Ablaze

by awalkerlifeforme

Aspen Antaeus has escaped the Hunger Games twice. She has become the face of the rebellion against the Capitol. But there is one thing stopping her from assuming her role as the Mockingjay. Her husband, Cato Hadley, was left in the arena to die. But when Aspen is given proof that he lives on, she joins the fight. And she will not stop. Not until every inch of the Capitol is ablaze.

16. Chapter 16

The implications of what Gale was suggesting settled quietly around the room. I whipped around to stare at him for a moment, trying to gauge whether he was joking or perhaps if he was exaggerating what he meant. Maybe even if he realized the cruelty of the suggestion once he had said it. But his face never once faltered. He meant it. He meant killing everyone in that mountain. You could see the reaction playing out on people's faces. The expressions ranged from pleasure to distress, from sorrow to satisfaction.

"The majority of the workers are citizens from Two," Beetee said neutrally.

"So what?" Gale asked.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I noticed Cato's family stiffening slightly. It hadn't taken me long to notice that there was no lost love between them. I knew why. They all thought that Gale had always been a danger between Cato and my relationship. Not only that, but he had ever exactly hidden the fact that he hated everyone from Two. Gale and Cato's family had always kept their distaste for each other quiet for my own benefit. But this, suggesting mercilessly killing their own people, was bound to push someone over the edge.

"We'll never be able to trust them again," Gale continued.

"They should at least have a chance to surrender," Lyme said.

"Well, that's a luxury we weren't given when they fire-bombed Twelve, but you're all so much cozier with the Capitol here," Gale snarled.

No one needed to know Lyme to know that what Gale had said was nasty. It was something that should have never been said to anyone who was a Victor of the Hunger Games. We all knew that the presence of the Capitol always came with a rope tied around your throat. Luxury lined with poison. By the look on Lyme's face, I could see that my thoughts, and my own aggravation, were echoing in her mind. I thought that she might have shot him, or at least taken a swing. She would probably have the upper hand, too, with all her training.

Gale had no idea quite what came from being in Two. He had no idea what they went through. He had no idea how the propaganda from the Capitol was shoved down their throats from the time they were young children. He had no idea that they never realized the truth until it was too late; they were either already dead or slaves to the Capitol. And all of that was missing one crucial point. The citizens from each one of the Districts had been pulled into this fight. They had been trying to avoid this. We had just made it impossible.

"They didn't firebomb Twelve. The civilians," I clarified myself. Gale turned to me with fire in his eyes. "They got sucked into this, just like we did."

But Lyme's anger and my rational suggestion only seemed to infuriate him and he yelled, "We watched children burn to death and there was nothing we could do!"

Bile instantly rose in my throat. I had to close my eyes a minute, as the image ripped through me. It had the desired effect. Suddenly I wanted everyone in that mountain dead. I was about to say so. But then... I'm also a girl from District 12. Not President Snow. I remembered the feel of the flesh melting off of my bones in both Games. I remembered the horrible, searing pain from the fireballs. I remembered the wounded miners coming to beg Ms. Everdeen for help as they lay dying on our counter. I couldn't help it. I couldn't condemn someone to the death he was suggesting.

"Gale," I whispered, taking his arm and trying to speak in a reasonable tone. "The Nut's an old mine. It'd be like causing a massive coal mining accident."

Surely the words were enough to make anyone from Twelve think twice about the plan. I wanted him so desperately to think about what this was going to mean for the people in the Nut. Their families, desperately searching for them in the aftermath of the bombing. Women and children crying, already well-aware of what had happened, but still praying desperately that they might have been wrong. Gale knew what it felt like. Katniss knew what it felt like. I knew what it felt like. We couldn't do that to someone. Not to people who hadn't asked for this to happen.

"But not so quick as the one that killed our fathers," Gale retorted.

My stomach churned. The only sense of relief I had felt after I'd realized that Mr. Everdeen had died in the coal explosion years ago had been the thought that Mr. Everdeen hadn't suffered. The explosion had been instantaneous. He had been buried so deep in the mines that it would have killed him immediately. He hadn't had time to suffocate. But those people in the Nut would. I remembered what it felt like when the smoke had started suffocating me in the first Games. It had burned through my lungs causing me to vomit pure bile. It was worse than death. You just wanted it over with.

Katniss didn't know the feeling of nearly suffocating to death, but she did know the horror of knowing someone who had. "Think about this, Gale," Katniss whispered, looking very much like she was about to faint.

"You would condemn someone to that kind of death?" I asked Gale.

He sent me another glare. "Is that everyone's problem? That our enemies might have a few hours to reflect on the fact that they're dying, instead of just being blown to bits?" Gale asked sharply.

Back in the old days, when we were nothing more than a couple of kids hunting outside of Twelve, Gale said things like that and worse. I took part in them most of the time. Laughing about creative ways that we could have killed the people in Two. Joking over using the people in the Capitol as target practice when we didn't seem to be hunting well. Katniss had even talked about the explosions with us, even with her father's untimely death. But then they were just words. Here, put into practice, they became deeds that could never be reversed.

"You don't know how those District Two people ended up in the Nut. They may have been coerced. They may be held against their will. Some are our own spies. Will you kill them, too?" I asked Gale.

"I would sacrifice a few, yes, to take out the rest of them. And if I were a spy in there, I'd say, 'Bring on the avalanches!'" Gale replied loudly.

Everyone looked shocked at his comment, but I had known Gale long enough to know that he was telling the truth. Katniss clearly shared my thoughts. We both knew that Gale would sacrifice his life in this way for the cause - after a moment, no one doubted it. Perhaps we would all do the same if we were the spies and given the choice. I guessed that I would. I had made the decision to give my life for Cato back in the Quell. But this was killing many. Not myself. This was a cold-hearted decision to make for other people and those who loved them.

