Chapter Text
Katniss’s POV
I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather. This is where the bed I shared with my sister, Prim, stood. Over there was the kitchen table. The bricks of the chimney, which collapsed in a charred heap, provide a point of reference for the rest of the house. How else could I orient myself in this sea of gray?
Almost nothing remains of District 12. A month ago, the Capitol's firebombs obliterated the poor coal miners' houses in the Seam, the shops in the town, even the Justice Building. The only area that escaped incineration was the Victor's Village. I don't know why exactly. Perhaps so anyone forced to come here on Capitol business would have somewhere decent to stay. The odd reporter. A committee assessing the condition of the coal mines. A squad of Peacekeepers checking for returning refugees.
But no one is returning except me. And that's only for a brief visit. The authorities in District 13 were against my coming back. They viewed it as a costly and pointless venture, given that at least a dozen invisible hovercraft are circling overhead for my protection and there's no intelligence to be gained. I had to see it, though. So much so that I made it a condition of my cooperation with any of their plans.
Exasperated, Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker who had organized the rebels in the Capitol, threw up his hands. "Let her go. Better to waste a day than another month. Maybe a little tour of Twelve is just what she needs to convince her we're on the same side."
The same side. A pain stabs my left temple and I press my hand against it. Right on the spot where Johanna Mason hit me with the coil of wire. The memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false. What series of events led me to be standing in the ruins of my city? This is hard because the effects of the concussion she gave me haven't completely subsided and my thoughts still have a tendency to jumble together. Also, the drugs they use to control my pain and mood sometimes make me see things. I guess. I'm still not entirely convinced that I was hallucinating the night the floor of my hospital room transformed into a carpet of writhing snakes.
I use a technique one of the doctors suggested. I start with the simplest things I know to be true and work toward the more complicated. The list begins to roll in my head....
My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. Gale was taken prisoner. He is alive, and they most likely are torturing him.
I swallow hard, forcing the rising bile back down my throat. I try desperately not to break. I can't afford to, not when I have to face the real world back under the concrete grids of District 13. I think of Hazelle’s hollow, sleep-deprived eyes when I pass her in the standard-issue hallways, and how Rory, Vick, and little Posy look up at me with a quiet, agonizing hope I can't fulfill. I see them almost daily, and their silent grief over their missing son and brother—their complete terror of not knowing what the Capitol is doing to him—only deepens the suffocating hopelessness that wraps around my chest.
"Katniss. Should I come down?"
Darius’s voice reaches me through the headset the rebels insisted I wear. He's up in a hovercraft, watching me carefully, ready to swoop in if anything goes amiss. I realize I'm crouched down now, elbows on my thighs, my head braced between my hands. I must look on the verge of some kind of breakdown. This won't do. Not when they're finally weaning me off the medication.
I straighten up and wave his offer away. "No. I'm fine." To reinforce this, I begin to move away from my old house and toward the town.
I stick to what I remember as the road, but it's a bad choice, because it's full of the remains of those who tried to flee. I killed you, I think as I pass a pile of ash. And you. And you. Because I did. It was my arrow, aimed at the chink in the force field surrounding the arena, that brought on this firestorm of retribution.
More than ninety percent of the district's population is dead. The remaining eight hundred or so are refugees in District 13. The credit for the survivors' escape has landed squarely on Peeta's shoulders.
I stop at the edge of the ash-choked Meadow, looking out over what used to be the perimeter fence, and the vivid story of that final afternoon washes over me. The months of covert planning Gale and Peeta had done in the dark paid off in a single, explosive moment. The second the arena screens snapped to static after my arrow hit the force field, Peeta hadn't wasted a breath. He raised three fingers and whistled our four-syllable note, unleashing a powder keg.
