The underlying drone of District 13’s ventilation system hums through the heavy walls of the confinement cell. Peeta sits cross-legged on the floor, his back jammed into the corner where the concrete meets. He is wearing the standard, sterile gray uniform, but his wrists are bound tightly together by heavy, locking military handcuffs. The metal cuffs are heavy enough to drag down his hands, but he isn't trying to fight them. Instead, his knuckles are white as he grips the solid iron links, deliberately twisting his wrists inside the bands so the sharp, unyielding metal bites mercilessly into his skin, using the grinding friction as an anchor against the tracker jacker static in his head.

Katniss stands just inside the doorway, her presence unnoticed as she watches the rhythmic, desperate motion of his hands. The fabric of his gray uniform is slightly rumpled, shifting just enough to expose a few inches of his forearms and the low line of his ribs. In the harsh, shadowless overhead lighting, she freezes. Running parallel to the fresh, angry friction burns from the handcuffs are rows of much older, pale, geometric scars. They are straight, faint lines tracing along the skin of his wrists and ribs—marks that completely predate the Capitol, predate the arena, and predate the rebellion.

A sudden, heavy realization drops like lead in her chest. The self-inflicted grounding wasn't something the Capitol forced into him; it was a ghost from his life in District 12, a silent language of physical pain he used for years to survive his mother's volatility and the crushing weight of his own isolation. She keeps her breathing perfectly steady, locking her face into a blank, neutral mask to ensure she doesn't betray a single shred of the aching pity tearing through her.

The metallic clink of the chain draws his glazed, bloodshot blue eyes upward. His ashy-blonde curls are damp with sweat, his face pale and strained as he fixes his frantic gaze directly on her, pushing his wrists even harder against the biting iron.

"It's too loud today," he whispers, his voice raw and cracking under the pressure of a memory he can't untangle. "The metal... it's the only thing that doesn't change. Katniss. Real or not real?"