PART ONE | THE SPARK

CHAPTER FOUR


Rapping on my door pulls from the crutches of my deep sleep. Effie pops her head round my door to ensure that she's woken me up with her incessant tapping. She tells me that I'm going to get even more work done on me today by my prep team so that I'm ready for the warmer weathers of District 11. Only part of me can imagine how difficult visiting this District will be for Katniss. It was Rue's home.

After breakfast, my prep team collect me and strip me. "We don't have as much work to do on you as Katniss' prep team has," one of the little birds giggles at me, making me wonder what exactly they'll be doing to her. For some reason, the women are expected to be preened much more than the men in the Capitol and the sexism of that fact annoys me; as if Katniss hasn't been through enough.

They wash me down with a gritty soap that feels like each little stone rips inside my skin to clean my pores. They cover me in the stuff before soaking me in a thick, menthol solution in a bathtub. I can barely breathe as I lie in the stuff, but the next bath they shove me in smells like the beautiful roses I grew so familiar of before the Games in the Capitol. They're practically the only untainted memory I have from back then.

The whole time I'm being washed by them, they make snide comments about my prosthetic leg. "It's such a shame that they had to do that," one of them says.

"Maybe there's a way we could... make it less... you know," another comments. I try to let the remarks slide off me, but I still don't have that much self-confidence when it comes to the way my fake leg looks, so it's harder than it seems.

By the time lunch comes around, I'm starving hungry and waste no time tucking into the meal that's been laid out for us on silver platters. Effie, Cinna, Portia and Haymitch are already there and eating away. Effie compliments the glow of my skin, but it just feels raw and freshly peeled rather than "glowing". I can't help but notice, as I'm shovelling mountains of stew in me, that Katniss is avoiding look at me. Somehow, I need to try to reach out to her, approach the subject of being friends. Portia told me I had to be there for her, and she was right. I know that now.

People keep trying to bring Katniss into the conversation, but she's in an incredibly grouchy mood that seems impossible to pull her out of. All of a sudden, halfway through the dinner, the train pulls to a halt, but we haven't reached District 11 yet. Some server reports that a part has malfunction and needs to be replaced, which will take about half an hour to do so, sending Effie into ultimate meltdown. She begins to babble, talking faster than a cheetah runs, about the impact of this delay and how we'll never be able to be on time, etc., etc..

"No one cares, Effie!" Katniss snaps. Everyone at the table turns to stare at her, shocked. "Well, no one does!" she says defensively, trying to back herself up when nobody says anything. Then, she gets up and walks out the carriage, the door slamming behind her. We listen in silence around the table as she exits through the fire door. It triggers some sort of alarm, but it doesn't make her come back.

"I'll go," Haymitch says gruffly, his chair scraping against the floor.

I stand up, waving him off. "No, let me, please," I say.

Haymitch nods in understanding; I think he's partly grateful that I am even volunteering to talk to her after how cold we were to each other in front of him. When I reach where Katniss is, she's facing away me, sitting down and looking off into the horizon. "I'm not in the mood for a lecture," she says, kicking a clump of weeds near her foot.

"I'll try to keep it brief." I say, taking a seat beside her.

"I thought you were Haymitch," she says, looking to me in slightly surprise.

"No, he's still working on that muffin." I joke. I try to reposition my artificial leg into a more comfy, natural position but it still sticks out awkwardly. Katniss watches me carefully. "Bad day, huh?"

"It's nothing," she says, brushing me off.

I take a deep breath, trying to summon up the courage it takes to not be pushed away. "Look, Katniss, I've been wanting to to talk to you about the way I acted on the train. I mean, the last rain. The one that brought us home. I knew you had something with Gale. I was jealous of him before I even officially met you. And it wasn't fair to hold you to anything that happened in the Games. I'm sorry." I say, barely pausing.

She pauses for a little while, taking in everything in. "I'm sorry, too," she says eventually.

