Warning: Physical, sexual, and psychological torture. This chapter is still from the perspective of someone who has not yet dealt with their torture and assault, so much of the difficult subject matter is handled in a victim-blaming (from the torturers) and ashamed (from the victim) kind of way. This will be resolved in later chapters.
"If you have any power or any say in what they're doing or how they use you," I plead to Katniss through the Capital camera, sitting across from Caesar Flickerman who leans in, enraptured. My voice cracks tearfully, imagining her in a situation similar to mine, shivering as I imagined her with Alastair. "Please urge them to stop this war."
I had been brought to the interview after spending the entire evening with Alastair. The sedative he had given me took away my physical prowess, but it did not grant me the mercy of losing consciousness. "Why do you antagonize me?" He demanded after I had slurred, "Get off of me!" Alastair glared, holding my face in his hands while I pulled weakly against the cuffs behind my back. "You know I can't damage this pretty face tonight, and yet you tempt me so," he growled, shoving a handkerchief in my mouth. "You'll be doing plenty of talking for Snow tomorrow during your interview, so do save your voice, sweetie." Despite the feigned pleasantries his scowl remained unchanged.
A small camera crew is assembled in front of Caesar and I, and my guards are at the wings of it. I see Thread smirk at my last statement, meaning I must have convinced them that I'm really trying to do what they've instructed. Better than my last interview. They like me as the beaten, emotional, broken lover more than the inflamed, passionate victor that I was in the first interview.
I'm not sure what I expect to happen if the war ends. I do know that they will never release me. I'm too valuable to them, for many reasons. But maybe they will spare Katniss. She's too symbolic to the districts. Much like they've kept their word in sparing Johana for my cooperation, maybe they will keep their promise about Katniss.
I feel foolish for even hoping this. How could I really expect them to spare the Mockingjay? But I didn't have a lot of other cards to play at the moment, and anything that might protect her...or Johana, or Annie...I had to at least try.
Alastair poked at the firewood with an iron, sending more embers up into the chimney shaft. "Something to remember me by?" He smiled wickedly and I could smell the skin on my shoulder burn as he pressed the poker in deep. I screamed, but was unable to move away from the hot iron.
"Thank you, Peeta," Caesar pats my arm, and as he turns to the camera to round off the segment I feel the searing pain in my shoulder again.
When the cameras cut, any restraint left in how I'm being treated goes out the window. I'm grabbed immediately and yanked up from the chair, Alastair's mark seemingly sizzling all over again. Caesar even looks a bit like he's gotten whiplash from watching the sudden assault. "I'll see you, Peeta Mellark," Caesar says soberly, watching with restraint as I'm taken away. I appreciate the sentiment because it's probably the nicest thing he could say to me at the moment without becoming marked a rebel or a sympathizer. He's saving his own neck, too, and I understand that. He might have a family to protect. He's just as much a pawn in their games as I am. We just happen to have different prisons.
I'm returned to the cells at the bottom of the Training Center, and I'm immediately outraged. It's clear that Johana has been beaten, her face now black and blue and her lip split. "You said no harm!" I roared at Thread, throwing off my guards in a surprising show of strength as adrenaline pumped through my veins. I'm able to tackle him before he can raise his favorite cattle prod.
"Stand down, Tribute!" Thread roars back as my hands claw toward his neck. I'm yanked off by the guards again, and as I struggle in their grip Thread gets back to his feet. In one gesture he unholsters his baton and extends it, then he swiftly backhands a blow to my jaw. I feel a molar dislodge, and my heads is pushed back by the force of the blow until I'm staring into the bright white lights of the cell block. I can vaguely hear Johana screaming, muffled through her cell's glass walls. I feel the guards step away from me a fraction of a second before Thread is raining his baton down on me. He goes for my knees first, forcing me down, and then he attacks my back and stomach. I instinctually cradle myself into a defensive position, but the baton simply moves to my arms and legs. I open my eyes to see Johana clinging to her cell wall, watching the other two guards join in. She shakes her head at me, eyes dark with bruises.
After a few minutes it's over, and I spit up my molar and a mouthful of blood on the floor. "Get him to his cell," Thread orders the guards, who more or less drag me across the floor. I look up at Thread when he stands by the door to type in the code that locks me in. "And I was so pleased with your interview," he mutters, punching the last button. Compressed air whooshes and my door shuts.
"Peeta!" Johana calls as the guards leave the cell block. "Talk to me, Lover Boy," her usual sarcasm isn't present, only panic.
