Chapter 21

I'm both terrified and relieved once the power is restored to the building. One the one hand, it means that we've been discovered, and that an unknown number of Peacekeepers are on their way here right now to stop us from rescuing Katniss and the other Victors. However, on the other hand the lights coming on seems to have snapped Peeta back to reality and stopped him from pummeling the remains of this Peacekeeper who did have a striking resemblance to Peeta himself.

My attention then turns to Katniss who is screaming terrified from the confines in her torture chair. "Peeta stop!" She's screaming. "He's going to kill me next, He's a mutt Gale, Peeta's a mutt!" She screams into the air so loud that it makes my ears ring and it feels like my skull is going to explode from the intensity of her shrill cries. Her face is actually turning purple with the effort.

"Shut her up!" Shouts Boggs. Who has taken the sack of weapons that I dropped on the floor when we were trying to wrestle Peeta from the dead Peacekeeper and is now filling it with as many items from the room as possible.

As I quickly unbuckle Katniss' impossibly slim wrist from the chair I'm aware that the room is filled with television screens at every angle that Katniss can possibly see. Peeta is staring wide eyed at the screens as he unbuckles Katniss' other wrist. "Don't touch me!" She's screaming.

"Katniss, it's me, Peeta." He tries to tell her desperately, but I can tell she's not going to calm down for him. "We're here to save you; we're taking you away from here." He wipes his forehead, probably thinking that sweat is running into his eyes when really it's the dead guy's blood. Peeta doesn't even realize that he's covered in it, and in Katniss' current state of mind he is unknowingly terrorizing her even further.

Now Katniss with both of her arms free lunges at him. "You can't take me anywhere! You can't take me! You're a mutt Peeta! A mutt!" She screams at the top of her lungs as she takes her fingers and digs them into his face.

I come up from behind Katniss and take her arms and hold them down at her side. "Katniss, what did they do to you?" Peeta asks in a defeated tone, in response she spits in his face. Boggs comes up with a black sack that must have only been in this room because it was a tool they used to blind Katniss. As soon as the sack is over her head she almost instantly calms, which is almost worse because she passes out and collapses in my arms. I scoop her up and walk out of the room, leaving Peeta flabbergasted behind me. I head for the harnesses in the centre of the building that will lift us back onto the hovercraft that will take us back to District Thirteen. One of the soldiers from District Thirteen mentions to me that other than the few guards who were here holding the Victors the building is completely abandoned so I'm not even careful as I walk out into the open, and the intense pain in my shoulder catches me completely off guard. The person behind me who I can't even see tackles me into a wall off to the side, I'm holding on to Katniss so I can't even protect myself without dropping and hurting her.

I shout out in pain as this person stabs me a second time in my right shoulder again, then a third, and a fourth, and countless more. Just when I think that this is it, I'm finally going to be released and will get to join Madge and Posy, and that protecting my best friend isn't a bad way to die an animalistic force pulls the person from my back. "Run, Gale!" Boggs says from across the room, and I do, I carry Katniss and hook myself up to the harness and watch as Peeta kills yet another guard as Katniss and I ascend to the hovercraft. We leave for District Thirteen a few minutes later once Peeta and Boggs make it onto the hovercraft. As soon as we are on our way and the hovercraft is leaving the Capital the medical team descends on us. Katniss is taken from my arms, the sack removed, and she is hooked up to all the machines that tell the doctors everything they need to know.

A set of doctors treat me, they get me onto an examination table. I lay on my stomach so they can cut my uniform away from my back and determine the damage. A needle is inserted to my arm and painkillers administered. I can feel my head getting lighter and lighter as the drugs take effect. I see Peeta sitting in a chair watching the doctors evaluating Katniss, but the look on his face is so blank that I don't think he's seeing the world in front of him. His hands and face and even his hair is covered in blood. The last thing I remember thinking is that maybe Katniss is right, maybe he is a mutt.

What follows is a series of events that break them both. It's an odd thing to see two people who were so completely in love, stay in love with each other but in a way that they are so completely never going to be together again. From the bag that Boggs filled when we were rescuing Katniss we learn of everything they did to her. Journals and logs, even some of the audio recordings and video clips show us the depths of which Katniss' mind has been twisted. Everything about the rescue was too easy, and now we know why, Snow fully intended for us to find her this way. Snow's own personal revenge on the Mockingjays and District Thirteen. On some level I suppose it's revenge on Panem itself just because of how willing everyone was to accept the two of them and change everything he's ever worked for.

