Author's note: Strike day!
I don't want to rush it, but I don't want to drag it out either. Rather short chapter here, but there you go. I don't want to add length just for the sake of it.
A couple of chapters ago, I'm too lazy to check which one, I said that it always amazes me how the entire storyline changes if you add one more character and a little bit of imagination. Here's proof.
The song is When a heart breaks by Ben Rector. I DON'T OWN THE HUNGER GAMES! *Insane, president Snow like laugh inserted here.*
Gale.
I woke up this morning
And I heard the news
I know the pain of a heartbreak
I don't have answers
And neither do you
I know the pain of a heartbreak
This isn't easy
This isn't clear
And you don't need Jesus
Til you're here
Then confusion and the doubts you had
Up and walk away
They walk away
When a heart breaks
I heard the doctor
But what did he say
I knew I was fine about this time yesterday
I don't need answers
I just need some peace
I just need someone who could help me get some sleep
Who could help me get some sleep
This isn't easy
This isn't clear
And you don't need Jesus
Til you're here
Then confusion and the doubts you had
Up and walk away
They walk away
When a heart breaks
When a heart breaks
When a heart breaks
Oh, when a heart breaks
This isn't easy
This isn't clear
And you don't need Jesus
Til you're here
Then confusion and the doubts you had
Up and walk away
They walk away
When a heart breaks
I can't think and I can't breathe... I feel as if a thousand tonnes of weight have been dropped onto my shoulders and into my stomach. Barely able to drag one foot in front of the other... Eventually, I stop trying and collapse into an air vent, lying flat out, examining the joints in the vent.
I have to respect what she wants. That much is clear. But it hurts so much... It would have been easier if I were dead, if she were. At least then I wouldn't have to face the pain of rebuilding a life without her.
Without her.
Suddenly anger, red hot, sears through my veins, burning everything and bringing blissful oblivion. It's almost painful to feel as it cuts through my veins, surging through everything, leaving me completely numb. Anyone but I could have predicted that this would be my second reaction... I was Gale Hawthorne, after all, and anger was what I did best.
Not anger at Madge- she had lost her leg, for crying out loud. She had lost so much, and it was all because of me. Because of my cowardice and my anger and my hate. She was better off without me. She was the sunlight, and I was made purely of bitterness and darkness. It was better this way. Better that she wasn't contaminated by all the evil feelings which ran through me.
Anger at Coin. That is what comes. Because those bombs Beetee and I designed weren't meant for being used on my girlfriend and a young girl of 12. Both of us still had qualms about using them at all, which we had made perfectly clear all along...
Because the bombs were not meant to be used on our own people.
Maybe, just maybe, what everyone had been telling me about Coin had been right all along. It had just taken Madge getting her leg blown off and Prim losing her hearing for me to realise it...
As if I didn't already feel like some sort of prize idiot.
In the darkness of the air vent, I realized something.
I never did get my revenge.
Only I don't know who to turn to. Under the new constitution, murder counts as a criminal offence rather than just a moral one. My family still needs me. So this is going to be a lot less simple than just sending a bullet through her head...
Katniss would be a useful ally, but too rash, too like me... For once in my life, I need to keep a level head, think this through properly.
Madge was perfect, except that she was in a hospital bed recovering from extensive blood loss and the loss of a limb, and that she and I weren't talking, quite possibly for the rest of our lives.
Prim would prove a good ally too, but she was so young, and had already suffered so much... She could testify, if there was a trial. Which was what I was sorely hoping for.
Plutarch didn't really care, he would only back us up if we were already backed by a lot of people with a lot of power, or if it were a case of saving his own skin. He was still stuck in his Capitol ways, putting his own safety before any small moral or shred of a scruple he had left. He would want to make sure it was a popular consensus before striking out against her.
Which left the rebel leaders. And one in particular seemed to stick in my mind.
"Paylor, right?" I ask. She looks up, exhausted, from directing some soldiers carrying a man on a stretcher toward the hospital.
"Soldier Hawthorne." She says, affording me a small, tight smile. I'm a war hero, after all, undeserving as I may be of the itle.
"Do you mind if I have a quick word?"
"Will it really be quick?"
"No, but it is really important."
She sighs impatiently, gives some last words of direction to the soldier, and leads me to her office, inviting me to take a seat in the chair opposite.
"You'd have thought a rebel leader's work would end with the war, but no." She sighs heavily. "Now, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Well, exactly that." I say.
She raises an eyebrow and takes a sip of her tea as I begin the recital of the many crimes Coin has committed in the name of winning the war. Slowly, she puts her teacup down.
"You must think we're all blind, Soldier Hawthorne." She says. "Don't think we haven't noticed."
"So, what are you going to do about it?"
