We all sit in the control room and watch as the TV comes alight with the Capitol seal. It fades and our attention is drawn to the scene outside President Snow's Mansion. For a moment there is nothing, then someone is dragged out the house, everything slows down around me when I see who it is. Peeta is being pulled across the semi-permanent stage shackled, bruised.
He looks completely destroyed, his face carrying a cut from his left temple to midway down him right cheekbone. His eyes are dull holes embedded in his face. His lips and arms purple with bruises, fresh bruises that weren't caused by the games, caused by something even worse. This was torture.
Then I see who else is onstage, what they are holding and I know what is happening. I want to scream but no sounds comes and instead I see Peeta forced to his knees. He looks outwards and manages to shout.
"Do not lose your hope, your spirit or your strength."
And before he could utter another word he has shot. His blood spilled out across the white marble on which he had knelt. And he was gone. His body slumped and then fell onto his collapsed legs. He was deadly still. I wanted to leave, run. Away from all the eyes that were now on me. Finnick who sat by me was gripping me hand tightly, but I couldn't get my hand to squeeze his back. Every movement I wanted to make was impossible.
Peeta's body was dragged from view leaving a trail of scarlet blood behind him, I will never see him again. Snow came onto a balcony above the stage and talked straight towards the camera.
"This was a death by your doing. Your rebellion has killed many and unless you cease to fight and hand over Miss Everdeen, you will all be killed. This death was because of the girl you have idolised. Maybe now it is time you realised she is nothing but a killer." And with then the screen faded to the Capitol seal before becoming black.
Silence hung heavy in the air, no one moved or spoke. And then my scream came to me. My lungs burned and head pounded but my scream was bloodcurdling. Finally I could move again and I ran. Ran until I was inside my room with my door locked. I have nothing left in me apart from the tears that cascade down my face. I collapsed on the bed the moment I got in my room; now the pillow my face was buried in is sodden; my sheets dragged over my head.
Sensing my anger pulsing through me I grabbed the handle on my chest of draws and hurled the connected draw across the room. Upon it's impact on the wall it cracked. I pounding my fists against walls whilst cursing the Capitol, throwing objects across my room watching as they smacked against the wall. I yanking my mattress off my bed tearing the sheets from it. Nothing helped but nothing made the feeling inside of me worse.
Amongst the piles of injured furniture I caught sight of the thing that broke me. The gleam of my pearl. And taking hold of it and holding it to my lips brought of a new surge of emotion. Guilt. He was dead because of me. It was all my fault.
I sat rocking myself holding the pearl to my lips for hours. And all I thought of was him. And I went through all our moments together.
That day when he threw me the bread, taking the beating from his mother just to save me. The first time he saved my life
The day of the reaping when I thought he was going to kill me, when really he was about to resign himself to death for me.
The chariots coming out in the first games. Our first tribute parade. How stunning we had looked. I remember him taking my hand, because Cinna said so, I didn't notice it then but tiny jolts of electricity had fired from his touch.
Our interviews when he expressed his love for me, how angry I had been, him going out there to weaken my chances when all along he wanted to help me. All along it had been the truth.
Our moments in the cave together, just trying to survive. Lying in each other's arms, sharing what could have been the last moments of our lives together.
The berries that started a spark among the districts. The berries that started a revolution held between our lips.
The nights we spent together on the victory tour. Saving each other from the nightmares that haunted us
The second reaping, when I became resolute that I would save his life, that it was his time to win.
The announcement he made on the interview about us having a baby together. That sentence that turned even the Capitol against the games.
The second games when he gave me the pearl, on the beach just together.
Seeing his locket with the photographs inside as he desperately tried to convince me that I should let him die.
Our kiss on the beach. How even then I knew that I belonged in this world only with him by my side.
The last moment I saw him.
And now it is all gone because he has left this damned earth and all I want is to follow him. In that moment I knew what I needed to do, what was my only option.
I walked towards Prim's stand where as kept her pen and paper incase she wanted to note things down. Obviously not from 13 with their stingy ways. No, this was from our victory house. The paper was soft to touch, the pen cool in my hand. And I wrote my letter, the last piece of me.
"These are the last words I can leave behind. I know that I am being weak, cowardly but I can't face a world, a life without Peeta Mellark. Our time on this world is like a ticking time bomb. And when it explodes no matter how young or old we are, how pretty or how smart or how brave or weak, when we die we explode leaving behind wounds that never heal.
I don't want to hurt those of you I love but it wouldn't be fair to make you watch me live like this. My life has become tightly woven around his, my life dies with his. I have nothing to live for without Peeta Mellark.
He said in our second games that he should die and not me because I had others to live for he had no one who needed him. He didn't realise that you only need one person who gives you purpose. I love my family, Prim especially, but Peeta Mellark saved my life all those years ago and since then my life was fated to end with his.
And now I know I have to be with him, the boy with the bread who has slipped through my fingers for the last.
K. "
I held my medication used to keep my sanity (the doctors did not like my name for this: Cuckoo pills). Uncapped the lid and took tablet after tablet until the bottle was empty; thirty five tablets gone. A weeks worth of medication and then all I had to do was wait. Thinking of Peeta, his lips that had kissed me in falseness so many times and so few with true love; his blue eyes that lite up when he spoke of baking; his blonde hair that shone. Every piece of him until I was just a body lying on the floor without life.
Two days after Katniss' body was found by her sister Prim, the Capitol released a statement.
'Two days ago your Mockingjay took her life. She was the person you believed as your strongest but she was weaker than all of you.
We as a government knew she was weak and so we devised a plan to prove to you that you were all backing the wrong cause. Peeta Mellark lives, it was all fake but she did not know it. He was shot with a fast acting sleeping pill and a bag of blood held in his shirt ruptured when he was shot. He lives to show you all we believe that life is something precious. Peeta Mellark never waged war against us so we saved him.
We have delivered him to District 13 where we hope he can deal with his loss better than Miss Everdeen.'
That was all they had to say, and it was said by a lowly spokesperson, the news was not even of enough importance for President Snow to deliver himself.
Upon his arrival in District 13, Peeta was presented with the letter Katniss Everdeen wrote and only hours later did he kill himself. Leaving a letter that read this:
"There is no one left who cares about me."