All bolded passages in the story are taken directly from the books and are not mine. I am not Suzanne Collins, to my everlasting shame. To explain further, the passages are used to show how this story is similar to the books but different. The passages often appear in places where they were not used in the books and at odd times to show the different contexts the passages can be taken in. In the end though, they're there to say something that I could not paraphrase as well.
Between being sick and the baby being sick and Gotham being sick, I didn't even realize I'd missed an update day until you know, basically now. We're recovering from upper respiratory infections (me, Melly, Gotham), ear infectino (Melly), two major surgeries (Gotham). We're not out of the woods yet with Gotham and Melly and I are not well but we are doing better. So please keep praying and thinking of us. He'll have to have surgery to remove a tube in a little over a week and that kind of...determines the whole thing.
Next update will be Wed or Sat depending on baby and fur baby.
After the realization of being a pawn in Coin's very own Hunger Games, it isn't easy to sleep. We're supposed to wake bright and early to head to District Eight at midday after some preparation. My room is silent with only the sound of my mother and Prim sleeping. Buttercup is snoring very loudly and my mind is free to run like a hamster on a wheel.
After hours of trying, I give up sleep, knowing that, as much as the baby and my body need rest, a more ancient part of me needs something else-answers or companionship. I find it two halls over. The lights are dim, and I'm sure that I'm about to be told to go back to bed by the cluster of guards when I see him.
Gloss motions to me, a cigarette waving in his welcoming hand. I wrinkle my nose at the smell, and he puts it out. The guards dismiss themselves and move away. When they're out of earshot, Gloss sighs. "I hate cigarettes."
I raise an eyebrow at him. "They offered and people gossip over cigarettes. So I figured they might say something valuable. Besides, it can't hurt to get some people to like us."
"I guess not," I shrug.
He smiles, "And I thought Haymitch was the lone wolf, but you're just as bad." He turns towards another hall and begins walking. I'm forced to follow or be left out of the conversation. "I did learn that Beetee is in the lab. He's fine-tuning some stuff for us. I managed to convince the guards that he had told me to come and I had gotten lost. It's amazing what people think is their own idea when you implant it in their mind."
He walks into an elevator and punches a button. "Couldn't sleep could you?" I shake my head, but he doesn't seem to mind much that I'm not talking. "Same. I used to walk around the Capitol streets at night, just wandering aimlessly. In the early morning, right before dawn, it's peaceful. There's no sound, no one even seems to be awake. Or alive. Sometimes I thought I was a ghost. I always walked because I wanted to find someone, talk to someone. But it never worked, because it's not how we're wired. No matter how many people I found to talk with or screw, I still felt alone because none of them had experienced what we have."
The arena he means, it always comes back to that. I understand though. Since I'd come home from my first Games, I'd been lost in seas of friendly faces, yet I'd felt terribly alone. Peeta was my only solace. None of the other Victors had that, someone from their games that had experienced what they had experienced….until now.
I change the subject hastily, "What's Beetee working on?"
"Weapons," he smiles.
With what's about to come tomorrow, weapons sound like a good idea. After several twists and turns, we find ourselves outside of the lab. Gloss finally figures out how to let someone know we're out here, but it takes another five minutes before someone lets us in. Beetee looks exhilarated. "You're a bit late."
"Late?" Gloss and I question at the same time.
Beetee turns his wheelchair around and goes into the room. "Well, Haymitch came with me, Finnick and Gale showed up about an hour ago. I expected Katniss to come first actually. I knew no one would be sleeping tonight."
He leads through several corridors into a long open room that takes my breath away. It's all very clinical and clean. The walls are all bare, but there are tables laid out with various weapons and at the very end of the room is a line of targets. Haymitch, Finnick, and Gale are all testing out weapons.
Beetee adjusts his glasses. "I made these for you, each of you. Granted, I didn't have a lot of time, but they had the technology I needed." He gathers all of us around and shows us what he's done. It seems he's made us customized weapons.
Haymitch has a lovely set of throwing knives, about twelve of various sizes. One of them is based on a knife people used to use against sharks. Haymitch demonstrates by punching it into a target dummy.
Something wet hits me in the face, and I struggle to get it out of my eyes. It's then I realize that the knife didn't just penetrate the body. The impact of it against the dummy made its insides explode. Which explained the disgusting stuff all over me, and why Haymitch was decidedly stained.
It's a last resort weapon. He explains that we'll each have one, only to be used to strike fear or when an ally isn't close. There's no cure for being caught on the other end of a blow from that blade. The other throwing blades, though, have something unique about them. The sound of Haymitch's voice if he's within twenty feet brings the blades to his armband where he can catch them. They hum, almost alive with his voice as though they are extensions of himself.
