The government's long since been corrupt, and yet, somehow Kiki's become the symbol of the resistance that seeks to overthrow it, to get rid of the games altogether. She's left as the symbol of hope, molded to be what the others want.
She wants the games to end; she wants the deaths to stop. If only she could do something that feels more substantial about it. It's like the resistance hasn't witnessed the same horrors she has. They've witnessed horrors, but not of the senseless civilian casualties outside of the games.
They didn't run to Shirayuki, to pick her lifeless body up from the ground, hold her on their laps and cry. If tears could put blood back in the body and make it flow again, Kiki wouldn't stop crying, wouldn't have went numb, seeing her lifelong friend laying there.
A bomb had fallen, and Shirayuki was a doctor, eager to heal and care for people. And she died. Became a civilian casualty that never should have been. She wasn't a part of the Hunger Games, had never been a part of it, and Kiki had to arrange for a funeral to bury her friend, who had tried to save lives and couldn't save herself.
Kiki's hands still sting from where she'd lifted Shirayuki on to her lap, where she tried to wake her even though Kiki couldn't help but tremble and know that Shirayuki wasn't waking up from this one.
So, she stood now, moreso than ever has a symbol of the resistance. She wanted the government stopped; she wanted lives saved. And yet, the resistance has a corrupt leader as well, and Kiki needs to dismantle the system and build it anew.
She needs people to quit giving into more and more violence; violence isn't the solution nor the answer. Sure, some is necessary, but killing to prove a point isn't the answer, never was the answer. Senseless murder, at the end of the day, is still senseless.
And she feels ready to collapse, an image rather than a person. And then there's bright hope slipping in in ways that she still never expects. As she returns from a long day of molding herself into what people can hope in and turns to go to her room, a hand falls onto her shoulder, and she looks up into warm brown eyes.
"You've got this." And he smiles, and Kiki feels like sunlight warming her up after a frigid morning.
"Thank you." Kiki tells him, still trying to figure out how to make the resistance what it should be and how to preserve lives.
"You're welcome." And he slips his hand into hers and squeezes it, and Kiki wonders how someone he makes it all feel possible, all doable.
They'll make it through and begin to carve out a better future; she knows they will, together. After all, they've gotten through all of this so far and the steps forward can't be all that many.