Miners pulled hidden pickaxes and iron bars from their coats, smashing into the barricades, while the town merchants locked arms to rush the front lines. Peeta had been right in the thick of the melee, using his physical strength to execute takedowns on armored guards, clearing a path. Madge had used her sharp wits to jam an iron rod into the electrical breaker gates, trapping Peacekeeper reinforcements behind a mesh fence, before climbing a crate to shout tactical directions to the crowd. Rory darted through the chaos like a shadow, using a hunting knife to slice armor straps and trip up the guards, while Prim bravely dragged the wounded behind merchant stalls to bind their injuries. Even Hazelle and my mother stood further back like an immovable wall, wielding heavy wooden beams to protect the children.
They were winning, completely surrounding the Justice Building, when the power grid suddenly went dead. In that disorienting darkness, instead of retaliating, the Peacekeepers executed a rapid, chillingly organized retreat, packing into their trucks and speeding out of the gates.
While the celebrating crowd thought they had won, Peeta’s instincts screamed a warning. He knew the Capitol was clearing the target area. He screamed for everyone to run to the dead, un-electrified fence. Madge took absolute authority, dividing the fastest young adults into squads to raid the bakery for grain and the apothecary for medicine, while she and Rory guided the trembling crowd through the gap sliced in the chain-link barrier. Peeta stood firmly at the fence line, waiting until the supply runners burst from the shadows with crates of food and medical gear. They had only made it a few hundred yards into the thick undergrowth of the woods when the sky lit up with a horrific brilliance, and the fleet of black hovercrafts firebombed everything into ashes.
I walk away from the Meadow, my feet finding the hardened paving stones of the square. I pass the approximate site of the bakery. Peeta’s family didn't make it.
Running away from the square, I head toward the one place the fire did not destroy, passing the wreckage of the mayor's house. It is nothing but a twisted skeleton of metal and blackened beams. Madge made it out, but her parents didn't. When the chaos broke out and the warning to flee reached the house, her mother, locked in the suffocating prison of her lasting migraines and the ever-aching, lifelong loss of her twin sister Maysilee at the 50th Hunger Games, simply refused to move. She didn't even try to do something to save herself, utterly hollowed out by years of grief. And her husband, Major Undersee, wouldn't leave without her. He stayed, holding his wife's hand in the dark, choosing to burn with her rather than abandon her to the flames. Madge carries that heavy, silent trauma every day.
But Peeta is alive. He is in 13 right now, carrying the responsibility of leading the survivors, his steady, empathetic presence helping keep our people grounded.
When I finally woke up and was allowed to leave the bleak walls of the District 13 hospital wing, I expected to find a subterranean wasteland of strangers. Instead, I was met with a fragile network of survival. It was then that I discovered Bonnie and Twill—the District 8 refugees I had met in the woods months ago—had actually survived the long trek and made it to 13.
And standing right beside them was Darius.
I remember sitting in a quiet corner of the cafeteria as Peeta and Darius recounted the impossible story of how he was saved. It had happened during the dead of winter, right after Gale had left my house after some recovery after being brutally whipped by Romulus Thread. Gale was still stiff, his back a network of raw, healing gashes, but he refused to let Darius be shipped off to the Capitol to face a horrifying fate. Rory had spent days tracking the Peacekeeper jail guard shifts, taking meticulous notes on their blind spots. With Peeta staging a loud, perfectly timed distraction near the town square, Gale and a couple of agile, young rebels from the Seam slipped into the holding cells. They cut Darius free, along with a few other prisoners, smuggling them into the woods. The heavy, blinding snowstorms of those weeks worked in their favor, completely delaying the Capitol’s transport train and giving the escapees enough time to vanish into the wilderness.
Now, Darius wears the sterile grey uniform of a District 13 soldier instead of Capitol white.
The people of District 12 are safe here, well-fed, clothed, and granted automatic citizenship. Many view it as a miracle, but a man named Dalton, a District 10 refugee, leaked the real motive to me. A while back, a brutal pox epidemic swept through 13, killing a significant portion of their population and leaving most of the survivors completely infertile. They desperately need new “breeding stock” to sustain their underground military society. That is how they see us. But the refugees from 12 don't care about the cold metrics of population genetics. They are just happy to be alive, safe from the Capitol's lash, and fed three times a day.
