Catching Fire: The New Story

"Katniss is - well... Dead."

Peeta's POV

For the next few hours, Katniss and I, along with the rest of our team, stayed quiet and resting for the first period of the train ride home. We all sipped on out hot chocolate and let the silence relax the tension of the Tour away. The night of festivities lies behind us and we only think of what is to come in Twelve. There is no question that everyone is too tired to speak and if someone indeed did speak up for anything other than more hot chocolate, there would be terrible consequences.

I watch as Katniss's gray eyes grow tired. She lays her head on my shoulder and I put our empty cups on the table in front of us. I wrap my arms around her as an Avox then takes our empty cups away to be washed. Katniss is asleep in just a few minutes, curling herself up on my lap. Glancing around, it seems that everyone is asleep but me. Haymitch is sitting on the recliner opposite of us - he really passed out with a half-full bottle of liquor still in his hands. Our prep teams are all leaning on each other on two couches, a blanket laid on each body. Effie had gone to her room hours ago to rest properly. Cinna and Portia sit beside us on the same couch, both in a deep slumber. 

I finally close my eyes and drift off along with everyone else.

-

I open my eyes in surprise. My whole body is shaking violently with fear. Is this real? My dreams have looked this real before, but never like this. This can't be real.

Looking down at myself, I see that I am in bed. It is the last I remember, rolling around in the covers until I feel asleep. The blanket is still tangled between my limbs. 

Even the simplicity of seeing myself in bed cannot erase what I have just seen in my nightmare. The room I am in being extremely dark does not help the anxiety that runs in my mind. The only light coming into the room was through the small cracks of the closed curtains covering the open window. I close my eyes wishing not to find out what will be happening next.

"Peeta?" I hear someone whisper. I open my eyes to the darkness again, searching for Katniss. I am certain it was her voice. But is it real? Or only a recurring nightmare? 

"Katniss?" I call. I move my hands around the sheets, seeking my lover. The covers seemed to weight too heavily to be real, I could barely move underneath them. But not soon enough, I feel her soft, small hand reach up to my face. It calms me, but also shocks me. Her hands are freezing ice cold.

"Peeta, this isn't a dream. Don't be afraid. Just open your eyes, you'll be okay," she says with a giggle. I realize my eyes were closed again, the darkness I find under my eyelids equal what I would find with them open. I can see her, though, faintly in the little moonlight we have. She is real, I am real, this is real. We're both in her dark green bedroom set up in her house in the Victor's Village. It is still dark out, no time has passed since I woke, but Katniss turns on her small table lamp, illuminating the room with yellow light. Shadows paint her face, angling her face perfectly. She remains with the tiny nose I love to kiss, her pink lips that are plump like a blooming rose, and her eyes the gray of the day during a storm.

I smile. "Alright."

"You scared me, Peeta. You were-"

Everything turned black in an instant. The only thing I could hear is her scream as she was cut off. I blink my eyes open, over and over again, rubbing at them and looking everywhere in the dark for her. I feel my hands over the ground I am now on, all I feel is cold, hard cement. 

I smell him before I hear him. Blood and roses, his signature. His evil chuckle throws shivers down my spine. I light turns on and it shows President Snow standing a few feet in front of me. He is suited in all white. The room were are in is pure white, no doors or windows, nothing. No way to escape, no way I could have entered. I am trapped here with him.