A/N: Features spoilers for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Features 'Lucy Gray' by William Wordsworth (while listening to 'Lucy Gray' by Emmett Franz) and 'The Hanging Tree' by Jennifer Lawrence.
PEETA POV
With Snow questioning why I was spending time with Haymitch, we had to lay low for a bit, so talk of the rebellion was limited. Instead, I did exactly what Katniss told Snow I did - brought him fresh bread, spent time with him to make sure he was all right, and kept his liquor supply up. We occasionally discussed plans by writing notes to one another, since those could be burned easily, but soon, we had to do that less as the weather got warmer and warmer, and there was less of a need for fire.
May rolled around and with it, warm weather, so Katniss and I decided to take the girls down to the lake. Lark was now two years and three months old, and Maevis was six months old, and Katniss was ready to teach Lark how to swim. "Are you sure she's old enough for that?" I asked her, unsure if that was such a good idea.
"I was younger than her when I learned how to swim, and I learned in icy cold waters. She's got it lucky, this one," Katniss replied. And so she taught our older daughter to swim, and Lark seemed to love it. She laughed and giggled and splashed Katniss, all while I sat on the rocks holding Maevis on my lap, who playfully clapped her little hands along to the joy of her sister in the lake. When playtime was over, we had our picnic lunch, and Katniss had both girls lie down for a nap in the warm spring sun while she and I sat together. Katniss was quiet - unusually quiet, for a moment alone between us - and she was thumbing her wedding band on her finger.
"What're you thinking about?" I asked her, running a hand through her hair. She didn't look up at me, but instead, focused her attention entirely on her wedding band.
"Peeta... if there was something going on, you'd tell me, wouldn't you?" she asked me.
"Of course I would, why wouldn't I?" I asked her, not sure what she was getting at. She couldn't know about my plans for joining the rebellion, could she? Or about what happened in the Capitol now nearly two and a half years ago? She couldn't know about that...
"It's just... You seem... I dunno... different, lately," she replied, and then she looked up at me. "As if you've got some sort of... hidden agenda."
"Katniss, you know I don't keep secrets from you," I told her. I hated lying to her, but I couldn't allow her to get hurt.
"So then what are you really doing with Haymitch? Why was Snow suspicious of it?"
"Honey, I promise you, I really have been bringing him bread and I really have been sitting with him and making sure he's okay," I told her confidently. At least by May, that part was fully true, as Haymitch and I hadn't discussed the rebellion in weeks. The suspicious look in her eye told me she didn't believe me, but she looked back out at the lake.
"I don't understand then... What's so suspicious about an old drunkard and his practically adopted son?"
"Adopted son? Haymitch would sooner shoot himself in the foot than adopt me for a son," I said, letting out a forced chuckle, but she wasn't amused. I let out a sigh and raised a hand to rub her back. "If there was anything for you to be concerned about, you know I'd tell you. Trust me, there's nothing exciting about watching him sleep all day."
"So if he's sleeping, why are you there for so long?"
"Because I told him I'd spend an hour with him every time I visit. I thought giving him some kind of routine might... I don't know... help him or something."
"And has it? Having a routine?"
"Maybe a little bit..." I let out a sigh. "I don't know. It's hard to help someone who doesn't want to be helped."
"Then let him rot, if that's what he wants. It seemed to work just fine for him for twenty-three years before we came along."
"That's because he had no one to care for him in those twenty-three years. Honey, he lost his family. He had a mother, two little sisters, even a girlfriend... Two, actually. Not at the same time." She looked back at me, her eyebrow cocked in curiosity. "I asked Effie for the footage from his Games... You know, the Second Quarter Quell. He'd outlived so many tributes, and he killed the last one by throwing a weapon into this giant cliff thing and it threw his weapon back up and into the head of the last tribute. He said the Capitol didn't like that he'd used that feature to his advantage... I thought it was pretty clever, personally."
"Was it like the technology used to prevent people from jumping off of the tribute tower?" I nodded.