Everyone in 13 tries to hold me together. My mother and Prim work tirelessly in the medical bays, Prim’s soft voice and gentle hands a constant comfort when the nightmares wake me up screaming. Madge is always there, her sharp, quiet intelligence offering a steady anchor when the political jargon of 13 threatens to make my head explode. Peeta brings a silent, steady comfort when the tremors start, understanding the specific flavor of grief without me having to say a word. Even Seeder, who was fished out of the arena alongside Beetee, Finnick, Wiress, and Mags, has become a protective shield. While Beetee is wheeled off to secret weapons rooms, and Wiress murmurs her unfinished sentences while mapping the underground grids, Seeder stands firmly between me and President Alma Coin, keeping the military officials from forcing me into a script before I can breathe.
They wanted to make Finnick a symbol of the revolution as well, a gleaming rebel leader to rally the coastal districts. But he is a ghost of himself, too entirely consumed by stress and terror over Annie’s situation in the Capitol. He tries, and because he at least has Mags by his side to quietly anchor him as she weaves twine in the hospital wing, he hasn't completely shattered. He might eventually step into the role they want for him, but he is still mentally recovering, drowning in his own helplessness.
Which means they still desperately need me to be the Mockingjay.
But a crushing wave of insecurity paralyzes me whenever I think about agreeing. Every time I take action, everything I do fails to go as planned. It always ends up worse. I tried to save Rue, and she died in my arms. I tried to protect 12 by playing the Capitol's game, and now my home is a cemetery of ash. I am a fractured, clumsy catalyst who leaves destruction in her wake.
I am nothing like Gale. Gale was a true leader. He had carefully planned an entire uprising, mapping out logistics, tracking guard shifts, and organizing cells for months. He made sure the rebellion would succeed, thinking out every tactical piece on the board, even while he was fully planning to die for the cause in the arena. He was prepared to sacrifice his life so the system would break. I just shoot arrows and hope the world doesn't collapse around me.
I bolt into the Victor's Village, the twelve fine houses unscathed. I rush into my home, slam the door, and lean back against it.
"What am I going to do?" I whisper to the walls.
I move through the downstairs on hunter's feet, picking up a few tokens: a photo of my parents, a blue ribbon for Prim, the family plant book. In the kitchen, a familiar hiss makes me look down. Buttercup, the ugliest tomcat in the world, has survived. I scoop him up, stuffing his thrashing body into my game bag. Prim loves him; I have to bring him back.
In my headset, Darius’s voice crackles. "Katniss, the hovercraft is drawing too much attention. We have to move out."
"One minute," I say.
The game bag reminds me of one last thing. I sprint up the stairs to my bedroom and pull my father's hunting jacket from the closet. The soft leather feels soothing against my skin. I turn around to leave, but suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
My nose twitches. The smell is cloying, thick, and entirely artificial.
I step toward my dresser. Hidden among a vase of dried, dead flowers is a single, fresh white rose. Perfect. Down to the last silken petal and sharp thorn.
I begin to gag at the stench, backing out of the room in a panic. The rebels did a sweep for bugs and explosives, but a flower meant nothing to them. It only means something to me.
President Snow.
It is a personal promise of revenge. It whispers, I can find you. I can reach you. Perhaps I am watching you now. And right now, he has Gale.
I grab the thrashing game bag from downstairs, sprint out onto the scorched lawn, and frantically signal the sky. The hovercraft materializes, a ladder dropping down, and the magnetic current lifts me inside.
Darius helps me over the ledge, his face tight with concern. "You alright, Katniss?"
"Yeah," I lie, wiping the cold sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, tightly clutching my father's jacket.
I don't tell him about the rose. I don't tell him that Snow is playing with my mind. I just look out the window as the ruined, burning coal mines of District 12 disappear into the clouds, knowing that a brutal war is coming—and Gale is trapped right in the dark heart of it.
