lost | the hunger games

• xxiii •

❝You sound like my nephew, always thinking you need to do things on your own without anyone's support. There is nothing wrong with letting the people who love you help you.❞

iroh, avatar: the last airbender

☾

Spiders live in my hands. They seem to grow under my skin, wrapping around my bones in an attempt to take my autonomy away. When I can't control them, when they grow without having been quelled, they move my hands against my will, making my fingertips tense into claws reaching for the needle sitting right there on the metal dish, or for the stethoscope around the doctor's neck. It's like my mind flashes to the future when the urge hits. I can see my hand taking the needle and stabbing into the nurse's neck or eye, or the spiders in my hands reach for the stethoscope and wrap it tightly against the doctor's throat.

It's been four days since they'd rescued us. Two months since the Quarter Quell. Time was difficult to conceptualize now. It's hard to grasp anything at the moment. I've been clinging onto that small piece of me that's still human. The part of me that I hadn't realized is still here until four days ago. Holding on to that had been the only thing keeping me from trying to kill everyone in District Thirteen.

Snow put the spiders there. He must have. Some time when I was sleeping or unconscious or some time in that haze of pain I entered every horrible day he had changed me. He put something into me that I cannot rip out. It's dangerous and it's made me a danger and I hate him for it. The doctors here in Thirteen tell me they can erase the spiders, although in their terms, they say "delusions" and "urges" like I'm a rabid animal, foaming at the mouth. Some primitive creature unable to stop myself from turning to violence. But they don't understand. They don't understand what it's like to live with these spiders in my skin, knowing they're not mine.

Still, Dr. Sitwell loves to tell me I'm "free" and that she's here to support me. It's bullshit, of course. I know that the only reason I'm here in the first place and without facing criminal charges for aiding the Capitol in those videos is because Katniss Everdeen demanded all the Victors be let off scot free. She probably had more Peeta and Annie in mind when she made that deal, but who am I to complain. It's painfully obvious that I'm unwanted here sometimes-that they don't want to deal with another ruined soldier.

They have me in my own room. It's somewhere in the hospital wing—the only area I'm not familiar with. They have yet to let me out of here, as I am still "recovering." The only times I ever really see the outside of my room is when I need to use the restroom, and even then, it's only down the hall with a guard and nurse beside me. I take my meals in my room, too. Usually it's a nurse or Annie who brings me the food, simple and bland on a plastic tray, but it's better than anything I'd been given in so long.

Annie comes in as often as she can, everyday. She comes in with a tray of food, or a new story or update about Thirteen or Four or whatever it is she thinks will make me react-speak, maybe. I don't, not usually. I can't. Most of the time, when I'm sitting in my hospital bed and Annie's sitting on the chair near the foot of it, she talks while I stare. Looking at her is the most I can do. I know she wants me to say something, but there's this paralyzing fear that if I open my mouth, spiders will pour out of me, webs pulling me to hurt one of the only people I care about. And I already hurt one of them—I won't to another.

So I stare at Annie while she speaks. I'm aware of the irony of the situation. That after years of Annie being the only clammed up, it's her who's trying to keep me afloat. She really does try even though she underwent the same torture I did. Or maybe she didn't, and that's why she's come out of it stronger—more alive—than I ever could have.