"There's nothing for you to be sorry about. You were just keeping us alive. But I don't want us to go on like this, ignoring each other in real life and falling into the snow every time there's a camera around. So I thought if I stopped being so, you know, wounded, we could take a shot at just being friends," I offer. I realised suddenly that my words couldn't be any truer. I'd rather have Katniss as a friend than nothing at all. The Games brought us together, and I can't let my own feelings tear us apart. We'll be in each other's lives for years, mentoring at each Games and living just a ten odd minutes away from each other.

"OK," she says, agreeing. Immediately, the awkward air seems to dissipate around us and we become ourselves again.

"So what's wrong?" I ask, but my question is met with silence as she picks at the clump of weeds. "Let's start with something more basic. Isn't it strange that I know you'd risk your life to save mine... but I don't know what your favourite colour is?" I say.

A smile sneaks her way up to her face. "Green. What's yours?" she answers.

"Orange," I say.

"Orange? Like Effie's hair?"

A laugh escapes my lips. "A bit more muted," I say. "More like... sunset."

She looks off into the sky, imagining the colour. I imagine with her a beautiful sunset orange in the summer evenings, casting a warm glow on everything. "You know, everyone's raving about your paintings. I feel bad I haven't seen them," Katniss says.

"Well, I've got a whole train car full." I say, rising up to my feet and offering my hand to help her up. "Come on."

She takes her hand, but instead of letting me go, she intertwines her fingers with mine and walks back to the train with me. When we get to the door, she stops, pulling me. "I've got to apologise to Effie first." she says.

"Don't be afraid to lay it on thick," I tell her. We get in, and I decide to let her grovel to Effie in private and wait for her a little down the corridor, just so much that she can see me but not so much that she thinks I'm eavesdropping. A long time passes before Effie lets her off and Katniss is able to leave the room. I greet her with a warm smile before leading her down a few carriages to go see some of the paintings I brought with me to showcase my talent.

She's quiet for a very long time as she looks at all of them. "What do you think?" I ask cautiously.

"I hate them," she says. "All I do is go around trying to forget the arena and you've brought it back to life. How do you remember these things so exactly?"

"I see them every night," I say in a small voice, letting miniature flashbacks of the nightmares pass through me.

"Me, too. Does it help? To paint them out?" she asks.

"I don't know." I say, trying to be honest. "I think I'm a little less afraid of going to sleep at night, or I tell myself I am, but they haven't gone anywhere."

"Maybe they won't. Haymitch's haven't." Katniss says.

"No. But for me, it's better to wake up with a paintbrush than a knife in my hand." I say. "So you really hate them?"

"Yes. But they're extraordinary. Really," she says. It hurts a little, but I try not to let it because truthfully, I understand. Whenever I'm finished painting them, I can bare to look at my own creation. Choosing which ones to bring was a flashback-ridden horror of a choice. "Want to see my talent? Cinna did a great job on it." Katniss says.

It makes me laugh, which is a surprising contradiction in a room full of paintings of the Games. "Later." The train lurches forward, fixed again. "Come on, we're almost at District 11. Let's go take a look at it."

We walk off to the last car on the train, sitting on some divine plush sofas. You can see the fresh, wide landscape as the train sweeps across the land. There a huge open fields with herds of dairy cattle, heavily unlike our wooded home. The train begins to slow slightly, and we get into a station where a fence that towers ten metres surrounds the train vessel. Nothing looks as lax as it is in our District.

"That's something different," I note. We zoom past some crops, stretching out as far as I can see for miles and miles. There are orchard trees in the distance. "How many people do you think live here?" I ask, but Katniss doesn't reply. I cast a tentative eye over to Katniss who's eyes have glazed over with the memories that haunt her and feel an urge to reach over and pull her into me, comfort her.

Effie calls us to get dressed and ready for our entrance to District 11. Portia gets me into an orange and black suit that I think is rather fetching, but I keep wondering about what Katniss may be wearing. When I see her again, dressed by Cinna's hand, I'm not disappointed. She's in an orange frock patterned with autumn leaves, and her image makes me fall in love all over again. You're just friends now, I remind myself.

For one last time, Effie goes through the programme and schedule with us all: being paraded through the District, fed with too much of their food and giving a speech they won't want to hear and we won't want to give. As the train pulls into the, I brush past Katniss and feel that she's shaking.

