A/N: Sheesh, I'm slacking! I swear I'm still writing this story! Hope you enjoy this chapter. -JayOnFF
A nurse from the hospital wing stopped by with an update on Effie, so part of the large group followed me to see her. The nurses have woken her up less than thirty minutes ago, and are trying to get her to drink water and eat some solid food.
Haymitch knocks on the door lightly and waits until a young nurse opens the door for our group. "Come on in, she just finished eating."
They've moved her to a different room, separated from Peeta and Prim. This way, she has time to recover without nurses and doctors constantly in and out of her room to check on them.
The room isn't big, we all just barely fit inside comfortably with my wheelchair taking up so much space. Finnick, Johanna, and Gale accompanied Haymitch and me to visit.
I don't even know what to say to Effie. I mean, she did play a role in putting me and Peeta into the Games and turning us into a spectacle. She was excited about us going in, knowing at the time that one of us was going to die, or both.
But on the other hand, she did play a role in saving us as well. Without her stage training, I wouldn't have gotten the Capitolites to like me, and in turn would have lost sponsors. Haymitch might not have been able to send me the burn cream, or the medicine to knock Peeta out long enough to grab our district bag at the feast.
In a way, Effie's made up for her role in the Games. It still hurts to see her in the condition she's in now. Seeing her awake does help though.
Her face lights up when she sees us. "Haymitch, you've come to visit," she says in her Capitol accent. "You look so much better now that you've given up on the bottle!"
"Very funny Effie," Haymitch says sarcastically. "And you look so much better now that you've given up on the powder you coat your face in," he says with a laugh. A tear begins to trickle down her cheek. "I was only kidding Effie, no need for tears."
"It's not that, it's just… I never thought I'd see any of you again," she says, holding back tears. "I thought we were all going to die…"
"You're safe now," Haymitch says, surprisingly trying to comfort her. "And Snow will pay for it. For everything."
"I didn't believe you Haymitch," Effie says quietly. "I didn't believe President Snow could be capable of such things…"
"You don't need to relive it just yet," Haymitch replies, stopping her from continuing. "You need to recover. Eat, drink water, and listen to the nurses. You'll recover quickly if you do."
"I know, and I will," she says. Effie looks so different without the makeup and the smile she used to wear religiously. She looks broken now. A shell of the woman she once was.
"I'll visit often," Haymitch says. "As long as you keep trying to get better."
Effie coughs before replying. "You had better," she says with a smile. She turns her attention to the rest of us. "Thank you all for visiting. It means the world to me."
Her eyes land on me, tears still in them, threatening to spill out. She coughs again before she speaks. "I'm sorry Katniss," she chokes out. "Oblivion on my end caused pain on yours. I can't make up for it, but I understand now how you must have felt before and during the Games. To think the Games were ever a good thing…"
"It's okay Effie, what's done is done," I reply, partly to try to stop her from crying, and partly because it's true. That apology was all I needed to hear. I forgive her fully.
"Still, I need to say this," she continues. "The cruelty I put every tribute I selected from those reaping bowls through… The pain I caused their families, watching their children die every year… I'm sorry for it all."
I want to reply, but I can tell she isn't done yet. She coughs again.
"But most of all, I'm sorry for never noticing any of these things until now," she says as tears stream from her eyes, running down her cheeks. "It took experiencing the cruel ways of the Capitol to see how right everyone has been all of these years… Haymitch and I argued a lot over the way I treated our tributes, especially you guys."
I wheel myself next to her and place my hand on hers. "Thank you," I say quietly. She smiles sadly.
"How is your sister and Peeta?" Effie asks softly.
"Prim has been medically induced until she can fully breathe on her own," I say, trying not to think too much about it. "And Peeta is sleeping for now, I am hoping he wakes up tonight so I can see him."
"Be careful with him Katniss," Effie says quietly. "He isn't the same boy as he was. I saw and heard…" she coughs, "a lot of the torture he went through. A lot of it messed with his mind as well… Just, be careful with him, and try to be understanding."
