Disclaimer: Since this is a (very direct) Hunger Games AU, some lines are lifted from the book. I don't own The Hunger Games.
A/N: This is nothing like Sensitive Baker Problems, meaning: the situations presented in this fic won't be dealt with humor, and the aforementioned situations won't be light and shallow. As much as I adore SBP!verse Pita (and Catnus), this alternative ending to The Hunger Games - and sequential continuation of the series - is one that I'd like to explore further. Canon events that aren't mentioned (in detail or at all) are still valid, though I won't delve too much into them.
Warning: This is a bit of a return to the style of my earlier one-shots (Potter!verse excluded), so fair warning - Angst Level: Red, character deaths, and spoilers from Catching Fire and Mockingjay.
Ignis
(Fire)
"You'll never be able to let him go."
-Mockingjay, Chapter 14
now that you've found it, it's gone / now that you feel it, you don't
Radiohead, "Nude"
i. The Victor
"One." Maybe I'm wrong. "Two." Maybe they don't care if we both die. "Three!" It's too late to change my mind. I lift my hand to my mouth, taking one last look at the world.
I feel my determination falter, as the berries pass my lips, when something drops to the ground with a soft thud, and I am hauled backwards.
I regain my composure, and stand, unmoving, numb, as the trumpets begin to blare.
Claudius Templesmith booms from above, "Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen! I give you - the female tribute of District Twelve!"
I spew the berries from my mouth, wiping my tongue with the end of my shirt to make sure no juice remains.
My mind is buzzing as Claudius' words register. The female tribute?
Something is not quite right. Peeta's named wasn't called. Why wasn't it called?
I realize my hand is empty - not locked tight inside Peeta's.
The strangled cry escapes my mouth before I even realize what I'm doing. The hovercraft materializes, dropping one single ladder, but my knees are inflecting and the Cornucopia becomes a blur.
I don't look down. I can't, because, if I do, I don't know what will happen. I don't look down, because the exclamations of the crowd in the Capitol that they're playing live over the speakers, indicate no enthusiasm; they display the chagrin and disenchantment of the pampered citizens. The disillusionment that the star-crossed lovers from District Twelve won't make it back to their abject home together. Because one will travel on a high-speed Capitol train. The other will be shipped off in a wooden box.
I stagger forward, but I trip on something and drop to the ground with a thud. It's Peeta's leg.
I grip the first rung of the ladder, desperately trying to get up and get the hell away from the arena. I shut my eyes before the electric current freezes me in place, and I wait.
In the few moments before I collapse on the floor of the hovercraft, I realize he never intended for both of us to live.
I wake up to the sharp smell of antiseptic.
I could have easily mistaken it to the familiar stench of Haymitch's white liquor, but this scent is much more potent and it makes me sick to my stomach.
I blink groggily. The entire ceiling glows with a soft yellow light, allowing me to see that I'm in a room containing just my bed. No doors, no windows are visible.
I gingerly raise my right arm to my forehead, with the intention of examining my wound, only to realize that the several tubes that extend to the wall behind me make it impossible. I groan, and drop my arm to the mattress.
I feel a cold liquid seeping into my vain from one of the tubes and almost immediately lose consciousness.
The first nightmare strikes so unexpectedly that it forces the air out of my lungs. The numbness, induced by the morphling and the shock and the confusion, has fizzled out, and it fucking hurts now.
I am running.
At first, I think it's the familiar trees from the woods outside Twelve that swirl around me as I pelt across a path sprinkled with pine needles, but it's too hostile here. The bow clutched tightly in my hand isn't the wooden one my father carved years ago; it is silver and sturdy and cold. It's Capitol-made.
I am in the arena.
I wake up, screaming.
My first post-games interview is a three-hour recap of the Games.
Even Caesar Flickerman - who usually babbles, and gushes, and asks so many questions - is unsure of what to say to make me more at ease. I'm sure he makes a notable effort, but, throughout the whole thing, I am aloof. I don't throw my fist in the air. I don't celebrate my victory.
I scream on the inside.
At least my external scars have vanished - courtesy of the ever so kind Capitol.
Twelve isn't any sort of a safe haven either.
The insect-like cameras follow my every move for weeks after the end of the Games. Apparently, the Capitol hasn't had its fill of their poor, tragic yet; they want more of her. They want to savor her pain for their personal amusement.
Haymitch visits, occasionally. I can tell Peeta's demise has affected him more than he'd like to show.
"Why did he do it, Haymitch?" I ask one day, as he removes the lid of his steel flask, and pours his clear liquor into the cup of tea I offered him.
"The whole Capitol bought your bluff," he shrugs, and brings the cup to his lips. A smile creeps onto his lips, when he continues, "so it's only natural that he did as well."
