ATTENTION!

I will be continuing to update on this site! If and when this story gets removed (thanks a lot ffn) then you can find my stories on my tumblr - There are also some pics that I created that I think you'll all enjoy ;)

Also… if you want to PM me your email addresses I can send out a mass email when I update and include the tumblr link to it (that way you don't have to constantly check to see if it's updated).

I will be starting this now as to not have to scramble once the story gets removed!

Thanks again for all your lovin and reviews! Best readers ever! And thanks a million to my beta Ameiko

Previously:

My vision came into focus and I realized that I wasn't in the sewers, but back in my room at Victor's Village. The strong arms around me belonged to Peeta and were rocking me back and forth, soothing me, instead of holding me back. I let out a sob and clutched him closer to me.

"You're alive."
He let out a little chuckle, still rocking me.

"Yup. It was just a nightmare Katniss, everything is okay."

"How did you know?"

"I heard you screaming. I hope it's okay that I'm here."

I nodded my head, my breathing returning to normal. Laying down on the bed, I grabbed his hand when he went to leave.

"Stay."

He nodded and slipped into bed behind me, his strong arms encasing me in their warmth as we both drifted off to sleep, free from our nightmares.

Chapter 7

Since the night of the storm, Peeta and I had reached an unspoken agreement that we both slept significantly better in the presence of one another. Every night after that found us together either in his bed or mine. Our friendship seemed to grow leaps and bounds, blooming to life like the plants outside as spring slowly turned to summer.

We had fallen into a loose routine, each of us rising before the sun as he went to work and I would either find myself in the woods or in the company of Haymitch before venturing into town to continue construction. We would eat together, sometimes in the company of our mentor, before venturing upstairs to sleep.

Although his presence at night didn't quell my night terrors altogether, they did drop significantly since our sleeping arrangements changed. When I would awake bathed in sweat and clawing at the sheets, my throat still raw from screaming, he would be there to find comfort in. His strong arms wrapped tightly around me, shielding me from the darkness that the nightmares brought.

This was also the case for his flashbacks. His condition was significantly worse at night, the light of day unable to shine reality across the dark recesses of his inner mind. Some nights it would take minutes for him to truly grasp the reality of the situation that he was in, as he would wake up thrashing and yelling nonsense, begging invisible enemies to end his life. It would normally require every light in the room being turned on and talking to him in smooth calming voices until the demons that plagued his mind retreated back to the remote places from which they originated.

Neither one of us were remotely close to being what people would call "normal", but every day we were together showed progress as the night terrors and flashbacks grew further and further apart. The comfort and solace that we brought each other made them easier, neither one of us having to face the innermost workings of our very damaged minds alone.

We found comfort in the familiar mundane tasks that awaited us day and night, both of us trying to steer clear of any sudden unforeseen events that might push our progress back. This was time to work on ourselves, to become re-accustomed with the familiarity of District 12 and our place in it.

However, our familiarity, our routine, our disregard to anything out of our comfort zone, ended up being our ultimate downfall. A simple letter in the mail blowing any sense of security we had created in our own minds out of the water.

A letter, a simple piece of parchment, had been the catalyst for both of us. The tiny spark that ignited an inferno across the land, burning everything up and not stopping until nothing had been spared from its destruction

It's appearance was simple, an off white envelope which contained a piece of light green paper which smelt of salt and sand. It also contained a picture, a picture of someone who I knew to be long dead. Another face I killed, staring back at me from the glossy confines of the photo paper. This version of him I had never actually seen, however it was easy enough to see that this was him, just a very much younger version of him.

Finnick Odair's sea-green eyes haunted me from the face of a child; his child. His auburn hair fell across a plump soft forehead as the child who possessed his features played with a knotted rope, smiling toothily into the camera. He smiled as if he hadn't a care in the world, as if he was ignorant of the fact that he was missing a parent, a father, and that it was all because of me.