What Effie says fills my heart with fear once again. I've tried not to think about it, about what Peeta and Prim have gone through. The torture they've endured physically and mentally. Every time the nurses and doctors mention it, I mentally try my best to ignore that part. But Effie was there. She saw and heard it. And she verified the doctors' concerns about what they've gone through.
Her words fill my mind with regret. I regret not going back for Peeta when I woke up. I allowed Haymitch to change my mind, and run, when I might have been able to catch him, and save him.
But who would have protected Prim?
My thoughts are so conflicted, and I have no time to sort them out in front of all of these people. I try to clear my face of any emotion, and thank Effie for the warning. Everyone gives her their own well-wishes before letting her rest. Haymitch helps me get to my room from here, pushing my wheelchair along in silence.
For once, I hate the silence.
He must be thinking the same thing, because he chooses to break it. "I know what you're thinking," he says as he walks. "I've been thinking the same thing."
"And what would that be?" I ask, not exactly sure where this conversation is leading.
"We shouldn't have let him go back," he says, before quickly correcting himself. "I shouldn't have let him go back. It should have been me. But Sweetheart, you have to let these thoughts go. I've been trying to do the same. We did exactly what we needed to do, which was getting here safely and rescuing them when we could."
"I know Haymitch, and I've been trying not to think about it, but I can't help feeling guilty for what they've been through," I say as we reach my room. "I mean, how would things have turned out if I went back instead? Maybe they let Prim go, and kill me? I know we made the right choice, but it still hurts knowing the pain we've allowed them to go through."
"I know Sweetheart," he says. "Just… try not to think about it too much. They're alive, they're safe, and there isn't a doubt in my mind that they will recover fully. All of them. Try to relax for a while, it's been a long few days."
"You too," I say as he turns around and heads towards his room. I do the same, wheeling myself into my own room. I decide on a bath, wanting to soak in the water. I feel disgusting, and want nothing more than to sit in the warm water and relax for thirty minutes.
Looking at myself in the mirror, I almost don't recognize the girl looking back. Messy hair in a braid that my mother must have done for me a couple days ago, dark circles under my eyes, bruises on my face. I look like a mess.
I smile. Peeta would still say I look beautiful. That's all I need to think about to empty my mind of any negativity. He's been a good influence on me. In less than a year, I've changed so much, and a lot of those changes are because of Peeta.
I lay in my bed for the first time, exhausted mentally from the previous days. Things are getting better, but I am still drained.
I wake up to knocking on my door, most likely Haymitch. I climb out of bed, into my wheelchair and roll myself towards it. My leg has been feeling a little better to walk on, but it still sends shots of pain up my leg, and down to my foot.
I open the door for Finnick, to my surprise, with a small smile on his face. "I have some good news, and bad news," he says as he walks in. "Which would you prefer first?"
"The good news," I reply, hoping it has to do with Prim or Peeta. He smiles a little more before answering.
"Peeta is awake," he says. I smile too before my mind brings me back to his bad news.
"And the bad news?" I ask. His smile fades a little bit before replying.
"They're doing brain scans," he starts. "Well, more of them. They've done a bunch when he first was rescued as well. But they have been noticing that there is something in his bloodstream when they do the scan. They have taken a little bit of his blood for testing. Whatever is in his blood is attacking his brain, from what I understand."
"Attacking his brain?" I ask quickly.
"It's interesting, to say the least. I only know what they told me, and trust me, I tried to get as much out of them, but my understanding is that his blood has traces of something that affects how his mind works. In the scan, they can see it attacking his brain, but he seems fine physically, so the doctors best guess is that it's affecting his thoughts instead. That's all they would tell me."
"Can I see him?" I ask, trying to disguise my concern. "I need to see him, can you take me there?"
"I can, but nobody is allowed in the room he's in," he says. "It's harmful without the right protective wear on, Haymitch already tried to see him."
"How long will they be doing the scans for?" I ask. Finnick shrugs as he sits on the couch and sighs.
"Could be a couple minutes, or it could be hours," he says. "I just figured you'd like to know what was going on. We can't go down there yet though."