Cato had spoken to me about the Nut a few times. His entire family had explained it to me. The Nut wasn't just some mine filled with Capitol workers and Peacekeepers. There were a number of people in there who were just trying to make a salary to bring home to feed their families. Right now I could see myself in the Hob, wandering back and forth, trying desperately to sell anything to gather food just to keep us alive for another night. What if someone had bombed the Hob when I had been in it, just because I was trying to save my family?

"You can't speak for all of the people in the Nut," I told Gale.

He looked like he was getting ready to counter me when Damien stepped forward. "No. I used to work in the Nut when I was younger. Those are mostly civilian workers in there, trying to support their children. I will not condemn someone to that kind of death," Damien told Gale sharply.

"The way that you decided to condemn Twelve?" Gale shot back.

For a moment I was sure that Damien would kill Gale. "That was the Capitol's choice," Dean said, calmly but with a hint of anger that I had never seen before. "No one knew what they were planning to do."

"But they sent in hover planes from Two," Gale pointed out.

"We didn't do a damn thing to your District," Dean snapped, his anger finally getting the best of him. I stepped in between him and Gale to keep either one of them from throwing the first hit. Dean took a step back and calmed himself down. "I'm sorry that you lost it and your people, but we can't keep seeing each other as enemies. There aren't enough of us."

Gale opened his mouth to speak again when I shoved him back. "Stop it," I snapped. "We have to come up with a solution."

"You said we had two choices," Boggs told Gale. "To trap them or to flush them out. I say we try to avalanche the mountain but leave the train tunnel alone. People can escape into the square, where we'll be waiting for them."

"Heavily armed, I hope. You can be sure they'll be," Gale said.

"Because you just bombed them," I argued.

"Heavily armed," Boggs agreed, before Gale could likely say something mean to me. "We'll take them prisoner."

"Let's bring Thirteen into the loop now. Let President Coin weigh in," Beetee suggested, also trying to diffuse the situation.

"She'll want to block the tunnel," Gale said with conviction.

How did he know exactly what it was that Coin would want? That was when I realized something. I had spent so much time in my own mind in Thirteen. Either talking to Haymitch or Katniss or Seneca of any of my own team. I'd spent so much time as the Mockingjay that I'd barely had any time to be around Gale and speak with him. In the absence that we'd had from each other's lives, I supposed that Gale and Coin had become close. He'd told me as much before. While I absolutely despised Coin and her attitude, Gale trusted the leader of Thirteen and clearly had her ear.

"Yes, most likely," Beetee said, agreeing with Gale's earlier comment about Coin. "But you know, Cato did have a point in his propos. About the dangers of killing ourselves off. I've been playing with some numbers. Factoring in the casualties and the wounded and... I think it's at least worth a conversation."

The whole idea of just having a conversation to weigh whether or not we would bomb the Nut and potentially kill everyone inside was sickening. It deserved more than a five-minute conversation. These were lives that we were talking about. It was worth so much more. This wasn't good enough. There could have been upwards of a thousand people in there. Destroying that many families - just as the Capitol, Snow, and the Hunger Games had done to my family - broke my heart. This was how Katniss's father had died. It was how Gale's had. I couldn't believe that he was okay with this.

Neither one of us looked at each other. I figured that Gale was angry with me for not understanding how angry he was but I was furious with him for thinking that this was okay. We couldn't do that to someone. A few minutes passed as we all gathered around a large table centered in the middle of what appeared to be an old meeting hall. We were all there to speak about the potential bombing of the Nut. A holographic image popped up facing Lyme, who was standing at the head of the table. Coin's face eventually appeared on the hologram to give her own opinion on the bombing.

"President Coin, we're indebted to you for the reinforcements and the Mockingjay," Lyme said. Coin nodded her agreement. I awkwardly looked to the floor. I'd done nothing while I was here. "But I'm not sure that anyone outside of Two knows what we've been up against. This is the Nut." A holographic image of the Nut appeared in the center of the table for Coin to see. "The Capitol's headquarters for all offensive operations. It's manned by both military and civilian personnel from District Two. As you can see, the fortress lies so far beneath the bedrock, it's untouchable. Yesterday, we attempted to take the northeastern gate. The enemy countered from higher up and we were forced to pull back. We took heavy losses."

Even after being a Victor, where I could only imagine what she had seen, she was still a general. She could never stand having to lose her own people. "Could we create a decoy?" Homes asked. He began pointing at the hologram of the Nut. "Send troops towards one gate, launch a staggered attack on another."

"Whose troops do you propose as a decoy, Commander?" Paylor asked sharply.

"We have the Mockingjay. Don't underestimate her. We could use her to erode support," Coin said.

Thankfully no one looked at me, but it didn't matter. I knew this would turn back to me at some point. I swallowed thickly, staring at the hologram of the Nut, pretending to be examining it. The one thing I was terrible at was trying to sway people. I had never been good at speeches. They always either got people killed or got me in even more trouble. I would need the line fed to me word for word. Just as it was always done. Katniss laid a hand on the edge of my thigh, likely sensing my discomfort.

"She may be able to sway some of the loyalists," Coin continued.

"You've been underground a long time, Madam Coin," Lyme said. Coin merely smiled at her disbelievingly. "This isn't like the rest of Panem. Support for the Capitol runs deep here."

She was telling the truth. Plus, District 2 had never liked me. Not after Cato had essentially betrayed them by protecting me and abandoning Clove. "Then there is no sacrifice too great. We need to control the arsenal inside that fortress. Even with every District in this alliance, we are outgunned," Coin pointed out.

"I won't commit my people to a ground assault just to pillage weapons," Paylor said determinedly.

"Commander Paylor, your people have suffered more than just about anyone else at the hands of the Capitol," Coin said.

"Which is why I won't condone a mass suicide," Paylor shot back.

