On shaky legs, I wobble my way around the bed, one hand out for balance. I've been strapped down forever, I don't feel like I've moved under my own power in weeks. My prosthetic feels oddly longer than before, that's weird. The whisper hisses threats and warnings, but otherwise it feels good to be upright again. A little light-headed, but good.
One of the jumpsuits is watching carefully, a hand at the ready to catch me, but after two trips around the bed, I feel steady again. She grins encouragingly as I cockily brag I'm ready to use the restroom by myself.
Two guards come to help, one to stay inside with me, one for outside the door. I bury the twinge as the whisper needles that I have to be kept under heavy guard so I don't hurt anyone, but I'm able to hold my hands steady as I leave the room for the first time. Looking around curiously, I see two more rooms like mine, private with closing doors, and several beds with just curtains to keep out prying eyes. There aren't many people ill in District 13, it appears. In one of the beds as we go by, a young woman cradles a tiny bundle in her arms.
I'm drawn to a stop, fascinated by the miniscule fingers curling around her thumb. She looks up happily, but, seeing the guards, worry clouds her eyes and she tightens her hold protectively. Shame rushes up my neck to heat my cheeks and I turn away, swallowing the knot in my throat.
Back in my room, I sit on the edge of the bed, not ready to surrender my verticalness just yet. Dr. Aurelius chatters incessantly as he putters around the room, monitoring and checking and observing. I sit quietly, concentrating on calming the whisper and nodding or murmuring agreement often enough to keep Aurelius from engaging me directly.
"Peeta?"
Apparently not well enough. "I'm sorry, what was that?" I ask, trying to look as though I just didn't hear him over the buzzing machines.
"I said you seem distraught," he repeats. "The guards said your little outing went very well. Surely that's cause for celebration?"
"Yeah, it went brilliantly," I mutter. "I didn't attack anyone, so that's good, right?"
"Ah," he nods.
The last thing I want is to deeply analyze that comment with Aurelius. I have to be more careful. He's a fool, but he's intense. A quick prod in the back of my mind brings me up short. A fool? Why do I feel such contempt for him? Why am I angry and brusque with everyone? Is that just how I am?
"Peeta," he begins in a gentle voice. I groan inwardly, but lift my eyes to his attentively. "You know that you are perfectly safe here. Perfectly safe." His words grate against the whisper and it rages in response. rip tear shred claw "I don't want to push you where you're uncomfortable, but I'd like to talk to you about something. Perhaps," he hesitates. "Would you consider attaching your restraints before this conversation?" he asks carefully.
The request bangs against the young woman's cringe away from me. I flush with shame again and grit my teeth against the furious threats of the hissing voice. Mutely, I attach one wrist by myself, then wait for him to do the other. I stare blankly at the wall as he tightens the straps, checking them twice.
"I want to talk to you, Peeta, about the morphling therapy."
I shake my head automatically. "I don't want to do it again," I say for what feels like the hundredth time. The whisper bites at the edges of my control. "It didn't make a memory less terrible," I tell him. "It wiped it out completely." He leans forward, practically itching for a clipboard, but he has to make do with just listening. "I don't know how to describe it," I fumble. "It's like there's a gauze curtain, and there are figures moving and speaking behind it, but I can't hear or see them. What if that was a real event that's gone forever now? I only have you guys telling me what you think is real, I can't tell by myself." I study the ceiling intently. "And anyway, I can't give up all my false memories," I say quietly. "They're awful, but they're the only ones I have." I shudder, imagining a world where my mind was filled with only the fog and numbness of the morphling recollection.
A flash of sunrise, a body in the water. Terrified eyes pleading desperately with mine as the life leached out of them. Another life given for her.
I grit my teeth together against the fury that rises in my throat. All these people died so she could escape the arena and never look back. All these lives, and she never even acknowledges their sacrifice.
Aurelius sees me tensing up, squeezing my eyes shut and trembling against the howling demand to shred and claw until no one is left.
"Peeta," his voice is gentle, and, for once, genuine. "I would like to show you something." I shake my head tiredly. I don't want to watch more tapes of her, of us, while they try to manipulate how I feel about it with drugs and tricks. "No drugs, and it's not a memory," he says. I watch him warily. "I know you feel lost," he says quietly. "I think you are missing a piece of you. I think you are missing her."
I shake my head rapidly against the thought, but, for once, he presses forward. "Please, trust me."
It's such an odd concept. Why would I trust him? Why would I ever trust anyone ever again? It's laughable in its absurdity. It makes so little sense that I actually shrug resignedly. Whatever. What could possibly be worse than what's happening right now?
He perks up right away and hurriedly gets together what he needs. I can feel the pressure of the increased attention from behind the glass, how many people just crowded in there to watch the latest experiment on the raging freak? I take slow, steadying breaths, gripping my fists in the bedding. Aurelius brings in the screen and fiddles for a moment, then turns to me. For once, he doesn't stink of the earnest need to reassure me. He just looks like a guy who wants to help.
"Peeta," he begins, "I really think much of the reason you are unable to feel like you are making progress toward remembering who you are, is that you are blocking out a significant portion of who that is." My breathing comes harder and faster. I'm sure I know where this is going, and the whisper is furious about it. "Regardless of how you feel now, and however that is, it's ok, but at one time you were deeply, truly in love with Katniss Everdeen."
He pauses to let the tremor work its way through me. I shudder and tremble as I fight to restrain the scream bubbling up in my throat. But I do. I fight it back, and I stay in control. Still shaking slightly, I meet the doctor's eyes and nod. I'm ready to go on.
