I can still hear the screams.

They never end, they leave a permanent ring that echoes in my ears and every second I have to remind myself that they aren't real.

But they were.

I can still smell the blood, that ugly metallic scent that hangs in the air. The scent that I know means a new kill, everywhere around me.

Surrounding death.

I can still feel the hopelessness. Not only for myself, but for the innocent people trapped around me. The innocence that wasn't acknowledged or thought of for one second when they died. I don't dare try to think of the maze of confusion that is my mind.

My eyes burn, I can never shut them. I can't handle the darkness. Haunted thoughts come by as fast as a blink.

My skin is still cold, the chill from the moist air in that cell never left it. I always look down at my hands and realize that they'd been shaking without me knowing. I try to focus on the pace of my breathing while the memories of past experiences are still fresh. They were smart enough to bring me into an empty white room with only a hospital bed to occupy it. I never checked, but I know that the door is locked. My wrists and ankles are tied up in fabricated chains that are connected to the sides of the bed. I'm strapped down onto the mattress, my waist, wrists, and ankles are tied down tightly. It's just like when I was fished out of the arena, just like the weeks I spent in an underground hell. Trapped.

I don't pay attention to the time anymore, what's the point? After hours of attempted rest, doctors come in to give me medication that soothes my turbulent emotions and heals my recent wounds. I can still feel the rage and confusion somewhere deep inside me, it's like a raging animal trapped in a cage, ready to devour everything and anything. The doctors and nurses are always trying to help me, or so they say. Most of the time I focus my eyes away from any movement and I try to think back at what memories could've been tampered with while trying to ignore the horrifying ones. But it's hard. Those seem to be the ones I remember the most. Human interaction is the last thing I want.

"Peeta?"

My eyes flicker to the left, one of the nurses, I believe her name is Claire, stands by the bed a couple feet away. She sounds friendly.

No, she could be tricking me with some fake voice and a fake smile, just because I'm so desperate for safety doesn't mean I should trust so easily. Don't look at her, anything could remind me of something from that prison. No risks, no trust.

"Peeta, are you alright?" She asks, concerned. I can find no trace of any threat in her tone.

My voice comes out in a hoarse whisper.

"Yeah."

She walks closer, and I turn my head away even more.

"Do you need to talk about it?" She asks slowly, as if I were a child.

I can hear her kneel by the bed and feel her searching for my eyes. I get a slight glimpse of her blonde hair and dull nurse uniform.

"No." I answer clearly.

She moves just a little closer, obviously ignoring my answer.

"We can help you Peeta. It'll all be easier if you let us help you."

She gently rests her hand on my arm, I make the mistake in casting a sideways glance toward her direction. She's looking at me with a pitied look, her grey eyes widened with concern and alert.

Grey eyes... the Seam... District 12... gone... Katniss...

Fear prickles at my senses while anger rises to my throat. My heart pumps hard against my chest, and my breathe hitches violently. After a sudden sharp intake of breathe, Claire flinches back.

"Peeta, please... calm down, we don't wish to harm you." I hear her say.

Then there's a heavy silence that follows. My arms shake fearfully and my angry rugged voice breaks the silence,

"I don't need... your help..."

Claire stands up and looks at me in the eyes, maintaining her gentle and friendly voice,

"You can't fully recover if you don't at least-"

"I SAID... NO... GET AWAY FROM ME... JUST GET AWAY..."

Claire whips back the second my voice breaks into a shout. She swings open the doors and disappears.

Just like my family. Gone. Only they disappeared from my life forever.

I'm left alone again, feeling sorry for my bitterness. It seems like they really are trying to help, and I'm scaring them away. What if they come to the conclusion that I'm hopeless, then what would they do?

-

Eventually they connect a tube that can dispense a knock-out drug into me for every time I lose control, it becomes a permanent thing like the restraints. After many unsuccessful attempts to reach me, the head of my recovery team, Dr. Salvo, is the one who finally gets me to cooperate.

She told me that they expect nothing from me, they only want to help me. She also asked me if I even wanted to get better, and I of course said yes. She then asked me exactly what I wanted help with, and it took me a moment to think about it. I told her that I wanted my memories back, the real ones, and I wanted to be normal again instead of some unstable maniac.

"We can only help you with the memories we have recordings of." She told me, "And we will help you only if you cooperate."

So I told her I would.

There were weeks of treatment and therapy, many doctors came in to talk to me. At first there were many uneasy sessions where they made me recall every moment in the Capitol. I didn't want to, but they said reflecting the memories would restore my sense of control and reduce the powerful hold they have on me. They also said it would help me work through any feelings of guilt, mistrust, and self-blame I have. These sessions are supposed to help me cope with the flashbacks, sometimes they're still too powerful, but I think I can feel improvement. They seem to see improvement too, at some point they finally let me hold my own eating utensils, whereas before they probably thought I would try to attack someone with them.

