GONE (The Hunger Games)

All The Pain

I wake up not too long after I fainted. Three minutes? Five minutes? My neck is bleeding quite badly and my legs feel terrible as they're dragged against hard concrete while I'm being pulled somewhere by some peacekeepers. I'm aching all over and everything just hurts so much. It's only a few seconds before the pain becomes too overwhelming and takes over me again.

***

Pain like a grenade set off in my skull.

Pain like acid in my heart, scorching and burning.

Pain like lava filling my chest, taking my breath.

The scratchy memory of a bullet graze on my neck merely just an itch now- a speck of dust against a tornado of just complete pain.

Every inch of my body, inside and out being stabbed with thorns.

Rose thorns.

White rose thorns.

Huge zaps of electricity run through my veins at five second intervals. My soul is trapped in a suffocating cage inside a body which is slowly disintegrating. This body is so unfamiliar, it can't be mine, but it is.

***

My body is now sore from the hours of electric shocks and pain drug injections. It lays bonelessly, my arms and legs shivering violently. My eyes stay shut, not a single ounce of strength left in me. A few minutes later, yet again I feel the prick of a syringe pierce through my sore neck.

One single memory only. Just one. It appears in my mind against my closed eye lids and it's of Katniss. Always her.

She stands so tall, so much older compared to the girl she was a year before. It's not that she's grown up from a silly school girl to what she is now- she was always mature, always at the receiving end of all the bitterness life had to offer- it's just that now, she's grown and matured from experience. Witnessing death, escaping death, and inflicting death. It's about a fraction more worse than the district life would ever be. Her face wears a hard expression, her eyes cool and calculating. She looks quite breathtaking really, in her supposed wedding gown. I don't exactly know how to describe it, it's just so white and extravagant, yet in a simple way. I feel as if she herself takes the crowd's attention, and not her clothes, which is saying something with the Capitol audience.

As she begins to spin, and her dress starts to catch fire, everyone is in awe. The dress soon turns into a darker shade of blue, until it's almost black. She spreads her arms open wide, and a huge wave of gasps rushes through the audience. Katniss' first spark of defiance from the first games put together with the one thing the Capitol never had control over. This is the moment that all hell breaks loose. This is the moment when the rebellion begins. This is the moment when hope to finally fight against the Capitol is possible. This is the moment when the rebellion gets a face, a leader, a Mockingjay: Katniss.

And then this happens.

A huge Mockingjay symbol appears in my vision. I've seen this type of the Mockingjay symbol before. It's coated in dripping blood.

A last little shred of insanity left in me- before I feel it, too, get lost forever- tells me that this is finally the end. There will be no more of Peeta Mellark, of the Boy With the Bread.