Finnick has a trident much the same as Haymitch's throwing knifes. It responds to his voice, and with a simple goodnight the metal becomes heavy and clunky in anyone else's hand. Gale's bow is more high tech, a thing of mastery and precision with more gadgets than I can even understand what they're used for.
Beetee gives Gloss a blade, long and thick. "Hello," Gloss says as the blade touches his skin. The dull glint of steel brightens and there's a new kind of lightness to it, an easier dexterity to it. Beetee tells him to tell it goodnight, and the weapon goes heavy in his hand. We pass the blade around so that we can each feel the effects of it. The blade is large and clumsy in my hand, but when Gloss takes it back, the sound of his voice brings it alive. It has the same capabilities as each of our special weapons. If we're wearing the armbands, the weapon can be called to us from a few feet away. Small things like knives can be called further, but Gloss' sword can only come about five feet. Beetee explains it's all about magnets and nano-something.
I don't hear anything he says when he hands me my bow. My bow is simple and black, elegant and light. As soon as my fingers touch it, the thrum of it shoots through my body. It is perfectly balanced, the edgings are carved in feathered detail. He shows me the different types of arrows that come with it. There are red ones for fire, white for incendiary, black for normal, and green for armor piercing.
We spend the rest of the night testing out our own weapons, getting used to them. We learn how to use the shark knives and how to load and fire a gun. But we each come back to our specialized weapon in the end.
Finally, Beetee makes us put them down before he leads us to another room. There lined against the wall are several suits. Three of them catch my eye and I find myself holding the black fabric in my hand, knowing whose hands made these.
Cinna.
There's one for Haymitch all in black, simple designs of a candle etched on one arm. The other suit is Peeta's, and I can tell by looking at it that it will fit him perfectly. The wrists are lined with outlines of mockingjays in flight. Mine, though, is even simpler. The lines are clean, but there are hints of pearls and mockingjay feathers abounding. The material is supple, stretchy but also hard.
"He only had time to make those three," Beetee says softly. "He designed a few others and left instructions on how he put these together so it could be replicated for other Victors. That's how they were able to finish Gale's, Gloss', and Finnick's. They're not as elegantly crafted, but they'll do."
Because they were not Cinna even if they had followed his design as best as they could. "What does it do?" I ask in a reverent whisper.
"It's got armor to guard your vital organs but that's lightweight and breathable. It's made to endure intense weather and environments. He even made it so that...if you had another child that the suit would grow with it."
Tears burn my eyes. There are no words to thank Cinna enough for these gifts. Beetee talks to the others about their outfits, but I only have eyes for the outfit in my hand. The last piece of Cinna.
I slide into one of the little rooms and slip into it it looks tight, it fits perfectly. The material is hard over my chest and stomach, but the material beneath stretches just enough to show the small round curve of my belly. Cinna has thought of everything. He prepared to save me, but also my child if I ever had another.
Butterflies flutter in my stomach as I put my hand over it. I shut my eyes and for just a little while, I'm alone with him or her and the Cinna it will never know. The tears burn my eyes threatening to fall. But I don't have time to fall apart. I don't have time to cry, because I'm fighting a war. I make myself get to my feet, take a deep breath and step out into the room. The others are in their own outfits, each of us sharp and deadly looking in black.
Gale pushes the loose hair back from my face. "Hey there, Catnip." He smiles. For a moment it's like I'm transported back to a time before the Games, when hunger and not war was our biggest concern. All the years fade for just a moment, and these are our woods again. Our rocky ledge overlooking the valley. Perhaps a little less green than usual, but the blackberry bushes hang heavy with fruit. Here began countless days of hunting and snaring, fishing and gathering, roaming together through the woods, unloading our thoughts while we filled our game bags. This was the doorway to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key.
It has been a long time since we were those people. This is not our woods or our mountains or our way. The words no longer come as easily they once did and I struggle what to say to my best friend.
"Good you're dressed," Cressida comes in, and I start when she speaks. "Time to head for our first real filming."
Boggs steps forward, hands folded carefully behind his back. "We're going to meet Commander Paylor in District Eight. We'll be boots on the ground in three hours. The area is relatively stable. We'll be meeting with the people, getting footage that you are alive and well."
Before it even seems possible we're in the air and on our way to the District Eight. Haymitch explains to me the final gift of Cinna's-a dark violet pill called nightlock concealed in a small pocket on each shoulder of a uniform. In case we're captured or have our hands tied behind our back, all we have to do is bite into the pouch and that's enough. So we don't have to be taken alive.
The motion makes me feel a little sick but I close my eyes and try to imagine what will await us when we come off the hovercraft, but nothing prepares me.