Are there Capitol hoverplanes speeding in to blow us out of the sky? As we travel over District 12, I watch anxiously for signs of an attack through the small, thick windows of the hovercraft, but nothing pursues us. After several minutes, when I hear an exchange between Plutarch and the pilot confirming that our airspace is clear, the tight knot in my chest begins to loosen a little.
Darius nods at the furious, muffled howls coming from my game bag. "Now I know why you risked your neck to go back down there. For a second, I thought you were hunting down a stray Peacekeeper."
"If there was even a chance of his recovery for Prim," I mutter, dumping the canvas bag onto an empty metal seat. Inside, the loathsome creature begins a low, deep-throated growl. "Oh, shut up," I tell the bag as I sink into the cushioned window seat across from it.
Darius doesn't sit next to me. He stands near the cabin door, his hands clasped behind his back in a disciplined military posture, but his eyes are warm and full of a familiar, protective concern. Because of his past training as a District 12 Peacekeeper, the authorities in 13 immediately assigned him to the military sector. More specifically, they assigned him to me. My plastic medical bracelet explicitly states that I am mentally disoriented, prone to hallucinations and panic, so having a familiar face like Darius escorting me on these authorized trips is 13’s way of keeping me on a leash without triggering another breakdown.
"Pretty bad down there?" Darius asks softly.
"Couldn't be much worse," I answer, looking out the glass as the smoking graveyard of our home disappears into the clouds.
It only takes about forty-five minutes to fly back to 13. A mere week's journey on foot. It makes me think of Bonnie and Twill when I encountered them in the woods last winter. They had been so close to their destination after all. When I finally left the hospital wing and found them here, clean, fed, and safely integrated into the underground grids, it felt like the only real victory I had left. They had survived the woods.
From the air, 13 looks about as cheerful as 12. The rubble isn't smoking, the way the Capitol shows it on television, but there's next to no life aboveground. In the seventy-five years since the Dark Days—when 13 was said to have been obliterated in the war—almost all new construction has been beneath the earth's surface. There was already a substantial underground facility here, a clandestine refuge for government leaders and the center of the Capitol's nuclear weapons development program. During the Dark Days, the rebels here wrested control, trained their nuclear missiles on the Capitol, and struck a bargain: They would play dead in exchange for being left alone. The Capitol demolished the visible remains, cut off all access, and left them to die. They almost did a few times, but they pulled through due to strict sharing of resources, strenuous discipline, and constant vigilance.
Now the citizens live almost exclusively underground. You can go outside for exercise and sunlight but only at very specific times in your schedule. Every morning, you stick your arm into a contraption in the wall that tattoos the inside of your forearm with your schedule in a sickly, purple, water-resistant ink. 7:00—Breakfast. 7:30—Kitchen Duties. 8:30—Education Center. And so on.
Fortunately, the refugees of 12 have never been wasteful, so fitting into a society where waste is practically a criminal activity hasn't been the hardest part. The hardest part is the clockwork precision. Because of my medical bracelet, they leave me alone for now, allowing me to wander into abandoned air ducts or hide behind the water pipes in the laundry. I don't know how long I'll be able to get away with my complete disregard for the clock, or how long their patience with the Mockingjay issue will last.
From the landing pad, Darius guides me down a series of concrete stairways to Compartment 307. We could take the elevator, only it reminds me too much of the one that lifted me into the arena.
I hesitate at the heavy door, anticipating the questions from my family. "What am I going to tell them about Twelve?" I ask Darius.
"They won't ask for details, Katniss. They saw the flames from the woods," he says gently. "They'll just be glad you're back."
I take a deep breath and open the door. My mother, Prim, and Madge are all inside for 18:00—Reflection, a half-hour of downtime before dinner. Before anyone can ask anything, I empty my game bag and it becomes 18:00—Cat Adoration. Prim just sits on the floor weeping and rocking that awful thing, who interrupts his purring only to hiss at me. He gives me a smug look when she ties the blue ribbon around his neck.
