Over the next few weeks, I slowly begin to rise from the mental coma the Capitol had put me in. The medicine bags become less and less, until all but one disappears, and even that one is only hooked for two or three hours in the night. It's a light antidepressant, Aurora explains, and it will help to improve my mood.
I learn that Johanna and Annie have been deployed in a safe part of District 11, where they've been picked up by the rebels. Since my episodes could make me dangerous for Katniss, Aurora insists on treating me before I can join them. I agree with her, even though I miss Katniss terribly. My bruises heal and the last of the venom is flushed from my system. I get used to solid food again and my appetite returns. In the nights, I sometimes cry, mourning my family and my home, heart wrenching when I think of Katniss.
But during the days, I become acquainted with the members of Aurora's household – or the Avian Squad, as I like to call them (since they refer to the headquarters as the Aviary, it seemed appropriate). It doesn't take long for me to grow fond of them, but I sense that the feeling's mutual by the way they treat me. Everyone is nice to me, which is in such contrast to my time as a hostage that it takes a while for me to get used to it, or even believe that they are genuine.
Hawkie visits me twice every day to bring me breakfast and dinner, sometimes she stays to talk. Waltz helps me to regain some bodily strength by rebuilding the muscles in my arms and legs with exercise, and later, when I'm allowed to leave my room, he introduces me to his training machines. There's also Tesla, a thin, spectacled man in his late forties, who spends most of his waking hours in the generator and communications room, grooming his dozens of monitors and circuits. I'm told that he is a mastermind of electronics, but for being so focused when awake, he can fall asleep in the strangest places. Once I almost trample him when I'm on my way to the kitchen, huddled up on the floor in front of the elevator. Which is curious, since my room is closest to the surface, and G & C is about the lowest level of the Aviary.
The reason I can walk around at all is Archie, the crazy inventor. He reminds me of Haymitch a little, because he too can throw a tantrum and get drunk until he passes out on his workbenches. Mostly when one of his ideas doesn't turn out how he imagined it. But it's not a regularity, and without Archie, a lot of things in the Aviary wouldn't work the way they should. There isn't a thing he can't build or assemble, no matter what material. Wood, metal, plastic, glass, fabric. Furniture, pottery, machine parts, and even… a new leg for me. The old one I left behind in the Capitol, but I like the new one more anyway. It has a soft material that takes on my body temperature embedded at the base where the stump of my leg lies, and the straps are made from leather that feels natural even after hours of wearing it. I used to hate the Capitol leg, because it felt all cold and wrong, and it never helped with the phantom pain.
"You like it? You like it! You'll run marathons like a wildcat when you got used to it – nothing I make gets broken, ever!", Archie cheered after I walked my first steps in his new leg. He gets hysterical when one of his inventions is finished.
"The scope of my rifle says otherwise, Archie.", Hawkie said in a grumpy voice.
"Ha, woman! You'd sink an unsinkable ship, if you'd get your hands on one!", the inventor retorted, and me and Waltz, who was holding me steady as I walked around the room, both laughed. There are two more members of the Avian Squad, Coach and Misa, who are brother and sister. Misa, a scrawny dark-skinned girl with sad eyes, is our medic, but I rarely see her. Probably because strictly speaking, Aurora is my doctor. She explains that Misa is a field medic and orthopaedic surgeon, mainly responsible for military injuries, whereas Aurora is a doctor for the human mind. Everything in between, the two of them share treating.
Coach, I see a lot. He's our cook and the most hilarious story-teller of all time. Thirty-five, tall and broad, he has travelled around Panem like nobody else I know. In his teenager years, he used to be a cook for the idle rich people of the Capitol, where he overheard the most sensational tales. After seeing the wrong in the world, he became a travelling con artist to help poor people all around the Districts, until he was picked up by Aurora. In a coup of brilliance, he had planted his sister Misa as a medic among the Peacekeepers in District 11, so she was safe.
All the members of the Avian Squad are incredible people, and being with them starts to feel like home to me. If it weren't for the episodes that simply wash over me sometimes, burying me in fear and rage. And each time I come to, I'm full of regret, afraid that I hurt somebody this time. And of course, Katniss. Not a day goes by without me missing her.
