AN: I was sooooooooooo tempted to write this from Peeta or Gales POV. I held back. It was tough but I stayed strong. I refused to take the easy road and go multiple POV (which I usually do when I write). I felt evil yet again when I finished writing this. I had to take a shower after…

Chapter 6: He's Not the Last

Katniss stepped off of Haymitch's front porch, letters in hand. She looked down the drive toward her and Peeta's home once she cleared the bushes that separated the two houses from view. That small but painful knot in her stomach only increased in size when she saw the two peacekeepers shoving Peeta inside of his own home before taking a post on either side of the front door. A sound from the opposite direction managed to pull her eyes away from the disquieting scene.

Two more peacekeepers and Gale were approaching.

His hands were bound behind his back and even from the distance, she could see the small trickle of blood running down the side of his face from an unseen wound on his head. One of the peacekeepers led him by the upper arm while the other walked behind the pair with a gun pointed directly at Gale's back. She wanted to run to him, to try and help him but she knew it would only get him more hurt than he already was.

So she did the only thing she could do, attend to her task for the day just like she had every day prior to this one for two months. She walked to her home, stumbling over her feet more times than she could remember, her muscles still not fully recovered from her brush with death the night before. She walked up her front walk and listlessly looked off to the side at her 'garden' and the implement she'd left in the elements two days before. How long would it stay there, she wondered absently? A week? A month? A year? She turned her head away once she reached the steps. She climbed them automatically and entered the house without even looking at the peacekeeper guards. The moment she pushed through, she was wrapped up in strong arms that nearly crushed what little life was left in her.

"When they came to the bakery, I didn't know what to think. I feared the worst. Kat, I thought…" He breathed into her ear.

The worst is yet to come. She couldn't help but thinking. 'It's… so much worse.' She couldn't help but recalling Haymitch's words, so apropos as they were. She just clung to him. Would he ever want to touch her again after this? If Snow had his way and if his letters accomplished what she thought was their purpose, then she highly doubted it. He didn't let her go even as Gale was pushed through the door, nearly colliding with them.

"What's going on Mellark?" Gale asked immediately, rubbing at his raw wrists, as the door was pulled closed by the Capitol guards on the other side.

"It's not his fault," came Katniss's immediate defense of Peeta. She hadn't been able to stop Gale's assault last night but she would do anything to prevent one now. But after they received their letters, she couldn't know…

To stop the increasing intensity around her, Gale's nearly boiling rage and Peeta's continued protective embrace, she pulled away from the baker and shoved the envelopes to their owners.

"What's this?" She heard both men say almost simultaneously.

"Follow me." She was trying to be the brave one but her voice cracked as she issued her order. By the time both men heeded her call, she had already sat down in one of the four chairs in the room that surrounded a small coffee table. She didn't give them a chance to ask any questions. She didn't know if she'd be able to answer so she just gave them another curt command. "Sit down and open them." Her hands were clasped together so tightly in her lap, her fingertips were turning white. She just waited. Several long minutes later she heard, first one and then the other jump up from their respective chairs. They are going to kill each other, she thought but when she looked up, their attention was not centered on each other. Instead, they were both running for the windows.

"No." She heard Gale breathe. Peeta said nothing. Needing to know what was going on, she got up and ran to the window. Outside, on the front yard were eight people on their knees, one more being held by his mother. Peacekeepers lined their backs, weapons drawn.

Peeta and Gale's families.

"No." Gale said again louder, backing away from the window, his hands both running into his hair where it looked they were going to pull it out by the roots at any second. Every muscle in his body shook with rage, fear and desperation. When Katniss looked to Peeta, he was still staring out the window, one hand on the glass pane, the other over his mouth. Tears were silently trickling down his ashen cheeks.

"No!" Gale screamed as he grabbed the object nearest him, a small table against the wall, and threw it across the room.

The knot in Katniss's stomach was now all she could feel. Peeta was the first to move after that. He pulled himself away from the window and walked over to Gale who had slumped to the floor, his head in his hands.

"Get up." He said to his dark haired rival. When Gale didn't respond, he spoke again. "If you don't get up now, they'll all die." He said it quietly and then reached down and offered Gale his hand. The man on the ground took one long deep breath before he looked up at Katniss and took Peeta's offered help. His eyes never left her once. Peeta then walked back to his seat and retrieved his letter. He looked at it one more time, reading through every line. By the time he'd finished, Gale had moved back to the windows but he didn't look out. His eyes stayed on the girl in the room. Katniss tore her eyes away from the pained expression on his face and turned to Peeta when he spoke.

"You have to tell us what's going on or they kill them all."

What could she do? She couldn't run, not like yesterday. She couldn't hide; there was nowhere to go. She couldn't clam up, sit down and cry; that would end in nine deaths. So instead of all those unavailable options, she closed her eyes and returned to her chair in a daze. When she looked back up again, she saw Peeta seated once more while Gale remained the statue by the window, unmoving. She had no idea where to start or how. It took her a long time just to say the first word.

"Everything I've done since coming back from the victory tour has been a lie." Both men remained quiet. She looked hesitantly from one to the other but they gave her no signals to follow so she just started at the beginning.

"President Snow came to see me at my house, right before the victory tour and told me that he'd send me messages, through Haymitch and that if I didn't do everything he commanded, he'd take Prim away and... and I don't even know, something worse than I can imagine." Still she received no response from either man. "The first message I got," she choked, "was to convince you to marry me." She spoke to Peeta. The second message I got," tears were rolling down her face and her stomach hurt so much that she had to press her hand against her abdomen, "was for me to find you Gale, the day before the wedding and…" That was the first time Peeta moved. His eyes closed and he hung his head. Gale remained as still as before but his neck looked like the tendons beneath were going to snap. "And sleep with you." Her voice cracked and sputtered the entire time. "My third message, was to marry Peeta," she continue to speak to Gale, "and act as a bride should on her wedding night." The last words she said had been word for word from the folded paper Haymitch had handed her.

