Correspondence between the Mellarks and the Culbersons
From Gloss Culberson to Peeta and Katniss Mellark prior to the Third Quarter Quell of the 75th Hunger Games
To Whom It May Concern:
If you have received this letter, I am dead. You are alive. At the very least, one of you is. Maybe it doesn't matter a damn, but whatever.
I hold no grudge against you two for the deaths of those I mentored last year. No doubt Haymitch has told you this, but no one truly leaves these games alive. Part of your humanity gets stripped away. Maybe as a Career it's easier because we're trained to do this, to kill without mercy and to die with a clear conscience. I don't know.
But I cannot choose between sparing the life of my sister and sparing that of an unborn child.
This is what I will do, what I will say. My sister comes first. What the Capitol has probably never told you is that we reached a deal, Snow and us. Instead of pimping out my own sister, I would marry her. We have-had, until Marvel went in-six children. Now we have five. And may I be damned to the deepest pit of hell if these kids grow up wondering why Mom and Dad had to die. Maybe I've already condemned myself. After all, who in their right mind says that they'll kill two Victors with a baby on the way?
God bless Panem. God damn Coriolanus Snow.
Excerpt and holographic recording from District One on the first Victory Day Parade
"I first want to say that I'm sorry." The young woman standing next to her husband looked down as he continued to speak. "I didn't know the extent to which the Capitol controlled the Districts. I didn't know that he forced your tributes to go from brother and sister to husband and wife. To the Culberson family, Katniss and I are truly sorry for killing your mom and dad."
The young woman looked over to the man, who had difficulty choking out the words, before quickly staring, vacant-eyed, into the crowd that had gathered. So these two were the Lethal Lovers, as they had been called while under the yoke of the Capitol. Perhaps Baker Boy might have become the next Caesar Flickerman. The kid was good at playing the heartstrings, but the girl? Too damaged. The Girl on Fire was burned. The irony.
Someone handed her the microphone, but she was slow to react until he nudged her. A great pity, a pretty girl so traumatized mentally and physically that she barely spoke, some in the audience thought. Less charitable viewers simply thought, the bitch had never been that good at prepared lines.
"I don't know what to say. I'm not sure that I can say anything." Her voice was still raspy, having never really recovered from nearly being choked to death and singed in countless IED blasts. "I want to say that we'll recover. Twelve is coming back, so's this place. So are the other districts and even the Capitol. I guess we will, you know, physically get back to where we were before. Peeta's mental breakdowns will stop, my, uh, burns will heal, but there are the memories of those we lost. And I don't know if that's something that can be healed or should be healed."
The young couple turned and limped off the stage.