"I hope you've brought me good news," Plutarch looks like he's about to pass out. I wonder when the last time he got a decent nights sleep was. Probably around about the last time I did. Which was... I've forgotten.
"Depends who you are." I wave the letter like I'm fanning myself. "Don't tell me you didn't read this when you found it."
"Thankfully they were smarter than that. From your tone, it sounds like they wouldn't have given it to you if they had."
"They would have burned it. And then spat on it. Then thrown it away."
"Just as well they didn't. What even is it?"
"Some kind of meeting," I keep it vague. I don't want to tell him what's really in it. "A surrender, sort of."
"Not the same stuff he had Peeta spouting? We had enough trouble with that last time. Is he still trying to play that card?"
"No. Times have changed. None of the rebels gonna surrender now. Mockingjay's made sure of it."
"Too right she has. That sort of attitude is damaging."
"I want to change it," I say. I cover the letter with my hands like I'm trying to hide it. Like if I hide it for long enough it will disappear as if I'm a magician.
"What do you mean?"
"I want him to surrender."
"So do I. I want him to surrender. I want to go home. I want it to all end and I don't have to worry that I'll end up taking nightlock. But he won't agree to it. The Capitol won't stop until they can powder their noises with Katniss Everdeen's ashes. They've even tried to kill her with Peeta."
"But the war's not going their way," I point out. "Once District 2 goes down only the Capitol will be left. Then they're really screwed."
"Will District 2 even fall? It's a tough nut to crack. If we can't crack it, then we are the ones who are screwed."
"But the odds-" I stop and start again. "We're more likely to win. We have the whole country. They have nothing but Two and the Capitol. Unless they wipe us out in Two completely, kill the mockingjay and squash the hope, the other districts can still gang up on the Capitol and starve 'em out."
"But there is still a chance," he points out. "Until Two falls, he can make a gamble on it."
"Look," I say. "Hear me out. Snow holds onto his power like it's his lifebelt, which it sort of is. I know that better than anyone. But he doesn't love the Capitol. He don't give a damn about any of them. The only reason he lets them live is because they don't cross him. If the choice is defendin' em or escapin' with his life, he'll escape."
"But if he has the slightest chance at keeping in power, he'll cling on to it." Plutarch argues. "Risking his life is part and parcel of it. He's risked it before, you've told me, Finnick told it to the whole country. If he can mutilate himself to get power and risk his life to get power, he can risk it to keep it. Besides, surrendering would be signing his own death warrant and crowd-surfing into a raging mob."
"Unless it wouldn't." I sigh and bury my head in my hands. This is the tricky part. "I'm going to have to offer something in return, to make him agree to it. That something will have to be his life."
"What?"
"If Snow promises to end the war, end the Hunger Games, leave the Capitol and live alone in hiding for the rest of his life, I will promise to let him and his family live. No executin'."
"None of the rebels would agree to this! This is doomed to fail! Katniss agreed to be the mockingjay on the condition that she is the one to kill him."
"I have hundreds of people out there with guns who want to kill me every day of my life," I remind him crossly. "A teenager who has been to hell and back and runs around carrying a stick and a bit of string is the least of my worries."
"This isn't what the districts want. They want him dead."
"So do I," I whisper.
"What was that? I didn't hear you."
"So do I!" I shout it louder than I mean to. "I want him dead. No, I need him to die. He took my daughter. He killed her. He poisoned me. He killed my- our son. He let them kill my husband. He never did anything to stop the peacekeeper, not as far as I know. He stood by and let Tiberius ruin my mind and- and- do those things to the Avoxes. He let him do that because it made the Capitol more powerful and he wanted me to forget. He sent my victors into the Quarter Quell. He sold the victors to the Capitol people. He burned Twelve and would have done the same again to us if it weren't for the grain growing. He never stopped the Games, because it would hurt his power if he did.
"I need him dead. Once he's dead, I'm free. I don't have to be scared anymore. I can maybe try and put it behind me, like- like,"
"Closure?" He suggests.
"Yeah. Like that. But if this war don't end soon, and I mean real soon, it's gonna go out with a bang. And when it does, we all lose, even if it means we win. I've already lost one child startin' this war. I can't lose another to end it."
"But the war won't end until he's dead. The districts will not let it end until he is."
"I want to see my children alive more than I want to see him dead." That much I do know. "Anybody with loved ones would say the same, I bet you. I want to close it off and end it all and I can't do that until Katniss sticks an arrow through his head. But is she even gonna get the chance? He's dying. What if he dies before she can get him anyway? Then it'll all be for nothing."