My mother hugs her wedding photo tightly against her chest, and Madge quietly helps her place it on the government-issued chest of drawers. Madge's face is pale, her movements precise. She doesn't ask me about the ruins of the mayor's house. She doesn't have to.
We are heading down to the dining hall for 18:30—Dinner when we run into Peeta. Because of his immense political importance—having co-organized the underground cells with Gale and successfully executed the evacuation of eight hundred people—the authorities of 13 have granted him a high-ranking position at the war table. But Peeta is still a baker at heart; when he isn't in military briefings, his schedule splits him directly into kitchen duty, helping to coordinate the rationing and baking of bread for the entire underground population.
Suddenly, the communicuff on Peeta’s wrist begins to beep. It’s an oversized, high-tech watch reserved only for those vital to the rebellion's leadership, capable of receiving instant print messages from Command.
Peeta looks down at the flashing text, his expression instantly tightening. He looks up, his eyes meeting mine, then shifting to Madge.
"They need us in Command," Peeta says, his voice drop-dead serious. "Right now."
Trailing a few steps behind Peeta and Madge, with Darius keeping a steady, protective pace right beside me, I try to collect myself. I dread being thrown into another relentless Mockingjay session, another argument where I have to explain how every action I take results in disaster.
I linger in the doorway of Command. The high-tech war room is deafeningly loud, filled with computerized talking walls, electronic maps showing troop movements, and a giant rectangular table with control panels. No one notices me, because the entire council—military officials, district leaders, Plutarch, and his assistant Fulvia—are gathered around a massive television screen at the far end of the room that airs the Capitol broadcast around the clock.
I’m thinking I might be able to slip away unnoticed when Plutarch catches sight of me and waves urgently. "Katniss! Come in, quickly!"
I reluctantly move forward, expecting the usual. War footage. Propaganda. An ominous message from President Snow. It is almost surreal to see Caesar Flickerman, the eternal host of the Hunger Games, with his painted face and sparkly suit, preparing to give a special broadcast.
The screen flickered to life with the distinctive, neon fanfare of Capitol TV. And then, Caesar Flickerman appeared.
He wasn't wearing his usual flamboyant, glittering suits. He wore a subdued, deep midnight blue, his trademark bright smile replaced by a somber, tight-lipped expression.
"Good evening, Panem," Caesar began, his voice echoing cleanly through the Command speakers. "We live in a time of unprecedented confusion and sorrow. The horrific events at the Quarter Quell arena, which cut short a game of celebrated victors, have left our nation asking many questions. Tonight, we are joined by a young man who was dragged into the very heart of that chaos. A provider, a hunter, and a survivor from District 12. Gale Hawthorne."
My breath hitched, catching painfully in my throat. I lunged forward, my hands slamming against the cold metal console in front of me. Gale.
The camera cut to a tight shot. He was sitting in a plush velvet armchair, looking terrifyingly whole. He was dressed in a tailored, charcoal-grey hunting jacket that accentuated his sharp jawline and broad shoulders. He looked exactly like the romantic, lethal hunter the Capitol audiences had fallen in love with during the pre-Games interviews—the protective family man.
But his eyes were entirely wrong.
Those striking gray Seam eyes, which usually burned with an untamed, furious fire whenever he even thought about the Capitol, were completely calm. Cold. Perfectly analytical.
"Gale," Caesar said gently, leaning forward and lowering his voice. "The images from the arena’s collapse shocked the entire nation. We watched you fight with everything you had, only for the sky to tear open. The Ministry of Information has recently compiled the definitive footage of those final moments. I understand this is the first time you are seeing it since your rescue."
The screen split. On the right, Gale remained in a tight frame. On the left, the Capitol broadcast began playing high-definition footage of the Quarter Quell's final minutes. It showed the lightning tree. It showed me, standing in the downpour, frantically wrapping the golden wire around my arrow.
I expected Gale to turn away. I expected him to glare into the lens with hatred. Instead, Gale leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, staring at the footage with the detached, calculating gaze of a strategist tracking an opponent. There wasn't a flicker of emotion on his face. No warmth, no pain, no longing. He looked at the image on the screen as if studying a foreign blueprint.
