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The respirator hurts her face. There are tiny burns all along Johanna's hairline and scalp, and the respirator straps rub back and forth across them with every breath and every step. But the air is filthy with little particles from the bombing, she doesn't want to risk her lungs on top of everything else that's wrong with her now. Her head hurts, just like it has every moment for weeks now, sharp pulses that radiate down her spine and into her legs, blurring her vision for seconds at a time.
As they move through the city center, she recognizes the remains of buildings, and almost laughs. Here was where she attended a party to celebrate the end of the 71st Games, and then she had to sleep with the Transportation Secretary. Here is a hotel that she and the others often saw clients. There was a club they went to that served a great cocktail, though she got caught in a tabloid photo fighting with Haymitch on the way out one night.
And then there are the corpses. She tries not to see them, because it's easier that way, just like it has been in the arena twice and as a mentor for eight years, but it's impossible when Annie shrieks each time she sees an arm sticking out from the rubble, or a pair of pants contrasting from the ash of everything. Shut up! she wants to say, as she wanted to say for the weeks they were down in the prison, with Annie crying daily. Why was she so vocal, so open about every emotion? But Johanna bites her lips and holds back her remark now, as she did then, which is something she hardly ever did, because Annie was special, because Finnick marked her as such. Annie got special privileges and that included far less restraint than what was expected in the Capitol.
And now Johanna does laugh, because what does it matter? There is no Capitol! Everything is gone, and certainly most of the powerful people are dead. Who cares if Annie Cresta makes a scene now? Johanna probably won't even have to stick her neck out to keep her safe, because there's no one left alive anymore.
Her thoughts are cut short as Peeta grabs her by the shoulders, his expression serious. She looks him in the eyes, trying to see if he's crazed, caught up in the rabidity of the serum or if he truly was just Peeta, and it's difficult to tell, because the shift is subtle, really. Peeta with the paranoia they've fed him is still himself, really, but his mind is altered, his memories and his usual assuredness are all lost. "Why are you laughing?" he asks her, shaking her a bit. Her vision is blurred as another pulse of pain runs its course. Johanna realizes now that this isn't the normal Peeta, but also… who but maybe Enobaria would understand what's funny about this situation? "Did you know about this? Did you know that the rebels would bomb the city?"
She doesn't, of course, she has no idea, but she wants to say yes because of her natural inclination to piss people off, just like initially she had talked back and spit at the prison guards. But she learned quickly there that it is better to just keep quiet and do as she is told, that it is not worth the trouble just to get one biting remark in. So now she does the same, shaking her head, even trying to look at bit frightened, to maybe make the 'real' Peeta remember that he wouldn't attack someone just because they didn't have the answers he wanted.
"You do! Tell me!" He moves his arms to her throat, not enough to choke her, but enough to hold her in place. It helps distract her from her usual pain, at least. Peeta's thin now, after weeks of minimal rations, but he still is taller than her by six inches or so, and his grip is firm.
Johanna closes her eyes, trying to dissociate, trying to separate herself from the moment he begins to cut off her air supply. It's Peeta, which is comforting compared to the guards, at least, but it feels like she's back in interrogation, like when her head was about to be slammed into a table or the electrodes are about to make her lose control of herself again.
"Hey, step back."
Johanna cracks her eyes open to see Enobaria standing between them with a knife at Peeta's throat. Peeta glares at Enobaria, and she feels the hands tighten over her throat, but Enobaria is serious, and presses the knife into Peeta's skin, enough to draw a thin line of blood. "Don't kill over this Peeta, this isn't you."
Johanna's vision is closing in, but Peeta releases her, and she falls to her knees. Enobaria takes the knife away, and Peeta kicks up a cloud of ash at Enobaria. "You don't know me," he says, turning away.
Enobaria kneels down beside Johanna, but it doesn't quite feel real, both of them shielded with their respirators. "Tell me that's the truth," Enobaria says, "That you really had no idea."