Hawkie brings me breakfast and dinner, but lunch is always reserved for Aurora. Every day, I spend hours talking to her, trying to sort out the conflicting memories in my head. She uses a sort of logic game, making me contradict myself in order to have a revelation.
"So you say that Katniss was responsible for the bombing of District 12, that killed thousands of people, including your family.", she says one day during our session. I nod.
"Last week, we established the most striking feature about the Katniss in your positive memories." She brings up the projector and shows me the recap of the Reaping from the 74th Hunger Games. Katniss and her sister, Prim, are on the screen.
"The love for her family.", Aurora concludes. "A love that made her choose a Game of Death in order to protect what is precious to her." I look at the picture, confused.
"Yes, but…" She cuts me off.
"Focus, Peeta. How does this tie together? Protecting your family at the expense of your life, but ordering a bombing that destroys hundreds of families, including the one you're trying to protect. Does that make sense to you?" Her eyes are hard and challenging. She wants me to defend my point with an explanation or give in to the fact that I'm not making sense.
"No…", I say sheepishly. Aurora changes the picture to another caption of Katniss standing in the arena, arrow poised, lightning striking down from the heavens.
"This is what really happened in the Quarter Quell. She shot an arrow at the force field in the exact moment when the lightning struck. After she'd been picked up by the rebels, the Capitol just assumed that she was the instigator, and sent the bombers to make an example of District 12 the way they did with District 13." On the caption, Katniss looks unsure, afraid even. Her hair is dishevelled, her face sweaty and dirty, her eyes fearful.
"Why did she do that? Shoot the arrow to destroy the force field." Aurora tilts her head and sighs, flicking her pen against the notebook she holds. This gesture is quite familiar to me by now. It means that I should know the answer to my own question. With a deep breath, I try to collect what I remember about Katniss, the good one, while separating and shutting out my thoughts about the evil one.
"Think about our list, Peeta.", Aurora instructs me. A while ago, we made a list of characterizations for both the evil Katniss and the good Katniss from my memories. I am to see the impossibility of the evil Katniss' existence by reminding myself of the list that characterizes the good Katniss. But even this little game, that seems almost childish and simple to me, is sometimes hard to come by. I go through the list. Not quick to trust. Loyal. Favourite color: green. Self-conscious. Blushes when I say something nice. Thinks too lowly about herself. Likes my cheese buns. Not good with words. But with actions. Impulsive.
"She acted on impulse.", I blurt out, and I can see that it's the correct answer because Aurora smiles at me and scribbles something into her notebook. This is how most of our sessions go down. She usually presents me with a conflicting memory and then leads me to the right conclusion. But she also teaches me techniques how to get a hold of my episodes, or to sort out the wrong assumptions from the right ones. I call them mind games, and sometimes I think of Aurora as a magician who plays tricks on the Capitol while they clap like idiots. Together, we find out that most of my fabricated memories have some shiny quality to it, but the real ones don't.
With time, I learn the most important pillars for fighting my hijacked thoughts: Logic. If I tie two things together, they have to make sense. Anchor. When I feel myself slipping away, I have to get a grip on something solid from this world. Focus. If I'm threatened to be overwhelmed, I need to single out the thought, not let it get jumbled up. Reciprocity. When I'm not sure, I need to formulate a question and consider the answer. Origin. If I get lost in conflicting memories, I return to the one I am certain is real. Actuality. There are things I consider given facts, and they do not change. My name is Peeta Mellark. I survived the Hunger Games. I love Katniss Everdeen. Conclusion. I never want to hurt the ones I care about. These pillars become my mantra when the episodes try to tear me apart.
Some nights, I just can't get any sleep because the nightmares are so vivid my sheets get soaked in sweat. Most of the time, Aurora sits in her chair, ready to comfort me until I drift off again. But she has her duties too, and I know that she sacrifices precious time for me when she should be planning the task forces' moves, or even sleeping. On nights when these matters are too pressing for her to stay in my room, I wake up paralyzed with terror, alone.
