Mockingjay: The New Story

Chapter Nineteen

Peeta's POV

I stare down at Katniss while she sleeps. Our hands lay by my hip. She lays on her arm, but I can feel her shaking possibly from a nightmare. I want to wake her, but I suspect she hasn't been getting much sleep. I let her sleep, dreaming, possibly having a nightmare and wondering what I am waiting for.

I shake her shoulder with my left hand and watch her turn her cheek and groan. After a minute, she wakes and sits up. 

"Good morning," she whispers. Katniss smiles and leans over to kiss me.

"'Morning. How is the baby?"

She smiles down at her growing stomach. "Perfect."

I lean over to her to kiss her this time. She smiles. "Peeta, about the baby-"

"Good mornin'," says a nurse at the door. "Just here to check Mr. Mellark's vitals."

I nod, allowing the woman to check my blood pressure and everything else she needs to check. I look back to Katniss who has gone white.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"Um, yeah. Its just the needles," she says nodding to the needle in my arm. The nurse chuckles and injects something into my arm again.

"You were saying? About the baby?" I say, looking back at Katniss.

She shakes her head. "Later."

I sigh and nod, not wanting to upset her.

-

"I'm giving up Finnick," I say. The cell besides me is empty, Johanna gone and her screams traveling down the tunnel. It is just Finnick across from me and myself.

"You can't give in. It takes ten times longer to put yourself together than it takes to fall apart."

I groan.

"The girls are safe, Johanna may not be, but she knew what she was signing up for. You have Katniss and your kid to get home to. I have Annie. It is not time to give up, there is always hope."

Then, Johanna let out the worst scream yet. Afterwards she didn't make a sound. Finnick and I stared at each other for the longest time, battling to see if we believed she was dead or not. She was being dragged by two peacekeepers minutes later. 

Johanna didn't wake up til two days after. Whatever they did to her was the worse yet. 

"Finnick's right you know."

I turn to her. She looked terrible, and not in an attractive way. Johanna didn't even care to hold herself up any longer. She leaned against the bars to her cell, her voice hoarse and unnatural. 

"We all have something to go back to."

"Oh, yeah?" I say, hopeless. "What about you? You said you had no one. What about that?"

She chuckled, sounding something like the mentally insane. She stared at me long and hard. I crawled over to the bars so I could hear her better while she whispered.

"I lied. It was an act. Of course I got someone. And now that the idiot decided to tell the whole world, they've been trying to get the stuff out of me. Killing me, all that do. For her, its worth it. Its worth it all."

I give her a confused glance. "Who?"

"Brainless. All she's done, only thing I've lived off. I will see her succeed, even if I'm bound to a hospital bed or chained to cold stone. I will watch her take down the Capitol before I die. Hell, I'll take all the torture if she continues with what she's doing. I just hope she'll take it easy in her state."