Johanna nods, catching her breath. There's a shock of pain now, and she feels nauseous. Enobaria had gambled on her. Enobaria the loyalist had bet that she wasn't a part of some rebel scheme to destroy the entire Capitol. Secretly, Johanna wonders what it matters, why Enobaria even cares after the loyalists spent weeks torturing Enobaria, who never helped the rebels once, but she doesn't bother questioning Enobaria who just saved her life. "It's true. I don't know what the fuck this is."
They go to the Training Center in pairs: Enobaria and Johanna, and Peeta and Annie. Johanna keeps looking over her shoulder in case Peeta decides Annie is up to something, but she tries not to do it too much, since she's pretty sure he thinks it's because she doesn't trust him not to attack her again. And maybe she doesn't, but she's reasonably sure Enobaria would have her back a second time.
The Training Center looks abandoned, just like everything else in the city center. They go inside the lobby, with weapons drawn, but there's no one there. "The basement," Peeta suggests. "Everyone else was hiding underground."
It's a good suggestion, and he seems more or less back to himself, perhaps the adrenaline of before has faded, but first, there's something else she wants to do. "I want to go to my apartment," Johanna says. "I have clothes there, and other things."
"Oh!" Annie says, almost a wail. "Finnick and Mags have things here!"
And Johanna thinks about the 4 apartment for the first time in months. She feels nostalgic, maybe, but kind of ill. She can feel her hands shaking with the thought of Finnick, and shoves that thought way back down. "I'll be in the 7 apartment," she says, going to the stairwell before she can think about it too much.
"Let's meet back in the lobby once it's fully dark out," Enobaria says. "Oh, there's a clock on that tower to the east. How about at 9?"
Annie says something about needing help breaking down the door to her apartment, and Peeta goes with her. Johanna goes alone. It's the first time she's been alone since the Games started. It takes a long time to climb to the seventh floor on the stairs, since the power is out and she can't take the elevator, but she makes it eventually, and stands before the District 7 apartment. She doesn't have the strength to break open the door, but she's lived in the Capitol long enough to know how to pick the locks of the Training Center doors.
She uses the safety card from the first aid kit and is able to open the door in less than a minute. She locks it again behind her, and checks all the rooms, ensuring that she's alone. Then she walks to the window and looks out at the Capitol. She isn't sure if she wants to cry or laugh. There's nothing. Where there used to be roads and buildings and cars and lights, there's absolutely nothing but rubble and ash and corpses.
Part of her is grateful she had no idea, that this isn't some secret that she had to protect while she was in that prison, and part of her is horrified. The rebellion she fought for just killed all these people? And left her to die in that prison? What would happen now? She feels like she's holding her breath, waiting for Snow to appear from the ashes and explain what is going to happen next, what horrible retribution is going to be cast over those who did this. And with that realization, she knows they need to get out of the Capitol as quickly as possible. Hopefully tomorrow.
She goes to the bathroom and considers her options. She is filthy, and she stinks. She hasn't had a bath since before the Games. But the idea of a shower isn't just scary, it makes her physically ill. It reminds her of them drowning her in the interrogation room, of the wet towel pressed to her face and the water in her lungs and the desperate, desperate gulps for air and the electric shocks that came right after. And the ever-present pain is there, in the back of her head and stretching across the top of her scalp like lightning, until her mouth tastes bitter like blood and she feels like she might stumble because the nerves in her legs don't seem to be working right.
She sees herself in the mirror, and the image is horrifying, unrecognizable. She has never been vain, but now she wants to cry. She's taken the respirator off, inside, and her reflection is just of someone emaciated and filthy, with shorn hair and small scabs all along her hairline, a few of them bleeding. She's so tired, after all the movement of the day with so little to eat and drink in the past few weeks, but she tells herself that she just needs a little more effort, just like in the Games. That she just has to push a little further and then maybe she can slow down a bit.
She decides on a bath, so that the water won't ever touch over her head unless she puts it there, carefully. She fills the tub, and while it is filling, she goes to the room she stayed in before the Games to find clean clothes. They are hers, decidedly, but they feel like someone else's, from another life. She feels like she was another person before the prison, and before the Quarter Quell. She picks out a shirt and pants and clean underwear and brings it back with her to the bathroom, and strips down.