"Will he be okay?" I ask, trying not to overthink. Every possible outcome is running through my mind at the moment.
"He'll be fine, calm down a little," he says as he pulls a small rope out of his pocket. "Here, I… I tie knots when I feel anxious, it helps. It keeps your mind off of things."
I take the rope in my hand, running my fingers along the frazzled edges before thanking Finnick. I don't know if this will help me distract myself, but I still appreciate the thought.
"I'm going to go try to find out more," he says as he starts toward the door. "I'm sorry to scare you," he says as he reaches it.
"No, don't apologize, I appreciate you telling me," I say quickly. I hate being treated like an innocent little girl, people walking on eggshells around me, as if I'm not capable of knowing things. "I would have told you if it were Annie."
Haymitch and the rest of the Victors kept the entire rebellion a secret from Peeta and me for an entire year. I prefer knowing than being kept in the dark.
"I'll come get you the second I get any news," he says before he walks out, closing my door behind him.
Calm down a little. Easier said than done.
But what good is stressing going to do? I sit on the couch and look at the rope Finnick gave me, and begin practicing some knots I've learned over the years from hunting, and from the Tribute Center.
It does help take my mind off of things. I must tie knots for an hour or so before Finnick comes back, knocking hard. I yell for him to come in.
"Get in your wheelchair, let's go see him," he says with a small smile.
I practically jump into my wheelchair, already rolling my way out of the room. Finnick helps push me towards where Peeta is, most likely in the hospital wing still.
As we approach the wing, Finnick slows down, almost to a stop. "Katniss, I just want you to be prepared for this," he starts. "Effie was right. I'll let the doctors tell you, but… Just be ready."
"Thank you," I say as he pushes me through the wing, towards the hallway that Effie is in. He must be in one of the other rooms. I know I should be scared, with the warnings I've received from both Effie and Finnick, but I only feel excitement to see him awake for the first time in a month.
Finnick pushes me into the room, where Haymitch and another doctor already are. I'm almost in disbelief when I see him, sitting up on the edge of the bed. His shirtless body is covered in bruises and bandages.
"Katniss," he says breathlessly when he sees me. He shuts his eyes tightly and grabs his ears, as if he is in pain. "Katniss!"
"Peeta?" I ask, quickly reaching out towards him. He opens his eyes and backs away, scaring me in the process. He stands up and looks around the room, still grabbing his ears. The bandages on his left hand begin to bleed through.
"No!" he yells as he stands up over me. He lets out a scream of pain, but from what, I don't know. "It isn't real!"
"What isn't real?" Haymitch yells as he grabs Peeta and pins him to the wall. "Calm down!"
After a few seconds of struggle, Peeta does calm down. He won't stop shaking, but he isn't grabbing his ears or screaming anymore. Haymitch takes a step back, still standing in front of me.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, staring at me.
"What the fuck happened in the Capitol?" Haymitch says as he takes another step back.
"It is quite imperative we know sooner rather than later," the doctor says as he steps forward with a clipboard and a pen. "And please, no matter how hard it may be to relive these events, we need to know everything. Don't hold any information back. Whatever just happened here, is most likely the cause of a specific torture you've undergone in the Capitol, but we need to know exactly what happened.
"Now that Katniss is here, I'll tell you," he says as he sits back on the bed. He rubs his temples, clearly still in some sort of discomfort or pain.
Was he waiting for me to be here before telling them?
"When I first got there, I was thrown in the cell with Prim and beaten bloody. Her screams only made it worse, and when she begged them to stop, they only hit me harder. She'd already been beaten by the time I got there, I think they wanted information out of her, but they eventually realized she didn't have any for them."
"The first few days, it was constant beatings, whipping me and beating me with a bat. They tried to beat Prim, but I did everything I could to stop them. I'd spit on the peacekeepers to make them mad, so they would beat me instead. I did my best to protect her, Katniss…"
"I know," I whisper. "Thank you."
"It wasn't until a week in that they began stabbing me with the needle…" he says. "It messed with my head, I couldn't think straight. They'd show me videos of you Katniss… You and Gale together, or you trying to kill me… You leaving me in the woods to run with Haymitch…"
"I didn't leave you," I whisper.