"When he came back, things were okay for a while. He, his mother and sisters and his girlfriend all seemed happy and everything seemed good, until... it wasn't. I don't know exactly what happened, but Haymitch said a witness said the four of them were summoned to the Justice Building when Haymitch was on his Victory Tour, and when he came back... they were gone. Never to be seen again."
"Oh... that's so... horrible... What about the second girlfriend?"
"He met her years later, not long before we were born, apparently. She was a merchant girl, recently widowed and had no family or children... She disappeared, too, but Haymitch wouldn't tell me about that one."
"I suppose we've all got our demons."
"Yeah..." I couldn't lie to her, not the woman I loved. I promised to love her and be honest with her through anything and everything, and here I was keeping secrets. I couldn't tell her about the rebellion, not yet... but I could find out where she stood. "Katniss... what would you think if... if there was a rebellion?" Her eyes shot up and she looked at me with a scowl in her eyes.
"What are you on about?" she asked me, an unspoken warning in her tone.
"Hypothetically speaking. I'm just curious," I replied cautiously.
"I wouldn't want any part of it. I don't want to start a war, I want to keep my loved ones safe. That's all I want. I've already lost my whole family once, I won't do it again."
"But what if you didn't have to? What if the districts rebelled and they won?"
"They didn't last time."
"But what if this time... they did? And there were no more Hunger Games or the Capitol or Snow..."
"And what if they didn't? What if they didn't and everything is made worse?"
"Katniss-"
"I can't afford to think like that, Peeta. I can't risk anything happening..." She looked over at our sleeping daughters. "Not to them..."
"If there was a rebellion, and we won, they'd be safe."
"We?" She looked back at me. "Peeta, what's going on?" I let out a sigh.
"Nothing... it was just hypothetical." Well, that plan backfired. I should have known she'd be unwilling to comply, always worrying that the worst could happen and never wondering if maybe, the best scenario could win. "It shouldn't have to be this way."
"Well, it is, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"Nope..." A cry from Maevis alerted us that she was awake, and Katniss got up and rushed to her daughter to tend to her. For a girl who once refused to entertain even the thought of having children, she was proving to be the most loving and fiercely protective mother of anyone I'd ever known. I smiled as I watched her tend to our daughters, Maevis having woken Lark up, and looked down at the wedding band on my own finger, reminding myself of the promise I'd made to love and protect these three beautiful girls. Something needed to be done soon, because I wasn't going to let my girls live in fear for much longer.
THIRD PERSON POV: SNOW
Reaping day had arrived - a hot summer day across all of Panem. The Capitol weatherman reported the average temperature of the districts being somewhere in the high eighties, which must have been unbearable in the more southern districts. The 77th Hunger Games were finally to begin, and President Coriolanus Snow watched the recap of the reapings from his rather large gilded bed. A simple cough had prevented him from watching the reapings live, needing examination upon examination by a doctor to determine that his health was much the same - deteriorating rapidly, his life only prolonged by medicines that couldn't be advanced quickly enough. Never the matter - it was Reaping Day, and Coriolanus Snow would set aside matters of his health for another day.
The District One reaping was first - a boy, Chrome, volunteered for a thirteen-year-old boy named Silver, and a girl named Peridot volunteered for a fourteen-year-old girl named Sunshine. They were both proud, strong and modelled after the ideal image of a Capitol citizen, as most citizens of District One were.
District Two came next - Odysseus volunteered for Jove, and Freya volunteered for Kali. Odysseus was strong, powerful and every bit the victor that the Hunger Games sought out, while Freya was stern, a warrior in her own right. The girl was fragile like a bomb, set to go off at any moment.
District Three followed - fifteen-year-old Geometra was called first, followed by her thirteen-year-old district partner, Cellyk. There was nothing remarkable about them - they'd be gone in a heartbeat. There were no volunteers.
And then District Four, which produced seventeen-year-old Cordelia and fifteen-year-old Cassius. They had broad shoulders, both of them, and the girl was beautifully bronzed with shimmering red hair. Cordelia was a contender, for certain, while Cassius seemed too cocky for his own good.
