My Name is Katniss Everdeen. I am 17 years old. I survived The Hunger Games. The Capitol destroyed District 12. I live in District 13 now. The Capitol have Peeta. The Capitol are torturing Peeta. I'm having a baby. Peeta's baby. But Peeta isn't here. Peeta is in the Capitol. Where he's probably already dead. Peeta is dead. Or dying. And so am I.
Prim places her hand on my shoulder and stops me from rocking. Slowly I uncurl from the ball I've wrapped myself into. I'm still living in the hospital, with all my injuries from the arena and with the baby they thought I may as well just stay here. It's also so they can manage my PTSD, but nobody really talks about that, not to me anyway. They just shoot something into my arm and let me go to sleep. If it wasn't for the baby, I think they'd keep me asleep for a lot longer, maybe they'd let me drift away never to return. I think I'd like that.
"Are you ready for your lunch?" Prim is standing at the end of my bed holding a tray, sporting her best smile. Everyone here knows that she's my weak spot and so they send her to get me to do the difficult tasks like eating and bathing, sometimes just getting me to open my eyes is a mission left to Prim to overcome. Gale comes to see me every day in the evening when he's finished working on whatever he does all day. We don't talk about Peeta or the baby or 12. We don't really talk at all. He just sits in the chair next to my bed and holds my hand. My mother checks on me every chance she gets in between treating other patients. She's the only person I let examine the baby. I know I'm being difficult for the doctors but I think she secretly likes that I trust her with something so special since I haven't trusted her with anything since my father died. I don't really want to trust her with the baby but, I trust her more than these strange doctors from 13 so it leaves me with no choice.
Prim sits with me, watching me eat every mouthful of food and encouraging me to eat more when I start to reject it. Sometimes I remember all of those times in my life when I was hungry, no, not hungry. Starving. I hate myself for rejecting the food literally being handed to me on a platter now but it's as if I'm no longer in control of my own brain. So much has been taken from me that I'm not sure I'll ever get back. Like my sanity. I examine the little bracelet fastened to my wrist that reads 'mentally disorientated' and wonder if I'll need it for the rest of my life. However long or short that might be.
I hear the sound from the television set next door, whoever lives in there has the volume as high as it can go as if they're trying to block out any demons that might be trying to make themselves heard. I'm grateful for the distraction since I am not permitted to have a television set of my own. From the voice through the wall I hear that we are at war. There is a full scale rebellion happening right now in the Districts. The other night, when Gale thought I was asleep I heard him whisper something that he thought I couldn't hear. They're all counting on you, Catnip. I still haven't quite figured out who he was referring to. Who's counting on me? My mother? Prim? The baby? I know they're all counting on me, they've always counted on me. That's why I'm too exhausted to breathe most of the time.
After a few weeks in the hospital they tell me I can go home. Obviously, I'm not returning to my actual home in 12 but rather an assigned bed in a room with Prim and my mother. I'm treated no differently to any other Capitol citizen except my bracelet means I don't yet have to participate in the rigorous schedules the rest of the population is subjected to. My mother and Prim place their arm in front of a scanner every morning and are printed with a timetable for the day. I get one but it only has times that I can eat, the rest of my day is up to me. I spend most of it hiding in little places I've found such as the boiler room. But, as my stomach begins to grow and the trip to the boiler room starts to feel longer than necessary I stick to pulling the covers up over my head and hoping the world will melt away.
Until one day, after a visit from Gale, when I get the overwhelming urge to visit my home. My actual home. District 12. I march over to Haymitch's room and make my request. He looks me up and down as if that should be my answer but after a moment of consideration, my unblinking look of determination seems to convince him, more likely guilt him, into arranging the trip.
The ashes fill up my nostrils and coat me from head to toe within seconds of leaving the hovercraft. I trip over skulls, bones and other debris as I make my way to my old house in the Victors Village. The only place still standing. While I'm there I collect more things to add to my collection of personal items such as my father's hunting jacket, the plant book me and Peeta made before the Quarter Quell, a framed photograph of my father, and I even find Buttercup and shove him into my bag to take back to 13, for Prim. Now my draw will have something other than Peeta's locket and the pearl from the beach. I don't know if I find that comforting or if it makes me feel further away from him. Either way, Prim and my mother will be happy to have these things back within arm's reach.
When I get back to 13 I'm whisked off to the hospital. Apparently I'm scheduled for a check-up. I give my bag to Gale and ask for him to take it to my compartment as quickly as he can, when I hand it to him and he feels the weight, hears the quiet purr he raises an eyebrow and suppresses a smile. "Don't ask." I say and begin to make my way to the hospital. I don't think the people of 13 are used to pregnancy, I remember Prim talking to me about an epidemic they had a few years ago that killed most of the children here. Maybe it's not so much that they're not used to it but just that it brings back too many bad memories. I serve as a reminder of their dead children walking the halls. Another reason for them to hate me. Another reason for me to hate myself.
I wait in the examination room for my mother only when the door opens I find it's a doctor I've never seen before. "Hello Katniss. I'm Dr Paul. I'll be carrying out your check-up today if that's ok with you?" She is a lean woman with tight brunette curls and a stern face that somehow transforms into being overly friendly with a simple smile. I decide that I like her and since I'm feeling more myself than I have in a while I let her carry out my check-up. She's the first person I've let near my stomach other than my mother and Prim since being in 13. At first I panic that I've made the wrong decision and consider making a run for it out of the room but, after a while when nothing goes wrong I realise it's just another symptom of the Games. Making me fearful of letting anyone close to anything I love.
"Would you like to see, Katniss?" Dr Paul turns the monitor towards me and I see a screen of fuzzy grey and white lines. I stare at it for a moment unsure of what I'm looking at before I start to make out the shape. And there she is. All safe inside me. A piece of Peeta that made it out of the Capitol.
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MOCKINGJAY: REIMAGINED
FanfictionA continuation of 'Catching Fire: Reimagined'. Katniss has been rescued from the arena by the rebels and now faces the rest of her pregnancy during a war and without Peeta by her side.