That was one of the reasons that I had always liked Paylor a lot more than I had ever liked Coin. There was something about her. She wasn't willing to just do anything to win the war. She wasn't willing to sacrifice innocent people. That was very different from what Coin was willing to do. She didn't care what it took or who she had to sacrifice. Winning the war was the big picture in her book. It reminded me of the way the people in the Capitol thought. It was the main reason that I didn't trust her and likely never would.

"If we don't take District Two, we won't get into the Capitol," Coin told Paylor sharply.

"Would it be enough to disable the fortress instead of taking it?" Gale asked suddenly.

We were back to Gale's plan. I had been so hoping that this wouldn't happen. Everyone looked over at him in surprise. He was just a soldier. It was shocking that he would speak out in such a high-profile meeting. "What do you have in mind?" Lyme asked, mostly for Coin's sake.

"You think of it like a wolf den. You're not gonna fight your way in, so you've got two choices. You trap the wolves inside, or you flush 'em out. If we can't attack straight on, then couldn't we use our hovercraft to strike around it?" Gale asked, motioning around to the face of the Nut. "We'll use the mountains. We'll hit weak spots in the peaks."

"We could design the bomb targets in sequence using seismic data," Beetee told him.

"Trigger avalanches," Paylor put in.

"Block all exits, cut off their supplies. You make it impossible for them to launch their hovercraft," Gale added.

"Bury them alive," Paylor finished.

Unable to stop myself, I turned to stare at Gale. He really wasn't seeing where the problem was in all of this. He didn't understand that this wasn't something we could do. We would be destroying so many innocent lives. Katniss was staring at Gale, too. She, just like me, couldn't stand the thought of that many people being hurt because of something we had done. Everyone was looking back and forth at each other, clearly now wondering if this was what we really could do. Would it be worth it? The looks on Cato's family's face was nothing short of horrified.

They clearly couldn't even believe that we were humoring the conversation. "We'd forfeit any chance to control the weapons," Coin said.

"Yes, but we'd face a weakened Capitol," Beetee added.

My head was spinning slightly. I needed to say something. I needed to stop this. But I couldn't force the words from my throat. "There are civilians in there," Boggs said, almost over the top of Beetee. I turned to him gratefully. If I couldn't say it, at least he could. I decided to go ahead and like Boggs even more. "They should be given a chance to surrender. Could use one of the supply tunnels for the evacuees."

"It's a luxury we weren't given when they firebombed Twelve," Gale said, staring down at the table.

Perhaps that was true, but we couldn't always be playing to get even with each other. That had been the problem for so many years. We always wanted to get back at each other. I had even wanted to get back at the male Tribute from District 2 before my first Games because of what had happened to my parents. At least, until I realized who he was. But if we kept playing like this, we would destroy ourselves. The Games would never end. We would always be trying to get even with each other. It had to stop before we destroyed ourselves.

So, I turned to Gale and stared up at him. He refused to look at me. "There's gotta be a better way," I told him sharply.

Gale completely ignored me. "I suggest we try the avalanche, but leave the train tunnel alone," Coin said. I stared at the screen, horrified. We were really going to do it... We were going to bomb those people. There would be some who would die on impact. We couldn't save everyone. "Civilians can escape into the square, where our armies will be waiting for their surrender."

"We should have every available medic standing by," Paylor said.

Lyme hadn't once looked away from Coin. "And if they won't surrender?" she asked.

Coin merely smiled. "Then we will need a compelling voice to persuade them."

Of course. Me. They wanted me to try and sway them all. But I couldn't. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. Honestly, what was it that I was supposed to say? I wasn't sure. Just tell them that we had to work together to end the Games? They loved the Games. Or, even if they had gotten over their love of the Games, they hated me too much. They hated what I had done with Cato. They hated the kind of person that I had turned him into. Right now, I also hated myself. How could I make them follow me? I was a joke.

When the time came to make the ultimate choice, after a long bought of arguing and many rude comments exchanged, the number of people allowed in were dwindled down. Only a handful of people were invited to be part of that conversation. Gale, Katniss, and I were released with the rest. Cato's family were also dismissed. I was fine with that. I didn't want to be responsible for what they were going to do. Katniss and I took Gale hunting so he could blow off some steam, but he wasn't talking about it. Probably too angry with us for countering him.

That was fine by me. I couldn't believe how cold he was being about the entire thing. I knew that he was hurting from what had happened in Twelve. It killed me inside to know how many people had died because of something I had done. It always would. But that didn't change my feelings about this. Those people in there were innocent. Even if they weren't, we couldn't keep doing this. We were all defending our own lives and our own Districts. We weren't thinking about the simple fact that we were all people and we all deserved to live.

When it came down to it, even the people in the Capitol were innocent - with the exception of those who worked directly with the Games. We all had to start looking at each other like allies or it would only be a short time before we either killed ourselves off or managed to completely destroy the rebellion. Those weapons were going to be useless if there was no one left to work them. Gale didn't seem to understand that. He didn't understand that those kids who had died in the flames in Twelve... Kids and their families just like that were in the Nut. We were doing the same thing to them.

The hunting trip was a little useless for all three of us. Katniss appeared to be shaking too much to actually make a shot. If there was someone who hated what Gale was suggesting even more than I did, it was her. She was sick of the killing and fighting. I knew exactly where she was coming from. I had suggested her to merely walk with us after a stray arrow had nearly gone through my foot. She had agreed. Eventually, I had suggested that she just go back to the Justice Building. She looked like she was about to pass out anyway.

It had left just Gale and me for about an hour, wandering around the woods. Neither one of us made an attempt to speak to each other. It wasn't because we were focused on hunting (we had only picked off a few squirrels, far below our usual haul). It was because we were both too angry with the other to force a conversation that we knew would turn into a fight. I had a feeling he was also still trying to process my admission that I had been pregnant before the Quell. Probably angry at me for that, too. I couldn't bring myself to care.

