The Thing That Had Changed
Back in the hovercraft, Gale sits next to Cressida and they hold a long conversation in low voices. A smile almost breaks his face at one point and I try to figure out how I feel about this. In the past, I've been possessive of his company, jealous of the threats from other girls who sought - and I'm sure gained, in many instances - his attention. Back then, no one offered him the kind of companionship - platonic, pragmatic - that I could. But everything has changed, and, anyway, I've given all rights away to feel that way. And, in fact, I don't. Gale's mood being smoothed over by someone else? It's a bit of a relief, to be honest.
Plutarch is talking about weapons.
I attempt to ignore this. But he is so enthused, his voice booms over the noise of the engines. He speaks of weapons that, if they were still available for use, would end the war swiftly and without the need for Mockingjay speeches or inventive traps designed by Beetee. Missiles guided by systems in the outer atmosphere. Aircraft that fly without pilots, controlled remotely. Biological weapons that, once deployed, kill the nerve system or disrupt cells, so that massive death - over a radius of miles - is simple and instantaneous.
"You're making that up," I say to him, absolutely nauseated by what he is saying. I suppose I should not be surprised that a species capable of throwing children into an arena and calling it entertainment is also capable of such dispassionate, wholescale slaughter. But I am.
"Do you know how many people used to live on this planet?" asks Plutarch.
I shake my head. Of course I don't. I don't know how many live on it now. I've been brought up in complete and thorough ignorance of such matters. Our ancestors might have been as green-skinned as Octavia and walked on their hands, for all I know about it. If I felt like engaging Plutarch further in discussion, I'd ask him why, given what Peeta said about our precarious numbers, he would want to kill that many more - even people from the Capitol. But I don't want to engage with him, and I don't want to discuss Peeta with these people who have so clearly written him off. But it makes me sad. Not to be tribal about it - tribalism has its dangers, including making it easier to see other people as enemies, without much provocation - but he's talking about massively killing off his own people, those silly, foolish, vaguely naive citizens of the Capitol. But Plutarch seemingly considers himself above such things, such people, even his own. An exception. An elite. And this is the person guiding my message.
Gloomily, back in 13, I return to our compartment, kick Buttercup off of my bed and fall asleep. My sleep is so sound, I dream of next to nothing. The next morning, Prim wakes me up before leaving for her shift at the hospital; she's let me sleep all the way up to breakfast. I make it to breakfast just as it is about to end - I've missed Gale, apparently - and I eat, dry-mouthed and untasting, then head for one of my favorite hiding places - the school supply closet a floor up from the cafeteria. There, I curl up on the floor, try not to think about Peeta, try not to think about Gale, and the mental exertion of these attempts knocks me out. I nap until dinner.
At dinner, I eat pea soup and try to bolster myself, try to find mental strength again. And physical strength, too - I'm so tired. I've never felt so tired. I still have a job to do, a boy to try to protect. I wonder if they will show him the footage of District 12. Footage of Gale and me. I wonder what he will make of it all - if it will cause him to despair, to give in. That's not like Peeta Mellark, but who am I to say how he is being affected by the torture? I think of the bruise his mother gave him when he threw me that bread - how horrible it was to imagine it, just that amount of pain. And how horrible it was to think about a mother laying her hands that way on her young son, just for some kitchen accident. This thing - is unimaginable, beyond my capacity to understand, let alone come to terms with or function with. I have to keep going until I can stop it. I wish - I wish I had the resources, the knowledge, the courage to say - can we not target the place he is being held, somehow rescue him from his captors?
Perhaps I can work on that. Haymitch. I need Haymitch to straighten up and actually help me.
Boggs finds me as I'm leaving the cafeteria. I am unexpectedly pleased to see him. Am I going to be included in some actual decision-making, or at least get some advanced information about something?
"Ignore the rest of your schedule," he says.
"Done," I answer, wryly.
Boggs' look of amused exasperation is so familiar to me now, I relax as I fall in step with him toward the elevators. Boggs has the sense of humor, the sense of proportion, that is absent from most people around here. I've seen him carrying around a little boy, I think, and I would really like to meet his wife or partner and his family, in general. These might be people I could deal with.
"Why do they want me in Command?" I ask him. Boggs' duties are a bit above chaperoning the Mockingjay around 13, so I wonder if they've been trying to find me for a while. "Did I miss something?"
"I think Cressida wanted to show you the District 12 propos, but you'll catch them when they air, I guess."
It's a mark of how comfortable I feel around Boggs that I reply: "That's what I need a schedule of. When the propos air."
He gives me a look - like he knows or guesses what I've left unsaid. But he doesn't say anything. He's discreet that way.
