#nerdhourariel

The Rebellion: Wake Up – Katniss and Ivy

 “Truth is like blood underneath your fingernails And you don't wanna hurt yourself, hurt yourself Looking too closely”

-          Looking Too Closely – Fink

 Katniss –

I lean back against the cold, metal wall of Beetee’s lab, the chill running up my spine. I think I’m going to throw up. The world around me spins and blurs, my insides twist up into knots while my head pounds. I blink but nothing rights itself. The world doesn’t get clearer or calmer. I just feel numb, less real, like I’m fading, like I’m not really here. Everything is muted, the colors blanched and lifeless, the voices of the people around me buzzing but I can’t find any words to cling to, to bring things into focus.

I blink again and again until I find one clear thing in the void, one person to focus on.

Peeta.

He keeps his arms crossed over his chest as he paces. His fingers digging into his skin so hard his forearm turns red from the pressure, he’ll have bruises tomorrow. He moves too fast, his fingers gripping tight, his eyes glued to the floor, thoughts far away in a room we aren’t allowed in.

Haymitch lays a hand on Peeta’s shoulder and he stops pacing. Peeta’s fingers loosen from his wrist as he sinks against the wall opposite me, hands rubbing at his eyes and tearing at his hair before returning to their place covering his arms.

I blink once more. The voices around me come into focus, but still, nothing feels right. It feels shifted to the left by one inch, just wrong enough to feel off even when everything still looks the same.

“We have to run more tests but it seems that President Snow, both of them, used a synthetic type of tracker jacker venom to erase and rewrite her memories,” Beetee says as he cleans his glasses, unable to look at us as he delivers the news.

“What does that mean?” Peeta asks, his voice shaky and quivering.

“They reprogrammed her, for lack of a better word, convinced her that she was someone else.”

“That Reagan was her mother,” I say, lifeless. I want to kill her. I want to rip out her throat, put an arrow in her heart and watch her bleed. I want to watch her die slowly. I could have. She would be dead by now if Peeta hadn’t stopped me.

I would be dead too. I should be dead too.

I can’t help but feel like I deserve this. That after years of trying to keep Ivy at a distance, of making her think I didn’t love her, this is my reward, my just desserts.

“How do we fix her?” Peeta asks, his voice shaking.

Beetee glances from Peeta to me, “I’m working on figuring it out.”

“Work faster.” My voice is dark and commanding, the anger in my heart spilling over to anyone it can reach.

“He will, Katniss, give him time.” Haymitch breathes on his hands and rubs them together to keep them warm. His voice creaks and wavers. My rage dissipates and all I have left is sorrow.

“We don’t have time, any day the Capitol can come knocking on our door, any day they can win. And what happens then?” I ask.

“She might know something, whether she’s aware of it or not,” Beetee starts but Peeta shakes his head.

“We’re not even going there,” Peeta commands.

“But if she does know something, something that could help,” Beetee tries again.

“So you want to what? Treat her like a criminal? Prove whatever lie she believes about us true, that we’re going to hurt her.”

“I didn’t say that, but it couldn’t hurt to ask.” Beetee rubs at his glasses again.

“I won’t allow it.”

“It’s not up to you,” Beetee states flatly, “Sooner or later Coin will see that she might know something or Gale, and they’ll make a decision on what to do, whether to treat or interrogate.”

Peeta steps closer to Beetee, his hands balled into fists, “Let them try, see what happens.”

“Enough,” I start quietly my voice growing as they continue to argue, “Enough!” They all stop and turn to look at me. My voice cracks. “She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know us.” And it’s all I can choke out before everything comes to a standstill. It feels like I’m fading, like I’m falling into pieces and I don’t want anyone to pick them back up.

The door opens and Finnick walks in. He looks around the room, noticing the grim faces and solemn, cold, atmosphere, “How bad is she?” He asks and I wonder how many people know by now. If all of Thirteen knows she’s here and she believes she belongs back in the Capitol, if they’ll look at her and think she’s more of a traitor than ever before and if what Beetee says could come true, if Coin and even Gale could come for her because they believe she has information they need.

My throat dries. I can’t go over it with Finnick, I can’t even think about all of it anymore. Peeta takes a steadying breath and shares the details, as much as he’s able to before his own voice gives out.

“She doesn’t know anyone. She doesn’t remember anyone,” Peeta finishes in a whisper and Finnick sighs deeply and heavily. A part of me knows that his concern lies with how it’s going to affect his son, how he’s going to tell Beck this news, and I’m angry at him for it. I’m angry that he has his family, that they’re here safe and sound. A part of me hates that he’s here.

“I’m going to run my tests, find the best course of treatment,” Beetee shares. I find myself back against the wall, barely listening, the buzz of the world around me shifting and filling my head with white noise.

“And what are we supposed to do until then?” Peeta asks, voice monotone, solemn with an underlying threat. The argument and threat from before unforgotten. I can’t even focus on the danger anymore, I have nothing left to give, no emotion left to feel.

“Convince her?” Finnick offers, “Talk to her?”

Peeta takes in his words but my head is fuzzy, my heart is broken, and I don’t think she’ll let me near enough to even say hello.

“She screamed when she saw me,” I state, “She doesn’t trust me or believe that I…how can I be her mother when she doesn’t know who I am?” I blink back tears, my voice failing as the pain becomes overwhelming.

“Katniss,” Peeta starts but I shake my head and find my way to the door.

“I need quiet…I just need to be away…” And then I’m gone.

I ignore the stares as I make my way back to my room. The world still spins, still buzzes with too much noise and all I want to do is scream. It keeps building from my stomach to my throat, ready to unleash all the pain I feel, all my rage.

When I’m safely back in the living unit, away from the noise, I ball my fists and let it go, screaming and screaming my voice raw. I hear the door open and close behind me but it’s too late, the screaming won’t stop no matter how hard I try to bottle it back up.

I keep screaming long after Peeta’s strong arms wrap around me and hold me close, my back to his chest, his heartbeat in tandem with mine. I keep screaming even as he tells me it’s okay over and over. I keep screaming even when I can’t breathe, even when my throat feels like its bleeding. I can’t stop.

I see the memories they’ve ripped from her, memories I have that she doesn’t. I see her first steps. Her first reaping at twelve, the fear that came with it and the relief when her name wasn’t called. I see her sitting in her favorite tree in our woods. I see her crawling into bed with me after she had a nightmare of her own and Peeta had left for the bakery early. I hear her laugh, I hear her learning to read and sounding out the words with uncertainty as Peeta tells her she’s doing great.

I hear her first word.

“Mama.”

I scream over these memories as they flash before me like a hammer being taken to my already broken heart and all the while Peeta holds me through it, securing me here in this moment so I don’t get lost.

When it’s over, when the pain fades enough to become a dull ache and my voice no longer works, Peeta talks, his arms still wrapped around me tightly.

“We can’t abandon her,” he says quietly, his voice vibrating through my body as he holds me. And I’m reminded of us so long ago when we were on top of a building in the Capitol, about to go fight for our lives, neither one of us knowing how it would all turn out.

“We won’t,” I croak out through my damaged voice, “I won’t.” And I remember after my father died, I remember what it felt like to be abandoned, to watch someone disappear on me. I can’t let that happen to Ivy. I won’t let it happen to her. I can’t build another wall. I can’t hide away from this, not again.

I have to be there for her in a way I wasn’t before. She has to know how much she’s loved, how much she means. She has to remember. I have to help her remember.

We have to help her remember.

Ivy –

“Is anyone there?” I shout to the mirror, to my own reflection staring back at me. I know it’s a window. I know they’re watching. “Hello?! Are you planning on sharing your terms with your hostage?”

I pull against the restraints, my limbs are still heavy from the drugs they stuck me with before and my mouth tastes like cotton, but my strength is coming back. I can’t let them see that I’m afraid. They’ll use it against me. They’ll use it against Mother back in the Capitol. I have to stay strong. The rebels can’t win.

Katniss Everdeen, the monster, can’t win.

I think of my room in the mansion, the comfort of my bed. How did this happen? How did they find me? I was supposed to be protected. I was protected. They must have had an inside source. I hope Mother figures it out. I hope she makes them pay.

I pull harder at the restraints despite the pain and chafing on my wrist. I don’t care. I want out. I have to get out.

I stare at my reflection. I look tired, but I suppose that’s to be expected. I haven’t been hurt, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be.

I look around waiting for someone to come, for them to ask me questions, but they don’t. Maybe they’re starving me out first, trying to get me weak before they do the real damage, before they try to turn me to their cause.

Mother warned me about this. After Great-Grandfather’s funeral, she warned me that the rebels might try something. She said they might make up stories, try to convince me that what I knew wasn’t real. She told me they were liars and they would do anything to get their way, to win.

Katniss Everdeen will try to win, but she will fail, like she did years before.

I’ll kill her if I get the chance. I’ll save the Capitol. I’ll have a day named after me. Ivy Snow Day. Panem will celebrate it.

A wave of unease and nausea comes over me at the thought but I bury it down. It’s just the drugs they gave me. Nothing more.

I keep pulling at the restraints, trying to force them to break. I start to hear ringing in my head as I do, a sharp, painful tone that radiates from my head along my muscles. I close my eyes as the pain burns behind my eyes, a throbbing that feels like my head is going to split in half, but I keep trying to force the restraints.

The door opens and I let my hands drop, the ringing fades, disappearing altogether in an instant. I sit back in my bed as a nurse with blonde hair braided down the side brings in food on a tray. It’s in a bowl with some gray bread on the side of it. I glance at the bowl to see some kind of watery mess with pieces of green in it. I grimace at the smell. Whatever that is, it’s not edible, and I won’t eat it.

I look away despite the growl in my stomach. I’ll starve before I accept anything from them, even food. Mother would be proud of that too. She would be glad I died fighting the rebels, she would be glad I died defending the Capitol.

The nurse swallows thickly, her eyes trying to hide some glassy emotion. I stare at her, recognizing her from the footage. She’s older, but her hair’s the same color, she has the same fear she did at her reaping.

“You’re Primrose,” I say, “Primrose Everdeen.”

“Hawthorne now,” she says.

I shrug, I don’t really care. She’ll always be Primrose Everdeen, the sister of Katniss Everdeen, who volunteered for her in the 74th Hunger Games. “Guess you followed Katniss here, huh? Makes sense.”

Prim holds the bread out but I shake my head.

“I don’t want your food.”

“You need to eat something.”

“I’ll eat when I’m back home,” I say defiantly and there’s a larger pain that crosses behind Prim’s eyes.

“And if no one comes for you?” She asks with a confidence that says her mind’s made up on the matter.

“They’ll come. They won’t let President Snow’s daughter die at the hands of the rebels.” I look at the mirror in front of me, knowing full well that someone is behind the glass watching now, knowing who it is.

“You won’t win, Katniss,” I say to the mirror, to her. Then I look at Prim, “She’s a monster, you know. She only gets people killed. She needs to die.”

“You could do it,” I taunt, “No one would see it coming and I promise you, the Capitol will pay you very well for that and for my safe return.”

Prim shakes her head, the same sad look in her eyes.

I pull at the restraints again, “You know she needs to die!” I start kicking, trying to escape somehow, until I feel a needle stick into my arm. Prim stares at me as the heaviness of the drugs and sleep pushes against me.

“When you die, when all this falls, it’s her fault and yours,” I whisper before fading.

The world comes and goes in a haze. I wake up to see someone taking blood and then they put me asleep again. I hear voices and beeping as machines take scans. I’m not in the white room and then I’m back in it. I wake with an IV in my arm to keep me hydrated and alive. They won’t let me starve.

“Does she really need to say asleep?” I hear a male voice ask, full of sadness and pain, and a part of me recognizes the voice, the tone, but I can’t open my eyes to look at them. I’m lost in the ether of the drugs.

“We can’t have her escaping and hurting someone,” a woman’s voice states, cold and stern. President Coin, I assume. Mother spoke of her, of her wanting to overthrow and kill us, of her wanting to take control of Panem.

“She wouldn’t do that,” the man’s voice says.

“Peeta, we don’t know what she would do. We don’t know what they made her think and we don’t know if someone here would be willing to harm her if they think she’s a traitor,” Coin’s voice states coldly.

Peeta Mellark is here. Of course he is, wherever Katniss goes, he follows. Mother said he’s her weakness and she’s his. The way to destroy them is through each other.

He sounds sad, sympathetic. Maybe he could let me go. He’s the more rational one. Or so it seemed from the footage of their Games. I remember watching it. I remember thinking even if he loved her, she didn’t love him back. He’d be better off without her. He’ll let me go if I ask.

I try to open my eyes but I can’t against the darkness, against the heaviness of the drugs. It’s like a chain wrapped tight around me, pulling me down into an ocean of drug induced sleep. I can’t swim out. The voices disappear and I’m back under, trying to swim up again but unable to find the surface anymore.

They wake me up to ask if I’m ready to talk, to eat, to comply, and every time they ask I stay silent and wait for them to put me back under.

It feels like I’ve been here before, that I’ve always been here, different voices, different rooms, but always the same. I’m asleep. I’m awake. I’m asked if I’m ready to cooperate and when I say no I’m asleep again. It’s like a clock that keeps going round and round and round. I can’t escape it.

I push to the surface again, breaking through enough to open my eyes this time. I’m still in the white room, bright and unyielding. But everything starts to fade as I struggle to stay awake.

“This should counteract the effects, or rather help her notice the effects,” the steady voice of Beetee Latier says from behind me. I know it from the museum, from footage and history. He did a lot for the Capitol back before he betrayed it.

There’s a hand brushing through my hair, it’s calloused and rough, but gentle at the same time. It feels familiar in a way that I can’t figure out. It lulls me back beneath the surface of waking and into the ocean of sleep. Only this time, there’s a feeling of peace in it.

“Is it safe?” The sound of the question radiates through the hand in my hair and the peace shatters. I push against the surface, harder than before trying to break through as the light blinds me. I blink, trying to focus on Katniss Everdeen. I want her to see that I’m awake. That I’m not afraid of her.

I want her to see that I’m going to be the one who kills her.

My breathing is unsteady as I fight the drugs to sit up, to get to her. She’s my way out. If I kill her, I’ll die here, but the Capitol will win. Her hand is gone from my head when I force myself to move, when I pull my arm I find there’s no restraint, that it hangs from the side of the bed like it’s been forgotten.

Their mistake is my only chance.

“I’ll kill you,” I mumble out, “I’ll kill you,” I keep repeating until I’m standing on unsteady feet, pushing forward. I try to hit her, scratch her, do anything to take her out. But I’m too weak, the drugs too strong and too saturated in my system. I stumble forward, falling towards the floor in an ungraceful dive.

She catches me before I hit the ground. She catches me and she steadies me even as I try to push against her. I can’t will my heavy limbs to move or fight anymore and she does nothing to restrain me, to hurt me back. She guides me back to the bed, much too gently for someone who thinks their life is in danger, her eyes bordering on tears as she does.

“Shhh, I’ve got you,” her voice is too calm, too…motherly. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit the narrative, what I’ve always known about her. A ringing overshadows her voice as she keeps talking, “I’m sorry. Please, Ivy, let us help. Sleep.” I hear boots enter the room and the click of restraints being re-attached as the pressure on my wrists returns.

