I don't own the characters, places, items or overall story idea - I just add a different version of this story.
1
I stare down at my shoes, watching as a fine layer of ash settles on the worn leather. This is where my house once stood. Over here was the door, and over there was where the bed I shared with my sister Prim, had been. 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 few days 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 any refugees who came back could be easily caught and carried away.
But no one is returning to this wasteland. I, myself am only here 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 the damage for myself.
Plutarch Heavensbee, the former Head Gamemaker who had organized the rebels in the Capitol, had sided with me saying, "Let her go. Better that she goes with our protection, rather than her sneaking out on her own. Maybe a little tour of Twelve is just what she needs to convince her we're on the same side." I was grateful don't get me wrong. But I was still a little ashamed having previously thought him a murderer.
The same side. My memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false. What series of event's led me to be standing in the blackened ruins of my city? This gives me a headache because the effects of a concussion Johanna Mason gave me haven't completely subsided, and my thoughts still have a tendency of jumping out of place.
I use a technique one of the doctors of District 13 suggested. I start with the simplest things I know to be true and work toward the more complicated. The words begin to echo 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. Peeta Mellark is my unofficial husband. We are thought to be dead by the whole of Panem. Most likely it is best they think we're dead if we want to maintain our current position.
"Katniss, should I send Peeta your way?" My mentor and friend Haymitch's voice reaches me through the headset the rebels forced me to wear. He's up in a hovercraft, watching me carefully like he did during the Hunger Games. I must look on the verge of some kind of breakdown. This won't do. Not when they're finally let me out of that underground city.
I straighten up and wave his offer away. "No, I'm fine." To convince him, I begin to move away from my old house and in toward the town. Peeta had asked to be dropped off in Twelve with me, but he didn't follow me after landing. Knowing I didn't wan't any company. He understands I wanted some time alone. Some walks you have to take alone.
The Summer's been hot and dry all week. There's been next to no rain to disturb the piles of ash left by the fires. They shift there and there, in reaction to my footsteps. No breeze to scatter it. I keep my eyes on where the road into town used to be. Every now and then i'd come across bones and skulls from the citizens who tried to flee.
I stick to the road out of habit, but it's not necessary as theres nothing to block my path in any direction. I pass pile after pile of bones. Some were burned entirely. Others, still had flesh in various states of decomposition, carrion for scavengers, blanketed by flies. I try not to think of it, but can't help but think i'm the reason you died.
Because it is. It was my arrow, aimed at the chink in the force field surrounding the arena, that brought on this massacre. That sent the whole country of Panem into chaos.
In my head I hear President Snow's words, spoken the morning I was to begin the Victory Tour. "Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, you have provided a spark that, left unattended, my grow to an inferno that destroys Panem." It turns out he wasn't exaggerating.
Burning. Still burning, I think numbly. The fires at the coal mines throwing black smoke into the distance. There's no one left to care, though. More than ninety percent of the district's population is dead. The remaining eight hundred or so are refugees in District 13. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the same thing as being homeless forever.
I know I should be grateful for the way we have been welcomed. Sick, wounded, starving, and empty-handed. But I can't help but feel like theres more than they're telling. But without them, I would not have been part of a larger plot to overthrow the capitol or had the strength to do it.
The citizens of District 12 had no organized resistance movement of their own. No say in any of this. They only had the misfortune to have me. Some think it's good luck, though, to be free of the Capitol's reach. To have escaped the mistreatment of the peacekeepers and their oppression, the dangerous mines, the food shortages, and hunger. To have a new home at all is seen as a wonder since, up until a short time ago , we hadn't even known that District 13 still existed.
The credit for the survivor's escape all goes to my best friend Gale, although he'd loath to accept any award for it. As soon as the Quarter Quell was over, or as soon as I had been lifted from the arena, the electricity in District 12 was cut, the televisions went black, and the Seam became so silent, people could hear each-others breathing. No one did anything to protest or celebrate what had happened in the arena. Yet within fifteen minuets, the sky was filled with hoverplanes and the bombs were falling down on them.
It was Gale who thought of the Meadow, one of the few places not filled with old wooden homes embedded with coal dust. He herded those he could in it's direction, including my friend Madge, my mother and Prim. He formed the team that pulled down the fence, now just a harmless chain-link barrier, with the electricity off, and led the people into the woods. He took them to the only place he could think of, the lake my father had shown me as a child. And it was from there they watched the distant flames eat up everything they know in the world.
By morning the hoverplanes were long gone, the fires dying, the final stragglers rounded up. My mother and Prim had set up a medical area for the injured and were attempting to treat them with whatever they could get from the woods. Gale had two sets of bows and arrows, one hunting knife, one fishing net, and over eight hundred scared people to feed. With the help of those who were able-bodied, they managed for three days. And that's when the hovercrafts unexpectedly arrived to evacuate them to District 13, where there was more than enough clean, white living compartments, plenty of clothing, and three meals a day. The small compartments had the disadvantage of being underground, the clothes were all the same shades of boring white and gray, and the food was bland to say the least, but for the refugees of 12, these were minor considerations. They were safe. They were being cared for. They were alive and strangely welcomed.