"Gale," Caesar pressed softly, watching his reaction. "When you look at Katniss Everdeen in that moment... What do you see? What is the truth behind the person the rebels believe to be the “Mockingjay”?"
He looked directly into the camera lens. Directly through the screen. Directly at me.
"The truth, Caesar, is that war is a calculation of resources, not a theater production," Gale said. His voice was steady, deep, and perfectly clear—the exact, chillingly pragmatic tone he used when explaining a high-stakes hunting strategy in the woods. "The districts are being told to throw their lives into chaos based on a narrative. But when you look at the mechanics of what happened in that arena, the narrative falls apart. She is not a rebel commander; she is a weapon dropped blindly into a field she doesn't control."
A collective, horrified gasp rippled through the crowded Command Center of District 13.
"In what way?" Caesar asked, his eyes narrowing slightly, leaning in.
Gale gestured calmly toward the footage of my arrow piercing the force field. "Look at the logistics. A structured resistance requires communication, defense, and a clear preservation of life. What happened there was entirely erratic, a desperate plan engineered by shadows who left their asset completely in the dark. That strike didn't preserve the tributes on the ground; it nearly incinerated them. If a rescue wasn't already hovering in the clouds, the rebel handlers would have left everyone to die in a premature inferno for the sake of a symbol."
He paused, his gray eyes hardening with a genuine, deep-seated conviction. He wasn't defending the Capitol, but he wasn't defending the rebellion’s current state either.
"An open conflict without centralized supply lines, without total unity, and without a unified structural plan is not a victory—it is a slaughter," Gale stated, his face an impassive, unreadable mask. "If you want to protect your families, if you want your children to survive the winter, you cannot follow a ghost into a firestorm. Unless the districts can offer absolute coordination, communication, and a synchronized defense across all sectors, continuing this chaos is a tactical failure. Look at the reality of the board, and lay down your weapons before there is nothing left to salvage."
The screen snapped to black. The Capitol broadcast was cut off.
The ambiguity of his words hung in the air like a suffocating fog. He hadn't praised President Snow, and he hadn't revealed a single piece of the covert underground cells. To the Capitol, he had delivered a perfect, rational plea for a ceasefire. But to the rebels, he had just used his natural, commanding authority to systematically hollow out the spirit of the revolution.
Inside the command room, the silence was heavy.
Subdued Capitol music began to play again, and then a woman appeared on screen, reading a list of expected shortages in the Capitol—fresh fruit, solar batteries, soap. I watched her with uncharacteristic absorption, because I knew everyone in that crowded, high-tech room would be waiting for my reaction to the interview.
But there was no way I could process it all so quickly. The agonizing relief of seeing Gale alive and unharmed was instantly crushed by the sheer horror of his cold, empty eyes. He hadn't just called for a ceasefire; he had painted me as a fraud, a weapon used to trick the districts. Oh, he made it sound as if he were condemning the tactical foolishness of both sides. But at this point, with only minor victories for the rebels, a ceasefire could only result in a return to our previous status. A return to the Hunger Games. A return to the oppression of the districts.
Behind me, I could hear the accusations against Gale building like a rising tide. The words traitor, liar, and enemy bounced off the reinforced metal walls. The military officials were furious.
"He's compromised," a commander snarled. "He's telling the districts to stand down!"
Since I could neither join in the rebels' outrage nor find the words to counter it, I decided the best thing to do was clear out. I couldn't bear the weight of Peeta's heavy, tragic gaze beside me.
As I reached the door, President Coin's voice rose above the brewing chaos, cold and entirely devoid of sympathy. "It seems that our captive soldier is highly effective. He just dismantled our entire campaign in three sentences."
I kept moving, but her voice cut through the room again. "You have not been dismissed, Soldier Everdeen."