That was the first time Gale moved. He turned back to the window and hunched over. Whatever he'd eaten that morning was now strewn across the floor at this feet. Despite everything, Katniss silently breathed a sigh of relief that Gale didn't immediately try to kill Peeta. It gave her the strength to continue.

"After that, every time I came to either of you… it was because a message directed me to. I had to refuse you if it hadn't been ordered."

"How would they know if you did or didn't?" The moment Peeta finished the forced out, broken sentence; she could see the realization come on its own. "No. They didn't. They couldn't have. We would have known, would have noticed."

"You didn't." She answered, not knowing what else to say.

"What?" Gale had recovered enough to stand but the control over his emotions was obviously becoming harder and harder to maintain. "What did they do?" It was more a hiss than a voice. He looked first to Peeta who gave him no reply and then back to her. "What did they do Kat? What the fuck did they do?"

"I'm sorry," was all she could say. She was starting to loose the battle as well.

"WHAT DID THEY DO?" He screamed at her.

It was Peeta who answered. "They recorded it, they watched it, just like the games. Everything."

Gale turned to stone again and turned back to look out the window. "Is that everything Catnip?"

The use of her nickname startled her back into the moment. "No." She breathed out. She heard him laugh once and then go silent again. "I'm going back to the Capitol."

"Why?" Peeta had more tears running down his cheeks but his face was blank and so was his voice.

She closed her eyes and remembered what Haymitch had told her, what had caused her to bolt, to run from everything and everyone, to try and die.

"It's… so much worse."

"Haymitch?" She whispered out. He'd finally looked at her after the glass smashed onto the floor. Neither of them even looked at it. His dull eyes just stared into her frightened ones.

"Finnick Odair. He was 14 when he won his games. He didn't kill ours, either Eriks or Sisla, they both died trying to escape the cornucopia." The fact that he remembered their names crushed Katniss. "He won in the end because a sponsor sent him a trident. It was the most expensive gift ever given before and since. He got that gift because of how beautiful he was. Everything that has happened to him after was also because of how beautiful he was."

"I don't…" she started but Haymitch just waved her off. He'd finally gotten started; he wasn't going to be stopped now.

"He's billed as a playboy, a love them and leave them guy." Haymitch got up and grabbed a bottle off of the kitchen counter before returning. He didn't even bother getting a glass and just took a swig straight from the source. "I had always suspected but I never wanted to believe it. He did it so flawlessly, he made everyone believe it." He waved her off again when he saw her open her mouth. "You see, almost immediately after the victory tour, Finnick spent an inordinate amount of time in the Capitol. His games, even today, are the most replayed of them all. They weren't even the best ones but they are the ones that star the beautiful boy from District 4." He took a deep breath and another swig. "They replay them so much because Snow tells them to. They replay them because they are an advertisement. An advertisement for Finnick."

The confusion on her face must have been apparent. The nice way of trying to explain it had come to and end. She saw his face harden before he took another swig, then two, then three.

"Snow sells him. To the women… sometimes men of the Capitol for money." He pinched the bridge of his nose then and it looked like all the quick alcohol he'd just swilled was about to come back. "That's what's so much worse. Finnick isn't the first to have it done apparently and he's…" It looked like his eyes were shining. Haymitch didn't do that. She'd never once even seen a hint that he could ever cry. "He's not the last."

It wasn't until the final words spilled out of his mouth, until he was jumping up from his seat and grabbing the side of his sink to expel it all that she finally understood.

Then she ran.

Peeta and Gale were just staring at her when she finished the tale. Gale started to shake his head, his lips pressed together into a thin white line and his eyes… she'd never seen so much pain, not in her own reflection after her father died. Not in Rues as she lay dying of the javelin wound and not in Peeta's right now. Katniss could take it no longer. She'd done her task for the day and she could do no more. She stood and screamed.

"I told them both everything, you saw now let them go." Her head whipped from side to side, directing her gaze at the walls, the light fixtures, the furniture, the floorboards. She ran out of the room. "Please let them go, you've won. Let them go!" She ran down the stairs of the portch and didn't even notice when half the weapons retargeted on her. "I did what you wanted, LET THEM GO!" She screamed.

She hadn't noticed one man who was pressing something to his ear. She didn't see him speak into a devise on his lapel. She didn't hear him tell the rest of the peacekeepers to stand down but she saw when they all turned and left. That's when she passed out.

AN: I'm starting to think that it's a good thing that I'm not and never will be in a position of extreme political power. I think I'm enjoying torturing these characters a little too much… What is wrong with me? Lock me up now. Good thing I have this fic to exercise my demons with.

Carla: I'm incredibly flattered to receive a review from someone that doesn't normally give them. That's just so cool, I have a hard time explaining why. And your English is fine; I wish I spoke Spanish even half as well as you write it. I don't think the regularity updates will continue quite this well but I'll always try. Muchas gracias por tus muy simpaticas palabras. It's been ten years since I studied Spanish, I hope that was at least intelligible.

enginette: *tehe* Aren't I a stinker.

catie8: I love that my 'twists and turns' are believable and not put on feeling. I'm really enjoying writing this story… almost as much as I'm enjoying receiving reviews for it. :)

pokips: Awww, I'm so happy you're enjoying it. I like my angst, it's no wonder it's a dominant theme in this story. Peeta and Katniss are just so easy to write with Peeta being all puppy doggish. Katniss and Gale are harder since they are so similar, the lack of contrast makes it harder for me I think. Hope I delivered on the quick update well enough.