Pure Torture: a Hunger Games Fanfiction

Chapter 40

Peeta

"You've got a warm heart, you've got a beautiful brain, but it's disintegrated from all the medicine." -Daughter

When Katniss disconnects, I give the headset back to Boggs.
"Everything alright, Peeta?" He asks when I give it back.
"Not necessarily." I answer.
"What do you mean?" He asks.
"Can you give me a minute, please? I need to find Gale and Finnick." I say.
Boggs nods, directing me to where Gale and Finnick sit.

Gale and Finnick look up from their conversation with some other Rebel soldiers they're sitting with. I must be interrupting, but somehow I don't really care. Katniss is more important.
"Gale, Finnick... Can I have a word with you?" I ask. They give me questioning looks before getting up. I lead them over to where Boggs stands.
When we're all together, I take a deep breath.
"Alright. There's something you all should know. I just talked with Katniss and..." I trail off.
"What is it?" Boggs asks.
"What's going on here...?" Finnick asks.
It's only Gale that remains silent. It's as if he's too worried about her to speak.
"The doctors had a Brain Scan done on her to see why she was having all of these problems. It turns out there's an area in her brain that processes fear that's damaged from PTSD and the torture and the Hijacking. It's so damaged that even the smallest things that can somehow relate back to her torture or the Games or anything like that can possibly trigger that part of her brain, sending her into a flashback or relapse or a zone-out. It's extremely oversensitive." I explain.

The air is charged. I wait for someone to say something. But they're all silent.
I speak first, breaking the thick ice that's covered our conversation.
"It could kill her..." I say. I almost choke on the words as they come out.
"It could kill her?" Gale asks.

"Yeah," I say, "it could kill her. If she has a relapse and manages to kill herself. Or if there's one thats extremely severe..."
"Oh my God," Finnick says.
"And she's got these little pockets of venom around her brain from the hijacking, too. The doctors aren't as worried about those, but if something happens... That could kill her, too. They might go away if we give it time, but they aren't sure." I add on.

I look around, tears welling in my blue eyes, and see that Gale's eyes look the same, too. Finnick's are red with tears and Boggs stares at the ground.
"So what are they going to do?" Boggs asks.
"They're giving her medicine. But they aren't sure if it will work. And only if she agrees to take it." I say.

"And is she going to agree to take it?" Finnick asks.
"I don't know. When I talked to her, she didn't seem to convinced to take it." I say.

I can feel the sadness around us in the air. It's like a thick, wet cloth draped over our mouths, suffocating us. We end the conversation there and return back to where we were. We act as if nothing is wrong, as we aren't telling people until we get the go-ahead.

I lie in my standard sleeping bag that came with the standard soldier packs. Some people lay outside in their own, near the heater to stay warm. Others sleep in their tents. I find staring up at the stars calming. It's the same sky Katniss is under, even though she's deep in 13. I connect the stars with my mind, creating pictures and thinking about how life used to be. I remember my family, my father and brothers mostly, and I remember my friends and Katniss. When my remembering Katniss turns to a sickening worry, I try to think about something else. I think about how it must be up in space. So quiet and seemingly empty. Maybe I'd like to go there. I think about the stars themselves now, how they manage to stay up in the sky and not crash down onto us. I think about how they burn, no matter what happens here. If I think about it the right way, the stars seem stronger than any human I know.

I close my eyes, trying to think myself back to Katniss. I try to conjure up the image of me lying next to her, sleeping in peace. Maybe if I think hard enough of it, I'll open my eyes to find myself right there with her.