The Reaper | F. Odair

Twenty

Warning for this chapter: Torture, detailed blood / injuries, gaslighting and mentions of SA

    Weeks turned into months. Aaron found herself almost every night sobbing from the pain they had put her through, and if she wasn't being put through excruciating pain she was in the medical room being injected with all sorts of things so her cuts and bruises never became infected or ripped open. She couldn't use her left hand -- the nerves were damaged and repairable, but it's not exactly easy to teach yourself how to reuse a limb on your own. Why even bother fixing it if they'd probably kill her, right?
She no longer had a concept of time. Every few dozens of houses of cards Peeta built, someone would come in and check on them or give them food -- every dozen hundred, one of them would be taken out of the room and returned later with new cuts and bruises, sometimes soaked and knocked out, others thrown back in sobbing.

The three learned to pass the eerie silence by playing with mucky cards, pieces of twine and little stones that left dust on the ground -- playing games such as tic-tac-toe and checkers (messily) on the floor.

One of the recent nights she and Peeta sat infront of one another, the peacekeepers taking turns in having who would choose which method to be beaten and tortured with next. This was not the first time -- each time they finished with that, one or the other was always sent to the medical wing.

But, then again, some nights Aaron wasn't touched at all.

Agnes would come in, or she'd be taken to Agnes, forced to do all sorts of things the girl didn't want to do for that sadist. In return, Aaron didn't get taken away, she didn't even have a finger placed on her by any of the peacekeepers -- even getting nicer treatment for a short amount of time. Agnes's words each time though confused her even further. Besides every time she woke up, more and more of her memories were either gone or different, she began to grow a hatred for her best friend, Johanna. Agnes was only trying to help her, her friends were all hurting her so that's why she was here. It didn't make sense.

The games began to come back to her more lively -- she'd wake up in the room or in front of peacekeepers coming out of a daze and each time she did they always injected her with some odd vile liquid. Her nightmares felt too real, her nightmares being so long that she'd wake up thinking she somehow travelled in time.

Aaron never wanted to relive the 70th games.

Every little detail was stronger than what she remembered -- how she butchered Quinn, how Annie bled out in her arms, how Blaze, Silver, Gold and Beatrix all called her name and mocked her. The pain of stitching herself up after almost dying, it was as if her levels of pain were somehow tripled. The physical pain wasn't as bad as the emotional though as she regrets becoming attached to her tributes, the ones she mentored and became attached to just to watch them die. It was as if she was reliving her entire life, but she didn't have the chance to change her mistakes, she could only scream and cry for her body to do something just for it to do the exact opposite.

And now, again, she sat there sobbing. Her hands were bound to a chair in a room she never got the chance to see -- eyes blindfolded from it all. The blindfold was soaked, but the fabric was still too thick to allow her to even make out the silhouettes in front of her. Her breaths were no longer erratic and fast; stressed. They were slow and long, her body slowly going limp. She was a bloody mess, her nose dripping, her lip split wide open. Some of the bruises on her body were so dark and swelled just moving the joint hurt.
The peacekeeper who was assigned to 'have' her was someone Aaron knew unfortunately. Aaron quickly learned the woman's name, Terra Fotia. District 2 trained peacekeepers, that was rather known and mostly common knowledge, it's also known many from 2 become peacekeepers themselves due to the pride they hold. But, like any human with emotions, Terra despised Aaron for killing her brother, her brother's death made her family an embarrassment. A failure. They didn't fulfill their training and win the games and bring honour to both their family and district.