The only thing I can remember before blacking out is heat of the flames that singes the tip of my braid and right pant leg. The concussive force of the blast is what really did a number on me. I hit the wall with enough force that I felt and heard crunching in my body when I hit the wall. I thought I might have done a somersault when I was propelled through the air, but I wasn't sure. I do know the moment I hit the wall I lost consciousness. It took the medics two hours before they found my crumpled, lifeless body. And the person to find my body was Finnick, and Prim quickly checked over my body to make sure there weren't broken bones or other discrepancies. Prim was unsure of what she was finding, so she finished my assessment, and got me loaded up into the ambulance.

I drift in and out of consciousness for a few days. I barely remember hearing conversations about my condition. I think I heard something about hitting the wall, and something about the velocity of the impact hurt a couple of vertebra in my neck. So the C-collar that was placed on my neck at the City Circle was left on. Next time I drift in from the abyss the collar was off. I could hear voices—two male and two female—but I couldn't place the owners. What I didn't know was that when I hit the wall that a few of my spinous processes had been bruised, but it was healing nicely.

This endless twilight reminds me of the time I came out of my first Games, and the Capitol was repairing my damaged body. This feels exactly like that, except I wasn't skin and bones. There must have been more to my condition if they kept me sedated this long. One day I wake up as mom was making her rounds. I was about to speak, but I couldn't. It seems that a tube was put in my mouth while I was unconscious. It takes her a few moments to pull the tube from my mouth.

"Here, drink this before you try speaking." my mom said, offering my some water to break the desert that was currently residing in my mouth and throat.

After few second of drinking the water, she asks. "How are feeling? Do you feel pain anywhere?"

"I'm a…I'm fine. I don't feel any pain. I said.

"Good, good. You just try to relax." my mom said.

"I'll do what I can." I said, as she was leaving.

Other than a few nurses, I didn't have a visit from anyone of importance for at least three hours. And it was someone I didn't really care to see or hear from—President Coin, but it was a short visit. She only spoke seven words when she arrived. "Don't worry. I saved him for you."

When Coin leaves, Dr. Aurelius orders that I don't have any visitors outside of family or close friends. Something about keeping my mental trauma from rising. Not that it matter because my next guests made me forget everything: Primrose and Finnick. Prim hugged me, and Finnick hugged us both. Prim updated the two of us on my condition, or lack thereof, and then took a seat. I held Prim's hand as Finnick updated me on the status of everything. On the war: the Capitol feel the day the parachutes went off, President Coin leads Panem now, and troops have been sent out to put down the small remaining pockets of Capitol resistance. On President Snow: He's being held prisoner, waiting trail and most certain execution. On my assassination team: Cressida and Pollux have been sent out into the districts to cover the wreckage of the war. Gale, who took two bullets in an escape attempt, is mopping up Peacekeepers in 2. Peeta's still in the burn unit. He made it to the City Circle after all. On my family: my mom: even busy still takes time to show her daughters love. Delly even makes an appearance.

Having no work, loneliness and boredom buries me. Even though my mom and Prim visit regularly, I feel my sanity begin to crack. All that keeps me going is Coin's promise. That I can kill Snow. And when that's done, there will be nothing left.

Eventually, I'm released from the hospital and given a room in the president's mansion to share with my mom and Prim. But they're almost never there. Except for meals and sleeping, they spend most of their time at the hospital. It falls to Haymitch to make sure I have company, eat and take my medicine. It's not an easy job. I take to my old habits from District 13. Wandering unauthorized through the mansion. Into bedrooms and offices, ballrooms and bathrooms. Seeking strange little hiding spaces. A closet of fur. A cabinet in the library. A long-forgotten bathtub in a room full of discarded furniture. My places are dim and quiet and impossible to find. I slowly turn into a victor, attempting to escape the nightmares of the past two years by curling up and making myself smaller, trying to disappear entirely. Wrapped in silence I try to make sense of my current disposition that I find myself in.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. There is no District 12. I am the Mockingjay. I brought down the Capitol. President Snow hates me. He attempted to kill my sister. Now I will kill him. And then the Hunger Games will be over… But wait. Didn't Gale say that the air force was dismantled when we took the Nut down?

