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Katniss starts seeing her after the reaping. First, she’s in the crowd- smiling in a rainbow dress as she raises three fingers into the sky.
She must be sixteen, hair and skin the coloration associated with the Seam. The dress itself is faded, but high quality. She makes eye contact with Katniss, smirking.
Katniss blinks, and she’s gone. As if she never existed.
She smooths over her features into a safe, neutral expression. The cameras are still watching after all.
-
Later, in the train, Katniss sees Her again. That’s what She’s become. Her, capitalized. She floats like a feather on the wind, like something more than human.
She sits on Katniss’s bed, then kicks off her boots to assume a more comfortable position.
“So… this is how they take you now,” She says, tilting her head up to meet Katniss’s eyes. She angles her face slightly to the left.
“Who are you?” Katniss asks.
“Why, Lucy Gray Baird, of course! Of the Covey,” She- Lucy Gray- slips off the bed to give Katniss a bow.
“What..?” Katniss trails off.
“What am I?” Lucy Gray says, smiling again, “Well, I don’t rightly know! But I must be some sort of ghost, if this truly is the seventy-fourth Hunger Games.”
Katniss tilts her head in lieu of a question.
“I survived the tenth, of course. Some might say I won it, but there’s no real winner here. My mentor, maybe, but Coriolanus could always twist a situation to be in his favor.” A thought dawns on Her. “Do you know of a Maude Ivory?”
“I do… I… she took care of my father when he was young. She… died a few years ago, though. There was an outbreak of tuberculosis… and…..”
Lucy Gray looks far away, and fades a small bit, as if a fog is covering her.
“What about Tam Amber? Barb Azure? Clerk Carmine?”
“I don’t know about the others, but I think I know the first. I think I’ve heard the Goat Man be called that. I don’t know, though. He sold my little sister, Prim, her goat.”
Lucy Gray seems to re-materialize at that. “We always wanted a herd of goats…” She pauses, then gives her biggest smile yet. “I do believe I know why I’m here. You’re going to win the games, and I’m going to help you.”
-
Katniss doesn’t sleep that night. At some point, Lucy Gray vanishes into mist, and Katniss is left alone in a too-big, too-soft bed. The weight of the games, of Lucy Gray, of everything feels like it is sitting on her chest and she can’t breathe. She wishes that she could be home, in the woods. At home, the only ghosts are the familiar ones.
-
Katniss’s father was a superstitious man. Not outwardly, and not violently, but a superstitious man. When Katniss was little, he’d tell her old, old, old stories about faeries and the things in the woods and what to do if you encounter a stranger who smiles with too many teeth and asks for your name. He never washed his clothes on a Sunday, and swore that the mirror hanging by the door meant good luck.
Katniss tried her best to be a realist. To be practical, not to put her faith in superstition. After all, what had it given her father? He still died, mirror be damned.
The mirror had broken the day of the explosion. Her father had closed their front door too hard, and the mirror had fallen. Katniss’s mother was not superstitious, but she knew how much the mirror had meant, so she’d gone out to buy a new one.
She’d broken in the same way as the mirror.
Unfixable.
-
Sometime in her contemplation of superstition and her father, Katniss dozes off. She’s awoken to the sounds of Effie bustling around her room. Katniss stretches.
“Good morning Katniss! We were just having breakfast, and Peeta wanted to see you! To strategize, of course!”
Katniss nods as a reply.
Lucy Gray whispers in her ear. “Go on, join ‘em.”
So, Katniss makes herself smile, which comes off as more of a grimace, and says: “Thank you for telling me that Effie. I’ll be right there.”
Effie, clearly appreciating the idea at least of being appreciated, beams and tells Katniss not to take too long.
Her dress from the reaping lays abandoned on the floor. Katniss picks it up, breathing in the smell of cedar and home. The mockingjay gleams on the front, another reminder of District Twelve. But it’s more than that, because it is also her father and her best friend, and her childhood.
She gets dressed, and pins the little golden bird over her heart.
Lucy Gray sits on the bed, and offers commentary. Somehow, she has become less of a ‘She’ and more of a ‘she’.
Less a ghost, and more a girl.
-
Haymitch is severely hungover, and Peeta is unreadable, and Katniss hates them both.
-
The train ride is a tepid affair, made manageable by Lucy Gray’s stories and songs. She reminds Katniss of her father, in a way. She has that sort of electrifying energy- when her eyes are fixed on Katniss she feels like they’re the only two people in the world. Her father was like that too.
Lucy Gray sings as easy as breathing, and when she sings, Katniss swears that she’s more vivid than a normal person.
“Just imagine what I could do with a guitar, darlin’,” she says to Katniss.