I had originally opened the envelope not expecting much. We occasionally got letters from Delly or Johanna, which came in unmarked envelopes. The rest of our mail was either order logs for the bakery or letters from the Capitol inviting us to extravagant events in our honor, none of which we ever attended.

So a letter from Annie inviting us to the 3rd Birthday party for her and Finnick's son, Finn Jr. as well as a picture of him had me flying up the stairs and into my room so fast that I'm almost positive my feet never actually made contact with a step. I slammed the door to the room, causing the frame to shake and a picture to come flying off the wall and shatter on the hard floor. I clutched my head, the picture of Finnick's son burned forever in the depths of my retinas. I clutched harder, willing the spitting image of the man I killed to leave my brain, but to no avail.

It started out slowly, just an image of Finnick here, a thing he said there, slowly flicking through the time that I knew him. The crunch of a sugar cube in his mouth as he taunted me at the chariots, the despair in his eyes while he silently grieved for Mags on the beach, the way his eyes would light up whenever half crazy Annie Cresta came into the room, the way he looked on his wedding day, and finally those sea-green eyes staring up at me from the sewers as the lizard mutts clawed at his flesh, biting and ripping flesh from bone. The sea-green eyes that looked up at me as a sharp claw separated neck from shoulders, and the acceptance in his gaze at his imminent death right before I dropped the Holo.

I clutched my head harder, pulling my hair in attempt to stop the barrage on my mind, but it did not help. Was this what having a flashback was like? It played on a loop, over and over, and every time no matter what I couldn't change the outcome. Finnick always ended up dead, lifeless and blown to smithereens by the explosive.

"Ahhhhhh!"

I let out a yell as my head surely split in two. Someone had finally found me and decided to put an axe in the back of my skull. I fell to the ground desperately reaching around my head for the intruding weapon that I was sure to find lodged deep inside my cranium but came up empty. Yet the pain still kept coming, increasing every time the loop started.

I tried opening my eyes, only to squeeze them back shut, the process of keeping them open being to painful to bear.

"Please. Oh, God, please. Make it stop."

I whimpered as I clutched my head, rocking back and forth on the floor like a child having a fit. The pain was nearly unbearable, as if Clove had finally got to me and was slowly inserting her knife into my brain, but the knife was dull and didn't give a clean quick death.

What was happening to me? Was I dying? Had my body finally taken the full brunt of what it could handle and was giving up on itself?

This was how Peeta had found me just minutes later. I had been screaming and cursing, clutching my head trying everything I could to make the pain go away. I hadn't heard him come up the stairs, my mind too focused on trying to block out the visions and the pain, however when I heard a series of expletives fly from his mouth and felt his strong arms wrap around me I let out a whimper.

"Katniss! What happened? Oh God, Katniss, are you all right?"

"Peeta, please," my voice was pathetic and far away. "Please, make it stop."

The pain pounded harder in my skull as a black tint started to overcome the images of Finnick that still plagued my mind, slowly blurring them out as the pain increased. Peeta's voice was muted, as if he were talking underwater and a mile away, and I could faintly make out my name coming from his lips before the images faded to black and I slipped away into what surely was going to be the most painful death.

When I awoke it was in a room completely unfamiliar to me, yet the layout was strikingly correspondent with the bedrooms inside of both Peeta and my houses. My surroundings smelt of musk and dust with a hint of lemon that burned my nostrils. I opened my eyes and was relieved to find that the crippling pain was gone, probably leaving with my demise.

As I took in my surroundings I realized that I wasn't dead, I was in another house in Victor's Village. A movement to my right caught my eye and I was equally startled and relieved to see Haymitch asleep in an uncomfortable looking chair at the end of the bed. I called his name to wake him up, only to have a pathetic squeak escape my mouth instead, my voice refusing to cooperate.

However, my insignificant noise seemed to be enough as he jumped out of his chair, eyes wide and crazed as he slashed the air with his fist. He quickly realized where he was and his eyes widened in surprise as the settled on me before he settled back into his chair and eyed my form.