The thought bothered, and I couldn't shake it. I periodically find myself back in my room, unsure whether I was driven by need for morphling or if Haymitch ferreted me out. I eat the food, take the medicine, and bathe. I see that the flames had did more than singe my hair, but the damage to my body was negligible so I did not require skin grafts. I cut off the parts of my braid that were singed, and then I thought. Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire. I look at my skin, and remember the burn I suffered to my calf in the first Games.

Dr. Aurelius shows up sometimes. I like him because he doesn't say stupid things like how I'm totally safe, or that he knows that I can't see it but I'll be happy again one day, or even that things will be better in Panem now. I know that I'm safe, sort of. I need companionship. My family is working long hours, Gale is out on patrol, Finnick is with Annie, and Peeta is still in the hospital. I thought. He asks if I feel like talking. I know I should answer him, but I don't. When I don't answer, he just falls asleep in the chair. In fact, I think his visits are largely motivated by his need for a nap. The arrangement works for both of us.

The time draws near, although I could not give the exact hours and minutes. President Snow has been tried and found guilty, sentenced to execution. Haymitch tells me, I hear talk of it as I drift past the guards in the hallways. My Mockingjay suit arrives in my room. Also my bow, looking no worse for wear, but no quiver of arrows. Either because they were damaged or because I shouldn't have weapons. I vaguely wonder if I should prepare for the event in some way, but nothing comes to mind.

Late one afternoon, after a long period in a cushioned window seat behind a painted screen, I emerge and turn left instead of right. I find myself in a strange part of the mansion, and immediately lose my bearings. Unlike the area where I'm quartered, there seems to be no one around I could ask. I like it, though. Wish I would have found it sooner. It's so quiet, with thick carpets and heavy tapestries soaking up the sound. Softly lit. Muted colors. Peaceful. Until I smell the roses. I dive behind some curtains, shaking too hard to run, while I await the mutts. Finally, I realize that no mutts are coming. So, what do I smell? Real roses? Could it be that I'm near the garden where the evil things grow?

As I creep down the hall, the odor becomes overpowering. Perhaps not as strong as the actually mutts, but purer, because it's not competing with sewage and explosives. I turn a corner and find myself staring at two surprised guards. Not Peacekeepers, of course. There are no more Peacekeepers. But not the trim, gray-uniformed soldiers from 13 either. These two, a man and a woman, wear the tattered, thrown-together clothes of actual rebels. Still bandaged and gaunt, they are now keeping watch over the roses. When I move to enter, their guns form an X in front of me.

"You can't go in, miss," says the man.

"Soldier," the woman corrects him. "You can't in, Soldier Everdeen. President's orders."

I just stand there patiently waiting for them to lower their guns, for them to understand, without me telling them, that behind those doors is something I need. Just a rose. A single bloom. To place in Snow's lapel before I shoot him. My presence seems to worry guards. They're discussing calling Haymitch, when a woman speaks up behind me. "Let her go in."

I know that voice but I can't immediately place it. Not Seam, not 13, definitely not Capitol. I turn my head and find myself face-to-face with Paylor, the commander from 8. She looks even more beat up than she did at the hospital, but who doesn't?

"On my authority," says Paylor. "She has a right to anything behind the door." These are her soldiers, not Coin's. They drop their weapons without question and let me pass.

At the end of a short hall, I push apart the glass doors and step inside. But now the smells so strong, that it begins to flatten out, as if there's no more my nose can absorb. The damp mild, air feels good on my hot skin. And the roses are glorious. Row after row of sumptuous blooms, in lush pink, sunset orange, and even a pale blue. I wander through the aisles of carefully pruned plants, looking but not touching, because I have learned that the hard way how dangerous these beauties can be. I know when I find it, crowning the top of a slender bush. A magnificent white bud just beginning to open. I pull my left sleeve over my hand so the skin won't actually have to touch it, take up a pair of pruning shears, and have just position them on the stem when he speaks.

"That's a nice one."

My hand jerks; the shears snap shut, severing the stem.

"The colors are lovely, of course, but something says perfection like white."

