I think Flavius might cry.
"A wig maybe?" he frets, running his fingertips over what remains of my hair. He snips a few places with his shears, evening out what Annie could not. "Let me see if I can find you a wig."
"No, we should leave it," I say.
"But Katniss, I want to make you look your best!" Flavius flitters, desperately looking back and forth between me and Octavia and Venia.
"I know, but…" I try to find the words. "I'm not my best."
They strap me into what looks like my Mockingjay uniform. It's not what Cinna made me, it's a replica. It will probably be in a museum someday, Octavia said. My real Mockingjay uniform burned along with my body. They had to peel it off me, taking large strips of my skin with it. I wonder if they'll lay that out in a museum too. A pile of burnt, melted skin wrapped in synthetic armor with a little plaque in front of it – What's Left of the Girl on Fire.
There's a soft knock on the door. Peeta peeks his head inside.
"Are you ready? Haymitch is almost done his introduction," he asks, not completely pulling his body inside.
"Peeta! Let me look at you!" Octavia tweets, grabbing him by the jacket and dragging him into the room. Venia and Octavia flit around him, straightening this and tidying that. Venia pours some goop in her hands and rubs it over his face. His tone visibly evens between the burns and his real skin. She turns to me with the putty but I shake my head and turn away.
"We should go," I state, grabbing my bow and empty quiver and swinging both over my shoulder. Peeta follows me out the door, but once in the hallway I stop suddenly and lean back in. "Thank you," I offer, and the three stylists wave me away.
Peeta tries to keep the pace up, but I'm dragging my feet. The temporary prep area was set up a few hundred feet from the stage, toward the mansion and away from the crowds. I could hear them clapping and cheering from the changing room.
"How's the speech going?" I ask.
"Good. He's said everything he said he would," Peeta replies.
"Is Finnick there?" I ask. A little smile spreads across Peeta's face, but he tries to hide it.
"No. He told Coin she could, um…" His voice trails off, his face flushing red.
"What?" I ask, grabbing his shoulder. At my touch his eyes dart up to mine, sparking with surprise. "Sorry," I say, dropping my hand away.
"He told Coin to suck it. His words," Peeta says. His gaze drops to my hand. "I liked that," he whispers and my stomach flips in a way it hasn't since we were backstage on our Tour. I should say something, I should step forward. I take a breath.
"There you are!" I hear a voice trill from ahead and I see Effie Trinket fluttering toward us. Effie looks different. She's certainly thrilled to be out of the gray uniform of District 13, but she's not quite as clownish as she used to be. Her make-up would be garish on me, but it is subtle for Effie. I can see her real face peeking out from behind the powder. "Come children! Move along! The stairs to the stage are this way!"
As we climb the steps, Haymitch is making his way down. He gives me a thumbs up. Good. At least something is going the way we planned. When Peeta and I reach the stage, the sound of the crowd is overwhelming. I don't know where all these people came from. Soldiers and rebels that were well enough to travel were sent back to their home districts. Certainly the people of the Capitol wouldn't cheer for their President's executioner like this. As I scan the crowd, though, the faces are those of Capitolite and rebel alike. Skin darkened by hours in the fields, laboring and working. Eyes weary and aged by years of hunger. Faces, powdered and white and painted and relieved. Hair kinked and curled with the salt of the sea. All mixed together, everyone mixed together.
I close my eyes and for a second I'm in the woods with Gale. It's autumn. The leaves of the trees have abandoned the branches and coated the ground in a blanket of reds and oranges and yellows.
"It's funny," Gale says, as we lie on our backs and look up at the tall, naked branches above us.
"What is?" I ask, focusing on peeling a leaf away from its stem without ripping it.
"Up there, in the trees, they are all separate and different. The bright yellow birch, the red maple. Up there, they keep to themselves. But down here, on the earth, they are all just leaves. It doesn't matter which tree they came from. It doesn't matter if this one is skinny and pale, and this one is fat and bright. In the end, they all look better together than they did apart," he says reflectively.
"Things probably look different down here than up there," I reply back. I turn my head and watch Gale, his eyes scanning the forest floor. He gathers a huge handful of leaves and hurls them at my face. There's a smell to dying leaves that makes me feel like I'm home. That makes me feel new. That makes me feel like I'll live forever in these woods with Gale. Like we'll always be this young.
Sometimes Gale wasn't angry. Sometimes he was just my friend.
A rock forms in my throat and I wonder how I'll do this speech. I look over and find Peeta's eyes already on me, studying my face.
"You ready?" he mouths. I nod slowly.
