(Peeta POV)
"My name is Peeta Mellark, most of you know me. I was one of the winners of the 74th Hunger Games along with Katniss Everdeen. I'm speaking to you tonight to shed light on the inhumane acts being perpetrated against the victors held captive in the Capitol. Many of you have heard part of the story from some of the coerced interviews that the Capitol is extracting from Katniss. But I want to tell you the whole truth, not some lie they cooked up to pacify the Districts and keep everyone in line. And certainly not some convoluted smokescreen of teenage melodrama that has no real bearing on the greater issues. I'll try to be as brief and concise as I can, and I'll start at the beginning.
Over two years ago in District 12, a name was called in the town square on Reaping Day. Primrose Everdeen. A name of significance, the first in a long line of unexpected and would-be tragic events. I say would-be, because if you understand anything from my message tonight, I hope that you understand this: the only thing that stood between tragedy and loss of innocent life was one unexpected glitch, something the Capitol never accounted for, someone they couldn't have predicted in their wildest fantasies, and that was the big sister of 12 year old Primrose, that was Katniss Everdeen. She was near famous in our District by the time she was 16 years old. She had already beaten the odds by surviving the death of her father, who was the only bead-winner in the family, and died in a tragic mining accident when she was 11 years old. Not only did she beat the odds for herself, but she also beat the odds for those she cared about. In District 12, 7/10 miner's widows die within months of their husband's passing, and 9/10 miner's children die after losing their parent. But Katniss was no ordinary child. At 11 years old she refused to let her family starve and die. She took to the woods, and began hunting and foraging, she kept herself and her entire family fed for the next 5 years through sheer determination and fearless devotion. Why is this important you ask? Well, because her hunting skills, as well as her survival skills are what enabled her to volunteer for her sister. They are what got her through the 74th Hunger Games. But she wasn't just a consummate survivor, a pragmatic killer and opportunist as the Capital is trying to paint her. If that were true, she would have won the 74th Games alone.
But that fact is that Katniss Everdeen was unlike any other victor in the history of the Games. Because while yes, she possessed the instinct and the skill to defend her own life with deadly accuracy, she was not, at her core, a true killer. That is apparent in her choice of allies, and her refusal to play the Games the way the Capitol intended. This is an irrefutable fact. Without Katniss to help me, I would have died in the arena. Everyone knows that. She wouldn't even have had to do anything to claim the victory, if she simply abandoned me by the river, or let me bleed out at the Cornucopia.
But she didn't. No, I say, she couldn't. The Katniss Everdeen I have come to know over the years is incapable of wasting human life. She is incapable of malicious slaughter, of cold blooded murder. Every time she killed in the arena, it was in self defence or in defence of someone incapable of defending themselves. Take Rue, for example, or me. Katniss defended both of us with a fierce, all consuming loyalty. That is the real Katniss Everdeen. That is who the rebels are calling the Mockingjay. The girl in the first Games, who held out the poison berries to me. Death and freedom in her hand, the chance to die not as feral, twisted shells, stripped of our own humanity because we took the lives of others, but as human beings carrying out the ultimate sacrifice to point the way to what our society, what our world needs most: unity.
No, Katniss Everdeen didn't hold out the nightlock berries to me because she loved me. The truth is she didn't, she could barely tolerate me and my adolescent preoccupations, my insignificant childhood crush at the time. The whole romance angle was not her idea, but mine. In fact she was vehemently opposed to it going into the arena. The only reason she played along with the star-crossed-lovers strategy was to get me sponsors to try and save my life after I had been severely injured by Cato. Her reasons were far purer than puppy love. She was setting an example for all of Panem. She rose above every expectation placed on her. Which is far more impressive than a lovesick school girl who went mad at the thought of losing her boyfriend. She forced them to choose. She called their bluff, and they flinched. Afterwards she lied, yes, she did do that. But not because she wanted fame or glory. No, the simple answer is she didn't want to endanger the lives of the people closest to us. Our families.
The Capitol has ways of keeping victors in line, in much the same vein as they keep the districts in line. What do they threaten? Whatever you love most. For the Districts it is The Hunger Games, and the process of surrendering your children to be stolen away from you and forced to fight for their very lives. For the victors, our family and friends are the ones that suffer 'accidents' if we step a toe out of line. So for two years, Katniss and I acted out the parts we had relegated ourselves too. All other aspects of our relationship were overshadowed by the expectations we had to meet to ensure the survival of our families. We were allies, we were victors, we were friends, and team mates. But we were not lovers in the true sense.