The water is cold, since the power is out, but not completely freezing, since it's summer. It's chilly, but tolerable, to sit in the bath. Just being submerged halfway in the water makes her breathing quicken, and Johanna gets to work scrubbing away weeks and weeks of filth. The water quickly turns gray, but she continues, carefully washing her neck, her face, her scalp. Then she drains the water and refills the tub, and washes one more time.
After, she takes a brush to her nails at the sink, and then trims them. She brushes her teeth twice, then rinses with mouthwash. She changes into the clean clothes, and only then does she feel a bit like a normal person again, and not a prisoner. She puts on a pair of socks and her favorite boots from District 7, and then packs a bag with things she wants to keep. She knows they're leaving, she's just not exactly sure where, or how. She adds spare underwear and socks, a change of clothes, a jacket, a scarf, all the tobacco and morphling she can find in the apartment, the filter off the faucet, and the toothbrush and toothpaste. Tentatively, she pushes open Blight's bedroom door and peeks inside, remembering how quickly he died in the arena, how horrible the blood rain was, and the force-field that shocked him.
She sees his pipe on the nightstand, beautifully carved, and takes that too. The time to meet Enobaria is approaching, but Johanna goes down one floor first, opening the District 6 apartment. She wonders if they've even left any morphling, if maybe they took it all before entering the arena, but then she sees it: a decent-sized tin left on the nightstand in one of the bedrooms. She opens it and pushes a little up into her gums, then adds that to her bag and continues down to the lobby.
Enobaria is there already, but Annie and Peeta haven't yet returned. "You look better," Enobaria says.
"Probably smell better, too," Johanna says. Enobaria doesn't say anything, but her small smile indicates this is probably true. "Gonna try the basement?" Johanna asks.
Enobaria shakes her head. "I think we better not risk it. We should stay the night in one of these apartments, and set off before dawn."
"Set off to where?" Peeta and Annie return from the stairwell at that moment, bags looking heavier.
"I don't know. Let's go upstairs and talk about it."
They go to the District 1 apartment, neutral territory, to discuss, and Enobaria opens a bottle of wine. Peeta shoots Enobaria a look, as if imbibing at a time like this was inappropriate, but Johanna understands. Drinking is just what you did in the Capitol when everything was shit. It was something to make things feel at least a little more normal. She would join Enobaria, but the pain in her head is reaching a new level. She is having trouble even following the conversation, and she can't even take a bite of the food Annie has dumped out of the cans for them.
So she lays on her side on one of the couches, arms curled around her head, wondering how she can take some of the morphling without the others noticing.
"We need to find a medic, or something," Enobaria says to Annie, once Johanna and Peeta are asleep. "She can't walk more than a couple miles, and he… I want to get Peeta help for whatever they've done to him."
Annie makes a face, and Enobaria expects her to protest, to defend Peeta, but she softens. "I agree. I haven't been feeling well, either. And Enobaria, you should get that wound looked at."
Enobaria doesn't know how Annie knows about the gash on her head, she thought she had cleaned it well enough with the spigot in her cell, and it was hidden under her hair. It was from one of the guards a couple weeks back, hitting her head on the leg of the table when she resisted too much. "You aren't feeling well?" she asks, changing the subject. It's easier to think about the others.
Annie shrugs. "Mostly this cough. But I'm also kind of woozy. I vomited when we were up in the 4 apartment earlier. I might have just pushed myself too hard as we escaped."
Enobaria sighs. There's no choice but to seek out a medic, she just has to trust that they wouldn't turn them over to the authorities, whoever was in charge now. "Ok, so we find a medic, and then District 2?"
Annie nods. They'd agreed on District 2 as their destination for various reasons. Enobaria because she wanted to go home, Annie because she thought the radio was saying that there was rebel activity concentrated there, so Finnick might be there. Peeta was coming along 'to find Katniss and teach her a lesson', though Enobaria hopes they could figure out how to set him right before they arrived, and Johanna had been sleeping through their discussion, so she hopes she'd agree to come along.
