| The Jabberbird | THG |

Chapter 11

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why don't you dance like, you're sick in your mind/ why don't you set your wings on fire

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Katniss  

Something's different.

The guards didn't come to hurt me yesterday, didn't come to show me more torture, they didn't come the day before, or the day before that. They dragged me in here after the interview and just left. But what they don't understand. Can never  understand. Is how little that would affect me now. Now that i know, now that i can see. I see now that Snow has played me like another piece in his games, as i always was to him.

 But seeing Peeta, and my little sister, calling out to me, is now the sun in my underground prison. Knowing they are alive, and are together, is all the freedom i need. Because if Peeta is safe, Gale might be too, and both of them will keep my family safe. And as much as Gale has against Peeta, i don't think he'd let him die, nor vice-versa. That doesn't mean i'm not worried, Gale doesn't take kindly to being hidden away, which is what i assume is happening, that they are all being hidden away somewhere. But for now nothing can touch me, they can do anything to me. They're safe. Good and safe. Don't have to worry about them now.

Good and safe.

As I'm rocking back on forth on the floor, thinking and wondering and worrying, the door opens. I probably should be used to it by now, it would've opened at least a hundred times since I came here, but I still flinch, knowing the worst is coming.

But it's not one of the guards, with their black eyes and their hard fists. It's a short woman, with thin purple hair, grey at the roots, pulled tightly back from her head, the streaks the comb left still visible through the hairspray, but I don't even bat an eyelid at this, for the capitol this is tame. The thing that puts ice in my veins is her crisp clean lab coat, and the one-way-glass that slides open behind her, where the window should be, the window through which I saw Darius and the red headed avox die.

I don't even try to get away, I know I can't and the pain would be unbearable, but I lean forward so my matted greasy hair falls over my face, one more shield from her cold and calculating stare, the stare of a scientist, not a killer. One interested in my suffering, and how I go about it. Not one to gloat over the pain they're inflicting, but one to inflict it all the same.

"Do you want to get in the chair, or do you want me to call the guards? Don't worry, we won't hurt you, this is just...an experiment" She cocks her head and gives me a sideways stare, with a smile so tight her lips are a deathly white. As she places a finger to her chin in mock thought i notice her nails are long and curved, like talons, and painted a glittery purple. I shudder. 

She doesn't seem to be carrying any weapons, but that doesn't mean I trust her. I know she's lying, but I also know not getting in the chair may possibly do me more damage that getting in it, if they wanted to beat me, they would have sent the guards. But I am still me, I am still a fighter, and the new beacon that is Peeta and Prim is shining bright and warm inside me.

"Why? What are you going to do to me?" i say, mocking her tone. I stare straight back at her unblinking eyes, turn my head and mimic her expression, the smile feels foreign to my lips but the satisfaction it gives me is all I need.

She turns a page on her clipboard and writes something down in a pen she retrieves from her side pocket, it's body is that of a short, bright peacock's feather, like the quills they show in my history books at school. A cruel comical mockery of something perfectly practical. The smile doesn't leave her lips.

"It's a simple session, we've decided your mind could do with a little helping don't you think? Just to help you to...see in the right way" she chirps in a girly voice.

"Look, I don't want to call the guards, hurting you will ruin the order of the experiment. But I have something that will ease you into it, I promise you we won't hurt our girl on fire" She digs her skeletal talons into her lap pocket, and when she takes them out she has something small pinned between them. I can't quite make it out until she turns it and it catches the light. A sea pearl.

Anyone behind that glass who is unfamiliar with the events of the 75th hunger games may see this as bribery, but I doubt they are, and neither am I. This is the pearl that Peeta gave me, the one he pulled from some seafood as a gift to me in the arena. I don't know how I recognize it, but I know that's the one. They must have pulled it from the parachute when the hovercraft fished out my body. I remember taking it, thinking that I would accept this gift from him, as I could not give him the one he was, is, fighting for. My survival. Because I wanted his, wanted him to live. I promised myself I would save him. And now he's safe. And it's not because of me. 

Before I can check them there are tears running down my cheeks. I think I have cried more in the time I have been here that I have in my entire life. I stand and try to make a swipe for the pearl, but I stumble and the woman merely steps back, I can hear the laughter in her voice as she says:

"Later. Chair. Now."

I sit, or rather, fall into the metal chair and watch her make another note on her plastic clipboard. She steps towards me and secures the straps around my legs and arms, which are already numb from the freezing metal that I'm sitting on.

"Well, that was easier than I thought, they told me you still had some fight in you, I have to say I'm a little disappointed" She says, crinkling her nose patronizingly as she pulls pale pink plastic gloves over her hands. I expect to see them rip at her nails but they merely stretch. I can't think of anything to say to her statement, I know it's true, but I want that pearl and nothing I want to say will help me do that.

"Huh. Well, let's get started." I see her signalling something to someone behind the glass, and the remaining walls slide open, revealing neither mirrored glass or see through glass, but the arena.

I scream out loud, forgetting where I am, and struggle with the restraints but they don't give. I look over to the woman but she is just watching me. I look around me, and suddenly someone else is on the screens, all around me, Peeta. My body goes still, and I stare at him. he's saying something about finding food or hunting but all I can see is him. I try to memorize his face, his eyes, his mouth, it was only yesterday that i saw him, from far away through a flickering television screen. But my eyes still feast on his features like we've never touched.

Then I feel a sharp ache in the side of my neck.

The pain is overwhelming, It's like when you're freezing and someone gives you a hot drink. You can feel it coursing through you. Only it's so much worse. I still see Peeta's face, but everything's different. His eyes slowly turn black, like the guards' and I can see him coming towards me on the screen. Coming to hurt me, coming to torture me, like I suddenly know he did to so many others, how could I have forgotten? I thrash around, screaming my head off, but he just gets closer and closer. I see fur start to spread down his neck, and when he bares his teeth, they're fangs. I know there's something wrong with what I am seeing but the terror and the agony keeps all other thoughts driven from my mind. I just need to run, to get away, to kill the horrible creature coming towards me, it's trying to kill me, I can feel it's hot breath on my face. A mutt. A filthy mutt. Here to murder me.

A/N - If you're reading this you've gotten pretty far, so thank you. Just like to say it means a lots you're even reading this, even if you think it's crap. Which, if you do, by the way, message me and tell me what i can do to fix it. I had to think outside of the box a bit for this chapter because the descriptions about the hijacking in the book are kind-of vague. So if it's not how you imagined it, that's fine. Hope you enjoy it!

note on chronology- i alternated peeta and katniss pov's but keep in mind the last peeta one happened before the interview, when he sees the interview LIVE will be in the next chapter, which is going on as katniss is being hijacked. sorry about the confusion 

Lyric- Cocoa Hooves, Glass animals