Which is another misconception I'd like to clarify. Whatever pictures you have seen, or whatever lyrics you've heard in songs, or lines in interviews, I am telling you now, take it with a grain of salt. Katniss is the most reserved and probably one of the purest people I know. And whoever, or whatever she had in her heart, has no bearing on what she chose to do. Which is, to devote herself entirely to defending her family, and becoming an excellent mentor to try and ensure more children from District 12 made it back home to their families. I hold nothing against her, and I find no fault with her. We were both simply trying to do our best to adapt to the constantly shifting political and social arena's we found ourselves thrust into after our Games.
The final straw came for us when we were ordered to get married when we turned 18. We were given this ultimatum, among other conditions, this past year, and instead of continuing with the charade I resolved to get us out. Out of 12, out of Panem, and away from the Capitol and their plans. Katniss again, was unaware of our plans until after they were set in motion. But that didn't stop her from valiantly and courageously, forging ahead with us into the wilderness in the middle of winter in search of the only help for Panem and the resistance we had heard of.
District 13. That is where I am speaking to you from, right now. Yes, it still exists. Yes, there are survivors from the Dark Days war. Yes, they want to help us fight and gain our freedom. And yes, Katniss was captured before she could even set foot in District 13. We encountered heavy resistance during our escape, from the Capitol, from Gamemakers, peacekeepers and mutts. But she survived them all, as she had done before in our Games. And when the rest of us were too sick and weak to continue, she did. Stung by trackerjackers, stabbed, and starving, and exhausted. She issued the call for help before she was captured, and saved my life again, and the lives of every person in our party. And in the ultimate sacrifice, she traded herself as a hostage, to the Capitol to gain the freedom of our protege, Deen Sparrow, winner of the 76th Hunger Games, and considered by both Katniss and I to be like our adopted younger brother.
That is who she is. Not the drugged into submission songbird in the golden cage. But the Mockingjay, the unexpected variable. The girl was never supposed to be reaped, but for the love of her little sister she took her place. The girl who was immune to love, but wholly susceptible to noble sacrifice. The warrior who defended all she cared for with bow and arrow and grim determination, but sang to a girl who lay dying and wove flowers into her hair. I am asking tonight, no I am imploring anyone with a conscience and heart to listen. Katniss Everdeen is the best of us, she is the girl who was on fire, who lit us up from the inside out with her radically different way of thinking. Because why should the districts be enemies when we can be allies? Why should we continue to kill and slaughter each other when we could be working together to show the Capitol that they do not own us, and we are more than just pieces in their game?
The answer is simple: we are stronger than they know. We need to leave behind the violence and strive to coexist with each other in peace. We need to follow Katniss' example. Most of all, we need to work towards finding a way to free her and the other victors, Finnick Odair, and Johanna Mason, before the Capitol kills them all. Please, please think on this and do what you know in your hearts to be right. Thank you."
The red light switches off and I exhale a sigh of relief.
Haymitch's hand clasps the curve of my shoulder and I lean back tiredly.
"That was good boy, hopefully Coin will approve it and Beetee will have it out by tomorrow playing in all the Districts." His gruff voice says as I begin to unclip the lapel microphone.
"But not the Capitol?" I ask.
Beetee looks over from his computer.
"Not yet. The Capitol's signal defence system is still up and running. I designed it years ago. I can't seem to find a way in yet. I guess I did my job too well. At the time I was just thinking about the science of it all….but don't worry. I'll get through." He says in that quiet tone of his.
I just nod. What else can I do?
I've been back and forth for two days since the last broadcast. Alternating between terrified and frantic, and furious.
What had she been thinking? Saying those things during the live broadcast? She was practically goading Snow into executing her. Her eyes had been desperate. And the song she sang was unsettling and frightening.
Don't listen to a word I say
The screams all sound the same
I knew she was trying to tell us that everything she'd been forced to say and do was part of a larger deception. And I understood, even when I hadn't, even when I'd doubted. I knew deep down that the Capitol could never be trusted to do anything other than pervert the truth and twist it into something like a weapon.
Our only hope now was to rally the districts, and turn more people inside the Capitol for the rebels. We'd never be able to infiltrate the Capitol without inside help.
Gale and Deen and Prim, and I had come up with a plan, something we needed Beetee's and Wiress's help with. Something we needed to keep secret from Coin and Boggs and the people from 13.
So that meant I had to play both parts, rebel leader/mouthpiece and man with a hidden agenda.
But it felt like I was racing against the clock, fighting against Katniss herself, who it seemed now was determined to try and get herself killed.
That was the part of me that raged against all of this. The furious part. Because hadn't she said they made a promise? Hadn't she said we would go together or not at all? She must know that without her I'd have nothing, no one that I cared for enough to keep me going if she died. No one that needed him, not like she needed him. No one that I loved with all of myself, and everything I had and would ever have.
