Disclaimer: I do not profit from this fanwork.
A/N: This is the first chapter of what I hope will be an alternate third book in the Hunger Games trilogy. My warnings to those willing to embark upon this adventure are manifold: I am a dabbler only in writing and this may be the worst-put-together fanfiction ever; my updates may be long in coming; this is unbetaed; my writing tends to reflect my mood and my moods are varied; I struggle to differentiate the voices of my characters; this is the first long piece of fanfiction I have ever planned. I have planned it, though. I welcome reviews and constructive criticism. Thanks for reading!
Chapter 1
I lie curled in my bed, facing away from Haymitch. I'm awake, but he doesn't need to know that. If he knew I were awake and I knew he knew we would have to have a confrontation. Again. That I am here and Peeta is there. But I can't follow that line of thought without shaking and crying, so I push it away and concentrate on taking even breaths. As long as Haymitch doesn't know I am awake, I can take a little comfort from his presence. He at least knows what agony I am in and shares my burden.
He's been sitting with me every night since we came here and they carried me in, the skin of my temple swollen tight and blood still seeping from my arm. I don't think he sleeps. He never did sleep at night, in the dark, and I wonder how he copes here. We never actually see the sunlight, only the horrible buzzing overhead lights that cast a sickly blue glow on everyone's skin. I can't sleep at all now, either. At night thoughts of Peeta constantly assail me, and I cannot escape the horrible conviction that he is being hurt, beaten, starved, and tortured, right now, at this very instant. My breath comes in short gasps and makes me dizzy. When my body is so deprived of sleep that I can't help drifting off, I am woken by nightmares. I can't remember them and am filled with the dread of unknown horrors. So when the night nurse, practical but comfortless, comes in to do her first check, I obediently lie down and close my eyes. But I don't sleep. And soon Haymitch comes in and sits with me in one of the angular, thinly-cushioned chairs and doesn't sleep either.
Our routine is interrupted for the first time tonight. My breath hitches when I hear the door open and someone else comes in. I don't recognize his smell—I always know when Haymitch is here because I can smell his peculiar sour tang. I used to think it was the alcohol in his sweat, but evidently it is just natural to him.
Maybe he should bathe more.
This smell is not the antiseptic smell of the nurses and doctors, or the robust smell of the food tray (which doesn't come now, anyway), or the fresh smell of Prim, or the faint metallic odor that now clings to Gale whenever he visits. I am not familiar with it at all.
But I do know his voice.
"How is she," murmurs Plutarch, and I concentrate on keeping my breathing slow and calm so they don't realize I'm awake. Maybe someday when I'm feeling…better…I'll tell Plutarch exactly what I think of his little game, but right now I just want to lie here. And eavesdrop.
"Physically? All right," replies Haymitch. It's strange to hear him speak so clearly, his tongue glib with sobriety. "Mentally? Could be worse, I suppose. Somehow."
"Do you think she's going to cooperate?" asks Plutarch. I'd be angry at such a question, but his tone isn't overbearing or patronizing. I wonder what he's talking about.
"Her?" I can see the expression on Haymitch's face clearly in my mind as I listen to incredulity of his tone. "She'll cooperate about as well as a rabid badger. Can you see her capitulating to any of Coin's demands? Oh, I mean requests."
I know Coin is the current leader of Thirteen, but I only saw her briefly when I first woke in the hospital and my main impression of her was the unlikely uniformity of her colorless hair. But it's clear from the disgust in Haymitch's voice what he thinks of her, and for all his lies, I trust his judgment of people.
There is a moment of silence and my back prickles under the unseen stares of the two men. Tension hums in the room and I fight the urge to fidget.
"I do so enjoy an intimate chat with a good friend," Plutarch suddenly says in an affected Capitol voice. I am confused by the inanity of his statement.
When Haymitch answers, "Yes, I come here for the privacy Katniss's room gives me. Sometimes even my thoughts are dangerous around the others," I realize that Plutarch was wondering if it is safe to speak openly. But openly about what? I was under the impression that here in Thirteen we are among friends, people with goals common to ours: that it is safe.
Dropping his voice low enough that I quiet my breathing in order to hear properly, Plutarch asks, "What do you think of Coin, now that you've gotten to meet her?"
"She's efficient. And cold. Ruthless, maybe. You know more about her than I do, though. She became Thirteen's leader recently, didn't she? Four years ago?"
"Five," Plutarch corrects. "I first came into contact with Thirteen when Gould was President. He was, I felt, unusually far-sighted. He made contact with the far districts and found me and the others. I am not sure how he knew of us. My family has been long dead and knowledge of my previous life deeply buried. Even the team that chose us from the districts was disbanded, shall we say, years before his first message reached me."