-
The Capitol arrives. Katniss meets Cinna, and she adores him immediately. He knocks three times on the wooden door to announce his presence, and his soft gold eyeliner and quietly deranged demeanor are enchanting.
He dresses her in a simple outfit- sleeveless shirt and pants (both black), dark brown boots, a pair of gloves, and a dark cape. On her head goes a golden wire crown. Cinna pins the cape closed with the mockingjay pin.
“Effie Trinket already got it approved for you to take it as your token, and I thought I’d incorporate it. This year, we, Tigris and I, decided to focus less on the coal aspect of District 12, and more of what coal is used for .” Cinna says.
“Who’s Tigris?”
“Peeta’s stylist. She’s been in the game for longer than I have. Well… she took a well-deserved retirement, but when she saw your reaping she insisted.” Cinna says, bringing out a strange device. “Now, I don’t want you to worry- the fire is perfectly safe.”
“The what? ”
It is fire. Cinna lights the cape on fire, and the crown on fire, and only looking for Lucy Gray gives her the strength not to faint as she is ushered into the float.
Peeta is dressed near identical, but his cape pin is shaped like an anatomical heart, and his gloves lack the feather pattern of Katniss’s. He smiles at her, and she smiles back.
She remembers her father told her once to never smile at a rabid dog, because they see the baring of teeth as a threat.
Haymitch mouths out “Hold his hand, sweetheart,” and Katniss’s face slips into a glare.
She holds Peeta’s hand.
Once the float starts moving, Katniss arranges her face into a perfect neutral. As the float goes, however, she feels the power of her costume. The Capitol citizens in their extravagant outfits and hairdos and jewelry throw roses and kisses to her and Peeta, and they are like gods, flaming haloes and all. Lucy Gray flits through the crowd at the pace of the carriage, like a snake among the tall grass.
As they reach the end, Lucy Gray mimes a bow, then motions her head to Peeta. Katniss takes the hint, and raises their entwined fingers. Peeta, thankfully, gets the hint, and the two bow to the crowd. The flames from their capes have begun burning together, and for a brief moment, they are one.
-
Lucy Gray prepares Katniss for the interview all through her training.
“Now, I think you should sing. Request a guitar, and I can teach you to play,” Lucy Gray pauses, laughing a little, “Ha… times really don’t change.”
Katniss tilts her head to the side.
“In my games, my mentor, well, he told me near the exact same thing. Not the guitar part, though. That was all me.”
There’s a pause.
“I’ll ask Effie.”
-
Tigris, Peeta’s stylist, is an enigma. She takes after her name, surgery and tattoos and clothing making her appear as tiger-like as one person can. She doesn’t talk much, but there is a warm glow in her eyes when she looks at Peeta, somewhat bittersweet.
Lucy Gray often has a faraway look in her eye when Katniss brings up Tigris. That’s often when she’s at her foggiest.
It is the night before the interview when Katniss hears a knock at her door.
She answers.
It’s Tigris.
“May I come in?” she asks, voice soft.
“Okay,” Katniss says, against her better judgment. There’s a familiar sadness to her, one that Katniss has seen so many times living in the Seam. It is a sadness that she has seen in Madge, in her mother, in herself.
Tigris carries herself with quiet elegance as she sits carefully on the edge of Katniss’s bed.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”
“I was.”
Tigris sighs, staring wistfully at a wall. “You remind me so much of so many people who don’t exist anymore, and I wouldn’t feel right leading you to your death without telling you why.”
Another pause.
“I was there for the first days of the Hunger Games, the Dark Days too. For the first part I lived with my cousin and my Grandma’am,” she laughs softly, “She was too regal and proud for Grandmother or Grandma. My cousin, Coryo, was one of the first mentors. His… friend, Sejanus too. I loved Coryo the way you love your sister. Unconditionally, I would have done anything to keep him safe, to keep him good. That’s why I adored Sejanus for him. Sejanus came from the districts, and he was good. He was kind, and he fought for what he believed in. You remind me of him. Of Coryo’s tribute, too. Lucy Gray? She also sang at the interview. I never got to meet her, but you still remind me of her. The tribute with her, too. Jessup, I think his name was.”
Tigris pauses again.
“I’m sorry for making you listen to the ramblings of an old woman.”
“It’s alright. I don’t mind.” Katniss says. She pauses, a realization dawning on her. “Jessup Diggs?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, I suppose that was his name. How-?”
“My father’s father’s father’s brother.”
Tigris smiles. “Give them hell, for him at least.”
Katniss, spur of the moment, hugs her tightly. Tigris stiffens, then relaxes into the touch. She hugs back twice as tight.
“Burn them down, Katniss Everdeen. Burn them all down.” She whispers.
-
She sings a song at the interview. It is one of Lucy Gray’s own, written for the interview. The tune is that of an old folk tune.