When we get out onto the platform, it's empty. There is no cheering welcoming committee. Eight Peacekeepers stand, waiting to direct us into an armoured truck. Effie sniffs when we're shoved inside. "Really, you'd think we were all criminals," she says, disgruntled and trying not to get her dress dirty on the benches.

We're let out near the District 11 Justice Building and sent to the back entrance. Smells of food cooking mixes with mildew and rot. There's not a lot of time to look around, and I doubt we'd be allowed if we did have the time. The anthem begins to boom through the square, noting our arrival. The mayor introduces us before the large, grandeur doors open with a big groan, revealing Katniss and I to the world.

"Big smiles!" Effie says, nudging us to move us forward.

There's a loud applause as we walk across the stage toward the microphone. The square is packed with people, but I doubt that this is even a small fraction of the amount of people who live here. I look out across and there are two special platforms built for the families of the tributes, with banners of the tributes painted behind them. On Thresh's platform, there's just one old woman and a tall girl who I presume must be his sister. But Rue's side is bursting with people, five younger siblings and a pair of parents. Their faces are painted with sorrow and sadness.

When the applause dies out, the mayor gives a small speech in our honour and it makes my stomach twist with sickness. I try to do my part of the scripted reply that Effie gave me, and Katniss tries to conclude it but her voice is small.

I look out toward the pictures of Rue and Thresh and decide not to get out my personal comments cards. Instead, I tell everybody about how amazing and strong Rue and Thresh were. How they got to the final eight. How they both kept us alive in part and how this is a debt that neither of us will ever be able to repay.

"It can in no way replace your losses, but as a token of our thanks we'd like for each of the tributes' families from District 11 to receive one month of our winnings every year for the duration of our lives." I say with finality. I have no idea if I'm allowed to do so, but I go along with it. It's our winnings after all. And they deserve them. It's the only way I can give back in any way.

The crowd gasps and murmurs. Katniss looks over and I give her a sad smile, the only thing I can muster. She raises up on her tip toes to kiss me, which I happily accept but it confuses me. It's just a thank you, I tell myself, nothing more.

The mayor steps forward and presents us each with a large plaque. Katniss is looking out toward Rue's family and I know, in her face, that she's going to go up and say something.

"Wait!" she says, stumbling forward toward the microphone again. Wait, please. I want to give my thanks to the tributes of District 11. I only ever spoke to Thresh one time. Just long enough for him to spare my life. I didn't know him, but I always respected him. For his power. For his refusal to play the Games on anyone's terms but his own. The Careers wanted him to team up with them from the beginning, but he wouldn't do it. I respected him for that."

Everybody is so silent. I look toward Thresh's family; the old woman is smiling at Katniss. The whole crowd feels as though it's holding their breath as they wait for Katniss to talk to Rue's family.

"But I feel as if I did know Rue, and she'll always be with me. Everything beautiful brings her to mind. I see her in the yellow flowers that grow in the Meadow by my house. I see her in the mockingjays that sing in the trees. But most of all, I see her in my sister, Prim." Katniss says, taking a small pause. "Thank you for your children. And thank you all for the bread."

There's a long pause, and the entire audience is trained on Katniss. Somewhere in the crowd, someone whistles Rue's four-note mockingjay tune that Katniss showed me back in the Games. By the end of the tune, I see the whistler: an old man in a faded shirt and overalls. He and Katniss meet eyes.

The mayor interjects, closing goodbye and taking a last round of applause. He leads us back to the Justice Building.

I turn to Katniss, who looks sickly and dizzy. "Are you all right?" I ask her.

"Just dizzy. The sun was so bright," she says. "I forgot my flowers," she mumbles; the bouquet she left was sitting on the stage.

"I'll get them," I offer.

"I can," she says. She opens the doors, and I can see it all happen. It happens in slow motion, chaos ensuing on the stage. A pair of Peacekeepers drag the old whistling man to the top of the steps, forcing him to kneel to the crowd. Then, they put a bullet through his head.