I knew it made me a mess. Barely functional. They'd had to sedate me after the broadcast, when I'd seen the large, stone-faced peacekeeper yank her practically off the stage by her hair. They'd had to sedate me a few more times over the past 48 hours. Prim...had been pale and withdrawn. Deen had been serious and stormy eyed. Haymitch looked like he was planning and strategizing every second, all the while with shaking hands and a wild thirsty gaze.
Gale had looked like a man possessed. He spent nearly all his time in combat training or down in Weapons Engineering with Beetee. He hardly said a word these days. His eyes blazed almost every second with a searing flame that threatened to spill over. Neither of us knew what they were doing to her. All we knew was that they were using Gale and I to do it, or at least our pictures, her memories of us, and now two men that looked remarkably like us.
Who they really were was a mystery. What was clear was that the Capitol had hired them as actors to add an extra sick dimension to this sordid love triangle they were trying to push. If only people knew the real truth, that Katniss had closed herself off emotionally from both Gale and I for years. That she really hadn't given much thought to how either of us was dealing with her neutral stance between the two of us, and that she probably would never have made any sort of choice, if Snow hadn't forced her hand and made her confront her own feelings.
And when she did, it had been messy and complicated and painful for all of us, but we had sorted it out in the end. That was something I held onto, when I saw her on screen singing to the man who looked like Gale. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept me sane, the memory of her hand in mine as we walked through the woods together after laying my father to rest in the wilderness under a cairn of stones.
I held on, for her...I'd keep holding on for as long as she was breathing. There was still hope.
(Katniss POV)
The past two days had been a crucible of pain. Physical, emotional, and psychological. First they'd made her watch as her prep team was beheaded on live television after Johanna and Finnick's battle in the caged arena with the snake muttations. Then they'd taken her to a room where they'd beat her black and bloody for hours on end. They followed it up with an especially long venom session, enhanced by the doppelgangers who were used to actually administer the venom to her. Afterwards they injected her with a round of some special nanobots, extremely expensive medical repair technology and tossed her back into her cell while the tiny things rebuilt her bruised and broken skin and bones inch by excruciating inch. Then they turned on her tape for hours over the loudspeakers. And everytime she was about to drift off to sleep because of exhaustion, they turned on the sprinklers to shock her awake with freezing water.
She had stopped crying completely after they cut off Venia's head, and since then the only noises she made were grunts of pain or screams of terror when the hallucinations took hold. They took hold a lot now, not just when they had her in the small room with the screens, and the machines that monitored her while they shoved venom into her veins. They were keeping her in a near constant drugged state. Everything was always slightly shiny or terrifying, or numb at alternate intervals. She kept waiting for Snow to issue the order for her execution. She was obviously more trouble than she was worth. She would never be obedient enough, she'd never submit completely. She found out, she'd rather die first. She was going to die anyway, and anybody associated with her was going to die, so they might as well just get it over with. What was the point in dragging it out? Except for Snow to take pleasure in the slow methodical breaking of her mind.
She was not taken out of her cell for another Caesar Flickerman interview. She was only taken out for torture and questioning, and the occasional trip to the music room. The days started to slip from her mind, and Finnick began to worry for her. Johanna took to calling her name for long periods of time until she finally responded angrily for them to leave her alone.
The only time she felt remotely normal was when she had to practice music sporadically with Hym. He always looked sad and terrified to see her. She knew she must look half mad by now. But in the quiet of the music room, the hallucinations didn't come. NotGale taught her how to play guitar until her fingers bled. But the pain in the tips of her fingers didn't even register after all she'd experienced. He just frowned when he suggested she stop playing for the day after she started to lose purchase on the strings made slippery with her blood.
She'd just shook her head and kept strumming, not knowing when they'd let her do this again, if ever. Nothing was certain except the pain and terror that waited for her when she stopped playing, stopped singing. So she escaped into the repetition of the movement of her wrist strumming up and down. She lost herself in the placement of her fingers on the frets. And when she sang her voice was low and hoarse from so much time spent screaming, but it was still able to carry a tune.
She thought she saw Hym holding back tears, and NotGale looked over at her uncomfortably. But she ignored them both and kept singing until they had to pry the guitar from her fingers and haul her away.
NotPeeta had laughed at her, when she tried to claw her way out of the guards grasp. She spit in his face with incredible accuracy as she passed by and he'd slapped her hard, open handed. She laughed at him hysterically as they dragged her away. Screaming at the top of her lungs that he hit like a fucking girl.