Eventually, we were called back into the Town Square as the sun began to set. Hours had passed since that first meeting and, as far as I knew, the choice still hadn't been made. They would have to wait until the sun was down for the attack anyway. They couldn't be seen by the Capitol hovercrafts. I watched the Nut as I sat on the steps of the Justice Building. Maybe I was waiting to see the bombs fall. Would they even tell me their choice? They seemed to only tell me things when they actually needed something from me.

The only good thing right now was that everyone left me to my own devices. My guards stayed with me but at my insistence, they did give me a little bit of space. It left me to merely kick my booted feet against the rubble. How many times had Cato climbed these steps? Had he climbed them a few months ago, determined to volunteer and save my life? If he was here right now, would he kill me on them? I placed my head in my hands as the tears threatened to fall again - over Cato or the potential bombing, I wasn't sure. All I knew was that I was glad I was alone.

Speaking to someone was the last thing that I wanted to do right now. If I started speaking, I wasn't sure that I would be able to stop. All I would want to do was scream at them. I assumed that everyone was too busy thinking about what came next. Gale was likely trying to fight his way back into the meeting to talk to Coin. He would listen to her and vice versa. Katniss was likely trying to take a walk and clear her head. I wished that I could do it as easily as she could. When it came down to it, though, this was bound to haunt her too.

We were the two people who could never stand for injustice, no matter who it was against. Perhaps it was because we knew what it was like. We knew what it was like to lay in the freezing mud and almost die. We knew what it was like to practically be beaten to death. We knew what injustice was like. We had felt it every day back in Twelve. There was no way that we could stand to see it. Not when the consequences were like this. Not when we were really talking about people's lives in the balance. This was a war but we were still human. We couldn't kill each other.

The entire thing was disgusting. I didn't understand how we were even talking about this right now. I didn't get it. Gale was my best friend. I knew his heart. I knew that he had a good heart. But was it limited to the people he loved? Could he not feel empathy for people he had never considered? The few in District 2 who were cruel didn't mean that they all deserved to die. Gale didn't seem to understand that. There was one thought that chilled me to the core. His plan was familiar to me. Because it was something a Gamemaker would have done.

As I sat on the steps, furious with myself for not saying anything and for Gale for even offering his brutal plan, there was a sudden bombing that rocked the landscape. I jumped at the sudden noise and ducked down against the stairs. My guards turned back with the weapons tensed but very quickly relaxed. They must have been used to the bombings. But a stroke of fear shot through me. Had they decided to begin the attack without letting me know what the final choice was? I glanced out to the Nut but it appeared to still be perfectly intact.

My eyes were still shooting back and forth as I tried to find where the hell the bombing had come from. "Don't worry. It's just how the loyalists say good morning," a feminine voice called.

My gaze turned to the owner for a voice. For the briefest moment, I thought that it was just another soldier. But I quickly realized that it wasn't. It was a girl about my own age. She had stern dark eyes and dark hair, tied back in a bun against the base of her neck. Freckles were scattered across her face. Her stern eyes relaxed slightly to give me a practically teasing grin. She reminded me of Johanna. But she reminded me of someone else even more. Clove, the female Tribute from District 2 in my first Games. It was Dara, her older sister.

"Dara..." I whispered disbelievingly.

Her lips turned up in a bitter grin. "Ah, so the Mockingjay remembers someone as inconsequential as me?" Dara quipped.

It sounded as though she had inhaled a lot of smoke recently. I stared at Dara for a long time. It had been a little over a year since the last time I had seen her on the train platform coming home from the first Games. I had gone to apologize to her for Clove's death, which hadn't gone over well. She had essentially blamed me for getting Thresh to kill Clove for me since I couldn't do it myself. Her insult to him hadn't gone over well and I had attacked her, only to be pulled away by Cato, who had then threatened her. That was the first and only time I had met her.

"Are you with the rebels?" I asked curiously.

Was she planning on attacking and killing me? I couldn't have blamed her. But the thought of Dara, Clove's sister, being a rebel was an odd one. "Believe it or not, I am. Most of the stone workers in Two are with the rebels," Dara said.

The idea of Dara being on the same side was somewhat comical. I hummed in surprise. Not necessarily against the loyalists, but they were with each other, which technically put them on my side. She was still staring at me with her lips quirked up into a somewhat wry smile. It was a big change from the last time I had seen her. Her gaze had been completely stone cold. Or furious. I'd left her with a blossoming fat lip and bruised face. Looking at her now, I saw the similarities between herself and Clove. They could have been the same person, had Clove's skull not been permanently caved in.

Her bloodied sister's image forced me to close my eyes for a moment. She grinned, likely well aware of what I was thinking. "Let's put it this way, I hate you," she chirped happily.

"Yeah, I figured," I said honestly. My death was likely the only thing that would ever make us even. "And I don't blame you."

"Most people here hate you," Dara added.

"Figured," I said.

It didn't take a genius to know that she was trying to bait me into saying something nasty. Either that or she was deliberately trying to dig the knife in a little deeper. Maybe she wanted to see just how far she could push me. The answer to that was going to be surprisingly short. I wasn't sure how much longer I could handle all of this. Dara must have known that she wasn't going to get to me right now. She was very much like her sister in that matter. She couldn't just go for the kill. She had to toy with her victim first. Make them angry before she pounced.

"We hear Cato's back from the Capitol," Dara said. I gave a twitch that I hoped was imperceptible. She glanced around. "Where is he?"

My throat closed slightly. I forced all emotion out of my voice. "He's safe. Back in Thirteen, undergoing extensive rehabilitation treatments. You saw how terrible he looked in those last few interviews with Caesar Flickerman. He's got a long road to recovery ahead," I said automatically, a slightly cold tone to my voice.

