The day of the wedding, Katniss sits at the lip of the lake, watching the sun slowly wake the world. It starts with the sky, dappling it a kaleidoscope of oranges and blues. It melts across the earth, nudging flowers and tingeing trees and rousing the wildlife. It dips into the water, inking it a deep blue.
Hours pass and the lake becomes a mirror, so clear that she can see every flick of fish below, every swoop of swallow above. A dragonfly skirts the surface, its pinprick footsteps leaving ripples. Air is honey in her lungs.
Katniss sits and breathes, thinking of nothing at all, letting nature move all around her and through her. Maybe, just maybe, a puff of breeze will dissolve her and dance her off like the fronds of a dandelion. She'd like that, to be scattered through the forest, her forest, burrowed deep into the womb of the earth, where she can be safe. Emerging each spring as a reminder of a girl who no longer exists.
When the sun tells her it's time—she can no longer ignore its heated stare— Katniss stretches to her feet. A deer raises its willowy head from where it had been lapping at the lake nearby. Remarkably, it's not afraid of the huntress. Not here. Not now. Not today.
Katniss leaves this place then, twining like a ghost through the trees. Nothing feels real. Nothing feels.
Stepping through the fence is like stepping back into reality. Already, her lungs clog with coal. Already, her mind clogs with a maelstrom of thoughts and feelings that scrape at her insides. The few folks she passes hurry to finish up a final chore or two, many already with their hair greased back and their shoes spit. They all have somewhere to be. As does she.
Back at the house, Katniss finds Mother sitting at the kitchen table, set with two glasses of milky water and two plates of food. Katniss ignores the offer and slips instead to the bedroom, where she sheds the trappings of the forest, sloughing off her boots and her pants and her grime with a bucket of a bath.
Then she shimmies on her attendant's dress, the one her mother had made special for the occasion with some leftover fabric. A compromise, she slings a shawl over her shoulders to hide the worst of her flesh.
Prim would be pleased.
"May I?" Mother says when Katniss emerges, a butterfly, and Katniss lets her touch the hair. Mother's fingers have always been magic.
Afterward, Katniss avoids the stranger in the mirror.
Then, she and Mother walk, side by side, to the town, joining the pilgrimage from the Seam, the only sound the whisper of fabric and feet.
It's like Reaping Day.
But it's worse.
When they arrive at the square, the rest of the District is already there, solemn sentinels, squared off to the stage. The stage where, this very evening, Prim and Rory were to be married.
As one, they watch.
They watch the pomp and circumstance. A parade of dolls on the screen, with their painted-on smiles. These children who dance for the Game Masters, puppets on an invisible string, whoring themselves to the highest bidders in the Capitol. Some play coy. Some play cocky. All are doomed.
Then, the final district, out steps Prim.
At the sight of her, the crowd doesn't cheer. It doesn't ooh or ahh or catcall or wolfwhistle or groan or moan.
Instead, it just takes a collective breath, crowds in the Capitol and the districts alike. Breathes her in like fresh air. For unlike her peers, Prim is not overdone. She's not unrecognizable. She doesn't primp or preen or pander. Instead, she just stands, slim and sure before twelve districts. Her face is serene, calm in that way that she is when faced with a medical emergency. It's like the Capitol crowd before her is a gaping wound—and she knows exactly what to do.
Katniss's throat grows unbearably tight. Her eyes burn.
Then the camera pans down, and Katniss sees what Prim wears. A simple wedding dress, a replica of the one that's still hung carefully behind their bedroom door. The one that Katniss' fingers had brushed as she'd carefully extricated her own dress from the hanger.
Katniss feels as though everything in her will combust. But she won't (will not) cry.
You look incandescent, Flickerman gushes, but Katniss ignores all that. She just watches her sister's face, the way she shapes words. Her small, sad smile. Katniss could watch her sister forever.
But beside her, Mother suddenly grips her wrist, insistent. Katniss becomes aware of it, something else that's incandescent. Something that has begun to bleed into the inhuman glow of the monolithic monitor.
All around them, golden stars begin to shine, held aloft by hands and arms throughout the square. Families everywhere unveil the lanterns they snuck in with them, under shirts and skirts. This is how it would have been, the twilight of Prim's wedding. At a wedding, the light means that we're with you, we'll help you, we love you.
This light means all that and more. This light bathes every face, brings a sheen to every eye.
This light defies the darkness.
The Hawthornes trickle to the Everdeen house at dusk, another day that ends like a whimper. Mother meets Hazelle with a hug that's more them holding each other up, faces haggard. Their tears have flowed since the almost-wedding, life draining out. Gale arrives last, late and filthy. He scrubs down out back while they prepare a simple, silent meal.
