"He's not here, sweetheart."
The words stung. My Peeta wasn't here, he wasn't by my side... Haymitch sounded sad and the look in his eye told me that something terrible had happened. I heard the heart monitor increase and my breathing increased as well, and Haymitch stood up, panic written in the wrinkles of his aging face.
"No, no, no! Calm down, that ain't what I meant!" he exclaimed in a panic. "He ain't dead. But he's very badly burned and he hasn't woken up yet."
"How long has it been?" I asked him weakly.
"Four days," Haymitch replied. Four days. Four days since Finnick and Calum died. Four days since we converged on Snow's mansion. Four days since Snow's vicious parachute bombs killed my sister. Four days since I last saw Peeta.
"What's happened?" I asked him calmly.
"Let's see... after the bombs, the Peacekeepers turned against Snow and helped the rebels in breaking into the mansion. Snow got captured, he's been kept prisoner ever since. We rescued all of Snow's prisoners, all the 'victors' of his last three Games, and... and Effie."
"Effie? Snow imprisoned her?"
"Sweetheart, she's in a bad way... but your antivenom is helpin' her. She'll be okay, with help."
"How's Carolina?"
"Physically, she's fine, but her heart's broken, ever since that boy died. Your brother. Thanks for bringin' my girl back to me, and I'm sorry about your brother..." He knew about Carolina and Calum. How did he... "The girl gets her knack for hearin' gossip from me."
"What about Annie?" Haymitch gently shook his head.
"She's in a terrible state. She started havin' lots of flashbacks. Now it's like she never got the antivenom. The kids are bein' cared for in Fourteen. Finnick's mother was brought there. She was also imprisoned." I honestly hadn't known that Finnick's mother was still alive. "Do you wanna hear what the Senate has been up to?"
"Not really," I admitted.
"They're waitin' on you and the boy to get better. They don't wanna make any decisions about the future without the original senators of Twelve."
"What about Thirteen and Eight?"
"Paylor's alive and well, and Thirteen's stand-in has accepted the full-time role of the position." I nodded and remained silent for a minute.
"Can I see him?"
"You ain't got the strength to move around yet. You was badly burned, needed lots of skin grafts and shit, I don't know what they were talkin' about with their damn doctor people talk. They said you gotta sit still for a bit."
"I'm the one person in this world who can't sit still." At this, Haymitch laughed.
"You are wrong about that," he said with amusement. "I've been to see the boy, though... He's lookin' rough, same as you. And, uh..." Suddenly, his hand was at the base of his skull and his gaze was directed elsewhere. "...sweetheart, you shoulda told someone you was expectin'... we coulda done somethin' for... to protect..." He let out a sigh, then looked me directly in the eye. "I'm sorry... You lost the kid."
My stomach dropped and my hands jumped to my abdomen, now empty with the life that should have been having been extinguished by the bomb. This damn war has now taken everything from me. Prim, Calum, Finnick, my family, my home, my child, maybe Peeta... I felt a tear start to fall down my cheek as I mourned the loss of the child that would never be. I felt Haymitch's thumb wipe the tear from my cheek in a very fatherly manner.
"Be strong, kiddo, but take whatever time you need... If you need me, just tell one of them fancy people in white and they'll come and get me," Haymitch said to me, and he leaned over to plant a kiss on my forehead before getting up and leaving my room. As soon as I was alone, I let out a sob, mourning my child and longing for Peeta to come and hold me and tell me that everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn't. But he wasn't there. He was unwell, probably close to dying, and I wasn't allowed to go to him.
"Peeta... Peeta..." I moaned through my sobs, covering my face with my hands and my whole body shaking. I must have cried myself to sleep, or I was given more drugs, because when I woke up, this time, Carolina was seated beside me, her gentle smile coming to life when I opened my eyes. She was trying her best to look happy and at peace, but I could see the war against sadness that she was holding in her eyes.
"Hey," she said, the sadness creeping into her voice. "How're you feeling?"