While District Eight is not in the shambles that Twelve is, it's not that far behind it. In some ways it's worse. Where District Twelve is a ghost town, totally uninhabitable, Eight is a shell crawling with life. There are many buildings left standing and people pick through the rubble like carrion. Here and there lie nests of machine guns or sniper pits.
We pass all of those places by and go directly to the place I dread worse than any battlefield. Now it makes sense all those crates they sent with us, and the white uniformed soilders. Give me a weapon in my hand and I'll figure out a way to fight, but here I'm useless. I'm no healer and this place isn't even as well stocked as my mother's kitchen and they call it a hospital.
Haymitch grabs my arm and propels me into the room. The smell of death and putrefaction is overwhelming. The large warehouse reeks of sweat and an iron so strong you can taste it-blood and we haven't even made it through the door.
A woman stands there, long-limbed with a bloody bandage that even I can see should have been changed already. She turns her head towards us and studies us with cool brown eyes. She's younger than my mother,
"This is Commander Paylor of Eight," says Boggs. "Commander, Soldier Katniss Everdeen."
Paylor raises and eyebrow. "Heard you were dead."
"Bet you also heard there was no District Thirteen," I say back. "We're here now."
She looks me coolly up and down. "Alright then Mockingjay, Time to meet your soldiers." She turns on her heel and leads us through a large room filled with decaying bodies. It's obvious from the state of things that they haven't had time to bury them-they've barely had time to move them from the rest of the hospital. When she pulls back the curtain everywhere I look there a hundred, no hundreds of wounded.
The smell is so much stronger here that it almost knocks me over. I can feel sweat starting to pour from my body and that queasy feeling in my stomach starting that is a forewarning that the baby has not tolerated my breakfast.
It'd be better if Prim was here. She'd know what to do or how to help. I feel useless as I scan the rows of bodies. There aren't even enough beds. What am I supposed to do with them?
"Why do you have them all here?" Gale's voice is incredolous.
"That or the streets," Paylor says.
"No," Gale counters but the rest of his words are cut off from me as someone says my name. Another. Then another and another.
I reach for the nearest hand and grab it. The fingers can barely grip mine but the eyes that look up at me are defiant, proud. "It's you? You're alive?"
"It's me," my voice comes out a little hoarse at first. "I'm alive. I'm here." It's all I have to say before I'm swept away. Everyone wants to talk to me, to touch me, to ask about Peeta and the baby. The pain they are going through is unimaginable and yet somehow the sight of me gives some of them a strange peace. People touch my leg with failing fingers as I walk by, others shout my name, and some can only blink or cry weakly with what little time they have left. That's why they didn't send Prim or more medics than they did. These people don't need to have their bones and injuries mended as much as their spirit. Broken and shambling, they'd fight if only they have the will to go on.
I am that will.
I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My ongoing struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.
A new sensation begins to germinate inside me. But it takes until I am standing on a table, waving my final goodbyes to the hoarse chanting of my name, to define it. Power. I have a kind of power I never knew I possessed. Snow knew it, as soon as I held out those berries. Plutarch knew when he rescued me from the arena. And Coin knows now. So much so that she must publicly remind her people that I am not in control.
When we finally leave the hospital, the feeling of energy that had been carrying me seems to dissipate. With almost no warning, I puke into the street. Haymitch and the others don't know what to do, but Cressida rubs my back sympathetically. I wish I could tell her to stop, but I'm too busy puking.
When I stand up, Paylor is looking at me, her eyes twinkling. "Couldn't take it?"
"You try being pregnant in a warzone," I spit back.
I'm surprised when she laughs. "I really like her." But before we can bother to get chummy or Cressida can get out more than two sentences about the excellent footage she got, Boggs is rushing us all away.
"What's going on?" Gloss shouts.
"They're coming in for a bombing!" Boggs shouts back as we run for shelter. "They don't know we're here and we need to keep it that way because the hovercraft can't land till it's over."
We've made it only a couple a streets over when the first wave of bombs hit. We all get knocked off our feet or dive, I can't say which happened first, by the force of the explosions. Dust and dirt rains down over us until we're in a grey half-world that makes me choke. This is what it was like for my father in the mines, for my people in my district after the bombs….Suddenly, it's hard to breathe even though there is enough air. Gale grabs me by the back of my uniform and pulls me to standing. For a moment, we both wobble. My ears ring with the sound of explosions and then the world steadies, and we run again.
Someone is saying something about safety up ahead, maybe it's Paylor. But each step seems to take too long, the ground stretches out too far in front of us. We're never going to make it.
