I push through the storm, hands feeling suddenly light and cold without the weight of the morphling in them.

I want to cry, but the tears would just freeze on my cheeks. Besides, I hardly have the right to cry. If anyone does, it's Gale. But he won't, of course.

I half wonder why I did it, and I half know.

I half did it to help him, him. I half did it out of pure spite. Spite for the stupid peacekeepers and their stupid uniforms, too white to represent blood. Spite for the stupid laws. Spite for the stupid medicine. Let it find a good home. Let it do some good.

I'm home now, and my hands are so cold that I can barely clench my fingers enough to turn the door knob. I have no story drawn up. I haven't a clue what I'll say if someone asks me where I've been. Maybe I'll tell them the truth.

The entryway is silent.

"Hello?" I call tentatively. There is no answer.

I start to snort derisively, but the sound sounds unnaturally loud in the silent house, and I stop myself quickly. I don't know why it still stings that I'm the only one here. I've expected it for years.

I'm always alone.

Numbly, unfeelingly, I unwrap my scarf and hang it and my coat on the rack. I had half expected our housekeeper to be here, but she probably didn't come today. And there's no garden to tend in the wintertime.

Softly, just as I always step on the stairs for fear of waking her, I climb towards my bedroom. On the way, I crack my mother's door and peer inside. It's dark, and stuffy, and she's immobile, as always. She doesn't notice me. She almost never does. She didn't notice before, when I crept in to take a box of morpling.

They're my mother's. She said I could take them.

It was only half a lie. She didn't say I could take them. I didn't ask. She'll never notice they were gone, though. I can see three more boxes from where I stand, and there's at least as much morphling stockpiled at my father's office, in case one or the other of the stashes is confiscated.

I close my mother's door before she can notice me and slink into my own bedroom, closing the door firmly and collapsing on my own bed.

I'm angry, though I don't know quite why.

I think of my father, working away at the Justice Building, and I feel a surge of hot, sticky fury. What's the point of him being mayor if he doesn't do anything? Couldn't he stop them, those awful peacekeepers?

Rationally, I know he has little, if any, control over them, but I feel like being angry at anybody for any reason right now.

And my mother, my useless mother. I understand about the headaches, I pity her those. I can even understand her addiction to the morphling, disgusting though it is. But how long has it been since she's spoken to me? Weeks? Months? How long since she called me by my name, and not Maysilee's? How long since this case of mistaken identity has triggered another of her headaches? It's gotten worse as I've gotten older. More and more, I stay out of her way so I can't be her ghost.

I hate her for being weak.

I hate myself for causing her pain.

And the morphling, all of the morphling. The secret shipments from the Capitol, the massive amounts of money my father pours into the habit. It's the only thing that can stop the pain. I understand this, of course. But she seems to need more and more, and costs are rising.

It was fitting that Gale should have it. The strongest man I know, the only one in this wretched place who could free us from this political prison. The one who will, given the chance. It's pathetic that I care, when we've exchanged not a word since the day of the reaping last year. Sometimes, though, I would catch his gaze at school and fool myself into thinking that we were in solidarity with each other. We were both sitting a vigil for Katniss.

Gale will use the morphling to recover, to become strong and help our world. I don't have to know him well to know that he has tendencies towards rebellion. I probably know more about him than I should, but he fascinates me. I only feel slightly guilty for eagerly collecting bits of information about the boy that I barely know.

My mother, on the other hand, would only use the morpling to hide from the world, to sink deeper into her addiction and depression. I haven't seen her in direct light for months, but I suspect that she's become yellow looking and fragile. I hate looking at morphling addicts. It's like looking into my mother's face.

It's not as if she's had a hard life, not really. She's the richest woman in the District. Hundreds of people have lost relatives to the Games, and they've picked themselves up, moved on somehow. But then, I've heard the bond between twins is different.

I sit up and cross to the window. The landscape is still obscured by swirling white snow, but I imagine that I can see to Victor's Village, to the Everdeen's new house. I imagine Gale there. Is he on the couch, perhaps? On a bed, or a bench? I hope that the morphling has made him comfortable.

I imagine Katniss at his side, smoothing his hair, holding his hand. I imaging Peeta looking on, sad but understanding. Too understanding. I can commiserate, with both him and Gale. I know something about unrequited love.

I turn my head toward the west. Somewhere, thousands of miles away, the Capitol lays, knowing of our misery and laughing at it. Someday, there will be a new Capitol, a better one.

Suddenly, I am determined to help it be.

It's wrong that Gale was whipped. It's wrong that my mother watched her twin's murder. It's wrong that my father has no control in his own District. It's wrong that Katniss gets a fancy house as a reward for slaughtering children, and it's wrong that Peeta was forced to do so. It's wrong that Prim knew, even for a second, the terror of certain death.

I'm angry, but this time, I know where my anger's directed. Not at my father or my mother. Not at the peacekeepers. I'll be angry at the Capitol, and I won't stop being angry until it falls.

Gale is angry. That's his strength.

Katniss is angry. That's her secret.

Haymitch is angry. That's his pain.

Peeta is angry. That's his surprise.

I'll be angry. It will be my power.

I will be more powerful than the Capitol. I certainly have more anger.