One of Coin's security guards stepped into my path, laying a firm hand on my arm. It wasn't an aggressive move, really, but after the arena, I reacted defensively to any unfamiliar touch. A blind panic flared in my chest. I jerked my arm free with a violent twist, shoved past him, and took off running down the stark, concrete hallways of District 13.
Behind me, there was the sharp sound of a scuffle—Darius’s voice barked out a warning, intercepting the guard to clear my path—but I didn't stop to look. I ran blindly, my heart hammering against my ribs.
My mind did a quick inventory of my odd little hiding places in this subterranean labyrinth. I bypassed the laundry, ignored the air ducts, and threw myself into the quiet supply closet in the Education Center. I slammed the heavy door shut, plunging myself into the shadows, and sank to the floor, curled up tight against a crate of chalk.
In the dark, the cloying, artificial scent of Snow's white rose seemed to bleed through the cracks of the door, suffocating me.
"You're alive," I whispered, pressing my palms against my burning cheeks. I felt a smile stretching across my face, so wide and desperate it must have looked like a grimace. Gale was alive. And a traitor to the cause. But at that exact moment, wrapped in the pitch-black shadows of the supply closet, I didn't care. I didn't care what he said, or who he said it for, only that he was still whole, still breathing, and still capable of speech.
After a while, the heavy door clicked open, letting in a sharp sliver of fluorescent light. Someone slipped into the tight space, closing the door behind them, and slid down against the wall right beside me.
It was Peeta. He didn't say a word at first. He just sat there in the dark, his shoulders settling against the wooden crates, his breathing calm and steady. In the chaotic, sterile labyrinth of District 13, Peeta was a piece of home. He wasn't aggressive, and he didn't demand anything from me. While he and Gale had been the ones closest to each other, working tirelessly in the shadows to map out the district's cells, his firm, fundamentally kind nature was an instant anchor for my frantic mind. He had a way of bringing a profound stillness into a room, never forcing me into a corner I didn't want to be in.
"Darius blocked the doorway when Boggs tried to follow you," Peeta said softly, his voice cutting through the quiet. "He got into a bit of a scuffle to clear your path. Coin took his military comm-device away on the spot as punishment."
I bit my lip, a wave of guilt washing over me. "I'm sorry. It's my fault."
"Don't be," Peeta replied, and I could hear the faint, gentle smile in his voice. "Darius told me he felt like a bureaucrat walking around with that plastic gadget anyway. He said a real soldier doesn't need a buzzer to know when a friend's in trouble."
A tiny, breathless laugh escaped my throat before the weight of the monitors settled back over us. "Who are these people, Peeta?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper. "What is this place?"
"They're us," Peeta answered, his tone turning thoughtful. "If we'd had nuclear missiles instead of a few lumps of coal. It's remarkable they survived at all, really."
Maybe it was because I still had the ash of the Seam coating my shoes, but for the first time, I gave the people of 13 something I had fiercely withheld from them: credit. For staying alive against all odds. Their early years huddled in these concrete chambers after their surface city was bombed to dust must have been terrible. And with that brutal pox epidemic Dalton told me about, their society was running on borrowed time. They were desperate for our gene pool, desperate for new breeders and citizens to sustain their army, which made them cold and utilitarian. They were militaristic, overly programmed, and entirely lacking a sense of humor. But they were here. And they were willing to take on the Capitol.
"Still, it took them long enough to show up," I muttered bitterly. "They let Twelve burn."
"It wasn't that simple," Peeta explained, his steady voice gently guiding my thoughts. "They had to build up a rebel base inside the Capitol itself, organize the underground cells across the districts... It took years. And then they needed a catalyst. Someone to set the entire powder keg in motion." He turned his head toward me in the dark. "They needed you, Katniss."
"They needed Gale, too," I said, a knot tightening in my throat. "But they’ve already written him off as a traitor. Why... Why do you think he said those things, Peeta?"
