I have gotten Coin to allow us to go back to district 12, after my argument with Gale I ran and found her to tell her my idea, at first she was hesitant but my argument to her was that if they wanted something real, something they saw back in district 8 than they were going to need me to be somewhere that I can be real and genuine again. She agreed to make arrangements for me and my team to up there tomorrow, I'm not sure if my team includes Gale anymore but if it dose I don't know how I feel about it anymore, I don't know how I feel about him anymore. I ask Finnick if he wants to go with us tomorrow but he declines saying that he doesn't think he would be any help since it isn't his district, he adds in with a laugh about how he's already had his time in the spotlight and that it's my turn, I hug him and try and prepare for the day I am about to face. I get up and before I leave I tell my mom not to worry but know she will anyway, this is something I haven't felt in a long time and it's nice to have my mother worry about me, it makes me think about all those times I worried about Prim when she wouldn't and all the times I have already worried about my baby, so tiny and helpless about to be born into a world full of war and violence, I remember the other reason that I agreed to be the Mockinjay, so my child will get to grow up in the world that I never got the opportunity too a world without the games and I may be the reason that the games are over for good. I get on the hovercraft and find that Gale is in fact coming with us, I sit farthest away from him and avoid eye contact, I can sense that he is doing the same thing because he dose not look at me once, he spends his time making small talk with the film crew. When we get to what remains of district 12 it looks exactly like the last time I saw it, I know that it's mostly gone but part of me wished that when I came back here it would be different, it would be fixed, it may have been the none rational part of my brain that tried to convince myself it would be different but it was both parts that were disappointed when I arrived. The film crew tells us that they want footage of us going through whats left of district 12, they say that the emotion we show will be both real and raw and is the best thing they can possibly get from us so that's all they ask. We spend our day going through the rubble of what was once our home and while I am still mad at Gale I am grateful that he does most of the talking, we don't go to victors village because that was the only part that wasn't destroyed but there is still plenty of footage that they get, I fight back tears again when I find myself standing where the bakery once stood, the whole point of this was to show Peeta what has happened to the things that he loves and show him that it was the Capitol that took them away, memories of countless times going there and trading game for some fresh bread to bring back to my sister. One memory sticks out in particular, the time where I sat just feet away slowly starving to death when he threw out two loafs of bread for me, that was the day that everything changed for me, that was the day that hope was brought into my life again and it was all thanks to Peeta, that was one of the many times that he saved me. While I haven't spoke much the whole day I know that I have to be the one to talk about the bakery, I know that Gale won't want to talk about the place where Peeta spent his days and this place is special to me too, I step in front of where things used to be and I just start talking "This is where the bakery used to be, this is the place that the Melark family used to work at, including my finacee Peeta. It was here that during the bombing that district 12 endured that the family was unable to get out and tragically died, while something so awful happened here I still have some happy memories here, memories of a hard working family, ones that include Peeta. He worked the hardest out of everyone actually" I let a laugh escape thinking of all the times I came in and saw him working in the back, I now think it was in attempts to impress me, what were the odds that being forced into an arena with twenty two other people was what got me to notice him. "This was also the place where we first met, it everyone already knows that story because we talked about it during the games but what you don't know is that he saved my life that day, and not only mine but my sister Prim's too. This place is special to me because I always thought when we went back to 12 to live our lives together" I put my hands over my stomach as my voice cracks, I promised myself that I wouldn't cry but tears start streaming down my face fast "that this would be where Peeta taught our child to bake, where I could show him or her one day where his parents met and how important that was, that without that boy with the bread, they wouldn't have even gotten a chance to live" Everyone is silent as I stop talking, Gale is focusing his eyes on the ground and avoiding my attention.
"Why don't we take a break now" I can't tell who says that because my vision is blurred by all the tears. I follow everyone over to a stream that we find and as I sit down I take a moment to marvel at its beauty, something so violent shocked the whole land and yet this one place stayed untouched, it reminds me of Peeta. I think back on not to long ago to the night before our first games when he told me that he wasn't going to let the games change him, and he was right, they were unable to change my boy with the bread. Just like this land he is pure and beautiful, I just hope that I won't be to late when this message that I just filmed reaches him. Soon food is being passed out and the avox who is named Pollux try's to hand me a cheese sandwich, I decline telling him that I am not hungry when he picks up a stick and writes out the word 'baby' I smile and nod "Yes your right, I should probably eat for the baby" as we eat I notice a black bird flying across the lake I smile and nudge him and point to my Mockingjay pin to indicate that that bird over there is the symbol for the rebellion, its my symbol now. I decide to show him exactly what they can do and I whistle out Rue's call, it's been so long since I have let myself think of that melody and it makes me smile to know how proud she would be of me if she was still here. After the bird has copied my tune he whistles a tune of his own and his happiness makes me smile, it seems that this is the first conversation that he has had in years, he then takes the stick and writes out the word 'sing' with a question mark after it, I think in my head of the different songs that I could sing, I rack my brain when I remember one that I used to sing with my father, one that was forbidden to me as a child, one that I never quit understood until now. "This song is called The Hanging Tree" I close my eyes and begin singing the words that even to this day I know every word of.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree" those words make me think of Peeta and how the last thing I said to him was that I would see him at midnight, but midnight never came for us.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree" at this point I have the birds attention now and they have started to copy the melody.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree" At this point there is a hush in the trees, with the only sound other than my singing is the rustle of the leaves, the birds have stopped coping me and are now silent, it's as if everyone and everything is stopping what they are doing to listen to my voice, to my song. Peeta was right when he said that they fall silent when I sing.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree" When I am finished I can see that everyone's eyes are on me, the song is about a woman who is willing to die for the man that she loves who is to be hanged for his crimes, this song is almost made for me and Peeta, I know he would die for me, I have seen him tell him to kill him so that I could live when we were in the games the first time, and again the second games when he told me if only one person was going to make it out alive it was going to be me, he would do that for me. I am so lost in thought that I didn't notice until now that I am being filmed and have been the whole song, someone yells cut indicating that it is time for us to leave and as the hovercraft takes off I look down of what is left of district 12, the place where mine and Peeta's story began and after today I have hope that our child's will also begin in district 12, someday we will come back here together, as a family.
Authors note- Hey guys! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, I just wanted to say that I do not own the words to the song 'The Hanging Tree' those belong to Suzanne Collins author of Mockinjay the book the song originally came from. Anyway I hope you liked this chapter it was really fun to write and I think it turned out really good and I loved it so I hope you do too, it is getting close to Peeta's return so I know that I am getting pretty excited lol, leave me a review if you enjoyed this chapter and until next time-Izzy