Chapter One

I open my eyes, scanning the room around me. Tubes run out of my right arm and I'm only in hospital sheets. How is this even possible? The last moment I recall is the arena collapsing around us. Bright flames lit up, almost like the muggy heat added to their fuel. I was trying to find Katniss when hell broke.

Katniss!

I immediately scramble, looking to find her. She has to be somewhere near me. I bolt up, though my body aches in protest. I groan, gripping my stomach. That wasn't the wisest decision, but I have to find her and make sure she's okay.

But first I have to know where I am.

Taking slow, deep breaths, I search the room for anything familiar. Across the room is Beetee, who is hooked up with so many tubes it's difficult to even know if he's stable or on the brink of dying.

Realization begins to dawn on me as I look at Beetee. If I'm where I think I am, then Katniss is farther away than I originally thought.

We must be in the Capitol.

The Games were interrupted somehow, so they must have retrieves us. I'm relieved at first, knowing they couldn't possibly kill Katniss, especially since everyone knows we weren't dead when the arena exploded, but then I feel a pang in my chest. They have to have their victor. They wouldn't allow what happened in the last Games to ever repeat again.

That meant we were being healed to only be thrown back into that godawful arena again. At the thought, my back and forehead begin to sweat. Would they add more tributes to equal 24 again? I know districts like One, Two, and Four have plenty of tributes that could easily be taken, maybe even volunteer to play in the Games.

I shake the current thoughts out of my head. First things first, I have to know where Katniss is. Going against my better judgement, I rip the tubes out from my arm and swing my legs to the side of the bed.

Surprisingly, it's easy to stand. I'm evenly balanced on my prosthetic leg, which I figured would be a main contributor to my struggle of escaping, but I find that I can soundly walk away.

As I exit the room, I hear voices. Familiar voices.

I pause, listening to a hoarse voice speak and a Capitol accent quickly argue with them. What was going on? I cautiously step towards the door, hoping I could decipher who was speaking and what it was about.

"No. I'll tell him." Haymitch says.

Haymitch!

I burst through the door, not exactly sure what to expect. At a table is Haymitch, Johanna Mason, and Plutarch Heavensbee.

I open my mouth to question what kind of mess Katniss and I have now made to invoke these three to meet but can't decide what to say, let alone how to use my voice. But they must read my expression because Haymitch gestures to the seat beside him as Plutarch pushes a bowl of soup towards the spot. I glance out the window, seeing we're flying. If I'm not in the Capitol, then where am I?

I still quietly, still horribly confused.

"Glad you finally woke up." Haymitch greets, studying me. But his smile didn't reach his gray eyes. Inside them is something else. Grief? Anger? I can't tell.

I stare at the soup that reminds me of nothing but the arena. They begin to talk to me, trying to explain everything to me, but it seems hard to concentrate. Apparently, there was a plan to get us out of the arena when the Quell was announced. The victors from 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 11 all had different levels of knowledge about it. Plutarch has been secretly apart of a group to overthrow the Capitol. Again, I'm used as a piece in a game I never consented to.

"Once the force field blew. You'd be the first ones they'd try to capture, and the less you knew, the better." Haymitch explains.

"The first ones? Why?" I ask.

"For the same reason the rest of us agreed to die to keep you alive." Johanna rolls her eyes.

"We had to save you because you're the mockingjay, Peeta. While you live, the revolution lives." Plutarch says.

I want to deny this all. All of that was Katniss. The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the dress that burst into flames. That was all her. I had nothing to do with that. She is the symbol of the rebellion, not me.

"Where's Katniss?" I immediately demand, my voice coming out hoarse, like I hadn't spoken in weeks. I cough, trying to clear it, but I don't think it'll make much of a difference. I don't bother dragging out the dreaded conversation, so I just jump into what I want. I want to know where Katniss is.

The room grows quiet, eyes shifting between everyone. I'm out of the loop and something isn't right. I can only expect the worst.

A smirk of sorts appears on Johanna's face as she looks towards the right of me. "Are you going to tell him or should I?" She asks.

I whip my head to look at Haymitch, who can hardly hold my gaze. My grip on my spoon tightens as I feel my jaw lock. What are they hiding me from?