That's when I go exploring. The Aviary is arranged around a central elevator, spanning six floors, each of which has four larger rooms. They are connected with narrow intersections that usually serve as storage, although they also hold a small toilet and washing room on every floor. My room is located at the right side of the elevator on Floor 0, the one closest to the surface. Hawkie lives right next to me, since she is the one who leaves the compound on a daily basis to hunt and gather what we eat. We get supplies occasionally from other task forces around Panem – even canned food from the Capitol. But most of the time, Hawkie provides. The two other rooms are Aurora's personal quarters and of the few that I haven't dared to enter yet. She never seems to be in them anyway and the doors are always closed.
The second floor holds the kitchen, the cantina where we can have our meals together if we want to, Coach and Misa's room and the food storage. Third floor has a medical room that even allows operating to some extent, a large common room for free-time, Archie's studio, and the great bathroom, separated for men and women of course. Waltz' domain is the fourth floor where the armory and weaponry lie side by side and his personal quarters connect to the training room. Generator and communications, Tesla's realm, is on the fifth floor and spans two rooms. There's also the combustion chamber, humming with the heating power that keeps us warm, and a dormitory for our two hovercraft pilots, but they rarely use it because they practically live in the garage.
In the basement, farthest down, is the Main Command Centre, well protected by a thick layer of bullet and bomb-proof metal and completely capable of operating on its own if separated from the rest of the Aviary. The whole sixth floor is one giant, circular room with monitors, maps and electronic tracking devices lining the walls. Its most striking feature is a metal ring that projects a giant, detailed map of Panem into its centre and simultaneously serves as a gathering table for the squad during tactical debriefs. A lot of other equipment whose purpose eludes me is carefully arranged here, including a holographic library or a machine that only seems to consist of a giant metal box with hundreds of blinking lights on the front.
Lights are always alive in the Command Centre. The screens flash away tirelessly, parts of the map show troop movement, at least three of the monitors televise Capitol news or channels and another two rebel propos around the clock. Notebooks, reports, scribbled observations and other information-holding media is scattered everywhere. I wonder how much intelligence flows through our Command Centre every day, how Aurora even manages to process and filter it into a coherent form. If she is not in my room, I usually can find her here, bent over her notes and maps, her eyelids fluttering from the effort to stay awake. Sometimes she has fallen asleep watching the Capitol news broadcast. I wrap a blanket around her when I see her like this.
In my weeks at the Aviary, I learn things about my remarkable saviour, bit by bit. For example, Coach tells me the story why Aurora wears white clothes at all times: There had always been a small, clandestine society of people in the Capitol and the Districts who defied President Snow's ways. But since such a thing was highly dangerous if uncovered, they only communicated in codes. Aurora's existence was a rumor among these people, and their code for her was White Queen, referring to the chess piece. To reveal herself to followers she could trust, she dressed in white only, and they recognized her.
She still uses this small trick, although by now it has mostly become a habit. From Aurora herself, I learn about her journey to Europe. Back then it was only Tesla, Waltz and her, and they barely made it across the sea, the hovercraft badly battered by storms. When European scouts discovered them after they got stranded on a rocky shore, they were half-starved and completely dehydrated. But the inhabitants were forthcoming, ready to share food, technology and knowledge with the newcomers. Aurora describes Europe as a small, disciplined, though very secluded country. They weren't interested in Panem and rather treated her like someone they picked up in the wilderness. She shows me pictures of the main city, freely accessible as it sits in a valley between the highlands with their lush grass meadows to the Northeast and the fertile, warm riverlands to the Southwest.
Unlike the Capitol, the Europe metropolis lacks rioting colors and tall steel towers, but looks more like an ancient city, its low-rise stone buildings ornamented with subtlety rather than sheer burlesque. But not to be underestimated, Aurora tells me, because the city has great underground laboratories and science centres that could compete with the Capitol's technology. I see winding, small walkways between the houses, ending into tiny gardens or parks.
