Okay, so this is A LOT shorter than the others, but with the ending coming soon, a lot of things will be happening in quick succession. I hope nothing gets lost. And since this chapter is so short, I'm going to try and post the next one before the weekend is over.
Keep your fingers crossed. Because I don't own anything like Katniss or Finnick, but anything that looks like it could belong to me, yeah, that's mine.
Anyway, go on! Read!
Betrayal
I've only been in the President's Mansion once. That time, I had Peeta by my side, somewhat in agreement of our situation even if our terms weren't exactly perfect. I can still remember the words Haymitch had used after we'd all talked about a wedding, when I'd commented how I thought Peeta would be happy to have a wedding, for us to be married, but Haymitch had said he'd wanted it to be real.
I know what that means now. Because now I believe Peeta and I realize what we have and what could happen if we lost it.
Tonight, Peeta isn't beside me, but someone else is who means just as much to me. And I know he'll help me through this just like I'll help him.
"Do you know how many people died building this house?" Finnick whispers to me as we walk down the Grand Hall to the first set of rooms and then the Grand Staircase.
I glance nervously up at the vaulted ceiling, the glowing chandeliers and the blood red wallpaper, shaking my head. "No," I say.
"No one does anymore," he tells me, adding, "well, other than me. The man who told me was part of the zoning committee who drew up the schematics. He made sure to tell me about the torture chambers in the basement."
My head snaps over to look at him so fast that it hurts. Finnick grins sympathetically. "Most of the people I talked to are probably dead by now. There are a few I hope aren't, but sometimes, hope isn't always a positive thing."
The first Peacekeeper comes up from the side of the Grand Staircase and Egeria Traal stops at the right bannister, directing us to the top.
"Guests will go first," she says in a removed tone.
I look at Finnick, and he glances at the peacekeeper before gently touching my back and guiding me up the stairs.
"It's okay," he says calmly. "I'm right here. Even if they separate us, I'm here, Katniss."
I try to take solace in his promise, but it only makes me worry about him.
The top of the staircase leaves behind the pristine white plush carpet and shines with a smooth ebony stone floor. It's cold to the soles of my feet, but I'm surprised that I haven't shivered once. The air is actually warm and fragrant. For a few minutes, I'm lulled into a sense of security. Maybe my brain has forgotten all the horrible things that have happened to me. But the appearance of a tall set of mahogany doors at the left end of a long corridor nearly cripples me with fear.
Snow is behind those doors. I know it instinctively.
"Ms. Everdeen, please go in," Egeria Traal says from behind me. "President Snow has requested that he meet with you first. I will escort Mr. Odair to the rose garden."
My heart hammers in my chest as Finnick turns to me and kisses the side of my face. "Don't let him see you shaking, Katniss," he whispers. "I know I can do this. I've been doing it for ten years. But you have to show him how strong you are. You can do this. Just remember that Peeta and Gale are close. We have to help them, okay?"
I lean back to look up at him, seeing a new glint in his eyes. He's switching from who I've known for the last four months back into someone he hasn't been since leaving the arena in June. He strokes my hair and kisses the side of my head, looking at Egeria Traal and leaving with her, his hand slipping out of mine as he goes.
As I turn back to the doors, they open softly. Inside, I see the office of a man I haven't personally sat down with in nearly a year. Has it really been that long since he gave me his ultimatum? Didn't I do what he asked? Didn't I prove to him that I loved Peeta? Finnick's words from Six come back to me with a vengeance, making me see that if he'd realized it, Snow had to have as well.
"Please come in, Ms. Everdeen."
His voice sends a shock through me. I never thought I would hear it like this.
Straightening my back, I remember Finnick's encouragement, walking through the doors and fighting all my instincts that almost cause me to jump when the doors close behind me.
"You're ahead of schedule," Snow says, revealed in an alcove away from the massive desk at the center of the room. "But then again, I expected no less." Then he looks at me. "I apologize for the restrictions on your delivery. I had to be for certain we would have an opportunity to talk."
The first thing made clear is how frail he looks. His face is so drastically thinner and paler now that his blood vessels peek through his skin. His facial hair is thinner and whiter, if that's possible, as is the hair on his head, and his eyes are sunk deeper into their sockets. He looks like he's withering away, and for the first time in a year, I feel more afraid of him than I thought possible. I've never seen a person look this old and this dangerous at the same time.
