Rye's Start {EDITING} (Book #2)

Flashback

I wake to use the bathroom, but when I come back to the bed Peeta is sitting up in a fetal position shaking. Knowing what this means, I carefully approach him.

"Don't.come.any.closer." I am about an arms length away from him. His voice is shaking.

"Peeta, talk to me. What's happening?"

"They won't leave me alone... They won't stop.... Please make them stop...make them stop!" His voice increases intensity just as fast as his anxiety with every syllable, "Please... Please...please..."

"Peeta? Who won't stop?" No response. "Peeta."

I reach out for him but he jumps and grabs my shoulders,"Real or not real....I'm in 13."

"Not real, we left a long time ago-"

"Real or not real, I'm in the Capitol."

"Not real-"

"Then where the hell am I!" He coldly says, his grasp on my arm is getting stronger every second.

"Home! Peeta stay with me!" But that doesn't work. But even in the dimly lit room I see his eyes relax a bit, but still mostly black. I would let him go sleep on the couch, but he could get Willow. And if I leave he could kill himself, so basically we can't leave this room. I just wish Peeta was having his rampage over this.

Over time I have begun to notice that he has two types of flashbacks. Suicidal and raging ones, and this is his suicidal one. It is so much harder for me because he pleads for death and it is hard for me to watch. The only thing that keeps me going through this is knowing that this isn't Peeta. It is the mutt the Capitol created, showing its ugly temper/personality. Showing just how scarred Peeta is; showing just how far Snow's venom went.

He looks deep into my eyes and whispers,"Help me."

"Peeta how do I do that? Baby tell me how to help you, let me help you!"

"kill...me" he says. But he is serious, I can feel the intensity in his voice.

He gets up and heads for the bathroom door, so I take this as my chance to get help. I run out the room, down stairs to the kitchen and grab the home phone. Then I run back upstairs and dial Haymitch's number.

He answers immidately,"Now either you are incredibly stupid to be calling me this early in the morning, or Peeta is going off."

"Peeta."

"I'll be there in 2." I hear a high pitched voice in the background, saying something about toothpaste and wigs.

I hear the front door open and footsteps run up into the room."Thanks for inviting me, sweetheart."

"Anytime,"I say sarcastically."he is in the bathroom."

Haymitch opens the door and we see Peeta chugging down a gallon bottle of bleach. I scream out his name as Haymitch grabs him, and pins him on the bed. Haymitch tells me to grab clothes and tie the end of them together. At first I questioned him,but I do as I am told, after he yelled for me to hurry. I tie one of the pants legs to the bed on each side and attach more clothes to it and tie it on his wrist. Then he goes wild.

I feel like I am back in 13 watching him fight against the restraints after he had choked me out.

"He took about half of this," he holds up the bottle of bleach."That has to be leathal. What do we do."

I think and think until I remember something my mother shared with me when I was young. Dilute the poison."Water, he has to drink lots of water."

We force at least a gallon of water in him but feet doing that I couldn't take it anymore. So I flew open the door and Willow was there. She looked past me at her father and started screaming(and that is what brought him back just in time too because the restraints have broke part) and is now scarred for life.

It takes Peeta a while to comprehend what had happened but when he did, he tried to go explain to Willow what she had just seen, but she refused to even be in the same room with him. Haymitch and I tried to convince her, but nothing worked. After that he ran to the bedroom and cried. And cried. And cried. More like sobbing really.

I told Haymitch thanks and that he should get some sleep, and he left. I could see the pain on his face too.

After awhile he asks," I haven't told you, have I?"

"Told me what?"

"What it was like in the Capitol..."

"No. I've always wanted to know but, I didn't want to upset you."

"I knew everything about you, well I thought. Before it all started, I was thinking about how your braids used to be in two instead of one, h-how your hand shot straight up when we were asked about the valley song, how I couldn't take my eyes off you, and how the birds would stop and listen when you sang, so I was just thinking about the happy times, Before the games." He pauses and his eyes well up,"then they started with the torturing. Needle after needle, beating after beating, shock after shock. I was slowly loosing my memories of you.... Slowly loosing me. Until one day you were gone... And I was too."