Here's the next chapter! Enjoy! I do not own Mockingjay.
Ch. 3
They had let me take a shower, though the water was cold and soap was not aloud, they had let me rinse. I know something important happened yesterday, but I cannot remember. All I know is that this afternoon I meet with Caesar again.
They told me that my argument should be the same. Tell people that the human race would completely die out if we went on with this war. If there is one thing humans feared the most it was oblivion. It was the only ground the Capitol could stand on. I of course had come up with the idea. Before they had started to torture me, before I realized that my life would be horrible, I had tried to come up with a reasonable idea to call for a cease-fire.
Saying the human race would die was the only real legitimate reason.
I sigh as they pull me out of the shower and run scratchy towels against my skin. It burns, but I had felt much worse pain in the last weeks. Losing Katniss was the biggest of those pains.
Just as I think her name a buzzer seems to go off in my head. A memory my mind can't remember. I've been digging through my brain for anything that I might have learned in the past day. It was something big enough to knock me out.
The guards drop clothes onto the floor and tell me to get dressed. I had a meeting with the President, they said, I had to look presentable. They knew the President had seen me writhing in pain against my cold metal table. The President probably liked me better that way, but this meeting wasn't to instill fear, it was to get me ready for my interview.
I walked with a limp because I hadn't walked in a while and the new leg they gave me poked into my stump. That didn't matter for the interview though because the public would only see my sitting, but they would have to be blind to not notice my changes. I look at the reflective glass in the elevator that takes me to where ever Snow is. My muscles are all gone, all my limbs are skinny as they were when I was a child. My face is warn down by sleepless nights and merciless torturing. I look almost as if I was a ghost, come to haunt the man that caused me all this torture. If only I were that lucky.
"Mr. Mellark, please sit." The room in which President Snow sits is large and glamorous made ugly by the snake that sits in the middle of it.
I walk painfully to the large chair that sits in front of the monster. I feel like throwing up, only because they gave me more food than they usually do.
"Lucy, you can get to work." Says Snow. A Capitol woman I'd never seen before walks timidly towards me, she begins to work make-up across my face. As if the stuff could hide my misery. I want to save my strength for the interview so I don't speak. I don't usually when I am around him anyways.
"Do know what they are doing to Katniss?" The question is rhetorical and the mention of her name sets another buzzer off in my head. It bothers me, but I don't have the strength to pursue it. "They have made her go to the Districts and see the sick people and they've video taped it!" He laughs, it's cold and heartless. I shiver from it. "As if people around the country want to see a seventeen year old girl talking to the poor! Peeta," He looks right at me, his emotionless eyes seeming to look into my soul and devour it. "She doesn't know what she's doing.
"She is young and they have brainwashed her. Listen to me, if you want them to stop get your point across. If she knows what is right she will leave District Thirteen. Talk to her Peeta, she will watch this. Put sense into her." I know way deep down in my heart that they have not brainwashed her and the videos he talks of are to show the pain that the Capitol has caused, but some part of me works it into reason.
I need her back, it's essential, I need her right here beside me. Right now and if the only way to do it is to tell her to stop than I must. I always had a way with words, I just hope that they will work.
A tear starts to fall and I feel it making a path on my makeup. Lucy has gone to get something, President Snow gets up and leaves and I'm left alone. He knows he's got me and he did it easily.
Lucy comes back and sees the tears, "No, no, no, no!" She wipes it away and I try my best to conceal them after that. It seemed to upset her too much.
When I'm sitting in another room waiting for the interview to begin I feel completely and utterly lost. Part of me knows I'll pass out, another part fights to stay conscience, but I know that I have no real control over any of it. There was a moment between them forcing water down my mouth and putting make-up on my skinny face that it was just me and Caesar. I mean there was the camera crew and the other people hustling around, but they weren't paying attention to us.
"Peeta," He looked at me with great pity and gave me a smile as if we had been friends for ages. Which I guess sort of we had, but it was one sided. I had seen Caesar all my life, interviewing the children that had no hope, but really he had no idea who I was. Most everything I had told him in my interviews were truth hidden behind a large web of lies. Caesar didn't know me, but for that one second he made me feel safe. "Are you ready for this?" I knew I wasn't, but part of me also knew that once the cameras started rolling my instinct to protect Katniss would kick in.
"I don't know." I let a fake laugh escape my lips to make it seem as if everything was okay, but he knew. He knew the Capitol had torn my whole world apart, he knew every last detail of my torture, and I wonder what made him stay here.
"Going to start rolling in 3, 2," The camera man makes a gesture and I see a red light on the camera turn on and I know somewhere out there Katniss is watching. Some part of me knowing that helps, but another makes me scared. I wonder if she knows I'm lying. I wonder if she sees right through my carefully articulated words.
The interview starts and Caesar and I have an easy banter. There are no questions of how my life has been or what I've been doing here in the Capitol because everyone knew the lies I would have to tell for those answers would be too hard, but then it really begins. He asks about the videos that President Snow had told me about. He asked if I wanted to tell Katniss anything.
It was easy as if I was telling the truth. Words flowed out, telling her to question the people that told her what to do. Which in all actuality was a good piece of advice. One should always do that. I just hope she will do whatever is best and if staying in District Thirteen and defeating the Capitol was the right thing, then I hope she did. As long as she didn't kill herself in the process.
I hope you liked it! That was a nice break and this week I'll get into my old routine of posting regularly! Don't forget to REVIEW on the way out! Thanks! ~boywithbreadlover