"You've been saying he's dying of poison the last two decades." Plutarch don't believe me. "What makes you think you're right now when you were wrong before?"
"Because I said. Power is his lifebelt. He can't barely live without it. When it starts slipping, he cracks up. It's falling away now. So he is too."
"That's a tenuous correlation," He waves it off with his hand. "No. Why turn on your own people for this, anyway? Why not enjoy his execution and know that justice was done?"
"Because I don't think it's worth people's lives." I tell him. "It was before, when Peeta said to end the war. Back then it was back to normal, back to games and Reapings and torture and starving. Let him go now and the same thing happens as not letting him go. The games end. The Capitol gives in. Your republic thing happens. Only he doesn't die. And neither do all the people that will die between now and the end of the war. Which as I've said, is gonna be a lot. This only gets bloodier."
I look at him and I know that I haven't completely answered the question.
"I'm a leader now." I tell him. "I'm a dictator but I'm also a leader. They don't want me to and I can't make them want me. I won't be- happy's the wrong word. I won't be- be able to cope with everything properly until he's dead and it's all over. I want that. I want to put it away and die happy. But it's not about what I want. It's about what's best for my district, what's best for those people I'm in charge of who hate me as a dictator and maybe even a traitor as well. I don't have no right to go up to a mother or a father or a kid in the street and say "hey, you know those people you love with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind? Yeah, they're gonna die miserable in agony and you're gonna die miserable in agony and when you all die everyone else will be miserable because you're dead, but you're all gonna do that so that when I die naturally and in less pain than any of those deaths I'll be slightly less miserable. Because one guy who we despise dies when he was gonna die anyway."
It's a crude way of putting it; and not fair to me and my suffering, but it gets the point across.
"Every mistake I've ever made was because I've been selfish." I tell him, because that's what my notes told me. "Everything I regret doing was done because I was being selfish. I won't regret this. Because it isn't about me anymore." I wouldn't say wanting Snow dead is selfish, but I can't stop myself from trying to end this. It feels like the only thing I can do.
"If your district finds out what you want to do," he says slowly, letting it all sink in. "They will drag you out and hang you from a lamppost by your ankles."
"And you? Would you do that? Or would you let me go and talk this over?"
Plutarch doesn't say anything.
"Look at the odds. If it turns out this was all a trap and he was just trying to get me there so he could ask me questions and torture and kill me, then I die. One person. One old stupid person. But if it works, then it can all be over."
Still nothing.
"Let me go." I plead. "I won't promise the earth. I'll make him want to go. I won't forget to make sure he agrees to all of it. I won't stop even if he hangs me while I'm still yammerin' on about it. I'll yammer away even while I'm on the scaffold, or the table or the gallows or when the firing squad are pointin' at me. I won't stop until he agrees to it."
"Fine. Fine! If that's what it must cost! Fine! Go! Don't blame me if you die," he warns. "But you can't make it look like you're going of your own free will. Otherwise-"
"Mob, lamppost, ankles."
"Yes. It'll be a very, very risky journey. Do you have people you trust completely?"
"Enough for this. I won't tell 'em why. And I can blackmail 'em to prevent them from telling other people what they're doing."
"You have peacekeeper uniforms?"
"Yup."
"A hovercraft?"
"Yup." Capitol seal and all.
"Then use them. Stage a kidnapping. Unfortunately the disguised may be gunned down in the process, hopefully only some of them."
"OK." I get up to go and get everything ready but then I double back. "One last thing. After the war,"
I swallow. "I want Mayella Snow in my custody."
He frowns at me. "Snow's granddaughter? Why? There's no need. She'll just go living with her parents, as she does now."
"I know, but... I just can't shake this feeling... I just... want to keep her out of the way of everything. She's 12, and sheltered and... Fragile. I don't want Alma frightenin' her."
"Old mother hen," he says fondly. "You're worrying over nothing. Coin is stern, yes, and fearsome, but she isn't petty. She won't hurt Mayella. Nor her parents, unless being arrogant, capricious, spiteful and selfish are now hanging offences. And they'll keep her safe, once all this is over. Besides, she'll probably be more afraid if she's sent off miles away to live with a strange old woman she doesn't know."
"You're right, I guess," I say, defeated. I shrug. "I'm just being silly."
"You can't go!" my son shouts. He smacks a fist down on the letter. "You promised. You promised you wouldn't go back to him!"