"I know," he says quickly. "Snow wanted to turn me into a weapon, he wanted me to kill you. He filled my mind with terrible images of you, trying to erase my love and turn it to hatred… Prim talked me through it when I got back to the cell, after they finished showing me the altered videos and images. After a week of Prim keeping me grounded, a peacekeeper realized what she was doing and moved me to another cell."
"But the needle still didn't work," he says. "Even when Prim wasn't in the cell, I was able to decipher that they were lying to me. It was harder without Prim, but somehow, as I was beginning to believe what I had seen, you visited me, Katniss."
"I did?" I ask, confused.
"Not literally, but in my dream you did," he says. "I think when you made it to District 13 was the first time I saw you in my dream. You told me you were on your way, that I just needed to fight a little bit longer. And I believed you, so I fought. Snow's images and faked videos got to me less and less, and with you in my dreams, you helped me figure out what was altered. I'm still struggling to figure it out now, a lot of memories in my head are foggy and shiny. I can't seem to figure out what is real or not real…"
"I'll help you then," I say as he opens his eyes, his blue pools making contact with my smoky gray ones. "Anytime you feel lost, just ask, and I'll help you. We can make a game out of it."
He smiles at me, something I haven't seen in what feels like a lifetime.
"Do these thoughts make you angry?" the doctor says as he finishes writing. "Do you feel any bad urges when you think of a memory that may have been tampered with?"
"Yes," Peeta says quietly. "He wanted me to hate Katniss, and while he didn't succeed at that, he messed my mind up… I used to be so calm, so at peace. Now I'm confused and angry. I don't know how to fix it either."
"You give it time," the doctor says. "I was worried when I saw your brain scans that you would be too far gone. The torture Snow put you through involved injecting you with tracker jacker venom. I'm sure you both know what that does to you, from your Games. Him showing you altered videos and images would allow the tracker jacker venom to trick you into believing that they were real. Thankfully, you learned to fight it off before it did irreversible damage."
"I'm fixable though?" Peeta asks, a small fraction of hope appearing in his eyes. The doctor smiles and nods.
"I have some further assessments I need to do, but yes, we should have no problem getting you back to your former self," the doctor says. "I'd like to work with both of you, if that is alright with you Katniss."
"That sounds fine to me," I say.
"I'm Dr. Aurelius, by the way," he says. "I'm confident we can work through a lot of things that you've both gone through, and help both of you with anything you may need."
"I appreciate it," Peeta says.
A knock on the door ends this conversation. The doctor goes and opens it, allowing Gale to walk in. He smiles when he sees Peeta.
Peeta's reaction is the opposite. His jaw begins to clench, and he starts to mumble to himself with his eyes closed tightly. "Not real, not real, not real…"
"Peeta, snap out of it," I say as I wheel myself over to him. Dr. Aurelius makes a move to stop me, but Haymitch tells him to let me be. I grab his bandaged hand and hold it gently. "Peeta, look at me."
He tries to open his eyes, but doesn't. "Not real, not real…" he says.
"Open your eyes Peeta," I say quietly. He doesn't listen, still mumbling those two words over and over. "What you're seeing isn't real. I need you to look at me, you need to get out of your own head and come back to me." He slowly opens his eyes, still shaking. Tears begin to trickle down his cheeks, until I wipe them away. "See? This is real, what you were seeing wasn't. When you're trapped in your head, listen to my voice, follow it."
"Thank you," he says quietly. "I'm sorry, I can't control it. Seeing certain things or people sometimes set me off. You and Gale were what Snow used against me the most. Any little insecurity I felt, he attacked… I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," I say as I give him a hug. "I'm just glad to have you back… We'll get through all of this together now."
"I've missed you Katniss," he whispers in my ear. I let go of him so he can see my face when I tell him the same. So he can see how much I mean that.
"I've missed you too," I say back.
Gale comes over to Peeta's bed after giving us our moment together. "Glad you're alright," he says. "Had us all a little worried. Seeing you unconscious was scary."
