That night, I'm sitting with Annie in the hospital, Prim taking a break from her duties to sit on the foot of her bed and watch the television screen. Plutarch had found Annie and me not four hours after we left Command to tell us that District 2 is planning to surrender tonight.

A part of me hadn't wanted to bother watching, but when I heard that Katniss was making a speech, I figured that I owed her enough to watch her at least. Besides, Prim wanted me to, and I don't think I could say no to her.

"People of District Two," Katniss begins, snapping all of our attention to the screen, "this is Katniss Everdeen speaking to you from the steps of your Justice Building, where-"

She stops as a loud screeching noise dominates the screen. The cameras turn towards a pair of trains, chugging out of an enormous mountain.

As the camera pans out to take in the entire scene, I can clearly see what the rebels have done. All of the entrances to the mountain seemed to be covered with dirt and rocks, except for the tunnels into the city square, and as I look more closely, I see that that is surrounded by armed soldiers.

They trapped the workers in the mountain with only one way out, and then surrounded them with people ready to shoot. Ready to shoot? Or ordered to shoot?

"Finnick, what's going on?" Annie asks softly. I take her hand and shake my head. I don't know. Something that's not supposed to happen, otherwise everyone wouldn't look so confused.

They won't actually shoot the people coming out of the mountain, will they? And what were they doing in the first place? Trying to destroy the mountain with them inside? That isn't right, even during a war. It's something that Snow would do.

"I don't know," I tell her confusedly, looking towards Prim. "Was this planned?"

But she doesn't answer. Instead she's ghost pale, and her horror-filled eyes are trained on the screen, not looking away.

"I can't believe they did that," she says. "Katniss wouldn't have let them do that."

I start to ask what she's talking about, but then the doors to the trains slide open and dozens of people come tumbling out in a cloud of smoke.

Before the smoke clears enough to see them clearly, a spray of bullets erupts from inside the station. Annie closes her eyes and starts whispering to herself, burying her face in my chest and shaking uncontrollably.

"Calm down," I whisper, rubbing her back methodically, trying not to look as I see one of the trains burst into flames, see people pushing out into the square where dozens of machine guns are trained on them. "It's okay, Annie. It's okay. We don't need to watch it if you don't want to, do you want to turn it off?"

She opens her mouth to answer, but is cut off by Katniss's shout of, "Stop! Hold your fire! Stop!"

Then she's running down onto the square towards one of the men, sprinting like crazy right into the group of survivors from the trains.

"No, no, no," Prim says, scooting back closer to where I'm sitting next to Annie. "What is she doing?"

Annie looks up slowly, then, seeing Prim, she turns her head resolutely away from the screen, instead focusing on trying to calm down the younger girl.

In contrast, I can't tear my eyes away, even though I know that I should.

Katniss reaches the man to help him, but instead he drags himself to his knees and trains his gun on her head.

The hospital goes dead quiet as Katniss takes two quick steps backwards, her eyes wide.

"No," Prim whispers, and Annie moves forward to hold the younger girl's hand. "No."

"Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you," the man says, his voice garbled. It looks like something was shot through his cheek.

""I can't," says Katniss, and Prim whimpers. We all wait for the man to shoot her, to take her out, but he doesn't. Her words have confused him. "I can't. That's the problem, isn't it? We blew up your mine. You burned my district to the ground. We've got every reason to kill each other. So do it. Make the Capitol happy. I'm done killing their slaves for them."

She drops her bow and kicks it over to him. The man bows his head and mutters, "I'm not their slave."

He says that, but I know that he's wrong. Of course he's their slave. We all are. Everyone is the Capitol's slave in some way or the other, or at least we all were at some point of time.

I know that more than anyone.

And Katniss clearly knows that, too, because her next words are, "I am. That's why I killed Cato… and he killed Thresh… and he killed Clove… and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always that Capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their Games."

Tired of being a piece in their Games. I can't say that. I won't want to quit playing these Games until there's a clear cut winner, but I know what Katniss is saying. That having your life revolving around Snow, around the Capitol, whether it's good or bad, is tiring. And I want it to stop.

"When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought… they've done it again," she continues. "Got me to kill you- the people in the districts. But why did I do it? District Twelve and District Two have no fight except the one the Capitol gave us."

Katniss kneels before the young man urgently, every eye in Panem no doubt on her.

"And why are you fighting with the rebels on the rooftops? With Lyme, who was your victor. With people who were your neighbors, maybe even your family?"

"I don't know," says the man, his gun still raised threateningly.

Katniss stands and turns slowly in a circle, talking to the rebels.

"And you up there? I come from a mining town. Since when do miners condemn other miners to that kind of death, and then stand by to kill however manages to crawl from the rubble?

"These people are not your enemy!" she shouts at the machine guns, then turns to address the wounded bodies on the square and addresses them. "The rebels are not your enemy! We all have one enemy, and it's the Capitol. This is our chance to put an end to their power, but we need every district person to do it!

"Please!" she concludes. "Join us!"

There's a second of hope, a second where we all release our breath as the man lets go of his gun and everything seems like it's going to be okay.

Then a gunshot rings through the television and Katniss crumples to the ground.

Prim sits stock still, her eyes wide with shock, her face even whiter than it had been before. Annie screams.

I'm more used to seeing things like this, have seen too much for it to surprise me, and even as my stomach twists with a horrible kind of worry that the Mockingjay is dead.

Then I see her try to sit up, but she groans instead. I see the man who had been raising his gun at her force himself to her side and kneel next to her. Dozens rebels rush over to her, and gunfire erupts all around.

There's blood and guts, and I think most of the people who escaped from the mountain are dead, so I quickly reach up to turn it off, knowing that Annie and Prim don't need to see that.

"Katniss," Prim whispers once it's done, hugging herself tightly. I look at Annie to make sure that she's okay, then sit myself down next to Prim and wrap my arms around her.

"It's okay," I say. "She's going to be fine. Did you see her try to sit up? She's still alive. I didn't even see blood. It went off of her suit. She won't die. Just a few broken ribs, if anything. She's fine, Prim."

"B-but-," she starts, tears in her eyes.

"Prim," I say, looking right into her big blue eyes. "You saw Katniss in the Games, right? The first time?"

She nods mutely.

"So you saw her leg get burnt? How she dealt with the tracker jacker stings? And you saw Clove cut her with that knife and make her lose all that blood?"

Another nod.

"And she survived all of those things without any medical care, didn't she? She got through them by herself or with Peeta's help, in the middle of an arena. So don't you think she can survive a bullet that didn't even touch her, with the best medical care she could get anywhere?"

Prim swallows, and I can see her latching tightly onto my words, wanting to believe them. I don't blame her. I want to believe them, too. Annie sits still beside us, listening to me, too.

"She probably could, couldn't she?"

"Katniss is a victor," I say, forcing a smile. "I'd say that she would have survived it even without the suit. If you want, we could all go down to Command and make Plutarch tell us how she is as soon as he finds out."

"You wouldn't mind?" asks Prim, her eyes flashing back to the screen like she can still see her sister there, even though it's completely blank.

"No, not at all," I say comfortingly. "Come on."

Then the three of us start down to Command to see how Katniss is doing.