“Is that really necessary?” Katniss asks.

“You heard her,” a man’s voice I don’t recognize answers, “She said she’d kill you.”

“Gale, she won’t,” Katniss argues.

There’s the distinct sound of a frustrated exhale before, “She’s President Snow’s daughter now, right? Why wouldn’t she try to kill you? Why wouldn’t she help them?” the man called Gale asks in a tone that’s harsh and unyielding.

“What are you saying? Give up?”

“It’s been two weeks with no change. It might be time for a different approach, for her to tell us something,” he states.

“Get out,” Katniss orders and there’s another frustrated breath before the heavy boots march out of the room.

I feel the prick of another needle and the ringing stops as the chain pulls me down into the ocean again and the world disappears.

I lose track of the days as I’m woken up and put back under. Prim comes and goes, always with food, always trying to get me to eat but every time I refuse and the IV stays in. I never see anyone else. I never see Katniss Everdeen again but I know she’s watching. I can feel her watching and there are times when I don’t find it unwelcome to know she’s there.

Sometimes my head pounds, sometimes I feel pain that isn’t there. Sometimes there’s a ringing and sometimes there’s silence. Sometimes I feel like screaming and sometimes I feel like crying but I don’t know why.

I know and I’ve accepted I’m never getting out of here. There’s a part of me that’s afraid to admit that I feel relieved when I think about that fact. When I open my eyes to the white room, I feel safe and I can’t explain why.

Most times I’m asleep I dream of home. The mansion. The Capitol. I see the bright, clean streets and the colorful people. There are dreams where I see caring, green eyes and I feel calm. There’s the taste of pastries I can’t remember the name of. The sight of Mother planning to fight, to win this war. There are maps on the walls and on her desk, a group of advisors around her and the plans can’t fail, they won’t fail.

I dream of Mother rescuing me, but her face changes and the room isn’t white it’s a dark red and there’s a screaming that never ends. There are dreams where I see the mansion and it doesn’t feel like home at all. There’s a yellow-green haze around it, like a halo that doesn’t quite fit, it feels wrong to look at the mansion when it’s like that and those memories burn.

There’s a cool cloth on my head that soothes and then it’s gone. There are wires attached to me that connect to machines and the room is red and then there’s only the IV and the room is white. The restraints are made of metal and they’re made of leather. There’s electricity coursing through my veins and no pain at all. There’s the yellow-green haze and the sound of Mother’s voice and there’s a green plant with flowers that tastes bitter and the sound of someone singing.

I see the rose garden Great-Grandfather spent his time in. I walk past the too brightly colored roses and the smell is overwhelming. It stays with me as I open my eyes and a wave of nausea follows. A lot of those memories seem to make me nauseous.

I blame the drugs.

I hear laughter, sarcastic but warm, like it can’t believe what it’s seeing in me and yet wants me to know that it still cares. It’s far away, too far away to be real. It must still be the drugs.

Once I dream of a meadow. It’s bright with tall grass that I run through. There are three shadows with me, their faces unclear, not fully formed. Still, I feel safe, even as I chase the smaller shadow in front of me, I smile. There’s no yellow-green haze here, just the sun.

I hear thunder and rain and I wake up with tears running down my face, though I don’t know why. I don’t feel sick after this dream. I just feel sad.

I wait for Prim to bring me the next dose, to put me back under, but she never shows up. The haze of the drugs wears off and for the first time the world focuses. I find that I’m starving. I want real food. I want to be out of this room. I just want to see the sun.

“Are you there?” I ask, my voice hoarse from disuse, “I’m done. I’ll eat, I’ll tell you whatever. Just get this IV out, please, don’t put me back to sleep.”

I feel like I’m betraying Mother but I’m too hungry and too tired of fighting to care.

Prim comes in and removes the IV a moment later but she doesn’t have any food with her. She doesn’t even stay. She just smiles as she pulls the needle from my arm and puts a bandage over it. Then, she leaves and I’m alone in the white room, looking at myself in the mirror.

I look horrible. I’m thinner than I was when I got here. My eyes are sunken, almost bruised looking. I look worn out, tired, even though I’ve done nothing but sleep. My limbs are heavy from not being used and all I want to do is get out of this bed. All I want is to walk around and eat something that wasn’t given to me through a tube in my arm.

About a minute later Katniss Everdeen comes through the door and I feel the same weight I always felt when I knew she was staring at me through the window. She’s carrying a few pieces of bread and I no longer care about the gray color of it. Of course they’d make me take this peace offering from her. Of course Thirteen would do this to me, test my will, break me down, accept their Mockingjay.

I wonder what comes next, what questions will be asked, what the next torture will be. I shake my head because somehow that feels wrong. It doesn’t feel like torture, it’s not the right word for it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know this isn’t the true definition of torture, that this isn’t the right use of the word, but I can’t find the place where I know it.

Katniss sucks in a breath at the sight of me and I want to pull on the restraints, I want to run, but I don’t. I know they’ll just put me back under if I do. There’s a dull ringing in the back of my head that I try to ignore, even as it radiates and grows.

“Hello, Ivy,” she greets, her voice tepid, measured, controlled.

She glances from me to the restraints and there’s a deep sadness that burns through her eyes, even more than the look I received from Prim. It’s pained, the sight of a wounded animal that’s still fighting, and there’s love in that look too, a mixture I can’t quite put together but something I’m entirely unfamiliar with. The only description of it is a mother’s look, but I’ve never seen that look from Mother back home.

Why do you think that is?

The voice is a whisper in the back of my head, new, yet familiar. I can hear the same laughter in it that I thought I heard before, the same sarcasm and resolve.

I look around for the source but there’s no one else in the room besides Katniss and myself. For some reason I find myself staring at Katniss’ eyes, like the whisper came from them, but I know they didn’t. I shake my head, willing the voice and the laughter to go away. It’s just side effects from the drugs. That or I’m going crazy, which wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility down here.

No, Mother wouldn’t allow them to drive me to this. I won’t allow it. I focus on the Victor in front of me. The Mockingjay. The reason for this rebellion. The source of Mother’s hatred and my current predicament. I try to find the hatred, to let it build and focus on her, but it’s like there’s a block like I’m numb.

Still, I don’t say anything. I just stare. She seems hurt by the look I give her, a hurt she covers up, and I hope Mother would be proud. I blink trying to ignore the throb that starts behind my eyes as the ringing gets louder.

She loosens the restraints and hands me the bread. I bite into it, not caring that it tastes like cardboard or that the crumbs land on the blanket covering my lap. I’m starving. It doesn’t matter how it tastes or how it looks.

I half expect to hear the whisper again, making some comment about how I said I’d never accept food from anyone here. But there’s no voice, no laughter, there’s only the ringing in my head. The bread settles and I feel stronger, more awake.

Katniss watches me, arms crossed over her chest like she’s waiting for me to do something, try something.

“What do you want?” I croak out, my voice still dry and cracked.

“I want to help you,” the words are awkward and heavy, like she isn’t sure as she says them, like she’d rather be saying something else.

“Help?” I laugh. “If you wanted to help I wouldn’t be stuck in here. You would send me home.”

“I know you don’t want to believe it, but this is home, at least for now.” There’s a deep sadness that surrounds her at the mention of home and I remember seeing footage of a destroyed District, of fire and ash. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about it, satisfied, disappointed, instead I feel nothing.

She looks at me again, “I don’t want you in here anymore than you want to be in here but you’re not yourself. I’m trying to get you out. Your father, Peeta, is too.”

“He’s not my father and you’re not my mother,” I tell her, angry, the pain behind my eyes getting worse the more this goes on, fracturing across my skull like lightning, “You’re just lying to try to get me on your side or fighting for you. It won’t work.”

“I’m not lying. I love you, Ivy. I know I never said it, not enough, not as much as you deserved but it’s true and I’m going to prove it to you.”

The ringing reaches a crescendo I can no longer bear. I close my eyes against the pain. My head feels like it’s breaking in half. The rebels must have done this to me. Beetee and Katniss did this. They’re making this happen, this torture.

And this time I feel like the word torture is right, that this is the first sentence of the definition of a word I should know well, though I still can’t find why, or understand my certainty in it.

“Stop!” I scream against the ringing, “Please, stop! Why are you doing this?!”

“I’m not doing anything,” Katniss says, her voice pitched and full of fear.

“It hurts,” I shout, “Stop! It hurts!” Tears fall from my eyes as my head falls forward and the world burns. Two hands catch me, the same hands that caught me before, the same rough, calloused but gentle hands that brushed through my hair. A thumb rubs against my cheek and I keep my eyes closed as pain fractures from my head through every muscle in my body.

“Ivy,” Katniss says, repeating my name over and over but all it does is make me hurt more.

“Get away from me!” I thrash, pushing her away from me. It feels like I’m being electrocuted over and over, my skin ripping and tearing, my entire body flayed open. I start to scream, I can’t feel anything but pain.

I see a flash of something I’m not quite sure is real. A house that’s not in the Capitol, but somewhere else, somewhere that should be surrounded by ash but isn’t. It feels warm there, it feels safe. I see Katniss at the door of the house and she smiles.

When I blink back into reality I look at her and I feel something familiar, a whisper of something true, but then all I feel is pain.

Prim rushes in with Beetee wheeling in behind her. A man dressed in the black of the rebel soldiers follows and pushes me down.

“Gale,” Katniss tries, pushing against the soldier. I stare into his eyes as the needle pierces my arm but he can’t look at me. The pain subsides and the world begins to fade as I hear the click of the restraints put securely back in place.

“She recognized me,” Katniss says, her voice wavering, “She looked at me before and she…it was her…what happened?”

“A counter measure. Conditioning,” Beetee says as my eyes grow heavy and close.

“Against what?” Katniss asks.

“Against you.”

I smell roses and hear Mother laughing and it’s not the same laugh I heard from the whisper before, this one isn’t warm this one is cold and ruthless. It scares me in a way it never did before.

Believe her…

The kind whisper returns and it’s the last thing I hear before I’m pulled under by the drugs once again.

Katniss –

“What happened?” I ask Beetee as he looks over his data culled from Ivy’s blood and the scans of her brain done while she was asleep.

“Something good.”

“How is it good?”

“Because if she reacted that badly, that means they couldn’t make her forget you completely so they had to put in conditioning to counteract it. If she gets too close to something real, there’s a pain response. Memories of you cause her pain because she’s not allowed to remember them. We just have to get her to push through the pain and find the truth underneath, then she’ll be able to build her memories again.” Beetee writes in a chart.

It’s been almost a month since Ivy was rescued. A month of fighting in Two with nothing changing, a month of Peeta and I taking shifts to watch Ivy from behind the glass while she sleeps in a drug induced coma and they run tests. Every time I look at her my heart breaks and heals all the same. She’s alive. She’s here. She’s safe, even if she doesn’t believe it, even if I’m not quite sure she’ll ever be herself again. She’s alive and she’s safe.

But sometimes I look at Gale and I wonder how safe she will be for long, if they truly will jump to questioning her, like they have been with Cain. I’m not allowed to watch those interrogations but I see Gale return with bruises on his knuckles and blood that isn’t his on his shirt and I wish I could.

Peeta spends hours training with Gloss or painting. I train too, trying to keep my mind off of what’s happening with Ivy. Coin lets me go outside to hunt and I bring back food on occasion. Gale went with me once, and it felt like when we were younger, silent and alone out in the woods, but since he started questioning Cain, since he started inching around the subject of questioning Ivy, the distance has grown again. I usually go by myself, the isolation better for me.

I encounter Beck and Finnick throwing tridents at targets one day in the training field. Beck seems to be healing more each day, throwing with ease. He watches me, looking for any sign that something’s changed with Ivy, but he never asks. I think Finnick has told him not to and he’s respecting that request.

The tests have only proven what Beetee already suspected, but today was different. Today Beetee told me to try to talk to her, that she might be able to tell that some of her memories are fake after giving his serum a chance to work. That’s what the new tests showed apparently. I wish I hadn’t tried. I caused her pain. I’m causing it to be worse.

Peeta comes into the lab a second later. “Gale told me you woke her up,” he says, “Why didn’t you come get me?”

I shake my head, “I don’t know. It happened fast.”

He puts a hand on my cheek, “Are you okay?” I nod even though I’m not.

“I’m hurting her, whatever they did, I’m part of it. I can’t be around her,” I say.

“No, Katniss,” Beetee tells me, “The Capitol is hurting her. It’s not on you.” Beetee adjusts his glasses and stares at the data again, there’s a solemn weight to him. He hasn’t brought up interrogation, if anything he’s fighting Gale on it more each day. Whatever he tells Coin about Ivy, she hasn’t ordered anything different to be done.

“All of this. It’s on me,” he admits. He takes a heavy breath, dropping the papers around him.

“What do you mean?” Peeta asks, taking a step forward.

“I came up with the theory back when I…when I worked for them. They wanted to know if there was a way to make people more compliant, loyal. I knew what saying no meant, so I did it.” His hands grip the side of his chair, “I collected data. I had test subjects, volunteers who didn’t know what they were volunteering for because the Capitol forced them into it. I figured out how to attack the fear response. I invented it. I created the serum made from tracker jacker venom.”

Beetee swallows the thickness in his throat, his eyes focused on his desk, unable to look at me or Peeta. “When it came time to present the results, I told them it was a failure, that attachment and false loyalty could always be overwritten no matter how much fear and pain they put the subjects through. And in that I wasn’t lying, I erased my research, gave them fragments but…I gave them enough, a blueprint that they were able to improve on. It was my research that gave them the tools to harm your daughter.” He finally turns to look at Peeta and me. “I will fix this, I will make it right. I promise.”

There’s a long silence before Peeta places a hand on Beetee’s shoulder, “It’s like you said, you had to. You couldn’t say no. You weren’t the one who put her through the process, you weren’t the one who did this to her, you were just a tool they used like all of us.”

“I created the tool they used.”

“No,” I add, knowing full well the Capitol’s hold over all of its Victors, “If you hadn’t they would have gotten someone else and they would have just killed you or someone you cared about.”

“But you know what they worked from,” Peeta says with a nod of reassurance, “So you can fix her.”

Beetee nods, “I think I might have a way to overwrite the override. But it could go bad and I don’t know that it’ll work or that you’ll want to put her through it.” He takes a breath, the cloud of guilt around him evaporating the more he talks.

“What is it?” Peeta asks. My heart pounds in my throat like it’s anticipating something horrible, something worse than what we’ve already seen.

“We have to put her in a situation that mimics the fear they created, but that also has an emotional connection for her to attach to. One she can’t ignore or fight against.” Beetee turns towards one of the lab computers and pulls up an image on the screen. I hold my breath as my heart plummets from my throat to my stomach. I recognize it from my nightmares and the reality with which those nightmares were born from.

Her Arena.

“No, no, she’s not going back there,” Peeta argues, his voice high and his hands clenched at his sides. “We’re not doing that to her.”

“The Arena is the last place she truly feared for her life aside from the Capitol and it’s not like we can send her there.”

“What about here?” I ask, “She’s afraid here.”

“She can’t break the conditioning here. She knows inherently that you won’t hurt her, that she’s safe here unless Coin and Gale were to change that and finally start questioning, which they won’t unless I tell them to and I won’t tell them to. No, we need to attack the fear response directly.”