"This ain't no request, Howard," I sigh. I am almost 79 years old, and tired of fighting. Tired of losing people when I do. "I have been summoned."
"He can't summon you like you're his bloody lapdog!" Whoever uses the word bloody in District Nine? I ask myself. He must have read it in a book somewhere. He picks things up like that.
"I think you'll find he can."
"Then I'm going with you." he blurts out- what's the word? Impetuously. Howard always dives head first into things. Just like his father did. What would Aunt Emmeline say? 'Acts first and thinks later.'
I miss Aunt Emmeline.
"I don't think that's a good idea," I tell him.
"You can't stop me comin' with you any more than I can stop you going."
"They won't like it," I say for the first and last time.
"They don't like us anyway, Mom. Victors are executed on live TV every other day. Why are you still even alive? Because of an old memory? That's all that stopped you being reaped for the Quell. No. I wanna make sure you come home again."
No, my memory didn't really stop me being reaped for the Quell. Chance stopped me being Reaped for the Quell. Me attempting to die alone out beyond the district fence stopped me. Funny that. Wanting to die stopped me from dying.
"But if I come home or not is all on my own head, Howard. I've done what I had to do and now I gotta face that. I don't want you getting involved. Come with me if you want but don't think it will change anything." I'm lyin' of course. I'm not going to let him tag along with me. He will stay here, where Alec and Dorrotha are. Where the family are. Where he can live.
He looks me in the eye, pleading.
"Don't go. Please Mom, don't go. What if something bad happens?" Bad things have already happened. I'm ready for them now. Lots of practice.
"Then I'll have finally paid for my mistake." I turn to the window and look out at all my fields of grain, the fields I killed for. The fields I killed my daughter for. From up here, looks like they're waving to me, beckoning me to join them and be safe. But nothing ain't safe any more.
I'm not different, I realise then.
I killed Carmelita with my own hands for defying me. I beat and control my people, telling them what they can and cannot do. They can't take more food than their ration, they have a curfew. I'm trying to let their enemies go free. I'm not punishing the people who deserve to be punished, I'm letting 'em go. They never chose me as their leader, I made them follow me. They have no other choice. I am their dictator.
I let my daughter die in order to keep control of those people.
I'm just as bad as he is. And that is almost more than I can bear.
Should I be surprised? No, I shouldn't be surprised. He once said he loved me, didn't he? And this is why. Because he is a heartless cynic; and I have a cruelty of my own. He knew it all along, it just took me too long to find out. But it was always true. It was just a half of me that hadn't blossomed yet.
Maybe I cry when I realise it. Maybe I laugh like a loon. Maybe I do both.
"I won't go," I promise to Howard and the lie is as terrible as the lie I've been telling him everyday all his life.
He spends ages just breathing out. Relieved. "Thank you, Mom."
"I'll stay here with you," I lie. "You're right. I should be here. Leaving would be stupid."
"I knew you'd come around in the end." He hugs me gently and I can feel the contentment in it.
"Yes." I let him give me his arm to lean on. "Let's go."
I can still feel his arms hugging me to him, still feel the last bit of relief I tricked him into feeling when their hands grab me.
They force my hands behind my back, I see Howard's face, his horrified yelling face, before the bag goes down and all there is is stuffy air and itchy cloth.
There's gunshots and shouting and I feel a big jolt as they throw me in front of them, that must be what they're doing, like a shield and for one scream I'm sure I've just been shot (I haven't) and then I feel like I'm flying through the air.
I'm a bird I think stupidly. My wings have grown. For that one second I feel like a mockingjay. Until I realise I've not flown, but been thrown and the door slamming means I'm in some kind of van. Peacekeeper van. Good luck if they try and get me now. They won't be able to keep up.
I shake my head up and down, trying to knock off the bag and knock out Howard's screaming which is still running in circles in my ears. I don't stop shaking until we get to the hovercraft and I sit hunched up on the floor of it, ignoring all the pain. I go over the plan over and over again in my head, like I'm going off to a battle and to fight and then I guess that that's just what I'm doing. And I have to win.
Howard. Oh. Howard. Please. I wish you could understand. But the reason I'm doing this is because you can't. And you shouldn't. It hurts too much when you do.
I have betrayed him, going behind his back like this, doing all this without telling him, but it will be worth it. I might die, but he will live. That's what will give me courage. I'm selfish, I guess because I'm all he has left now, and he is all I have left of Boff. I have to leave him; and he will have to suffer, but he will live. He has to live. If he lives, I'm home.