Dara merely stared at me for a long time. "Hmm..."

"What?" I snapped.

"For someone who loves their husband as much as you do, you seem a little emotionless talking about him. You lost a child with him. You were separated from him for weeks and he was tortured," Dara said. Her lips turned up slightly. She must have been noticing my stance getting more and more tense with each comment that she made. She knew something was wrong here. "Aren't you happy to have him back?"

"Yes, of course," I said automatically.

For those few minutes, before I had seen him, I was thrilled. But that had all changed very quickly. "I see," Dara said slowly, nodding at me. "You sound happy."

"What are you getting at?" I hissed.

Dara put up her hands in a defensive position. "Nothing, Mockingjay. Just seems strange that you talk about Cato kind of like you're trying to… not actually think about him," she said.

If this was all that she was going to do to me, I wanted her far away from me. Because unfortunately, she was quite correct. Any time that I talked about Cato or our life together, I tried to not really think about him. I just gave the automatic response that I had already written out for myself. It was bad enough, thinking about our old life together. The way that we had used to love each other. This was a new nightmare that I was living. But it was a nightmare that I had to live internally. This wasn't one that I could share with the people of District 2. They would lose any sympathy for me they had.

As Haymitch had said a number of times before, the people of District 2 only liked and sided with me because they thought that Cato was still in love with me. They loved their boy and were more than willing to adore whoever he did. If they found out that Cato had gone through what he had because of me and that he now hated me more than anything else, there was a good chance that they would immediately defect from me. They would go right back to their previous loyalty to the Capitol. We couldn't afford that right now.

"It's hard to see all of this every day," I said, motioning around me. I had to say something. I just wasn't sure what to say to convince her that things were okay. "My life is emotional enough. I don't need to cry over everything."

"Right," Dara said slowly. Her lips turned up again in another wry smile. "Is that it or are you getting a little closer to your cousin?"

If there was something that I couldn't stand, it was people who continued talking about the Cato/Gale/me situation. "What the hell do you want? Another black eye?" I sneered.

"The truth," Dara shot back.

"I'm telling you the truth," I hissed. In a way, I was telling her the truth. But she knew that she wasn't getting everything out of me. "Cato is back in District 13 undergoing extensive -"

"Rehabilitation after everything he endured in the Capitol," Dara repeated tonelessly. She merely glared at me for a moment. "Yeah, so we've heard. But I haven't heard anything else about him. About your conversations." She was right. Cato had been rescued, it had been announced, and then it had been radio silence from us about his condition. No one outside of Thirteen knew what was going on. "Has he told you anything about his time there?"

If we were close enough to speak to each other, Cato would kill me. I cleared my throat and said, "He doesn't like to talk about it and I don't want to push."

Dara hummed thoughtfully. "Must be some very awkward conversations."

"I think everything is these days," I said truthfully.

"Honestly, when did the two of you ever have lighthearted conversations?" Dara asked.

At the end of the day, we had just been two kids in love. We'd just wanted to be together. There were so many conversations that we'd had in the darkness of the night, just the two of us, laughing and harassing each other. Those conversations that had seemed so meaningless to me at the time but now meant the world. Because I knew I could never get them back. All of those talks about fighting over what our house would be decorated in (not blue), the kinds of pets we would have (he wanted a dog, I threatened to cook it), and him insisting that he could teach me to dance.

All of those nights that I could never get back. Those conversations that would never come to light. "Probably more often than you'd think," I admitted to Dara quietly.

There was one night in particular that I was thinking of. One of those nights that I wished I could go back to. A moment that I could live in forever. A moment where I wondered what would have happened if I had known what was coming. It was the second day after training during the Quarter Quell. Our wedding had been announced the day before. We were currently trying to hide from any reporters who wanted to ask us a million questions about a wedding we hadn't been involved in. We were laying in bed together, twiddling our thumbs with each others.

"What are you doing?" I laughed as Cato crushed my thumb with his own.

Cato stared at me. "It's called a thumb war." I merely stared at him. "You've never played this game before?"

"Guess not," I admitted.

"It's easy. You just take your hands, wrap them together, and try and pin the other person's thumb for five seconds," Cato said, wrapping our hands together and holding his thumb straight up.

He nudged me to do the same. "Is everything a competition in District 2?" I asked curiously.

Even a simple children's game had been turned into a competition back in his home. "You're just asking that because you know you're going to lose," Cato teased.

If there was one thing he knew, it was that I hated being told that I would lose at something. "I am not!" I barked indignantly. Cato smiled. "Okay, fine, let's play."

He switched sides with our thumbs three times before starting the competition. I found immediately that I wasn't very good at this game. My thumbs were too short compared to his. Plus, his were much stronger. The only benefit that I had was that my nails were long and rather sharp. I could dig them into his palm. But each time I did that, he increased his grip on my hand, grinding the bones together. I almost always let up on his palm after that. When it came down to it, he was stronger and had bigger hands. There was no way I was winning. It took him almost three minutes to permanently push his thumb over mine, practically crushing it.

My nail was getting pressed down into my hand. "Ow!" I hissed, ripping my hand back away from his.

That was a terrible game for kids to play... "See?" Cato said, grinning proudly at himself. I rolled my eyes. "I win."

"That's just because you have big-ass hands," I huffed.

Cato grinned again. "You know what they say about big hands."

"No?" I asked curiously.

Cato's face fell as he stared at me. Eventually, he started laughing. I narrowed my gaze. I hated being laughed at. "You're so unbelievably innocent, it's pathetic."

"Don't be an ass," I snapped.

I was not that innocent. I had just crawled out of a shower with Cato, after all. It had just all come a little later to me than it had to him. "Do you want to know what it means?" Cato offered.