My recovery room is just down the hall from Katniss' observation room. I hear her screams, they are heart wrenching and devastating and it makes me glad that Madge died in District Twelve. I'm featured on most of the propos alongside Peeta, what if they took Madge to do the things they did to Katniss. Madge is stronger than I imagined, but she would be just like Katniss and I'm glad she died before anything like this ever happened to her. Peeta is the trigger to Katniss' hell and it kills him a little every time he sees the terror in her eyes at the sight of him. He tries every day for a week to get through to her, when he's finished trying, when he accepts that he is hurting her just by seeing him he escapes to my room. He sits with me and we listen to her screams until they stop together. "Annie and Finnick are getting married." Peeta says to me one day.

"Yeah, I heard. They visit Katniss everyday too." I say.

This peaks his interest, "Katniss sees them? Talks to them?"

I give him a reassuring half smile, "No, they stand on the other side of the glass and watch her as the doctors try to get through to her, and then they visit me before they leave. Finn told me that they've been to your quarters to visit you but you are never around. They say that you are always with Boggs doing drills with the other soldiers."

In response Peeta sighs heavily and runs his hands over his short military haircut. "They say she was hijacked." Peeta takes a seat in the chair next to my bed. Once he's closer I can see the see the telltale darkened circles under his eyes, he hasn't been sleeping. "Boggs got journals, can you believe it? They kept journals of how they tortured her. Things that worked, things that didn't." He sighs heavily and I put a hand on his shoulder and give it a gentle reassuring shake. When he looks at me his eyes seem like mine must have when my world came crumbling down around me, when I got to thirteen and I realized Madge and Posy hadn't made it, tortured and guilt ridden. "She stopped eating when they would bring her food. There's notes, she wouldn't eat without me. We used to do that as kids, that's how I brought her back after her mother and Primrose. I told her I wouldn't eat without her, and it got to a point where she would only eat with me and then gradually without, but this time, I wasn't there and it's what made them escalate how they were torturing her. I was here in Thirteen, safe. I should have been doing the same thing she did, but Coin had me convinced there was time. That I should work to be the best soldier. Coins said that she was too valuable to their own cause, and that they were going to keep using her to show that she was against the rebellion, and she looked so healthy in the Capital's first propo that I believed Coin. I thought I had time, and it turns out that she was fighting any way she could to not be a piece in their game. Then they showed her that last time and bombed us so I couldn't leave." Peeta shakes his head in disbelief. "Why couldn't it be me? If I stay in my room this question runs through my mind a million times. I'd go crazy if it weren't for Boggs keeping me busy. That's why I'm never in my room, I can't keep still."

Just then her screams ring out loud and clear again, Peeta clinches his teeth together and deep, guttural, tortured sound erupts from his throat as he clamps his hands over his ears as if he can block out her screams. "Hey man, calm down." I say and just when I squeeze Peeta's shoulder again he stands up.

"I can't take it anymore, I can't stand that she's like this because of me! We should have been reunited like Annie and Finnick, we should be happy that we made it through this thing together, again. Instead I've got this," Peeta gestures to the sounds of Katniss' screams. Through the little window on the door we see nurses and doctors running to the sounds. Peeta opens the door and quickly follows, I stand quickly ignoring any pain that this causes me and I follow Peeta only to find him on the other side of the observation window watching as Katniss fights like mad against the doctors and nurses. Even in her weakened state her insanity gives her an animalist strength that requires several nurses to hold her down so they can administer some kind of sedative to calm her down. Almost immediately her muscles begin to relax, her head tilts in our direction and the look in her eyes are so desperate, I look to Peeta and the same look is mirrored in his own eyes. "She's just a shell of the person she used to be. They broke her, she'll never be the same. They gave her back with nothing left to put back together again."

As Katniss calms words that she was incoherently screaming before become clearer, and we can hear that she is chanting "He's a mutt, he's a mutt…" endlessly.

Peeta lets out a rueful breath as if he's thinking of something amusing. "She's right, I am a mutt."

"You're not a mutt." I say with a roll of my eyes. "That's just something they told her while she was being tortured."

"No, I am a mutt but I wasn't created in the Capital. I was created in Thirteen." And with that Peeta walks away.

I watch for a minute longer but as I turn to walk back to my room there is a voice that comes from behind me that says, "He's not completely wrong you know." I find Haymitch sitting in a darkened corner of the room. "Yeah, I probably should have told you guys that I was here, but somehow I don't think that would have stopped the boy's ranting." Haymitch stands and walks until he is standing beside me. "She'll come back for him. It just looks bleak now because this is all just starting, they'll find a way to bring her back."

