"No, Annie, Annie, do you remember me? I'm Johanna, Finnick's friend. Annie? Annie? No, you're not in the Games, neither is Finnick. Annie? Annie! You're safe, you're alive—no, Annie, the walls aren't shaking. Annie, that isn't real! Oh for God's sake Haymitch, you try talking to her." The commotion is coming from a different hallway, and Peeta jumps up to go help. I'm more hesitant, though, because in all honesty, I'm afraid of Annie Cresta. First, the fact that she killed so many people. Secondly, the horrifying dream she starred in. Third. I don't know how to deal with the insane. So I stay slumped against the wall.

"Annie," Haymitch starts in a surprisingly gentle, even tone. "Do you remember your Tour? You were in Twelve, do you remember? I talked to you before I passed out drunk at the bar. Tell me if you remember," he urges in that smooth tone.

"Yes," I hear her low, gravelly voice say. "Finnick said you were a good guy, even if you drank too much. Is that real or not real?"

"That's real," Haymitch says evenly.

"Is it real that we're in hell right now?"

"No," says Haymitch. "That's not real."

"Finnick," says Annie, her voice evening out and sounding less insane. "Where is he?" Haymitch doesn't say anything for a moment, but her low voice drops even lower until it's a rough, flat whisper, "Tell me where Finnick is or I'll kill you." My blood runs cold when I hear her speak. She isn't only crazy, she's terrifying. But she speaks again not long after, and I realize I can't see Peeta anymore. There is something gentle and soft in her rough voice when she says, "You have blue eyes."

"Yeah, I do," says Peeta gently. My heart seizes up and I get up from the floor and run down the hallway, but pause before I turn into the hallway that they're in. "You have green eyes."

"I knew a boy with blue eyes like yours, once," says Annie. Her voice is no longer flat and terrifying, but a normal gravelly tone. "His head was cut off."

"I remember him, too, Annie," says Peeta in a gentle voice. "He was in the Games with you. He loved you."

"I loved him, too. His eyes were the color of the sky. Then I loved Finnick. Finnick's eyes are green like mine." Annie gives a great heaving sob and I turn the corner. "Now they're both gone."

It's easy to forget that Annie Cresta, like Finnick, is a great beauty. Her skin is a caramel color—the color you'd get if you mixed the fair white of Peeta's skin with the silky brown of Thresh's. Her eyes are large and slanted and the same dreamlike sea green of Finnick's eyes. Perfect, small nose. Slanting cheekbones. Some of the fullest lips I've ever seen. Annie Cresta's face is a work of art. But people forget, because she's insane.

She puts her fingers in her dark, curly hair and sobs again. After a minute or two of this, she puts her hands over her ears and starts talking. "There's a beast who cuts off heads. Is that real?"

"No," says Peeta gently. "There are no beasts here. We're in District 13."

"Oh," she laughs, a little madly. She opens her eyes again and looks around. Her faces colors like she's embarrassed. "Sorry, I—my—the head doct—" she stops short when she sees me. For a moment, her brown skin turns almost chalk white. I put my hands up in a reconciliatory way, but she doesn't seem like she's going to attack me. She seems sad. Almost like she's seen a ghost. After another minute or two, the color returns to her face. But she keeps looking at me. "I killed someone that looked just like you, once. He was a boy."

"I know," I say to her. I'm not gentle like Peeta or hostile. I say the words baldly.

"Did you know him?" she asks.

"No," I tell her.

"He had gray eyes, just like yours." But she looks away from me then, and looks back at Haymitch. "Please tell me where Finnick is." Her spell of madness has passed and she seems almost normal. I'm struck by her beauty again. It seems like she pays almost no attention to it, though.

"Honey, Finnick is-he's-Finnick is in the Capitol," Haymitch sighs.

"Oh," she says, the sad look coming onto her face again. "Is he alive?"

"We think so," Johanna says. She looks at Annie the same way I do—warily.

