Author's note
Hi everyone! How do you like the latest chapters? Should I do parts where I write in other's point of view (like I did in chapter 28)? Or do you prefer only one point of view in the story? Please tell me your opinions in the reviews!
All the love to everyone who still read this story. It is now so long I have to reread to even remember it all myself.
A.A.
Chapter 29 – Back to 12
Peeta and I are in meetings all morning. Coin wants us to do another video to support the rebellions in the other districts. "We need to give them hope and fuel to go on fighting," Coin says. Peeta and I look at each other. "Send us somewhere, then," I say and look at our president. "We can't do much from here. We must do something real to help them. We can't sit in district 13 if we want this rebellion to take over the capital" Peeta agrees with me. Coin look down at her nails and think about what we said. "But we can't risk you. You are the faces of the revolution." She says, and her servants agree with her. "We didn't say we wanted to go to the centrum of the fights. Send us to district 12 if you can't send us somewhere else. Record when we talk about the torture our people have gone through. Just let us go somewhere, to show them we are really fighting with them." Peeta says. I watch him speak, and I see his blond eyelashes in the light of the lamp. Peeta convinces miss Coin that we should go. She says that we could go within an hour.
Peeta and I sit in the hovercraft with our camera team. Cressida, our director sit face to face with me. Pollux and Castor sit next to her, and they smile at me. The capital brothers who turned against their leader. I hold Peeta's hand. My father's jacket hangs around my shoulders and warms my cold body. When I wear the jacket I remember the days when I used to hunt with Gale in the woods. I remember the times in the woods I shared with my father. Me swimming in the lake and picking strawberries in the sun. I remember everyone I have lost when I wear the jacket of my dead father. Under the jacket is the plain grey uniform everyone wears in district 13.
In district 12 everything is the same as the last time we saw our destroyed home. The corpses of our people are just a little more rotten. More people have turned into skeletons. But the district is still the same as the last time we went here. We start to record where the building of Justice once was. Now there are only ruins left. We talk about old memories from our old school. "When we were younger I used to watch Katniss go home from school from the schoolyard here," Peeta says. "Now there are no kids who walk to school here. Because of the regime of Panem, the kids that we used to walk to school with are dead. Ten percent of our people survived the firebombing. Hazelle Hawthorne, the mother to Gale Hawthorne who is a dear friend of ours and Katniss's cousin, is a heroine. Without her, there wouldn't have been any witnesses of the horrible bombings in district 12." He says, and I see a tear in his eye. "The capital says that they want to protect us, but they only use us. In their hands we are slaves. And they turned us against each other by making us compete in the Hunger Games. Let's return the favor and fight with me, Peeta and all the rebellions that are fighting for a better future for all of us. In a future where we all have the power to make our voices heard. In a future where everyone can live in peace." I say to the camera.
We walk down the road to the bakery, where the metal from the ovens is the only thing left. "This was the bakery where I grew up. By that tree, or what's left of it, Katniss sat against that tree a late evening when we were eleven years old" Peeta tells. "We were starving at home. My father died in the mines in an accident the same year. Without Peeta, our family would have died, just like so many others did." I fill in.
We go to the Seam, to the area where I used to live. Where Gale used to live. I walk down to the place where my old house was standing. I say a few words about the place where I used to live and then we move on, further into the Seam, where the house of my cousins used to be. "Gale. This is where you used to live. I know that the capital changed your memories of me and Peeta. But I just want you to know that I will always love the person I used to hunt with, the person who sacrificed his own life to save Peeta and to protect and save me in the arena. You are the best friend and cousin someone could ever as for." I say as we walk by.
We go to the lake for our lunch, and a few mockingjays fly between the trees. Pollux, who is an avox, point at a bird flying by and points at my pin I wear on the jacket. "Yes, that is a Mockingjay," I say, and he smiles. When we sit down by the lake Pollux whistle a simple melody, and the birds sing after him. Then he points at me. "Do you want me to sing?" I ask him, and he eagerly nods. I don't sing very often. I sang to Rue in the first arena, and sometimes when Prim was little I sang to her. And just like Peeta told in the cold caves, I sang in front of the whole class when I was five and our teacher asked us if someone knew the Valley song. Now I sit with him by the lake in district twelve, with a camera team from a district we thought were extinct. I start to sing the first song that comes to mind. I sing about the hanging tree. An old song that my father used to sing when we bathed and swam when I was little. It is a horrible song if you listen to the lyrics, but the melody is beautiful.
"Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
They strung up a man
They say who murdered three
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree"
I finish the song and see tears in Castor's eyes. Then I note the camera in his hand. I thought they did not record it, but they did. "I swear that the mockingjays did quieten down to listen to when you sang, Katniss," Peeta says and takes my hand and kiss it. I blush a little and watch a Mockingjay in a tree taking up the melody of the song. We eat our sandwiches we got brought from district 13, the cheese melts in my mouth and I drink the water from the little creek I used to fill my water bottles with when I hunted my food myself. "Do you sing often, Katniss?" Cressida asks me when we walk through the woods that I know better than my own pocket. Castor wasn't sure we would find our way back to the district, and Peeta just laughed and told the team I find better in these woods than I did in our old house in the victor's village. "No" I answer Cressida's question. "Why not? You are a real talent." Crastor says. I don't want to answer that question, and I hear Peeta answer it for me. "It brings up memories of her father. I remember him going to the Hob with his game bag, and he was always singing. Mr. Everdeen was known as the coal miner who always sang on his way to work. He was a really good singer, just as his daughter is."