"How long has it been? How's Peeta?" I asked her.
"A few hours maybe... he's much the same, I'm afraid," she replied. "He'll be okay. I know how badly you want to see him, and as soon as you're able to get up, I'll take you to see him."
"You will?" She nodded. "Thank you..."
"He's being kept under isolation, but there's a window you can see him through. His burns were so much worse than yours, Katniss, and it caused a lot of damage..." I nodded, fighting the tears that were stinging in my eyes. "You love him so much, that much is so obvious. He knows it, too, so he'll fight to get back to you. Peeta won't let anything keep you two apart."
"We won the war... Now there's nothing that'll keep us apart," I said, my voice laced with hope, and she smiled again. Carolina was perhaps one of my closest female friends, along with Johanna, and I remembered the day that we met. It was in Thirteen, in a similar setting to the one we were in presently. Peeta was sitting by my side holding my hand while I recovered from the lightning shock when she came in, smiling brilliantly and charming and looking oddly familiar.
"Hello," she's said. "I've been looking forward to meeting both of you. I'm Carolina... Carolina Abernathy." I remembered how Peeta and I both exchanged a glance before we looked back at her, and she shrugged. "It's exactly what you think. Haymitch is my father."
"I had no idea he even had a daughter," Peeta had said.
"He sent my mother away to Thirteen before I was born to keep us safe. I never knew what I was being kept safe from, but she always spoke so highly of him," Carolina had replied. Peeta and I had only ever known the drunk that Haymitch had been all of our lives, and Carolina only knew him after she was already mostly grown. She spoke so highly of him always and adored him despite his flaws, and the more we got to know her, the more we learned how much like her father she actually was.
Carolina brought me to Peeta's room the following day, when I was finally given permission to leave my bed. I sat in a wheelchair while she wheeled me to his room and I stood as I looked through the window at what looked to be the corpse of the man I loved and treasured more than anything. The heart monitor beside him, however, told me that his heart still beat, so despite how dead he looked, he truly was alive. He looked so mangled, covered in artificial skin created by the Capitol to heal his burns. A lot of his hair had been burned off, and it was heartbreaking to see him without his beautiful ashy blonde locks that I had fallen in love with. He hardly looked like himself, and I had to be led away in tears to keep me from distressing myself any further.
Haymitch hung around me a lot more in the days of my recovery, trying to help me find ways to entertain myself, but there was nothing that could keep my mind from going to a dark place. I missed my brother, too, but Cailean was nowhere to be found. He was uninjured in the blast, having stayed in Tigris's shop, so I began to wonder where the hell he was. We'd both lost our brother - granted, he'd had a lifetime with Calum while I'd only had a combined total of about nine years, but Calum was still my brother, and I still loved him and mourned his loss.
"He's just... he's not himself," said Carolina sadly when I asked her. "He's not been allowing himself to mourn, so he's keeping all of his emotions bottled up."
"I need to talk to him," I said to her. "Sister to brother..."
"He hasn't wanted to see anyone," Carolina told me.
"And I want to see no one but Peeta but I don't have that option so he'll either talk to me or sit there while I prattle away at him," I replied. Carolina, being the good friend she was to both my brother and myself and holding all the love she had left for the two of us, promised me that the moment I was discharged, she would bring me to his side. I was discharged two days later, and she helped me into a car that brought us from the hospital to Snow's mansion, where we had evidently set up camp. She led me to a room and gently tapped on the door, then opened it.
"Cailean, there's someone here to see you," she said, but there was no reply. Carolina simply let me into the room and closed it behind me, leaving my brother and I alone. He didn't look up at me, seated on his bed looking dark and lonely, as I crossed the room to sit down on the bed beside him.