Except it wasn't a bluff. Not really.
"Maybe he thought you didn't want to have to kill him. And, obviously, he didn't want to kill you, so killing yourselves was the better option."
"It should have been me," I murmur.
"Good thing you realize that, sweetheart."
I don't go to the woods anymore. At least, not as often as I used to. You'd think that it would be easy, being with Gale again - Gale, whom I hadn't stopped thinking during those weeks in the Arena.
It's far from that.
But I can't avoid him forever - I can't pretend I don't need him. Even if he has been lessened to my cousin.
It's not quite like before, but, somehow, I manage lock the bad memories away for a few hours.
"We can still run off, you know." You and I, we could make it.
If only it were that easy.
It is me who kisses him under the shade of a pine, so desperately needing to feel something.
I thought I would find the much needed comfort I longed for at the Hob, but I can't bear the sympathetic looks and the pats on the back for much longer.
Greasy Sae refuses to take my money now. But I'm rich now; I'm a victor. I can afford my own wild dog meat soup.
At first, Ripper is reluctant about selling me the three bottles of white liquor.
"What do you want with them?" she inquires suspiciously.
"Not for me," I mutter indifferently. "Haymitch." I smile bleakly.
Ripper shakes her head. "Haymitch came yesterday," she scolds. "He bought a whole lot."
The pouch I set on her stand, rattling with the sound of metal clanking against metal, more than convinces her.
Inside me, the spirits taste like fire. I hate it; it reminds me of the Girl on Fire.
I hate the Girl on Fire.
"Convince me."
With his visit, President Snow shatters any hope that it will end. It won't end, ever.
How he knows of the kiss between Gale and me is beyond me, but the point is he knows he's not my cousin. He suspects the star-crossed lovers were a canard - my girl-in-love persona was a facade created to induce sympathy from the audience, and ensure my victory; but it was not noble, not by Capitol's standards. It was the spark that would kindle a fire not even the Capitol would be able to quench.
Peeta is dead, and the problem is I don't look broken enough.
The Victory Tour does nothing to diminish my memories of the Games. Or my hatred for the Capitol.
Or my overmastering, all-consuming terror.
One is the hardest. I thought that seeing Rue and Thresh's families would overwhelm me emotionally, but the deadpan crowd in Glimmer and Marvel's district proves to be far worse.
My cheeks turn scarlet when I realize I didn't even know the name of the boy I killed.
The nightmares become worse now. He is never in them, but there is a vague feeling of guilt and despair that surrounds the darkness and horror of it all.
"It wasn't your fault," says Cinna, lifting a hand to remove a strand of hair from my eyes. I know he's being honest with me - he always has, after all - but his words do nothing to console me.
Because it was my fault. My idiotic defiance caused this, and there's no way I can take it back.
I long for Peeta's reassuring presence, his sturdy arms to ward all of it off.
The next few days go by in a swirl, and when we're pulling into Twelve, I strive to recall what I can from them.
Celebration dinners and victory speeches and parties thrown in my honor and rich, gluttonous people gorging themselves and throwing up so as to do it again, and again, and again.
Things are different now.
First, it was the new Peacekeepers; harsh, adamant men. Snow's men. It was when Gale was caught poaching and was whipped in the middle of the square, and I stood there, unable to bring my feet to move. It was when Darius, with his red hair and freckles and banters, was murdered.
Now, the Hob is a heap of debris and rubble. Greasy Sae and Ripper and the rest of the traders were imprisoned. They were released, obviously, but, were they caught again, they wouldn't be so lucky as to end up in a prison cell again.
Two refugees from Eight are found and executed in the woods; a woman and a teenage girl. The reason: treason against the Capitol.
There was an uprising in Eight. Perhaps Snow was right. Perhaps my actions, tragic as their aftermath was, did ignite the fire that would bring the world he and his predecessors had so carefully constructed down.
I know it's heavy, I know it ain't light / but how you gonna lift it with your hands folded tight?
Arcade Fire, "Month of May"
ii. The Quell
Had viewing not been mandatory, I would be in the woods, pretending it wasn't happening at all.
Snow, with his snakelike eyes and white rose sewn on the lapel of his suit, begins to speak, but I don't listen. It's another one of his propaganda speeches, where he recites the same old story about the Dark Days; how the rebellion was an unwarranted, feeble mutiny against the mighty Capitol; how the laws that were laid out for the Hunger Games were Panem's saving grace.
It makes me sick to my stomach.
And then it's over, and Prim has buried her face in her hands, and mother has tears streaming down her face, and the president's last words repeat themselves in my head. And then I get it.
Haymitch is a deficient mentor, as per usual.
It's not because of his drinking problem, for once. It's because this time, he can't be my mentor.
