Chapter Text
Two girls run to each other in the plain where the Cornucopia lies. The look on the face of the girl from District 11 is frantic; the cannon has gone off and she doesn't know what it means. But when she sees the girl from 12, she knows.
They clasp hands when they reach one another. Both are a wreck of emotion. Enraptured and devastated and bewildered, the Capitol audience watches from the grandstands/their living rooms, lavishly furnished/the town squares, baroque and crowded/the control room of the Gamemakers, where Plutarch Heavensbee begins to hope something, and does not regret the risk he took in sending the whistle Mellark's way.
Primrose Everdeen—favored last in the betting pools—takes a slip of paper from her pocket and bends over it with Rue Garlander—favored second to last in the betting pools—to read. The audience realizes it is the scrap given to her by Peeta Mellark—favored seventh in the betting pools—and they wait with baited breath.
Cameras strain to capture the girls' expressions, but they are carefully blank despite the tears. Their shoulders are frustratingly pressed together so that no lens can determine what is written on the paper. When they finish reading, the girl from 12 sets it afire and Mellark's last words are ashes scattered to the wind.
The girls stand and stare at each other. One man in the Capitol crowd shouts for Rue Garlander to take the knife in her belt and claim her Victory. Everyone hushes him with a particularly odd vehemence and he sits down, face burning at a transgression he can't define. Rue does no such thing. She even wriggles the knife out and throws it to the side like the metal burns the touch.
Primrose uncradles the poisoned bread and picks off the wrapping. Some of the audience make confused noises. She's aware of how deadly it is. Others are quick to understand, and the stands begin to fill with the sounds of their distress. Sharp intakes of breath and distraught cries are heard in varying pitches and shades of disbelief.
The girl from 12 breaks off a chunk of the bread, darkened by a cluster of the nightlock berries, and hands the rest of it to Rue. Rue Garlander takes it without saying a word.
From the grandstands/the living rooms/the town squares/the control room the audience shouts, "No, don't!" And from a private suite reserved for the President of Panem, "No" is said quietly and with fury.
"No," is said from around Panem, invested in this outcome in a way they never were before. For the first time in anybody's memory they watch as intensely as the Capitol crowd does.
"Oh, no, no, no," says District 11, and Mrs Garlander in particular.
"No, please no," says District 12, and Mrs Everdeen in particular.
No no nononono thinks Katniss Everdeen, on her knees in tears, but a suspicion kindles in the back of her mind as well.
Yes, thinks Haymitch.
After joining hands, Rue and Primrose raise the bread to their mouths. And take a bite.
A voice in the air shouts, "STOP! STOP!"
In the end, it is Claudius Templesmith who gets the last word. The girls spit out their deaths, and cling to each other as more words are heard and a hovercraft bears down from the sky.
When he's asked, and he will be, Seneca Crane will uphold the ratings as his justification for sparing them both, and hope that President Snow will understand.
Katniss
They don't even give us a body to bury. We show up in a gray drizzle for a hovercraft that never comes. Instead a Peacekeeper, a new one I don't recognize, gives a transparently fake announcement that Peeta had expressed a wish in the Capitol to be cremated and spare his friends and family the grief of a burial.
Nobody buys the story, but I don't know why they're lying. Madge clarifies for me one day soon after, as we walk the path to the new Everdeen house in the Victors' Village.
"They don't want us turning his grave into a memorial," she says. We're in the only place we feel safe talking. When we reach the house, we will have to monitor our words. "They want him forgotten. That's why they won't even give us his ashes. They're afraid we'll turn him into a symbol. Out of sight, out of mind."
No one will forget Peeta. I'll be damned if I let them. Madge agrees.
I wish I could talk to Gale about this injustice but he's strangely reluctant to discuss Peeta. It's surprising; normally Gale will take up any opportunity to rail against the Capitol.
"I wish," I begin, and I stop. I don't know. All of this feels wrong in a way I can't express.
Peacekeepers are more visible than ever. After the Games, a trainload of new officers arrived and began what they called an 'investigation' into the poisoned loaf of bread. Nearly everyone in the district has been questioned; several people have been taken for interrogation. I haven't yet seen any of them again. Gale narrowly avoided arrest, if only because nobody in the know wanted to lose one of their prime sources of fresh meat. If my sister wasn't a Victor, they might have arrested me.
Prim hasn't asked me if I did it. She hasn't asked Gale either. I volunteered my denial minutes after she walked off the train. No way would I risk Prim's chances or Gale's family that way. I won't lie to her, though, and say I hadn't wished at the time that he would have taken a bite. So I say nothing about it.
Madge is positive the Capitol sent Peeta the loaf. "President Snow must have guessed what he was going to do," she says. "But he didn't want to make it obvious that he wanted Peeta gone. So he's blaming it on us."