"Hey," I said to him, speaking in Gàidhlig, the language that the two of us were born speaking. He didn't answer me. "I'm not going to waste time asking how you are because I know how you are, and it's the same way that I am. We've both lost our little brother... Cailean, he wouldn't want us to lose ourselves within the dark shadows of our minds. He'd be scolding you right now for this, and me as well. He'd be so proud that you lived to see the end of the war and the beginning of the brighter days. You know what he'd say... 'When the sun starts shining again, we'll learn how to live'." It was something our father used to say. Cailean remained silent, his eyes mournful and sorrowful as they stared at the dark curtains that were drawn over the window. "Speaking of the sun, it's a beautiful day outside... Why don't we open these windows?" I stood and crossed to the window, pulling apart the curtains and letting the sun shine through onto his depressed form on the bed. "Cailean..."
"It's another sun that he won't see," Cailean replied quietly, and I sat back down beside him.
"It's the crime of war... We've lost so many people, people we loved and cared about... Prim is dead, too. All those years of living together, I came to love her like my sister. We had an unbreakable bond until I broke it in a moment of selfishness, and now that bond will never be repaired." We sat in silence for a moment, Cailean now looking down at his hands. I reached over and took them in mine, leaning against my little brother's shoulder.
"How is he," he whispered, referring to Peeta.
"Not very well," I replied honestly. "His burns were so bad. They think he'll recover, but who knows if he'll ever be the same..."
"He will," Cailean replied. "He's strong... Stronger than I'll ever be."
"Don't say that," I told him, and he shrugged.
"It's the truth. If he could, he'd be right by your side. I didn't show up once."
"I don't blame you." Another moment of silence passed between us.
"Did they tell you about Donnel?" At this, I picked my head up as he glanced at me and gently shook my head, and he let out a sigh. "He was too severely injured... asked for whatever they could salvage to be given to Peeta... He died of his injuries on the first day." I now felt tears stinging my eyes. Peeta now had no living members of his family left - no parents, no brothers, no children. Only me. "He was so brave, Donnel. The things he did when we were out on the mission... I'll never forget them." It was my turn to be silent. I lost three siblings, all on the same day. Prim, Calum, Donnel. Snow really did try and take everything from me that he possibly could. "But Donnel didn't have Peeta's spirit. If he did, he'd still be alive now. He had some, don't get me wrong... Perhaps he gave it all to Peeta, to help him fight to get back to you."
"Making sure I'm taken care of, like he said," I replied finally, and Cailean nodded.
"I don't know what I'll do now..." he whispered. "Calum wanted us to stay in Fourteen, but I can't be there anymore. I don't ever want to go back. Too many memories..."
"I understand how that feels..." I said, referring to my feelings towards District Twelve.
"And Carolina... I know she lost him too, but... she makes me think of him. Reminds me of him. I don't want to be reminded of him..." It was then that I noticed why the curtains had been closed over the windows. It was the same reason why a blanket was draped over the mirror above the dresser. "I see him everywhere... Every time I look into a goddamn mirror, I see him, torturing me, reminding me that he isn't here." Calum was the mirror image of Cailean, and every time Cailean saw his reflection, he saw his twin brother.
"That isn't his fault."
"I know. It's my fault for surviving."
"It's not your fault, either. You know who's fault it is. You know who did all these horrible things for no reason other than he wanted to." He was silent again.
"I heard you lost the baby," he said suddenly, and I nodded. "I'm so sorry."
"I didn't know you knew."
"Carolina mentioned it to me, when you were in the hospital still." I nodded gently, quietly. "What now?"
"We live," I replied. "We live the best lives that we can, for them. For Calum, for Prim, for Finnick, for Hadley, for Donnel..." Cinna. Portia. The people of District Twelve. Graham Leper. Zeodary Sage. The rest of the Mellark family. Agnessa. Rue. Foxface. Cato, Clove, Glimmer, Marvel, Thresh, the rest of the tributes that died over the course of the entirety of the Hunger Games. Haymitch's family. Carolina's mother. Our father. Our mother. Ashilda, Dòmhnall, Alasdair and Anndra. My Uncle Archie. Madge Undersee. Lucy Gray Baird. Sejanus Plinth. Wiress. Mags. Orion Wolffe, Gimm Berkeley, Kudos Pinely. Alasdair Douglas, Keeko Thorne, Fellord Hartstone. Castor. The rebels who gave their lives so that a new sun may shine on Panem. The Hawthorne family...