"How can you be so sure?" I ask.

Haymitch looks to the door way that Peeta just left through, "The boy got way too strong too quickly once he decided to become the Mockingjay to get Katniss out of the Capital. I think they have some of that artificial Capital magic here. I don't know how much, but I do know that if they want to bring down the Capital they'll need both of their Mockingjays to do it. Peeta's missing something that Katniss has. He's a smooth talker, and convincing as hell, but Katniss always looked like someone who fought and clawed her way through life. She was more like every other poor citizen of Panem and if a girl from District Twelve can stand up to the Capital win a few times then they started to believe that they could too. He's not as effective on his own and Coin and her people are starting to realize this. It would have been a lot easier if they had saved her rather than him."

"But it would have killed her to see Peeta like this too." I point out.

Haymitch nods his head, "Yes, it would have. And she would have handled it just as badly as Peeta is about to."

As it turns out Haymitch is right about Peeta. I don't see him for weeks other than catching a glimpse of him secretly watching Katniss from the hallway in one of the brief times he's back in Thirteen. He's constantly out in the Districts fighting, I spend another couple days in my recovery room but after that I'm back to being Soldier Hawthorne. I live with my brothers and mother who is adjusting to life in Thirteen, my mother barely talks anymore. Since I can't be out fighting like Peeta because of my injury I'm put with Beetee to come up with strategies to win this war. Turns out my input is really good because of my knowledge of snares and hunting and most of my ideas are put into action.

I check on Katniss every day, I don't know if Haymitch ever leaves because no matter what time of day I go to see her he is always there. He was right, she is improving more and more every day and with each milestone I hear Haymitch pick up a phone and say things like, "Make sure the boy knows that she was allowed to feed herself pudding today, Plutarch." But I notice he emits the parts where it didn't stay down and she vomited it all over the floor and that triggered another episode.

And so it goes on and on for days and turns into weeks yet again. Mostly my days are filled with strategy sessions with Beetee, but eventually we get to the day where I'm allowed to go in and see her, talk to her. Some days we talk about everything, some days we just sit in silence. I hold her hand; I'm everything for her that I can be given the situation, and more than once I hear Peeta's voice in my head that says she's a shell of who she used to be and how right he was when he said that. Still, there are days where she shows improvement.

"I've heard Annie and Finnick are getting married in a few days." She says to me one day.

A small smile forms on my lips, "Yeah, Finnick is pretty psyched."

A thoughtful look comes across her face. "I'd like to volunteer to take Annie to Twelve; I think I remember there are gowns at my home in District Twelve from the Victory Tour. Would you come with me?"

"Are you sure you want to go back to Twelve?" I ask worriedly.

Old Katniss would have rolled her eyes, made me think that she it is ridiculous to worry over her this much, but instead I'm met with large fearful grey eyes. "They'll be there, I can't do it alone. But I have to know if it was real or if it was something they put in my head."

"If what was real?" I ask.

Katniss clenches her hands into fists so tightly that it makes me wonder how her finger nails don't leave little cuts in her palm. I can see she's fighting the images from consuming her and she tries to regain control. "The memories, I'm starting to be able to tell them apart from things they created, made up. Memories that they implanted in my head are unclear and shiny. I can't focus on them, but Gale, they killed my family, Peeta's family the Mellarks. All of them, didn't they?"

I look at her sadly, "They died in the District Twelve explosions. They were among the missing, they didn't make it out, just like almost everyone else I couldn't save."

"No, that's not what happened to them. Before the bombings they were executed. Shot in the head, all of them. Even Tule and she was only a few weeks from delivering her baby." I don't want to believe her, but the way she is speaking is the most lucid and calm way I've seen her in my whole time visiting her. Her next words make me sick to my stomach. "They put them back in the house. In the Victor's Village. They knew the bakery would be destroyed in the bombings but they left the Village intact. When we go back there the houses will be fine, and their bodies will be set up in the house. The idea was that Peeta was supposed to go back and find them; Mr. and Mrs. Mellark are at the dining room table. Graham, Rye and Tule are in the family room around the television." She looks away from me, and her next words are heartbreaking. "This memory is not shiny like the rest. I think they really did it and took video, showed it to me. It's too real. I wish it was shiny and unclear but it's not."

"It's been months. I don't think anyone has been back to Twelve. There were no survivors; nothing is left to go back to." I tell her.

"I need to go back. I need to see if this memory that I have is real or not. If they are there in the house I need to take them out and give them a proper respectful burial. They were the first people to save me and they don't deserve what they got in the end." Katniss practically begs.

