the red mount of his hair, then his cheeks, across his neck. They curved as lady fingers would slip down his cheek, alluring in nature and taunting. Darrius watched as Peeta watched as Effie watched; the ribbons wrapped around his torso and arms and legs, pooled at his groin. That's when his mouth opened into an 'o', his face contorted into a grimace of pain. Within the confines of his tube, Darrius hollered and went stiff. The flats of his hands hit the glass repeatedly, urging Peeta to do something, anything. Please!

Peeta didn't. Couldn't. He watched. As the citizen of Panem watched children kill each other. He watched behind the glass, behind the screen.

Darrius' skin bubbled where the tendrils touched, ballooned calluses which burst and oozed yellow puss. First on top of his head where the mist had slipped, coating his hair in jelly like clumps before they burned off and out of existence. Peeta could hear it without hearing, the sizzling of Darrius' flesh like eggs on a hot plaque, the hissing of burning hair, the howling of the poor man.

Peeta flashbacked to the arena, to Mags and Katniss and Finnick; To deteriorating material of clothes and nerve endings giving up. To that side of his face that went slack, to his arm which flailed uncontrollably, a ghost of itself, refusing to cooperate. To his legs that wouldn't work as they should, tripping into themselves.

But that was not exactly what was happening to Darrius. Close, but not quite. The tendrils dissipated into a thin veil of whites and greens, becoming one big cloud. It nearly glowed from its brightness, like perfectly white, clean clouds in a deep blue sky, while Darrius' flesh faltered into greys and whites and yellows, then purples as his skin bruised where it boiled, then red and yellow and green where the calluses exploded into bubbles of blood and pus. A ripple ran across the man's body, down his sides. It was unnatural, that tremor, alien and carrying with it all the agonies and fear and pain he suffered from at that very moment.

Darrius' head slammed into the glass - Broke his nose. Or maybe whatever what affecting him had made him soft where he should have been strong and solid. The appendage caved as a thin cup of paper crumbled with a slammed fist would. Pieces of skin peeled away when he pulled back, sticking to the invisible barrier, snapped free from his broken face like wet chicken skin. It slipped slowly, very slowly, downward. And then the rest of him, any part of him, that touched the transparent confines would glue itself to the glass, ripped from his muscles with no resistance. Darius realized this a moment too late, his brain refusing to accept such a grim reality until it was clear it could only conceal the truth from his consciousness so long. His eyes came alight, his mouth opened wide, ripped at the corners easily now that everything about him was so tender. He inhaled and the bright mist invaded his mouth. A soundless shriek escaped him, then a spray of bright red followed. Beads curled at his lips, descended across his chin. If the mist worked its way inside as it did outside, Peeta had the horrifying thought of the young man's organs liquefying.

Peeta made a noise. Something like a whine deep in his throat. That was the first time he reacted at all, too stunned to do anything further. He caught his reflection, a sheer moment where he thought he saw a ghost and he screamed, banged his hands to the glass. It did nothing to save Darrius. Nothing. He fell to his knees, heaved, hurled bile on the cold metal at his feet. He didn't want to look anymore, but his eyes were drawn to the jelly of Darrius' eyes as they deteriorated into moist pools and slipped down his cheeks like tears. By then Darrius looked no more human then the mutts of the arena. Darrius collapsed unnaturally into the tube as though he was made of soft, warm clay. Peeta made another sound, the mewl of a wounded animal.

His mind tipped toward a dangerous edge. He forced images of Katniss forward, tried to overlap them upon the mangled shape that was once a human being in the neighbor tube. There wasn't much left of Darrius now, but that horrible rubber like mask, with its mouth disturbingly wide and the sockets of his eyes as wide as the tongueless, gaping hole. He was all soft and slippery and bubbling now. He was but a thing, a human suit. A thing Peeta hoped was dead by now.

His eyes wandered to the other tube. To Effie. She rested there, eyes wide. She'd watched it all. She'd watched as Peeta had watched but he felt a whole lot more hateful. She had no tears. She was not trembling. She stared and looked like any Capitol citizen would watch the Hunger Games. She'd never seen someone die so closely. Only on screen. Only in the confines of her living room, or wherever it was escorts watched as their tributes murdered each other. She was smiling. All wide and full of teeth.

He loathed her.

He despised her.

Until he realized she wasn't smiling at all. Until he saw madness in her eyes. She'd watched Darrius decompose into this unrecognizable mass and as her fickle brain registered that fact, she was slowly, slowly losing her mind. It wasn't a smile. It was a facial distortion of unrecognizable magnitude because her mind could not decide on which emotion she should feel, which one was appropriate. It stuck there as a computer would freeze, skipping over its components until finally it would shut down.

When the first tendrils of mist slipped into her tube, he didn't really hate her anymore. When her emotions finally stopped jerking on and off in her brain, when she looked up, when her mouth opened and she banged against the glass in renewed panic, he felt sorry for her. When her hair stuck to her forehead and large beads of sweat covered her body, when she crumbled into a ball in her tube, waving the arms of death away, shrieking and crying and wailing (again he could not hear, and it was probably best that way), he thought he cared for her despite all. When finally her skin did not bruise and ooze and split open, when he realized long before she did that she'd been tricked, that this was nothing toxic but likely no more then condensed water, his heart swelled and he thought he loved her. Not as he loved Katniss of course, but as he loved Haymitch, as he loved Delly Cartwright, as he loved his brothers and father. As he loved, even, his mother.