This is very confusing. Plutarch is originally from the districts? Which one? And he became a Gamemaker? A rebellious one, but even so it's hard to believe anyone from the districts would willingly participate in promoting the Games. But Plutarch is clearly storytelling and I want to pay attention. I have learned the importance of gathering as much information as possible, especially when it's being delivered in whispers in your hospital room when you're asleep. Supposedly.
"Gould was building Thirteen's military into a force that could defend itself and others from the Capitol without necessarily resorting to nuclear threat. Shortly before the epidemic he told me that he believed Thirteen could liberate four to five of Panem's districts without major reprisal from the Capitol. He then hoped the remaining districts would overthrow the Capitol—despite its military power, it is appallingly unstable internally—and either join Thirteen or form their own country and ally with them."
"And he really thought the districts would trust him as opposed to the Capitol?" snorts Haymitch, but gently. After all, he is trusting Thirteen right now. I think.
"He thought they would look at it as 'any port in the storm.' His plan was to free what districts they could and arm them and eventually to put control over the nuclear armaments into a small group representing all the districts, so that they could not be used as a threat against any of the districts. I understand this was a hotly contested plan, though." Plutarch pauses. "I believe Coin was very vocally against it. She thought Gould was ridiculously idealistic."
"Maybe she has a point there. The districts are in bad shape," Haymitch yawns.
There is a short silence again, and I can practically hear the wheels turning in Haymitch's head.
"And how did Coin come into the Presidency, exactly," Haymitch finally asks.
"Gould died in the epidemic. The presidency should have gone to his second, but he was totally inefficient about running Thirteen and everyone who survived the plague would have starved to death if Coin hadn't stepped in and kept everything in order. When the worst of it was over the people demanded an election. Coin not only kept them alive but promised to accelerate Gould's plan and to expand it to free all the districts and overthrow the Capitol. She believed it could be done in ten years."
"And that was five years ago," Haymitch grunts.
"Five," agrees Plutarch.
"And now the districts have started actively rebelling on their own, and I don't suppose Coin and Thirteen are really ready to handle it," Haymitch.
Well, what are they doing dragging us out of the arena then? Everyone will take that as a clear indication that they're going involve themselves in the rebellion.
"There are disadvantages, certainly, and some advantages, too. Coin is going to take or make every advantage she can to win over the districts. But…she doesn't have the touch, Haymitch. She can make executive decisions but she can't make people like her."
"She should've stuck to her guns and gotten Peeta out," Haymitch. "Katniss can't make anyone like her, either."
"Just because you don't like her doesn't mean other people don't," chuckles Plutarch. "I find her charming, myself."
"You don't really know her," comes the dry response.
I'm really about to stop pretending to sleep just so I can tell Haymitch exactly what I think of him, the lying, scheming, two-faced wretch, when he continues gruffly, "I like her okay. She's just so…"
"Honest?" Plutarch suggests. "Forthright? Straightforward? Single-minded?"
"Young," Haymitch says. "Her whole experience has been caring for her family at the expense of everything else, herself included. She doesn't have any goal past that. It makes her short-sighted."
"Were you any different at that age?"
There is a long silence.
"Worse," replies Haymitch, and there is so much pain in his voice that I am afraid I am going to have to fake waking up so I can panic, but Plutarch distracts me.
"They are all so young," he says in a curiously tender voice. I hear him lift his heft out of the chair and move near me. Then he leaves.
Haymitch shifts in his chair and I breathe carefully, trying to go to sleep. But all I see behind my eyelids is Peeta walking away from me through a green forest.
The next morning I stand blinking in the hallway, wondering where to go. They have discharged me, finally, from the hospital and now I stand under the lights looking at the candy-striped floor. Someone told me to follow one of the lines to the living compartments, but I can't remember which one.
I head a light patter of feet and am suddenly knocked off balance by a flying Prim.
"Katniss! Sorry I'm late!"
I catch my balance, barely, and smile in response to Prim's burst of laughter.
"I just got out of class in time to make it here. Do you have anywhere you have to go? I'm headed back to our room and I can show you," Prim smiles up at me.
Prim came to see my every day while I was in the hospital not sleeping, and even in this short week I can see that coming to Thirteen has been transformative for her. She always had been a pretty child, with golden hair and delicately creamy skin. And now, even in the harsh artificial light her eyes glow and the fullness of her cheeks and lips speaks of health. Her hair is braided and coiled in a small bun and even the shapeless gray jumpsuit she wears does not detract from her coloring.
I look at her eager face and imagine Twelve, blackened and burnt by Snow's bombs. How can she smile?
"Stop frowning at me, Katniss," Prim chirps. "We need to get to our rooms. Time is precious, here. Show me your schedule."