"Sure," I said.

Cato pulled me up against his chest, tangling ourselves into the sheets even further, as he leaned down. His mouth gently brushed against his ear as he whispered the real meaning of the big hand's comment. For a moment I merely stared at him. He had to be kidding. There was no way that he was telling me the truth. I stared at him, waiting for him to start laughing at my naivety, but he merely grinned even wider. Suddenly a blush formed on my face, spreading all the way from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair. Cato laughed at my embarrassment.

"You're making that up," I finally said.

Cato laughed, shaking his head. "I am not, ask anyone."

"And who am I going to ask? Finnick Odair?" I teased.

"I'm sure he'd be more than happy to tell you," Cato shot back.

The last thing that I needed was Finnick Odair telling me about anything he did after dark. I arched a brow and moved into him playfully. "How about if I'd rather have you show me?" I teased, moving into him.

Cato gave me a twisted grin. "Oh, I'd be honored to show you that."

There was no doubt that he wouldn't want to show me something like that. He had wanted to since the moment we had meant. From that first moment, he had stood in between my legs and threatened to kill me. There had always been sexual tension between the two of us. It was a kind that I had never felt before. It was the kind that warmed me to the core and made my toes curl underneath my feet. It was the kind that I had only ever been comfortable exploring with Cato, and I would only ever be comfortable exploring with him.

Distracting me from my thoughts, I laughed as Cato grabbed me around the waist and rolled me down underneath him. His hands were tight enough to leave bruises but I didn't dare ask him to let me go. Not when I knew that this would likely be one of the final times that we could be together. For a moment I thought that we would go back to what we had been doing earlier, but we didn't act on our urges for once. Instead, we just enjoyed the peaceful air between the two of us, laying close together, fitting ourselves against one another.

We were silent for a long time before I couldn't sit in silence any longer. "Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we'd grown up in each other's District?" I asked curiously.

Cato hummed quietly. "Never really thought about it, I suppose. I always liked that you were from Twelve. Differing world views," Cato said. Yes, we really were from two different worlds. But I had always been curious, what would have become of us if we were from the same place. Would we have gotten along or hated each other? "But if you were from Two… I don't know."

"Come on. Tell me," I goaded.

"I think we would have hated each other," Cato admitted.

Despite what he had just admitted, I barked out a little bit of laughter. "Really?"

"Yes," Cato said, smiling at me. "I think that we would have constantly competed against each other. Best swordsman, best knife thrower, best archer; the likes of that. I was stronger. You had better aim." Very true. "I was a better planner. You were smarter." Also true. "I acted on impulse. You were patient." That one was only sometimes true. "We would have constantly butted heads. You would have been humble, I would have been proud. You would yell at me, I would laugh while you got riled up."

All of those things were so true about both of us. We had constantly competed against each other before the first Games. Who had gotten the higher training score, who had gotten more Sponsors, and who had the audience liked more. He was stronger than me but my aim with knives and arrows was much better. He did tend to plan ahead, but I was smarter about things. He did act on impulse, because of hunting I had trained myself to wait things out. We had butted heads so much at that point. He was always smirking where I had constantly second-guessed everything.

That entire imagination of our life in District 2 sounded very familiar. "Sounds like us before the first Games," I said, echoing my thoughts.

"Exactly," Cato said.

"Do you think it would have changed?" I asked curiously.

Cato smiled, brushing my wet hair back off my forehead. "Yeah. I think one day we would have ended up in the Academy together, after hours. We would start snapping at each other again and something would happen. Someone would say something to make the other look at them in a different light. Things would change after that," Cato said quietly.

It was just an echo of what had happened to the two of us in real life. We had hated each other before the first Games had really gotten underway. It hadn't been any real love between the two of us for a long time. But something had gradually shifted between the two of us from that night at Snow's party. Then things had changed even further once we had wound up on the rooftop garden the night before the Games. We had spoken to each other like the oldest of friends and had realized that we were both real human beings with friends and families. That was the first love we'd felt between us.

That was the beginning of the end. That was when things had so desperately changed between us. "Who would make the first move?" I asked curiously.

I wasn't even sure who had made the first move in real life. Cato had certainly been bolder and kissed me first, but I knew that I had played into him long before. "Me," Cato said confidently. I laughed quietly. "Because you would be trying to deny your feelings."

It all sounded familiar. "Sounds like a nice story," I whispered.

Cato turned to look at me. A small smile crossed his lips. "It's got a happy ending," he whispered back, pressing his mouth against my temple.

"What's the ending?" I asked curiously.

Cato merely stared at me for a moment before his lips turned up in a wry smile. "I don't know yet," he admitted. At least he was being honest. "But I know that we're always together."

When it came down to it, I supposed that was the important thing. The simple fact that we were always together. Perhaps we would end up in that Meadow together since we very simply weren't going to be able to be together in real life. Not after everything. At least we had the chance to end up together in the afterlife. Maybe it would be peaceful. I leaned over to kiss Cato, our kiss becoming deeper and deeper as the minutes ticked by. His hands wrapped completely around the back of my neck and rested there possessively.

We broke apart after a long time together. "What about if I was from Twelve?" Cato asked me quietly.

I was silent for a moment before saying, "You would have gotten eaten by a bear."

There was a good chance that he really would have gotten eaten by a bear. He was a little too bold and brave. He likely wouldn't have realized that he would have had to be careful in District 12. There was a good chance that he would have walked right into a bear's den and gotten himself killed. Cato merely stared at me for a moment before my lips broke out in a small smile. We both immediately started laughing. I loved being annoying when Cato was trying to be nice. He grabbed me around the waist, tackling me back in the bed, getting a little bit closer.

