I saw it before I felt it.
I could see the uniforms of the Peacekeepers as they pushed their way through the crowds. I remember raising my rifle, wrapping my finger around the trigger, and pulling it. I had trusted myself then-I had gone through training on this. I had dragged myself out of bed morning after morning with broken ribs for this: I had gone through the Block for this. I came here to kill President Snow, to get revenge for Peeta, to get revenge for District 12, to protect Prim and my mother and Gale, to make sure that President Snow could never touch Peeta again.
That was my mission, and I was going to carry it out, no matter what the cost. Even if it was going to be my last tune, the Mockingjay would sing this song.
There was a reason I had been put on a sharpshooter squad, and not just because I was part of what Plutarch had-perhaps too cheerfully-named the 'Star Squad', the faces that were going to go on television all over Panem for this. The other reason-the more logical reason-I was on the sharpshooter squad was because I was good with guns and bows. Maybe a bit more so with bows than with guns, but I was still a pretty good shot with my rifle.
I had hit several Peacekeepers where their armored uniform was weak, and was rewarded with rather gory spurts of blood, the ones that I had injured hitting the ground with a sickening thud!. I was just beginning to get a bit cocky, thinking that this was going to be a piece of cake, when the unthinkable happened.
I felt the impact of a bullet going through skin just beneath my heart. You'd think my body would be used to all the impact on my ribs, but apparently it wasn't-I could feel a rib or two snap.
I tasted something metallic in my mouth-blood, maybe?-and suddenly everything seemed to get sluggishly slow. My head suddenly made contact with something hard-the ground, perhaps?-and I felt a sharp pain shoot through it. My fingers loosened on my gun, and I laid there on the ground, breathing heavily with pain shooting from my ribs and my temple. Gravel seemed to have wormed its way through the first layer or two of my skin in places, but for some reason, all the pain seemed to be going numb. It felt dulled, as if I was in the hospital, and I hadn't had any morphling, obviously-which made my chest constrict with fear, and even my fear was dull. Why was it so numb if I had had no morphling?
I distantly heard Peeta screaming my name. I rolled my head over to the left just a little bit so I could see Peeta. His eyes were wide, he was screaming, tears were rolling down his face, he was reaching out to me, but the the Peacekeepers swarmed around me and blocked my vision of him and his vision of me... Wasn't he hijacked, though? Hadn't he been poisoned with trackerjacker venom, made to believe that I was a mutt, that I was something to be feared and killed?
Could it be that all this time, the real Peeta had been hiding away inside of him, that the person he had insisted to love so truly getting wounded-possibly to a fatal extent-had brought out his kind side again?
Could it be that somewhere, deep down inside, he had still loved me?
Tears began rolling down my face. Why was life so cruel? When the true Peeta was finally there, finally within my reach, why did something like this have to happen?
I hear his voice ringing through my ears again, and I can just picture him trying to struggle his way through the tight ring of Peacekeepers watching on, making sure I was really going to die. But in his voice this time, I can hear clearly the tears and the hopelessness.
Don't cry, Peeta, I want to call out to him. Don't cry... I'm going to be all right, I'm not going to go anywhere! But my voice won't work, and I know it's not the truth this time. The Mockingjay will never be able to sing again by the end of today.
I closed my eyes and felt all the pain beginning to seep away. I could hear all the voices now, of all of the ones I loved, and I was beginning to miss them already, but I knew that no matter what they said or what they did I would never be able to come back to them.
"Don't go, Katniss!" Gale's voice cries out from my subconscious.
"No, no, no, Katniss! Not you, Katniss!" Prim's innocent little voice wails. "Come back, please. I need my big sister. I need you. We need you..."
"Come back, Katniss! Come home! We need you, Katniss! It's not your time yet, you're too young-don't go!" That one was my mother's voice.
I hear one last voice, one voice that resonates against them all, one that will forever stay with me, even in death, until the person who the voice belongs to can join me.
"KATNISS!" Peeta's high-pitched voice calls to me. "NO, KATNISS! NOT YOU!"
I want to tell them that I love them, that they'll join me eventually, that where I'm going to be going I can't feel the pain that the president puts me through, that I won't have nightmares that I'm back in the Games anymore-but I couldn't find my voice to answer them. Where had my voice gone?
I opened my eyes again, but this time all I could see was blackness-the Peacekeepers were all gone, and all had gone silent. I began to get scared, wondering why it was all dark. I hadn't exactly been an angel in my life, so I could see me going down instead of up, but I wasn't... well, I wasn't anywhere. Wasn't I supposed to go somewhere now?
But then there's a little bit of light-not much, just a soft little glow. And then I realized that the light was resonating from around a small little graceful figure, a figure that I hadn't seen in so long...
Rue's sweet, graceful fingertips caress my face. She smiles gently at me, and then holds down her hand for me to take. I was about to tell her that I wouldn't be able to move my arm without pain, I was about to tell her about my injury, about my ribs, but then I realized that my body was as good as new. I reached up and took her hand, and she helped me to my feet, still smiling.
"Come on, Katniss," her gentle voice says softly. "It's time to come to your true home."
I smile back. "Okay."
That was when District 13 lost their Mockingjay.
The Mockingjay's final song was cut short, but she died singing.