PROLOGUE

~the last place we left off~

It only took one word; one word sent the entire fate of Panem spiraling down a hole towards an abyss that led to nowhere. She had said, "Why?" She had questioned the president. Questioning the president is risky enough, even when she was not directly within his clutches, but she was right underneath of him, daring him to do something about her rebellious behavior. The glint in her eyes, that single spark that could set a fire like a match on a line of gasoline, it was an honor for the Mockingjay to die in such a way.

She was right when she told the president that the Capitol was fragile enough to be taken down by a handful of berries.

Capitol newspapers, district news-boards, televisions, anything to get the word out: they were all swarmed with the news of Katniss Everdeen's death. The Capitol began to see Snow's true colors: a murdering, heartless tyrant. Credit given to Snow, he convinced like it was easy as buttering toast. The Capitol people are still within his clutches, his power was never taken away, he was never overthrown, all because he convinced the people.

Katniss, on the other hand, was not so lucky.

He took the arrow she aimed at him, deadly and aimed directly at his right eye. He walked right up to her bow and ripped the arrow out of the shaft. He questioned her choices. She questioned his sanity. He refused to admit to anything negative. She refused to surrender. He got fed up with her rebellious streak. She got an arrow in her neck.

Snow convinced the Capitol citizens that he had killed Katniss "for a greater good." He convinced the Capitol citizens that Katniss was the enemy, said she would have brought down the entire Capitol and given the districts free-reign. He had the citizens convinced that "free-reign," means complete and utter chaos.

The districts were immediately placed under even tighter supervision, especially the rebel districts: Four, Seven, and Twelve. The rebel victors were to remain under the president's supervision at the Presidential Mansion until the time came to train tributes for the Annual Hunger Games. The victors still remain under the control of the president, but things had not gone as according to President Snow's plans nor commands.

Peeta Mellark became the solo mentor for the District 12 tributes. First year mentoring, he had no partner. All the other surviving rebel victors, Finnick, Haymitch, and Johanna, helped Peeta as much as they could, but no one had the heart to try anymore. Without Katniss, their moods were no longer happy. The hijacking President Snow had previously inflicted upon Peeta took its toll by turning the once caring and loving boy into an emotionless shell of what he used to be before Katniss left him.

Haymitch Abernathy was moved from the District 12 mentor team to the District 11 mentor team to make up for the lack of eligible victors. However, he thought he had a win with Katniss and Peeta, his star-crossed lovers, and, although he would never admit it out loud, he cared for the two of them like they were his family. Losing Katniss was the final straw. He gave up on trying to lessen his drinking and dove head-first into it again. He was of no state to mentor anyone into victory ever again. He was barely even alive.

Johanna Mason was, perhaps, the most stable of the remaining rebel victors. She had all of her emotions, although they were not always in check. She was more prone to tears and angry outbursts, and no one could blame her. She could form coherent thoughts, though they were usually angry and murderous towards President Snow for how terribly he ripped apart her family. Her best friends were either dead or acted so much like the dead that he could be.

Finnick Odair was the most broken of all of the remaining rebel victors. So completely destroyed, he had no hope of revival. His heart so completely shattered, there was no glue strong enough to piece him back together, to whom he used to be. The only thing that held him together was his Annie, and her death was the only this strong enough to break him.

After Katniss was killed, President Snow was terrified of the rebels who he could not control: the ones in District 13. He sent one hovercraft carrying one bomb to the district. The single, very carefully placed bomb set off all of District 13's nuclear storage. The district was searched everywhere for anything and everything valuable for either side of the Uprising.

There were no survivors.

When word arrived to the Capitol, the four remaining rebel victors, Peeta, Haymitch, Johanna, and Finnick, were standing in Snow's office. A guard walked in, bringing the news of District 13. President Snow showed nothing but poorly hidden glee, while Peeta, Haymitch, and Johanna showed shock, unbelief of what had happened. And Finnick went off the deep end.

He grabbed a pen off the president's desk, tried to kill himself. The others knew what he was trying to do. They stopped him. Finnick hasn't spoken since that day. President Snow realized that Finnick wasn't ready to return to his duties from before the failed Uprising. He sent the others into Finnick's previous position; he sent Finnick to "wait" in a cell, the same cell his Annie was in before she was rescued. But there was no rescue for Finnick. President Snow believed that a month or two for Finnick to grieve would be enough before he could return to his duties with his fellow victors.

