"You're trial's over." Haymitch says, crossing the room. "Come on. We're going home."
She doesn't understand, because she doesn't have a home anymore. But because she doesn't have any fight left in her, she lets the strangers feed, wash, and clothe her. One of them picks her up, and he carries her down to a room with two chairs in it.
"Wait here," the stranger says, setting her into one of the chairs. He leaves. Katniss wonders why they leave her in a room, unguarded, when she is the lunatic who killed Coin. She doesn't question it though. She's too exhausted.
She sees people entering the room, and exiting through another door, but she doesn't pay attention, instead staring at her scarred, pink and yellow hands that are folded neatly in her lap. Another person comes into the room and passes her, but then stops abruptly. Katniss glances up. It's Gale.
Prim, she thinks immediately.
He stares at her for a moment, then clears his throat and nods at her. He starts to move toward the other door, the one that everyone's gone into but hasn't come out of yet.
"Is there a meeting or something in there?" She asks. Her voice is scratchy and too quiet from not using it. Gale hears though, and he pauses, his hand on the doorknob. "No," he says. He hesitates, then, "Going back to Twelve, right?"
"If that's what Haymitch meant by home." Katniss returns her gaze to her hands. "I guess I'll see you there."
There's a long silence, and Katniss expects him to leave, but he doesn't. She glances up again, and he's staring at her. "I'm not going back to Twelve," he says.
Now she's the one staring. She digs around in herself for an emotion, but she feels nothing but confusion. She assumed he would come back. "Why not?"
"There's nothing left for me there." Gale glances at the door. "I'm going to District Two. Paylor offered me a position there."
Katniss nods, then exhales. "Okay." She returns her gaze to her folded hands. They're crisscrossed with pink lines. Living proof of what the war did.
The war.
"May the odds be ever in your favor," she says, on impulse, and it sounds final. She can remember the day she was reaped, when the two of them were in the woods. They tossed berries to each other. She has nothing to toss to him this time.
Gale opens the door. "And yours as well," he says, then slips through the door.