Peeta shakes his head, “After you just tried to apologize for creating it, you want to repeat your experiment?”

Beetee continues, “Yes. She’ll attach to the memories she can’t run from and she’ll be able to notice the differences between the artificial and the real, definitively without pain.”

“Or she’ll end up worse,” Peeta says, “You inject her with more of the same crap and she’ll just be more terrified of the same things. She won’t come back. She’ll never learn to trust us. What if she dies in there? Or she tries to kill someone or herself? What then? Coin won’t let her back out. They will question her and she’ll be stuck in that room for the rest of her life.”

“It’s a risk but it’s the only risk you have. She can’t and she won’t find the memories here, especially with the aversion they put in against Katniss. She’ll never come back in Thirteen. I have to run a few more tests with her awake but from the scans while she was dreaming, the only way is fear. True fear and pain. You saw it today,” Beetee points to me, “She was afraid and she was in pain and she looked at you, and she saw you.”

“I don’t know what she saw,” I reply, my thoughts back in her Arena, in watching her survive, in being helpless to do anything for her or Bas. “You want her to relive Bas’ death. That’s who she can’t find here.”

“When we first did the experiments, emotional pain, it always beat the serum. Love forced the subject to fight harder against what we were doing. The Capitol wouldn’t have been able to get rid of Bas any more than they could get rid of you. My theory is they didn’t need to add anything with him because there was no need to condition against him. Not when he’s no longer a threat.”

Peeta takes a heavy breath. I look at him as he works to understand but he knows, like I know, this is the only way. This is the only chance. Beetee’s right. He created it, he knows the weaknesses, what he says is true.

“It’ll be safe, as safe as I can make it. It’ll feel like she’s dreaming…”

“It’ll feel like a nightmare. This isn’t the way,” Peeta says to me, pointing at the Arena on the screen, “I won’t force her back into that Hell.”

“Then we ask her and she chooses for herself,” I say.

“What?” Peeta asks.

“Katniss, she doesn’t know who you are, she can’t choose between you and the Capitol if she only knows what they’ve taught her,” Beetee tells me.

“Then figure out a way to keep her from being in pain whenever she sees me and let Peeta and I take her out of that room, show her where we live, get her used to Thirteen. Because I saw it and I know she saw it too, saw me. I’m not going to throw her in an Arena with the hope that she’ll come out of it okay. Not unless she knows what she’s going in there for. She didn’t have a choice the first time, she should now,” I argue, my voice strong and certain, my heart more sure in this moment than it has been about anything before.

Beetee’s silent for a long time after that until he asks, “And if she does decide to go?”

“Then she goes,” Peeta answers, “Can you do it?”

“I think so. But it’s not my decision whether or not she’s allowed out.” Beetee reaches for notes, looking through formulas and photographs, lost in thought.

“I’ll talk to Coin,” I tell Peeta, marching out of the lab, carrying the weight of this moment on my back far better than any weight before. I know where she’ll be. I know where she’s always been. In meetings, strategizing, making her case for whatever the next step is when it comes to District Two.

It’s been a back and forth, gaining small ground only to be pushed back again. Two is far more formidable and with a stronghold even better than the Capitol. I think of what to say, of where to push, what information to bring up and use.

I’m the Mockingjay but that only holds so much weight. I have to give Coin something more, something she’s been thinking about since Ivy came here.

I find Coin in a meeting with Plutarch and Gale, exactly where I knew she’d be. There’s an image of District Two up on the screen.

“Katniss,” Plutarch greets, but I ignore him.

“Ivy needs to be allowed out,” I say.

“We can’t trust her,” Coin argues, “She could escape. She could reveal our location to the Capitol. She could do any number of things.”

“Not if she trusts us.”

“And why do you think she would?”

I swallow hard, uncertain on my argument. Peeta should have done this but I was so determined, so in a rush to do it, this was a mistake.

“Because you let her out and she learns to trust you,” Plutarch offers. “Right, Katniss?”

I nod, “We have a plan. Beetee has a plan to help her.”

“It’s a mistake,” Gale speaks up, his voice firm. I stare at him, of all people, to go against me, to go against Ivy. He continues, “She had an episode when she woke up. She saw Katniss and she tried to kill her. Whatever your plan is, it won’t work. I think you need to accept that she might be gone.”

I shake my head, of all people to talk about accepting others who are gone, to talk about people not coming back, “I saw her. The real her. She’s not gone. She’s not,” My eyes find Coin, “Talk to Beetee. Find out for yourself.”

“And what happens if my decision stands?” Coin asks.

“Find yourself another Mockingjay.”

“Ultimatums only work when you have leverage. Rescue her or no Mockingjay. Help her or no Mockingjay. You’ve done your job, I don’t think we need a Mockingjay when we’re close to winning now,” Coin states, coolly.

I glance at the screen, symbols that indicate our side and symbols that indicate the loyalists, it’s even, always even.

“And yet,” Haymitch clears his throat, “Madam President, it would appear that District Two does need the Mockingjay.”

Coin looks between Haymitch and me.

“And you need a team of advisors, which I’m sure you had before we got here. I mean, after all, twenty five years got you pretty far, didn’t it?” Haymitch asks with a smirk in his eyes.

“It still doesn’t mean anything, I put my neck on the line it has to be for some purpose. The people around here were distrustful of you, they kept asking why now, but your actions put that aside, but now if they see Ivy running around, your daughter, a traitor to them, regardless of the circumstances, what will they say?”

“She warned us of the attack.”

“After she stood with Reagan Snow at the funeral. Regardless of her warning, that image doesn’t fade in their minds. I am trying to win in Two, I need my people to trust me, to believe in me and this mission. How can I do that? How can I ask them to trust me if I do that?”

“You tell them she’ll tell you what she’s seen, what she knows from being held prisoner in the Capitol and she’ll do it willingly.”

Plutarch leans back in his chair, a look of admiration on his face, “She would have seen their plans, especially if Reagan was keeping her as close to her as possible.”

There’s a long silence as Coin weighs the options, she glances back to the map, of the dead even fight still waging in Two.

Finally she clears her throat, making the decision, “If Beetee confirms that the threat she poses can be contained, I’ll allow her out. But she’ll be monitored at all times, her location always known and someone always with her, no exceptions.”

I nod in agreement, “Thank you,” I say before leaving. Gale’s hard stare follows me out. I don’t look back. He can believe what he wants. It’s not true and he’ll see it along with everyone else.

I have hope. For the first time in a month, I have something real and tangible to hold onto. I saw how she looked at me, for a moment it was the old her, whether she was aware of it or not, she was there.

I have to bring her back. I can bring her back.

I find Peeta in our living unit and the second I get in the room I wrap my arms around him in a tight hug.

“How’d it go?” He asks.

“Coin agreed, well she’s going to talk to Beetee, but she’ll let Ivy out.” I take a breath, my first real breath since Ivy has been gone, and I feel lighter even with the weight that’s now bearing down on me to fix my daughter.

“Just like that?” He asks and I swallow hard, afraid to tell him but knowing keeping the secret would be far worse in the end.

“Once Ivy’s better, Coin wants to talk to her.”

“You mean interrogate her,” Peeta argues, anger rising. I put my hands on his chest keeping him in place.

“No. Ivy will want to tell her, she’ll want to help. Think about it. She’s seen the Capitol and it’s plans, she’ll want to help us win. We can have her back, Peeta. All she has to do is tell Coin what she saw.”

“But what if she doesn’t know anything? What if that’s not all Coin wants?” He asks.

I swallow hard, “Then we deal with it then. But for now. We can have her back.”

“We can have her back,” Peeta repeats, the grim air around him fading as he breaks into a smile despite the fear. He glows when he smiles, when it’s genuine and bright, it’s like the sun and I can’t help but stare. And this doesn’t feel like a moment worth smiling about, not with all the pain and suffering that has led up to it, not with all the damage that’s sure to follow. But it’s a small victory and if it can elicit that smile from him, I don’t care how small the victory, it’s been too long since I’ve seen that smile and I’ll take the moment.

He grips my hand in his own and then my mouth finds him, trying to find that light, that smile, the dandelion in the spring. There’s a hunger deep and pained building in my stomach as I guide him to the bed and he lets me. He returns my kisses with a fever of his own as the heat builds between us.

This moment feels right, it feels like finding a light in the darkness, it feels like finding home.

“And I feel life for the very first time Love in my arms and the sun in my eyes I feel safe in the 5am light You carry my fears as the heavens set fire”

The Mockingjay: Cold Reality - Katniss and Beck

Katniss –

She’s in the Capitol.

 The Capitol.

It’s not real. It can’t be real. This isn’t happening.

The bruises on Peeta’s knuckles, Haymitch’s nose, it all makes sense. He left her.

I reinjure his nose.

“You son of a bitch, you were supposed to save her!”

There’s a pinch of something sharp in my back and then everything blurs.

I hear a louder commotion as Annie yells and doctors rush towards her and it all fades in and out. Then I see Beck desperately walking away from his bed, struggling to hold onto anything to stand upright and fight against the doctors trying to stop him. He’s watching me as he walks and he doesn’t need to ask. I don’t even know if he can.

I hear the words again, this time from Peeta’s mouth, and somehow it hurts worse when he says it.

 She’s in the Capitol.

I wake in a different bed than before, this one located in a room that I have all to myself. The lights are dim and I don’t even know how late or early it is. For a moment I close my eyes, willing Ivy to be there, willing for all of it to be untrue, for it all to be some kind of nightmare.

But I don’t wake up and it doesn’t go away. It’s reality and there’s no escaping it. I sit up in bed half expecting someone to be there to stop me, but there’s no one here. A part of me is thankful for it. I can’t talk to anyone now. I can’t see anyone. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do or what I should be trying to accomplish. My only thought is on Ivy trapped in the Capitol and what they could be doing to her.

Are they hurting her? Are they killing her? Could I trade my life for hers or will Snow just hurt her more if I try? What kind of Hell is she in?

It smells too clean in here like all the chemicals designed to eliminate illness and injury. I have to get out of here. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I have to get out.

I don’t run. I don’t draw attention to myself. I avoid anyone that can try to stop me. I almost expect to see Gale again but he never appears. I’m grateful that he doesn’t.

That’s another deep pit of endless thought that I don’t want to travel down. He’s a soldier for Thirteen and I’ve been the Capitol’s portrait of a grateful Victor. Peeta and I have spent years under Snow’s thumb. We’ve been threatened. We’ve had our children paraded in front of cameras only for our son to be killed and our daughter captured. And Gale has been living in Thirteen. He’s been talking of revolution and war and freedom while hidden away from all of it, while his family had to survive without him.

I find a dark corner in some forgotten tunnel where pipes run overhead, the sound echoing all around me. I sit alone in the darkness while my thoughts travel back to the Capitol, back to Ivy. She was so scared and broken and the arena was going to destroy her. That’s the last image I have of her. Her fear, her heartbreak, it’s the first thing that emerges.

But she was brave too. She was so strong and brave and she fought so hard. That’s the next image that comes to my mind. Her standing before the reaping, standing as tall as she could, trying to keep the attention on her, to make herself seem like the formidable threat.

And after that I remember a toddler with messy brown hair trying to walk. And she used to smile when she was a baby. She smiled all the time, even for the cameras. And that smile was real back then. She didn’t know the difference yet.

Now the Capitol has her and I can’t do a damn thing about it. And all that bravery won’t mean a thing in Snow’s hands.

I can’t do anything. I can’t help anyone. I’m not a savior. I’m not their hero. I’m nothing. I can’t even protect my own family, how am I supposed to lead a rebellion? How am I supposed to be the spark that they want?

I’m pretty sure none of them even want me anymore. And if they still did, they won’t once they learn how much the Capitol can hurt me, when they learn the Capitol can beat me. My son is dead, thrown into an arena just to make me suffer. My daughter is in their hands, her fate tied to my own and if I fight she could die. They won. They’ve already won and I haven’t even decided what steps to take. And everyone who follows, they’ll die. They’ll fight and die and I can’t do anything. I can’t even move.

I can’t save Ivy. I couldn’t save Bas. Peeta’s probably next. And then I’ll be alone. Just like Snow wants.

I feel the tears burn as my throat constricts and my breathing comes in shallow, short bursts. The air is getting thinner or so it feels. I can’t move. My hands curl into themselves as I back up against the metal pipe, hitting it hard. I still can’t breathe.

And then I hear growling.

The mutts. No. They can’t be here. I haven’t heard them in years. They only come in nightmares. They don’t haunt me when I’m awake.

But I see it anyway. I see it charging at me. I hear it screaming and its Ivy’s screams. It’s her cries. And it has Bas’ eyes and it doesn’t matter how much air I try to suck into my lungs, I can’t breathe.

I can’t do this. I can’t fall apart. I have to save her. I have to. I can’t let her die. I can’t let her stay there. I can’t let her become another ghost crawling and burying itself in my mind. I can’t let her become another mutt.

I have to say it. I have to calm down. I have to breathe.

Start with something simple. Start with what you know. Get through the day. But Ivy was what I knew. And Bas what was I knew. What do I know now?

My name is Katniss Mellark. It was Katniss Everdeen. My home is District Twelve. Right now I’m in District Thirteen. I’m married to Peeta Mellark. We have, had, two children. Bas is dead. Ivy is…Ivy is…she’s in the Capitol.

“Mrs. Mellark, you have to come with me now,” a woman’s voice says in the darkness. “Take her back to her room.”

Someone grabs my shoulders and I’m screaming and struggling against them. They get me to my room again and put me back to sleep.

When I wake up Peeta is there. He looks tired. He has deep bags under his eyes, his wrinkles forming crevasses around them. He looks like he’s aged ten years in two days.

“You look terrible,” I croak out as I sit up in my bed. He looks down, the hint of a smile on his face. Twenty years we’ve done this, knowing how to bring each other back even when it’s all gone to Hell or worse. It was always about survival. Even when there was no arena to fight and die in, it was always about surviving the next thing. We did that together. We’ll do this together too.

“Can’t all look as good as you,” he returns. He slides his chair closer to me, his hand reaching but falling on the bed instead, “We should probably talk about what’s going on, right?”

I nod, “There’s a lot.”

“I saw Gale.”

I let out a puff of air through my nostrils, that’s a wound that hasn’t started to fade yet. I don’t think it will. Peeta quickly counters, “We won’t start there.”

“I can’t talk about her or what they’re doing…I can’t…every time I think about…” The shortness of breath comes back again and I close my eyes as the panic rises. Peeta’s hand falls onto mine and squeezes, rooting me to the spot and stopping it before it starts.

“I can’t either.” And when I look at him I can see the hard lines getting deeper and the lost look in his eyes. I turn my hand over and knot my fingers in his, squeezing back.

“We need to get her back.” He nods at my words and I know the way. I know what I have to do. I know what Panem needs. We need to win a war for her and I’ll do it.

And Peeta knows what I mean even when I don’t say what’s beneath the words, “Katniss, it’s going to be a war. And the Mockingjay…I’ve heard Plutarch talking and I met President Coin. All of this is going to get worse.”

“It’s already worse,” I swallow, “What about Haymitch?”