She wonders about that instinct, hoping Johanna would come along. She ought not to care - if Johanna wanted to go to 7, or anywhere else, it shouldn't matter to Enobaria. And yet, she wanted her to come. When Peeta had been ready to kill Johanna, Enobaria stepped in without even considering if Peeta was onto something: Johanna could have known about the bombing, really. Enobaria feels uncomfortable with this attachment, and to a rebel, no less. Cashmere would never let her live this down. But Cashmere is dead, she remembers with a sigh, killed by Johanna's axe.
"I'll listen on the radio, try to find somewhere for us to go." Annie stands and goes into one of the bedrooms, the one normally occupied by the escort. Johanna was asleep on the couch, and Peeta was sleeping in Gloss's old room. The tributes' rooms were available, but Enobaria goes into Cashmere's room, because that's where she had always slept, before.
It smells like Cashmere, faintly, and she falls onto the bed, pressing herself to the pillow. She can feel the tears hot on her cheeks before she realizes she's crying, and she tries to work out alternatives in her mind: ways that Cashmere could have survived, ways she could have avoided the prison, ways she didn't have to kill 5 men, ways to avoid being raped by Peacekeepers, ways the whole Quarter Quell didn't need to happen. It all comes back to Katniss winning the 74th Games, really, and for a brief moment she feels the rage Peeta feels, the desire to make Katniss understand what suffering she's caused, but she swallows it down, because she knows the Capitol's game. Snow is to blame, really, not a teenage girl who doesn't understand what a quagmire she's stepped into, something that was started decades earlier. She falls asleep in Cashmere's bed, and wakes up disoriented.
It's clear Johanna has found morphling from the way she's quiet and calm the next morning. Annie and Peeta might not recognize it, but Enobaria has been through too many cycles to not know the haze of a morphling high. "Eat," Enobaria says, pushing a protein bar at her. She's found Johanna won't eat anything that takes the effort of managing silverware, whether from her fatigue or pain or another reason, but she'll eat the bars pretty consistently.
Enobaria hears the shower turn off, and a few minutes later Annie emerges, hair wet. She's found a hair brush, and sits at the table, trying to work at some of the knots that remain in her hair. She does look a little green, now that she's pointed it out to Enobaria. Peeta is the last to join them, and he's also showered, but he's also cut his hair. There must have been a pair of scissors or battery-powered clippers in Gloss's bathroom. He looks more like his old self, except for the bruises and the weight loss.
"We should wear hoods, and sunglasses," Enobaria says, "We're too recognizable as Victors."
"Yeah, then we can just be 'suspicious characters'," Peeta says, more sarcastic than usual.
"It should be fine," Annie assures him. "We'll just look like we're trying to keep ash out of our eyes." Peeta doesn't argue anymore, and Enobaria wonders a little at how he will listen to Annie, of all of them, but she doesn't give it much thought. He is on board, and that's what she needs.
Enobaria glances at Johanna, but she remains silent in her spot on the couch. This isn't unexpected for someone on morphling, but it is Johanna, she has opinions about everything. "We're going to find a medic, and then we can set off towards District 2. On train if it's safe, on foot if it isn't. Alright?" she asks, making sure Johanna doesn't have her own, separate plan.
Johanna shrugs, nodding. "Makes sense. I mean, we don't know where District 13 is."
Enobaria feels her heart almost stop, before her pulse is hammering in her ears. She expects Peeta to make a move, but it is Annie who is crouched before Johanna, her voice desperate. "Johanna. What is District 13?"
But Johanna just shrugs, like Enobaria has seen her do a hundred times in the interrogations. "I don't know," she says, her voice the languid calm of morphling.
"What do you mean?" Annie asks. She puts her fingers on Johanna's chin, drawing her face to Annie's, making her look at her. "Why did you say that? Isn't District 13… gone?"
Johanna sighs, as if even thinking about this is exhausting, and maybe it is, under the influence of morphling. But there's a twitch in her face, or maybe a wince, and Enobaria wonders if she was asked the same question in interrogations. Perhaps she ought to intervene, but she feels rooted to the spot, her own curiosity winning.