I groan and turn to face her, hissing against the throbbing bruises I can feel spreading over my body. My shoulder hurts the most, and my jaw. I'm too spent to lift my head from the floor, but I tilt it toward her and wink. Anything to help calm her down. The last thing I wanted right now was to be fussed over. I could see her shoulders relax slightly, and she rolls her eyes. "Another interview then?"
"Yeah." I look down at my suit. The dark color hid whatever blood might be on me, but it was disheveled and ripped. I took advantage of a snag and ripped a small piece of fabric and wrapped it tightly, wedging it between my cheek and the gum that had lost a molar. My mouth kept filling with blood and I didn't think the Peacekeepers were going to bring me a salt water rinse.
Johana watched me carefully. "That's not enough pressure. Keep your hand there, too." I did as she said and looked over at her. "Trust me." She grimaced and pulled her lower lip down to reveal a missing tooth on her bottom row.
"What happened?" I asked.
Johana sighed visibly. "Well, my guess is that whatever bargain you alluded to just now expired. Let me guess? You'd do what they wanted if they left me alone?" I nodded soberly and she scoffed. "So then either you failed, they don't need you anymore, or they lied. It's hard to tell with these motherfuckers."
Alastair's voice filled my head. "The guy..." I looked at her and then away again, "...from last night. He um, said something about me going off market." I suddenly felt very sick, and vomited, the makeshift gauze and more blood coloring the pool of bile.
"So the deal was null," Johana spat, rolling her eyes. "You didn't have to protect me, you know." She sounded bitter. "But thanks," she added softly. "It was only a matter of time, Peeta. They don't buy that we know nothing."
I wiped my mouth with the suit sleeve, and then eased myself up really slowly. "I don't want you to go upstairs," I said simply, shrugging the jacket off with a lot of effort. I ripped a new bandage for my mouth and ripped off a sleeve as well, just incase I had more bleeding to tend to. Then I laid the jacket over the vomit, at least stifling the smell. The jacket was wasted anyway.
"I don't suppose that you want to talk about it," Johana stated, slumping down to the floor of her cell but still remaining by the door where we could see each other. "So let's move on. There's really no need to torture yourself with it - they have enough other torture in store."
We were feed crackers and water on this new regimen, all pleasantries gone. Avoxes were in charge of bringing the food, and they would type in a code that would open a small window at the bottom of our doors that I had not noticed before. The Avox would slide in the tray and cup, and remove it later.
Thread and the guards picked up the pace on the beatings. I was forced to watch as Johana was shocked and interrogated. When I looked away they treated her worse, in their sick, twisted way of making sure I would pay attention. They always started with Johana, but I wasn't sure exactly why. When they left Johana hypothesized that it was because they thought I was the one to break, and if they beat me first I wouldn't be conscious for her pain.
They liked to shock Johana, but not me. Thread seemed to enjoy drawing heavy inspiration from my time upstairs. He would order the guards to strip me, which hurt me more than I would have liked to show.
"Up on the wall," Thread ordered, and the guards manhandled me over to the leather straps along the wall of my cell. They secured both of my hands above my head, so that I was facing the wall. I hated standing there naked and vulnerable, but at least I wasn't having to look anyone in the eyes.
"Oh, look at this one," Thread boasted, jabbing a baton into my shoulder. I flinched automatically away from the touch, understanding that he was gesturing to the mark Alastair had burned into me. "Looks like he belongs to someone." Thread slid the baton down from my shoulder toward my hips. "Look at these scratches." He must have been tracing them.
I felt humiliated, angling my body flush to the wall in an attempt to escape the baton, tears springing to my eyes. I prayed silently that Johana was unconscious from her beating and wasn't watching.
I felt the cattle prod press into my spine seconds before the shock rang through my body. "Flinch away from me again," Thread warned as the shock started to dissipate. "Now where were we," he mused, the baton back on my back. I couldn't help but flinch and moments later I clenched my teeth through another shock. "What did I say?!" Thread demanded, pressing the baton into my back again. I held my breath and put my feet shoulder width apart, tensing my body so that I could override my instinct to flinch.
"Good," Thread observed. "Now that we've established that, tell me what you know about the rebellion."
I swallowed, furrowing my brow as I anticipated more torture because I didn't know anything. "I don't know anything," I answered honestly, but knew it wouldn't be good enough.