I look sadly at the mirror in the room, knowing that Haymitch is on the other side watching.

After that the orders are simple. Katniss is going to Twelve strictly to help Annie pick out a dress from Katniss' old Victory Tour collection. Finnick and Annie come with us to Twelve, we are instructed to simply land as close to the Victor's Village as possible and go straight to the house, let the girls choose their clothing, come back to Thirteen before it's known that a Mockingjay is out of the district. Once on the hovercraft on our way to Twelve a very anxious and unstable Katniss and Annie are seated together, and while Finnick and I are watching them from a very close distance I fill him in on what Katniss told me we are going to find in the house.

"Are you crazy? I can't let Annie see that, it would push her over the edge. I never would have brought her if this was the plan, why didn't you tell me that this is why we are actually going?" Finnick asks angrily.

"Coin and her people would have never allowed us to go there on our own if we told them what we were looking for. They would have sent their own team to investigate and Katniss would have never known for sure what happened to them. She needs this, as gruesome as it could be, she needs to know that she set things right with the Mellarks." I say.

"What if they did die in the bombings? What if Snow had them make the whole thing up and she saw this image while she was all jacked up on Tracker Jacker venom? What then?" Finnick asks.

"Then she knows for sure she can't trust any of her memories, that there is no hope for fixing her ever. She will never have a way to distinguish between what could be real and what isn't. I think she could control her episodes if she could just get a handle on what is real and what isn't. She needs this." I try to reason with him.

"Well Annie doesn't. I'm staying with Annie on the hovercraft until you let me know if I can take Annie inside without traumatizing her again." Finnick says angrily. Seeing that there will be no persuading him on the subject I simply nod my head in agreement.

It's not long after that we arrive in the hovercraft only steps from the entrance of the Village. A small army of soldiers from Thirteen protect us as Katniss and I approach the steps to the house. Katniss is dangerously close to having an episode, and to be honest, my own palms are sweaty and my heart is racing at the thought of what we might find inside. Katniss slowly opens the door and steps inside. Each step seems to take an eternity, but somehow at the same time we get to the family room too quickly, I don't want to have my friend see her family that way.

"Wait, Katniss don't. You don't need to do this." I say at the last second, but it's too late. I watch her face change from dread to confusion to fear. She turns her back to the family room and runs in the direction of the dining room. I follow her with a quick look in the family room to see an empty sofa.

I find Katniss in the dining room, her hands are clutching the back of one of the chairs at the empty table. "What is real?" She wails with eyes clenched shut; her knuckles are white with the effort of gripping the chair and riding out an episode where her days of torture flashback in her mind. "How will I ever know what is real! Will I ever know again? What did they do to me?" Katniss screams, but when she turns to walk away from the table she trips on her own two feet.

As I bend down to pick her up from the floor I glance at the large embroidered rug that the table and chairs sit atop of. There's a disruption in the pattern, the rug itself is a mixture of colours of red and browns and greens. But there is a large amount of red that doesn't follow the pattern. I reach down and touch the rug, the red it something that is hard and dry. "Katniss, there's blood here on the rug." I help Katniss from the floor and she hugs herself into my chest crying and trying to keep from falling apart.

I hold her close, but walk to the back of the house. When I get to the back door I open it and look outside. "Katniss look." I say. She lifts her head from my chest and together we walk out the door and walk to the middle of the yard where we find five grave markers made of sticks and mounds of dirt where someone must have buried the bodies. They were buried so long ago the sprouts of grass has already started to grow on the disrupted earth.

"It was real, wasn't it?" Katniss asks.

"Maybe Peeta was here. Maybe he found your family and took them out here and buried them. Who else would have done it?" I suggest aloud.

"Soldier Hawthorne? We don't have much time to be here. Hovercrafts from the Capital could be on their way." One of the soldiers from Thirteen says to me.

"Yes, of course. Could you please tell Finnick and Annie that it's safe to come inside." I ask the soldier. When he walks away I go with him to give Katniss time to say goodbye to her family but I continue to watch her from the doorway. Stylists lead Finnick and Annie upstairs to the room where Katniss told them they would find her gowns. I notice they are taking an awful lot of clothing back to Thirteen with them, even some clothing that look like Peeta's suits. I suppose everything is able to be salvaged and remade once it gets back to Thirteen.

One of the soldiers comes to me and says "Solider Hawthorne, we need to leave now. We've spotted another hovercraft on its way here. There's no way to tell if it's one of ours or from the Capital, but at this point we know where most of our hovercraft are and it doesn't make any sense for one to be anywhere near this District."

