When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
- Jean-Paul Sartre
Epilogue - Part I
October, Year 75
A young soldier staggered down the stairs of District Two's Military Base, clutching his gaping cheek with a dirty, damp cloth. The whole base would soon crumble, become ruins, just as the ancient Romans once had. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend it was just another afternoon in history class. Clenched firmly in his left hand was the machine gun - a pesky, dated weapon, but equally efficient and precise in its efforts. For a moment, he came to a stalemate. He could either surrender the gun and effectively surrender his life, or continue to drag the millstone and lose his footing.
Distracted by the surrounding chaos, he crumpled to the ground.
So this was how he'd die. Funny. The nasty rebels circled in on him, ready to end his miserable life, when a girl called out for them to stop, and then repeated the command "Hold your fire!"
Katniss Everdeen. The soldier nearly laughed a poisonous, toxic laugh caught in his chest. He'd been waiting for the day, the possibility, but he'd never imagine it'd one day come. They'd be proud — so, so proud. Dragging himself up by his knees, his mouth contorted into a sly grin as he positioned the barrel of his rifle to the crevice of her forehead. If he was going to die, then he was going to go out in style.
She backed up, holding her bow in surrender.
"Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you." He challenged, a fire ignited in his darkened irises.
"I can't."
Confusion flooded the soldier's eyes. In Two they'd been taught to think on their feet, to be sure and smart. Perhaps it was the honesty, the earnestness in her answer that unsettled him, but she wasn't done quite yet.
"I can't. That's the problem, isn't it?" She lowered her bow, trying to rationalize the scene before her. "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."
Her bow fell to the ground and she slid it over to him with her boot, effectively leaving her life in his calloused, broken hands. It was a big leap of faith and he wondered how much trust she had in the decisions of a complete stranger, from someone as far away from her home as District Two was.
"I'm not their slave," was his only pitiful response.
Katniss looked at him. "I am. That's why I killed Cato . . . and he killed Thresh—"
As she babbled on self-indulgently, the soldier balled his fists. Perhaps Cato had killed Thresh in the name of the Capitol, but no... no, that wasn't right. He'd killed Thresh for Clove, who would have never been in the games if it hadn't been for Dahlia's murder, who wouldn't have even mattered had their been no games in the first place, but... but... fuck.
Damn this girl. Damn this war.
He wanted to go home. The snow-capped mountains weren't worth it, weren't worth what he'd endured to get there.
"...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 the Capitol."
Everything hurt. He'd tried for so long to keep them from plaguing his thoughts, his every waking movement. Clove's redirects, her commands to calm down when his temper flared, and Cato's cheerful face laughing at his clumsy mistakes and keeping his feet stuck to the ground, telling him to never give up and cheering him on at every milestone.
Heat rose to his cheeks and he took a steady breath. He was tired of being sad all the time, tired of the ache in his chest that never dulled.
"When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought…they've done it again. 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 Everdeen was going about it entirely the wrong way. It wouldn't have mattered if District Two and District Twelve 'had a fight.' What she failed to understand was that it'd never been about District Twelve. Hell, it'd never been about any of the districts. It'd been about doing what was right — protecting their protectors.
She sunk to her knees before him and urgently pleaded, "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?"
A flash of black hair and white teeth, grit with defiance and determination came immediately to mind, but he buried the memory. He didn't want to think about him, about the traitor and the grievances he'd committed against Cato's and Clove's memories. How he'd failed them not once but twice.
"I don't know."
The world was spinning out of control. Maybe it was the blood loss. Maybe it was the unbearable grief, but something flashed over him.
Death had plagued the soldier all his life and he'd learned to treat it so casually, so tritely. He'd long ago stopped keeping count, lost his faith in something better, something different. Her gray eyes, steely and determined only confused him and gave him. . . hope?
Why would she risk it? Risk her life, knowing that while she might win a single battle, she could never win the war. And maybe not for the first time in his life, he wanted something more. More than just honor and doing what he was told.
She rose, gave him a quick glance, and turned in a circle, addressing the public of Two — the sleazy miners who'd left him to die, "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 whoever manages to crawl from the rubble?"
Oh, she was gullible. So, so terribly gullible. She and Cato had that in common, that and their casual grip, the way they both held their weapons firmly in their left hand, naturally, as if an extension of themselves. She was about as good a speaker as Cato, too. Only convincing in the barest of states.
The miners actually thought they had a chance, that they could rebel against the Capitol and win. He'd told his mother, a miner herself, not to join them and condemn herself to a terrible fate. She grabbed his face, kissed his cheek, and told him each morning to be careful and be brave. He'd failed her in the former, but was desperately trying not to in the latter.
It was a hard end to avoid when suffering through immeasurable pain, when you could feel the life slowly slipping from your lips.
"These people are not your enemy!" The braided girl shouted, pointing to the wounded soldiers gasping for air. Then she turned to the hiding rebels, "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!"
She had a lot of guts, a lot of nerve and as she extended her hand to him, inviting him in to her alliance, the soldier blinked. He'd been in so many before, but with Katniss Everdeen? He'd never conceived such a fate and all he could think was that Clove would have liked her. Had she had the chance, Clove would have really appreciated the girl's nerve, and by the looks of it, Katniss Everdeen needed a Clove. She needed someone swift, deliberate, and tactile. Someone smart enough to know better.
None of it mattered, though, because just as he was about to accept her grasp and the chance at a new life, Katniss Everdeen was shot in front of his very eyes, and the world fell into chaos once more.
Author's Note (2012): To the reviewer who asked, Clove is right-handed as stated in chapter eight. Cato is left-handed and so is Katniss :) Three guesses who our resident soldier was. One more epilogue and then the alternate ending! Please review.
Author's Note (2017): I think I edited maybe two sentences in this chapter. There are some chapters with better writing than others and this one most certainly was it.
Written: October 2nd, 2012
Edited: April 9th, 2017