I've missed Coin's speech. I have no idea what she said. I tune in to hear her extoling the Mockingjay. She sweeps her hand back toward me. I take it as my cue and step forward to the podium. The crowd cheers until they have no strength left in their lungs. I don't know if I'm smiling, but I think maybe I just look at peace for a moment.
Prim would be happy here.
When a silence finally falls on the crowd, I clear my throat. I think I'll sound tiny compared to the cry of the throng, but my voice booms over the crowd through stadium speakers. I take a step back.
"People of Panem!" I speak out, and they take off cheering again. I wait until the sounds fade, but my legs shake beneath me. I wonder if anyone notices. "For the first time, I think I really mean that. We are the people of Panem! All of us!" The crowd erupts again, screaming until their throats are raw and fatigued. "I know I am here to accept an award. I know you are here to honor what I did. The only promise President Snow and I ever made was that we would not lie to one another. I am going to keep that promise with you now." I take a deep breath. Say what you mean. "I don't deserve an award for what I did. Snow was a tyrant, and a murderer, and he took everything from us. He was the villain in all of our stories. It's not about what he did to me, or Peeta, or any one of us. It's about what he did to all of us. And so was his end. I didn't end this war alone. It came from all of us. We ended this war." The crowd explodes in cheers. People grab hands and hold one another. They hold strangers and family and friends. They are the fabric of our country. "War isn't something we glorify. It doesn't discriminate in who it takes from us. It doesn't matter how important they are to you. Just like Snow, War took from us. And now it's over. And now we are finally free."
I close my eyes. This is the part Peeta wrote. The part we stayed up all night practicing. "What does freedom mean? Freedom means thinking for yourself. It means taking joy in the things you love. It means providing for your family and finding pride in your work. It means hot days and cold nights. It means finding out what lies beyond the walls of our districts. It means exploring, growing, and putting down roots. But more than that, freedom means choice. For once, we finally get to choose. Choose to stay. Choose to go. Choose who we love. What we do. And who leads us." I stare at Coin. I make no attempt at subtlety. I turn back to the people. "You. You are the dreamers, and the seekers, and the leaders of our nation. All of you. So it's time to step forward. It's time to lead. It's time to choose. Because the same truth that ended the war is the truth that will build this country. It's not about one person. It's about all of us."
I step back from the microphone while the crowd is still screaming. I stare directly at Coin. She keeps her face flat, but underneath I can see that she is boiling with fury. She raises her hands to the crowd. Those from District 13 and the Capitol fall immediately silent, while the rest murmur energetically. They aren't ready to submit.
"Our last announcement. There were many lost in the War, but not all those who ran into battle were armed with a weapon. In honor of the medics we lost and the children they were trying to save, we are erecting a new medical facility. Directly behind where your feet stand today will be the future site of the Primrose Everdeen Children's Hospital. We will memorialize those who President Snow took from us in his final act of cruelty and barbarism," Coin speaks. The crowd applauds loudly, people occasionally craning their necks to look over their shoulders at the pile of rubble which will one day heal the smallest of us all. My eyes burn, and I turn my face quickly before I give Coin anything else. As I stare at the floor of the stage, though, my head is overwhelmed.
The bomb.
The bomb.
Snow's final act of cruelty and barbarism, Coin said.
Snow was dead. He knew the war was over. His only concern, even in the end, was self-preservation. If he had another hovercraft, he wouldn't have used it for some spiteful last strike. He would have used it to escape. He was calculating. It wasn't in his nature to act out on his emotions. He didn't kill people for fun. It always had a point. He always had a point, a specific reason. The Games weren't for fun, they were perfectly calculated to subdue the districts and cement a sense of superiority in the Capitol. To alienate us from one another. He would have called an act like the bombing wasteful. Unnecessary. The game was already over. Those were his words. Anyone can see the game is over.
Snow killed for a reason.
And he had no reason to kill those children.
I feel like I'm choking. I think back to his words on the roof.
Neither of us, not me, not Snow… Neither of us were watching her.
I look at Coin as she soaks in the praise of the people. My mind flashes again, not to the roof this time, but to the ground. Gale sprinting toward Prim like he knew what was coming.
Like he knew.
I remember, and it feels so perverted in my mind I try to shove the thought out, but it flows over me. Beetee and Gale discussing weapons. Playing against their victims natural instincts. The two-wave bomb.
We're just playing by the same rulebook Snow used when he took Peeta.
I can't. I can't. But I see Gale's slate gray eyes locking with mine through the fence, brimming with despair, throwing Prim with everything he had left in him.
He knew.
And now I do too.
This final act of cruelty and barbarism.
It wasn't Snow.
It wasn't Snow.
It was Gale.
It was Beetee.
It was Coin.