"I'm sorry I threatened to kill you," she says to Haymitch in a little voice. "I've never really grown out of the habit."

"It's fine," he says. "Are you tired?" She nods. Not touching her at all—probably because he's scared out of his wits—he leads her down the hall to a hospital room.

"What," I say between my teeth. "In the hell was that?"

"You have to admit, she's a looker," Johanna says.

"I wish I knew why I'm terrified of her," I say.

"I do. The boy who beheaded her partner, boyfriend, whatever—she cut off his fingers and toes. And his hands and his feet. And his arms and legs," says Johanna in a flat voice. "Then she cut off his head. She was screaming bloody murder the whole time, but she was laughing, too. When she was done, she rubbed his blood all over her face."

"How many people did she kill again?" asks Peeta. We're all still looking down the hall where she disappeared with Haymitch.

"Eight, I think," says Johanna.

"Jesus," says Peeta.

"Still, that was weird," I say. "One minute she was screaming, next minute she's threatening to murder Haymitch, the next she was crying. Then the talking to herself and then she was almost totally calm. All in the span of like, five minutes." A shuddering yawn racks my body, and I try to hide it by putting my hand over my mouth.

"I thought it was weird how she was dead calm as soon as Haymitch said Finnick was in the Capitol," says Peeta. He tugs us both on the arms and we start the walk back to the compartment. I'm so exhausted I could fall asleep right here.

"It isn't, really, if you think about it," says Johanna. I sway a little on my feet, the pregnancy getting the better of my ability to stay awake, and Peeta lifts me into his arms the way he always does: my legs around his waist, my head on his shoulder. "She's gotten used to Finnick going to the Capitol all these years. You know. Maybe it calmed her down because it was familiar. Maybe she thinks he's just going to do his usual business there."

"Maybe," muses Peeta, but I'm already asleep.

PB

Annie haunts my dreams again. This time, I'm in a place that seems vaguely familiar. After a while, though, I decide I don't know where I am. It's a strange place; an ancient, crumbling city. The only notable thing about this place is the tall white tower in the middle. I shudder. I don't like the way this place feels. I whip my head back and forth, trying to gain a sense of my surroundings, but the wind blows my hair all around my face so I can't see. I decide to run away, to take shelter in one of these ancient buildings. When I run to one, though, the doors are locked. The doors on the next are locked, too. So I run to the white tower and go inside. Climb the endless stairs.

When I get to the top, I don't look out the windows. I don't really want to know where I am. I just want to stay here until whatever storm that's brewing outside blows over. So I sit down and I see that I'm not alone.

She's there, with a boy. He has hair black as my own, and olive skin. But his eyes are bright blue. They're sitting on the floor, looking at each other, not paying any attention to me. I feel uncomfortable, like I'm intruding on something. I'm not sure what, though. I try to leave the room, but there's an invisible wall stopping me. A sense of panic starts to rise up in me, because I just have a bad feeling about this place and I start wishing I'd never climbed up here.

"Katniss," a low, gravelly voice says. My breathing picks up. My heart starts slamming against my sternum. She's spotted me. "It's okay. He's gone now." I turn around and find that the boy really has gone. I breathe a sigh of relief. I get the sense that I've seen the boy somewhere else, perhaps in another dream, but I try to shake it off. I sit cross legged on the floor. "Why are you afraid of me?"

"I don't know," I tell her honestly. "You've killed a lot of people."

"So have you," she says. Despite how rough her voice sounds, I can't deny that it probably sounds attractive to men. I have a strange moment, then, of jealousy. "So have all of us."

"I know that," I say. I don't know what else I'm supposed to say, because in a way, she's right. I may not have trained for the Games, but I've killed people, too. I don't remember her Games all that well—just that her district partner was her boyfriend, that she killed a lot of people, and that she went insane—because it was the summer after my dad died. So I can't pinpoint why exactly it is that she scares me.