The enthusiasm was interpreted as kindness. But a man named Dalton, a District 10 refugee who'd made it to 13 on foot a few years ago, leaked the real motive to me. "They need you. Me. They need all of us. Awhile back. there was some sort of pox epidemic that killed a bunch of them and left a lot more infertile. New breeding stock. That's how they see us." Back in 10, he'd worked on one of the beef ranches, maintaining the genetic diversity of the herd with the implantation of long-frozen cow embryos. He's probably right about 13, because there don't seem to be nearly enough kids around. But so what? We're not being kept in pens, we're being trained for work, the children are being educated. Those over fourteen have been given entry-level ranks in the military and are addressed respectfully as "Soldiers." Every single refugee was granted automatic citizenship by the authorities of 13.
Still, I can't help but feel uneasy about them. The floor under my feet hardens, and under the ashes, I feel the paving stones of the square. Around the perimeter is a shallow border where the shops once stood. A heap of blackened rubble has replaced the Justice Building. I walk to the site of the bakery where Peeta's family baked the bread. Nothing much left but the melted lump of the oven. Peeta's parents, his two older brothers, none of them made it to 13. I begin to walk away and catch his eyes on me from my left. Peeta. His eyes are red, so he must have been crying. I don't say anything as he walks my way. I hold out my arms as he walks into them.
Usually it would be me walking into his arms as he comforted me. The role reversal seamed to have awakened a new feeling in me. Knowing I can do something even if it's just this to keep him together. After a moment he takes my hand and we walk away from the bakery. Walking. We reach the one place the fire didn't destroy. I pass the wreckage of the mayor's house, where my friend Madge lived. She had made it out of the inferno, but her family was not so lucky.
The grass has been scorched and the gray snow fell here as well but the twelve houses of the Victor's Village are unscathed. I let go of Peeta's hand and go into the house I lived in for the past year, I leave the door open knowing Peeta would worry, and lean against the kitchen table. The place seemed untouched. Clean. Why did I come back here? How could this visit help me answer the questions I can't escape?
"What am I going to do?" I whisper to the walls. Because I really don't know.
People kept on talking to me, talking, talking, talking. Plutarch Heavensbee. His assistant, Fulvia Cardew. A mishmash of district leaders. Military officials. But not Alma Coin, the president of 13, who just watches. She's fifty or so, with gray hair that falls down to her shoulders. Her eyes are gray, but not like mine. they're very pale, as if all the color was sucked out of them.
To them i'm the symbol of the revolution. The Mockingjay. I just watch them talk or I leave the room because my head starts to ache. Sometimes if I don't get aboveground I feel I might start screaming. I don't bother to say anything. I simply get up and walk out.
Once as I was about to enter the room I heard Coin say, "We don't need her we have the boy" Meaning Peeta. I couldn't agree more. He would be an excellent motivational speaker.
But they had already rescued me, Beetee, an old inventor from 3, who I rarely see because he was pulled into weapons development the minute he could sit upright. Literally, they wheeled his hospital bed into a top secret project. He's very smart and very willing to help the cause. Then there's Finnick Odair, the sexiest man in all of Panem, or so every girl I run into says so. Originally from District 4. He kept Peeta alive in the arena when I couldn't. They wanted to make Finnick into a rebel leader, but have trouble keeping him awake longer than five minutes. He's not able to concentrate on anything other than Annie, the mad girl from his District who's the only person he loves, and she's being held by the Capitol.
I move around downstairs, reluctant to make any sound. I pick up a few things, a photo of my parents on their wedding day, a blue hair ribbon for Prim, the family book of medicinal and edible plants.
What am I doing?
Is there any point in sneaking around with a bunch of armed hovercrafts protecting the area. I go to the closet and dig out my game bag and put the photo and book inside. I start for the door when I remember something els I want. I sling the strap of the bag over my shoulder and head up the steps to my bedroom. Inside the closet hangs my father's hunting jacket. Before the Quell, I brought it here from the old house. Thank goodness, or it'd be ash now.
The soft leather feels soothing and for a moment I'm in a different time where my father sang to the birds as I played with the flowers of the meadow. Then Haymitch calls in telling us it's time to go. I stuff the jacket and think better of this chance and stuff as much of the clothes Cinna had left me inside my bag as possible, once thought too flashy now my only escape from the dull grey. After clearing out my room of petty clothing i start heading down the steps. I take one last look, Tidy. Everything in it's place.
I step outside and close the door behind me. Peeta meets me outside holding a haul of his own. Clothes, photos, paints, brushes and canvases. "Well, why don't you just take the whole house" I joke. He lets out a small laugh "and what about yourself? I guess every girl would want to save her pretty clothes." he says mockingly. I glare at him "Cinna made me these" I practically shout. His smile fades and he looks at me. "Katniss, you know I didn't mean it like that" he says soothingly. He reaches out to me with his free hand. I sigh. "I know" I say taking his hand.
A hovercraft lands ahead of us and between me, Peeta, and Haymitch we quickly load up all of Peeta's belongings. I take one last look back at the Victor's Village and then the hanger door closes and it's gone.