Peeta’s fist clenches involuntarily before he relaxes it, “They threw him into some room somewhere to dry out. Apparently they don’t like that kind of thing here.”

“Good.” I imagine him suffering in some dark hole, crying for relief with no one there to give it. And I don’t feel better at the thought but still my anger burns.

We both fall silent, our hands entwined.

“Effie’s here,” he says, breaking the quiet of the room. “I don’t know how but she got here or they got her here.”

“Did she bring her outfits?”

“I hope so. Because the clothes here…I can’t imagine her being happy about it.”

And even in this pit of whatever mix of despair and hopelessness we’re both feeling we manage to laugh. It’s small, it’s barely even there, but it’s enough to get us through this one second of existence and push us onto the next second.

It’s enough for us to survive.

Beck –

I taste cotton in my mouth as the haze of the world falls onto me. I don’t open my eyes, burying my face into the soft pillow instead. I breathe in, smelling salt air and the hint of something else, something familiar and foreign at the same time. It’s like spice and ash and oak, the scent of woods and earth. It’s all encompassing, pure in my mind, as my eyes remain closed. But it begins to fade with each passing second. And I can’t remember the smell exactly, it’s a mixture of all the smallest memories I have of it where nothing is clear, except for the person it belongs to.

I finally open my eyes to see her lying there beside me. The blankets are pulled up to her waist as sunlight streams into her hair from the small window. And I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s here and I’m here and Hell, I can’t believe we both survived. How did we survive? How did we get here?

I realize I don’t care.

The cotton taste sticks to my tongue. I hope it’ll fade the more I wake but it only seems to be getting stronger. I push it away. I push every thought away. It doesn’t matter how we got here. We’re here, that’s what counts.

I glance around and I realize we’re on a boat. I can hear the waves gently slapping against the bottom, rocking it up and down. I have a boat?

Okay, maybe I want to know how I got her to stay on a boat, and how I finally got my boat. I’ll ask later. I’ll ask when the shock wears off. And maybe that’s what I was left with after it all ended, a bunch of fogged up memories that aren’t clear, or maybe I’m dying and this is my last moment. Or maybe we’re both dead and the afterlife is real. And if it is, well then screw it, I’ll be happy with dying.

My eyes fall back onto her. She’s fast asleep, one arm draped across my chest, the other on her pillow. Her mouth is half open in her slumber and for a moment I forget to breathe.

I feel warm. I feel like crying. I feel…I’m overwhelmed. It just keeps rushing over me the longer I stare at her. At her dark hair and closed eyes that I know hide the brightest blue’s I’ve ever seen. I want her to wake up. I want to talk to her, to see her, to feel her closer to me.

I turn my whole body towards her and let one hand fall onto her hair, brushing it back, threading my fingers through it. She stirs. I should feel guilty for trying to wake her, but I can’t bring myself to feel it. I’ll apologize later. Maybe I could make her breakfast or something. I’ll make her a thousand breakfasts if it meant spending every morning like this.

I can only really cook one thing. And by cook I mean fry it. It’s fish. That’s the only thing I can make. Does she like fish? Would she eat it for breakfast? I should find out what she likes. I can learn to make that. I’ll make it every day.

I watch her eye lids open and my throat almost closes up. She blinks before opening and closing her mouth as she wakes. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sleep like this, so calm and at peace. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her not trying to stay alive and keep it together.

I feel a flash of pain but I fight it off. It’s just a memory. This is real. This is what matters. This is where I want to be.

But where else am I supposed to be?

No. It doesn’t matter.

Stay in the moment. Stay right here.

Stay with her.

“Hi,” she says, her voice thick with sleep. She moves closer to me, fighting to stay awake as a small smile crosses her features. I feel my own smile in return.

“Hi,” I tell her, my hand resting on her cheek. My eyes run over every inch of her, looking for any scars, any signs of what we’ve been through, but I see nothing.

She closes her eyes again, drifting off. I gently shake her. “Hey, stake awake.”

Her eyes find mine and her smile is gone so mine disappears too.

“This isn’t real,” she whispers.

I nod. I know it isn’t. It can’t be. How could it? I know the truth buried in a vague memory of a crying mother and the news that tore a hole in my chest the size of the arena.

“But I want it to be.” I swallow the cotton taste down, “I don’t want you to be…I don’t want to wake up and you’re not there.”

“I don’t think your parents would be too happy with you sleeping the whole revolution away.”

“I think they’d prefer that to me being anywhere near it.”

Her smile returns and I feel my heart break all over again. What are they doing to her? Are they taking that smile? Are they burning away the best parts of her? Is she even still alive?

“You have to wake up,” she tells me in a forceful tone. “You can’t fall apart. That’s what he wants.”

“We’re going to get you back. I’ll get you back.”

“You can’t do that if you stay in here.”

I let out a breath.

“You know I’m right,” she chimes and I feel the warmth again. And I want this for real. I want the lazy mornings, late night talks, even the arguments that end in making up and everything in between. I want a life with her. A life where we don’t have to worry about Games or the Capitol threatening to destroy us. I just want to be happy. And I want it with her.

“Five more minutes,” I whisper.

Her fingers splay out across my chest as she tucks her head underneath mine. My chin falls on top of her hair and I breathe her in, my arms wrapping around her, holding her close to me.

I close my eyes and wake to a bright light above my bed and pain across my stomach. But it’s nothing compared to the ache in my head and chest that just won’t go away. And it doesn’t matter how much morphling they give me, there’s no curing this pain.

I hear the heart monitor and my throat swells and my eyes glass over. I choke back a sob as the tears start to fall and it just won’t stop hurting.

“It’s okay,” my mother says gently, her hand running through my hair, another holding onto my wrist while each sob gets worse and worse as it goes on. And I can’t breathe. I can’t feel anything but the pain.

And there’s no sunlight here. There’s no promise of tomorrow down here. There’s no hope or happiness and Ivy’s in the Capitol and God knows what they’re doing to her.

And a part of me wishes I was dead so that I didn’t have to feel this. But I know better, I know that’s not the answer. I’m alive and I have to keep going.

They won’t kill her. They can’t. It would be stupid to kill her. Katniss will fight to get her back, so will Peeta. And I’ll help too. We can get her back.

But until that happens it’s going to hurt. I have to get used to it. And I will. But right now I can’t even think about what getting used to this is going to feel like.

“What are they doing to her, mom?” My voice cracks and breaks as I repeat the question.

“I don’t know.” She pulls me closer, holding my head and all I can do is cry.

When it ends, when I’m drained and no more tears come, I stare at the ceiling. My bandages scratch at my skin and I hear my father walk into the room.

“How’s…” My mother starts.

“Peeta’s with her,” my father answers. “Is he…”

“I’m awake. You don’t need to whisper,” I say, my voice flat and toneless.

My father takes a seat next to me. “I’m sorry.”

I turn to look at him and he’s barely keeping himself awake. I’ve seen this a few times before, when he would come back from the Games, when he was sent to the Capitol. He’s worked himself tirelessly for something.

“Have you slept?” I ask and my father smiles before shaking his head.

“Had to wait for you to wake up, Captain.” He smirks and I let out a sigh. When I was little and we would go out on the boat, there was a time when I insisted on being the Captain of the vessel. I thought I had to make the commands even though I was in no position to be running any kind of ship. He played along, called me Captain for years, until I got too old for it.

“Don’t…we’re not even on a boat.”

He shrugs, “I like the nickname.” His smirk fades and he’s serious when he tells me, “You did good in there. You did.”

“I did good? I didn’t save Grover. I killed people. How is that good? I couldn’t help when Bas…”

And then it’s my mother’s turn to speak, “Hey,” she says, her voice harsh and serious and I turn to her.

She swallows, “Don’t stay in that arena.” She stares into me and I know where those words come from, I know the nightmares and the memories and the years she spent on her own ghosts. “Promise me. You don’t live in that arena.”

I nod. “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I need,” she says giving me a kiss on the forehead. My father watches her, a light and fire in his eyes that I haven’t seen in years. And maybe it’s the fact that they’re away from the eyes of the Capitol or that I’m safe, but there’s something more, there’s a freedom in this.

Sometime after that both of my parents fall asleep in chairs beside each other, my father’s head falling onto my mother’s shoulder. I don’t sleep. I’ve slept too much in the past however many days it’s been. I think three.

I’m quiet as I get out of my bed, my hand falling to the bandage at my side as a twinge of pain reminds me why I was lying there in the first place. I push past it and walk out the door of my room.

I find myself walking down hallway after hallway until I’m out of the medical wing. I’m surprised no one stops me. Security must be pretty lax around here if I can just walk out. How did this place survive destruction if they can’t even be bothered to watch their patients?

I’m not complaining. I’m glad to be out of there, even as another wave of pain radiates out of my midsection. It serves to make me walk slower. It must be the middle of the day. People walk past me with what looks like schedules tattooed on their arms. They all wear the same outfits, grey work uniforms, everyone moving like they all know exactly what they’re supposed to be doing even as throes of more citizens join them.

I stop in the middle of a large open space that breaks off into more corridors with elevators and what I can only imagine are apartments rising up all along the walls. There are grated metal catwalks with each level and my eyes travel up towards where I can’t see. How high does it all go? It’s like a whole city beneath the ground.

Crowds of people pass by me, none of them paying me much mind, all of them focused on their schedules or somewhere they should be running too. A few of them do actually run.

A woman with grey hair and deep wrinkles walks by with Plutarch Heavensbee. There are two others with them, both wearing black. I’m sheltered by a group of men all talking about some filtration issue, my lack of uniform going unnoticed.

I don’t know what makes me want to follow them but I do. It’s something more interesting to do than to walk around. Maybe they have a plan to get Ivy back, maybe they have something more to say than what’s been told to me.

Either way I want to know.

“It’s too dangerous and we don’t even know if she’s capable of talking to these people,” The woman says in a stern voice.

“President Coin, she needs to see that others are fighting, that her district is fighting and winning. It’ll be even more motivation for her to want to be the Mockingjay,” Plutarch argues. He shaved his beard since I last saw him. He almost looks normal, human, not like the head Gamemaker that almost killed me.

“And what makes you think that after Twenty Five years she’s interested now. That they’ll want to follow her.”

“Her daughter’s in the Capitol. Look what happened when her son died, that speech she made. She can make another speech. Something about fighting for her children, that she won’t stop and they shouldn’t stop until their children are safe. We can film it even, broadcast it to the districts.”

I keep a reasonable distance, close enough to hear but not close enough to be seen. I can’t help but think I shouldn’t be doing this. I should probably go somewhere else. I don’t need to hear about the war, right?

No. I’m pretty certain I do. And I’m even more certain Ivy would be doing the same thing that I am right now. She would want to know if she had the opportunity to.

“It’s not enough.” President Coin stops in front of a room. I stop at the corner where I can listen. A few other people in Thirteen pass by me, these ones spare me a glance. I guess they’re not used to seeing others without a schedule or place to be, or walking around in their hospital garb.

“She has to visit the rebels in her district. She has to see what’s at stake and they have to know that she’s still out there.”

I scoff just as President Coin does. “I think she knows better than anyone what’s at stake and I think she’s known it for years, she just didn’t care enough to face it. Mr. Heavensbee, we and the rest of Panem are done waiting for a savior. The rescue of the tributes of the 100th Games as well as the death of Basil Mellark and the incarceration of Ivy Mellark has provided us with an opportunity for others to join our cause. Hopefully it will be enough to change the tide.”

Plutarch is quick to interject, his voice quick and charismatic, full of intelligence and an air of superiority. “Madam President with all due respect, hopefully is not a guarantee, it’s a shit maybe. And when you don’t get enough to change the tide, you’ll all drown. If she goes to Twelve and makes a speech for those rebels and we broadcast it, we have a spark again. If we provide a line for them to attach onto and we let the other districts know that Twelve of all places is willing to stand with the Mockingjay again, then I assure you we will have the revolution we should have had twenty five years ago.”

There’s a silence that follows before Coin’s flat voice sighs in agreement. And I can’t see it but I know Plutarch is smiling, or at least, his eyes are mimicking whatever he can call gratefulness. He’s won whatever negotiation this was, if you can even call it that.

“Fine. Send her. And make it count.”

“This hole is deeper by the hour My hands are bleeding I spin around, you're nowhere I'll throw away my ugly plans They're too tired to push me anywhere but down So who am I to fool now if you're gone, you're gone If I am found below the ground I'm searching, desperate”

  “Far off in the distance     Somewhere you can't see     Allegiances have formed your destiny

 Opposition all around     Feeding off your soul     Trying hard to swallow up you whole

 And the demons all around you waiting     For you to sell your soul”

-          Black – Kari Kimmel

Ivy –

Freezing to death was slow. It was quiet too and almost calm. Slow, calm and quiet while everything around me blurred and darkened and I went numb.

Burning to death is none of those things. There’s no numbness. There’s no quiet. It’s choking, scalding, and bright. Everything is way too bright.

I try to climb towards the window by positioning anything to give me enough height to reach it. I stand on a table, pull a bench on top, but I still can’t reach the window. And even as I see it I don’t think I could get through and I don’t think Beck could make the climb with his injury. I don’t have a lot of time left to decide if I want to keep trying. The smoke gets too thick to see and I can’t find the window anymore.

The only thing I can see is bright oranges and reds dancing around me through thick smoke as the fire burns.

I drop back off the table and find Beck waiting for me. He’s close enough to see the worry in my eyes. I knew when we came in here there was no way out and now he knows too. He can see it in me. We’ll die if we stay. We’ll die if we leave. It’s just a matter of which death we prefer.

His hand clutches his side and there’s fresh blood staining his fingers. His stitches must have ripped open. He looks pale and faint as sweat drips down his neck, but somehow he still manages a smile.

“If you weren’t in these Games I think I would have won,” he says in a light tone.

“So this is my fault? Because I was, what? Born?” And I’m taken aback by the shift in blame, a frustration and anger that only he seems to bring out in me, even now when we’re faced with death once again. And how many times have we faced death now? I lost count. This is the one that sticks though, that I’m sure of.

“Not entirely. I did team up with you.” He shrugs and I want to push him until I realize what he’s doing. He’s playing it off. He’s playing the valiant tribute from Four. He’s saying goodbye.

So I play too.

“Yeah, well, you are a lot dumber than you look.” I wipe sweat from my forehead as the fire travels up the walls and its starting to surround us now. We don’t have much longer before this whole place collapses.

Still, his smile grows, “Oh I’m the biggest idiot in Panem. But you wouldn’t have made it this far without me.”

“And you really think you would have made it without me? What would you have done if I wasn’t here?”

He grabs my arm while his other encircles my back pulling me to him. My breath hitches, my pulse pounds and everything blurs around me as his lips crash onto mine. All I can feel is him. All I can taste is him. And he tastes like salt and sun and hope. I imagine him sitting on the beach while the ocean crashes behind him, the sun on his face and a smile in his eyes. And it’s the real him. And it’s the real me. There’s no fire. No Games. No Arena. There’s just us, in this moment, with no role to play and no masks to wear.

And I kiss him back with a shared desperation. One hand winds around his neck pulling him closer as the other falls on his chest feeling his heart beat with mine. And I remember when we first met at the chariots and I wonder if it was all going to end up here. His eyes had reminded me of home. He feels like home. A part of me wishes I could see that beach and feel that sun. I wish we could go home.

