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"I vote yes, for Prim"
"I am with the Mockingjay", Haymitch follows after a pause.
Peeta gazes at her briefly; appalled at what has just happened. What is he thinking? That he has been lied to, that she really is a mutt. Who else but someone with a heart as cold and cruel as Snow's would support another round of the Games? Another round of children dying gruesome deaths for entertainment? Another round of people betting when children will die? But this time around, they will be dying to avenge all the district fallen after a brutal war. How does this atone for anything or anyone? There will still be more horror, more bloodshed. What kind of person would want another televised killing with sponsorships? How do we solve deaths with more deaths? No matter what Coin says now, it will not be a one off; it will never stop. Coin is not the type of woman to ever stop. The Hunger Games are too ingrained in Panem for it to be shocking and the Districts would no longer have any reason to fear a reaping. Many will be pleased the suffering is on the other foot for once. No matter how you cut it, this is what will happen. How is it any different from how the Hunger Games were before? How is this justice?
Peeta grips the table, knuckles turning white with the effort, but his face remains impassive.
Katniss cannot take it anymore and turns her head, catching Coin by the arm as she starts to leave out the door. She extends the white rose to her, watching the glint in her eye as she tells her "to make sure he wears this over his heart" then ducks her head to glance back at Peeta, now alone at his side of the table, hunched and broken, but silent.
She stands abruptly after Coin leaves the room and leaves in the opposite direction, remembering she should meet up with Effie and finish whatever this day brings. She is just turning the corner when Haymitch's growl stops her short, forcing her to stop when he plants himself into her path. She looks into his eyes, which reflect the same grey as hers but turns her head away under his intense glare.
"Sweetheart, what did I just agree to in there? What's your angle?" He barks quietly. Even now, you never know who could be listening. No matter what had happened, or who was supposedly in charge, this was still the Capitol after all.
She chokes and attempts to sidestep him, not wanting to speak, not wanting to unravel, but he doesn't budge, forcing her to look back at him.
She starts to snap, anger boiling at his scrutiny.
"Don't give me that look, I have the right to know what's going through your head right now" he tells her.
She stops short at this, realizing then and there how much Haymitch truly trusts her, so much so that he followed her lead without hesitation, knowing she was thinking of something. How could he know? How could he tell they were not just the ramblings of a mad, desperate girl? She softens and speaks hoarsely, her voice cracking with the effort, drained from disuse and her sudden previous burst of anger.
"Haymitch, everyone we ever loved is dead!" Tears glisten in her eyes as she remembers Prim and she slumps against the wall. She continues, choking with tears "We can taste the ashes of District 12 from here and the rest of Panem is a hollow and bloody shell. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead Haymitch and she wants another Hunger Games? To make everyone's death count for nothing? This why we rebelled, this why we wanted to halt the cruelty of the Capitol. We wanted to end the torture, the killings, the control they had over us and the hunger".
Haymitch had grabbed her forearm roughly in the middle of her rant and they were now standing in the depths of a large closet, whispering as slats of sunshine poke through the cracks. He looks at her, anguished, clearly not understanding where she is going with this but waits for her to continue.
She touches her forehead, attempting to massage away the pain in her head that threatens to make her see stars. "She is using the Victors as pieces in her games, just as Snow did. After everything we have suffered, she wants to use us cover her tracks so that if things go wrong, if this decision is not supported by the public then she can blame everything on us and say that we forced her hand. That's why she wants everyone to know that we were aware and we agreed, even though that was no choice at all. She would have gone ahead anyway, even if we had all said no."
"I don't quite understand what this has to do with..." Haymitch starts.
"Don't you see? The people of District 13 were never all in, from the beginning. They never cared about us for 75 years, about the Games, about the hunger or the suffering! No matter what they say about them being under threat of nuclear annihilation from the Capitol, they watched us crumble for more than half a century with their tech, with their science, with their connections, with their weapons, with their food! They could have always helped us a little Haymitch, even it was just to stop us dying of starvation. You and I now know that they had the means to do so."
She breathes erratically, chest falling up and down in her anger. She looks away from his knitted eyebrows, scratching her nails mechanically on the surrounding wooden panel to calm herself. Her mind is spinning. She can see in her mind what the problem is, why she felt uneasy, why she said yes.
She looks back at him, making an effort to explain best as she can. This is too important to hold back. "How can she propose this?" She asks him. "To ask us to watch children die again, as if they are not human. As if they are not people, as if they have no thoughts, no agency. As if it wouldn't matter if they lived and died and only the way they die is important. Another Hunger Games Haymitch? It is sick. Televise it? Watch children suffering and killing themselves? How does this atone for a war? It's just like how the Capitol saw the Districts, as if we are not people, as if we are not real because they have never interacted with us, as if they cannot imagine themselves in our shoes. Just walking, suffering blobs of entertainment."
He listens, still waiting.
"The citizens of District 13 don't think they're the same as the rest of us Haymitch. Snow was right..."
She struggles, loath to give credibility to her greatest enemy.
"Snow? Now you are listening to what Snow has to say?" he entones, aghast. "What the devil does Snow have to do with this?" He shivers, and she can't tell whether it's from the cold or his dawning panic that he gravely miscalculated by tying his vote to hers. He takes a horrified step towards her and she almost imagines she sees the shadow of 25 years of Tribute deaths cross his face. "Katniss, what are you talking about, why would you listen to Snow?"
He almost reaches out, probably to shake her she thinks, but he is almost hyperventilating. He thought she had a plan! He thought that...
Too many games, too much strategizing and he's lost the plot chasing after things and trying to find hidden meanings to everything. He should have known she was no longer in her right mind. Her manic conditions making her spew words and talk about the rightness of Snow. He calms himself down and pauses, contemplating. There's something there he thinks, somehow he feels in his bones that it is not madness leaking from her, this is Katniss. So he waits to hear it.
She feels numb as she thinks back to that meeting in the study so long ago. Snow had been right; a war had been more gruesome than anything she could have ever imagined. Her people were dead. Panem had been completely destroyed, including the Capitol. She is not sure she believes the revolution was truly worth it.
"He and I promised not to lie to each other", she whispers to him quietly.
He stares at her blankly.
She forges ahead, suddenly eager to explain the situation to him for once.
"The people of District 13 think we don't count as much as they do and we can just be used to further their goals. They intend to dominate, not cooperate with us. They want to be on top not integrate or merge with us. They are just the flipside of the Capitol, Haymitch. If we do this, if we go ahead with the Games, nothing has changed, nothing will ever change."
He looks at her considering, noting, weighing. He had been so consumed with doing whatever it took to ending the terror he had been willing to exchange vows with the devil himself to do so. He had not thought beyond ending the reign of Snow. Coin had completely blindsided him with this vote.
"Haymitch", she whispered softly "what makes you think she will stop after one reaping of the Capitol's children? What makes you think it will not be the Districts again after a while? There are still enough Capitolites with enough influence."
He grasps at his hair, finally seeing it, now comprehending what she saw that he couldn't.
"So why did you say yes sweetheart?"
"Because I have a plan. And I want her to think I don't."