The steady beep of a heart-rate monitor roused her. Lingering numbness spread through her arm, upon which she had inadvertently fallen asleep.
"Ma'am?" the voice called out to her again.
"Is she going to be alright?" the girl asked, staring at her numb arm draped across Gase's body, still unconscious on the hospital bed. The sight brought back memories of how just having Gase's arm lying across her body, was all it took to keep the nightmares at bay. The reminiscence made her lips tremble.
"She's still heavily sedated, and won't be waking up soon. This is the only way the reconstruction medicine can work on her spinal cord, but we have some other things to dis-"
Dr Aurelius' voice faded past her eardrums. Biting down on her lip, her eyes roved over the swathes of bandages on Gase's head, and wires running beneath them. His hand on her shoulder sent her whirling around in annoyance.
"What?" she spat.
"You are Panem's leader, the fate of our nation hinges upon you," he said, voice taking on an accusatory tone, before softening, "your well-being is the well-being of us all."
She stared at Dr Aurelius, recalling how he acceded so easily to have Gase moved to the Capitol hospital.
"Fine, fine," she relented, allowing him to help her to her feet, and to lead her to his office down the hall. She peered into each ward they walked past, filled with District folk like Gase, injured by the ravages of war and disease, now receiving the medical care they needed so desperately but was always withheld. All she could think about were the thousands more who couldn't be saved.
"Right," Dr Aurelius announced, sitting across from her, "I've been working with Victors and Soldiers for a while, and although the stress of trauma is always evident in all of them, it usually manifests itself in different ways. A good way to start this diagnosis would be the question - what's bothering you the most today?"
She looked at the linoleum floor, flexing her fingers, still prickling with pins and needles, but kept silent.
"Is it - pain?"
Pain.
At once, she gritted her teeth at every injury she'd endured and healed from. The wounds on her legs, the burns on her arms, even that gash on her head, now throbbed with a fury that made her want to vomit. She shut her eyes, and nodded.
"You know, I could prescribe you a mild dosage of morphling, to help with the pain."
The girl shook her head.
"I'd rather not. Pain is like an old friend of mine, a constant guest in my home," she answered, remembering Johanna's tea, "to do that would be like shutting him in the sitting room. I'd rather deal with him and perhaps one day he'd get bored of my company and leave."
Dr Aurelius stared at her, pen twirling in his fingers while he made sense of her words.
"Fair enough," he answered, jotting down notes, "have you had any problems sleeping?"
She looked back at him, words on her lips, before realising it's really only been 48 hours since she pulled the plug on the Capitol.
"I was sleeping fine earlier, until you woke me for forty questions."
Dr Aurelius chuckled, "You really are as much of a smartass as they say you are."
Smart.
The singular word bounced around in her head, dragging out a distant memory of her mother cradling her sobbing face as she said goodbye before the games.
"We know you're smart enough to make it out alive-"
Smart was the reason why Panem had a new government. Why Gase was still fighting for her life in the hospital bed. Why Plutarch was dead, and Lucius was dead, and Snow was dead, and Coin got riddled with holes from her own hand. All of a sudden, tears sprang to her eyes as she silently wished away everything that'd happened.
"I wish…I wish I wasn't smart, none of this would've happened. I would've died in the games and that'd be the end of everything."
Dr Aurelius scribbled more notes down, before placing a reassuring arm around her shoulders.
"You shouldn't deny your place in history, the lives you've changed for the better," Dr Aurelius said, "but at the same time, it's hard for us to remember that you're still a girl, who's had her childhood snatched away from her."
You're still a girl. The thought caved her chest in and brought about more sobbing.
"It's ok, take all the time you need," he said, offering her a tissue.
"I can't, I can't, I can't," she complained, wiping her eyes, "I've a cabinet meeting in five minutes!"
"Well, perhaps we should pick this up another time, but before you go, I'll ask you again: what's bothering you the most today?"
The gut-wrenching tears and crying stripped all pretenses from her, leaving her vulnerable in front of the doctor. Her bony fingers grasped at that cathartic feeling, and she searched her soul for an answer.
"I feel like a goddamned hypocrite," she confessed, burying her face in her hands, "just for being alive."
Her eyes were still reddened, chest still heaving with angst as she shuffled into the cabinet chamber. Six pairs of eyes stared back at her, and then amongst themselves, and she didn't need to hear their thoughts to understand their apprehension at having a young girl govern a nation.
"I would like to thank you all for taking over your respective posts at such short notice, and even though this transition will undoubtedly prove to be a struggle for all; rest assured that you were all chosen on the basis of merit, and not on loyalty."
She paused to look around the room, faces reflecting her own sentiment of suddenly being thrust to the forefront of the nation, with hardly a day's notice. Most were plucked from various districts. Others, retained from the old Capitol Administration.