The two families have gathered every night since the Games began, finding comfort in solidarity. Together, they've watched it all. And in all of it, Katniss sees Peeta. His influence, his eloquence in Rory's mouth during the interviews, proclaiming his love for Prim. The bold move of them running, hand in hand, from the Cornucopia. The silver parachute that sank their third night without food. Bread. He sent them bread.
Katniss has hardly moved from her nest on the couch in days, desperate for glimpses of her sister. Even now, Gale is the one to hand her a plate. She doesn't want to miss it, not a single second.
They chew in silence, this lull. It's nearly prime time. An hour after the shifts let out across the Districts, well past the time for something to happen. Too many hours have stretched today without death, a rising tension. Even the announcers have been silent for large swathes, instead piping inappropriately cheery music over footage of the remaining tributes.
The monitor cycles through scenes of the remaining tributes. Flick, and it shows mosquitos drifting in a lazy circle, like buzzards. They wend above a half-rotted corpse of a tree, with roots like frizzy old hair. The fat flies are everywhere, swollen with the blood of other unfortunates, their drone a steady indicator of death. One of the perils of this arena, for those who dare sit still. The column of mosquitos will gradually increase to a veritable tornado, a signal as clear as smoke.
The boy from District 10 knows this, had managed to evade the mosquitos, ever on the move. But that was before the rivers had dried up. Now, four days without water, he's beyond caring. The flies have found him now, and it's a race. Either the Careers will be drawn to the signal, or the boy will die.
Either way, the boy is already dead.
Flick, and the monitor shows the Career pack. They haven't yet noticed the flies, only now beginning to crest above the tallest trees less than a mile away. Instead, they fight and fornicate, like they always do, fearless around their fire. They make plans, brag about what they'll do when they finally catch the lovers from 12. "I'll show her," says the swarthy Capitol favorite, "what a real man feels like."
Katniss wishes she could jam an arrow through his eye.
Flick, and the monitor shows the lovebirds themselves.
Katniss had been afraid, so afraid, that the arena this year would continue the trend of past years, an artificial death trap. Last year, it was a labyrinth of corridors, almost like a mine, with new threats around every corner. The year before, it looked like an abstract painting, everything the wrong color, the wrong size, a surreal magnum opus, as Flickerman had deemed it. Sky blood-red, blue trees, nothing green or earthy. Nowhere to hide.
This year marks a return to ordinary. Katniss had sagged against Gale in relief at the panorama of a forest. It gives Prim and Rory a chance, maybe even an edge, given their experience. Already, they've taken advantage—Rory has set some crude, yet effective traps for small game, much to Gale's surprise and pride. Prim has foraged for edible berries and plants. She also found the less edible variety, creating pastes and powders to blind and maim. So far, no one has gotten close enough for her to have to use them.
But that's about to change.
Somewhere, there is a button, waiting to be pushed, a trigger for the next calamity to drive them from their safe haven. Yesterday, it was a flash flood from the nearby hills. They'd been briefly separated, Prim up a tree and Rory rushing to lead the Careers away from her hiding spot. Somehow, he'd eluded them long enough for them to stumble on the tribute from District 5 instead. Then he'd doubled back to rescue Prim. Now, they've set up camp in a shallow grotto, shielded from the elements and from prying eyes.
The cameras linger on the lovers, cycling through various angles, as they settle in for another long night at that perfect temperature, down to a science. Just cold enough that it's difficult to sleep, but not cold enough that you can die from hypothermia. They're lucky, at least, to have each other for heat.
Katniss tries very hard not to think about the boy from 10.
"Do you remember," Rory says, snuggling Prim in the crook of his arm, "the first time I asked you to go steady?" The question makes Prim smile, how many times he had to ask her to go steady before she said yes.
It's a game they play, each night, talking through their favorite memories of their courtship, their lover's spats. Breaking hearts all over the Capitol, the thought that only one of them will survive this. They're doing it for the cameras. They're keeping themselves alive.
Somehow, Katniss knows that this was Peeta's idea. He's doing what she asked, what she demanded, doing his best to keep them alive long enough so he can do…something, anything. She knows, that he'll try.
"There's only one Victor, Katniss!" Gale had exploded, when she voiced her hope to him.
Selfishly, Katniss had asked Peeta to save only Prim. Even though Gale can't see it, she knows Rory would agree with her.
But now, Peeta's running out of time. The monitor has switched back to the Careers, camped less than a mile from her sister's position. Rory won't be able to elude them much longer, not with the Game Makers herding them together. And the viewers are getting restless. Only a matter of time, now, until someone pushes that next button.
But then, something happens.
Something small. Something impossible.
The screen flickers.