Peeta was quiet for a long moment, analyzing the strategy behind Gale's words. "Gale is a brilliant tactician, Katniss. Even if the Capitol did something to his mind, he is still a rebel by heart. He wouldn't read a script written by Snow, and he didn't. He used his own ideals. Think about what he actually said. He called the arena a tactical failure because there was no communication, no unity, no structural strategy. He didn't just ask for a ceasefire, Katniss. He gave them an ultimatum: either the districts actually join forces, coordinate their logistics, and fight together as a united army—or they need to surrender right away to save their lives."
I shook my head, my mind racing as his words clicked into place. "And by painting me as an innocent, manipulated puppet, he's detaching me from the Mockingjay image entirely. If the districts lose, or if I stay hidden, the Capitol won't hold me responsible."
"Exactly," Peeta nodded, his expression serious. "He must have been told you're alive and in District 13 with the rebels. He's laying out a defensive grid for you."
The realization hit me like a physical blow. He was giving me an option.
My mind flashed back to that afternoon in the woods, inside the abandoned shack, when Gale and I had the conversation about running away to the woods after coming back from the Victory Tour just because there were uprisings in the districts. I made it very clear I never wanted to be the reason the people risk their lives fighting.
Now, on a national stage, he had used his own life as a bargaining chip to give me a choice. By tearing down the image of the Mockingjay on live television, he was giving me the freedom to detach myself from the war completely—to hide beneath the grids of 13 and just survive, clear of any responsibility. But at the same time, by demanding communication and a unified strategy, he was leaving the door open. He was giving me the option to step up on my own terms, to give them the unity he demanded, and be the face that would spread the fire.
He was risking everything to give me that choice. Because whatever they were doing to him, Gale was still the boy from the Seam who would rather die than truly become the Capitol's pawn. He was playing a lethally dangerous game with Snow, balancing on the edge of a knife just to give us a chance.
Images flashed through my mind in a horrific, rapid sequence: the spear piercing Rue's small body, Gale hanging senseless and bleeding from the whipping post, the corpse-littered, blackened wasteland of my home. And for what? For what?
As my blood turned hot, a fierce, untamed fire ignited beneath my terror. I remembered other things. My first glimpse of an uprising in District 8. The victors holding hands in defiance the night before the Quarter Quell. And how it had been no accident, my shooting that arrow into the chink in the force field. How badly I had wanted that golden thread to lodge deep in the heart of my enemy.
I sprang up violently, my knee upsetting a heavy box of a hundred pencils on a nearby shelf, sending the sharp sticks of graphite scattering across the concrete floor with a deafening clatter.
"Katniss? What is it?" Peeta asked, instantly rising to his feet beside me.
"There can't be a ceasefire," I breathed, my hands trembling as I leaned down, blindly fumbling in the dark to shove the pencils back into the cardboard box. "We can't go back to the way things were. We can't let Snow win."
"I know," Peeta said softly. He knelt down beside me, sweeping up a handful of the scattered pencils, his calm, concise motions soothing the panic in the air as he tapped them into perfect alignment.
"Gale was right by saying those things," I insisted, my frustration boiling over as the stupid sticks refused to fit into the box. I snapped several of them in half in my grip. "The people, the districts, they need to join if they even want to stand a chance… They don’t understand, if they just…there can’t be a cease fire, that’s for sure, but he is there, and what will he say, what will they do—"
"Katniss, I'm not arguing with you," Peeta cut in gently, taking the broken pieces from my hands. He filled the rest of the box with swift, steady movements and flipped the lid closed. "If I could press a button right now and end Snow's regime forever, I'd do it without a second thought. The question isn't what Gale thinks. The question is... what are you going to do?"
It turned out the question that had been eating away at my soul, the insecurity that had paralyzed me for weeks, had only ever had one true answer. It had just taken Gale's clinical, agonizing broadcast for me to finally recognize it.
What am I going to do?
I took a deep, steadying breath. My arms rose slightly in the dark—as if recalling the heavy, black-and-white wings Cinna had stitched into my uniform—then came to rest firmly at my sides.
"I'm going to be the Mockingjay," I said, my voice ringing with an absolute, lethal resolve. "And I'm going to bring him back."