A/N: I'm sorry if my writing gets lazy near the end, I'm suffering from severe hayfever and I'm nearly falling asleep at my laptop.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.

Chapter Eight

Peeta sat in his bed, watching the propo on loop. He was just out of the shower and couldn't resist turning it back on. His dad didn't know he had recorded the clip and Peeta preferred it to stay that way, as his father wouldn't be too happy about it if he ever found out. He still hadn't adjusted to the extravagance of Capitol lifestyle. The silks and fancy cottons were rich and alien to Peeta. Even if his medication blurred a lot of his old life into staticky fuzz, he still seemed to be stuck on the peasant lifestyle he used to live.

The D13 propo started in a hospital. Whoever held the camera was an amateur, the lens constantly wobbling and the picture taking a good minute or two to adjust into something clear. Said amateur's breathing could be heard, heavy but even. Even when the baby started to cry, the breathing remained calm immediately going to the aid of the child.

Peeta didn't recognize the little girl who was crying. A tiny voice at the back of his head told him that he should. She seemed familiar in some aspects but ultimately Peeta could not place her. She was very young, she still slept in a cot. And the words spoke next were what struck him the most.

"Is this what you wanted to accomplish, Snow? A poor little girl with no parents because of your sick Games?"

Even though he didn't recognize the girl, Peeta knew the voice. It was Cato. Cato. The lying, cheating, horrible, sadistic bastard who had tried to ruin his life. He still suffered nightmares because of that son of a bitch. What was he trying to accomplish in recording a little girl cry? Was he trying to get sympathy points? Was he trying to get the Districts on his side by blaming Snow for the death of her parents? It wasn't his father's fault, none of this was his father's fault.

As if to make matters worse, a different girl started to scream. A blonde girl a couple of beds down. Peeta knew her. Her name was Madge, his mother explained to him who she was. She had goaded him into becoming the Mockingjay when Cato relented just the tiniest of bits and let him visit 12. She told him lies about rebellion and uprisings, she scared him into trying to act. His mother told him that he had to be weary of Madge, because she was a manipulator.

But this girl didn't look like she could manipulate a spider into catching a fly.

She looked broken. She was having nightmares. She screamed for her parents to run from something no one could see but her. Cato had went to her, dumping the camera on the bed in just the right position that you could still see Madge as she roared in fear. He pinned her wrists to the bed to stop her from hurting herself or him as he tried to calm her down.

Peeta shut his eyes. That seemed so familiar. The nightmares, the soothing, the words of calm and relaxation, whispers of promises falling on broken ears. Cato looking terrified, his eyes glistening with tears. He was worried, for some reason, concered, scared? Why was he seeing this? It had to be a lie, one of the few apparations that manage to slip through the wall the medication put up in his mind to protect him from the untrue stories Cato had filled him with.

He curled his knees up to his chest and watched as Madge woke up and Cato held her close, shushing her, comforting her. The fire ate up the image, leaving a message in the black darkness.

Why let this pain continue? This is what will happen if Snow wins the war.

Join the Rebels, and fight for the right side.

The clip clicked off and Peeta sighed, resting his forehead on his knees. Cato was obviously trying to capture the attention of those who had lost loved ones during the Quarter Quell Bombings. Those who had people close to them who had been severely injured. It was a low blow and Peeta knew that a lot of very naive people were going to listen. It wasn't fair. Why were they blaming his father for the things that were out of his control?

His watch bleeped. Peeta reached out and pulled open his bedside drawer. His medication lay inside. Syringe and turquoise liquid. He noticed that when the medication was kept together in high concentrations, it had a deep green element to the colouring.

The needle slid into the container smoothly and sucked up as much of the turqouise-green liquid as it could hold. Peeta winced as he placed it at his neck, always hating the sensation it caused as it entered his veins. As his thumb pushed the plunger, a shudder ran through him and his mind began to cloud up.

His mother told him that the best thing to do when he took his dosages was to lie down and let it take effect. He hated how the medication confused him. It was always coupled with a feeling of nausea as the memories in his head were rearranged to fit the truth. When he asked his mum about why he had to inject so much, and she said that if he didn't, the lies would eventually start sliding back into place and he'd start believing them again. And he couldn't start believing them again.

Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could remember how Cato hurt him. How he used to treat him and use him as an nothing but a sexual object to please his desires. But once, when he was only . . . what? Five minutes late on taking his dosage? Something else leaked through and instead of Cato, it was Hunter Mortimer, Mya's friend. Peeta didn't really interact with Hunter that much and it confused him as to why he would see him in Cato's place sometimes. Maybe his head really was truly fucked up.

He picked up the remote and switched off the t.v, letting silence spill in and fill the room. He needed sleep anyway, his dad said they were going to do some visits to people suffering from food shortages in the Capitol, due to the Districts rebelling. Snow explained to him that the citizens were looking at him, Peeta, to know what to do. If he was holding strong, even though everything else seemed to be against him, then they could take comfort in that and do the same.

And Peeta was all too happy to provide that comfort.

~xXx~

"They're thinking about going into the Capitol," Fulvia Cardew said one day in the mess hall. Cato looked at her with a confused frown, wondering why she had decided to bring that up so randomly. "They want to try and get the prisoners out."

"The prisoners?" Kayla asked excitedly. "Does that include-"

"Sadly, no," Fulvia sighed. "Mr Mellark is no longer considered a prisoner, remember? Coin classifys him as a traitor now. They have no reason to save him."

Cato was disgusted. "Did Coin watch the same footage as us?" he asked. "When his eye turned turqouise and that blonde woman sat on him while Mya injected that stuff into him? Surely Coin has to know that they're controlling him somehow."

Fulvia shrugged, swirling her spoon around in her meager portion of stew. She looked very pale and her cheeks were hollow, she looked almost like a ghost more than an actual person. Her body obviously hadn't adjusted to the small portions of food that was customory in 13 but probably considered scandalisingly small in the Capitol. "I don't make the rules," Fulvia said quietly. "I just follow them."

Cato looked down at his own food, not sure why he had adjusted to the change so quicky. Food had never been a problem in his District, like it might have in the outlying Districts, 10, 11 and 12. Was it because he was in the Hunger Games twice? His system was used to being starved that he barely noticed anymore.

He looked at Kayla. She was staring at her empty bowl, as if wishing more in. It broke his heart to see her so desperate for food. Like the others, she was rapidly losing weight but keeping just enough on to be considered healthy. That's what 13 do, they examine your current state of health and physicality and give you just enough food to keep you going. That's why you always have to flash your schedule through the scanner before you recieve your food, so they know what portion to give you.

Every day the last thing on Cato's mind was eating. And even now he didn't feel hungry. He glanced at the guards on mess hall duty, who weren't watching them as present. While their backs were turned, he switched his and Kayla's bowls. She looked at him with wide eyes, unable to believe that he had just done that.

"But your food . . ." she whispered.

"It's okay, you finish it for me," Cato whispered back.

"I couldn't possibly-"

"Kay, eat the food."

Kayla stared at him for a moment, in disbelief, before a smile broke out across her face. "Thank you," she whispered. Cato smiled back and patted her head, made much more happy by watching her eat than he would have ever felt by eating it himself.

"If it makes you feel any better," Fulvia said, "I think you might be on the rescue mission."

"How is that supposed to make me feel better? Going into the Capitol with knowledge that I can't go in search of Peeta?" Cato asked dryly.

Fulvia leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I don't mean that. What I mean is that you could use your position on the rescue mission team to your advantage. Go in search of Peeta and bring him back. Of course, you'd get yourself into all kinds of trouble but I'm sure you'd be more than willing to do that, for your boyfriend's sake."

"But if I took him against Coin's will, what would she do to him when we got back to 13?" Cato asked, his voice hushed.

Fulvia sat back. "I don't know. That's the thing. Unless you are willing to take full responsibility for his recovery then he would very likely be put into prison."

"I'm more than willing to take responsibility for the recovery," Cato said. Harold could help him. He seemed to know a lot about the venom they were injecting Peeta with, maybe he'd know a thing or two about flushing it out of a person's system.

"Prim and I would be willing to help," Kayla put forward. There was four people on Peeta's team already. Five if Fulvia counted as well. "We may not know a lot about what Snow has been doing to him but I'm sure with a little guidance and medical research we could find something useful to do."