Gale. Someone else who hadn't visited me. Surely, he had been released from the Peacekeepers' grip.
Cailean nodded beside me, understanding all of the names I didn't speak aloud. "We'll live for them," he told me quietly. And then we hugged, tightly. Not too tightly that he would cause me pain where the skins were covering and healing my burns, but tight enough to enforce the idea that we were finally safe.
I was assigned a room to stay in at Snow's mansion, since I would be required to attend the next Senate meeting in a few days to represent District Twelve. Peeta was supposed to sit beside me, and I hoped and prayed to whoever listened that Peeta would be there by my side, but I knew the chances of that would be slim. There was a knock at my door, and I turned towards it. "Come in," I said, and the door opened to reveal a very tired-looking, but with excitement, dressed in her usual Capitol garb with a brilliant blonde wig and dressed in a bright shade of mauve, Effie. "Effie..."
"Hello, my dear," she said in a voice that told of the endless tortures she had to have endured for the last three years. I couldn't stop myself from running to her and embracing her tightly, and she smiled and embraced me back.
"Effie, you have no idea how glad I am to see you!" I said through tears of joy, and I felt her acrylic nails brushing through my hair.
"It has certainly been a long, long time," she said with a warm, motherly smile, pulling back from the embrace to brush a piece of hair behind my ear. "I'm so very sorry for all you have lost..." I nodded quietly, not really wanting to answer. She must have known about Calum, about Prim, about the baby. "How is he? Peeta?"
"The same as he has been," I replied.
"Have you been to see him?" she asked me, and I nodded, then burst into tears and sobbed into her shoulder as she pulled me into another embrace.
"Oh, my poor dear," she said as she held my sobbing, pathetic form. "I've heard so much from Haymitch about you two, how your love for one another blossomed from the ashes of the war. He also told me about your wedding. It's such a shame I wasn't invited!" At that, I couldn't help but laugh at her attempts to cheer me up. I knew how much she would have wanted to be at our wedding, but truth to be told, I thought she had been on Snow's side with the Capitol. The thought of her being imprisoned never crossed my mind, I'm ashamed to admit.
"I wish you could have been there, Effie. You would have loved every second of it," I told her through tears. "Although you would have hated my dress."
"I'm sure you looked beautiful no matter what you were wearing," she told me warmly. I had dinner that night with her, Carolina and Haymitch, but it wasn't the same without Peeta. Effie absolutely adored Carolina and wouldn't stop teasing Haymitch for having it in him to have a daughter. Carolina adored her equally and the two got along like a mother and daughter almost, which got me taking a second look at Haymitch. For a long time, it seemed that he was annoyed by Effie's presence, but as I watched him try to hide a smile behind his drink, I could see that he liked the attention that Effie was giving him. I believed that Carolina noticed it, too, as we shared a knowing glance between us and watched Effie and Haymitch teasing each other playfully. All this time, what I had thought was a bemused drunken smirk on Haymitch's face was a hidden smile full of emotion, and I realised then that perhaps Haymitch didn't really want to spend the rest of his life alone after all.
The nights were the worst part of my days after the rebellion came to an end. I longed for Peeta's arms around me, holding me and keeping the nightmares away as we slept, but he was too busy fighting to stay alive. I should be by his side, I should be visiting him more, but I couldn't bring myself to see him again. Seeing him burned and battered the way I had scared me, and although it didn't make me love him any less, it made me afraid that Peeta was never going to be the same, that he wasn't going to be my Peeta anymore. He'd see how dangerous life is being married to me and he'd demand a divorce or even an annulment, leaving me nothing to remember him by. A small voice inside of my head told me to stop thinking that way, that Peeta would never do such a thing and would scold me for even thinking it, but the guilt consumed me, and so did the nightmares.