Authors Note:

Hi there! Im Mina and this is my first delve into The Hunger Games and its actually the first time I post a story! :) I really truly love the characters and story that Suzanne Collins has brought us - this is really an homage to her. This is basically the my own version of the Mockingjay Epilogue. I wish that it originally could've been longer and so I'm experimenting a little with how things progressed. As always no copyright infringement intended. Taking all beta applications. Please enjoy and leave reviews - I'm very interested to hear your opinions! xo Mina

My Voice

I, am Katniss Everdeen, and I am broken. I have no one to live for, not even myself. After returning home from the Capitol I was deemed mentally incapacitated. The first time I walked inside my home in the victor's village after the aftermath I nearly had a syncopal episode.

I walked in feeling numb and physically exhausted to my core, wondering how I even got here and yet vaguely remembering the ride home. But my journey goes much further than than that.

Haymitch lingers in the doorway as I assess the furniture arrangement or perhaps the dust I see floating carelessly through the air.

"Well sweetheart here we are, don't do anything stupid will you?", he says with a tone of playfulness in his voice – but we both know I'm beyond it. I nod my head in acquiescence. Haymitch sighs sadly and leaves, leaving an empty silence in his wake.

I haven't heard my own voice in so long; I idly wonder what it sounds like now. Perhaps I've become like an avox, cursed to be mute due to all the trauma I've suffered. Who knows? I stay in my living room for a while, walking around inspecting the lamps and windows feeling very much like an outsider, a stranger. And I guess that's what I've become now, a stranger to myself and to those around me. I can't even speak aloud; how pathetic.

Time ceases to matter as hours turn into days which turn into months as I am given a second chance in life to rejoin society so to speak. Yet there are still those who care about me. Greasy Sae comes in almost every day to cook me something and has to guide me through virtually everything.

I once didn't shower for two weeks straight and did nothing but stare at my food. That's when Sae had enough. "Katniss? Katniss! What is wrong with you child, what happened to that strong willed girl I once knew?", she asks accusingly and yet with as much tact as anyone could offer in this circumstance. I look up from my stew and face her gentle eyes.

I have no answer for her and even if I could speak, what would I even reply? I hold her gaze for a minute or perhaps ten and continue to stare at my stew once again. This seems to cause a reaction in her because the next thing I know she has me slung over her shoulder and I'm naked in my bath tub while she scrubs my back and cleans my hair. After she's finished bathing me she dries me and puts fresh clothes on me while I lift limbs methodically to assist her.

Something in her gesture touches me and after that incident I make an effort to bathe as often as I remember to.

Haymitch comes around once in a while too. He talks, I listen. Sometimes he tells me stories of his childhood, of simpler times. Other times we sit in silence in the living room, Haymitch rocking slowly in my rocking chair while I lay down on the couch counting dust particles or random objects.

In the most insane way his quiet company brings me something I can't quite put my finger on. Comfort perhaps? Or maybe an old sense of camaraderie? He never pushes the no talking issue but I know it hurts him to see me like this. When he goes he gives me a kiss on the forehead and leaves as silent as the wind.

Since returning home, I haven't once slept in my old bedroom, it just didn't feel right. As if I was intruding into someone's personal space, their privacy on display for me. So the living room has made for a makeshift room and I don't quite mind nor care.

Eventually the snow outside melts and spring begins to show and with it comes the indescribable feeling that a change is on the horizon. On a Sunday while Greasy Sae and Haymitch are over chatting about the weather and the stew she's making, something in me clicks.

"I swear Sae I haven't seen the sun so bright like this in such a long – "

"I want to plant dandelions tomorrow," I blurt out. My voice sounds familiar but different.

Haymitch's mouth hangs open. Greasy Sae chuckles. "I say that's a great idea girl – and how about some game? Stew would taste much better with some of that."

I nod. Duly noted.

The next day I wake up early, shower all by myself and get ready to go out hunting. It feels odd, the routine that is, I've done it a million times before and yet it almost feels like I'm remembering somebody else's thoughts, someone else's memories.

I adjust my boots and look in the mirror. Who is that girl staring back at me? No longer the girl on fire, I'm the girl who was engulfed by the flames and yet lives somehow to tell the tale. My once pretty face is marred by the horrors that I've seen and endured. My once smooth body riddled with scars from the crackling embers. And yet I was fire once. Fully emblazoned in all its glory.

I leave the house with a small sack Greasy Sae left me for food and head out on my adventure. Everything feels incredibly new. I am hypersensitive to every sound and image that I see in the forest in front of me. How come I never noticed the beauty of a sycamore tree, standing tall in all its glory – showing me her longevity as her roots cradle the earth silently?

There's a dormant part of me that feels like that lost and afraid eleven year old that had to venture out into the woods a step at a time, going farther on every attempt. Knowing there were two mouths to feed at home, relying on her. And then I feel that once dominant side of me, the side that wasn't afraid to scale eighty foot trees or hunt game twice my size.

Every step I take into the woods alights that once leading side of me and I smile to myself as I remember her; me. I reach the part of the woods where I would always keep my extra stash of bow and arrows and feel my hands come to life as I feel he strength of the bow in my hand. I close my eyed and allow myself to just feel this moment. "Beautiful", I say to myself,

Something out in the distance catches my eye, a dandelion. And just like before – I know that I'll be okay.

I feel him much sooner than I see him, a shift in the air and I know deep in my core that he's near. Peeta. I see him as I return from my daily hunt, he's speaking to Haymitch by his house. I nod as I pass them by. I'm not ready, he knows this. And yet as I walk by him I see the face of the baker's son. The boy I owed my life to a hundred times over.

As I walk in the door, Greasy Sae is there ready to take the game. She smiles at me, I smile in return. I go upstairs to bathe and as I strip my clothes off I feel it. I feel my heart beat in rhythm once more and as the hot water slowly creeps up over my body I begin to sob. I cry for me, I cry for him. I cry for my father and my mother. But most of all I cry for Prim, sweet little Prim who would cry at the sight of seeing me cry without even knowing why and this in turn brings another round of hysteria on.

I lean my head back in the tub and let all of the memories attack me. The good ones like seeing Prim come home from school with her blond hair flouncing in the wind or Peeta smiling lovingly at me. And I let the bad memories engulf me too. Thoughts of Finnick and the screeching sounds his flesh made as it was torn open or the wild rage in Peeta's eyes the first time he saw me after his captivity. How I cried myself to sleep that night feeling shocked and nevermore so alone. This is the first time I've allowed myself to truly purge my feelings since my return eight months ago. And so when the tears and sobs slowly cease, my once hot water has run cold and my heart feels infinitesimally lighter and it's enough for me, for now anyway

I see Peeta around the Victor's Village more and more and our interaction has grown somewhat awkward and yet light. We never directly speak to one another but we acknowledge one another's presence.

One day in the summer I am working on my dandelion garden when I hear him approaching. I know it's him because of his walk and prosthetic. His bad leg lingers a little longer than it should giving him a distinct rhythm. I turn around slowly and almost can't quite comprehend what he's doing. I feel myself growing angry and flustered, but before I can get a word out he quietly says, "I picked them – for her. I thought you might like to plant them along with your dandelion garden…"

I bite my lip and nod. "Thank you", I mouth. I don't trust my voice. He sets the wheelbarrow down and walks away.

End of chappy 1...what do we think? Please let me know in the reviews! xo Mina