In the present day, in the ruins of Cato's old home, I found that I was crying. My face immediately started burning with embarrassment. I was sick of crying and looking like a fool. It was time for me to be the stone-cold Mockingjay I had promised President Snow I would be. I brushed the stray tear out of my eyes and set my jaws together, looking out into the distance. Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see that Dara was staring at me with something that looked just the slightest bit like sympathy. Not quite, but close. It was the nicest I'd ever seen her.

When she spoke next, I noticed that she was very careful with her words. "He's back. Shouldn't you be happy?"

If he was back to normal, I would have been thrilled to have him back. I would have never let him out of my sight. We would have laid up in bed for a long time and never dared let go of each other. There was no way I would have ever left the bedroom. That was the only good thing about the two of us being in the state we were in. He was so terrible that I had to do something else to take my mind off what was happening with him. It meant that I was completely focused on being the Mockingjay and nothing else.

Dara was still staring at me as my mind wandered off toward the life that Cato could have had. The life that I had unfairly taken from him. I stared at her. For once, I saw someone human. She looked heartsick for me. She likely also knew how tough it was to lose someone she loved. She had lost Clove just the way I had lost Cato. I thought on it for a moment before deciding that I might as well tell Dara the truth about what had happened to Cato. For some reason, I trusted her not to say anything. It was obvious that she knew something was wrong with us anyway.

"He's not the same," I whispered quietly.

"Not the same?" Dara asked curiously.

A lump formed in my throat. I swallowed, forcing myself to be stone cold about the entire thing. "The Capitol put him through a process called hijacking," I said tonelessly. Dara merely stared at me, her eyes asking what her mouth didn't. "They take Tracker Jacker venom and inject him with it while showing him audio and visual clips and cues. Of the two of us mostly. They distorted his memories, associating them with feelings of fear and anger rather than love or contentment, at least."

Dara merely stared at me, likely trying to gauge whether or not I was joking. I wished that I was. She would know soon enough that this wasn't a joke. Cato really hated me and would always. His family was wrong. Everyone was wrong. There was no way that we could pull out whatever it was that the Capitol had done to him. When it came down to it, we didn't even know the full extent of what it was that they had done to him. We had no idea exactly how it had worked. We didn't even know where to start. But I did. This began and ended with my death.

"What does that mean?" Dara asked, finally finding her voice.

"All of his memories of me have been altered. He believes that I'm a mutt," I said, my voice cracking slightly. I cleared my throat and continued. "He's terrified of me. When he first was rescued he tried to kill me. The Capitol let us take him with Snow hoping that I would insist on a private reunion. Had we gotten it, Cato would have killed me."

My entire body was numb with the truth of the matter. We would never again be those two kids who laid in bed and joked around. Played silly little games or teased each other. Things were too hard. Our entire life was so twisted. Everything that could have been was snatched from us. Even the possibility of being young parents, still growing up as we raised our own family, had been taken. That conversation had been one of the final ones that we'd gotten like that. But I had always thought... hoped... that we could have somehow ended up like that again.

Two kids with nothing more to worry about than their love for each other. How could the Capitol have taken that from us? We had never wanted this. Only each other. I realized that my throat was closing up again and choking me, just as it always did when I was on the verge of tears. I swallowed them back and turned to look at Dara. She was staring down at the ground, seemingly thinking on my words. She remained silent for a long time. Unless I was wrong, she looked just the slightest bit sorry for what I had just told her.

When she spoke again I was surprised at how soft her voice was. "Can it be undone?"

"They're trying, but it seems highly unlikely," I admitted.

The two of us stared at each other for a moment. I took in a deep breath, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice. Thinking about the change of my life with Cato only made things worse. "He hasn't calmed down at all in Thirteen?" Dara asked carefully.

"No. If anything, he's worse. He insists that I'm a mutt and I need to be killed. He's being locked in a padded room with restraints constantly on him. He can't even speak to anyone who reminds him of me. It sends him off into a state of panic. He hasn't been able to see his friends or family since returning," I told her.

Dara swallowed. I assumed she had gotten on rather well with Cato as kids. It must have been hard to hear about her childhood friend like this. "It's that bad?" Dara asked disbelievingly.

"He's not himself. Likely never will be completely himself again," I said quietly.

There was no way that Cato would ever be back to normal. He was so far away from the man I had fallen in love with so long ago. He was so far away from the Career I had met. There was nothing of the old Cato left. I watched Dara out of the corner of my eyes. She was sitting on the stair right below me. She looked like she might have felt a little bit bad for me. But there was no way. She hated me. She felt bad for Cato, more than likely. I didn't want to be pitied anyway. The entire thing was my own fault.

"He looked bad. Erratic. We thought that it was just physical abuse," Dara finally said.

"No… it was so much worse," I replied.

It was so much worse than any of us had expected. No one had really known the extent of the torture before he had arrived back in Thirteen. Apparently, he had talked to the doctors in Thirteen about what had happened to him in the Capitol. They had all offered to tell me what had happened to him, but I had refused to listen. I didn't want to know about all of the pain I had caused him. It was selfish, but I couldn't know. I didn't want to know. I just wanted him to get to his old self with me nowhere near his life, no longer destroying it.

"You know, one of the reasons I always hated you was because I hated how sappy the romance was," Dara said. I merely stared at her. I supposed that I deserved her insulting me. I was much of the reason that her sister was dead. "But I always kind of liked watching it. It fascinated me. I'd never seen someone that in love. I always thought it was an act. But I guess it's not."

"No, it never was," I said quietly.

She hummed understandingly. "The only reason I was ever content with Clove dying was that at least two people who genuinely hated the Capitol, who had the power to bring it down together, had won," she said quietly.

My stomach wrapped itself into knots. That wasn't what either one of us had ever wanted. We'd just wanted to be left in peace. We'd just wanted to get our lives together without any interruption. But it was clear that it wasn't happening. Particularly not right now. Clove hadn't died for nothing. I could promise Dara that much. I would bring down the Capitol. I genuinely hated them. We had loved each other at one point, each of us more than anything else. But it was gone now. All that was left was the promise to bring down the Capitol and kill Snow.

