❝𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐎𝐒❞ | k. everdeen

chapter 16: i spy.

One more week. One more week was all Peeta, Nola, Johanna and Annie had to endure to get out of there. A week, still, was not a comforting time, because they didn't know it, and because everything that happened in that seven-day period was enough to make their lives change forever.

—Peeta —she had managed to articulate on the first day. Her throat hurt when she spoke and more when she swallowed, she felt like she could barely breathe through her nose and so she heard puffs of air coming from her, because she was breathing with her mouth open.

She didn't know where she was, so she didn't even know why she was calling the boy. She figured she had been taken to the cells down there, because the dim light illuminating the room was too artificial to be that of the room she had been provided. Still, she thought she might be mistaken, because her vision was blurred and she felt a deep pain in her temples that made her see black dots every time she fixed her pupils on something. She checked with some satisfaction that she could move, which meant she wasn't tied to anything like an animal, but she soon realized the enormous effort she would have to make if she wanted to get out of bed.

Everything hurt. Her head, her chest, her stomach, her legs. But still, she kept thinking about Peeta, who was probably having a worse time than she was. He'd gotten the worst of it, after all, after she'd revealed to the rebels and possibly the rest of the Districts that the 13th would be attacked in the morning. Was today the day? Nola didn't know. Nola didn't know how long she had been there, sleeping or unconscious. She didn't know if what she had said was true, though it seemed, from Snow's reaction, to be as real as her pain, and she didn't know if her warning would have been enough to save all those, as that avox had said.

Would she still be alive? Well, why wouldn't she be? It's not like she could talk to incriminate herself, much less was Nola going to be the one to blame her with the pain she felt every time she spoke.

Would Peeta still be alive? She hoped so. When one of Snow's agents had grabbed her from behind, Snow had ordered the recording to stop, and one of the assistants had kicked the camera until it rolled across the floor, Peeta jumped out of his seat in defense of Nola, completely out of his mind. Nola had never seen him so angry, not even in the arena trying to protect Katniss, but she thought he would have spent too much time building up all the anger and all those feelings inside him, and that her words had been the trigger.

Nola had witnessed the beating he had taken. Peeta had knocked down one of the agents taking Nola, but another one had taken his place again, and then three others had come in to give the boy his comeuppance. Peeta had managed to fight back at first, but the blows kept coming, and something inside him told him that there was no point in fighting anymore, that there would continue to be three, maybe then more, against him, and that it had been stupid to try to save Nola that way, because now they would need much more help than he had tried to provide.

The clothes that were always left for her in the room were gone. She was wearing a bloody white tank top and gray oversized pants. Her hair was plastered to the back of her neck, cold sweats traveling down her neck, and she wondered if what she felt was cold or hot. She tried to brace herself with a metal bar on one side of the bed, but the pain in her ribs was too intense to get up, so she dropped to the floor, her back pressed against a cold wall, and hissed in pain. She didn't know what had been done to her, but it didn't look good.

—Nola?

Peeta.

—Peeta? —Nola mumbled against the wall.

A grunt of compliance came through the wall she was leaning against. Nola put her hand on top of it, and for the first time saw that her knuckles were bloody and full of unhealed wounds. She guessed that she herself would not have fallen without a good fight.