"The hovercraft… the one that came first into the arena… the one that was supposed to take us all… it was from District 13."
"What?" Enobaria can't understand this, and she, too, moves closer. Johanna had said she didn't know anything about the bombing, but she had kept this secret?
"If Katniss and Finnick are alive, that's who got them out."
"What?!" Annie is almost hyperventilating now. "Where is it?"
"I don't know."
Annie grabs onto Johanna's shoulders, jostling her, and Johanna recoils, turning her face away as if Annie wasn't Annie but someone far more intimidating. "Explain!" Annie says, shrilly, desperately.
Johanna has her eyes screwed shut, and Enobaria wants to tell Annie to back up, that this feels too much like an interrogation, except Annie feels too volatile now, and wasn't this the woman who was kept in an insane asylum for years? And also, Enobaria wants to know, too. District 13 was a myth, it wasn't real. It was destroyed, and there was nothing left.
"I never met anyone from 13," Johanna says, her voice clipped. "I got all my information from Finnick, or Haymitch, or Mags. But the Games were always supposed to end early. Once the force-field broke, District 13 was going to send the hovercraft to grab the tributes who were still alive. At least the rebels. It was thought the loyalist tributes would be treated kindly by the Capitol." She turns her head, opening her eyes and looks at Enobaria. "Obviously, that was false."
"So that's where Finnick is? We need to go there!" Annie says.
At the same time Enobaria says, "Why now? Why did 13 wait until now?"
Johanna chooses to answer Enobaria. "I guess there's not many of them, but they thought they stood a chance of getting District support with the Mockingjay on their side. That's why protecting Katniss was the priority."
Enobaria sees Peeta nodding, and realizes he's been oddly silent for this whole conversation. "Did you know?" she asks. "Did you know about District 13?"
He shakes his head. "This all feels like a memory, or a dream. The plan, I mean. But I didn't know about District 13. I mean, it's not real, right? I just thought… someone was coming, at the end."
"What about Finnick?" Annie says. "If he's there, I'm not going to District 2."
"If the war is in 2, I'm sure 13 has mobilized," Enobaria points out, if they're even real, hanging on her breath. But she had seen both hovercrafts. There is no reason for her to doubt that what Johanna is saying is the truth.
Annie backs up from Johanna, her lips pursed. "I need to think. There's a makeshift clinic about a half mile east of here, according to the radio."
They pack up to leave, quieter and more guarded than before. Enobaria is replaying all the interrogations in her head, trying to remember what they asked Johanna, and what she had answered. She doesn't think District 13 ever came up, but she knows Finnick and Katniss did, and the end of the Games came up many times. How much pain and suffering could Johanna have avoided if she had just told them about it? Or perhaps, had she given them an inch, they would have thought she knew more, and asked about things she truly didn't know about, so the end result would be the same, except she had given up rebel secrets? It was impossible to say.
Annie walks with the others out of the Training Center, a scarf over her head, sunglasses and respirator on her face. Even so, she wonders if they will be recognized: a band of 3 women and 1 man who are obviously not Capitolites or soldiers, and she's nervous. She can't get captured again.
Her head is racing, wondering what to do. The plan is to go to District 2, but she wonders if she ought to try to go to District 13, wherever that is. She also wonders if there's more she doesn't know, secrets that the other 3 are keeping that she doesn't even know how to discover, because she has no idea what questions to ask.
Peeta walks beside her, his head on a swivel, and she can feel his adrenaline surging again. Enobaria and Johanna walk ahead, but they're not speaking, and Annie wonders if Enobaria feels betrayed by the secret of District 13, and a part of her hopes she does. It would serve her right for trusting Johanna so blindly.
They come upon the clinic, or at least, what Annie assumes is the clinic based on a red cross sign out front, but Enobaria stops a ways off, drawing back into an alley, watching. There's two Peacekeepers standing at the doors, rifles in their hands. "We can't go there," she says.
