Die for You | Catching Fire

chapter forty

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chapter forty
ECHOES

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tw:
ptsd, sadness — mockingjay is heavy :(
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Her body already senses she's not safe before her mind can recall those last few moments of the sky falling in the Arena. Sage inhales the acrid stench of antiseptics, and machines hum around her. It's not difficult to know that she's in a hospital. Something that should evoke relief — not terror.

If only she weren't in a Capitol hospital.

The memories of those final moments in the Arena come in fighting flashes through the drugs. Augustus barreling toward her like a rabid dog. The sharp pain deep in her stomach as his dagger protruded from her abdomen. Tolly screaming for her after the cannon while she begged Peeta to go find Katniss. The lightning striking that tree with a deafening roar. Then the sky falling as the blood-soaked ground beneath her shook.

There was a hand. A metal hand of Fate plucking the bodies from the lightning tree one by one. She thinks she counted four. One distinctly female, the other three male. Tolly. Was Tolly one of them? She thought she heard gunfire beneath Peeta's attempts at reassurances as she continued to bleed out. Then there were the Peacekeepers yanking him off her. "You guys are gonna help her, right?!" She was strapped to a gurney. The Capitol doctor had purple skin like Philo. Blood on her wedding ring.

There's no blood on her wedding ring now as she stares down at it. Her heart aches, the ghostly sensation of Ptolemus slipping it onto her finger haunting her. She can hear him screaming for her again. That metal claw. Was it Plutarch? Did he rescue him like he promised? Did he at least do that?

She whimpers. "Tolly."

It isn't long before her doctors and nurses find that she's awake. They murmur and whisper to one another, shooting her icy looks every chance they get behind their masks. Sage wants to ask them questions, but she knows they won't answer her.

Instead, her heart beats in her throat as they complete their final examinations on her, clearing her as healthy. When they lift up her gown to inspect her wound with their cold fingers, it seems The Capitol doctors have worked tirelessly to stitch up the mangled flesh and tissue, even prescribing what those in the Districts would describe as magic to heal her body at a stunning rate. Just as they did when she won her Games. There's only one reason why they wouldn't let her die, or why they would rush the body's healing process.

It's because they know what she did.

Their candy-colored fingers lack a gentle touch as they mangle her tubes and cords. She can feel the Morphling drip waining, the medicine's hold slowly creeping out of her system. Sage just stays stiffly still, almost hoping if she refuses to move she might disappear. It's no use. Her necklace burns against her chest when she's given another glare by the nurse removing her IV, and her mind races to her family.

What's happened to her family? Did they save her family?

There's no healing the sickening dread that courses through her. A sour taste coats the inside of her mouth, and she must look green, because the nurse shoves a trashcan into her face the same time she heaves up bile.

"Don't worry. The meds will wear off soon," the woman says. The words would be comforting if it weren't for her hateful tone. The worries are relentless.