"I think your little band of rebels within the rebels is coming along nicely," Fulvia beamed.

"Are you with us?" Cato asked.

Fulvia sighed. "Sadly only in spirit. I am still Plutarch's assitant, after all. I must stay by his side in whatever decisions he makes."

Being there in spirit is better than not being there at all.

Maybe they acutally had a shot at saving Peeta from President Snow.

~xXx~

"What do you mean we can't save him?!"

Harold's eyes were directed at the floor, unable to meet Cato and Kayla's gazes. "Exactly as it sounds," he muttered. "We can't take him from the Capitol."

"Why not?!" Kayla demanded angrily.

"If you're worrying about what Coin will say, Fulvia said she should be alright with it as long as we take full responsibility for Peeta's recovery," Cato tried to explain. Harold looked at him with a horrified expression. "You know a thing or two about the venom they're giving him and Kayla and Prim are going to do some medical research to see if they can find anything that will help."

"They won't find anything," Harold said sharply. "There's nothing in any datebase in the country that details anything about tracker jacker venom. The only people who know about it are the people who have either worked with it or been given it."

Cato remembered the story Harold told him. About how he was an experiment child and one of the things they trialed on him was the tracker jacker venom. "But you've had experience with it, surely you know a thing or do about ridding it from someone's system," he insisted. "Why are you being so reluctant? This is Peeta's life we're talking about here!"

"Yeah, his life which will be put at risk the moment we take him from the Capitol," Harold snapped.

"What do you mean?"

"If we take him away from the Capitol then he won't be able to take his venom dosages," Harold said, begging them to understand.

"What are you talking about? We don't want him to take the venom, that's the idea!" Cato exclaimed. "Why would we rescue him just to continue to give him the thing that they're torturing him with?"

"Oh god Cato, you don't understand," Harold groaned. He shook his head and brushed his hair out of his eyes. "What would happen if you were suddenly taken off your bi-polar meds?"

"His bi-polar would get worse," Kayla answered instantly. How she could get to the answer before Cato could? He was the one taking the tablets, not her. "The mood swings would increase and he'd probably bite the head off of anyone who came within five feet of him."

Harold nodded. "Exactly."

"What's the point in bringing that up?" Cato demanded.

"Wait," Kayla said, "are you trying to say that if we don't give Peeta the tracker jacker dosages his condition will only get worse?"

"Not exactly. He'd develop a lot of severe illnesses, diseases we don't have the facilities to treat here in 13," Harold explained. "It was okay for me because I was in the Capitol and Snow knew how to treat such sickness but we just don't have that here! We can't take him away, he'd be in more danger here than he would be there."

"What sort of illnesses?" Cato asked.

"Illnesses that can only be treated in the Capitol like cancer and blood disease. Heart defects, liver failure, brain damage," Harold listed. "Anything you can think of, he will be vulnerable of developing it."

"Prim and I could research how to treat those," Kayla said firmly. "We could make salves and stuff. Surely it isn't a lost cause."

"That's cute Kayla but there's nothing you can do," Harold sighed. "These illnesses are beyond anything we can do here. If we were to save him and take him back here, Peeta would die within the first five months of being here."

"Die?!" Cato snapped. "That has to be an exaggeration. Peeta can't just die, it's not possible."

"What the hell do you mean it's not possible?" Harold exclaimed. "Everyone dies eventually, some sooner than others."

"But not Peeta," Cato replied. "Not my Peeta. He won't go down that easy."

"He won't have any control over it."

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do."

"So you're not going to help us then," Cato stated.

Harold shook his head. "I can't. I don't want to be responsible for Peeta's death. You can do what you like, but I'm not going to be a part of it."

Three people on Peeta's team. And one more in spirit.

That still had to be quite strong . . . right?

Fulvia was right. Cato was put on the rescue mission. There was at least twenty soliders gathered together with the intent of getting the prisoners out of captivity. Cato was glad that they had gathered so many together, because at least when he broke away from the group, there would still be nineteen in search of the others.

Cato wasn't sure what he was going to find in the Capitol but he had to be prepared for anything. How much worse could it get anyway?

Peeta was going to be rescued from the Capitol, he was going to make sure of it.

A/N: Please R&R with you thoughts! I apologize for any mistakes! (: