Nightingale

Chapter 2

Katniss

I sit in the corner, trying my best to braid my hair. It's become so tangled and without a hairbrush of my own, I have to used my bitten down fingernails to take apart the horrendous teasing that the strange stylist did to my hair for one of my many interviews. They want me to say things, tell them how Peeta abandoned his pregnant fiancee to fight against the gracious government who had given us everything. How because of my status, without the games, Peeta never would have thought about me as a romantic interest and I wouldn't be carrying his daughter in this battered, crippled body.

I do my best to refuse these things. I work my way around saying such accusations. It gets me beat afterwards, where a long sleeved gown will hide. I've done my best to remain defiant despite all this, everything they have done to Johanna for being a conspiritor and to me and Annie.

But I'm starting to faulter. Everything they say, it's starting to sound true. Peeta is out there, free and working with the rebels. He didn't ever feel what I did. He seemed to love me, to want to take care of me, but towards the end, It was about the baby. Everything was about that baby. He asked for kids constantly. Infact, there were sometimes I felt like he was making the best of a bad situation. If he was stuck with me, he was gonna have kids. He told me a lot that he had always wanted kids.

My baby breaks me from my thoughts, kicking my ribs as though to remind me that her father willingly followed me to eminent death before he even knew about her. I lay my scraped hand on her and smile.

"You're right, he loves us," I say. "And he's doing everything he can to get us out of here."

"She's active today?" Annie asks. I nod.

"Any other time, it freaked me out," I say. "But she does a pretty good job of talking me out of their lies."

"He didn't know any more than you did," Johanna says. "It was supposed to be safer for both of you that way."

"I know that!" I snap. "But it's confusing. Having to say one thing to keep my child safe and believe another." I look down at my wide belly. It seemed like it had grown so much since I got here. I look at my leg and it's thinning muscles that were beginning to atrophy do to the fact that I can't walk any more. It's a lot easier to roll me around and cover up my leg in a long skirt than allow me mobility. "How long do you think we've been here?"

"A month judging by how bad that leg's getting," she says. "The way they drag you around by it when they get ticked off, I'm surprised they haven't snapped it off." I look over at her, dripping wet from her torture of the morning.

"I'm surprised they haven't started on me yet," I say, watching through the bars of my cell as Annie is dragged away screaming, probably to be sold out to the highest bidder for another night. On my other side Johanna is pacing her cell like an angry tiger I saw at a capital party once.

"They need you plump and pregnant for their luxurious interviews," she says. "You're lucky to have that bun in your oven. Otherwise, they'd be more willing to tie you to a slab and rape you too. Be happy for every day they don't take you out of here too."

"They will," I say. "They've told me more than once that I'm next." I cross my arms tightly over my chest and try to make myself small.

"And that day is today," I hear as my door  is slid open. I look up to see President Snow  and two guards. "Happy to see the girl on fire still has her glowing personality." The guards grab me by the shoulders and start dragging me out. I drag myself as best I can to fight them, but I am brought towards the torture Chambers. They shove me into a chair and strap down my arms and Snow sits across from me.

"What do you want from me?" I ask. "I'm sure you were listening. You know I have no idea where they are and what they are doing."

"Miss Everdeen, you know for you, nothing is that simple," he says. "Defiance will not be unpunished. We know your child is innocent in the matter however. So we must get creative." I look at him and shrug.

"I suppose you should," I reply. "It's not as though you would ever hurt a child. You just make them kill each other." One of the guards slams my head against the table, forcing me to bite my lip. I look up at him. "This must mean I'm done with my TV appearances."

"You're sharp tongue will not save you from what we have planned. Your defiance will only make your punishments more painful. Especially seeing as you sparked the attack on us."

"And what is it that my punishment will be," I ask. A man in a white coat comes forward and holds a needle.

"We'll kill two birds with one stone," he says. "We are going to inject you with a perfect serum. It will speed up your gestation by half as well as destroying your mind and strength. By the time you deliver, your child will kill you, having stolen all your strength for itself. That, or should your beloved blue eyesld Baker save you in time, you'll kill him with your bare hands in the haze the serum perminantly puts on your mind."

I watch in horror as the man sticks the needle into the vein of my arm and cry out as the serum burns through my veins like fire. My arms struggle in the restraints and feel it. The affects starting from the venom of a tracker jacker. They flash horrible images on the screens around me. Twisted memories cloud my mind.

Peeta leaving me for dead time after time. He chopped my leg of in the area on the top of that metal horn and tied it off. And more times than I can count, he rapes me. Tied to a bed, I struggle to get free as the man I love, I think I love? How can I love someone who did this to me? But he didn't did he? It's shiny, and odd. It's fake isn't it? But at the moment I am not able to discern a clear memory of how things really happened. Then is this, is this how it happened? If I have no other recollection, could what I'm seeing really be true?

My cheeks are sticky with tears as I'm yanked up from the chair and shoved onto my belly on a bed. My arms are bound at the wrist and pulled tight, chained to the headboard. My leg is kicked out to the side and I hear a belt being unbuckled.

"Don't!" I scream. "Don't you dare touch me! I'll kill you all! With my bare hands, I'll tear out your fucking throats if you touch me or my child, you facist shits!" I feel the strike of a whip across my back. I grit my teeth and hear laughing. President Snow bends down to my level.

"To be entirely honest, Miss Everdeen, you aren't my type," He says. "But the good doctor here, why he's your biggest fan and has been dying for a moment to himself with you. And you and I both know you are not strong enough to stop us. We've clipped your wings, Mockingjay. May you never fly again." I scream as I'm roughly entered and I do my best to stop the tears.

But I can't. I am broken. My body eventually goes limp and I'm flogged after the doctor moves away from me. I can only hope that this abuse isn't hurting my baby as I feel my back turn into a raw resemblance of what Peeta's was not long ago. I've gone so limp that I barely notice when they stop.

'It can't get worse,' I think to myself but am proven wrong as they press a hot iron brand into my shoulder, scarring my back further. I'm finally cut free from my restraints and thrown on my butt as the me stand and laugh around me. President Snow bends down in my face, bathing me in the scent of blood.

"How low the mighty bird has fallen," he chuckles. In a brief moment of clarity from his injection, I spit in his face. He wipes it off and I'm dragged away, laughing histaricly.

"Is that all you got?" I laugh. "Bring it on mother fucker! I've got nothing but time!" In my crazed, half mad state, I barely notice as I'm dumped into my cell. A rough burlap is thrown over me and I continue to chuckle as my mind refuses to process what just happened to me.

"I must say," Johanna says from my right in a cell my swollen shut eye can't see. "Well done brainless. Well fucking done."

My only response is more laugher as I am again clouded by madness.