Chapter Text
Start with the things you know, her doctor said once.
My name is Katniss Everdeen. My home is District 12. I won the Hunger Games at 14. I went back in at 15. We broke the arena. The Capitol took Peeta. We got him back. We fought a war. We won. I killed Coin. Now I’m here.
Katniss shudders and wraps frail arms around bony knees. How long has she been here? It could have been months, it could have been years. All she knows is that they have held her here for a very long time.
They being some crazy Coin fanatics—Coinists, they called themselves. They’d arrested her right after she killed Coin. In all the chaos, she’d lost sight of Haymitch and Plutarch.
It’s a mistake she’s still paying for.
Katniss shifts, barely noticing the chain attached to her ankle. They’re probably not even needed anymore; she doubts she’d be able to stand, let alone leave.
The frigid air bites through her thin dress and she shivers violently, trying to warm herself. It doesn’t work, though.
The door at her back opens slowly, its hinges creaking.
Katniss slams her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to see what’s being dragged in.
Not for the first time, she wishes for her old nightmares to return, since nothing can possibly be worse than what—who—they’re bringing to her.
“I hope you had a nice sleep, Katniss, since we’ve got a busy day today,” one of the Coinists says as something heavy is dropped in front of her.
When she doesn’t respond, he kicks her roughly directly in an old stab wound.
Pain explodes outward and she instinctively curls in on herself further, a tiny noise escaping her despite her best efforts. She bites her tongue until tangy blood floods her mouth. Still, she keeps her eyes shut.
“Open your eyes, Katniss. We brought you a gift,” another Coinist says, cupping Katniss’s chin gently and tipping it up. She snarls when Katniss refuses to obey. “Open your eyes, you little shit,” she orders again, punching Katniss in the temple.
Katniss frantically shakes her head and tries to make herself smaller. “N-no,” she whispers roughly as tears seep through her eyelids and down her bruised face.
Jeering laughter surrounds her. There are at least four of them today. She flinches as loud footsteps approach, making them laugh louder.
“Did she just say no to us?” a new voice asks. The person grabs her matted hair and yanks. It’s so tangled with blood, sweat, and tears that she’ll have to shave it completely if she ever gets out.
Katniss cries out and rises to lessen the pain, only to collapse under her own weight. Her hands connect hard with stone and she hisses.
“Katniss.”
No. Not him. Marcus is the worst of them all: he hits hardest and is the most creative in his torture sessions. He’s observant, always remembering to twist the knife just so to force screams from her chapped lips.
At his cold voice, Katniss flinches and whimpers pathetically. She stops fighting against the hand in her hair and stills. She tenses as Marcus’s cold hand grips her chin harshly, his blunt nails digging uncomfortably in her skin.
“Open your eyes, Katniss,” he says calmly. “Or I will make you.”
And she knows he will, probably with a knife. Knives are his weapon of choice—he talks to them as he carves her like a turkey.
Hesitantly, Katniss opens her eyes and immediately meets Peeta’s gaze. His stocky, muscular form has shrivelled to nothing but skin and bone. His hair is greasy and limp, framing his skeletal face.
“Peeta,” Katniss chokes out. “Please, God, no. Not you. Not you.”
“Katniss,” Peeta breathes in horror. He reaches up and wipes a tear from her face. “What have they done to you?”
Katniss can’t hide the horror in her voice as she says, “Nothing that they won’t do to you.”
Peeta’s eyes fill with tears. “Don’t worry about me, sweetheart,” he says gently. “I know what’s going to happen.”
Marcus grabs Peeta and shoves his ankle into a cuff attached to a chain. “Sit still and be quiet or I’ll slit the Mockingjay’s throat,” he says, then turns to face Katniss.
Katniss shudders as he rolls a tray over to her. Metal tools rattle ominously as the tray comes to a stop in front of her.
“Alright, you know the drill,” he says. “Pick a tool, Katniss.”
Katniss shakes her head. “N-no,” she whispers. “Please, no.”
She whimpers as Marcus crouches in front of her. A harsh hand grabs her hair and forces her head back as the cool steel of a knife is pressed to her throat.
“You forget that you don’t have a choice, dear Mockingjay,” Marcus says in her ear, his breath hot against her neck. “Don’t you remember our deal? You’re going to choose a tool or I will bomb every single district to the ground.”
Katniss covers her head with her hands, trying to hide. “No!” she begs. “I can’t! Please don’t make me!”
Marcus kicks her. She cries out as a rib cracks. “You’ll choose a tool and you’ll choose it now,” he orders.