"Good to see you up, sweetheart. You gave us all quite the scare."

I wanted to ask what happened but my voice failed me again, a pain radiating from the back of my throat as my vocal chords refused to cooperate.

"Don't hurt yourself. You screamed yourself out of a voice. Won't be getting that back for a couple of days according to the good doctor. I'm assuming you want to know what happened don't you?"

I nodded my head in compliance.

"Well, to make a long story short you had a panic attack. Guess after all the crazy shit that went down you finally snapped. Congratulations sweetheart, you're certifiably insane."

I had never wished for vocal cords more in my life. Instead, I settled on sending him the most hate filled glare I could muster. I thought back to those moments before blacking out, to Peeta's arm around me, and his panic at seeing me in that state. As if he knew where my train of thought was heading Haymitch spoke out before I could ask about him.

"I'm gonna go get the doctor. He can explain everything to you."

He flew out the door before I could physically protest, leaving me with unanswered questions.

Not a minute later a man with salt and peppered hair arrived in the room, he was studying a clipboard he had in front of him before he looked up and met my eyes. His gaze was warm and friendly, not at all cold and calculating like the doctors I was used to dealing with, and he offered his hand in greetings as he reached the side of the bed.

He introduced himself before instructing me that attempting to talk would do nothing but increase the stress on my vocal chords and leave me out of commission longer. He gave me a pad of paper and a pen to write down questions and answers. After covering the basics of what I was doing, what was going on, and why he thought that the picture of Finnick's son triggered it he explained to me what happened.

"To be completely honest, Katniss, I am surprised that this hasn't happened before on a level of this intensity. Your body has been through more than anyone should have to endure and it has its own ways of dealing with certain situations. In your case, Finnick was probably just the straw that broke the camel's back. All your symptoms point to a severe panic attack, even the hallucinations you were experiencing can be brought on by them, as well as the pain your body was feeling. Finally, your body couldn't handle the stress of the attack and shut itself down."

He proceeded to tell me that panic attacks were treatable similarly to the way Peeta's flashbacks were. Recognizing when one was coming on was the first step, followed by not panicking over the fact that you were starting to have a panic attack… which I'm assuming is easier said than done. He also told me that there were medications available for fast action relief and prescribed me a bottle to be used with utmost caution. Finally after covering all of his bases he asked me if I had any questions.

Where's Peeta? And why am I in Haymitch's room?

My pen and notebook did the talking for me.

The slight smile fell from his face.

"Well, Katniss, when Peeta found you on the ground like that it triggered certain synapses in his brain. These synapses had yet to be tripped during his flashbacks, and we have just recently found out that they have a much more severe reaction sequence than the ones triggered during his previous episodes."

He must have read the dumbfounded look on my face and sighed before running his hand through his graying hair.

"The flashback that was provoked opened up a deep dark part of Peeta's brain, a part that had yet to be affected, but can be catastrophic now that is has been reached. When I arrived at the scene Haymitch was holding Peeta back from killing you. He was not himself, Katniss. When Haymitch locked him out of the room he snapped, he destroyed the house, broke windows, furniture, mirrors, and then he beat himself silly trying to break down the door to get to you. Finally, we had to resort to sedating him."

I shook my head as my eyes burned with tears.

"When he came to, he didn't remember anything that happened. The last thing he remembered was trying to get you to wake up and then it all went black. His mind is not as stable now as we were hoping. He saw what he did to your house and immediately left back to his and I haven't seen him since. You are being kept here for your own safety."

Tears silently streamed down my face as I shook my head in denial. This couldn't be happening. We were both doing so well. We had each other, we had our routines, we had our jobs and our District 12 family and dare I say we had our happiness? I refused to believe that within a short day, a miniscule 24 hours, that had been taken away from us. We had lost everything. I had gone back to being the insane Mockingjay, and Peeta the Capitol Mutt killer.

One tiny step forward, a thousand giant steps back.

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