During the Hunger Games, we were never allowed to walk around freely in the Capitol, but when I see the pictures Aurora shows me, I wonder what it would be like if the rebellion succeeded. Will I be able to stroll on the streets of the great Capitol, or will it never lose its menacing aura, always bringing up the memories from the Games, and the torture? Even though Aurora is open about her visit to Europe, she never talks about her life in the Capitol. Nobody seems to know what she was doing before she stole a hovercraft and set out into the great wide open – except Waltz and Tesla. But whenever I ask them, their faces turn into masks of stone and force my question into non-existence.
What I do know is that she always intended to return, although that is a mystery on its own, because Europe basically sounds like a paradise that I wouldn't leave again. She became a doctor there, studying at one of the two universities the country has, then gathered all the resources she could possibly muster, and came back. Building the Aviary has been an endeavour of years, and more and more people joined her. She travelled through the Districts and even to the Capitol as the White Queen, establishing task forces for her cause. But what exactly is her cause, now that there's an open rebellion? Why didn't she join the rebels?
One night, when I find her in the MCC, she stares at the screen that shows rebel propos, looking very displeased. I follow her frown and see Katniss, surrounded by flames that seem to be shaped into wings, dressed in a uniform that was clearly designed by Cinna. Under her form, the words "Catching Fire – The rebellion marches" are emblazoned with burning letters. Aurora snorts, a cynical sound.
"What is it?", I ask and sit down next to her. Suddenly her anger explodes out of her like a breaking dam and she shoots up from her chair.
"Wrong is all it is! Wrong! Parade her around like that, like a prize-horse on the market. They are using this poor girl to boost their war. And just because nobody would fall in line if they saw Coin's dull face." Her voice rises as she walks circles around me, reminding me of a caged animal ready to pounce.
"I don't like it either, I admit. Who's Coin?" Aurora flicks the remote control and a woman around fifty appears on the screen, her grey hair so straight it looks unnatural. Her expression is hard, lacking any sign of emotion to the point of rigor.
"President Alma Coin is the true leader of the rebels, and the president of District 13. She made Katniss the Mockingjay, a symbol to rally the Districts to her cause. I can't stand her.", says Aurora.
"She doesn't seem like someone people would sympathize with, but I guess you don't dislike her because of her looks.", I muse.
"Have you ever wondered why District 13 lives in complete silence for more than 75 years, but then generously steps up as soon as defiance starts seething in the Districts, to take the rebellion under their protective wing?" I understand what she's suggesting. This sounds like calculated power play, and Katniss is stuck in the middle. It begins to dawn on me why Aurora refused to hand me over to the rebels, irrespective of my hijacking. She doesn't trust District 13, or more precisely, Coin.
"'For thirty years, I have plotted to bring down the Party. I'm sick in mind and body.'", she says quietly. At the sight of my questioning look, she elaborates. "It's a quote from a novel, a very ancient one about people who live under constant surveillance and are forbidden any individuality by the laws of a government called 'The Party'."
"Sounds familiar." My tone is sarcastic.
"It's fitting. Maybe the author has seen it all coming. Ever since I came back, I have tried to help ease the people's misery, while Coin sat and watched them waste away, waiting in the shadows for the right moment to step forward. In my eyes, she's no better than Snow." We both watch President Snow on one screen and Alma Coin on the other in silence for a while.
"I'm afraid, Peeta.", says Aurora suddenly. She sounds so weak that I shiver at the thought of her being afraid of anything. It just can't happen. She is what's holding us all together.
"I'm afraid that we have sacrificed the soul of our species long ago, when we decided that children murdering children is justifiable to prove a point. I'm afraid that we are flailing, pathetic creatures in a battle between two giants who would both trample us in order to win. Snow and Coin see people as tools for reaching their goal. Someone has to be their voice in all this. Vox Populi, the voice of the people. Frightened, angry, unheard, oppressed." Her confession both rattles and moves me.
"You could be."; I say in earnest. Aurora turns her piercing grey eyes to me and smiles, a sad, regretful smile. I can feel that she wants to tell me something, something very important, but no words leave her lips. And in the silence, her gaze speaks clearer than words ever could: I can't.