"The Games broke me," she says. I nod. She stands up and offers a hand to pull me to my feet. Hesitantly, I take it. I'm surprised by how strong she is. She isn't that big of a person. She walks over to one of the windows, and points outside. "See over there? That's where I murdered the boy from your District. He looked like you. He had black hair and gray eyes. I didn't want to kill him. I looked into his eyes the entire time." I shudder again, because I don't want to hear this. She continues pointing out of the windows. "Here is where I murdered the girl from District 7. I asked her to join our alliance, but she wouldn't. So I had to kill her. Her eyes were brown. Like Johanna Mason's." I stare at her, wondering why she seems to be fixated on the color of people's eyes. "Here's where I killed the girl from Two. I didn't hate her, but she came for me. She started it. So I had to. I don't really remember what she looks like anymore." She shifts her body to the left a little. She's shorter than I am, but she's better built. Well-endowed, but with plenty of muscle. I can't imagine anyone trying to pick a fight with her. "Here's where I killed the boy from 1. We were allies, but someone else had already cut off his hands and ones of his arms. So I killed him, because I didn't want him to suffer. There," she points towards a long stretch of grass. She smiles. The weak sunlight reflects off of a gold horn. "I killed my first three. I took a knife in the back there, too. It didn't feel very good." She laughs, and it doesn't sound insane. "The last person I killed was over there." She doesn't say anything else about him, though. She drops her hand and sits back down on the floor.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" I ask.

"Because. We're not so different, you and I."

"Yes we are," I breathe. "We are."

The floor in the tower starts to shake.

"No, Katniss. We're all the same. All of us."

I try to run for the stairs, but the stairs suddenly collapse and I'm stuck up here.

"What's happening?" I scream at her, trying to claw her eyes out. "Let me out of here!" She laughs and flips me onto the ground as easily as she would if I were a fly she swatted.

"I can't," she whispers. "This is our penance. All of us."

Then the dam breaks and the tower crashes down at the same time and everything is shaking, shaking, shaking—I see faces under the water but I close my eyes—it's still shaking—

"Katniss," Peeta says, shaking me gently. I shoot straight up in bed, breathing hard. "You all right?"

"Yeah," I gasp, putting my hand on my chest like it'll slow my heartbeat down. "Bad dream."

"I figured," he frowns. "You usually scream, though. You didn't this time." Peeta pulls me into his arms and I bury my face in his neck. The familiar smell of him is instantly comforting.

"I was underwater," I say. "Couldn't scream. What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty," murmurs Peeta into my hair. My breathing spikes again, but this time, fear isn't the cause. "Your family should be here in a couple of hours."

"Then we have time," I say. I pull him so that he's on top of me, and he adjusts his weight so he's not putting any on my stomach. "Talk to me."

"About what?" he asks. I run my fingers up his bare abdomen. He shivers.

"Anything," I breathe. He looks down at me with that look in his eyes—that addictive, heady look that's love and lust and desire and reverence all in one—and the mood very subtly changes.

"I don't want to talk," murmurs Peeta, and his lips crash down on mine. It doesn't take long for me to catch up. When I try to take a breath, he closes the gap between us. When he pulls back, my lips find his again in seconds. When we kiss like this, the words Peeta spoke to me on our wedding night come back to me in perfect clarity. Maybe it's just the universe telling you we were meant to collide. Just as I know, in the core of my body, that these words were true, I know the words I spoke to Gale were a lie. Maybe we would've ended up together. No, I'd have found my way to Peeta eventually, eventually when thoughts of him and the bread and the dandelion got to be too much. I would've found him, and he would've been there, waiting for me. I know he would've always waited for me to find him.

"I love you," I whisper into his mouth. "More than anything in the world." He pulls my nightdress over my head and his lips fall to my neck.