"Sorry to scare you," Peeta says with a small smile. "Thank you for helping them rescue me. I'd be dead if it weren't for you guys."
"We weren't leaving you there," Gale says. "Couldn't leave you there. Or Prim."
"Is she okay?" Peeta asks quickly. He must not have been updated on her since he woke up.
"She should be okay to take out of the coma in less than a week," the doctor says. "No complications have occurred so far, she seems to be fighting to wake up too."
"That's good news," Gale says.
"Indeed," the doctor continues. "The three of them are very lucky. Snow normally doesn't hand over his captives that easily."
"What do you mean?" I ask, turning my attention from Peeta to Dr. Aurelius. He smiles sadly.
"Well, I used to work pretty closely with Snow," he starts. "I've seen what he does, and what he's willing to do. While I'm sure this all seems scary to you guys, seeing people you're close with in this state, Snow took it easy on them. I have no doubt in my mind that Snow wanted to use Peeta to get to you, but once he realized the tracker jacker venom wouldn't work like he thought it would, he decided to allow us to rescue them."
"You think he just let us in the Capitol?" Gale asks.
"I think we caught him off guard with our timing," Dr. Aurelius says. "He most likely didn't expect District 13 to infiltrate so quickly after Katniss made it here. But still, if Snow wanted to, he wouldn't have let that rescue mission succeed. He wanted us to have them. I'm just not sure why yet."
"It's definitely a possibility," Gale says. "It did seem a little too easy to escape the Capitol. Sure, peacekeepers fought back, but now that I'm thinking about it, there wasn't much security surrounding Snow's most valuable prisoners."
"Exactly," the doctor says. "I'm just a doctor, but I am concerned. And while President Coin doesn't take my thoughts seriously, while Peeta and the others are recovering, I'd like to try to figure out why Snow let us have them so easily."
"Makes sense," Gale says, nodding.
"I'd also advise you all not to visit alone," he says. "We see how Peeta reacts to the stress, which isn't his fault, but there are safety concerns."
Peeta just smiles sadly and looks away. "Katniss, can I ask you something?" he says, seemingly not interested in the previous conversation anymore. Something else is on his mind.
"Of course," I reply.
"You told me you loved me in the Tribute Center, when we were making cheese buns for breakfast," he says, almost nervous for the reply. "Real or not real?"
"Real," I say.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly. "That memory was shiny. Snow must have tried to alter it somehow."
"We'll figure it out together," I say.
"I hope so," he says. "I have another memory, but I feel like it's real… Nothing is shiny about it, or foggy at all, and I really wish it was."
"What was it?" Dr. Aurelius asks, his interest piqued. Mine too, to be honest. I guess his conversation ended.
"In another part of the chambers in the Capitol, Snow had mutts as prisoners," Peeta says. "Do you remember how it felt, looking at the muttation hounds in our Games? Their eyes, their hair, it was the tributes? Well, the mutts in the cells, I think they're people we know…"
"People we know?" I ask, my heart sinking. I feel like I know exactly where this is going.
"Yes. The first cell he showed me had…" Peeta starts, trying not to choke up. "It was my parents, and my brothers."
"You're positive?" Haymitch asks, a little more concerned now.
"Nothing about this is shiny," Peeta says sadly. "I'm pretty sure of it. It didn't end with just my family… They were experimenting on them. They were testing how fast someone becomes a mutt after being bitten by one. My prep team…"
"Oh my God," I whisper.
"I wish it were shiny, but it isn't," Peeta says with tears in his eyes. "Every mutt in the street is someone's friend or family member."
"That means…" Gale says quietly from across the room. "Vick is a mutt too then."
A/N: More backstory, more twists, and I think I know exactly where I want this story to go, so hopefully, we start moving along. Very sorry about how long this is taking, writers block is very real for me! Thank you for all of your patience.
On another note, a lot of things happening in the Hunger Games world! A new book announcement AND movie?? Suzanne Collins is blessing us once again. Can't wait. But in the meantime, hope you all are doing well and enjoyed the chapter! :) -JayOnFF