Command is crowded, but there's a seat at the table in between Finnick and Plutarch, so I take it, thinking how I have one of the better angels of the rebellion on my left hand, and one of the better devils on my right. I glance over at Haymitch - looking no better nor worse than the last time I saw him. At Coin - who is reading some notes, as unflappable as ever. Gale, for once, is absent. So is Beetee.
All the monitors are filled with the current Capitol feed, which is a gardening program. This hardly seems worth Boggs' time to hunt me down. "What's going on? Are we going to watch the District 12 propos?"
"Maybe," says Plutarch heartily. "Beetee has finally figured out how to break into the Capitol's programming."
"What?"
"There's live programming tonight - Snow will be making one of his addresses - and we're hoping to disrupt it. Maybe with the District 12 propos, but I don't actually know what Beetee has planned. I left that up to him and Cressida."
Beetee - I guess he's down in his office in weapons development, and Gale probably, as well. I find my anticipation rising, along with my anxiety. All my hopes and fears about the filming we did in 12 - the range of the various consequences for Peeta - come rising back up. I feel the presence of Finnick next to me so strongly - how he must be concerned about this, too, at least to some extent. I wonder - since he now, too, has contributed propos to the cause - will they taunt him with Annie as they have been taunting me with Peeta's appearances?
So, when Snow appears on the television, I close my eyes for a moment, disturbed by his smiling, obnoxious face. But I feel Finnick stirring next to me, and I open my eyes in time to see the camera panning out - as it has for Caesar's interviews - to slowly reveal his companion. And again, it is Peeta.
I almost jump. Only a couple of days have passed since his last appearance startled me. But a couple of days is apparently all that is needed to wreck even more havoc on him than before. (Has he actually ever been "live" for these interviews? Is he now?) He's sitting on a tall stool, tapping his left foot in a strange rhythm - like a heartbeat with a skip in it - and, though he looks directly at the camera, his gaze is unfocused. Worse. It is angry and unsettled. I've never seen quite this look on his face - I've seen him angry. I've seen him confused. This look radiates both at once; it swirls around, almost palpably blurring his features. His entire body strains - I can see the clenching muscles in his neck - against invisible bonds. His eyes are pale, drained; they don't even look like they belong to him.
Dramatic music swells and a huge map lights up in the wall behind him. It's like he's one of the Capitol news reporters reciting a list of rebel incursions and victories as video plays in the air beside him. But every word he speaks sounds forced, resentful - strange. It's difficult to watch - it must be painful for the Capitol citizens to watch, as used as they are to smooth, smiling, blank-eyed reporters. And his news - if you pay close enough attention to parse it out - is not comforting - not for the Capitol, anyway. This is not normal propaganda. No - to put Peeta on display like this is merely to show that, one way or the other, Snow holds him, tightly, in his grip, to do with what he will.
This, again, is designed for me.
And then - pop! - Beetee is in. Peeta is replaced on screen - by me. They have started - as if expecting Peeta to be involved somehow - with a shot of me walking toward the wreckage of the bakery. After a few seconds, it's gone - and, for a moment, Peeta is back. Truly back. For just an instant, his eyes look puzzled, but clear - concentrating, thinking, trying to figure out what all this means. But this doesn't last long before he's again saying something about a damaged water plant.
For the next few minutes, it goes like this. Peeta's droning voice is interrupted by me, by Finnick, by me, by Finnick. It's like a tug-of-war between the rebellion and the Capitol - the broadcast flipping back and forth. Eventually, the Capitol gives up, the broadcast cuts to a still shot of the Capitol seal, and I look to Haymitch. He meets my eyes, and he has no comfort to offer me. Dread is in his face. I want it to stop. I want 13 to let go of the airwaves, let Peeta finish saying whatever they are forcing him to say so he can be sent back to his prison cell and left alone. If what is keeping him alive is this sick job they are making him do, then let him do it. What does it matter? The Capitol residents are useless - even if riled up to fight the rebellion, they are soft, weaponless. The rebels will know better than to be swayed by the manic words of a captured tribute. It doesn't matter.
Then they are back, Snow and Peeta. And Snow - clearly upset, though his face contains all emotion - asks him if he has "parting words" for me - a turn of phrase that chills me to the marrow.
But Snow has overreached. While I wait, breathless and sad, for Peeta to chastise me and the rebellion again, his face undergoes a series of painful contortions, and when he speaks to me, it seems to come to him at great personal pain and expense. "Katniss … how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you! … in Thirteen! Dead by morning!"