"Katniss," he says, and he makes my name sound like a prayer. "You can't leave me." He's on top of me, taking my face in his hands, kissing me roughly. When he pushes into me, I gasp, but he doesn't stop talking. "You're my only dream," he murmurs, looking down at me while his hands grasp the headboard. A sound—half-moan, half-gasp—escapes my lips and his are there to quiet my own. As our movement picks up, as our bodies kindle a spark into a burning wildfire, I cling to him, and he to me. When it's nearly over, when we're both falling from dizzying heights, he only says one word. "Katniss."

After, we listen to each other's heartbeats. I don't know which is his and which is mine, and maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. When you collide the way that we have, maybe you get tangled up and lost in each other until you don't know where one of you ends and the other begins. "I can't live without you," he breathes. "Everything that I have and everything I am belongs on you."

We look at each other then, and I know—know more surely than I've known anything in my life—that this would've happened anyway. That we were meant to collide. So I say, "I've always been yours. Even if I didn't know it then."

"I'd die without you," he says.

"Don't leave me," I say. His lips find mine then, but not in that desperate way they usually do. They find mine softly, gently, like we have all the time in the world. Maybe we do.

We're interrupted by Johanna. "God, please tell me you're done in there!" she raps on the door insistently. My face turns bright red.

"Go away," says Peeta, smiling into my lips.

"If I thought the tacky romance drama was unbearable, having to listen to that was ten times worse," she snaps. She keeps knocking. I groan. "I'm bored, Katniss. And I'm hungry."

"Fine!" I yell at the door. Frustrated, I throw my pillow at it. I think she kicks the door. I'm not sure. "I'm seriously rethinking having her live with us."

"No, you're not," Peeta says, sitting up and pulling his shirt over his head. He gives me a crooked smile that makes my heart seize up. I crawl over to him and put my arms around him. My heart beats against his back. He kisses my forearm. "I love you, Katniss."

"I love you," I whisper. "What you said earlier. That you'd die without me."

"Yes," says Peeta, his face leaning against my arm. "What about it?"

"I know how you feel," I say lamely. After a minute, I add, "I'm giving you everything I have. Please don't take it away from me."

"How would I take it away from you?" he says curiously, turning to face me.

"By leaving. Or dying."

"Katniss," he murmurs, pushing a clump of hair behind my ear. "Nothing on this planet could make me leave you. Even a bullet to the heart. I'd still find a way back to you."

"Good," I whisper. I stroke his cheekbone with my thumb. I kiss him gently on the mouth. "Johanna is going to murder me if I don't go out there."

"Go," he chuckles. "I'll meet you later."

"Okay," I say. Unwillingly, I throw the drab District 12 uniform on. I walk out of the room, avoid Johanna's eyes, and go to the bathroom. Wash my face. Braid back my hair. Let the color drain out of my face. When I get outside, I've managed to make my face blank and impassive. "Let's go."

We walk to the cafeteria in silence. Technically we aren't supposed to be eating this late, but neither of us got a schedule. And there are certain perks to being famous. So we get breakfast anyway. We don't say anything over breakfast, either. Now that the bliss of my morning has passed, I'm incredibly nervous. What condition will everyone from Twelve be in? I don't know if Madge made it. God, I hope Madge made it out. Is my family injured? Gale? I start hitting my fists against my leg, the way Johanna does. She notices.

"Hey," says Johanna sharply. "No use doing that."

"I know," I snap. After a moment, I add in a softer tone, "Sorry. I'm nervous."

She waves her hand dismissively and, with a mouthful of hot grain, says, "They'll be fine, Katniss."

"You don't know that."

"It's called trying to make you feel better, brainless," she retorts. "I thought you'd less keyed up after this morning."

I kick her under the table. She doesn't even flinch. "Shut up. Talk to me about something else. Anything else."

"Okay," she says, thinking. "So how big is it?"

"How big is what?" I ask, stuffing the last of my bread into my mouth. I furrow my eyebrows at her.