"You look well, Ms. Everdeen," he says, probably not meaning to sound threatening and failing. "Or should I actually call you Mrs. Mellark now?"
The scared little girl fades at the first mention of Peeta as I take another step toward him. "Will it matter?" I ask. "He's safe. It's just you and me now."
He shakes his head, or rather, his head shakes, and his eyes turn to the window behind the alcove as it overlooks the burning city behind him. "My wife died many years ago," he reveals cryptically. "I still miss her. I had a special rose bush planted in my garden for her. Now my son and my granddaughter get a rose from that bush on the anniversary of her death. I ask that they wear it to breakfast that day. To lunch and dinner. To honor her memory." He looks at me and says, "She was an extraordinary woman. Warm. Lively. Brave. A heart attack. It was very sudden. But I make sure people know that she was worth every bit of love they gave her."
Confused, I shake my head, and he rises to sit at his desk. His limbs tremble as he does so, and he groans softly as he sits. "She was very much like you, Ms. Everdeen. She had a fire burning inside her that refused to be extinguished. It was so heartbreaking to lose her. But it would have been worse for her to wither away and die because of age and time. It would have been tragic for her to have gotten tangled up in the world we live in now. I don't think she would have survived it."
He gestures to a chair in front of his desk, and cautiously, I sit down.
He queues up a video on the viewscreen at the corner of his desk, and there hovers the image of a young, vivacious woman with light brown hair, smooth tan skin and a bright smile. On her arm is the younger version of Snow, tall, proud and indifferent as ever. The woman waves at the crowd gathered below, and then he waves. The camera pulls out, showing her grown belly as she rests her hand over it. I'm stunned, for lack of a better word. I barely recognize Snow as he stands next to this woman.
"Her name was Agnes," he says and turns off the viewscreen. "Some people who knew her still say she made me a better man. When she died, I realized that she made me soft. So I resolved to be more tactful and more resilient. I needed to be in order to survive. By any means necessary."
Even with the video, I'm questioning her existence despite the fact that I knew Snow has a son and a granddaughter. Those things were public knowledge, but the only things most people knew about his wife was that she had died not long before he became president. Now that I know these things about her, my imagination is running scenarios around and around to understand that the man in front of me could have very well been the one to kill her.
And I back track to his implication that Peeta and I have already gotten married. We haven't, but that's not what I'm focusing on.
Snow knows something. Something private about me and Peeta. He must. Why else would he tell me about his dead wife?
"You proved to me that you loved Mr. Mellark," he says when I look at him again. "You proved many things to me over the last few months. Ten months ago, we made an agreement for neither of us to lie to the other, so I feel I must ask. Do you still love him?"
"I do," I say without blinking. "Very much."
His grin makes me uncomfortable, the way it always did. "The two of you did such a brilliant job portraying yourselves in Eight. And Two. Too bad of course that the child you claimed to be carrying didn't make it to be viewed and loved by people you also claim to be protecting."
It takes all my strength not to clench my teeth. I can't show him that I'm angry. That means he still wins. It means he still has power over me. He doesn't deserve that power.
"Those people are protecting themselves now," I say, instead of the retort I have to bite back. "I only helped them see they could. So did Peeta. And Finnick."
His thinned out, white eyebrows lift infinitesimally, and his outer shield cracks. Then he presses on. "Oh, we'll get to Mr. Odair soon enough. Right now, we're discussing you. Before we continue, I need you to keep your promise. Do try not to lie to me, dear. You never were a believable liar, Ms. Everdeen."
Because this conversation isn't going the way I'd hoped by now, I realize that I have to make Snow believe he's winning — that he's convincing me of his superiority. I realize that's what this speech is for. Snow is telling me that he was like me once, young and strong and in love, and he was able to overcome that. To him, love is weakness. To me, I see now that it's the one thing I've always wanted but never felt I deserved.
"I won't lie," I tell Snow. "I promise."
The grin on his face make my skin crawl even as he cues up another video, but this isn't of his wife. This is of me in the Quarter Quell, sitting on the beach with Peeta.
"I wonder if he knows," Snow says, and I decide for once to play along.
"Knows what?" I ask.