Annie is inclined to agree. But in truth, she needs to go somewhere. She feels queasy and unwell, and she knows she can't go to District 2 or District 13 until she sees someone for medical attention. It feels like it's been ages, but it's really only been two or three days since she shot a man and they escaped the days and days of horror inside that prison.
They draw back further into the alley, and it's a little scary just how quiet it is in the Capitol, with absolutely no one around walking or driving or even opening a window. So Annie is startled when someone taps her shoulder from behind, and she freezes, thinking it will be a Peacekeeper. It's a woman, and she realizes after a moment that it's an Avox. She has auburn hair and freckles, and she hands Annie a paper. 'Do you need help? Come with me.'
"Medical help?" She asks. "My friends and I are hurt, and ill, and need help, but we can't go near the Peacekeepers," she says. She feels a pinch on the back of her arm, probably Johanna.
The Avox nods, and then takes a pen and writes on the back of the paper. 'Yes, please follow me.'
It isn't lost on Annie how even in the bombing of the Capitol, it's the Avox who helps her, and the Peacekeepers and Capitolites who turn her away. She follows the woman to a basement under one of the townhouses in the alley, and they enter quietly, and she sees the place is lit up with actual electricity, and Annie is so grateful to see it she doesn't even care how they've worked it out.
There's a television playing in the one corner, just a small one, but she can't watch it, as more Avox come to check on them. She sees a couple other people on stretchers, and she sees them using hand signals, and realizes that the Avox are forced to take care of their own, that they were rejected from the regular clinic.
"Tell me what's wrong," the woman writes, pulling Annie aside. The same woman that led them inside takes over her care, and others check on Enobaria and Johanna and Peeta. She wants to explain about Peeta, but she thinks she might be sick again, so she focuses on herself first. "My name is Aspen."
"I'm Annie," she says, taking off the sunglasses, then the respirator and scarf. "I was kept prisoner underground since the Games. How long has that been?"
Aspen does the math, and tells her it's been just over a month. Annie's heart drops, realizing how many days she spent in that cell, and how long she's been apart from Finnick. "I… know I need to eat and drink more, but I just don't feel right. I am nauseous, and kind of unsteady, and something is wrong."
Aspen nods, and draws a curtain around where she's sitting with Annie. It's makeshift, just a bedsheet clipped to a pipe on the ceiling, but it gives them a bit of privacy. Then, she writes down her plan. "Water with salt for rehydration. Vitals check. Daily vitamins. Pregnancy test."
Annie supposes it's a bit much to expect the Avox to have blood tests or anything fancy at their makeshift basement clinic, but she doesn't expect the only test she's offered to be a pregnancy test. "What? No, I'm not-" But the words die on her lips, because there is a chance, albeit a small one. Right in the beginning, in the first week, they had raped her, after all.
The Avox understands her lack of protest as consent and gets the things she's written. And an hour later, Annie's drank about a liter of salty water, taken a vitamin supplement and packed away the bottle to take with her, gotten her blood pressure, weight, and pulse checked, and peed on a stick.
Aspen nods at her to come look, but Annie already knows the result. It was like knowing she would be called for the Games before the escort even reached into the reaping ball. As soon as pregnancy was a possibility, she knew it was true. She was having a baby, and it wasn't Finnick's. No, it belonged to a Peacekeeper who was now dead, an evil man who assaulted her and Enobaria, who tortured Johanna and brainwashed Peeta. She checks the test to confirm her suspicions, and then she takes a long exhale, trying to remain calm. Hold your breath. Stomp three times. Tap your fingers on your chest. She knows it upsets Finnick when she can't control those urges, when she shows the world why they keep her locked up in the Ward, but she can't help it right now.
"Do you want to keep it?" Aspen writes.
Annie nods. There's no other choice in her mind. Aspen gives her a second bottle, this one full of ginger root, for her to take with her. "For the nausea," she explains. Annie wonders where she got all this, and wonders where they are. Below a pharmacy, maybe, or maybe someone had stolen from an actual hospital. Either way, she's grateful.