"Oh god, I haven't even read the agenda," she muttered under her breath, before struggling to recompose herself, "what's on the table for today?"
Boggs craned his head forward to speak. The Defense and Security Chief position was supposed to go to Lucius, before she'd gotten him killed.
"Ma'am, in total - we have more than five thousand disarmed peacekeepers from loyalist districts and about three hundred civilians working for the old regime currently interned in the Capitol. What should we do with them?"
She sighed, and looked at the Minister of the Interior, one of Beetee's recommendations from a District 3 factory.
"Aye, the list is ready - thirty-four infrastructure projects, six caused by the war, another twelve which were vetoed by Snow for some reason. Four are urgent. The remainder can wait. It made my eyes water at how much neglect Panem has suffered, whether he did it deliberately or not."
"Great, there's your labour pool for these," she commented, "get them on it."
"But ma'am, these are peacekeepers, not labourers."
"Alright, I'm authorising the secondment of masons and carpenters from 2 and 7 to work with and guide them," she said, pinching her forehead, "I'd like to point out here that this is the dawn of a new Panem, where everybody, regardless of district, partakes in the same sufferings and joys."
The other ministers nodded, and immediately began to scribble down notes.
"Have we resumed production, are the outputs back in line with pre-war levels?" she asked, turning to the Agriculture and Industry ministers, who were really just representatives from 8 and 11
"Not yet, but we're getting there," he said, "would you like to maintain the quotas the Capitol had put in place?"
She pondered for a moment, before nodding, "I've explained this awhile ago, we'll reduce the output once surpluses come into effect after the removal of price controls in the Capitol, this will be expected to take place in six months to a year's time. This will also fall in line with the expected diversification-"
At the mention of the word, they paused, and stared at her, pens hanging from their fingertips.
"Yes," she said, her gaze unwavering, "I'd like to talk about diversification."
Staring at the concrete beneath her feet, the girl stood amongst the ranks of peacekeepers and soldiers assembled in the prison courtyard. She clenched her fists as they all stood to attention, feeling like she was frozen in place by an invisible forcefield, unable to move, or utter a word in protest.
Even breathing was laborious.
"Squad, halt!"
She glanced up briefly at the five soldiers marching to a halt before her, faces betraying little emotion as they shouldered their rifles.
"Squad, left turn! Make ready! Aim!"
The girl screwed her eyes shut. She'd seen this a dozen times in the townsquare. Murderers. Usurpers. Drug abusers. This time was different. This time it was all her goddamned fault. She tightened her jaw in anticipation.
"Fire!"
All your goddamned fault.
"Fire!"
You fucking hypocrite.
"Fire!"
You deserve to die.
Opening her eyes gingerly, the briefest sight of hooded, bloodied corpses slumped over on the opposite wall tied her stomach into knots. She buckled over, only for a soldier to catch her by the arm.
The parade commander swiveled around, "Gentlemen, you are dismissed!"
At once, everyone heaved a sigh of relief and dispersed, and with their respite, untied the knot in her chest. Her vision swam back into focus, and she made out one of her ministers' faces. The Minister of Peace and Justice - a former attorney general of Snow's, before his family fell on their wrong side.
"You must be feeling some way about it," he muttered, lighting a cigarette, "but trust me, this was the best end you could've given them."
His words did nothing to alleviate the weight on her mind, but he continued anyway.
"Snow used to test out Mutts on people on death row," he said, watching as soldiers untied their corpses, "and frankly, after finding out what these guys did in District 1, sometimes I wonder if you should have."
She took a few deep breaths, "I swore I'd create a Panem filled with civility and kindness, not one where we still do things like this to one another."
"It sends the wrong message if you left them alive, Lucius would've done the same thing," he said, taking a drag on the cigarette, "perhaps civility and kindness are reserved for the best of us, and animals like them - deserve to be treated like animals."
The girl stared back at him, knowing it'd be a vain attempt to argue with a seasoned lawyer.
He continued, "Where Snow and the other architects of the Hunger Games failed, was assuming all of us are animals. But we aren't. There is good in this world. Good from people such as yourself. Panem needs to see that."
For once, her shoulders relaxed, and she allowed him to walk her out of the prison and into an awaiting car with blacked-out windows. Despite her request to keep a low-profile, security was still as tight as ever, and Peacekeepers on motorcycles escorted them through the Capitol streets. They made it barely half-way to the broadcast building before the convoy ground to a halt. Incessant chatter crackled on her escorts' radio sets.
Glancing outside, she looked at the wide, clean-swept Capitol streets, with Capitolites attempting to resume some semblance of normalcy as they hurried about their business. The pavements had fewer people than usual, most opting to wait it out in the relative safety of their homes, avoiding the Peacekeeper checkpoints that guarded every street corner.