District Five gave Iness and Neuro, two young kids both of fourteen years who looked as if they had no skills, and therefore, no chances. Their deaths would be unremarkable, an unfortunate sacrifice for District Five.
District Six produced Juness and Plug, two twelve-year-olds who were unfortunate to be selected on their very first, and last, reaping. Twelve-year-olds never stood a chance, a point that the insufferably golden-tongued Peeta Mellark made sure to mention. If he thought he'd win them sponsors, he was wrong - these children's deaths would, also, be unremarkable and therefore go unnoticed.
District Seven gave Jereka, aged seventeen, and Rowan, aged sixteen. Rowan was tall and strong, while Jereka was fierce and stiff. Maybe District Seven would add another victor to its collection - after all, they had only won three Games in the history of the Hunger Games.
District Eight produced thirteen-year-old Mystere and eighteen-year-old Hollick, and neither of them seemed to stand a chance. Hollick was skinny and missing a hand, possibly from a factory accident, while Mystere was small for her age and frail. It was unlikely that either of them would get very far.
District Nine gave a fifteen-year-old girl, Lebellum, and a fifteen-year-old boy, Quest. Both seemed unremarkable and they likely wouldn't get very far.
District Ten's tributes were Ostriny and Venom, two children of ranchers, likely. Ostriny was small and young, and Venom seemed like he stood at least a small chance, but his skills on a horse and with a rope likely wouldn't help him in the arena. At least, not this one.
District Eleven gave seventeen-year-old Penance and and fourteen-year-old Rig, two tall and well-built children who may give District Eleven a fighting chance this year, but only time would tell.
District Twelve shook him up for perhaps the third time in the last sixty-seven years. Why was it always District Twelve? The coal-mining district that always starved, that always produced the smallest and skinniest of tributes, that almost never succeeded to survive past the initial bloodbath of the cornucopia. And yet, for the last three years, they had. Coriolanus Snow would have expected either Peeta Mellark or Katniss Everdeen would be the cause of yet another incessant headache, but alas, they were not - it was something that likely they wouldn't have even predicted, nor would their foolish pet drunkard they called a mentor - not with all the censoring that had been done before any of them were even born. The distress came from the reaping itself, pulled from the glass balls by the overly-enthusiastic Effie Trinket. The boy was no problem - Lucas Steele, a fourteen-year-old boy from the poorest parts of District Twelve. Skinny and frail, unlikely to survive beyond the first day. But the girl...
Her name was Lucy Greyson.
PEETA POV
The train ride to the Capitol was as to be expected, quiet and not featuring much chatter. We got to know our tributes, Lucas and Lucy, who were both from the Seam and both as skinny as every Seam child who'd ever been reaped was. Lucas was very distressed, and understandably so, but Lucy was fairly neutral on the whole situation. She was older than Lucas at sixteen, and seemed to accept her fate, and she was surprisingly cheerful about it. "What's the point in being sad? Life is short for a Seam girl, anyway," Lucy Greyson had told me. She wasn't wrong. Many Seam girls that Katniss and I had known growing up died young, whether it was due to starvation, disease or childbirth. It was uncommon for a Seam girl to live past the age of fifty.
We had no way of knowing that Snow was upset. Of course, I didn't even know there was cause for upset until long after the 77th Hunger Games, so for Katniss and I, going into the Games was exactly like what it had been for the last two years we had been mentoring. We arrived at the Capitol, set down our things and got our children situated in the Hotel, put Haymitch on babysitting duty and made our way to the tribute parade to kick off the start of the Hunger Games. Lucy Greyson was a beautiful girl with olive skin and dark hair, characteristic of the Seam, while Lucas Steele was a little paler, the grandson of a Hebridean refugee. They both looked quite handsome on the chariot, with flames exploding from their clothes the same as ours had now three years before. Lucas didn't seem very fond of the idea of being set on fire.
"Be grateful you're not naked and covered in coal dust. They say that's what the designers did for Haymitch's Games," I'd said with a wink, and that seemed to cheer the kid up a little bit.