"You know. Peeta's. . . well, you know."

"Johanna, I swear, if you don't shut up, I'm going to kill you right here and now," I say angrily. She just smirks at me. God, she's worse than Haymitch sometimes. Just to get rid of her stupid expression, I say, "Big enough. Are you done?" I ask, gesturing to her tray. Without waiting for her to respond, I swipe it off the table and put them in the pile of dirty dishes. I walk slower than I normally do, waiting for the flush to leave my cheeks.

When I get back to the table, the smirk has left Johanna's face. Her usual expression is back: bored and annoyed. Like she's ready for someone to cross her just so she has an excuse to rip their heads off.

"What time is it?" I ask her, tugging on a clump of her spiky hair.

"Close to ten," she says. "Maybe we should find out where they'll be coming in." So we do. It isn't until we're wandering around the gray halls of Thirteen that we realize we have no idea where Haymitch lives, we have no clue where Peeta is, and we don't know where we can find Beetee. So we walk to the elevator and go to Command.

When we get to the door of the room, we look at each other awkwardly. Do we knock? Do we just walk in? Knock, then walk in? It's Johanna who decides. She slides the door open, and we find that we've interrupted a meeting that looks important. Haymitch and Beetee are there, along with Coin and Plutarch. I turn red.

Johanna doesn't seem to care though. "Sorry," she says in a way that makes her sound like she's not sorry at all. "We were wondering where the refugees from District 12 will be arriving."

Coin, who we've interrupted mid-sentence, manages to force a polite smile. "Completely understandable," she says brusquely. "Hangar 2, I believe. Thirteenth level, follow the signs. They should be here shortly."

"Alright," I say quietly. I turn around and walk out as quickly as I can. Johanna's on my heels, smirking again. When she's by my side, I turn to look at her. She looks the same as always. Confident and unafraid of anything. It almost makes me feel better. She grips my hand in her own, and when she sees my nervousness, she squeezes it hard.

"You should be happy," she says, speeding up. I walk faster, too, because it helps settle the anxiety in my mind. "Your family is alive. Even your handsome cousin made it."

"He isn't really my cousin," I tell her. We're speed walking now. We get to the elevator and I jam my finger almost angrily into the button that reads '13.' "Someone at home made that up."

"Why?"

"Probably because he was too handsome and not very willing to play nice for the cameras, when they went to Twelve to interview him when I made the final eight. Didn't play well into the star-crossed lovers dynamic, or something. So some genius made him my cousin," I explain.

"Have you ever been more than cousins?" she asks, wiggling her eyebrows. I bark out a laugh, but it's a frustrated laugh.

"No," I tell her. "For him, it was . . . different. I know that now. I just never thought about him like that."

"Do you ever wish you would've?" she asks, using our linked hands to scratch her cheek. I scowl at her.

"It's funny, I was thinking about that this morning," I tell her dryly. "I told him once, a few months ago, that maybe we would've ended up together if it weren't for Peeta and the Games. It wasn't until today that I realized that I-I . . . would've found Peeta eventually." It makes me uncomfortable, talking about two of the people I love most. But it's Johanna, I remind myself. Johanna's on my list of people that I love now.

"Hmm," she replies noncommittally. "I guess that means he's fair game, then."

This time, my laugh is genuine. One of the nice things about Johanna is that she lets moments of particular emotional tension pass by and diffuses them with her crude sense of humor. It makes bearing all of this so much easier.

"I thought you and Haymitch were . . ." I trail off, looking at her out of the corner of my eye. The elevator finally stops at Level 13, and we look around for a few minutes, trying to find the signs that Coin told us about. We sit down to rest after a moment, though, because I'm still tired and the baby is kicking me a lot this morning.

"Haymitch is cool," she shrugs. "We're too alike for it to go anywhere, though."

"You and I are alike," I remind her.