He nods back and continues. "I want to show you a clip we taped earlier, before you were brought here. It has never been aired, the Capitol has never seen it, cannot have used it against you. This will be a true and natural vision of her for you. Do you believe what I'm saying?"
I nod slowly. tricks schemes lies liars tricks The whisper is buzzing angrily, looking for the manipulation, trying to find the trick. An honest look at her, without the fear that it's a planted memory. I don't know how much I trust this idea, it could easily be another trap. But I'm so exhausted with distrusting every breath, every word, every thought. The whisper keeps a steady feed of hatred rolling through my mind at all times, I feel steeped in it. I honestly feel like I have nothing to lose.
Aurelius clicks on the screen and I tense immediately, a habit. Green. Trees and leaves and grass and shrubs. Green is everywhere. My breath catches in my throat and I blink rapidly, the sting of tears behind my eyes. The forest calls to me with its calming, welcoming coolness. I had no idea I missed it so much until just now. A group of people are sitting around in the shade of the trees as the sun glints brightly off the smooth surface of a small lake. The air is filled with birdsong, an echoing interlacing melody that pulls at my memory.
"Want to hear them do a real song?" Katniss stands and steps even further back into the leafy shade. I grip the sides of the bed, clenching my jaw. I fight to keep the shriek at bay as she stands, head down, gathering herself. But she doesn't change. No flaming wings sprout from her shoulders, she remains a girl standing in the dappled shade of the cool green forest.
Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Her voice is sweet and gentle, steady and true. The birds are beginning to play with her melody themselves, singing it back and overlapping the tones. I have a sudden picture of a large, wiry man with laughing gray eyes and gentle hands. He stands outside my backdoor, talking with my father as I listen from the safety of his aproned back. They are laughing and teasing each other and the man, it's Katniss' father, squats down to smile into my eyes.
"Want to see a trick?" he asks with a wide grin. I nod eagerly and he stands tall, clearing his throat. He glances around the back alley, whistling a low, warbling tone. The mockingjays begin to answer, whistling back as he smiles. And then he begins to sing.
Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee
As his voice rises and swirls through the air, the birds sing back, their calls looping and churning together to complement and match his own. I stand, breathless as the magic works around me.
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.
By the end of his song, the birds had fallen silent, a hush filling the alley as they listen to the song themselves. On the tape, as she finishes and the last notes hang in the air, they pay her the same honor of silence.
The room comes back into focus around me. Dr. Aurelius watches me attentively, the stillness heavy around us as well. "I know that song," I say wonderingly. "Her father sang it. I heard him once, at my father's bakery. I was little, a first year, I'd heard a rumor that the birds went silent when he sang, and damn if they didn't." I look dazedly to Aurelius. "That's where it started."
"What started, Peeta?" he asks.
I shake my head, unwilling to share this yet. "Sorry, nothing," I say. "I'm just kind of confused still." It's enough for him, and he claps his hands together and begins chattering about what a great success it's been. I tune him out and concentrate on my new, blossoming thought. The singing. It was the singing that first snagged me for her. I shake my head, trying to keep the whisper from screaming so loudly I can't think. I remember her singing.
This thought occupies me for the rest of the afternoon. I'm distracted when Delly comes to visit, and I barely touch my dinner. I remember her singing. I remember my tiny, childish heart swelling with an undefinable want, a confusing buzz of happiness. I answer Aurelius' questions as well as I can, trying to seem engaged when all I can think of is that I remember her singing.
Night falls and I'm too restless to sleep. After what seems like hours I press the call button and request the guards to accompany me down the hall to the restroom. I need to walk. That too, echoes with a haunting familiarity, setting me even more on edge. As we make our way down the hall, I try my best to keep my eyes from the bed where the young mother cringed away from me, but she's no longer there. I breathe a sigh of relief and feel some tension drain from me as the first guard sweeps inside to check if anyone is there. He nods for me to enter, but I hesitate.
"Look," I say sheepishly. "I get it, I really do, but we're who knows how deep underground, no windows to escape from, no one is in there, there's nowhere to go. Is it possible," my eyes drop to the floor. "Can I just, please, go in alone? I promise I'll call for help if I feel at all out of control."
The guards hesitate, conferring quietly, before grinning at me understandingly. "Go on, then," he growls. "Call out if you need us, though, ok?"
"Promise," I say with relief and push through the doors into the empty room. As I stand in the quiet, unobserved for what must be the first time in a century, I breathe easier. I wonder if I can convince Aurelius to let me outside? Ever since the tape, the need to be outdoors has been an itch under my skin.
"I'm not their slave." The words are muffled and confusing. I look around for the threat, drawing a breath to call for help.
"I am." The call freezes in my throat. It's Katniss' voice. Is she here? The sounds are coming from the other side of the wall. "That's why I killed Cato…and he killed Thresh…and he killed Clove…and she tried to kill me." The words send images spinning through my head, smashing into each other and screaming against my skull. I lean against the cold wall to keep from crashing to the floor. The sound comes more clearly now. "It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their Games."
The words blaze in flaming, scorching screams across my brain. We're on a rooftop. The city is lit beneath us, celebrating the beginning of the Games. Katniss is determined to return to her sister, but I am certain I won't ever leave the arena. I have decided to do everything I can, before I die, to be sure Katniss Everdeen is the victor. I only want to finish my life as myself, not some twisted puppet playing the Capitol's game.
Katniss didn't understand, she only knew she would do whatever it took to go home. I feel her words now as blows. She understands. She finally sees. And I – I am the twisted and broken puppet bearing no resemblance to myself. I begin to shake and I can feel the whisper's scream taking me. I'm not myself, I am only rage and destruction and hate. I feel the darkness close over me and I use my last breath to call the guards. As they rush inside, I hear the gunshot.