The Chains That Bind Him (Peeta Mellark fanfic)

Note: this fiction may contain strong language and some scenes of a mild sexual nature. You have been warned!

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Peeta's head swung in drunk circles as he fought to regain control of his neck muscles again. The foggy haze left by the unknown drug that had floored him lingered menacingly in his brain, causing his eyelids to remain stubbornly lethargic. As he gradually worked his way around his body, sensing the muscles that were and weren't yet alert, his attention was instantly drawn to the tight tugging sensation in both shoulders. He had only ever felt that feeling once before – back in the Capitol torture rooms where they fought to re-program his brain. The mere thought of those fractious weeks – or were they months? – still chilled his spine and often triggered those crippling flashbacks that froze his body into stone until he was able to talk himself back around to reality.

He lifted his groggy gaze towards the massive room that spread out before him and couldn't immediately recognise anything his eyes perceived from any past memories. The room had the appearance of a large banquet hall, with stones cladding every surface from the worn floor beneath him to the towering vaulted roof some 50 feet in the air. His neck cricked loudly as he tried to scan the tattered tapestries that hung from flagpoles at regimented intervals along either side of the room. This place was clearly too old to be located within the Capitol itself, but the faded colours and symbols from the old banners gave him no further clues as to where his miserable luck had now landed him.

How did I even get here?, he thought, trying to pull himself up from the slouched lean that he'd adopted against the cold stone wall. Immediately, the burn from the rusting chains sliced through the already shredded skin around his wrists, and he hissed wildly through clenched teeth before letting a gasp of slight desperation escape from his chapped lips. His torn cotton shirt was spotted with blood stains as he surveyed his aching body, and he was somewhat alarmed to find his prosthetic limb missing. The drugs had numbed the lower half of his body to such a degree that he still had little feeling from the waist down, hence the reason that he had to lean on the wall to stop his fragile forearms taking the full weight of his body.

He panted heavily as his head shot to his left and then to his right, before finally clocking his shoe attached to the bionic limb propped up against a scarred sandstone pillar just a few metres from where he was chained. What weirdo is behind all this?, his brain pondered, before his ears pricked up at the click of a door latch echoing from the opposite end of the hallway. It seemed that he wouldn't have to wait too long to find out the answer to his last question.

As the figure entered the hall, the sharp crack of heels on stone instantly told Peeta that it was a woman. The poor light inside the dusty hall made it difficult to pick out anything at the opposite end, but still he strained hard to try and decipher just who the shadowy visitor could be. Her footsteps were slow and steady, echoing loudly around every wall and filling Peeta with a sense of dread that intensified with each reverberation. He quickly stopped trying to uncover the identity of the mystery woman in the dark and instead started staring intensely at a single shaft of sunlight that was streaming in through a broken stained-glass window high above his head on the right-hand wall. He estimated that she must be only 7 or 8 steps away from entering that light, and he prayed that he would then at least know who was responsible for inflicting this new hell on him.

But he was to have no such luck just yet, as a step or two short of the yellowy streak of brilliant light, the mystery woman came to an abrupt stop. Peeta re-adjusted his weary eyes towards the shadows once again and could vaguely make out the silhouette standing with a hand casually resting on her left hip as the other hand moved towards her lips. After a few moments of excruciating silence, Peeta was given his first chance to unmask the lady.