She thanks Aspen for the help and goes to find the others. She passes a man with burns to his face, and a woman sleeping or sedated with a cast all up her leg. Johanna is sleeping as well, with Enobaria sitting beside her. Enobaria has a bandage on her head, at least, and Johanna has some sort of IV running into her wrist, and a salve on the little scabs all over her face and chest.
So Annie sits beside Peeta, because this was the place for her, really. She had thought maybe she'd find a kindred spirit in Enobaria, as they were both Careers, but Enobaria was too strict, too unflinching and it didn't work for Annie, who was always wondering about the other option, always wavering back and forth. And she thought perhaps she could get along with Johanna, since Finnick liked Johanna, but she just can't, because Johanna represents secrets about Finnick that she isn't privy to, and if she never sees Finnick again, she thinks she might just blame Johanna.
But Peeta is like her in a lot of ways. Neither of them knows the Capitol well. Annie was kept away from it through Finnick's intercession, and Peeta never had a chance to mentor. He's gentler than the other two as well, his only kill in the Games a mercy kill, and hers was a mutt. Enobaria and Johanna bond over the years of misery they had in the Capitol before the Quarter Quell, so she feels herself drawn to Peeta over the fact that neither of them have that shared past, that they both are outsiders in this way. And that they're missing their other halves: Finnick and Katniss.
Peeta is resting, his blood being pumped through a high-tech looking machine. "What is this?" she asks the Avox who is nearby, watching the numbers on the machine's screen and writing things down.
He looks at Annie and then finds a scrap piece of paper, scribbling out an explanation. "This is a dialysis machine. We're trying to filter the poison from his blood."
She thinks it's fascinating that they've manage to figure out he's been poisoned, and that they have a machine capable of correcting it. She wants to ask so many more questions, but she lets the Avox work and she waits, quietly, for Peeta to wake up.
Peeta wakes up in a daze, his arms thrashing. It's dark, and his limbs feel like lead. There's a man beside him with dark skin and glasses who is giving him a calming gesture with his hands. He holds up a whiteboard that says, "Be calm. At the clinic. My name is Ulysses."
"Ulysses, what happened to me?"
The man licks his lips, nervous. Peeta looks beside him to see Annie sleeping on the cot next to him, and the whole rest of the infirmary resting or moving quietly in the dark. He waits as the man, obviously an Avox, scribbles another message. "You were poisoned. We filtered your blood. The toxin is gone, but it messed with your mind, so you'll have to work through your memories."
The man nods at a large machine beside Peeta, obviously the thing that did the filtering. He feels nervous, sort of unreal. He wants to believe this man, really, but he doesn't know where he is, or who he's working for. For all he knows, these people just turned him into a mutt, just like Katniss. He can feel himself getting more and more agitated, and doesn't even know what he wants to say. "You're lying!" he accuses, too loudly in the quiet room.
Annie rouses, her hand on his shoulder in a moment. "Hey," she says. "Ulysses took care of you all day today. And I watched to make sure he didn't do anything malicious," she assures him. This shouldn't be that reassuring. They could be working together, Annie and the Avox, and even if they aren't he barely knows Annie. But he can feel himself calm down a bit at her words, at the knowledge that there was someone looking out for him, and that she watched to make sure he was alright. He nods.
Ulysses stands, but writes one more message on the board. "Read this over, if you can't sleep, and call me if you need me." He hands Peeta a pamphlet and leaves.
Annie sits in the chair beside his bed and holds his hand. It's nice to have someone touch him in a gentle way, and he squeezes back. "Are you alright?" he asks her.
She shakes her head. "I'm pregnant, Peeta."
"What? How?"
She averts her gaze, staring at the bedsheet beside him. "In the beginning, two of the guards, they…" She trails off, but he gets the idea. "It just happened once, but I guess it was enough."
"I'm sorry, Annie."
"How are you feeling?" she asks, her fingers tapping a little on the back of his hand.
He shrugs. He's tired, certainly, but it's good to know that he's no longer got poison in his system. "Is this really alright?" he asks her. "Are we safe?"