My confusion must show, because she takes my hand and turns it, looking for something.
"Oh, you don't have one yet." Prim offers me her wrist and I see the purple ink, though my eyes won't quite focus on it. "You'll get one tomorrow, so you know what they need you to do during the day. And then it washes off by bedtime."
Is this what Plutarch meant when he asked if I would cooperate? I really don't think I will be able to follow a schedule when I'm too tired to focus my eyes to read it. And my head hurts.
Prim, though, is now walking me down the seemingly endless hall—it curves slightly—and chattering about her classes and the people she's met. I smile at her because it's impossible not to smile at Prim when she's enthusiastic, but most of the words wash over me. I may be out of the hospital, but I'm still shivering like a nervous animal and my most coherent thoughts are of Peeta.
"Katniss. Katniss!" I hear Prim say and look up to find that we have stopped walking and are standing in front of a door. Prim's happy expression is gone and I suddenly see what I didn't before: dark circles under her eyes, creases marking the corner of her young mouth, and restless fingers plucking at the buttons of her blouse. For some reason I feel a little better, a little less alone.
"Is this our room?" I ask, earning a smile for managing what must be a fairly normal tone of voice.
"This is it. It's a bit plain."
It is plain, after the strange luxury of our Victor's house, but we have our own bathroom with a shower and the floor lamps glow more golden than the cold, blue lights in the hall. No windows, though, three stories underground, and the walls are unadorned. I shiver.
"The walls," Prim gestures at them, "I keep meaning to find something to hang on them, but we're awfully busy. Mom's helping in the hospital and I'm taking some practical nursing classes as well as regular school. Maybe you could find something…." Prim falls silent as she takes in my expression. "You'll probably be really busy anyway. I don't suppose you'll have time. And speaking of time, I have to be at class in fifteen minutes and it will take me that long to make it. You'd think they wouldn't spread the classrooms out so far, but I guess it's how they ensure we kids get enough exercise. Lunch is in a couple of hours. Gale promised me he would come by and pick you up."
Prim envelops me in yet another impulsive hug and I breathe deeply, enjoying her scent that still somehow reminds me of grass and flowers and wet earth. Here is something good to think about, if only for a few moments. Then she is out the door and I'm alone in a chilly room with bare walls.
I find the bed that has been designated for my use—I can tell because Prim has tucked her nightgown under her pillow, and on the low table next to my mom's bed is a thick medical text with her name neatly inscribed inside the front cover.
I lower myself carefully onto the tan wool blanket covering my bed, and close my eyes against the light in the room.
I wake with a shriek from some dream that is already slithering away from my memory. I'm still gasping for breath when I hear a knock on the door, no doubt a second attempt.
When I finally open the door, Gale is standing there, a concerned expression on his face.
"You okay, Catnip?" he asks, bending down to look at me a little more closely.
What in the world does he mean by okay?
"I guess," I mutter, trying to smile. "My head doesn't hurt so much. Is it time for lunch?" I'm not very hungry, but maybe it will be good to move around a little more.
"I left my meeting early. President Coin would like to speak with you briefly, and I told her I would bring you by," Gale says matter-of-factly.
My eyebrows lift. "You had a meeting with the President of Thirteen?"
"Well, I guess they see me as, you know, the de facto leader of Twelve, since I was trying to feed everyone when they found us. Food is important, around here. I mean, making sure everyone has enough." Gale actually shuffles his feet as he says this. "Well, and I guess I organized the evacuation when Twelve…. If you can call it organized. I just happened to be the first person to realize what was going on, and knew where to go."
"Because you've been defying the Capitol by slipping outside the fence for the past five years, Gale," I remind him as we start walking away from our room. I hope I can find it again.
Gale grimaces. "I just had to feed my family, same as you."
Same as me. So I braved going outside the fence and learned to shoot, to kill. That helped me defy the Capitol and win the Hunger Games, and now where are we, the people of Twelve? Dead, mostly. I am suddenly cold with terror for Gale. I remember Haymitch's distrust of Coin.
I try to sound casual. "What do you think of President Coin?"
"I think she can help us win the Rebellion," Gale says fiercely. "She's not very friendly, but does that matter? And she seems to think that what I—that is, we, you know, the people of Twelve—have to say is important. And I think her team of advisors is good. Not that I know that much, I guess."
"That's got to count for something," I say lightly, but I wonder if behind Gale's sudden defensiveness is the fear that maybe it does matter if Coin if friendly.
We walk until I'm hopelessly lost—I can find my way through miles of woods but in this gray world I cannot get my bearings—and then we arrive at yet another plain heavy wooden door.
Gale smiles at me. "Come meet your new leader."