At this incredible speech, I rise to my feet, gaping. Off camera, we can hear Snow cry out: "End it!" The rebel video snippets start breaking in again, horrifyingly, while the aftermath of Peeta's warning plays out in between. His mouth moves soundlessly as he stares at something beyond the camera that is pointing to him. Suddenly, the camera is knocked over and all we can see is tile floor. There are shouts, blows. Then suddenly I hear him cry out - in pain. And a spray of blood spatters the tiles.
.
.
"You were dead. Your heart stopped."
Peeta looks at me like I'm going crazy, but I can't explain it, why the sobs are coursing out of me.
There is a distinct difference between a living body - even all the way down into the deepest coma - and a corpse. Death is many things; but most importantly, it is so very still. I've seen it too many times already over the course of my seventeen years. You see a body … speared by the Careers or simply starved to death … at first it is very possible to mistake it for a sleeping figure. In that first, initial relaxation of the face - before rigor mortis - death does look exactly like sleep. But as you stare, as you approach, it is the utter stillness of the body - all energy, all spark, all quiet breath gone - that marks the difference.
So it was, that first day of the Quell, when Peeta touched the force field and, in the moment that seemed to stretch on and on - before Finnick came to massage his heartbeat back to life, to lend him his own breath - I could feel it. Nothing. The absence. Everything about Peeta that truly was Peeta switched off as if by a light switch. That moment is preserved in my mind so that there is always a place inside me, a universe contained in a fraction of time, where Peeta is dead. This moment returns in dreams sometimes, to haunt me. The absence. The ache.
Just that morning, his warm lips had kissed me - not just my lips, but all over my body. The backs of my knees. The hollow of my back. And now those lips were cool against my cheek as I pressed against them, listening for breath. The warmth of him - that is the main thing you miss in that universe where he is dead.
"It seems to be working now." And, as if to confirm his words, I had returned to his lips and they were warm again.
I open my eyes, blearily, to the sound of a dull, but loud explosion, and sit up abruptly in the darkness. I'm surprised I actually managed to sleep, on this night that I've possibly watched Peeta killed - certainly witnessed his beating - live on television; nearly lost Prim and Gale, who were the very last evacuees to make it into the bunker before the bombs started falling; and am now entombed very deep underground while the Capitol pounds 13. And this is how I know that Peeta is probably dead - or will be soon. Because his warning was sound. Upon his words, Coin called an emergency mandatory drill and we descended into 13's deepest levels. Within minutes, the Capitol bombs were upon us. I don't know by how much, but I am sure that Peeta's warning saved many of us.
It feels like it's been years since then, not weeks. Peeta … I mouth his name into the darkness. Are you alive? I can't believe I have to go through this again - the near certainty that the Capitol has killed him, the paralysis of not knowing for sure. And the worst of it is, it is even more directly my fault, this time. I don't know what they would have done with him if they didn't need him to bait me. Would they have killed him long ago? Or would they have actually let him go - once it became obvious that he had no part in the rebellion? I am the person on whom his life or death hang - maybe both, ultimately. And I feel like I should have found a way to manage it all better.
.
.
For three days, holed up in the bunker with the rest of District 13, this numbing dread is the state of my mind. My outer affect is quieter than normal, but not really by much, so I don't think anyone but Prim actually can sense what is going on with me. Gale keeps to his family's area; sulking, or giving me space, I'm not sure which. I don't know what he wants from me. If I asked him to switch off his feelings for me, he would laugh and point out the impossibility of that. So, he should know, without sulking, the position I'm in. Perhaps I'm being unreasonable again, but what choice do I have?
I introduce District 13 to "Crazy Cat," a game in which I torment Buttercup with a flashlight - keeping the spot of light dancing too quickly on the concrete floor, or too far up on the concrete wall, for him to ever catch it. And in the midst of this, realization comes to me. This is the exact game Snow is playing with me. Bait? No, Peeta's use to him is far less humane. If he would exchange him for me, that offer would somehow already have been presented. Peeta is the unreachable thing he is taunting me with, his method for driving me crazy. To understand … the words I say against the Capitol will be taken out on Peeta. If I were to stop, Peeta's use ended, he might kill him. If I were to publicly recant the Rebellion - thoroughly debase myself to him - Peeta's use would again be ended, and he would most certainly kill him, just to twist the knife that much further. It is in the suspense of the game that Peeta's life is preserved.
As always, between Peeta and me, there is a horrible dilemma. No matter what choice I make, I cannot save him, only minimize the damage. To move is to hurt him. To stop is to kill him. Prim said it - on the first night of the attacks, that Snow would not kill Peeta, not right away, because then he would have no one to use against me. And now I understand the extent of it.