"Well, we rebel leaders actually have quite a lot of power, surprising though it may seem. If you could gather up Soldier Everdeen, Doctor Everdeen and Doctor Undersee, we may have quite an impressive case against her. We need to set an example, of course, which means it will probably be on camera. And it needs to be a democratic decision, so we'll have to gather together a jury, like in the time of the ancients. People who, at the very least, appear unbiased."
"When?"
"Give me three hours." She says.
Which is how I found myself on the stage again. In front of thousands. I stare at Coin with nothing but cold hatred in my gaze.
"There is nothing more despicable, in my opinion, than a hypocrite. Someone who disguises themself as something good and pure, but in reality is just as evil, just as corrupted, as the person they allegedly despise. Alma Coin was one of these people. Whilst she preached freedom and revolution and democracy, she was plotting how she could make this work for her, plotting her rule, which ultimately would have been no better than Snow's. She always talked about how much value 13 put on children. So why was it she, and now Snow, who bombed those children in the barricade, an utterly meaningless loss to her, yet the end of everything for parents and siblings and loved ones across the country. Why was it her, and not Snow, who sent a 12 year old girl into combat, to certain death, in order for her elder sister to witness her destruction? All for what? So she could win the war. So her future after the war ended was certain. So she could secure her reign. Answer me this. How is that any different to what Snow did?"
No one can. I listen numbly to the testaments of Katniss, of Prim, of Mrs Everdeen... But, in the end, it is Madge's which most catches my attention. Which catches the entire crowd's...
She is wearing a chocolate coloured floor length skirt with a white blouse, her hair bound back in a lose ponytail, the curls rippling down her back. There are dark circles under her eyes. She looks breathtaking.
She doesn't say a word, not at first. Then, she lifts the skirt up to real the metal leg. She looks Coin directly in the eye.
"I am alive only because of the mercy of a man I considered my enemy, and my own intuition, my own knowledge of your evil and of the weapons you had at your disposal. Of the terrible nature of the bombs you had designed. Bombs designed to pray on human weaknesses, and human instinct. Like the ones you fired at the barricade. A wave of bombs go off. Medics, like me, like Primrose Everdeen, rush in to help them. A second wave takes them out. Never did I think that you would make it look like the Capitol had fired them, so you could win your twisted war. Never did I think that I might be on the receiving end. That you might be so without morals that you could take out your own people. But you did. In the end, I was a threat. Katniss was a threat. So you sent me and Prim in there, to annihilate the only people who could threaten you. If Katniss lost her sanity, and I lost my life, who could there be left who could possibly take over? Other than you. You preach childhood and innocence and everything beautiful. But in the end, it was all just words. You disgust me."
To no one's surprise, Alma Coin is sentenced to die beside Coriolanus Snow the following morning. And Madge Undersee will fire the poisoned dart which ends her life.
There is something oddly beautiful the following morning. Oddly right. I suck in a deep breath of the clean, morning air. The sunrise is blood red, scarlet. This morning, the blood shed ends. With the death of both corrupted leaders.
The sun hits the entire city with it's rays, lighting the destruction and violence which tore it apart. I watch from my balcony window.
The sun, I come to the conclusion, neither knows nor cares whether there is war or whether there is peace. Whether there is death or whether there is birth. Whether it is April or May. Whether we are happy or whether our grief goes beyond words. Whether we are here to see it or whether this violence has destroyed us all, as Peeta said it would, all those months ago.
The sun will go on rising in the east and setting in the west, regardless of the world which rotates it. Around and around and around. It pays no attention to what goes on below it as it illuminates everything with it's beauty. It cares not if we are worthy. It is a strange and beautiful thought. That the sun would go on rising whether humans existed or not. That life would still exist long after humans were gone.
That the sun would continue to rise.
The square is crowded, oh so crowded. The air is mingled with celebration, defeat, exhaustion and grim satisfaction.
There is not a single person in that crowd who has not suffered. Not a single person who will grieve, truly grieve, for the death of either president. There isn't anyone who does not act out of vengeance. And not a single person who does not deserve to get it.
Two girls who I do not know with gold and ebony curls brushing against their shoulders take their place on the spaces marked out just for them. One picks up an arrow, the other a dart. They look at each other a moment. It is lost on neither of them how monumental this will be.
The dart whistles through the air at precisely the same time as the arrow. They both find their mark with a satisfying thud, pinning both of the dictators to the post to which they were tied. The insane laughter of the man and the hysterical screaming of the woman both cut off rather abruptly, silenced with the entire square as scarlet stains blossom across their faces. Red as the roses Snow used to tend.
Katniss and Madge turn, and walk inside, leaning together for support.
I have never, ever felt so alone.
