ghosts that we knew: A mockingjay fanfiction

33

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 33

Katniss

I should have listened when they told me to stop. I should have turned around and closed the door when they told me to stay out. I should have thought of my child, instead of thinking of myself, when they told me that the room was 'off-limits to unauthorized personnel'.

But I suppose 'should haves' are things of the past, now.

Before I can even process that his sudden advancement toward me is out of neither desire nor desparation, he wastes no time before lacing his outstretched fingers around my neck. With a lethal grip, the fingers lock in and press down into my skin. Hard. Cold. Deadly. I'm trapped in his grasp, and no matter which way I wriggle, I cannot escape.

I feel Arden slip from my hands in the same instant Peeta's hands encase me. Have I lost my child in the heat of this nightmare?

Terror of an entirely new kind combats the terror I first felt when his fingers wrapped around my throat. His fingers. Peeta's fingers.

Peeta.

This is not him. I refuse to believe that the snarling, seething monster who has me stuck beneath his entire force and energy is Peeta. It's the only thought that keeps me from succumbing to his strangulation.

And then I think of my baby girl, no more than a few hours old and already thrust into the crossfire of danger by her own mother. I want to scream, want to cry out for Arden, but my airways have been shut down, my voice has been silenced, and my life has begun to slip away.

I am just beginning to see spots when I feel the sudden rush of release.

Peeta's angry face, blurred around the edges due to my lack of oxygen, leaves my line of vision in a flash of black armor. As I begin to regain consciousness, I make out the image of Commander Boggs. He has my attacker pinned down with one arm while shaking out the other, the one he presumably used to punch Peeta squarely in the jaw.

Ignoring the lungs that scream for air, I scour the room until I've found her, nestled safely in Haymitch's embrace. Her arms flail and her cries float high above the maelstrom that has taken over the room. She's red in the face from the shock of being ripped from my arms, but otherwise unscathed. My Mentor's eyes are wide as saucers, and although I know he has been caught off guard, I am grateful for his instincts; someone had to protect my child.

Swaying in and out of delirium, I begin to slide down to the ground. Two doctors quickly catch me before I crash into a wheezing heap at their feet. Another hurries onto the premises with a wheelchair for me to lower and steady myself in.

"What in the world is going on?" I hear Plutarch shout. His voice sounds like a mere echo, miles away from where I remain paralyzed in the wheelchair. The world around me is a swirling vortex, dizzying me and disorienting me and threatening to never spit me back out in one piece.

Boggs has his hands pressed firmly against Peeta's chest. The rabid beast underneath the weight of the soldier resists him, screaming foul obscenities that merely bounce off of Boggs, as if the man was entirely bulletproof.

Without so much as an ounce of attention to Peeta's outbursts, Boggs shouts back, "That's what I was trying to tell you before...we don't know. Something's wrong with him. Hawthorne discovered it on the hovercraft ride back here. The doctors were going to run some tests to confirm before letting her see him. For safety purposes..."

At the mentioning of his name, I think of Gale. Has Peeta-calling this creature by his name just doesn't feel right-hurt Gale as well?

Glaring through a curtain of blonde curls, he growls again. The sound is filled with chilling hatred, so horrid that it can only belong to a monster, not a man.