When The Canary Sings

My Name Is.

First Person Point of View: Becca Blue: 

* 

"My name is Rebecca Blue, but no one ever calls me Rebecca because it has seven letters, and apparently no one likes the number seven." I recite robotically, "I am fifteen years old. I am from District Twelve. I have lost many people in my life. Mom, dad, Mawmaw, Chip, Trixie, Picker, Celica, Rose, Penny, and not to mention all my victor friends. Even my snake died." With every word, there is a little pause. "I like to sing, and have fun. My hair used to be long, but now it's short. Now that it's clean, I kind of like it. I have green eyes, and I used to have freckles but because there isn't any sun in this beehive they've all gone into hibernation. I have a boyfriend named William Green Jones who loves me a lot, and I am the victor of the 73rd Hunger Games. Haymitch, this is dumb."

Haymitch purses his lips, "well, that's what Katniss did."

"And is Katniss super normal and high functioning?" I snark, he rolls his eyes. "Yeah, that's what I thought." I say. This is one of the scarce times Haymitch is visiting, and he won't even look me in the eyes. Not the happy reunion I wanted, but whatever. He wants me to talk about what happened, but why would I do that? I'm trying to forget it.

"You're not gonna get better if you don't talk about it. You have to talk about it, open up to someone about what happened. You didn't talk about it to Will, so I'm your only option."

"What about Finnick?" I say, poking myself in the broken ribs.

"Can you not?" he says, swatting my hand away. "Are you gonna open up to Finnick? If so, I'll get him in here now."

"No." I say, "I. Don't. Want. To. Talk. about. It."

"Damnit, Becca." He says in a tone that makes me flinch. Ugh! He sees the jolt, and immediately calms down. "Please? I know it's hard, and I know that you want to forget it all. But you have to talk to someone." He practically pleads. I look over, and immediately regret it. Seeing the look on his face, bloodshot eyes, wrinkles that weren't there before, and his face locked in a permanent frown. My stupid heart lurches forward.

Earlier this morning, I got discharged from the hospital. No crutches, just an insane amount of medicine, a boot around my foot, bandages around my chest, and stitches on my skin. Most of the wounds were in my head, anyway. Of course, the first thing I did when I left the hospital was run away. And since I'm currently living in the ants nest that is District Thirteen, I got lost in the never ending tunnels. Of course, the first person to find me is Haymitch.

I'm sprawled out on the floor, Haymitch sitting with his back against the wall on the floor a few feet away from me. In the dimly lit tunnel, I can perfectly make out his heartbroken face.

"Do you miss Effie?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Do you?"

Silence comes after that. He shrugs, "yeah."

This answer satisfies me. If Celica were here, I'd have to give her my blue shoelaces. We had an ongoing bet since we were ten on if Haymitch and Effie were secretly a thing or not. She said yes, and I said no. I wonder if I could go back to Twelve and find those blue shoelaces, then find her and give them to her. It's hard to believe I was so poor, we were betting on a shoelace while the people in the Capitol were betting millions on people's lives.

"They did a lot of things to us in the Capitol," I start, and great, now I've opened my mouth so I won't be able to stop. "Don't tell the doctors. I want people to think I'm good. I'm okay and I can actually be someone here."

"I won't." He says.

My hands have a tremble to them, probably a permanent one. I can practically hear my bones snapping and the heavy footsteps of the guards. Not real, not real, not real. "I'm trying to tell it chronologically." I mumble.

"Take your time, kiddo." he says, and that little word makes my eyes fill with hot and thick tears. My head flashes back to dot man, this tunnel looks so much like that alleyway.

"When we first got there, they asked us where you guys were. I had no clue, y'know? But I pretended I did, and I lied." I say, bitterly chuckling to myself. "I told Snow himself that y'all were hiding out in the woods, deep, far out into the wilds. And boy, did I make it worse for myself." I chuckle again.

"It started out with them beating us senseless. Until...i don't even know, until I couldn't move. Until I was laying in puddles of my own blood." I grit my teeth as I push myself off the floor and sit up straight. I want to move over to Haymitch, and just let the man who saved my life countless times just hold me. But, I don't move. Not yet at least.

"Then, it was the white rooms. The ones that look exactly like the ones here. Ha–ha, right? That's why I hate it here. No color. Whatever, that's besides the point. As if the white room and the isolation wasn't enough, they began feeding us less and less. There was no way to keep track of days down there either. No clock, no windows, no calendar. Nothing."

Thankfully, he doesn't interrupt, because I keep going. Word vomit. "Then, they started the psychological torture. They chopped my hair, they played tracks of people I love screaming. Like the jabberjays, except it didn't stop after an hour. So much screaming." I mutter, shuddering at the memory.

"Then they followed their favorite book ever. How To Torture a Kid 101. They waterboarded me, and don't think that's it because it's not!" I am laughing now, I don't know why, but I'm letting out high pitched and deranged giggles. "They would take all my clothes off–no, this is definitely not where you think it's going! Then, they'd shove me into a hole, filled with bugs. Bugs." I shiver, and twitch, and then laughing turns to crying. "They were everywhere." I whisper, Haymitch doesn't move. He's waiting to see what I will do.

I don't even care if I'm acting like a baby at this point, I crash into his arms, and on instinct, he wraps them around me. Cradling me like a dead person. "They were everywhere. And they'd take me into this big room with sprinklers and I thought I was gonna get a shower!" I cry, "I thought it was a shower, and it was blood! All over!" I sob, "they electrocuted me! They killed me!"

"Shhh, babygirl, shh, I know, I know," he mumbles, petting my hair. I lean my head under his neck. No, he doesn't know. "You're here, you're alive."

"They told me you were dead. All of you." I mutter, through a loud, cracking sob. "And it was my fault. I was so scared." In all my sobbing, I forget to mention how I died for fifteen seconds, and the dark, stuffy room they shoved Peeta and I into, the one I almost died for good in. For some reason, I'm still angry at him. For leaving me. But I'm not gonna tell him, not when he's holding me like this.

"No, no," he says softly and gruffly at the same time. "I'm here, I'm here, right here." I can feel his grip on me tighten. "You're okay, I'm okay, Katniss is okay," he pauses, giving me a shake. I tilt my head up and furrow my brows. "And I know you know Will is okay."

I give him a tiny smile. "Shut up."

"That kiss was a huge propo."

"What the hell is a propo?"

"Hard to explain," he mumbles. "C'mon, I bet Will is looking everywhere for you. Can't have loverboy worried, right?"

I give him a tiny smile as I stand up. I lean my head on his arm as we walk. "I guess so much for three feet apart, huh?" He huffs a laugh and nudges me. "Hey, play nice, I died for fifteen seconds."

"What?"

I chuckle down the hallway.