He takes a deep breath, his eyes training on me. Whatever he has to say is slowly killing him, or maybe he knows it'll kill me. "We rescued Beetee, Johanna and you from the arena before it was too late."

"That doesn't answer my-"

"Katniss, Finnick, and Enobaria were captured by the Capitol."

His eyes drop to the floor as the realization dawns on me.

Katniss is as good as dead in the hands of President Snow.

Heat rises to my cheeks as I push away from the table, my soup splattering everywhere. "We had a deal!" I shout, directing my anger at Haymitch. Everyone else's voices just morph into background noise as I glare at the drunk.

"Don't you think I know that?" He argues back, glaring at me.

"I was supposed to die! You were supposed to save Katniss, not me! That was our deal!" I repeat, hands trying to hold my shoulders. Without second thoughts, I do whatever I have to to get them off of me.

"I know! I remember!" Haymitch says.

"It was my turn! You promised that you would save her instead of me! I got to you first that night!" I continue, shoving him to the ground. I tower over him, anger coursing through my veins.

Suddenly, a sharp pain enters my arm and I feel myself drifting off. "You lied to me." I whimper as they dragged to my room. "You lied to me."

xxx

As I my open eyes, Delly sits at the edge of my bed. "Delly," I softly say.

"Peeta, it's so good to hear your voice." She smiles, gently touching my face. Delly and I have been friends since we were little. Actually, she's been my closest friend. Our parents had shops next to each other, so we would always play together growing up. As we got older, we began telling each other secrets we would never tell anyone else. I used to tell other people that she was my sister.

"What are you doing here?" I ask, furrowing my eyebrows.

"Oh, Peeta. There's been a terrible accident," she begins. She's silent for a while, wiping away the tears on her cheek. I stay silent, not wanting to push her. "After Katniss blew out the arena, the Capitol bombed District Twelve. There was this huge fire and almost no one made it."

"My parents?" I ask, fear in my veins. "Are they okay?"

She sniffles, shaking her head. "There's no one left in your family. None of them made it."

Cries shake my body as she pulls me to her lap. I've lost everyone that I could possibly care about. Katniss has been taken hostage by the Capitol, my parents and brothers are dead thanks to the Capitol. Everything is gone by the Capitol's greed. It's the Capitol's fault.

"Don't worry, Peeta. We'll get through this. We'll make a new life in District Thirteen." She says, gently petting down my hair. I sit up, confusion clogging the gears in my brain.

"District Thirteen?" I ask. "What are you talking about, Delly?"

She takes a deep breath. "There's nothing left of Twelve, Peeta. Both of us are orphans now. But, somehow Thirteen has been thriving underground. This whole time, they've been living in a different world without the rest of us knowing."

"And they never bothered to help us? Never bothered to stop the Games and save all of those innocent lives lost to it? Live lost to the Capitol?" I ask, anger coursing through my veins again. The entire time we were at the mercy of the Capitol, Thirteen has been living a life of peace.

"I don't know much, but we should be thankful that they've taken us in. Without them, we would have nowhere else to go. We were in the woods for three days with food supplies running low. We're in debt to them, Peeta." She says.

In debt to Thirteen, a district we've all thought to be blown to smithereens. A district who had been sitting idly by, watching the rest of us suffer at the hands of the merciless Capitol. Letting them take our children and watch them fight to the death for entertainment.

Delly may be in debt to Thirteen, but I'm not.

"Peeta, I know that look in your eyes," she begins, frowning at me. "It's not their fault for leaving us. You can't blame what the Capitol has done to us on them." She warns.

Like usual, Delly has a point.

"I'm not blaming them for that," I say, thinking through how I really will feel about them. "But I won't trust them. They don't know what we've been through."

She nods her head in approval. I've tried explaining my experience with Delly many times before the Quell was announced. She might not have understood everything, but it helped to let it out. It's not safe to keep everything bottled up.

"You should get some rest, Peeta." She says, laying me back down. I'm about to protest as a clear liquid enters into my bloodstream from the tubes in my arm. She brushes down my hair as my eyes grow heavy. Even in my drug-induced sleep, all I can long for is Katniss and her safety.

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Welcome to my new book! I hope you all have enjoyed it so far! I'm not sure how often this will get updated since my main priority is Through The Eyes of Willow! If you haven't read it, go check it out! Thanks for reading and I'll see ya soon!