But we can’t. We aren’t home. We aren’t safe. He’s dying and this is goodbye.

He winces and all my senses flood back. We break apart and I can feel my pulse beating a little faster and it has nothing to do with the fire making its way towards us.

He finds his voice through shallow breaths, “If you weren’t here, I’d probably have done that earlier.”

“You wouldn’t have known me.” I feel more awake, alive, and it’s almost cruel to feel like this right before it’s all going to be over.

“I would have tried to know you. The cameras, your interviews, I saw past it. I would have seen past it. I would have tried.”

I have to stop myself from kissing him again as a beam crashes down and he pulls me to the door. The bench we put in front of it is gone. He must have moved it while I was trying to get to the window. The only thing keeping us in here is the trident but no one outside is trying to get in anymore. They’re waiting for us to come out.

“So what do we do now?” I ask and I can still taste salt but I ignore it. I have to ignore it. Everything is sweltering now, stifling, and I can no longer breathe as I once did. And this has everything to do with the fire, everything to do with the fact that we are dying in here.

His eyes find mine and there’s a challenge in them. He smirks, “Run.”

And with that he pulls the trident from the handles and rips open the door. And there’s no room for arguing, there’s no way for me to stop him. So I just start moving.

I grab the knife from the door and pick up my bow. I’m out into the open air, the breath coming easily and the wind drying the sweat on my skin. I don’t look for Beck. I can’t look to see if he’s gone. I can’t know. So I just run. And I keep running while Cain waits, sword in hand with victory in his eyes like a wolf ready to devour its prey.

I pull my last arrow, loading it with a prayer fresh on my mind. I’m about to fire when there’s a large explosion that throws us all to the ground. Everything flashes then goes dark as the false weather disappears. All I can hear is the ringing in my ears while I struggle to get my bearings, but it’s too dark to see.

Light breaks through as the dome fractures across the sky. I hold my breath as a loud creak resounds through the whole arena before the fractures fall apart. I push myself to my feet as metal beams and broken pieces drop to the ground, bursting into flames on impact.

Emery drops her spear and watches the sky as real sunlight pours in, wiping away the darkness. And it’s warm. It’s so warm and real, but how can this be real? How can the sky be that bright? The blues and clouds above are so much more colorful than I remember. Through the broken dome I can make out a hovercraft, a black mass against the blue, and it’s getting closer.

This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. This is just part of the Game. It’s always part of the Game.

Another beam falls and Emery dives out of the way to duck behind a tree, her eyes still on the hovercraft. And I look around but I don’t know where Beck fell or if he fell at all. I can still hear ringing and the collapse of the arena around me as metal shards hurtle to the ground. I’m in a daze and somehow I’m still moving forward, though I’m not sure why.

The hovercraft has to be from the Capitol. Something must have happened, something bad. My mind doesn’t allow me to think of the possibilities. I’m hyper aware of my feet moving and the breath heaving in and out of my lungs. I grip the knife and bow in my hands with the last of my strength, though I’m not sure how much longer it will last.

My eyes fall onto my hands. They’re rough and calloused and have felt too much blood and taken too many lives. The string around my neck holding the rings seems to pull me further towards the ground like a weight, but I keep pushing forward. I have only one goal, one focus, and it’s to keep going. And in my haze I see my brother again. I see his blonde hair and his eyes watching the sky like Emery. I see him smile. And then I see him bloody and dead.

He disappears and then my eyes fall on Cain, on his retreating back, as he runs towards the river bank. And there’s a stinging and throbbing in my throat, a reminder of what he did. I can feel the fire he tried to burn me in. I can feel Bas’ breath leave his lungs. And Cain is responsible for that. He can’t get away. He has to pay.

The haze disappears the ringing in my ears stops. The sound of the world comes to me in a flood of broken metal pieces and burning trees. I hear the whirring of engines and what sounds like someone screaming but all I can see is Cain. He’s getting away. He can’t get away.

So I run. I run as fast as I can while my blood boils and my lungs ache with all my hatred towards him. I pass his sword and he dropped it. He’s afraid. He’s afraid of what’s happening in this arena.

Good. This makes it easier.

I tear my way through brush and broken branches but I barely feel them as they cut into my cheek. Cain keeps running, the arena keeps falling, and I have my target.

I sheath the knife as I load my arrow. I wait to fire once he reaches the river bank. The arrow lands in his ankle and he screams in agony. And then I’m on top of him, throwing him into the ground, knife back in hand ready to finish this. But he’s stronger than me and I’m tossed into the edge of the river.

The water soaks into my clothes, my bow ripped from my hand by the force of his. Somehow I hold onto my knife but his knee pushes into my shoulder to keep me from using it. His hands are around me as he shoves me further into the water, trying to drown me.

I’ve felt what it is to drown. I’ve felt what it is to burn. And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of all of this. He’s too far in, too close to harm. I can see his ankle, the arrow still sticking out it. I kick as hard as I can and he doubles back, the blood pooling in the water. His hand pulls my necklace with him, breaking it as I stand.

I kick him hard in the neck as my knife lands in his knee cap. He punches me hard in my cheek and I taste blood. I claw and punch as he tries to choke me again and when I grab the arrow in his ankle, I twist it hard. He backs off and I remove the knife from his knee to point it straight at his throat. He stops. I have the advantage. There’s no escaping this for him.

I catch my breath, spitting up blood and water as Cain kneels before me, dirt and mud from the river caked onto his clothing, bruises forming around his face.

“You win,” he says to me, closing his eyes, welcoming it. And I killed Victoria like this, with vengeance and hatred in my heart, and I want to kill Cain the same way. I want him to pay for everything he did. He deserves this.

But still, I can’t bring myself to finish it. I can’t make the final cut. I look over his shoulder and I see Bas again. I see him watching me with disapproval in his eyes and I can’t bring the knife down into Cain’s throat.

And it doesn’t make sense. What’s one more life taken in here? What’s one more kill? He deserves to die. I hold the knife closer, my hand steady even though everything inside of me is shaking and screaming. And he deserves this. He deserves to feel the pain he caused. He deserves to die.

But I can’t be the one to do it. My eyes lock onto Bas’ and he shakes his head. He looks back up to the sky, the real sky, and everything around us is crumbling but the sky is real. The sun is real. The wind is real. The light from the sun catches on the rings spread across the ground and they shine in it. And it’s another reminder of home, another piece of me that I need to hold onto.

And I can’t kill Cain no matter how much the darkest part of me wants to. It won’t bring Bas back. It won’t make me feel better. Killing Victoria proved that much. Beck was right. My family wouldn’t want me to do this. And I didn’t care then, but I do now.

I have to find Beck. I have to get out of here.

The ground whips up as the whir of engines sounds overhead and Bas disappears. Cain opens his eyes as I pull the knife away from his throat and there’s a confusion and anger in them. He reaches for my hand to take the knife but I kick him in the throat, knocking him to the ground.

I look up to see the cold metal of the hovercraft descending towards us, ropes dropping from the side of it. It blocks out the sun as it approaches.

And I know the Games are over but something else is starting, something more.

I raise my arms and drop the knife as boots land behind me. Cain sprawled out on the ground, still breathing, still alive.

Katniss –

I come to amidst the sounds of beeping monitors, hurried footsteps, and muffled voices. I’m not in the hovercraft anymore. I don’t know where I am.

I’m lying in a bed with scratchy sheets and thin blankets. It’s not a Capitol bed. I’m not in the Capitol. Or at least, I hope I’m not but I can’t be sure. I’m no longer wearing the Peacekeeper uniform. Wherever I am, they changed me into a hospital gown. The lights are dim in here with no windows to look out of. This can’t be the Capitol. They always have windows.

Unless Snow doesn’t want me to see what’s out there. Unless he wants me to think I escaped only to realize he still has me right where he wants me for as long as he wants me there.

There’s a curtain blocking my bed. And the voices all seem to come into focus.

“I need morphling,” someone says.

“He’s going to need surgery,” another voice replies.

Everything spins around me as I try to stand up and I feel the pinch of a needle in my arm. My eyes follow the tube to the bag providing me fluids. I pull the needle as my feet land on the cold floor. How did I get here?

I hit my head. I remember that. My hand finds the cut where I can feel the stitches. I was in the hovercraft. I fired the arrow. The blast knocked me back and the Capitol was coming. I see no Peackeepers around me. This can’t be the Capitol, which means it must be Thirteen. We made it. My heart springs to my throat at my next thought.

Ivy. I have to find her.

I take one step forward and the world spins once again, this time faster. The curtain opens and strong hands stop me in my place.

“Whoa there, Catnip.”

My whole body freezes. He’s dead. He’s gone. The mine collapsed. He can’t be here.

And I look at him and he is. Gale. He’s alive. A little gray, with wrinkles around his eyes, wearing what looks like a black military uniform, but alive. He’s alive. Or am I dead too? Is this all a lie my dying brain constructed? Did I die when I tried to save Ivy?

But his hands are warm and the pain is real. He’s alive. I’m alive. We’re in Thirteen.

“You…you can’t…” I feel the acid in my throat and the raw taste of copper as a wave of nausea hits me. I think I might throw up but I don’t. There’s nothing in my stomach for me to manage it. Gale tries to help me back into the bed but I push away his arm, not as strong as I want to but it gets the point across.

“You’re dead,” I finally breathe out and he has the decency to look down. He left his brother, his family, Madge. He left me. He left everyone. All that talk about fighting and about protecting Twelve and the people he loved. And he left. He ran away.

And I remember Rory, working in the mines and putting on a brave face, taking charge when his brother was gone. I remember Madge who became a ghost. I remember Gale’s mother, crying and sobbing at the news of the collapse. And Twelve mourned for Gale. I mourned for him. My children mourned for him too.

“Twelve was never gonna survive with me. Not with the Capitol watching. I had to die so I could live to fight.”

My hand connects with his face in the hardest slap I’ve ever managed, “You’re a coward.”

He sucks in a breath and there’s a deep hurt and anger in his face that matches my own, “Look who’s talking.” He pulls it back, standing straight, a soldier of Thirteen.

“I want to see Ivy,” I order. He looks down again and even now I can read him. Even now, I know that look. It’s the same look of mercy he gave a wounded animal before he finished the job.

I shake my head, pushing him aside and tearing open the curtain. He doesn’t stop me but I can hear his footsteps following. The adrenaline helps to stave off my nausea but I still have trouble seeing straight.

I round a corner and press my hand to the wall to keep myself upright as I enter the chaos of running doctors and nurses trying to treat incoming mentors and tributes.

It’s a long, slow walk as I pass by bed after bed. Most are empty but there’s the few with people I don’t recognize receiving treatment. They all wear grey. The doctors and nurses wear white. Some spare me a glance and then look to Gale with a question in their eyes, but none stop me. I wouldn’t let them stop me even if they tried. I need to find my family.

Johanna sits on a metal bench as a nurse cleans a cut above her eye. She stares at me and Gale as we walk by her, a hard edge in her stare.

“You should lie down,” Gale tries as I stumble but remain upright. He holds out his arm, ready to push me back into my room but I don’t need his help. I don’t want his help. I want to find my daughter and Peeta.

“Katniss,” he says and I snap again.

“I don’t need…” I take a breath, the dizziness creeping back in. He grabs my arm this time but I smack him back. “I don’t need you.”

It’s then that Johanna shrugs off her nurse and puts herself between me and Gale. It’s good that she does because I’m about ready to hit him again.

“Maybe you should take a walk yourself,” Johanna directs to Gale and I’m grateful for her words when I can’t find mine.

He glances from me to her and she never moves from her spot. She keeps staring him down, almost asking for a fight.

“I’ll…” He doesn’t say goodbye, he barely looks at me as he leaves. I hope he never looks at me again.

My anger fluctuates between cold shock and burning rage and it’s all the lies that I’ve been told and all the cowards that abandoned me to rot in my cage. Panem stopped caring about the Mockingjay. They stopped fighting. They shouldn’t have put that responsibility on me to guide them. They should have fought for themselves. Cowards, every single one, Gale included. He ran away to Thirteen and left all that he once said he cared about. And for what?

Haymitch is a liar too. He had a plan and he never told me about it. He omitted the truth which is just as bad as telling a lie, especially when it comes to the Games and especially when my children were in them. He let me try to save my children and he let me watch one of them die and all along he knew there was a plan. He could have said something, he could have told me, and I would have fought. He could have tried harder. They all could have. I’m tired of lies. I’m tired of fear. I’m just tired.

“Where are you going, Mockingjay?” Johanna asks and her voice has dropped to a quiet tone, reserved but not unkind.

“Don’t call me that,” I say, the tiredness aching in every syllable. I keep walking. She doesn’t stop me. She doesn’t even try to. All she gives me is a small nod.

I pass Annie and Finnick standing over an unconscious Beck. He lies in his bed, machines working to keep him alive, bandages wrapped around his midsection. Annie holds onto her son’s hand and doesn’t look anywhere but at him. A doctor checks his vitals, distributing morphling as Beck groans.

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay,” Annie says, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “You’re safe.”

Finnick twists and ties knots in a fraying rope as he stands against the wall. His eyes move back and forth from the rope to the heart monitor with every beat, like he’s reminding himself with every beep of the machine that his son is alive. His son survived.

I can make out Emery sitting up in her bed, staring at the floor, a bandage being applied to her ankle. Gloss sits with an arm around her, talking to her in a quiet voice while she struggles not to cry. He looks up to see me and his eyes fall back to focusing on his daughter. If it’s possible he holds her tighter.

“Katniss,” I turn and find Peeta walking towards me. He looks different. He looks colder, broken. His eyes are red, his jaw is set in a thin line and he keeps his hands curled at his sides, like he’s struggling not to hit something.

“What’s she doing out of her room?” Haymitch asks while a nurse follows behind him carrying gauze, doing everything she can to try to treat him. He pinches his nose, blood fresh on his shirt, while a dark purple bruise blooms across his face. He waves the nurse off as he keeps walking. She sighs and turns away. I can see Peeta’s hands shaking with fresh bruises on his knuckles and I know who he’s struggling not to hit again.

“You need to rest, sweetheart,” Haymitch says as he stands in front of me. I don’t look at him. I can barely hear him. All I can see is Peeta as he takes quick breaths and his hands curl and uncurl into fists. And I know. I know without him telling me, but I can’t bring myself to think it.

“Where is she?” I ask. Haymitch grabs my arm but I pull it back, “Where is she?” I repeat and I can see the pain in Haymitch’s eyes and it has nothing to do with his broken nose.

“Where is she?” I ask one final time as my voice cracks and fractures.

I watch Peeta. His hand tears into his hair as he looks to the floor. And he looks like he’s ready to scream. He looks like he’s ready to fall apart and I’m not far behind. The chaos of the medical staff quiets and all I can hear is my own breathing, my own frantic heartbeat, as I struggle to hold on.

“She deserves to know,” Finnick says from beside me. It makes my heart drop into my stomach.

I turn to Haymitch and he owes me the truth. He owes it more than he’s ever owed me anything. She has to be alive. I have to believe that she is. I have to believe that I would know if she wasn’t, that something would tell me that she wasn’t. I would know. She has to be alive.