However, two years in the cell did nothing but kill Finnick very slowly. He still didn't speak. When he was let out to mentor tributes, Finnick would just lie on the couch, crying his heart out for the loss of his love and his unborn child. After the 76th Games, just four months after the news of District 13, Finnick's body was no longer functional.

Finnick thought that, if he were still alive when Annie was dead, there would be an empty void in his heart, that he would be absolutely nothing. But instead, he felt almost completely whole. Almost.

When the 77th Games came around, passing in a blur of tears and heartbreak, Johanna Mason made her escape while her train to District 7 stopped for fuel in District 3. She was aboard when it stopped, and when it arrived in District 7, carrying the newest victor, she was still alive, but she was not alive. Her escape was much the same as Haymitch Abernathy's the previous year. The two of them both died, Johanna of a train malfunction, Haymitch of alcohol. No one knows where they were hiding, and no one could doubt their stories because they were put together and executed so well. However, President Snow and Finnick were the only ones to know the truth.

They never died.

President Snow couldn't just put out wanted posters for it would cause a riot or, better for the rebels, another Uprising. He couldn't draw attention to the fact that people could escape his clutches. It would refill the hope of people in the districts to know that two more victors escaped. It was better for the citizens of Panem to think that they had died at the hands of the Capitol, like all the other victors did.

After Johanna managed to escape, even stricter rules were implemented towards the only two remaining rebel victors. Peeta was no longer allowed to return home under any circumstances, not that he ever did anyways. His emotions and his hijacking never mixed well with the memories of his old home. Finnick, who was slowly dying of a broken heart and sea deprivation, was not allowed to return home either. He received daily questionings from President Snow himself about when he might have been ready to "revisit" the Capitol's paying population. Finnick did nothing but sit and mourn the loss of his wife and their unborn child. It was the same every single day.

When Finnick reached the point by the 78th Hunger Games that he could no longer move himself at all, President Snow relented and sent him back to District 4 for one week after the Games. Finnick spent his entire week in the ocean, his mother coming by three times a day to make sure that he ate and drank. When the train came back for him, Finnick could move himself, although he was still wrapped inside of a vortex of darkness and despair. President Snow relented and agreed to let Finnick return home for one week each year.

The victor of the 78th Hunger Games was the younger brother of Finnick's best friend as a child. At 18, he was as much of a rebel as Finnick once was. During his Victory Tour, however, he was kidnapped. When the peacekeepers found the boy, on his way back to the ocean in District 4, they brought him to the Capitol. They attempted to draw the kidnappers out of hiding by murdering the victor publicly, but to no avail. The boy died, and President Snow was no closer to finding out who kept helping rebels escape.

With only two remaining rebel victors, one slowly succumbing to death by broken heart, the other losing his humanity, and three non-rebel victors, Enobaria and the naïve victors of Districts 7 and 2, by the time the 79th Hunger Games draws near, it seems as though the Capitol has won, yet again.

But on the newly smoldering remains of District 13, a petite figure stood with an army ready to strike and an almost foolproof plan at her fingertips. The figure looked up, waiting for the signal from her head captain to put her plan into action.

When she saw the unmistakable black and white wings of a mockingjay fly over her head and drop the bottle in front of her feet, she smiled to herself. What was in that bottle was the first step to the final phase of her plan to rescue her family and end the reign of Coriolanus Snow.

Picking up the bottle, she pulled the note out of it. This is where our new hope begins, she thought to herself. Committing the note to memory (It really wasn't long at all.), she pulled a small lighter out of her small back bag and set the note on fire. "If we burn, you burn with us," she said loudly, but there was no one around to hear her. She chuckled quietly to herself. It had become quite a joke back at boot camp.

Turning around, she walked west towards her new destination, towards District 7. She needed to meet with some old friends in order to put her new Revolution into action.

"This is the kind of crazy we need in this world," she said to herself once again, "the kind willing to do anything necessary."

She would never turn her back on her family, but she was ready to start something so dangerous that there was no telling who would survive. But she wasn't worried. She knew they wouldn't care. She didn't either. They were going to possibly kill themselves for the future of Panem, and that was okay by them.

"Whoever said that there was something wrong with being crazy is crazy."

DISCLAIMER: All plots prior to this story's belong to Suzanne Collins and whoever else is associated with the trilogy. All I did was throw a twist onto the end of Mockingjay. The words written here do happen to be from my brain. Props to whomever can guess the song from which the lyrics at the top come from. Those aren't mine either.