I could only retell the events in the Capitol once, I couldn't relive it all more than once. I told them the things I could remember, even the bizarre things. I didn't tell them everything though, some things I didn't want to repeat. In the end they said that a lot of what I remember could be hallucinations, since the Capitol always gave me a daily dose of tracker jacket venom, the side effects are severe enough to trick me. I asked them if there was a way to figure out what was real and what was not, they said only I could tell because it's my own mind.

Truthfully, I don't know how to tell what is a hallucination and what's not, but I didn't ask them about it again, they probably would've made me repeat the entire story again.

It seemed like after every session, they would prescribe me with a new medication and assign another "mind exercise." Then they would remind me that I'm safe and leave. I was never calm in every single session, sometimes I could keep it together while other times the memories brought back uncontrollable emotions that arise from strong anxiety and fear. I didn't think the therapy sessions were overall useless.

The one thing they helped me with the most was my thoughts about Katniss.

I don't know if it was the medications, the therapy, or both, but they convinced me that every life-threatening thought or memory I had of her was fake. When I looked back at them, they all seemed so blatantly unreal. Somehow I knew I could trust my judgement. Even though I knew she wasn't a killer mutation, I didn't know how to feel about her now. Whatever I felt for her before I was in the Capitol is long gone. Maybe the angry and fearful thoughts I had before aren't completely gone, the effect they had on my emotions certainly aren't gone.

Everything about her is a question. Her intentions, her beliefs, her feelings...

They started to help me with the fake memories by showing me recordings of what really happened. All they had were clips from both Games and interviews before and after them. They all seemed to be what I could remember, the only difference was that they didn't have some dark, bizarre twist. The only thing I couldn't rule out was again, Katniss and her intentions.

I distinctly remember her attacking me after I confessed my love for her on live television. Wouldn't she be flattered after something like that? Then, during the Games, she tried to kill me. She dropped a Tracker Jacker nest on the Career camp that I was rested in. For a moment I'm confused at my own intentions, after she tried to kill me, I saved her life and risked my own afterwards. I have to constantly remind myself that I was playing out a love act, but then I think again, it wasn't an act though, not on my part anyway.

Then there was the long day of me dragging myself around on my injured leg, I remember being so sure that I would die at any moment. If someone came running out of the trees I wouldn't be able to outrun them or even stand long enough to fight. The dehydration and starvation was taking its toll on me, but before it could finish me off, Katniss showed up.

I wasn't at all threatened. But why did she go back for me? She must've thought she owed me after I saved her life. Then the long days in the cave. She cared for me, it didn't look like it was through love and concern, her odd focus looked like it was coming from something else. This goes for the kissing as well, her expressions do not look genuine as mine do, it's something I can't understand. Then the berries, another thing I don't understand, why would she want to keep me alive? She didn't love me, not really. I remember now that she flat-out admitted to me after the Games that it was all an act on her part.

I just couldn't understand.

One day, they decided to try something new with my rehabilitation. They showed me a clip of Katniss and I in the cave, when she tells me a story about her sisters goat. Throughout the story, I started to feel more and more drowsy. Some soothing feeling ran through my veins, it was so strong that I couldn't think straight at all, my vision was dizzy and blurred, and I couldn't even open my mouth to speak. When I could finally speak again, I croaked out a simple question,

"What happened to the goat?"

-

After what seemed like forever, they finally removed the restraints. Even though the door to my room is still locked, I have a new reliving feeling of freedom. That same day, one of the nurses informed me that the next part of my treatment was interactive,

"One of the best ways to overcome the scary thoughts is to channel it into something else, like your hobbies. Delly tells us that you always decorated the cakes at your bakery. There's a big event coming up that we'd love for you to help frost the cakes for." She said.

"What's the big event?" I asked.

"Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta are getting married."

I didn't feel as happy as I would've been before.

All I'd felt about Finnick after the Quarter Quell was betrayal because he'd been one of the tributes who had been in District 13 while I was in the Capitol. All he'd done in the Games, saving my life, being my ally, it was only to keep Katniss as an ally as well. Without her, none of them would've bothered with me. I was more angry about it when I was isolated in that cold cell in Capitol, but now I feel a little selfish about it, I try to wave it off, I shouldn't feel selfish about this. He was following the rebels plan, and didn't tell me about it, then I was left to die as the arena blew up.

As for Annie, I never knew her. All I knew was that she was a mad girl from District 4 that Finnick was in love with, and I didn't know she was in the Capitol with me until they told me. They only kept her in captivity, they didn't do anything very bad to her as far as the doctors know.

I agreed to decorate the cakes, mainly because I wanted to get out of this room. When frosting the cakes, I did feel enjoyment from the concentration and how it distracts me from anything else. Even with the two guards lurking over my shoulders, I had a chance to enjoy the sweet familiar smell of baking pastries and feel the heat of ovens in use.

Then of course, the wonders of the colorful icing that I could make into flowery shapes and designs. It's been a while since I've frosted any cakes, doing it again was great. There really was no use for the guards to be there, but of course it's just a "precaution."

They still don't trust me and my levels of sanity. I worked on the cakes for days, being the most at ease I've been for a long time.