Haymitch swallows hard before saying, “She still has her tracker in.”

“Where?!” My voice echoes off the walls, sounding frayed and broken.

There’s a long silence before Haymitch delivers the news, my eyes meeting Peeta’s as the words fall around us, burying me and breaking me with them.

The Arena: Flight of the Mockingjay - Katniss

It starts as planned.

The Peacekeepers are being dispatched to the training center as part of President Snow’s reaction to his Victors going missing. We blend in to the incoming units, sticking together, following orders, and no one questions us.

Haymitch and Beetee disappear to deal with the power and the hovercraft. At least, I think it’s them. We all look the same, it’s hard to tell. The rest of us stay with the Peacekeepers. It starts out almost too easy. And I think this is working. I think we have a chance. I have hope.

We stay in line. We don’t say a word. It’s going well. It’s going to be okay. We’re going to rescue her. I’m going to see my daughter again.

And then we’re stopped by a large Peacekeeper with his helmet off. He has a hooked nose and a beard. He surveys the units. He’s in charge, he’s making the orders, and he’s dividing up the reinforcements. He points and sends each person to their post and to their new assignment. I step forward in line, praying I’m with the others, praying we aren’t split apart. He reaches me and shoves me to the left. Peeta was next to me, he’s not anymore. No one is. I’m the last to join this group.

“Head up to the trading floor and keep the mentors in line. It’ll be over soon.”

I freeze. What does he mean? It can’t be almost over. What’s happening in that arena? I need to know. I have to stop myself from running as a hand pushes me forward, keeping me with the unit.

Under the synchronized marching of boots a voice whispers, “Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

“Johanna?” I question.

She shushes me, sticking beside me as we march on. I want to ask about Peeta. I want to know if she saw him or if she can even tell which one he is, but I can’t. I have to be quiet. I have to stick with the plan as best I can. There’s no turning back even if one of us gets lost or left behind.

We have to get to Ivy. Whatever it takes, I have to save her. I have to undo what I’ve done. I trained her for these Games and it’s my fault she’s in them. It’s my fault I played the part. It’s my fault she’s losing herself in the arena. And I know what it’s like to lose yourself both to the ghosts of the Games and to the image of a Victor. I have to salvage whatever’s left of her and bring her back. I can’t lose her too. I can’t let it happen.

She has to know I love her. She has to know for sure. I can’t let it go unsaid anymore and I hate that I let it happen. I hate all the things I never said to Bas, all the memories I never shared with him and yet he never questioned it of me. And I regret that I couldn’t show Ivy that same absolution. And she said she’s seen it, she said she knows, but she can’t until I tell her.

I owe her a better life, whatever life she can have after this. I owe her so much more than I’ve given.

I used to think I would be better than my mother, that I wouldn’t do what she did to me, that I wouldn’t disappear on my children. And maybe I didn’t disappear but I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t who they needed. Maybe that’s worse. Maybe it’s the same.

I never let them starve. Even at my absolute worst, even when I couldn’t get out of bed, I never let them starve. And maybe that’s better than my mother. Maybe I am better, but not by much. And I can’t live with that.

We keep traveling down the hallway and I know we’ll be at the elevator soon. And I know it’s only a glimpse, I know it’s temporary, but I need to see her. I need to know she’s still alive.

“Keep up,” Someone shouts behind me and then it’s followed by, “Move!”

I can see the elevator. I can keep going. I can see her before the power shuts off, before I take the chance to escape.

“What are y--”

I hear a commotion, more shouting mixed in with the sound of someone being beaten, and I turn. It’s Wiress. Her hands are twisted around themselves, her face bleeding where she was hit as the Peacekeeper who beat her stands with his baton raised, ready to deliver another blow.

“They’re here! They’re wearing uniforms!”

Wiress looks at me and she looks through the helmet as if she can see right to my eyes. And I can see that she knows it’s me. I try to get to her, to stop what I know is about to happen, but Johanna pushes me back as she raises her gun.

“Shut it dow--”

The final blow is delivered and Wiress’ face is frozen in her last words. A gunshot rings out and the Peacekeeper falls beside Wiress. Johanna removes her helmet, throwing it to the side as she grabs me and we start running.

“Helmets off!” The Captain orders but no order to shoot follows and no gun shots threaten me.

“Snow wants her alive!” Is the final order I hear as I throw my helmet off and we turn down another hallway. We slide as I hear more boots and we turn. I can see another elevator but we don’t take it. We can’t go up. We can only keep running.

The alarms start to sound through the building, mixing with the shouts of Peacekeepers as they march towards us. We’re trapped, or about to be, there are only so many hallways for us to run down.

And I thought I had hope, I thought I could have hope. Hope is wasted here.

We hear more boots and Johanna pulls me through a steel door. And I know this door. It haunts my dreams with its silence. It’s the door I was never allowed to go through, the invitation I never received, the goodbye’s I could never give. The dead door.

I can see my breath in the air as Johanna shuts the door behind us. And then the power goes out.

Even in the darkness, I slam my eyes shut. I’m afraid to look. I’m afraid to see what I know I’ll see. It’s too cold here. It’s freezing. I can feel my skin start to numb the longer I stand still.

I keep my eyes closed as the emergency lights turn on and there’s a dim red glow against my eyelids. But I can’t open them. I can’t see what I don’t want to. I can’t face it.

I can hear the Peacekeepers outside the door and there’s no way out. I don’t know what President Snow will do to us. I don’t know what horrors he could possibly come up with but I know they’ll be nothing good.

And my thoughts are on Ivy, on her still in the arena, and I can only hope Peeta will get to her. I can only hope one day she’ll forgive me for all I’ve done, even if I’m not there to apologize and tell her myself.

I finally open my eyes to stare at the steel door. Johanna’s Peacekeeper baton is jammed in the handle, stopping the door from opening. It shakes and rattles as our pursuers try to pry their way in. It won’t be long before they succeed.

“He looks so small,” Johanna says in a low, wavering voice. And I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see him. But this is the only time I’ll ever get to see him, the last time I’ll get to say goodbye. I won’t get to bury him in Twelve, I realize that now. He’ll be stuck here. He deserves a goodbye. He deserved so much more than what he got. He deserved a mother who would have fought for him, who wouldn’t have let him go into that arena. I have to make up for some of that. If the Capitol takes me, if President Snow gets me, I’ll never have the chance.

Another chill runs through my bones as I take a breath and turn, trying to stay strong, trying to keep my face stoic. The tributes are placed in order by District, just like everything is done in the Games. I pass Stone, his wounds have been fixed and all the imperfections from survival erased. He’s dressed in a white suit, prepared like a doll. That’s how they like it when they bury the dead from the Games. Clean, honorable, and made up just like the chariots. It’s all a lie, a façade, all of it. And there’s no escape, even in death.

I stop beside Victoria and I can’t help but look at her. Ivy killed her. That’s what Beetee had said and he had looked solemn, he didn’t want to tell me, but I can see it. Whoever cleans the bodies hasn’t gotten to her yet. Her wounds are still clear and on display. It was violent, it was angry, and a part of me doesn’t want to believe Ivy did this, but I know she did. I know she’s capable of it. The same rage flows through her veins as it does mine. It’s my rage, my fire that she got. And Bas had it too, but it wasn’t enough to save him. And judging by the tears in Victoria’s flesh and the amount of blood on her clothing that fire won’t be enough to save Ivy either, if anything it’ll destroy her.

Ivy and Beck killed Stone to survive and they did it together. Ivy killed Victoria alone. And as I stand between the two bodies I can see the difference. I can see the marks of survival and the marks of vengeance. And I don’t know if I would have acted the same. I don’t know if I could. Even worse I don’t know if bringing Ivy back from this is possible.

My eyes fall on Johanna as she stands over Grover. She’s right, he does look small. And for all her hardened edges, for all the bitterness and loud anger, she’s quiet, her eyes staring at the boy lying in front of her. He’s pale, his glasses foggy from the cold and he’s been fixed up too. He’s been turned into a lie. Johanna’s eyes soften the longer she looks at him, like she’s lost in a memory. And she sees past the lie, she sees the boy that was, not the boy they created.

“I was his mother’s mentor, she was in…it was bad when she came back. She had to go to the Capitol a lot, they liked her.” Johanna watches Grover, as if hoping that by mentioning his mother it’ll bring him back, but he doesn’t move. “And then one month she didn’t have to go and a couple months later he was born and she was…I thought she was getting better, I tried to…I watched out for him. And her. I tried.”

Her hands are tentative, slow and caring as she removes the glasses, folding them and placing them at Grover’s side. Her other hand finds his hair and stays there, her palm pressed to his forehead, fingers brushing his locks.

“I tried. I should have tried harder,” her voice cracks and I don’t know whether I should say something, I don’t know what to say. My loss is as fresh as hers. There is nothing to say.

If Grover looks small it’s nothing compared to the boy from Ten. His feet don’t even reach the bottom of the metal table he’s laid on. I can’t look at him. I keep walking and as I do I finally bring myself to look down the end of the line towards the two from Eleven and I’m getting closer. The girl, Callie has been put back together with Teddy beside her, and they’d look like they were sleeping if not for the lack of color in their skin and breath in their lungs. And I could pretend they were sleeping if I wanted, if I tried hard enough, but I know it’s a lie. Like the way they’re prepared, like the way the Games are presented, like the way my life has been since I became a Victor, it’s just another lie.

And I can’t lie anymore.

When I stop in front of Bas I can’t feel the cold of the room anymore. I can’t hear the Peacekeepers outside. I can’t even hear Johanna. I’m alone standing before my son and everything is quiet. The red lights bask him in a glow that reminds me all too much of the moment he faded from the world as blood seeped into the ground and tears fell from his eyes for the last time. He was scared and I should have protected him. I should have done better.

I couldn’t help him. And I can barely look at him now without feeling like a piece of my soul is being torn out. And I didn’t realize how much I ached, how much I hurt, until I looked at him, until I faced him. And it’s so much worse than I imagined. It feels like I’m a statue, like I’m frozen and cold and I can’t feel any of it. But somehow I move closer to him, somehow I stand near enough to see the Mockingjay pin returned to the lapel on the suit they dressed him in. They let him keep it.

I stare at the pin and my fingers fumble over themselves to touch the golden bird with the arrow in its mouth. Madge gave it to me. She told me it was a gift and it was. It was a token, it was hope. That’s what the country saw and felt once before and it’s what they need to see again.

I draw my gaze from the pin to Bas’ face. His eyes are closed, his hair combed back and his face still. He looks older now that I see him. He looks worn and weary. I close my eyes and the tears come but I don’t fall apart. I don’t break down like I thought I would. The cold burns against my skin from this room and the silence I felt before disappears.

I can hear what’s happening outside. I can hear the Peacekeepers barking orders, ready to break down the door.

“I love you,” I tell Bas in a voice that barely produces any sound. And he always knew but saying it aloud makes it real, even if he can’t hear it now. I take the pin from him and I pocket it. I need to carry it for him. I need it so I can remember how I held this country’s hope in my hand and I let it die. I buried it. I can’t do it again. I have to keep it alive for him, for my son, for everyone. And he painted the symbol before, he tried to remind everyone that I was still here, and I let him down. I won’t let him down again.

“They’re going to be in here soon,” Johanna says, her voice back to a steady and controlled tone. She doesn’t say anything to me about Bas and I don’t say anything to her about Grover. We let it be. Two mothers mourning their sons in silence while trying to survive.

The door shakes and rattles and there’s the distinct sound of drilling. Johanna pulls her gun and waits.

“I’ll fire, you run.”

“I can’t let you…”

“You’re not. No matter what, keep running. Get to the hovercraft and go.” Johanna gives me a smirk, “Be the big savior, Mockingjay.”

The door slides open but before Johanna can fire a Peacekeeper drops to the ground, unconscious. There are two gun shots and Gloss steps into the room.

“What the Hell?” Johanna asks.

“I should be asking you that,” Gloss replies.

“I thought you’d be on their side,” Johanna says, kicking the unconscious Peacekeeper, blocking me from Gloss, “Or are you looking to take Katniss to Snow yourself?”

He shakes his head, “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Is that so? Funny. How exactly did you walk out of that arena, was it by being honest?” Johanna remarks.

“I thought that was you,” he retorts but there’s a tiredness to his words, a worried edge in them. “We need to go.”

“We don’t need to do anything.” Johanna points the gun at him but he doesn’t flinch. Instead, he drops his and waits.

“I want what you want,” he says, staring at me pointedly, “Before it’s too late.”

And I remember how he’s been these Games. Sleepless, red eyed, always watching the screens, never leaving the room unless Cashmere forced him to. The other Careers, namely the ones from Two always sleep just fine and this year is no exception, but Gloss has been different. He’s worried about his daughter. He wants to save her just like I want to save mine.

“You want to save Emery,” I state and he nods.

“She helped kill my son,” I tell him and my voice is cold, “Why would we help you get her out?” And she didn’t deliver the killing blow but she was there, she helped. She’s as much to blame as Cain and Victoria.

And I realize a part of me is relieved that Ivy got to Victoria, that she made them pay. And I wonder if my rage will consume me just as it’s doing to Ivy. And even worse, I wonder if I’ll let it.

“Because I just saved your lives, and because…we’re different in the arena. She’s different in the arena. She just wants to go home, like we all do. You both know what that’s like.”

We can hear more boots marching their way down the hallway.

“More will be here soon,” Gloss says and his hands are curled at his sides and he’s pleading. His eyes, everything about him is screaming to let him come with us. And I have to. I have to get to Ivy. There’s no time for this. We need to get to the hovercraft. We need to go. I have to save her.

“We need to go,” I say, “This doesn’t mean I trust you. And if you do anything, if you’re trying to get me to Snow or to stop this, I’ll put an arrow in you myself.”

I head out first with Gloss and Johanna following. “We need to get to the hangar,” I say and Gloss nods.

“I know a way,” he says and starts down the hall. Johanna stops him.

“No, we’re not following you.”

“I’m not your enemy.”

I push forward, there’s no more room for arguing. He’s right. He’s not my enemy. He’s not who I’m worried about. President Snow is our enemy, all of ours. He’s the one we should focus on fighting. For now, there’s just this mission, just the rescue.

Johanna keeps her gun on him as we move. The alarms continue as emergency lights blaze in the hallways down to the hangar and I’m relieved when we make it there. But there’s no one else around and I think we’re too late, I think they left without us.

There are no enemies to fight and from what I can gather, no missing hovercrafts, no empty space for us to realize we’ve been abandoned. Maybe we’re the only ones who made it.

I’m about to ask if Gloss knows how to fly a hovercraft when Haymitch storms in holding the bag of weapons in one arm and helping Finnick carry an injured Beetee with the other.

Blood covers the back of Beetee’s uniform and his head lolls against Finnick’s shoulder. There’s blood on Finnick’s face but he’s unharmed, or looks it. Johanna glances behind them for anyone else and I can feel the absence where Peeta should be. My heart falls into my stomach.

“Where’s Peeta?” I ask and my voice turns frantic as I push past them. Haymitch grabs my arm, stopping me from leaving.

He shakes his head. “We need to get to the hovercraft.”

“Not without Peeta.”