"That everything he's done so far has all been for nothing. Most people who fight for the things they love rarely understand that. My wife didn't know, and I doubt Mr. Mellark knows. I'd say it's very certain that even Mr. Odair knows. But you see, Ms. Everdeen, you and I, we are the kind of people who know when to give in to the status quo."
And there it is again. It's that feeling I'm getting that he knows something. Peeta and I have been careful since we got to Thirteen, and we were far from prying eyes in Six. So what is it?
"Maybe we are alike," I say, and he lifts his eyes to mine. "Maybe deep down, I know that even though I've tried, none of the fighting I've done will make a difference. With the people I've been defending or with Peeta. And maybe all I really wanted was to save my sister from a fate I knew would ultimately kill her. All I really wanted was to keep her safe. To keep Peeta alive. And maybe I convinced myself that I did this for other people's own good. Like you did. That still doesn't explain why I'm here now with you like this. It doesn't explain why you're telling me about your wife and insinuating that I'm already married to Peeta. And all it really proves is that I almost won. The only thing that stopped me was fear."
I'm not sure what's prompted me to say all of this, but I immediately see that it pleases him. He grins, all too satisfied as he speaks again.
"Oh, Ms. Everdeen, you will learn. It will take many years, but you will eventually learn. It's the things we love most that destroy us. I want you to remember that I said that."
The doors open as the images on the view screen change to show the moments when Finnick and I were handed over. We're taken away, and just as the plan to overwhelm the guards was supposed to have moved forward, our team is surrounded and apprehended.
Two Peacekeepers pull me from the chair I've been sitting in and make me watch as Peeta, Gale and the others are taken into custody by more guards than it seems possible to have been left. These men must have pulled out of Two when the Rebels took control from them, coming here to the President's Mansion.
But how could this have happened? Only a few people knew about this plan even if a good number of rebels were involved in getting us here.
"As I said," Snow tells me, "I wonder if he knew that everything he did has all been for nothing. I'll see you in a short moment," he says and nods to the Peacekeepers. "Just a momentary stop to freshen up for my guests."
The men pull me away, and though I want to fight, I can't. Now that Snow has Peeta, there's no telling what he'll do if I don't cooperate.
So I let them take me from the office and back downstairs, trying to figure out who's betrayed us when we were so close. The walk to the rose garden outside is filled with more nerve-wracking, angry contemplation than I've ever done in my life, and I want to just collapse. It's over. The fight is over. It's the only thing I can think at this point.
We've lost.
We reach the doors to the rose garden just minutes after leaving the house, and in that time, I've thought of twelve different ways to take out my guards. I've given up any hope of seeing Peeta again, and my life has become meaningless. Let them torture me or even kill me. I don't care anymore.
Then the doors to the garden open, and I see Finnick there by himself. He's dressed in a pure white suit, and at first, I think the worst. They've found his armor and his weapons and managed to convince him that Annie isn't safe. Why else would he allow them to dress him this way?
He turns and see me, nodding for me to come to him, and the guards leave, unconcerned that I might run. Why would I run now that I have no hope of escape?
"Katniss," Finnick says and reaches for me.
I don't fight him when he takes my hand in his, and I don't fight him when he enfolds me in his arms. I should, but I don't. Then without any reason at all, I begin weeping.
"Shh," he whispers close to my ear. "It's okay."
I shake my head, my whole body trembling.
"No, it's okay," he insists.
"He knew," I cry almost inaudibly. "He knew the whole time. He just sat there and taunted me. He just sat there, Finnick. He has Peeta and Gale. I'm going to lose them both. I can't lose them both. I can't — "
"Stop," he shushes, cupping the back of my head. "It's okay. He doesn't know everything. When they set me to change, they searched me and found nothing. Beetee's armor is working, so I need you to listen to me. Maybe he has Peeta and Gale, but they know what to do if they're captured. We prepared for this, remember? It's okay. I've got you. I promise."
Though I'm still shaking, when I lean back and look at him, seeing the question in his eyes, I nod.
He's right. We were prepared for Snow learning about our plan. Gale and Peeta will get free.
They have to.
Surprise! I guess. Because here we start the real part of the story I wanted to change. The ending. It's trying to be a real bitch because it knows I'm trying to finish it. But just keep your fingers crossed, and I'll find my inspiration again. We'll be okay.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Until next time. Later!