That night, for the first time in days or weeks, they came to get her in the early evening. Along with Johanna and Finnick. The two of them exchanged worried glances Katniss just smiled, hoping that finally, finally they would let her fight in the cage arena with them, that they would let her die.
But she had no such luck. They gave her a shot in the elevator that made her feel like she was floating, and Johanna had whistled and tried to snap her fingers in front of her eyes to almost no effect.
"High as a fucking kite," Johanna had remarked worriedly to Finnick, as she stared at Katniss' glassy overblown pupils.
They took them all down to the tunnels beneath the tribute center, and loaded them into an armoured vehicle. She didn't know how long they drove or what direction they drove in. Time seemed to ebb and flow meaninglessly around her.
Until all of a sudden she was being stripped of her prison garb and stuffed into a red strapless dress with a high slit up the front that ran to her upper thigh. She wondered numbly whether Snow had succeeded in selling her finally? If he had, then she would be dead fairly soon. That thought made her giggle and Johanna and Finnick had looked on with suspicion in the cramped dressing room.
"Katniss, why are you laughing?" Finnick had asked her, in an overly calm and quiet voice, the kind of voice you use with mental patients.
"Because Finy-fin, soon I'll get to go home." She had told him in a loud whisper. He looked sorry for her then, and shook his head.
"No, Katniss, this isn't your Final Bidding Night." He had told her in a tired voice.
"It's not? Then what is it? It's not another interview? And I don't think they want me to fight in this dress hahaha!" She'd laughed hysterically as she twirled in the red dress.
"It's a private show, Brainless," Johanna had said as the stylists outfitted her in a dark purple lacy bra and underwear combo, with matching stockings and garters. Katniss blanched as she hazily took in what Johanna was wearing.
"What?" She asked uncomprehendingly, and turned back to look at Finnick, who was naked except for a pair of very tight, very tiny men's underwear.
"You'll all be performing tonight," A harsh but instantly recognizable voice rang out in the dimly lit room that Katniss now realized smelled like stale alcohol, old sweat, and desperation. Thread. The only thing Katniss was really still afraid of these days. Thread, unlike some of her less imaginative torturers, seemed to have an instinctive knack for making her time in the torture rooms not just painful but excruciating and seemingly endless.
He eyed the three victors slowly. Without any emotion beyond contempt and disdain. He never referred to them by their names, instead preferring to call them by the years they won our Hunger Games.
"74th, you'll be providing the musical entertainment tonight. You are instructed to interact with the guests, but not to have inappropriate contact. Your bidding is still in progress. Your handlers will be with you to make sure you remain untouched. 65th and 71st, you're instructed to entertain the VIP guests. This will include a private show that the two of you are required to participate in, at the end of the night. Now, the guests with golden tickets are the VIPs, and their tickets have specific instructions for what services they have purchased. Failure to perform will be met with extreme punishment, not only for you but for cellmates. You all already know just how much pain can be inflicted in a moment's notice, so I suggest you do as you're told, and fuck whoever, however, and whenever we say. Because the alternative won't be death, not even close." He said in a menacing voice and I saw Johanna's gaze harden, while the muscles in Finnick's arms tensed.
But the other guards were right there, swiftly pressing a knife against Katniss' collarbone, and trailing it threateningly down her exposed skin. It made her shiver. One of the tortures she hated most was knives, and the long trailing cuts they left on her skin, and the hours it took the nanobots to repair the deepest cuts.
"Someone will pay good money to cut one or all three of you up. And we'll let them take turns all night, while we strap the three of you down. You can either go willingly, or not. You can take the fluff assignments or we can start you out with the hardcore shit. Your choice, although personally I'd love to see how long it would take for the docs back at the tribute center to reattach some nipples after they've been cut clean off a body. That would make for a very interesting evening." Thread mused with a threatening grin.
Katniss hissed as the point of the knife began to dig into her skin a little. But she wasn't in Johanna or Finnick's position right now. She wasn't being asked to sell her body just yet. But if they didn't want to do it, she would grit her teeth and take whatever punishment came. She'd never ask another human being to do something that despicable to save her from some pain. Pain was nothing new, to any of them. And past a certain point it became routine.
"I've never been particularly fond of nipples. I won't miss them at all." Katniss says nonchalantly, but because of her drugged state it comes out slightly slurred. Thread just cocks his arm back and punches her in the gut reflexively to shut her up.
"Well, I personally like mine Brainless, so why don't you just shut up and play your stupid music for tonight?" Johanna says in an furious impatient manner. Finnick just fixes his stare on Thread, who meets his gaze with a triumphant grin. And just like that they all start to long for the danger of the arena and the hot lights of the interview stage. Because tonight, all this will certainly be much worse.