"Now, Lucy," Cinna was saying to the older girl. "Stand tall, stand proud - you're proud of your district. Remember that when you're on the chariot."
"Come hell or high water, you're coming home. That's the aura you need to give off," Katniss told Lucy with a smile, the first smile Katniss had given since we arrived in the Capitol.
"That's what I'm hoping for, isn't it?" Lucy asked. The tributes were loaded up onto the chariots and sent out into the public eye, all of them looking quite wonderful. Usually, there were some tacky outfits for most tributes, especially in Districts One, Five, Eight, Ten and Eleven, but this year, pretty much all of the parade costumes were phenomenal. Katniss and I stood side by side watching the television back where the tributes were preparing for the parade.
"Look at the District Two boy," Katniss whispered to me right when our tributes were brought out. Lucy and Lucas's faces were up on the big screen now, since it was their chariot that was being presented next, but on smaller screens, the faces of other tributes were still being displayed, and the boy from District Two - Odyssey? Odysseus? I forgot his name - was staring at the big screen, eyes wide with wonder and awe.
"Interesting," I said, and then I glanced at my wife beside me. "We could use that, you know."
"All right, Haymitch," Katniss replied, teasing me and glancing at me. "Just don't let her get hurt. Snow's not going to let two tributes leave the arena together again, especially if they're from two different districts."
"Fair point," I told her. "We'll work something out." And indeed we did. "The boy from Two couldn't take his eyes off of her. I think we should make her aware of it, tell her to do something with it," I said to Haymitch and Katniss that night in Haymitch's room as we watched the recap of the parade.
"You wanna try to play another love story involvin' District Twelve?" Haymitch asked.
"This isn't another 'star-crossed lovers from District Twelve' type of story, Haymitch... this is a forbidden love kind of story. The boy from District Two, the district known for being the most violent and the most determined to win the Games, in love with the girl from District Twelve, the district that almost never has a shot at winning! Think about it. The Capitol will want to keep the two of them alive for as long as they can," I said.
"Until, in the end, when there's two of them left and he kills her," Katniss replied somewhat sternly, and I let out a sigh.
"Unless she kills him first, or he loves her so much that he can't do it," I told her.
"The hell has gotten into you? This doesn't sound like you, Peeta," Katniss replied, a little surprised. It was true, it didn't, but it was all part of the plan that Haymitch, Finnick and I had formed. Districts Three, Four, Seven and Twelve were planning on sending a message to the districts using the Games. Personally, I had no idea how powerful the message would be, as the goal was to have the careers killed off as quickly as possible and aid in the win of a seemingly weaker tribute - 'you're not weak, you are equally as strong. Join the rebellion and fight back against the Capitol' was what Beta had said (the plan was his brainchild). It didn't seem like a very broad message to me, but he was one of the leaders of the rebellion, so I didn't want to question his decisions - yet.
"I, for one, like it. It'll make the girl desirable," Haymitch chimed in.
"And what about Lucas?" Katniss asked us both. Haymitch and I exchanged a glance, and I placed a hand over Katniss's.
"We both know we have to choose one... Only one comes home. I really think that Lucy has a chance," I said to her.
"We'll do what we can for the boy, but he ain't got much promise. The girl's already striking. She's a pretty girl, and the Capitol likes her," said Haymitch.
"Why though? She didn't do anything remarkable during the parade. The tributes' outfits have been on fire for the last four parades," Katniss replied, making a pretty valid point.
"Don't know," said Haymitch. "The girl's an enigma."
THIRD PERSON POV: THE GHOST
Enigmatic; the girl who disappeared in her footprints. Did she flee? Did she hide? Did she die? The fate of her spirit may never be known. She occupies the cobwebs of an old man's heart, now black and dead and shrivelled up from the hatred that lies within. The mere mention of her name strikes fear into that cold, black dead heart.
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray;
And when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child...
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
— The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
You may yet spy the fawn at play,
The hare upon the green;
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen...
