CHAPTER fifty-four|MESSED UP

Ruelle~ game of survival
❝Are we the hunters? Or are we the pray?❞

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HOSPITAL ROOMS HAD always been something that I never understood- they were always so strangely calm and organised even when the people inside were the most unorganized people in the world. Katniss was completely the opposite of her clean and rather unimportant room and yet this was the room that she had been in for hours on end without so much as a glimpse into the chaos that was unfolding outside. Maybe they didn't want her to have to worry about it; I thought it was because she was too busy staring at her hands.

Her long hair was down for the first time in a while, infact I didn't think that I had seen her with her hair down at all before, and her bed as covered in a pale blue blanket and two pillows. The walls were cream, dirtied while being still white, and while the tiles did not hang off the walls it still felt like they were not quite on the stone as the room shaked with intensity. Not exactly comfortable, but nothing in 13 was ever comfortable.

She hasn't looked at me since I entered, not until the doctor left and she was left alone to sit up and stretch her tired arms. Then she looked at me for the first time, that was also when she thought it was ok to speak.

"How did we get here?" Katniss asked in a gravely voice that was half asleep. She seemed defeated, her dark eyes were drooping to the floor like they were being weighed down by boulders.

"Honestly, I don't know." I replied solemnly.

I didn't, that might of been because of my memory loss but I thought that it was something that ran deeper than that, I thought that this uncertainty came form a stupid form of youth. I was still young, barely an adult, and yet it was up to me and someone not much older to control the fate of a whole state. We had been trying our best- that much was obvious- but even we needed to be kids once in a while. She needed a mother to hold her tight, or a father that would tell her what to do and yet as Katniss looked at me I could be neither.

"I never wanted this. I wanted change, but I also wanted to be a child." I crossed my arms over my chest.

"I remember before my dad-" Katniss began before she seemed to catch herself. She looked at me as if she was assessing whether I was worth the knowledge that she had; something in her told her that I was someone that would benefit from knowing.

"It was my birthday. We were so poor then- I woke up expecting my dad to already be gone for an extra shift at the mine, but he was there. He took me to the woods to hunt- I remember wishing that I could grow up and be like him. All I wanted was to be old enough to be an adult and be able to work; I guess I got what I wished for."

Katniss' voice never wavered. I noticed that when she was saying something personal, the raven haired girl would talk in a whisper with such a flat voice that she almost seemed like a robot. I didn't know why, her story had so much importance intertwined with it.

"My dad was no good at hunting." I muttered. "He could hardly hold a knife right. He would just tell me to breathe and do what my mum said."

I jumped when the curtain that hung from the ceiling was ripped back harshly. The noise was so loud compared to our voices that it made my ears flinch; I looked at Katniss instead of whoever pulled the translucent material back so harshly as she seemed to panic into a seated position.

"Well there she is, the Mockingjay" A sarcastic voice rang out in the most perfectly irritated way possible. It caught me off guard, I had not heard that voice in what felt like a lifetime.

"Johanna." I breathed out a sigh as I said her name, she turned to me with just as much shock as I had painted over my own face.

She looked terrible. Her head was shaved bald- she wore clothes that were so baggy that I could not even see the curve of her hips or chest anymore, and yet she was still the most intimidating woman that I had ever seen. Beautiful, shaken up so much that she shed a tear as she wandered over to touch a strand of my blonde hair.

"Shit Titan." Johanna acknowledged. "I thought Snow had rebooted you. Nobody told me anything, and then they broadcasted that speech you did in Two and I was so angry at Finnick for not telling me. I saw you collapse and-"

Johanna closed her eyes for a second and then fell limply onto Katniss' bed to snatch the needle from her arm. She stuck it into her own skin before she opened her eyes again but by then she had turned away from me to look at The Girl On Fire; her tear was wiped away quicker than my heartbeat.

"You don't mind do you?" She asked Katniss. " They cut of my supply of morphine, there's this head doctor that comes in and sees me everyday try'na help me adjust to reality like some-"

She tapped the medicine beside the bed as if it had failed to turn on like it was supposed to- Katniss and I didn't stop her.