"Get me the hammer," Thread told someone, and I felt lightheaded. The hammer? "One blow from this hammer and I can break any bone that I want, so I'll ask again," Thread seethed. "What. Do. You. Know."
"I don't..." I didn't get to finish my sentence. I felt a sickening crack in my left forearm and I couldn't hold back a scream. I could see that though my wrist was still secured in the cuff, my arm bent between my elbow and my wrist. Dizziness washed over me, as Thread grabbed a hold of it. I screamed, pleading for him to let go.
"Tell me what you know and I will."
When I didn't answer he squeezed, and I roared. I felt like fainting, drooping so that my weight was mostly supported by my right wrist. "I said don't flinch," Thread reminded me and the cattle prod was shoved into my right shoulder and electrified.
I need you, Katniss's voice floated to the surface and I felt the sea wind at the beach of the Quarter Quell graze my face.
Thread took my chin in his hand, forcing my face toward his. My eyes were squeezed shut, so he barked, "Look at me!" I hated the tear that slipped out when I did.
"Do you want this to happen to Miss Everdeen?" He taunted, a sparkle in his cold, blue eyes, and more tears came to my eyes at the idea.
"On his knees," he ordered the guards, who obliged, taking me down from the wall and forcing me to my knees. I couldn't stop a scream when they twisted my arms behind my back. They cuffed my hands behind my back, and this position was one I knew all too well. Thread stood in front of me, stroking his baton symbolically. "What about this? Would you like for Miss Everdeen to be taken upstairs?"
I panted, sweat beading on my forehead from the extraordinary amount of pain I was in.
He grabbed my throat. "We recorded you, you know."
My skin must've blanched more than it already had. "No..." I whispered in disbelief.
"We know what kind of whore you are."
I felt heat crawling up my neck and I felt faint. I felt my peripheral vision decreasing, focusing in on a narrow tunnel with Thread's face at the end. My heart rate picked up, and I felt goosebumps all over my legs and arms. My limbs started to shake, a panic attack rearing its ugly head. I felt claustrophobic, like my body could not hold enough air and was some foreign thing that my consciousness was floating above, yet was trapped by it.
Thread smiled. Jackpot, he must have been thinking. "Bring it in," he told someone, his voice sounding to me like it was underwater. Thread was passed a small screen, around the size of a notebook, and he held it at my eye level in front of his waist.
On the screen I saw two men, standing in the penthouse bathroom. I was between them, my eyes wide with fear and panic as one held me and the other wrapped a leather belt around my wrists. I was fighting against them as best as I could, telling them to stop. Ross. Michael. Their names surfaced from somewhere deep down, and I watched my own face smashed into the screen. The camera must have been inside of the bathroom's mirror. The mirror smashed with my forehead's impact, and on screen my eyes drooped a little. I saw the man called Michael grab my hips from behind, and thrust his pelvis toward me, my head smacking into the glass again.
I tried to turn my face away from the screen, looking down at my prison cell floor, my vision blurry from the tears that had surfaced. "Nope," Thread warned, backhanding my jaw several times in a row. I felt my head swimming, and he was able to easily pull my face back toward the screen. "Tell me you deserve it," he parroted Alastair's words to me, and that's when I totally lost it.
The panic attack flexed its muscles as the memories I had lost from Portia's pill can flooding back. I was hyperventilating, and it felt like every nerve in my body had turned into fireworks. But not in a fun way. I sank further to the floor, wishing I could fulfill the instinct to grab at my hair and yank it out, but my hands were still bound behind me. That probably wasn't helping the feeling of being trapped, nor was being surrounded on all sides by Peacekeepers.
"No!" I roared at Thread as he wrestled my face back toward the screen, but I stopped fighting so much when I realized that he was showing a clip from my first games, when I laid helpless and injured in the cave and Katniss leaned down to kiss me. I could feel the wires in my head getting crossed, my arousal from seeing Katniss and I being intimate confusingly present with the memories of my experiences upstairs with Michael, Ross...Alastair.
Katniss had drugged me. So had Alastair.
No!
I tried to throw the thought out as fast as it had appeared. With Katniss it had been different. It was about survival, it was to save me. I trust Katniss.
Stay with me, I heard Katniss's voice from the train echo in my head.
Stay with me, I heard Alastair command, forbidding me from passing out, cuffing me to the bed.
"Peeta!" Johana screamed somewhere. It was all so foggy. I heard her plea, "Stay with me!" just as darkness crept around my vision and I passed out.