CHAPTER TWENTY
I should've been happy.
I should've been glad.
No, scratch that. I should've been beyond happy, beyond glad, beyond the greatest joy I had ever come to (and by the way, I haven't had much happiness in my life). I should've thanked the heavens and every god in the old myths, fell to my knees in front of the Girl on Fire, and appreciated the mockingjays in a new way.
But instead, all I feel inside is dread. Horror. Misery. I'm out of the arena, but this whole world is an arena. I'm only away from a small part of it. There were only twenty-three opponents in there. In this world, there are millions and billion.
My heart is empty.
Most people would say that I would be under depression because of Finnick's death. I denied that, because, well, it isn't true. But later, I would come to regret it, because I had no idea what I am going into now.
The thing is, I'm not half-dead, crying myself to sleep every night, being attacked by rampaging nightmares, and live in a hospital bed because of Finnick's passing away. No, the thing that bothers me the most... is Cinna.
One might say that it's because my stylist turned into a mutt. Yes, they're right. But only barely. What I fear for is beyond that, the very terror of it too horrendous to think of. I have to face it, though, because it's my duty. I feel, with the same power surging through Katniss Everdeen decades ago, that I have a role to play. I have to end this war.
Cinna is - I mean - was a mutt. All along, he had been playing me into his treacherous claws. The real Cinna had eyes lit up by fire, his imagination sparked by the leftover embers in the fireplace. He never would've dulled those emotions by dumping snow onto an innocent girl, and chilling what's left of her warm happiness, and changing her into someone different. And the entire time, this whole fact has been so obvious to me, but I had refused to accept it, because this whole concept was too miraculous to shove away. I should've shoved it away with all of my strength and dumped Cinna into an ocean of worries, where they can drown him instead of the other way around. The fact is...
Cinna can't be alive. If he had been presumed dead for fifteen years, he should've been dead and killed by the Capitol. His body... is just a shell of its former beauty, used as a costume for a mutt's soul to occupy and trick me into its sly hands. The real Cinna is dead, and all that's left is the remains of his twisted, mutated form.
Now, the real question arises. The districts couldn't have made mutt-Cinna. They might be cruel enough to throw one last Hunger Game for the children to feed its hungry mouth, but never recreate someone in a mutt form - especially someone honored, someone mourned by Katniss Everdeen herself.
There's only one theory I can think of without working my brain too hard.
The Capitol is still alive and thriving.
As soon as I manage to tell Katniss Everdeen about my latest theory, she calls for a council meeting immediately. Even me, a thirteen-year-old girl, was invited.
Now, I slouch in my seat, watching the people surrounding me. Gale Hawthorne. Peeta Mellark. Beetee. My mother, Annie. President Paylor. Plutarch Heavensbee. Fulvia Cardew. Dozens of other officials I cannot name.
I'm excited for this, oddly. I want to show the rebels, the districts, the flames, that I'm worthy. That I'll take down my home. That I'll defeat them and humiliate them in the worst ways possible. That I wouldn't hesitate to kill one of my breed.
Then comes the line that changes everything.
"We need to eliminate the hidden Capitol immediately," Katniss Everdeen declares. "We need to control the small empire they manage to hold, and kill the last of their kind. We need to take them prisoner, interrogate about their headquarters. We will not rest until every last one of them is dead!"
This statement is so similar to ones I had heard before, and I'm more than familiar with that. My eyes widen in shock, and realize that the Mockingjay wants to kill them all. Showing no mercy, and destroy their hideout completely. Wipe the remains of the hidden Capitol from Panem's history.
I hadn't expected this. I had expected war prisoners, not direct murder. I had expected at least some show of kindness the Girl on Fire had showed to us, the last tributes of the last Hunger Game. I hadn't expected... a full-out blown war between the rebel soldiers and the Capitol.
How ironic. The rebels are the ones fighting back, not the other way around.
"Stop," I croak, but in the din of cheers that had arisen for the Mockingjay, my voice is unheard among the cacophonies of others. "Stop!" I yell one more time.
Slowly, one person nudges another, and a blissful silence welcomes me to the podium. I swallow hard and rise to my feet. Even standing up, I'm shorter than Gale Hawthorne, sitting down beside me.
But what he doesn't have - and what the rest of the rebels don't have - is my will. My motive. My cause to fight.
"I'm not fire," I say simply. Blank looks shoot at me from across the room. I swallow my fears and keep going. "I'm not one of you guys. Fire only destroys and destroys, surging forwards, never looking back at the trail of destruction it has left behind. Smoking ashes, still burning woodlands... I'm not like that. I do it carefully, look at the last few steps I had just taken. I look forwards, seeing where I'm headed into. I look at where I am right now, and what I should do. I'm not a beast, only blindly stepping into enemy territory.
"Both of you - Capitol and rebel - have one thing in common: the fire. The flames leap inside you, gnawing your heart out, just forcing you to devour one more thread of your enemies. One side attacks, and the other fights back. One side defends themselves, the other pushes in harder. That's all the battlefield is made of: hundreds and hundreds of spirits and souls, children of the same fire. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be made into one. I don't want to be controlled!
"I just want to be me, and no one else! I just want to feel the true power of being alive. All my life, I had been played, into one side's hands, and then another. I want to make my own decisions, my own paths for my future and destiny to come. I want to walk my own road to death, and I don't want anyone else accompanying me.
"Some of you will think that this is crazy. But I swear, I'm not. I just want to live a life of my own, in peace and silence. Isn't that what you all fought for? To live in an era of peace and love? This isn't peace! This isn't love! This isn't silence! What you are planning right now, is a massacre. A bloodshed of loved ones being torn away from each other. Millions of battle cries wailing to death. Is it just too much to ask to make a compromise? Is it too much to ask to at least try for a peace treaty, and give them a chance? Is it just too much to ask to be free?
"I'm begging you, at least give them a chance, to live out their lives, and be free!"
Under the table, my hands clench into fists. This has to be a battle that I have to win, for Finnick, for his father, for generations upon generations of people who fought for the same side I do now. Capitol or rebel, or any other side... are all fighting for this cause.
We are the direct opposite of fire, fueled by anger and a need for revenge. No, we are the children of snow, of ice, of the cool autumn wind that chills our bones. We can eliminate our fears and anger and everything in between, we can cool down even the most furious people. Snow isn't all that bad, and I should know, because I am one.
I can't lose this battle. The flames had already made fun of me once, taking away the people I love. Everyone knows that fire melts snow... but everyone also knows that when snow turns to water and salty tears... they can douse even the strongest rages of fire.
Guess what? The Capitol is back.
Okay, sorry for not updating, I've been suffering from a huge case of writer's block lately and I've escaped to the Corner of Doom and Bloodshed and Migrating Monarch Butterflies, AKA the world of Asclepia, or Trauma Center/Trauma Team. So, yeah. Want to see what I've been doing lately? Check out my TwistedJabberjays account.
Ah, yes, speaking of Trauma Center, if anyone can find a TC nugget in this chapter, I'll write Twenty-One faster. Hint: it doesn't have anything to do with Trauma Team, unfortunately, so it's not the Cinna-shell thing that you were probably thinking of with Rosalia Rossellini and Twisted Rosalia and all.
ANYWAYS... yeah. Oh, and lemonsmania, since you found this, can you make an account and review with that since... well... I wanna talk to you? Thanks!