Finnick and Johanna share a look, “Annie’s not with you?” He asks and his voice is frail, like glass being scraped against the ground. And I know what he’s feeling. Peeta’s not here. I can’t keep moving. I have to wait for him.

“We never saw her,” Johanna answers, “Wiress is gone.”

Finnick nods and takes the full weight of Beetee onto him as Haymitch shoves the bag of weapons into my hands.

“We need to move,” Haymitch repeats with force, “We’ll be surrounded soon.”

Finnick’s hands grip Beetee so hard I’m sure they’ll leave bruises. I swing the bag over my shoulder and Johanna pushes me towards the hovercraft, but I can’t move. I don’t want to move. Finnick struggles to keep his feet moving forward and I know it’s not the weight of Beetee on his shoulders.

I can’t breathe even as we board the hovercraft. It’s a medical one, the same ones they use to take tributes out of the arena after they win. There are no weapons on board, save the one’s we have on us. If the Capitol follows, and they will, it’s going to get a lot harder to escape them.

Haymitch knew this was a possibility, he knew we were going to face this and he warned us, or tried to. Still, it’s hard to face the truth.

Finnick lays Beetee onto the ground, putting an IV into his arm. His every motion is mechanical, his eyes trained on what he’s doing, afraid to look anywhere Annie isn’t.

“Finnick,” I try and my voice has the same edge, the same broken sound as his.

“I hope they’re dead,” he responds quietly, “If Snow...I hope they’re dead.”

And I understand. Peeta being dead would be better than what the Capitol will do him. And I don’t know what kind of world there is without him in it. He’s been a part of my life for so long. I love him. I believe I do, I know I do, even if I can’t find the words to say it. He knows. He’s always known. And living without him. It doesn’t seem possible. I don’t know if it is. He should have heard it too. I should have told him.

There’s Ivy. I have to focus on her. I can mourn later. I can worry after. I have to save her. He would do the same.

Haymitch goes to the front and starts the hovercraft. Gloss looks around frantically, his worry taking over and someone’s missing for him too. The cold metal of the hovercraft seems to surround me and the glass in my voice travels into my veins.

We should wait. We have to wait, but we can’t. I know we can’t. I know we have to go. Beck and Ivy need us to leave and Annie and Peeta would want us to go. I would want to be left behind if it meant saving Ivy. I would let the Capitol tear me apart if it meant saving her.

The engines come to life and everything begins to lock down for flight. The door starts to move downwards, ready to seal off the hovercraft so we can take off. Finnick sits back after he finishes working on Beetee and his hands twist into themselves, his fingers turning white as he grips his knuckles.

My fingers press the empty space where my wedding band was until they reach into my pocket for the pin I took from Bas. I press it into my palm and I try to remember the days after I won, the days when Peeta and I wouldn’t talk because it was just an act, an act we had to keep up. And then I remember the days when it stopped being an act, when we laid in bed beside each other and there was peace and warmth and I forgot to pretend. I remember him throwing me bread when I was starving. I remember the dandelion that meant hope. And I try to picture that feeling when I look at the Mockingjay pin. Is this what they see?

I don’t know how to live without the dandelion in the spring, without the warmth that only Peeta can give me.

The door keeps closing and I look out into the hangar. How can I give them hope when I have none for myself?

And then I can see them. Two people running towards us as fast as they can, desperately trying to escape. Peacekeepers follow with some breaking off to get into hovercrafts of their own. They fire and the two keep running.

“Haymitch!” Johanna screams over the engines but the door keeps closing. Finnick runs towards the door, his eyes alight with the same hope that burns in my heart. And as they get closer I can see Peeta pushing Annie forward, keeping her in front, making sure she gets there first.

Finnick holds out his hand, Gloss keeping him in place so he doesn’t fall. Annie picks up speed, sprinting as the Peacekeepers get closer. She reaches when she’s close enough and Finnick pulls her up, falling back, barely able to catch his breath. His arms encircle her into a hug and there are tears in his eyes, but the moment is short lived. Peeta is still running. He still needs to get here. He’s not safe yet.

I tear open the bag of weapons and remove the bow and arrow, careful to use only the standard arrows, not the electrified ones. It’s easy enough to notice the difference. The regular ones are silver tipped and it reminds me of my Games, of the bow I took from the hands of the girl from One after I helped kill her. Glimmer. That was her name.

I load the arrow and I fire at the Peacekeepers behind Peeta. He’s slowing down but he can’t stop, he has to keep going, he has to make it.

I’m yelling as I fire, Peacekeepers falling with each arrow, and I’m calling Peeta’s name. Finnick is back beside me, ready to grab Peeta when he can. Gloss extends further, holding onto the door and about to fall out. We are approaching the edge and Peeta’s running out of room to run. The door is going to close. He’s not going to make it.

“Jump!” Gloss reaches and Peeta jumps. I can’t breathe. I only hear the door shut and I don’t know if he made it. I’m afraid to look and see no one there.

And then I hear Peeta say, “Thank you,” and he’s breathless and I can feel my heart beating again. And before he has a chance to say anything else I pull him into a hug and his strong arms circle me. I bury my face into his neck and breathe him in. He doesn’t smell the same here as he does back home, but he still somehow smells like him.

“I thought you were gone,” I tell him and I can feel him nod against me.

“It’s okay, I’m here now,” he says with his breath against my ear, “Always.”

“Well that was entertaining,” Plutarch Heavensbee interrupts, emerging from the front of the hovercraft, a drink in his hand. “I wish we had a camera.”

Peeta and I break apart as the air around us darkens and Haymitch pushes Plutarch back to the front.

“What’s he doing here?” Annie asks, her hand finding Finnick’s.

“Helping,” Haymitch answers sparing a glance at me, “You should get ready to fire that arrow.”

He turns back inside to fly the hovercraft. Gloss presses his head against metal side and I can’t tell whether he’s going to be sick or worse. He turns to Peeta, his voice lowering.

“Cashmere?” He asks.

Peeta swallows and shakes his head. “We were cornered and she…I think they grabbed her. We kept running.”

Gloss nods, taking a seat, his eyes glazed over. And I can tell Peeta wants to say more, he wants to apologize, do something for Gloss and I can’t understand why. Gloss has never helped us. He has never allowed his tributes to ally or done anything that could be construed as kindness. If anything, he’s kept to himself and looked down on us. He’s only allying now because it’s convenient. And I wonder what he’ll do when it no longer becomes convenient. Or maybe he’ll try to save his sister, maybe he’ll still help. But I can’t be sure. He’s spent years perfecting his persona just as much as we all have, only his was never far from the truth, or so it seemed.

But he’s not the enemy. Not right now. And I have greater things to worry about.

I find the electrified arrow and I look around. The others all watch me and it’s what I didn’t want, it’s everything I tried not to become. I didn’t want to be the symbol, I didn’t want to have people looking for me or to me but here I am, right where I was always going to end up. I squeeze the pin in my pocket and I think of Bas. I have to do this for him. I have to save Ivy.

Haymitch walks back out from the front of the hovercraft, tending to Beetee’s wounds.

“Where are we going?” Annie asks, “After we…”

“Thirteen,” Haymitch responds, tightening the bandage on Beetee’s back, “They’ll be able to…they have a medical team.”

“They? They’re alive? It’s real?” Peeta asks. Haymitch nods and the words fade in my mind. It’s real. Thirteen. Madge went looking for it. Gale wanted to find it. Maybe Madge made it. Maybe that’s why she never returned. But if they’ve been there all along why haven’t they helped before? Why haven’t they fought back? What have they been waiting for?

I watch Haymitch work, wondering about all the lies he’s told and how many times he’s had a plan in place. I want to punch him. I want to scream. He knew it was there. Plutarch is helping, he was helping this whole time and Bas is dead. We could have acted sooner but they didn’t. And I don’t know what to say, I don’t know if my anger will ever fade. I’m tired of being a pawn, of never knowing if I’m safe or if they’re telling me the truth.

But right now I don’t care about any of it. Right now, I just want to save Ivy. Right now I need to focus. I need to fire an arrow and bring down the arena.

Peeta’s hand finds my shoulder and gently squeezes it. I give him a nod to tell him I’m okay even though every nerve is buzzing and shaking. I’m not okay. I don’t know if I’ll be okay. Maybe when I see Ivy again, maybe when we’re safe, if we can ever be safe, maybe I can start to be okay, but I don’t think I will be. Bas is still gone, we’re starting a war, and there’s going to be more dead before this is all over.

“Ten seconds,” Plutarch calls over a speaker in the hovercraft. The door opens and the wind whips through as the others strap themselves into seats or hold on to whatever they can inside. I take a breath and approach the edge, my steps unsteady as I find my balance. I just need one good hit on the shield to bring it down, as long as Springer does what he’s supposed to, as long as he got his message.

I look down and I can see the metal barrier of the arena. The shield blocking it from the rest of the world, keeping everyone inside isolated and everyone outside entertained. There’s a large flicker of light, a surge of power running through it and there are sparks coming from the side.

And I take that as the sign. I have to do this now.

More hovercrafts are following, war hovercrafts. I can make them out in the distance. We’re running out of time. I load the arrow and take a breath. And I only have one shot, it needs to be perfect. I exhale and I let the arrow fly.

It lands right on target.

There’s a large blast as the metal and Capitol created boundary breaks apart, shattering and fracturing below me. The force sets the hovercraft off balance and my foot slips out as I’m thrown back inside.

My head collides with a metal beam and everything disappears into instant blackness.

 “All you have is your fire,     And the place you need to reach,     Don't you ever tame your demons,     But always keep them on a leash.”

The Arena: Exit Strategy – Katniss and Ivy

Katniss –

The car comes to a stop outside a spice shop. Haymitch watches until its clear then practically shoves us out and the car drives off. We travel down streets and side alleys until it’s a maze of towering buildings and old blocks where few Capitol citizens pass by. I wonder if they’re all gathered watching the Games somewhere or if this area has fewer residents than others.

For all my years spent traveling here for the Games, I still don’t know much about the Capitol itself. I never really had a reason nor the desire to explore it. I hated it. I never wanted to step outside the training facility or the fashion district. I still hate it, even when I’m hiding here.

Haymitch throws his arm up, halting us. He pushes Peeta and me against the wall blocking us as a woman with purple hair walks by. She’s followed by a child wearing a pristine dress and matching purple curls that bounce with each step. They don’t pay attention to us. They don’t even acknowledge us.

“Mommy, if she wins can I meet her?” The child asks, “The Princess?”

My stomach coils and I press myself further against the stone wall until the back of my hand scrapes against the brick. Peeta holds his breath and clenches his eyes shut, trying to do all he can to block it out. And I imagine Ivy winning. I imagine these people standing in hordes calling her name as they grasp and claw for any piece of flesh they can. And I see her face locked in an emotionless expression. I see her eyes staring coldly ahead. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t cry. She just stares.

“Of course you can, but I want to meet her first,” The woman with purple hair tuts as a laugh ripples from her throat that sounds more monstrous than human. It echoes off the walls of the buildings and scrapes across my vision of Ivy. The woman’s laughter mixing with the screams of her fans and I can’t let this happen. I want the laughter to stop and for the screaming to die. They can’t have my daughter.

They keep walking, the child mimicking Ivy shooting someone with a bow.

“And the way she stabbed that one from Two!” Is the last thing I hear the child say before they turn a corner. My heartbeat picks up. She killed someone else. She’s hunting them. She’s playing. And even if she’s rescued, even if she doesn’t end up in this city with these people, I don’t know how to help her. I don’t know if she’d even want my help. I failed her. I failed her and I failed Bas.

“Haymitch,” Peeta says when the mother and child are gone and it’s all he needs to say. Haymitch nods and pushes us down another alley that twists and narrows until we stop once more.

He knocks on a steel door, glancing around until a latch clicks and the door slides open. We walk inside, the door sliding shut behind us. A light clicks on once we’re inside and I’m shocked to see people in the room with us. After all, who would still follow the Mockingjay now? Who would even want to help?

But here they are.

Johanna. Finnick. Annie. Beetee. Wiress. They all sit around a table. Johanna has her legs propped up as Wiress mutters to herself off to the side. Finnick and Annie sit closer than I’ve seen them do before. And I realize this isn’t like before anymore. This is something new, different. And for the first time I think I feel hopeful.

“What is this?” Peeta asks.

“A blind spot,” Beetee replies.

Haymitch points to two empty chairs for Peeta and I to sit in. I want to ask what’s happening but a part of me already knows or thinks I know. I sit silently, waiting for Haymitch to start, waiting for it to be explained to me. And Peeta does the same, but there’s an agitation to him. I can see it in the way he rubs his thumb and first two fingers together. It’s something he does when he’s trying to calm down, usually he’s rolling dough between his fingers but he doesn’t have any here.

Haymitch clears his throat, standing before an attentive audience. He turns to me first. “We’re getting her out. We’re getting all of them out,” he adds to Finnick, Annie, and Beetee.

“I knew once the quell announcement happened, that we needed a plan,” he continues, “That this was going to be different. That people were going to respond differently.”

“Why not tell us?” Peeta asks, his voice rising, his fingers still. “Why wouldn’t you get them out sooner? Bas died and you couldn’t figure out a way…” And Peeta’s standing now and I feel angry too. I feel lied to, but I know the answer. I know why they couldn’t act sooner.

Haymitch looks at me and I say it before he can. “Because of me.”

Peeta turns and his face falls with his anger. He shakes his head. “I don’t believe that.”

“You can’t have a revolution without support. You can’t win a war when there’s no hope, no focus. When the announcement came out, it was only a matter of time before…”

“Before you finally saddled up and said what needed to be said,” Johanna responds. And I expect her voice to be angry but it’s not. She says it so matter of fact and with the hint of a smile that despite her pain I think there’s pride. I think she’s been waiting a while for this. Maybe I have too.

“Shut it down,” Wiress mutters.

Beetee nods.

“We tried to keep them alive, to get them sponsors,” Finnick says. “We should have done more but…they were separated, we can’t control all of it.” He stares at the wall, looking anywhere but at me. Annie looks, she watches me, and there’s sympathy. Did she know? Did Finnick tell her there was a plan? Did everyone know but Peeta and me?

“You could have tried harder,” I say and despite my guilt I can’t stop the flow of anger through me. I can’t stop my rage. And Haymitch lied. He stood there and he pretended there was nothing to be done. And Peeta and I we’ve been lying to ourselves thinking we’d find a way when both of us knew there was none.

But Haymitch knew there was one.

“You could have told me,” I say. “I would have…I could have done something sooner.”

“Snow was watching you.”

I remember the meeting, I remember the rose. He would have been paying extra attention, especially to me. This was always about breaking me. It was always about putting me where he needed me and then finally killing me when there was nothing left for him to take. It wasn’t just to eliminate me. It was to eliminate every trace. Make everyone lose faith, make them fall back in line, and then kill me and everyone I love so it never happens again.

“And to be honest, Sweetheart, you’re not the best at faking the part.”

“I’ve done it pretty well for twenty five years.” I’m almost surprised at how restrained I sound, how steady despite the ache in my stomach.

“Not telling the whole truth and trying to inspire people to follow you are two very different things,” Haymitch says and Peeta huffs, backing up from the table. He starts to pace, breathing out through his nose. I twist my finger where my wedding band used to be and it’s another reminder of the child I lost, and of the child I can still save.

