Chapter One
Characters belong to Suzanne Collins, even though I wish Peeta was mine.
I used some of the ideas from the end of Mockingjay as well.
As soon as I open my eyes, I wish I hadn't. I hurry to shut them again. I keep them closed and play out the events in my head. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I survived the Hunger Games. I started the rebellion without even knowing it. I became the Mockingjay. We took the Capitol. I killed Coin. President Snow is dead. Prim is dead.
Now is when the what-ifs start. What if I hadn't volunteered for tribute? Prim could have still been alive. I don't really believe this for one second, but wasn't the point of me volunteering to keep her alive? To not have to watch my little sister die? I watched her die, along with hundreds of others because I volunteered. What if I had just swallowed the nightlock? Finnick would still be alive. Cinna. Boggs, Leeg 1 and 2, Mags, Darius, Marge, countless others.
I force my eyes open and take in the familiar scene. White walls, my arms in restraints, the tubes and needles and morphling. There is no one else here. I don't know who I would expect to see, maybe Haymitch, or Plutarch, more likely someone sent to kill me. I don't know why I'm here in the hospital after killing Coin. The rebels must be in an uproar. Who's side is the right one? The President of 13 who organized the Rebellion or the girl on fire? It's ironic that Cinna named me the girl on fire, and I actually was. The fact that I laugh to myself confirms that I have a pretty steady stream of morphling running through my veins. If my hands were free, I doubt I would rip the tube out though; the feeling of numbness is welcoming.
After what seems like forever, I am transferred from my room by someone I don't know to a hovercraft. I don't know where I'm going, I don't even know if I care. Probably something to do with murdering Coin. Once I'm pulled up, I see Haymitch. "We're going home." That's all he says, which is fine with me. He drops me off at my house in the Victors Circle, and I wander inside and fall asleep on the couch.
Greasy Sae wakes me up in the morning and she makes me breakfast. I force some down, and once I've eaten what I can, I stay sitting for a while. I must have fallen asleep again because it is late afternoon when Haymitch stumbles in through the front door. "This letter is from your mother" he says. Obviously, he expects me to open it now, with him standing there over me. "There's no point in delaying what you already know Katniss". Stupid Haymitch. Can't he see I'm in pain? It's like he hears my thoughts before they even form, because the next thing he says is "You've got to get yourself together. You're too young to carry your pain on your shoulders every moment of your life. Unless you want to end up like me Sweatheart". His smile is quite as sarcastic as usual, as if there's real pain in his words.
I think for a second and reach for the letter. It's short and to the point, she knows me well enough that she assumes I already knew what she would do. In the back of my mind I expected it, and I knew she wouldn't be able to come back to 12. Not yet anyway. I know why, and the last thing I need is my mother to shut down as she did after my father's death. As I remember how she was at that time, and how much I despised her for what she did, I finally see exactly what I need to do. I was always stronger than my mother, and Prim would never have wanted me to live such a tortured life as I have been. Haymitch is gone when I surface from my revelation. Small steps, I tell myself. I help Greasy Sae with dinner when she comes. We don't say anything, but I know she's glad to see me up. When she leaves, I'm tired again and try to fall asleep, if that's what you can call it.
It's like my dreams were trying to break my new-found will to live. I replay so many deaths that night. Their screams surround me, intensifying he fact that I can't save them. Before I wake up, the last images I see are Gale, being taken away by the capitol peace keepers. I search for Peeta. I see Prim. The explosion of the bombs jar me awake.
What happened to Gale? To Peeta? As soon as I was able, I was sent to execute Snow. No one had told me anything, and revenge was too strong in my heart to remember to ask. Someone had to pay for Prim's death, and Snow's words "I'm afraid we have both been played for a food" were heavy on my mind. That's why Coin had to die too.
I don't wait for Greasy Sae and breakfast before I run out of the house and burst through Haymitch's front door. It takes me several minutes to wake him, and several more minutes to get him into a state where he will talk to me. I ask him about Gale. He informs me that Gale broke free of the Peacekeepers when the bombs went off. He was on the front line when they took The Capitol completely. He sustained a few minor injuries, nothing serious, and decided to stay in 2, where he had accepted a job with Beetee. "So he's not coming back either? I ask.
"Did you really think he would?" is his all too simple reply. No. I know why he didn't come back. His bombs killed helped kill Prim. It wasn't his fault directly, he didn't know that would happen when he was designing them. But he knows me. He knows I would never be able to look into his eyes without a flash of hatred, of question, emitting from my eyes. He knows we can never be together in the way he had dreamt of, our relationship would probably never return to the way it was.
"Peeta?" I ask, my voice is barely above a whisper, scared to hear the answer. I knew how unstable he was. Without his handcuffs and with a nightlock pill. How could I have left him like that? Haymitch says nothing, and I search his face. How much time has passed? 6 seconds? 2 minutes? 10 minutes? It seems like an eternity before he finally speaks. "Why don't you ask him yourself?" What does that mean? I look around and find Peeta standing at the door. "Hey Katniss."
I look at the boy standing before me. His skin is pink like mine. I can't imagine how hard it must be for him now. To go from the boy before our first Hunger Games together, who's innocence all but killed him, to the boy that stood before me now. He lost a leg, his mind, his beautiful body ruined by fire and torture. All for what? Me? Yes. I want to run into his arms right then. To comfort him. To comfort me. But what do I do? Stand there, my mouth frozen and my feet glued to the floor. "Well, it's good to see you out of the hospital. Glad you're home" Peeta says before he walks back out the door.