When the tube was lifted and the fog evaporated into thin veils, Effie gained a second wind. Perhaps she thought she could get away. Perhaps she thought she had a chance. A slithering hope of escape. She scuttled across the floor, on all fours, and that's when the man with the beak caught her, propped her on his knees. She beat at him. Still Peeta heard nothing; could only imagine the sounds of she must have made when this... creature touched her.

There was a rush, a time of madness, tasting bittersweet at the tip of his tongue and acidic at the back of his throat. Somehow, watching Darrius melt away into a bloody sack of skin and bones and puss was less painful then this. He slumped where he was, shut his eyes tight, brought his arm over his eyes, and willed this nightmare to end.

Later, much later, he'll paint her too. He'll paint her as he would paint Lavinia and later the shapeless form of Darrius.

He'll paint a close up of her face, the sheer mask of terror, with her features stretched beyond recognition, with her smeared make-up, and her matted dark blond hair he was sure was really golden under all the crust of dust and oil. He'll paint her like that because he dared a peak once, and that's all he saw, and that's all he'll ever see. Katniss will see it, spread on a large 50 by 50 inches canvas, but she'll ask no questions. Maybe it's because of the many birds he'll have painted around her, small, nearly insignificant, like specks from afar, but with long dripping beaks and blood soaked feet and charcoal feathers. Hundreds and thousands of them, like flies invading Effie's mouth, nostrils and ears. Katniss won't ask because with that alone, she'll know. And she'll keep herself locked up in her room for a week upon that realization. She won't speak to Effie Trinket for a month, and later she will address her with her eyes cast to the ground because she'll feel completely responsible for the horrible fate she suffered at the hands of these men.

And for a while, Peeta will believe her responsible too.

As it happened, there was no sound. No sound at all. Even his breathing, flaring nostrils, the thump thumping of his heavy heart, none of it was making any sort of sound. When he looked again, the glass was covered into an opaque wet sheet of condensation. Sweat. Tears. Snot. Bile.

He heard a voice. It was soundless. But it was a voice. The voice was beautiful. He knew it, but could not place it in time, could not conjure who could sing so beautifully that even the angels would stop and listen, envy that choir of beauty. It came from nowhere yet it came from everywhere and it soothed him, at least partly. The deftness of the words made him feel like he could, maybe, hold on. With it came the familiar smell of sugar, of dill and of flour. With it came the smell of his childhood. With it came the smell of security.

The tube lifted. He rolled and fell three feet down to the floor from the platform, knocking the breath out of him for a short moment.

He heard footsteps. Crying. Shrieks. Please and don't and stop and Haymitch please, Haymitch, where are you! His arms crossed over his eyes, drowned the light as though it would render everything soundless again. He still heard that voice, but it was distant now. It was leaving him. He reached out, called for it to stay a while longer, then felt such guilt in wanting to ground it, to keep it to himself that he burst into uncontrollable wails of sorrow. "I'm sorry", he cried, "I'm sorry! But I need this! I NEED THIS!"

The voice drifted away, and with it, it took another sample of his sanity. It went to a better place, he realized, elsewhere where it was needed. He felt alone and empty now, abandoned.

When he heard a voice again, it was not beautiful. They made angels weep. It was not a song anymore because the words were being yelled at the top of Peeta's lungs, wanting so desperately to drown everything else. But it isn't effective. Not like the other voice.

Wear a necklace of rope side by SIDE BY SIDE WITH ME! STRANGE THINGS DID HAPPEN HERE - ( "It's your fault, Peeta", the man with the feathers whispered at his ear gleefully, all your fault, listen now, listen! Listen!" ) NO STRANGER WOULD IT BE, IF WE MET AT MIDNIGHT IN THE HANGING TREE!

His voice grew hoarse. The man with the feathers became agitated. He didn't like the words, the signing, the blocking him off. There was a sharp pain below Peeta's ear. He screamed. It burned. It spread through his bloodstream. He thought he was falling apart, even tried to reattach his arms and his one good leg. He panicked.

He felt heavy as though he was filled with sand, calling out for the voice. He didn't even need a song! Just the voice! The voice! The voice that smelled of his family's bakery! The voice! "TALK TO ME! TALK TO ME!"

Darkness met him. Silence. He was relieved for it. In it he wept what needed to be mourned. He wept for Darrius. He was a peacekeeper, but he had been good. He had been a gentle soul. And he wept for Effie, whom he'd gone from despising to loving unconditionally within the space of a few minutes. Effie, poor pedestal Effie. In all her mindless selfishness, she truly was just another victim.

He woke up with the taste of clay in his mouth. He woke up with the shrieks of Effie as she called for Haymitch in his ears. He woke up with the image of Darrius' pulsing face coming apart embedded behind his eyelids. He woke up with the smell of vomit and piss invading his nostrils. He woke up with a need to pop his nails off his fingers and punch holes in his cheeks. He woke up with renewed hatred for the god machine. He woke up with Johanna's dark, beady eyes gazing at him, her head crudely shaved, bearing an unhealthy grin of twisted madness as she held onto the bars of her cell.

And she whispered with a flicker of her tongue over her cracked, bleeding lips: "Talk to me?"

End of Chapter 2