"There's a hold up," the minister commented, "the street in front had to be cordoned at the last minute, they're finding another route for us now."
"Why, why is the street being shut off? I think I told the garrison to keep movement unimpeded as far as possible in the Capitol."
The minister turned to her in the back seat, "it appears there is a protest, a demonstration of some sort."
Despite reading voraciously over the past year, the words didn't mean a thing to her.
"What's a protest? What's a demonstration?" she asked.
"It's when a group of people are unhappy with something, and march on the streets to make this known. Obviously the removal of Snow's speech restrictions in the Capitol must've gotten to them."
"Well, what're they unhappy about?" she asked, eyes widening at the realisation that all was not well.
"Doesn't matter," he muttered, "all that matters now is that they're blocking the road."
Gritting her teeth, she got out of the car, eliciting a frantic response from her escorts. Once outside, she immediately heard the angry voices on the streets around the corner, right at the start of Government Avenue. Peacekeepers moved to grab her as she left the column of vehicles.
"No, no," the minister said to them, "watch that she isn't harmed, but don't stop her."
Voices grew in ferocity. The bounce in her step disappeared as the girl rounded a bend onto the avenue, where she was confronted by a mob numbering in the hundreds. Three tanks and a dozen peacekeepers sealed off the avenue with barbed wire, weapons trained on the crowd who were raising banners and chanting in the still morning air.
For Snow! For Snow! For Streets paved in Gold!
She made out the banner closest to her, a white tarp emblazoned with blood-red paint
-HANG THE FOX HANG THE FOX HANG THE FOX-
Gasping, she remembered how, once again, you don't realise what you've done, until the consequences catch up with you. Her hair stood on end, and that familiar instinct of wanting to run and hide froze her feet into the ground.
Nonetheless, she grunted with determination and clambered onto a tank, her presence before the crowd immediately drawing a chorus of jeering that blew her ears off. An empty beer can flew past her face, followed by a bottle aimed right at her skull. She caught the bottle midair and hurled it back at the protestor, missing his head by inches.
"Panem! Panem!" she yelled, at the top of her voice, barely rising above the rancor. She repeated herself twice before the crowd quietened down, and a peacekeeper handed her a loudhailer. An impromptu film crew began filming her from behind as she stood atop a tank, red hair fluttering in the breeze.
"Here I am now!" she shouted, loudhailer squawk echoing off the concrete buildings.
"Here I am - what're you going to do to me? Just a year ago, you cried with me in my darkest moments, you watched with bated breath - every step I took, and cheered me on when I won the Games. Today, I stand before you, no longer a Victor, just an ordinary citizen of Panem. Pray tell - what are you going to do to me now?"
The crowd was silent in response.
"I see on your faces, dread and worry - that we will go back to the dark days where you never knew when the next meal would come, or when your houses would get flattened by bombs. You want the old days back, with Snow on top, where the fridges were full and the streets were safe. Far be it that I would try to change your way of life! Far be it that I would try to take anything away from the Capitol, for each one of you are as much a Citizen of Panem as any one from the Districts-"
A lone voice heckled her from the crowd, "We are not the same!"
"We are all human!" she yelled back, "tell me - are they not capable of crying, of dying, of feeling the same fear and pain and sorrow that you do? Over the last two days I've seen lives and families destroyed in my effort to prove this point. Snow would have you believe that we are all violent animals, cursed to a lifetime of succumbing to our base instincts. But there was another side of Panem he didn't know about:
He's never heard the voice of a mother claiming she's not hungry, as she feeds her family with the last bits of bread.
He's never seen the empty seats at dinner tables, once filled by children sent to die in the games.
He's never felt the hopelessness of the Avoxes who toil beneath the Capitol out of daylight, broken by their pasts and weary of their future."
The crowd fell into a silence so deep, one could hear the wind whistling behind her. A tear slid down her cheek, and her voice broke into a stutter.
"None of you have seen this. But I have. And I hope none of you ever will."
She lowered the loudhailer, before raising it again to her lips.
"You can shout and holler all you want. But I hope that one day the words of Panem's long forgotten Anthem will echo in this very street, and in the hearts of every citizen:
Gem of Panem
Seat of power
Strength in peacetime, shield in strife."
As she lowered the loudhailer again, her lips parted in awe when the crowd carried on singing without her; a whisper first, before their voices rose in harmony:
Protect our land
With armored hand
Our Capitol
Our Life
A/N: Foxface's speech to the Capitolite mob was inspired by several speeches throughout history:
1) Boris Yeltsin's speech atop a tank, following a failed Communist coup (August, 1991)
2) George W. Bush's bullhorn speech at ground zero, following the 9/11 attacks (September, 2001)
3) "Empty seats at dinner tables", taken from Barack Obama's speech following the killing of Osama Bin Laden (May, 2011)