Chapter 56

When I woke, I immediately sought out Katniss in the dark basement. She sat in the center of the room with her head in her hands, deep into some horrible thought process. I tried to move to comfort her, but collapsed back onto my pile of furs, and settled for hoisting myself up on one elbow so that I could see the rest of the cellar.

Around me, the remaining members of my squad were slowly waking and stretching. Finnick leaned back against a wall, fiddling with a short piece of rope. Pollux and Cressida looked exhausted, but when they saw Katniss in the center of the room, moved in a bit to sit near her. Peeta, too, was awake, but handcuffed to the stair support. When he saw me looking at him, he smiled and rolled his eyes, as if already willing to joke about his inability to keep himself together. I had to give it to the kid- he was a good sport.

"What's going on, Katniss?" I whispered into the darkness. "Are you okay?"

But she didn't seem to hear me, and so I spoke a bit more loudly:

"Katniss, we all knew you were lying about Coin sending you to assassinate President Snow."

This did the trick. Katniss glared back at me with tears threatening to spill over from her eyes.

"You knew, maybe. The soldiers from Thirteen didn't."

Cressida shook her head and offered Katniss a sad smile. "Do you really think Jackson believed you had orders from Coin?" she asked kindly. "Of course she didn't. But she trusted Boggs, and he'd clearly wanted you to go on."

"I never even told Boggs what I planned to do," Katniss argued back, her voice desperate with guilt.

"You told everyone in Command!" I told her, more sharply than I meant to. "It was one of your conditions for being the Mockingjay. I kill Snow."

"But not like this," Katniss said softly. "It's been a complete disaster."

"I think it would be considered a highly successful mission," I consoled her, looking around at the disheartened faces of my squad-mates. They all need to hear this. "We've infiltrated the enemy camp, showing that the Capitol's defenses can be breached. We've managed to get footage of ourselves all over the Capitol's news. We've thrown the whole city into chaos trying to find us."

"Trust me, Plutarch's thrilled," Cressida agreed.

But this didn't seem to convince Katniss. "That's because Plutarch doesn't care who dies," she said darkly. "Not as long as his Games are a success."

No matter how long Cressida and I tried to get Katniss to believe otherwise, we couldn't seem to pull her out of her spiral of grief. Peeta remained silent beside the stair support. I glanced at him in exasperation, expecting him to jump in and defend Katniss. This is not the time for conflict within the squad. We've just got to get this crazy job done, and then get Katniss to safety. It's not complicated.

Finally, Katniss asked Peeta for his input. I crossed my fingers that he would back me and Cressida.

"What do you think, Peeta?" she asked forcefully.

Peeta took a deep breath before responding, probably trying to compose himself. That's right, Peeta. If there's a time for diplomacy, it's now.

"I think... you still have no idea. The effect you can have," he told her softly as he readjusted his cuffs so that he could sit fully upright. "None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow."

As soon as he finished speaking, Peeta collapsed back against the stair support. Finnick went to sit beside him while Katniss showed her map to me and Cressida. We were only a handful of blocks from Snow's mansion, but if the past few days had taught me anything, it was that a single step could be deadly.

"What we need is to get him out in the open," I suggested, thinking that the closer we could lure Snow to us, the less danger my squad-mates would have to face. "Then one of us could pick him off." I could do it. Then no one else would have to risk getting hurt.

"Does he even appear in public anymore?" Peeta asked behind me. Finnick grunted in acknowledgement of Peeta's question. It was a valid point- and if anyone had experience with Snow's comings and goings, it was probably Peeta, who had spent God-knows-how-long locked up in the city center.

"I don't think so," Cressida speculated. "At least in all the recent speeches I've seen, he's been in the mansion. Even before the rebels got here. I imagine he became more vigilant after you aired his crimes, Finnick," she said with a wink in his direction. Cressida and Finnick laughed, but Katniss kept her eyes glued intently to the map, and Peeta stared down at his feet, completely out-of-the-loop.

"I bet he'd come out for me," Katniss said. "If I were captured. He'd want that to be as public as possible. He'd want my execution on his front steps. Then Gale could shoot him from the audience."

I looked up at Katniss in horror, ready to squash this idea five thousand different ways. But Peeta beat me to it:

"No," he said firmly. "There are too many alternative endings to that plan. Snow might decide to keep you and torture information out of you. Or have you executed publicly without being present. Or kill you inside the mansion and display your body out front."

"That's enough, Peeta," Finnick warned him.

"But it's the truth!" Peeta insisted. "He's not above that. I've seen worse."

"We know you have," Finnick assured him gently. He reached for his pack and withdrew his canteen to offer Peeta a few sips of water.

"Gale?" Katniss asked. I scrambled to assemble my thoughts.

"It seems like an extreme solution to jump to immediately," I said slowly, watching Peeta sip from the canteen. "Maybe if all else fails. Let's keep thinking."

The others settled in to catch some rest before Tigris called us up for dinner. I moved in closer to Katniss and put my arm around her while she finished examining her map of the Capitol.

"You should rest, too," I whispered, fingering a lose strand of her dark brown hair.

"Later," she said, brushing me off as though she had barely heard me. "Too much to think through right now."

"Give me the map. Let me do the thinking for a bit. You need sleep- you've been carrying us all through for days."

Katniss shook her head. "I think I can hear Tigris locking the shop upstairs. Here," she said as she handed me the key to Peeta's handcuffs. "Let him stretch for a bit before dinner. I really just want to be left alone right now, okay?"

"Okay," I agreed, accepting the key and leaving the girl I loved alone with her map.


Thanks so much for reading! Everyone knows what conversation comes next, and it's the conversation played the largest single role in inspiring Gale's Amaranth. I consider this chapter a short one because it's predominantly Mockingjay dialogue, and I'm super excited to get to write my own full dialogues again for the final part of the story... which, of course, entails many, many, updates still yet to come!

Wishing all the best to my wonderful readers. :)