Quickly I gather Katniss and although we have to take an indirect route back so as not to accidentally cross paths with any enemy hovercraft within a few hours we are back at Thirteen. Katniss soundlessly walks directly back to her observation room in the hospital. I don't know if this trip benefited her at all, and I suppose it's too soon to tell. I sit with Haymitch for a while and tell him what we found and we discuss weather this trip did anything to help her.

Knowing she's safe, I head back to my own living quarters, and when I arrive I find my mother and brothers in the middle of the room with a group of soldiers from Thirteen. "What's going on?" I ask, with the way things are going I suppose it's a natural reaction to suspect the worst.

"Strict orders from Boggs himself, you're to meet his hovercraft when it lands, which will be shortly." The soldier states professionally and without any hint at what Boggs could possibly need me for.

"Ok," I look to my mother, "I'll be back as soon as I can mom."

"Actually the orders were for the whole Hawthorne family to meet him at the landing site." The soldier clarifies; the look I give him must intimidate him because he clears his throat before nervously saying, "I think the order is actually coming from Soldier Mellark. I think its good news, word is they were in the hovercraft that was headed for Twelve, they were there after your hovercraft left the area."

We head above ground together and just as the door to the hovercraft hangar opens we see the hovercraft opening its doors as the engines power down. Peeta is first to get off the hovercraft and on his face is the widest smile that reminds me of the boy he used to be before the games. The person who follows him off the hovercraft is a woman with hair that is hanging limply, but is the colour of sunshine where it's not smeared with dirt. A child runs past her, practically knocking her over, "Momma!" The little girl screams.

"Posy!" My mother cries out and runs toward my little sister. I watch as my mother gets down on her knees just as Posy crashes her little body into mom. My brothers and I come up and wrap our arms around mom and Posy creating one giant hug. There are tears in my eyes and I don't care who sees. This is the happiest moment of my life, my sister somehow survived.

I look up from my family to look at the girl beside Peeta, "Madge!" I say and in two long strides I take Madge into my arms and vow never to let her leave them again.

Katniss

The sound of a plate being placed down on my bedside table wakes me from my nightmare. I open my eyes, but instead of the fluorescent lighting that usually has me blinking in blindness from the brightness for minutes the room is dim, incredibly dim. I turn over to find a single white stick candle burning for light. One the plate is a single cheese bun I reach out and touch it, it feels warm and fresh, it makes the room smell familiar. The next words are so eerily familiar it makes my skin crawl. "Katniss, I know you don't know us very well, but I promise, we will keep you safe." I hear a familiar sound, it's soft and soothing. "I saw everything yesterday, I had nightmares from it last night, and I know that you probably see the nightmares when you aren't even sleeping. I bet you can see them right now, it's not something any of us will ever forget." I lay completely still in the darkness for a long time afraid to move. After a few minutes the voice speaks again. "I'm not very good yet, but I will be one day. I'll keep practicing until I get it perfect for you Katniss."

"Is this real?" I dare to whisper.

"No." The voice responds, "But, it was once."

"Please eat Katniss. I'm not going to eat until you do, don't waste it." I say in response. "This is what was said before wasn't it? That's what gets said next."

A light chuckle rings through the room, but it doesn't quite sound how it should, it's older. "Yeah, that's what was said next." I hand appears in the small area where there is light and drops a piece of paper. I reach a hand out and turn it over, the most familiar image of Prim and me looking through the bakery window at the cake displays. The hand drops a glass of water on the table next, "I'm not going to eat until you do, don't waste it."

I don't know what to do; this is all so familiar, "Is this a memory? It's not shiny." I can feel the anxiety creeping up on me and I work on the breathing exercises that Dr. Aurelius suggested I do when I feel the anxiety about to overtake me.

"It's both Katniss, it's a memory of a life we had a long time ago and a real promise now. I ran out of hope for a while Katniss but today I saw something that reminded me to never give up. That even when things are hopeless those you love the most can always come back. I'll never give up on you again Katniss. This is real Katniss, and I'm not giving up on you, will you come back to me?"

Somehow the voice is calming and comforting and takes me back to a time where I have felt this way before. Out of control, no idea who I was or what I was going to do or how I was going to survive, but this voice talked me back to reality. He brought be back from the darkness once before. I know that the answer is, "Always."

I shaky relieved sigh is whispered into the air and I reach my hand out into the darkness as I remember I did once before and find his hand and take it in mine and allow myself to embrace this feeling of hope.