She glances my way and keeps talking in a low voice. "I don't think it was the first time, Katniss. That somebody tried to make a sacrifice. But they always got wiped out before they got the chance. Peeta was the first to get away with it."
In the short time since the Games ended, she's become outspoken in a way I would never have anticipated. She's beginning to sound like Gale. I'd always sort of thought Madge wanted to visit the Capitol, from the wistful way she's talked about it. That was before I knew about her aunt.
I guess she's right. Peeta wasn't the first decent person to be reaped in nearly seventy-five years. None of those decent people were ever Victors. Sacrifice is something the Capitol demands but is terrified of being freely offered. That is why they never accept volunteers. Because what does our punishment mean otherwise?
The thought of the bread makes me ill. I hate that Peeta died thinking we despised him. We did, for a while. I did. I'd stared at the screen, willing him to fall in the Cornucopia, furious he hadn't opened the jar of tracker jackers, dismayed he didn't die in the tent fire. Gale had been apoplectic when Peeta joined the Careers that first day.
But then he saved Rue, and I realized he'd given himself up for lost from the very start.
And now I will never stop owing him.
A sensation of something narrowly missed, a possibility that never had the chance to materialize, leaves a hollow in my stomach. I don't know how to describe it. Like fate took a wrong turn somewhere. There was a boy who loved me, and he's dead now.
I have to turn my face away so I can wipe at an eye without Madge seeing. "I'll see you later," I mumble. The Village has come into view.
Madge nods and goes on to my house to see Prim and Mom. I take a different route and end up at Haymitch Abernathy's front door. The brass doorknob is smudged and dirty. His house is unlocked.
There's something I want to ask him.
The debris assaults the eyes, but it's better than it was. Out of gratitude, my mother has been helping around the house and she enlisted Hazelle Hawthorne's help in cleaning and making sure he's eating decent meals. I wonder if mentors in other districts are similarly showered with thanks from the families of surviving tributes. Haymitch doesn't always seem to know how to take it, maybe because Prim's the first tribute he's had who made it back alive.
After moving to the Village, Haymitch and I have established a weird kind of acquaintanceship. Prim stills looks to him expectantly for direction, and he's around whenever the cameras are. She's too sweet to banter drunkenly with, so he targets me.
"Hi," Haymitch greets me from a chair.
"You're still conscious," I observe. Usually by this time in the afternoon he's in an alcoholic haze.
He grimaces. "Give me a few minutes." A bottle of liquor is clutched in his hand.
Haymitch is his own particular kind of despondent today, abrasive and sarcastic. A mentor can never hope for anything better than being halfway successful; even with a Victor, they still depart the Capitol with one less student than they'd brought. It's a way of suppressing even the Victors, so that one way or another they're always a failure.
And I think he'd liked Peeta.
The mentor makes his way over to his table, steadying himself with his hands as he goes. Plopping down, he gives his bottle an ironic smile.
He must be the only mentor that's aided a tribute in engineering their own death. Judging by his pronounced gloom, this fact is not lost on him, but I want to tell him that Prim is his absolution, not whatever's at the bottom of his bottle. Peeta thought Prim and Rue were worth dying for.
I think he knows why I'm here. He doesn't seem about to raise the issue, so I do. Since we don't trust that our homes are not bugged, I wait until Haymitch follows me outside before I ask.
"Haymitch, did you know the bread was poisoned?"
His eyes are mocking. "Did you?"
It's the question no one's been willing to ask me. "If I could have figured out a way to kill him that wasn't so obvious, I might have tried," I say. I'm ashamed to say it, especially now, but it's the honest truth. Next to Prim, nothing matters.
Haymitch appears to believe me. But he hasn't answered my question. "Haymitch," I say more sternly, "did you know."
He hesitates in downing the rest of his bottle, but only for a moment.
"What I knew was that he was a baker's boy who'd know his bread."
I step back. "Haymitch."
He rubs his eyes. "I didn't send it myself, so you know. Don't look at me like that. I'm betting Snow sent the bread. He always knows how to spot a troublemaker. He didn't get where he is now by letting backs stab themselves."
I'm shocked. "But you let it through. You risked Prim's life. Gale's family. All of District 12. For what?"
"Because, sweetheart," he says, staggering back into his home and falling into his debris-strewn couch, "things needed shook up."
At the time, I don't understand what he means. Not until the grain stops coming in, until the dressmakers stop receiving any bolts of cloth, until I spy a news report on the television in Mayor Undersee's study and hear Prim's fearful account of her Victory Tour with Rue do I realize what's happening.
Within a year, the war begins.
I wonder if Peeta was expecting this. Or hoped for it. Or if all he wanted was to spare two little girls. Maybe that's all we needed.
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