Disclaimer: All stories are individuals of themselves and are unrelated to each other.
Something gets injected to me and the pain evaporates. Nothing has felt better in existence. Nothing. Whatever they've put in me really does the trick, I don't feel a thing at all. My vision starts going hazy.
The whipping flashes through my head again. The crack of the whip, the scowl of Thread, the trickle of my blood onto the rocks below me. But nothing. I feel nothing. I smile thinking about how much pain I should be enduring but nothing reaches me.
Someone starts touching me. My neck, my eyebrows, my cheek. It feels nice. They have soft hands. Thin fingers that were made for playing the piano, perfectly shaped fingernails that don't dig into my skin. I drift off into a dream where the mayor's daughter follows me into the woods, begging to show me where the strawberries are. She tells me she's been craving them and I laugh. Someone's tracing my lips, now. In my dream it's her. Madge. The blonde who insisted upon following me around when Katniss first went into the Games, rattling something off about friendship and unity and support.
I blew her off, of course I did. Multiple times. The girl from town. Too pretty for me, too delicate. She wanted more, I could tell by the way she looked at me. Maybe I wanted it too but we never did anything, just talked and talked and talked, pretending like what we had wasn't just an act…
The vision of Madge Undersee that spins in my head meshes with real life. Or is it real life anyway? Her golden hair hanging in strands in front of me, her hand holding mine. Maybe she brought the medicine, I don't know where Mrs. Everdeen would've gotten it. Of course not, Madge is just a friend. Is she a friend? What are we?
Her voice is soft and sad as she whispers, "I'm sorry." And then her lips are on mine. Soft. Sweet. She tastes like strawberries.
I blink awake, "Madge?" But no, it's not the girl from town sitting before me. It's Catnip, a confused scowl on her face as she pushes herself backwards, out of the chair she's sitting in and away from me. I blink a few more times and she's gone, my eyelids drifting back over my eyes as I slip asleep again.
Of course it wouldn't have been Madge. The mayor's daughter wouldn't even bother to give me a second glance in town, why would she want to kiss me? She doesn't care about me. Never did, never will.
A/N: Whoops one of my faves.