I still can't see him, but his voice seems to rise up from an adjacent bed of roses. Delicately pinching the stem through the fabric of my sleeve, I slowly move around the corner to find him sitting on a stool against the wall. He's as well groomed and finely dressed as ever, but weighed down with manacles, ankle shackles, tracking devices. In the bright light, his skin's a pale, sickly green. He holds a whited handkerchief spotted with fresh blood. Even in his deteriorated state, his snake eyes shine bright and cold. "I was hoping you'd find your way to my quarters."

His quarters. I have trespassed into his home, the way he slithered into mine last year, hissing threats with his bloody, rosy breath. This greenhouse is one of his rooms, perhaps his favorite; perhaps in better times he tended the plants himself. But now it's part of his prison. That's why the guards halted me. And that's why Paylor let me in.

The irony of the situation is not lost on me. I thought.

I'd supposed he would be secured in the deepest dungeon that the Capitol had to offer, not cradled in the lap of luxury. Yet Coin left him here. To set a precedence, I guess. So that if in the future she ever fell from grace, it would be understood presidents—even the most despicable-get special treatment. Who knows, after all, when her own power might fade?

"There are so many things we should discuss, but I have a feeling that you visit will be brief. So, first things first." He begins to cough, and when he removes the handkerchief from his mouth, it's redder. "I wanted to tell you that I'm relieved that your sister survived that bombing."

Even in my lonely, and semi-rational condition, this raises a red flag. Reminding me there is no limits to his cruelty. And how he will go to his grave trying to destroy me.

"The bombing was so wasteful, so unnecessary. Anyone could see that the Game was over by that point. In fact, I was just about to issue an official surrender when they released the parachutes." His eyes are glued on me, unblinking as not to miss a second of my reaction. What he said reinforces an idea that I haven't told anyone. "I made a mistake in believing that you were some scared girl from the outer districts. You're too smart to believe that I was the one who dropped the bombs. Forget the obvious fact that if I had a working hovercraft at my disposal, I'd have been using it make an escape. But that aside, what purpose could it have served? We both know I'm not above killing children, but I'm not wasteful. I take life for specific reasons. And there is no reason for me to destroy a pen full of Capitol children. None at all."

I wonder if the next fit of coughing is staged so that I can have time to absorb his words. As much as I want to write off everything he just said as a lie, I'm…intrigued by Snow's confession. He's trying to unburden himself before he dies. There's something he knows that he's not telling me, and it's the piece of information that I need to confirm my theory.

"However, I must concede it was a masterful move on Coin's part. The idea I was bombing our own helpless children snapped whatever frail allegiance my people still felt for me. There was no real resistance after that. Did you know it aired live? You can see Plutarch's hand there. And in the parachutes. Well, it's the sort of thing you look for in a Head Gamemaker, isn't it?" Snow dabs the corner of his mouth. "I'm sure he wasn't gunning for you and your sister, but these things happen."

I'm not with Snow now. I'm in Special Weaponry back in 13 with Gale and Beetee. Looking at the designs based on Gale's trap. They play to human sympathies. The first bomb kills the victim. The second, the rescuers. Remembering Gale's words.

"Beetee and I have been following the same rule book President Snow used when he hijacked Peeta."

"My failure," Snow says, "was being slow to grasp Coin's plan. To let the Capitol and the districts destroy one another, and then step in and take power with Thirteen barely scratched. Make no mistake, she intended to take my place from the beginning. I shouldn't be surprised. After all, it was Thirteen that started the rebellion that led to the Dark Days, and then abandoned the rest of the districts when the tide turned against it. But I wasn't watching Coin. I was watching you, Mockingjay. And you were watching me. I'm afraid we've both been played for fools."

And there it is. The one piece of information that I need to put everything together. District 2 housed the air force for the Capitol in the Nut, which we disabled. I thought. Now that Snow reminded me that the bomb was of Gale's design, I know this to be true. Come to think of it, Coin is a female version of Snow. All this is information is damaging to say the least, and hard to refute. I'll go over the specifics after I finish here.

"Don't believe me?" Snow asked.

There was a moment of silence, and then I said. "Go on. Say it."

Snow shakes his head in mock disappointment, but there was a sly grin on his face. "Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other."