In the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Haymitch had chosen me over Peeta. In the third Quarter Quell, I highly doubt he would chose his sullen and hostile former mentee over his own life, sad and pathetic as it is.
Because, in typical Quell fashion, there is a twist, and the twist this year is as follows: the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.
District Twelve has only had three existing victors to choose from. One is dead. One is Haymitch. And one is me.
"You know," he says one morning, as I'm preparing to hurl a spear at the trunk of a tree, "had it not been for your idiotic nightlock bluff, you might actually stand a chance in this."
The spear misses by a few inches.
Haymitch's words stab like knives.
"I'm not the one who swallowed the berries," I spit, my voice dripping acid.
"Anyhow, I won't be much help to you," Haymitch continues, unruffled.
"I don't need the help of a drunkard," I grumble.
"Don't worry, sweetheart," he murmurs with a smirk playing in the corners of his lips. "I won't kill you."
"It's not like you can," I retort.
I did suggest we started training for the Quell, but all Haymitch did was to drunkenly wave me off. Well, the joke's on him, I suppose.
I don't get to say goodbye.
Peacekeeper Thread ushers Haymitch and me to the train, and my goodbyes are still hanging on my lips as the train leaves the station, and District Twelve disappears for one last time.
Haymitch looks at least ridiculous in the glowing unitard, our opening ceremonies outfit.
In fact, all of the aging tributes - including Mags, the debilitated District Four tribute, who looks well over eighty - appear almost farcical compared to the younger ones, like Finnick Odair, the sexpot from Four; Johanna Mason, the sniveling coward turned killing machine from Seven; and me, the Girl on Fire.
The crowd is delirious, eager to blow me kisses, and fling roses my way, but I am unforgiving.
I hear his voice coming from the jabberjays' beak, and, for a moment, I almost forget he swallowed those berries.
The Quarter Quell lasts three days exactly.
By its end, three things I have learnt.
First, Haymitch didn't survive.
Second, District Twelve was bombed and destroyed.
And third, the rebellion has started.
I am nothing without pretend / I know my faults / can't live with them
Wye Oak, "Civilian"
iii. The War
It turns out that the Quarter Quell was merely a leverage. It worked as the cannon that echoes before every Hunger Games, only this time it connotes the outset of the rebellion.
It turns out that I am being made into the icon of aforementioned rebellion.
You would think Thirteen was a Capitol-esque, in terms of allotments, district - solely judging by how well it's managed to survive for seventy-five years. At least, in terms of accommodation, yes, we do have a solid roof - and a few tons of cement - over our heads, but the place resembles its austere and stiff president down to the smallest details; grey, dull, and so, so suffocating.
I wander aimlessly for hours through dingy corridors, and hide in abandoned storage rooms.
Finnick is the only one I can talk to. Not that I don't have other choices, but I'd rather be with someone who understands.
He tells me of the things the Capitol makes victors do, what they made him do. His sea-green eyes watch me closely, and I wonders how the hell I escaped.
"You are the one half of the star-crossed lovers from District Twelve, and, with your defiance, you single-handedly brought down the keystones that consolidate the Capitol. Selling your body would be too lenient a punishment," he explains.
"I thought you were just a dick," I mutter, semi-apologetically. Finnick chuckles.
I now dream of the boy with the blue eyes, the boy with the bread, and it's just us - no direful darkness - and it's both easier and harder this way.
At least the nightmares are gone.
And when the mutations take Finnick's life, I cry. I cry for Annie, and for the loneliness that is now burgeoning inside me, and I have no one else to turn to now.
There is no one to turn to now.
Cinna was murdered, that day, before the tube led me to the "Clock", I'm sure of it.
Inadequate as Haymitch was as a mentor, his absence hits me harder than I imagined. Everything about him reeked of the smell of his clear liquor, and I detested him; but I understood him, and he understood me.
Fire.
I am The Girl on Fire.
Cinna would be so proud now, for his creation is coming to life.
in every speck of dust, in every universe / when you feel most alone, you will not be alone
Keane, "My Shadow"
iv. The Aftermath
By the end, I am amazed I've managed to hold on to what little sanity was left in me.
Somehow Gale survives. My mother does, as well.
I am dumped in Twelve, where all that remains is the ashes and the dead. I try not to dwell much on that fact - fire is too painful a memory to recall, too strong an ache to bear.
Days, weeks, months pass, and the scars are slowly beginning to heal. Dr. Aurelius' calls dwindle, as do Greasy Sae's visits. I visit the Hob sometimes - the stacks of bottles filled with clear liquor evoke a small smile to play around the corners of my lips.
The boy with the bread frequently finds his way into my dreams, handsome and alive, his blue eyes reflecting the sky that hovers above the Meadow.