They've let me sit up to eat. I'm in a very small room, by myself. I'm attached to the bed by my one remaining ankle, and they've removed my prosthetic. I've no idea where it is. I'm also attached to the bed by something around my neck so there's little chance of movement and there are chains on my wrists so that even though I can feed myself I can't move very far. The eating utensil is soft and flimsy. It can barely hold the weight of the soup.
There is an Avox standing by the door watching me sadly and a guard on the opposite side. Another Avox stands by the window nearby.
I'm not sure how long it's been.
I think I remember at least four times of waking up and going through the conversation of the arena having been destroyed and the rebels being Katniss or having taken Katniss and the Capitol having graciously rescued me, Johanna and Enobaria, though I haven't seen either of them. I thought I may have heard Enobaria growling at someone but I could have just been dreaming.
The door opens suddenly and I fail at not jumping in shock, what was on my spoon spills on to the table. The Avox by the window quickly mops it up and then seeing the man whisks the spoon and bowl away along with the table and the other Avox also rushes out. The guard walks into the room and stands on this side of the door. For a moment I think I see President Snow standing outside.
The man is wearing deep purple, with a blue color it's striking compared to all the pale muted colors I've been seeing recently.
"Peeta," he says, graciously, "It's good to see you looking so well."
"I'll take your word for it. There are no mirrors in here."
He gives a smile that's ever so slightly wrong for his face and it makes my stomach ache, "The President would like to meet with you," he carries on, "but before he does so I need to speak with you first."
The way he says that I feel scared in a way that I have not felt since my name was first drawn before the 74th games.
"What is it you need?" I say, evenly. I smooth the sheet down on my legs in attempt to gauge just how much give the cuffs and chains on my arms have, not enough to do anything to him without throttling myself. Well, there's an option.
"I need to talk to you about the rebel plot."
"What rebel plot?"
He looks at me, clearly this was an answer he was expecting but he also doesn't believe me, "The arena. Your wife blew it up and you knew nothing about this?"
There's a moment of confusion on several counts and then I remember what I said in those last interviews. Snow made Katniss wear the wedding dress. We wanted to make him pay. The secret wedding ceremony. Our eternal love. The baby. And they went on anyway. I remember Haymitch talking long into his whiskey about the uproar in the Capitol about our unborn child possibly being killed in the games but they've been watching 12-18 year olds kill each other in them for 75 years now and that's fine.
Katniss was angry with me for once again dropping a bombshell on her during the interviews, "You come up with these good ideas too." she complained.
"I have to make up for the fact I'm useless in a fight somehow." I told her, "If we could talk our way out of the arena I'd be great, and that's what I was trying to do."
It failed, obviously.
"I don't." I tell Mr Purple and Blue, "We don't. That wasn't the plan."
"So there was a plan?"
"To survive, yes. At least for that...we were going to electrocute Br-" I can't say his name. I see my hands all covered in blood, "the career pack and then I don't know what would have happened." I realize my hands are shaking.
He grabs one of them, very tightly, "You expect me to believe that?" he squeezes. It's as if my skin is squeaking. I feel joints cracking against each other, normally that sensation might be a relief.
"It doesn't really matter. It's the truth." it's a strain to talk evenly, "If there was some kind of conspirac-" my voice catches and I can't help but cry out in pain given at that point he bends my wrist back.
"Oh, do go on," he says, pleasantly.
"Conspiracy," I manage, "I had no idea."
He releases my arm and it flops against the bed which causes me to cry out in pain again. My wrist is-I stop looking at it.
"Who was helping you?" he asks.
"Who was helping us what?" I ask.
"In the arena?"
"We-we got sponsors and donations from all sorts of-I don't know. Usually Haymitch signed them? I imagine he got all kinds of Capitol-" he grabs my throat. Maybe I won't have to choke myself, maybe he'll do it for me. I expect him to bring his face to my face but he doesn't. There's an odd noise close to my ears then and pressure and I realize he has claws on his fingers and they're pressing very, very lightly into the back of my neck.
"That," he says, "is not what I was talking about and I imagine you know that. You're a smart boy, Peeta. Smarter than Katniss. You knew from the get go how to work the system here. If anyone was negotiating deals with people it was you." The claws start to dig in to the back of my neck, "I'm not the type of person that people can talk their way around, so stop trying. Just tell me what was going on. We can sort things out. People can get leniency. I'm sure you'd like to see your wife again. No one wants an innocent child to get hurt."
"Really? Because you were sure willing to put an innocent child in the arena. What if Katniss had been the one who'd been hit by the force field and whose heart stopped? What then?" I push against his hand. The baby being a lie forgotten in anger, "If you really gave any kind of shit about innocent children there would never be ANY Hunger Games. You wouldn't starve us in the dis-" my air supply is cut off then and I start to see spots before my eyes.