Just before the next wave hits, we throw ourselves down in the mouth of a small alleyway. They don't seem to be targeting us, but they do seem to be targeting something. It's almost as if they dont' know we're here as if there's a bigger tar-
"The hospital!" I scream. "They're bombing the hospital!" I look around at the faces near me and I see that Gale has come to the same conclusion.. "We have to do something!" I scream, but no one moves so I do.
The bombing lets up for a moment and I push myself to my feet running. I hear the sounds of guns being fired, of someone in this District fighting back. I push myself flat out to get there before anyone can stop me. Boggs grabs my arm, but then he's gone. Gloss is screaming for me to go.
We find the warehouse roof and climb the ladder to the top. I'm surprised to find Paylor is in one of the machine gun nests. While Boggs had us running to safety, she had run here. I feel ashamed. She starts to say something to me, but I wave her off tired of words.
Gale and I stand, waiting for the next wave to come in. We each pull the fire arrows, but as the first wave passes we do little to no damage at all. We switch to the explosives and lead the planes by a few yards.
Suddenly, they appear in the sky, two blocks down, maybe a hundred yards above us. Seven small bombers in a V formation. "Geese!" I yell at Gale. He'll know exactly what I mean. During migration season, when we hunt fowl, we've developed a system of dividing the birds so we don't both target the same ones. I get the far side of the V, Gale takes the near, and we alternate shots at the front bird.
The lead plane jerks and nosedives into a building, the second and third spiral into each other, exploding mid-sky while a fourth and fifth one go down in a hail of gunfire. There are the ominous sounds of explosions, but the bombers have had enough and they do not turn back.
Half of the camera crew had followed us up to the machine nest, and they follow us back down where Haymitch is waiting. Gloss descends from another roof, bloody but in good spirts. Finnick was hit once in the arm by flying shrapnel, but he's okay. Boggs and Haymitch are screaming at each other now. But it's too late, it's all over. We've done what we wanted.
I follow the heavy plumes of black smoke that rise like from a funeral pyre. When I get there, I see that's exactly what it is-a pyre. The whole hospital is gone. The building is caved in. Most of the people probably died in the collapse. Before we'd gotten closer, I'd heard a scream or two but now there is silence. Whoever the fire or building hadn't killed, the smoke had done it's job.
Every person that I just met, that I just talked to and consoled and uplifted is now dead. Gale has been right all along. I remember all those years in the woods, listening to Gale rant against the Capitol. Me, not paying close attention. Wondering why he even bothered to dissect its motives. Why thinking like our enemy would ever matter. Clearly, it could have mattered today. When Gale questioned the existence of the hospital, he was not thinking of disease, but this. Because he never underestimates the cruelty of those we face.
My heart is breaking for them, for the naivety I have had until now. Cressida calls to me and her voice brings me slowly turn back to her. "That's going live from the Capitol to all the Districts, Katniss. Snow wants everyone to know that he's sending a message to every rebel there is. Katniss, what do you want him, want everyone to know?" Her eyes are blazing, tears streaming down her face.
Haymitch looks to me stoically. He doesn't cry or say a word but I can tell that this has affected him more than he'll admit. He has the ability to stay silent on the subject, but I do not. I am their Mockingjay.
I stare into the camera and instead of retreating into myself, I hold on to the quiet strength that is Peeta. I feel his convictions and I let the rage, so much like Gale's, sweep me under. "I fought in the Hunger Games," my throat constricts for a moment but I push through. I imagine it is not the lens of a camera I am looking into, but into Snow's face-his eyes slitted like snakes. "And you called it leniency. You starved us so that we would not rise against you and said it was for own good. You bombed my home." I do not wipe the tears that streak down my face. "You obliterated my people, and you called it a warning."
I point to the decimated hospital behind me, "Minutes ago, I visited a hospital there. I spoke with people, touched them. They were sick and hurt. They were unarmed. You bombed them out. There will be no survivors. Will you call this mercy?"
My chest is heaving, rage drives me, "You call this a message." I point back to the building collapsing in on itself, hear the screams of people realizing that they cannot rescue their loved ones from it. "I will not stop fighting. You have taken my people. My home. Peeta," I choke on his name. "My baby." But not this child, I think.
The silence is deaf0eanening. "I will bring the war to your home! I will pay you back for your kindness. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground. But you will not stop us! We will not surrender. We will all die to the last man, woman, or child rather than lay our weapons down. And when you beg for it," my voice is cold as ice. "We will not show you mercy."
I point to the downed planes, the seal of the Capitol on their wings being consumed by fire. "Do you see that?" My voice is low, but it carries. "Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!"
Then the weight of the dead pulls me down to my knees with the knowledge that each of them were just another warning to me.