-
Katniss is stuck on the platform, Peeta’s distraction has worked and now she will die and she will let down all these people who rely on her, and she spirals and she spirals and then a voice tells her to run and she runs and nearly dies as she retrieves a small backpack.
The voice follows her to the woods.
He reveals himself later, when Katniss sets up camp.
“I’m Sejanus.”
The boy is eighteen at the oldest, though his round face and dark curls make him seem younger. Lucy Gray leans on him, her bright multicolored dress at odds with his stiff red uniform.
“Nice to meet you.” Katniss barely whispers, trying to move her lips as little as possible.
He’s softer than Lucy Gray, physically and in how he talks. Katniss likes him. He reminds her of her father.
-
She wins with Peeta.
-
(She doesn’t know if winning is an accurate word. She survives with Peeta. She and Peeta survive together. She believes him now, that he’s in love with her. She’s in love with him too. But she doesn’t know if she’s in Love with him.)
-
Lucy Gray and Sejanus are a constant as she heals. They sit by her bed, and entertain her with songs and stories.
The world thinks she’s crazy. She embraces it. She is crazy.
It’s easy to be crazy when the world hates you, she learns. They hate her, they love her.
She holds Peeta’s hand like a lifeline, and he holds her like one too. His cane is beautifully carved with flames and birds and flowers.
-
Their stylists send them both off to District 12. Tigris with the same expression Buttercup does when he catches a mouse as she kisses them both on the cheek, Cinna gathering them both into a great hug. He slips Katniss something into her pocket.
On the train, she inspects it. It’s a charm bracelet. The charms are a huckleberry, a mockingjay, a garter snake, a rue flower, and a match, all cast in gold.
Peeta has been given his own gift, a golden pocket watch with another anatomical heart engraved on it, surrounded by hyacinth and chrysanthemum.
-
Katniss arrives home, and the goat man stands in front of her house. He wordlessly offers her an instrument, beautifully kept, but clearly old. It is like a guitar, but rounder.
His voice is rusty as he tells her to keep it, and that he will teach her how to play free of charge.
“Are you Tam Amber?” she asks him.
“I was. I am in my heart.”
“What is this instrument called?”
“The mandolin.”
“Did you know Lucy Gray?”
“Do you always ask so many questions?”
“No.”
“Yes I did.”
-
Katniss attempts to return the pin to Madge.
“Keep it. Mayslee would want you to have it.”
-
Being crazy and being in love come with some perks. Interviews are easier, given she can just play a song or say whatever vague idea comes to her mind.
-
Gale is cold.
-
Tigris calls her sometimes.
-
The seventy fifth games are announced.
-
Katniss meets the other victors. They are too young to look so old.
-
She sings again, as she raises her wings. A song she learned from her father, titled ‘ The Old Therebefore’.
-
She is lifted out of the arena kicking and screaming for Peeta, but also Lucy Gray and Sejanus and Tigris and her father and her mother, and oh does she just want her mommy to come and make everything better.
-
Her world is shattered. District Thirteen is empty without Madge and Tam Amber and all the people who didn’t survive.
-
Katniss is the Mockingjay. She films propaganda, Tigris the sole survivor of her and Peeta’s stylist team.
-
“DO YOU SEE THIS, CORYO? FIRE IS CATCHING, AND IF WE BURN, YOU BURN WITH US.”
-
She sings.
-
When she sings the hanging tree, Lucy Gray harmonizes.
-
The war is bloody. Peeta hates her.
-
Finnick is dead.
-
She starts seeing new ghosts. Reaper in his embroidered hat and suit, Dean Highbottom who reminds her of Haymitch, former tributes who come and go.
-
She talks out loud to the ghosts. She knows how she is perceived, and she finds that she doesn’t care.
-
Peeta is real, and Katniss is real.
-
Prim dies and Katniss talks no more.
-
Gale attempts to apologize. She slaps him, and his lip swells, and he leaves.
-
She visits Snow.
“How do you know those songs?”
“I know lots of things, Coryo. I hope you rot.”
-
She kills President Coin.
-
She grows older.
-
Tigris dies, age catches up to her.
-
Katniss has children, with Peeta. She tells them stories of the Covey and teaches them which plants to eat and sings them to sleep every night.
-
The ghosts never truly go away. Not Lucy Gray and Sejanus, at least.
-
She gets older. Peeta gets older.
-
Her children have children.
-
Peeta dies.
-
Katniss is an old woman.
-
Her grandchildren have children.
-
Katniss is very very old.
-
And then she dies.
-
Her family buries her under a willow tree, near what was once the Seam. It survived the bombings, and is so old that if it were a person, could probably remember a time before there were districts or a capitol or dark days or hunger games.
-
Her ghost, it’s rumored, sings to the last remaining mockingjays from their nests in her grave.