They stopped telling the story of Lucy Gray long ago, when the phantasmagoria of songbirds and snakes plagued the holder of the cold, black dead heart. Once a face that everyone knew - a victor of the Hunger Games, like so many others beyond her years - that disappeared in the night, with only footprints left behind to indicate that she had ever lived. The stories of the girl in the rainbow dress who sang like a caged songbird were forbidden, and the girl who won the 10th Annual Hunger Games' name was never written in the books.
'The 10th Hunger Games, in the year 2095, were the last Games before the great changes were made to ensure that the glory of the victor be established. The name of the victor is now lost to history, but it is only known that the victor hailed from District Twelve. The victor was dead by the following year, likely due to illness, which ravaged the people of District Twelve in the early days of the Hunger Games,' said the passage in the books. What a load of false crap that was.
'To-night will be a stormy night—
You to the town must go;
And take a lantern, Child, to light
Your mother through the snow.'
'That, Father! will I gladly do:
'Tis scarcely afternoon—
The minster-clock has just struck two,
And yonder is the moon!'
At this the father raised his hook,
And snapped a faggot-band;
He plied his work; — and Lucy took
The lantern in her hand...
She had a voice that stopped even the birds from chattering, and a golden tongue that turned every head. She wore a dress of rainbow - she came in colours everywhere, turning a world of grey to one of many colours. She was the key to the lock of the black dead heart, long before it fell ill. She painted his black and white world with the colours of her spirit, made of a fire that could never be quelled. She was a bird, once free, but then caged - she was the Sun, and he was Icarus, and he flew too close.
Not blither is the mountain roe:
With many a wanton stroke
Her feet disperse the powdery Snow,
That rises up like smoke.
The storm came on before it's time:
She wandered up and down;
And many a hill did Lucy climb:
But never reached the town.
The wretched parents all that night
Went shouting far and wide;
But there was neither sound nor sight
To serve them for a guide...
At day-break on a hill they stood
That overlooked the moor;
And thence they saw the bridge of wood,
A furlong from their door.
They wept — and, turning homeward, cried,
'In heaven we all shall meet;'
— when in the snow the mother spied
The print of Lucy's feet ...
She was the girl who struck fear into a heart that dared not to love. That cold, black dead heart feared the damage that love can do, for it is love that undoes even the strongest of men. He'd heard all the stories of lovers who took their own lives because living without their love seemed too unbearable - Pyramus and Thisbe, Hero and Leander, Orpheus and Eurydice - and vowed to never let love capture his heart. And yet, love still managed to creep its way into that long-neglected heart. But love was a dangerous game to play, and soon, he learned that lesson harshly.
Then downwards from the steep hill's edge
They tracked the footprints small;
And through the broken hawthorn hedge,
And by the large stone-wall;
And then an open field they crossed:
The marks were still the same;
They tracked them on, nor ever lost;
And to the bridge they came.
They followed from the snowy bank
Those footmarks, one by one,
Into the middle of the plank;
And further there were none!
Love was like a fire that could not be satisfied, feeding and feeding until it became too large for its nest, casting out fingers to grasp whatever it could reach and burn it to ash. Love had the power to destroy and to weaken - to drive a man to madness, to drive a man to kill. Love could take any given individual and change the very nature of that man, and he may never know himself again. So he did the only thing he knew he could do - he ripped out his heart, so it could never own him.
— Yet some maintain that to this day
She is a living child;
That you may see sweet Lucy Gray
Upon the lonesome wild.
O'er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind...
No one knows what truly happened to Lucy Gray Baird, victor of the 10th Hunger Games, and ill-fated lover of Coriolanus Snow. Some say she ran, others say she died - she disappeared where she stood, vanishing into thin air, haunting the empty cavity where the heart of Coriolanus Snow once lived, singing the haunting song, calling out to her lover.
Are you, are you coming to the tree?
Where a dead man called out for his love to flee?
Strange things did happen here,
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight in the hanging tree...
She was a ghost - an enigma, a phantasmagoria of the horrors of love. He should have known... He should have known she could never, truly, die.
A/N: What will the mere thought of Lucy Gray and the rumours of rebellion do to Snow, and what will he do to take back control?
Please review!