She leans in closer, her voice a whisper in his ear. "I was talking to Ulysses earlier, and he said that machine for your blood used to be Snow's. That he knew how to clean the poison from blood because he had to do it for Snow. And that he doesn't have to do it right now, because Snow is dead."
It takes all of Peeta's restraint not to cry out, so he bites his tongue in shock. "What? You can't be serious." Snow was inevitable. There was no way he had died. Even if the bombs had destroyed his mansion, he had to have a forewarning, a way to get to the tunnels, or a hovercraft, a way to make sure he continues to rule Panem.
Annie nods, though. "I mean, the news hasn't admitted it, or the radio, but why else hasn't he made an appearance yet? They can't cover it up much longer, I don't think." She sighs. "You should sleep some more. Enobaria wants to move in the morning."
Peeta tries to sleep, but he is too wide awake with the revelation that Snow is dead. Had Katniss done it? Had the secret District 13 done it? He opens the pamphlet in his hands, titled "Resist: Understanding the Lies of the Capitol" and reads through it.
The Capitol is full of lies, and it can feel impossible to remember what is Right and True. Follow these guidelines to determine the Truth for yourself:
1. Recount everything you can, in order. Write it down. Ask witnesses to fill in missing events. Don't let them erase or change your past.
2. Find more than one source. Check the radio, the television, the newspaper, and eyewitness accounts. The Capitol can try to cover up as much of their wrongdoing as possible, but they cannot possibly cover all of their tracks.
3. Make friends and allies, and share information. Be truthful with your friends, and share your concerns with them. Trust that they will do the same. We cannot succeed if we are all paranoid of each other.
4. The Capitol may cut out your tongue, or take away your power, but it cannot completely silence us. Think about why they want you to be hidden. You are a threat to their lies.
5. Help other people. The Capitol continues to maintain its lies by hurting and separating people. If you can help people and build a community, you can restore some balance, and spread the Truth.
He reads the pamphlet three times over, then lays awake for another hour, trying to remember everything in order. It's no use, he has to write it down, so he takes a piece of paper and pen from where they're sitting on the filtering machine and starts right away, from his birth to the Quarter Quell, and whenever he hits a blank or something that doesn't make sense, he skips over it, figuring he can ask in the morning.
But when he does wake, it's to shouting, and he is on high alert immediately. The Avox have backed off, to the other side of the clinic, and Johanna is awake now, confusion and horror on her face as she talks to Annie.
"You can't possibly be considering keeping it?" she asks.
"I don't see how this is any of your business," Annie shoots back.
"Annie, be reasonable," Enobaria tries, her voice at a normal volume.
"I am reasonable! It's reasonable that I'm allowed to keep it if I want to!"
"No, it's completely fucked," Johanna says, shaking her head. "But you are insane, aren't you?"
"Hey, let's all calm down," Peeta says, coming to stand between them. "Annie can do what she wants, and we can't afford to be fighting right now."
Enobaria rolls her eyes, and Johanna smirks. "Oh, do you have a crush on Annie? I have bad news for you, Peeta. She's head over heels for Finnick, and she's pregnant with a sadist's baby!"
Now Annie does move towards Johanna, but Peeta holds her back. She's warm, charged with anger, and she smells nice. He wonders if he does like her, a little. There's something there, a gentleness about her that is lost with Enobaria and Johanna, and he appreciates that she's there with him. If it was just the other two, he would feel like he is drowning, buffeted along with Enobaria's orders and Johanna's sarcasm. With Annie, he feels like he has someone in his corner, at least. He knows why she's keeping the baby, or at least he thinks he understands.
He thinks it's because there's nothing here. All the buildings are razed, they walked past dozens of corpses, and they were afraid for their own lives every day in that prison. Even before that, there was the Games, where death was offered freely and almost too easily. It felt too horrible to end a life, just for the unfortunate fact of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. How could they just choose to end a life?
He knows Johanna could, and Enobaria could as well. Katniss probably could, from his memories, unclear as they are. He doesn't know if he's a better person, or just weaker. But he knows he and Annie are different, somehow.