Katniss starts to cry. “P-please,” she sobs. “I c-can’t. Please d-don’t make me. Please n-no, not Peeta—”
“Choose a tool now, damnit!” Marcus barks, fed up with her sobbing.
Weeping, shuddering, Katniss obeys. She grabs the first tool her hand touches and presents it to him.
“Good choice, Katniss,” Marcus says. He points to another Coinist. “You—grab a chair.”
Katniss is crying too hard to see which tool is in her hand, but she knows the weight of every single tool on the tray. She’s been forced to use them on her loved ones so many times that she thinks she’d recognize the tools in her sleep.
It’s a mallet.
And she’s going to use it on Peeta. And he’s going to scream and Katniss is going to know that it’s her fault, that Peeta is screaming by her hand—
Vomit crawls up her esophagus and Katniss twists to the side to puke on Marcus’s shoes.
He roars and stomps on her hand, making her cry out. She screams and fights as he drags her to where Peeta is cuffed to a chair and forces her bruised fingers to curl around the mallet.
Katniss groans and harshly bites her lip to silence herself as tears slide down Peeta’s face. Why inflict even more pain on him?
“Let me explain what’s going to happen, Peeta,” Marcus says. “You’re going to be in a world of pain. Your girlfriend’s going to deal the first blow. Then, when the time comes, she’ll kill you and put you in the Corner.”
Marcus points to the Corner that contains a pile of corpses. They’re not just any corpses, though. No, these corpses are all that remain of her loved ones.
Peeta chokes on a sob, his eyes fixated on the Corner.
Despite knowing what a terrible idea it is, Katniss looks too. She’s greeted by several familiar faces.
Sometimes, when Katniss fights the Coinists, she’ll be chained in the Corner. Sometimes it’s for a few hours. Sometimes it’s for a few days.
No matter how long she’s in the Corner, it is by far the worst torture inflicted on her. Each corpse had been perfectly preserved so Katniss is forced to remember her part in their deaths.
Whenever she’s in the Corner, another part of her dies.
Finnick had survived the mutts from the Capitol’s sewer, only to die here. In a cruel sense of irony, he’d been drowned. Slowly.
(Marus forcing her to hold Finnick’s head underwater. Finnick’s limbs flailing desperately as he fights against her hold. Finnick’s thrashing slowing and stilling. Performing CPR until he starts breathing again. Gently stroking his face as he opens his eyes.
Katniss shoving his head back under.)
But not before being forced to watch as his and Annie’s baby was ripped from Annie’s stomach.
(Marcus forcing her shaking hand around a scalpel that slowly descends upon Annie’s stomach. Annie and Finnick screaming and begging her to stop.
Katniss not stopping.)
Next to him is Gale. Arrows stick out of his body randomly. One of his own snares loops around his ankle and holds him upside-down above a dried pool of blood.
(Rough rope chafing her hands as she manipulates it to form a very familiar snare. Marcus’s hands on hers as she draws and aims a bow. Tears streaming down her face as she releases arrow after arrow. Gale begging for her to kill him.
Katniss finally aiming for his eye.)
Johanna’s head is in Gale’s pool of blood. Her limbs had been chopped off with an axe. They’re scattered around the Corner and among the corpses.
(Gently kissing Johanna’s limbs before chopping them off. Screams turning to wails as a red-hot axe is pressed against wounds to cauterize them. Johanna asking if the torture is done as Katniss positions the axe over her neck.
Johanna murmuring, “Thank you, Brainless” as Katniss swings down.)
Johanna’s torso is on a metal bed frame. When Katniss is in the Corner long enough to sleep, she’s cuffed to the bed frame and forced to cuddle the torso like it’s a pillow.
What’s left of Effie’s face peeks out from under the bed frame like the monster under a child’s bed. Her face is contorted in agony, mouth wide open in a scream that was cut off. She’d been given a makeover—chemicals had been applied to her face like makeup and her hair was brutally sheared off.
(Her hand shaking as she dips a makeup brush into a green powder. Effie screaming as the brush touches skin. Effie’s skin blistering as more chemicals are applied.)
Katniss’s mother is on an operating table, covered in burns and sloppy stitches. Marcus had cut her, over and over again, and forced Katniss to stitch her up.
(Marcus dragging a scalpel across her mother’s skin. Tears running down her face as she desperately tries to stitch her mother up.
Sometimes giving up and cauterizing the wound instead.)
Katniss is snapped back to reality when Marcus backhands her.
Marcus’s hand covers her own over the handle of the mallet. He raises the mallet over Peeta’s arm and chuckles darkly into her ear. “Let’s see how long Lover Boy lasts, shall we?”
The mallet swings down.