"Some guy from this rabbits warren actually knows anything about my reality."

If there was anything that I understood, it was the feeling if dread within me when I talked to somebody that thought U were crazy. Not Dr. Granger, but there seemed to be rooms inundated with people that were convinced that I had become psychotic. As my oldest friend took a moment to soak up the drugs I took her hand in mine for comfort, she squeezed back until my hand became more white.

"At least 20 times in a session he tells me that I'm totally safe; safe from the Capitol; safe from Snow. What about you Mockingjay, feeling totally safe?"

"Until I got shot." Katniss replied dryly and with half as much friendliness as before.

"Oh please, the bullet didn't even touch you. Cinna saw to that, of course your costume would be bullet proof, Lorna was is more danger than you. So what are your injuries?"

Katniss explained her damaged as if it was nothing compared to what she had faced, and in a climate such as this one it was wise not to dwell on the bruises or cuts that were survivable. We were Victors, to us bruises were papercuts and broken ribs were scrapes on the stone floor; she mentioned her lung as if she had just bitten her nail too close to the skin.

"Well I'm surprised they didn't find you a new lung, well I mean I've got two do you want one of mine?"

"Jo." I warned her when she had gone too far. She talked to the girl as if she was a brat that was waiting for a new toy that hadn't even come out yet when in realisty, she was nothing like that. She didn't want anything like what she was given- she didn't ask to be in the middle of a war, none of us did.

"What? Lorna if that guy took a shot at you then you would of died, but it's everyone's job to keep her alive."

"Is that why you hate me?" Katniss asked.

"Partly. You're also a little hard to swallow, the whole tacky romance drama and the defender of the hopeless act - even though it's not an act- which makes it even more unbearable. Feel free to take any of this personally."

"You should of been the mockingjay, nobody has to tell you what to say."

They bickered like there wasn't a war outside the hospital room, or perhaps they bickered just because there was one that raged on so violently that it ruined whatever it was that the two had in comman in the first place. While they did I took the time to think about what she had said- I could of died in front of District Two just a day ago and I was not even thinking about it. I hadn't noticed that I could of died without giving people the answers that they had wanted from me- Finnick would of been left because I thought that I had more time.

If there was anything that I knew, it was that time was relative and in no way certain.

Johanna stopped talking to Katniss to pick up everything on her desk to mock, until she saw the pearl that Peeta had given her in the area. The shiney ball seemed to make her anger faulter for a moment as if she is finally remembered that it wasn't jus6 her that had lost everything because of Snow. The pearl was so small that I had missed it on the desk beside the bed; the last time that I saw that pearl was when me and Finnick were fighting too, and I was almost killed the next day.

"It's from Peeta." Johanna recognised it almost instantly.

"Yeah." Katniss looked away from us both after she glanced at me, and then Johanna finally seemed to remember who else was with us in that arena.

"Finnick told me what he said to you Lorna, he told me that you finally realised that you hated him." Johanna spoke so quietly that I almost didn't hear her. It burned my chest, I felt like all the food that I had eaten over the last couple of days was lodged in the back of my throat so that I couldn't swallow.

"I don't know Jo, I can't trust myself anymore."

Katniss looked back then, as if she was just hearing about why Finnick was not with me when I showed up to visit her. She looked sad, and I came to realise as I looked around the room that we all did.

"They messed us up pretty good didn't they." Johanna sighed.

"No." I muttered. "We did this to ourselves, he just made it worse."

•••••••••••
1776 words.

I'm so sorry for the trash.

JOHANNA KNOWS JUST HOW TO SUM IT ALL UP DOESN'T SHE. uhh poor Lorna, but I've got something really happy happening soon I promise to make you all feel better after reading my depressing book. It can't be this sad forever, right?

I just wanted to say one last big thank you to wtflangdons for the awesome gifs she made me, one of which is for this series and I love it. LOOK AT BBY FINNICK!!!