“We don’t have time for this,” I start, my voice louder than I expect it to be. “Every second we waste here Ivy’s playing the way they want her to. I heard that child out there, she killed someone.”

“The girl from Two, Victoria,” Beetee answers before I have a chance to ask. “I saw it before I made my way out.” He swallows, and there’s something in the way he doesn’t look at me that scares me. It’s not like Finnick’s look. It’s not avoiding my eyes out of guilt, its worry, its concern. It’s the same look Prim gets when she has to tell the family of one of her patients that they died. It’s the same look I saw on my mother for years.

“What happened?” Peeta asks and his forehead creases, the worry lines etched across his face as deep as I’ve ever seen them.

“The Gamemakers pushed them together by bringing down trees. Ivy and Victoria crossed paths, your daughter walked away.”

“That’s not all of it.”

“You don’t want to know all of it,” Beetee warns. He clears his throat before he continues, “But the Peacekeepers certainly seem more interested in watching the Games rather than the mentors they’re supposed to be imprisoning.”

Peeta runs his hand across his face and he’s on the verge of falling apart. I can see it in his tense shoulders and in the restless way he keeps rubbing his fingers together. It’s only a matter of time before he crashes.

“Of course they’re more interested, a little bloodlust is entertaining, but too much,” Johanna responds, her eyes fixated on the table, “Too much and they’ll get scared they broke their Princess. Good thing she has the star crossed romance to humanize her.”

“Johanna. Don’t.” Peeta stares at her hard. She shrugs with the bare hint of a thin smirk and its bitter, like her words.

“I’m just saying what Flickerman and Templesmith surely are.” Her eyes return to the table.

“Beck?” Annie asks, “Is he?”

“Alive,” Beetee tells her, he removes his glasses and cleans them with his shirt. “But for how long, I can’t say. He was injured in the fight.”

Annie lets out a breath. “So…” Her voice bottoms out and she can’t say anything. She shuts her eyes, pulling something in, taking another long breath and she’s calm when she speaks again, “I need my son back. How are you planning on accomplishing that?”

Haymitch turns to Beetee who stands and starts speaking, “We know where the arena is, we need a hovercraft to get there, preferably with some medical equipment on board for Beck. It’ll be faster than the attack hovercrafts, but we lose fire power to take down the shield around the arena and to stop any other hovercrafts coming after us. And they will send ones after us, but we should have enough time.”

“How much time?” Finnick asks.

“Five minutes,” Beetee answers. “It’s not much, but it’s enough. I can send word to Springer. He’s been sticking close to the bridge and the power comes on twice a day. He can use it to shock the boundary; it won’t be enough to bring down the shield, but…” Beetee lifts a hatch on the floor, fishing out a bag that he drops onto the table. He eyes me and I open the bag. There’s a bow and arrows, all in black, the arrows with different colored feathers. It’s sleek, light, and perfect.

“The blue ones, they’re electrified with enough volts to...”

“Shut it down,” Wiress mutters.

“What are the red ones?”

“You don’t want to use those on the shield.” Beetee gives a half smile and I’m too in awe of the weapon in my hand that I forget about the rest of the plan. I imagine what it would be like to hunt with this. I imagine the silence and smooth delivery of an arrow from this weapon. I wonder when Beetee made this and how long he’s had it stashed away for this moment.

“How do we get the hovercraft?” Peeta asks, his voice is rough, strained, his eyes weary. I’m brought back to the reality of this room as Peacekeeper uniforms are pulled from the hatch.

“We dress as the enemy,” Haymitch says.

“The easiest and closest medical hovercraft is in the training center. I can shut down the power. Then we get to the hangar and take off.”

“And what about our weapons?” Johanna asks, “I’m not going in there unarmed in nothing but a disguise.”

“There’s more in the bag,” Beetee responds.

“So that’s the whole plan? Just get a hovercraft and take off? And then Katniss shoots the arena?” Peeta asks his voice full of disbelief, the tension in his shoulders even more pronounced in the way he holds himself upright.

“I expect there will be some fighting involved. But yes, that’s the plan.”

“That’s not a plan that’s a prayer.” Peeta’s hand falls at his side as he stares Haymitch down. “You honestly expect us to trust that this will work?”

“Do you have anything better?” Haymitch asks.

Peeta glances at me, almost asking, but he shakes his head.

“Then trust it’ll work.” Haymitch closes the hatch. “When the sun sets we move.”

Peeta stalks over to a corner of the room never looking back at the others. I follow him right after. We’re given our space, no one comes to talk to us and no one expects us to talk to them.

Johanna takes a nap on a cot in the back of the room while Beetee and Wiress talk about volts and shutting down the electricity of the training facility. There are some technical words I don’t understand and I tune them out as I get closer to Peeta. Haymitch leaves to send Springer the message or at least that’s what he says, I don’t know how much of what Haymitch says I believe now.

Annie and Finnick take their own corner, their hands never leaving the others as they sit close to each other, their voices never rising above a whisper.

Peeta doesn’t sit. He doesn’t lean against the wall. He doesn’t do anything but pace in our corner. His breathing is heavy as he walks and his eyes follow me.

“Peeta,” I start, swallowing the rising lump in my throat. “I’m…”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize. You and I both know that no matter what they say, the Mockingjay, that’s not on you. They could have…they didn’t have to lie. It’s not your fault. Bas…it’s not.” He keeps pacing, his hands curling into fists.

“I should have known. I should have…I didn’t know he would go off on his own. He saw her…and Cain…he…it’s not; none of this is how it was supposed to go. We did what Snow wanted, we said what he wanted. We don’t deserve…” He snaps and his fists connect with the wall. He punches until his knuckles bruise and crack, leaving marks of blood on the wall. He finally stops punching and that’s when I hear the sobs.

He crumbles and I’m there to stop him from falling. His head lands on my shoulder and his body shakes with each fresh wave of tears.

“I know,” I tell him as he breaks.

“He’s gone,” Peeta chokes out and I fight the tears forming in my eyes as I hold him.

We stay like that even after the sobbing stops and Peeta’s tears have dried. I think I fall asleep for a little while because when my eyes open Haymitch is back and it’s time to go.

We put the Peackeeper uniforms on and I don’t know if this is going to work. I don’t know if any of this is going to be worth it. She could be dead. We could die trying. But there’s worse ways to go and I would rather die trying than hiding.

I put the helmet on, my heavy breath the only sound I hear until Beetee’s voice crackles through the communications he added. He repeats the plan, but I can’t tell which Peacekeeper he is. And we all look the same in these uniforms but Peeta’s gloved hand finds mine as the door opens to the Capitol.

Beetee tells us to move and my hand squeezes Peeta’s before we let go of each other.

Ivy –

I try to scrub the remainder of the blood on my hands as hard as I can while Beck sleeps. His breathing is still pained and short. I don’t know if he has much time. I did what I could, what I knew how to do, but I don’t think it’ll be enough.

I look up to the sky once again, my eyes squinting against the brightness. The sun is high and shining. It’s been the same for hours. I don’t think it’s going down anymore. I think they want us to stay in the light. It’s more dramatic.

The single arrow in the quiver at my back rattles as I stand. I shake off whatever tiredness I’m feeling. I don’t want to sleep. I’ll only have nightmares and one of us needs to stand guard. One of us needs the rest more.

I look to the trees and for a split second I think I see blonde hair but I know it’s not real, it can’t be real. I’m just tired.

A shadow passes by me and I raise the knife but it’s gone. And then I see him standing there.

Bas.

He stares. That’s it. That’s all he does. And I can’t do anything but stare back. He’s not really here. I know that. But I can’t help that I see him. I can’t help but pretend he is.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. He says nothing. And then his stomach bleeds and there’s so much red spilling out he looks like he’s drowning in it. “I’m sorry!” I try again, my voice rattled and shaking. He’s gone before I can say it again.

I watch the place where he stood but the only thing there is a tree. I take a deep breath. I have to stay calm. I have to keep myself steady.

Then, there’s an explosion and a cannon and I grab Beck as he startles awake. He can’t move fast. He can’t risk hurting himself more.

“What…” He breathes.

I look to the bridge where smoke rises and then the face appears in the sky. It’s the tribute from Five.

“He must’ve set off a trap. Bas said…” I shut my eyes and I can’t shake him from my mind. He’s not real. He’s not here. Ghosts don’t exist. “He said Springer was putting traps there, hiding out.”

“Bet he’s not hiding anymore.” Beck tries to stand but he groans in pain. I check the bandage. Blood is starting to seep through it, he doesn’t have much time.

“You shouldn’t...”

“We can’t stay here.” His eyes find mine and I know he’s right. I hand him the trident so he can use it keep himself upright if I can’t. He still needs to defend himself and I only have one arrow. I help him stand, keeping myself positioned under an arm to help him walk.

“I can do it on my own,” he says.

“Yeah? Take five steps and prove it.” He huffs a small laugh.

“I say we move away from the bridge. Cain probably heard that too,” Beck says through labored breaths. I nod.

The slope up from the creek is the toughest. Beck strains himself, his breath getting shorter, and we have to slow down. His arm tightens around my shoulder and I’m carrying more of his weight as we ascend. He uses the trident to try to level out his weight and I’m grateful when the ground flattens and we can pick up the pace.

I ignore the shadow of my brother following me from the trees, the grey eyes and blonde hair that surrounds me with every step I take. I don’t hear his voice yet, though I’m sure it’s coming.

I’m losing it in here. I can feel it. And I can’t stop it. I want to say it started when I killed Victoria, or even when Bas died, but the truth is it started long before that. It started the second I shot August. And I kept it at bay for as long as I could. I focused on finding my brother while I left pieces of my soul scattered about the arena with each death and each choice. Grover drowned and I hardened myself to it. I killed Stone and I didn’t blink but I felt it after. And then Bas was killed and whatever strength I had left to fight this was gone and I gave in.

And even though the sun shines on everything in here all I see is darkness, all I see is blood and death.

Bas stares at me from the river and then I see August and Stone. Grover follows from the trees and Victoria stands in front of me. All my ghosts are in here. There’s no escape.

Beck stops and his eyes fall on another shadow but he can’t see my ghosts, he can’t see what I see. He can’t see Victoria blocking our path. Unless the arena is doing this, unless we’re both going crazy, but I don’t know which would be the more comforting outcome.

I don’t have a chance to find out. The dead disappear and all I see is what Beck sees, all I see is the source of all my hatred, all my rage.

Cain.

He stands ten feet to the side of us, sword in hand and spear at his back. He’s bruised and there’s dried blood on his shirt and hand. He grips the hilt of the sword readying for a fight. I can’t fight him. We can’t fight him. I hear rustling and I know Emery isn’t far behind.

We have to run.

“This is gonna hurt, but you have to move,” I tell Beck and he nods and we do just that. We move as fast as we can. I throw the knife in the hopes of keeping Cain at bay. He dodges it as it sticks into a tree, picking it up while he runs. Great, now I’ve just given him a knife too.

I half expect him to throw it back but he’s moving slower than before. His injuries must be taking their toll. And then I remember the arrow that went through his hand. The hand he uses to throw with. He can’t use the spear unless he’s in close range.

“Emery!” He’s panting through his words and I think that I could kill him if I tried, but I can’t try. I have to keep moving. I have to help Beck keep moving.

I’m not paying attention as Beck and I slide down a hill full of loose rocks and dried mud. My hands are scraped up as are my legs but I’m mostly fine. Beck groans and he can’t stand. I hear two pairs of footsteps catching up. Emery’s here too.

I look around for anywhere to go and then I see a building looming in the clearing, the quarry behind it. It looks like a factory, a little old and rusted, but its shelter, it’s safe.

I help Beck up and we half limp, half run our way to it. We can block the doors and wait the two out. They’ll need to find food. They’ll need to break apart. We can outlast them.

A spear lands to our left and I turn to see Emery watching us, disappointed. Cain rubs his shoulder blade and there’s fresh blood on his hand. His wound is open again. Emery stops to check it but he shrugs her off, brandishing the sword as he follows Beck and I.

The clearing feels larger than it is and it very well could be. The Gamemakers could be changing the landscape in bits and pieces, drawing this all out, building up the excitement. The dust in the air from the quarry swirls as a breeze flows through. The sun shines brighter if it’s possible and I’m so tired of all of this. I’m so tired of cameras, of the show, of the act I have to put up. All I want to do is scream.

We make it inside as my knife hits the door. I slam them shut, shoving Beck’s trident in between the handles of the doors to keep them closed. Beck and I lean against them, and this is it, this is the last place I’m going to hide, the last place I’m going to run to.

And I’m starting to think Springer might be the biggest challenge out of everyone. He’s well hidden. He’s got traps, supplies. He’s the tribute no one saw coming.

And I’m glad he’ll win over Cain or Emery. I’m glad he gets to go home because I know I’m not going to. Not with two Careers outside, no weapons, and an ally close to death. And I’ve faced death several times. I’ve expected it and it didn’t come. But this time I know it’s real. This time I know it’s the end.

“You can’t hide in there forever!” Cain huffs and I hear him circling, waiting. He says something to Emery that I can’t make out, but I know he’s right. We won’t be able to hide in here forever. Sooner or later, I’ll have to face them.

There are old benches and tables in the factory that Beck and I slide in front of the door to ensure our safety. He moans in pain as the table scrapes across the floor, checking his bandage as more blood seeps through. I search through crates filled with threads and needles, making sure to find one that’s not rusted over and unusable. If I can stitch up Beck’s wound enough, I can get him further, I can keep him alive a little longer. It’s dusty in here and there’s old fabric littering the floor. There’s no food or water. There’s nothing that will help us survive and no back way in or out. There are small windows at the top to let some light in, but nothing we can climb out of.

Cain bangs on the door, kicking and yelling, but the table and trident holds it closed. I turn to Beck and show him the needle and thread. He sighs and I know whatever I’m doing is just delaying the inevitable. He’s pale and his hand shakes as he drinks from the canteen.

When I remove the bandage there’s more blood than I thought there would be. I try to block out Cain as I do my best to sew the wound shut. Beck hisses and winces in pain, looking like he’s going to pass out any second.

“You have to stay awake,” I tell him.

“I know,” he responds. He tries to sound confident, he tries to sound like he’s in control of whatever he’s feeling but he looks scared, and there’s no hiding that. “Ivy…”

“Don’t. I’m not leaving you here, not to them.”

He smirks, his fear abating for a small moment. “I knew you liked me.”

“Shut up.”

I get about halfway through when I start to smell smoke. I look around and it begins to fill the room, blanketing the ground with swirls of white and grey. Beck whips his head around too, the worry lines etched into his face. He looks older than he did when this started, I’m sure I do too.

I cut the remaining thread with the tip of the arrow and bandage him back up. It’ll have to hold. It’s the best we can do. I hurry to the door and its warm, a light spreading around the edges of the factory. A spear flies through the window and lands in the middle of the room, fire burning on its tip and pluming inside the factory.

And it’s ironic that this is how I’m going to die. My mother was the girl on fire and here I am about to be set ablaze too.

I honestly didn’t think this is how I would go.

“I got this target Right here on my back They're aiming where I was Not where I'm at They ain't stopped me Since I was eighteen I'm moving faster Than my enemies”