"Yes, but I'm not trying to sleep with you," she rolls her eyes and laughs. My head jerks around when I hear Peeta calling my name.

"Where have you guys been?" he calls, slowing to a walk when he gets closer. I try to stand up on my own, but my back hurts and my stomach feels bigger than ever. So Peeta, when he gets here, puts his hands under my armpits and pulls me up.

"There aren't any signs," Johanna says, annoyed.

"If you two walked two hundred feet to your left, there would be," sighs Peeta. "Never mind. Let's just go. They should be coming in any minute."

"How many hovercraft did they send?" I ask, lacing my fingers through Peeta's.

"Twelve, I think," says Peeta. "There were only 970 survivors. They had to crowd the hovercrafts pretty tight."

"Oh," I say. Suddenly, I'm overwhelmed with rage and horror. 970. Out of eight thousand. Snow did this because of me, because I was the one who blew out the force field. And I'm so angry, so angry I could kill someone with my bare hands, but I'm also horrified and sickened with myself. My actions killed almost ninety percent of the people in my district. I did this.

That's what everyone that survived is going to be thinking. They're all going to look at me with blame and hatred and I can't do anything but accept it, because I hate myself more than they ever could. I hate myself.

My people. Greasy Sae, Ripper, Leevy, Thom, Madge, Mayor Undersee—the names keep running through my mind, wondering if they're alive—then the other names come, the ones who I know are alive, but will probably never be the same after seeing District Twelve go up in flames—Prim, my mother, Gale, Hazelle, Vick, Rory, Posy, Peeta's father, his brothers—the list goes on and on and I can't stop it—

It isn't until I feel Peeta's arms under my body and the vicelike grip of Johanna's fingers around my wrists that I realize I've collapsed. You killed them, I tell myself. You, you, you, and no one else.

"You didn't do this!" I hear Peeta say. He's wrong, though. If I hadn't fired my arrow at the force field—electrified the nation, President Coin said, what a joke—everyone in Twelve would be alive. Wouldn't it have been better for me and twenty-two other people to die so Peeta could've gone home and everyone else could've lived? Wouldn't it? "Katniss, there's only one person responsible for this, and it isn't you!"

Katniss, remember who the enemy is. Haymitch's voice echoes around my head for a while. I know who the enemy is. But that doesn't mean that I'm not the enemy, too. I just wanted to hold them accountable for killing that little girl.

Yes, Snow is the enemy. Snow is the one who should be held accountable for the destruction of my district and my people. But that doesn't mean that I'm not to blame. Because I am.

"If you hadn't blown out the force field, none of us would be here," says Johanna, who is frustrated. "Don't be stupid."

I manage to open my eyes and see that we're outside of a large door that says Hangar 2. I look at Johanna. "Surprised you didn't call me brainless," I say.

"I didn't need to. You already know that."

"You know this isn't your fault," says Peeta gently. I'm somewhat embarrassed that I collapsed, so I wriggle out of his arms and stand up. "You don't punish one person by killing seven thousand people."

"I know," I sigh. "But they'll all hate me for it."

"No, they won't," snaps Johanna. "You were brave enough to give them an opportunity."

"An opportunity to do what?" I ask. Oddly enough, her voice reaches me more than Peeta's does in this moment.

"An opportunity to get out of the hell they were living in and make their lives mean something," she tells me. Her fingers are still around my wrists, and they squeeze tightly before releasing me. She looks through the window into the hangar. "It's time. Stop being stubborn and go see your family."

Peeta puts his arm around my shoulders, and leads me through the sliding door. The wind in the hangar is strong enough to blow me backwards, but Peeta's arms are there to catch me. A hovercraft is descending through the wide opening thirteen floors up. For a moment, I can see the sky.

We move closer to the hovercraft as it touches down. I have no idea if they'll even be on this one, but I can't resist. My heart is beating so fast, it feels like a continuous thrum in my chest. Prim. I'll get to see Prim.