That night I lay awake, feeling nauseous, as usual, and holding myself as rigidly as possible, to keep myself from shivering apart into a million pieces. Now the ache, vaguely located in the vicinity of my chest, is a searing pain directly in my heart. I don't know what a heart attack feels like, but this is how I've kind of imagined it. And I don't care. Let it come. This way, I won't have to live with him dead and he won't have to live with me dead. We'll be dead together, finally resting. Removed from the horrors of this world.
Eventually, I force myself stiffly up and tiptoe out of the little alcove in which Prim, my mother and I are waiting out the bombing. I wander around - I know I've seen him in this section of the bunker, somewhere - until I find him. He's huddled on a bunk, a little battery-operated light propped up on the mattress beside him, methodically tying and untying knots in a small length of rope. This has been the activity that has kept Finnick more-or-less sane during all these weeks here in 13, where he's been so wrecked, so unnerved by Annie's capture, that he has not even been able to leave the hospital. I stare at him for a moment with sympathetic eyes, before I demand his attention.
As I explain to him about my revelation, and see the confirmation of it in his softening expression, the ache inside me grows until I really want to cry.
"This is what they're doing to you with Annie, isn't it?"
And I remember, too, that Finnick actually did warn me about this, on the hovercraft that pulled us from the Quell.
"I should have warned you earlier than that," he says gloomily, studying my face. "Or shut up about it, since it was too late to do you any good, then … the problem was, I didn't understand, when I first met you."
"What?"
He looks down at his rope. "We all knew your romance strategy in the first games was an act - at least, those of us in Haymitch's inner circle. The one thing I didn't realize at the time - the one thing Haymitch didn't tell me - was that it wasn't really an act on Peeta's part."
I squirm uncomfortably.
"Nothing I saw on the Victory Tour convinced me anything had changed. In fact, he looked almost as miserable as you, which I thought meant that … that you were both being forced to spend time together, now. When you were reaped again, we all thought you would continue your strategy, and it really wasn't until Peeta hit the force field in the arena and nearly died that I -."
"That you what?" I ask, although - remembering my emotional outburst at the time - I think I know what is coming.
"That I knew I'd misjudged you," he says, looking up at me again. "That you do love him."
I part my lips on these words. Words I have never said.
"I'm not saying in what way. Maybe you don't know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him."
It's funny how I thought he'd say - the other thing. That it was obvious to him that we had been intimate. Maybe that's what he means, but … no. Because - what would Snow care about that? In his eyes - as in Coin's - one lover is interchangeable with another. That's what Finnick means when he says it was too late to warn me: I tipped my hand that day in the arena. Convince me, Snow had said. Convince me that you love him. That was my task on the Victory Tour. But it was not until that day in the jungle, under the sweating pink sky, that I finally did convince him. And handed him this weapon to use against me.
I move, Peeta is hurt. I stop, Peeta is dead.
Snow has already won. He's beat me. Maybe I'm not broken, yet; maybe I can hold on a little while longer. But it doesn't matter. At a certain point, I will no longer be able to tolerate this game. I'm already crumbling.
You love him. Finnick's voice seems to whisper the words again. I feel a rush through my blood - similar to the rush I felt in the arena, when we kissed. But this one is tinged with fear, with a sick feeling. I withheld everything from him - and I took everything. His company on those nights on the train. Those weeks after I broke my heel. And finally, finally when I gave him the one thing ... I could not keep it out of my face, the thing that had changed between us; and I put a target on his back every bit as dangerous as the one that was already on mine.
You love him. Of course, I do. It wasn't just desperation or anxiety and it wasn't just lust that night. I could never have done it had I not known, deep down, that I did. In what way do I love him? I asked myself the same question when I confronted my feelings for Gale, and there were no answers, really. Gale - is Gale. Whatever it is - this thing with Peeta - it includes what happened between us that night; that night, which I can finally understand outside of a vacuum. Which I finally understand was a culmination of all the warm and soft and hard and hungry feelings that had been growing between us.
When did it happen? I muse. And what does it mean?
And then I remember that I have doomed him - by loving him. And I wish, for his sake, that he had never met me. Because he has done absolutely nothing but keep trying to save me. And though I tried to do the same, I could have done better, and this final failure has resulted in catastrophe.
"How do you live with it?" I ask Finnick, choking.
"I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking." He looks at me, and my stunned expression seems to give him pause. "Better not to give in to it," he says. "It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart."
That sounds about right, I think to myself. Because I can tell - I can sense - that if I do give way, do break into all these pieces, there will be no coming back from it.