My stomach was fluttering with nerves and disappointment. "We have to keep him in complete isolation. We can't risk having him hurt someone or send any pro-Capitol messages out there," I told Dara.

Dara nodded thoughtfully. "I've known Cato a long time."

"Probably since you were kids, I guess?" I said.

She nodded again. "Yeah. The two of us never really got along, but I always admired him. Tough inside and out. No one could sway him. He was the epitome of an Academy student and soon-to-be-Victor," Dara explained. I nodded at her. That sounded like the Cato I had met. "But I remember seeing him after he fell in love with you. Softer. More of a family man. He went from a young boy who loved the idea of being a Victor to an adult who didn't give a damn about them. He just wanted to keep his wife safe."

"He did a good job for a long time," I said quietly.

"They might be able to fix him," Dara said, almost reassuringly.

It was one of the nicest ways someone had spoken to me in months. "I won't bet on it," I said quietly.

"Do you think he'd give up on you?" Dara asked.

My throat tightened. "No," I answered truthfully. "But I can't take any more disappointment."

Dara looked like she was tempted to throttle me. Which she very likely was. "And what about him? When they broke his body and his mind, do you think that he ever just gave in? Thought 'I can't do this anymore'? You think he ever just gave up?" Dara asked sharply. I said nothing, already well aware of the answer. "He didn't. He was willing to do anything and go through anything to save you. And he did. Your turn."

But I couldn't... I was just making his life worse... "Dara -"

"I know that you're hurt right now," she interrupted me sharply. That was the understatement of the century. "I know that this entire thing hurts. But too damn bad. It's war. You owe him this much. Just try."

"If you saw him -"

"Get up and help him," Dara demanded harshly. She must have been closer with Cato than she had admitted. Either that or she just hated me feeling sorry for myself. Maybe a little bit of both. "Small steps. But something has to give. Crawl first. Walk next. One day you might just find that you're running again."

If it ever got to the point that I could speak to Cato without him trying to kill me... "Do you still think about Clove?" I asked Dara curiously.

If I could never get over Cato, would I think about him every day for the rest of my life? "Every day," Dara admitted. I nodded. I guessed that it was actually kind of nice to know that Dara really did love Clove, who had always seemed so tough during the Games. "The ones that we love never truly leave us. They're right there, watching over us. Hoping that we make the right choices."

Back in Thirteen in the early days of my rescue from the arena, before I had known that Cato was still alive, I had thought about him every day. My thoughts were never anywhere else. They were only on him. Even now, I was always thinking about him. Everything seemed to tie back to him. But it was Dara's last words that echoed in my head. The ones we love never truly leave us. My mother and father. Mr. Everdeen. Cinna. Leah. Rue, Peeta, Thresh, and Finch. Mags and Wiress. Madge and her family. All of those before and after them.

Were they all watching them? Everyone who I had known and lost in my life... Was there a chance that they were all watching every move I made? I still imagined Peeta whenever things started getting hard for me. Perhaps they were all looking down on me and trying to convince me not to give up on Cato. Maybe they were saying that he was still down there. I just had to get him out. I knew that they would have been right to tell me that. Cato wouldn't have given up on me. He would still be fighting for me. I needed to get the hell up and fight for him.

The right thing to do was tell Dara that I wouldn't give up on Cato. I knew that she was waiting for it. Instead, what came out was, "The pregnancy was real, you know."

Dara smiled slightly. "Oh, I figured it would only be so long anyway. I believed it."

She was one of the rare people who had believed it. "Why?" I asked.

"Cato never could keep it in his pants," Dara said plainly.

Much to my surprise, I started laughing. Mostly because she was telling the complete truth. From the moment I had met Cato, he had always had a hard time controlling himself. Around me, I supposed. It was comical that everyone had been able to pick up on it. Even Dara began laughing after a few seconds. The sight must have been strange. We had always hated each other. We still didn't really like each other. I guessed that we had just been put into the same situation. It had forced us to learn to respect each other's point of view.

It had taken all of this for me to realize just how hurt she was. Losing the person she loved most to someone she felt was the villain of the story. These days I knew how she felt. I knew what it felt like to lose someone. I loved Cato and I had been forced to watch Snow steal and twist him away from me. I finally knew how Dara felt. I could finally respect just how upset she was to lose her sister. I hadn't believed that she could have really loved her sister and that wasn't fair of me to assume that. Perhaps we were on the way to respecting each other.

She had mentioned the pregnancy and I had told her that it was real. She must have known that I wasn't really pregnant. It had been almost three months since the arena. I would have had at least the slightest bump on my stomach. But right now I had lost weight from all of the stress of the war. I was back to being skin and bones as I had been before the first Games and during the Victory Tour. Dara had long since calmed down and she was now staring at me expectantly. It was time for me to admit the truth to her. She had given me that much.

"The blast… it -"

"I know," Dara interrupted me. She might not have loved me, but no one wanted to let someone remember a traumatic event like that. "They told us. You don't have to tell me. You're young. It can happen."

If we were in bed together, he would strangle me. "Maybe once he doesn't hate me," I muttered.

We were so far away from those two young people who had discussed having a family. We couldn't even be in a room together right now. "Listen to me, Mockingjay. You don't take that much love from two people and eradicate it overnight. It doesn't work like that. It's still in there somewhere. You just have to find it. Look around," Dara warned.

"Thank you," I whispered.

Maybe it was in there somewhere. But it was going to take a lot of work and likely a lot more heartbreak to find it. "Don't thank me," Dara said, rolling her eyes, looking very much like Clove. "I just want this damn war to be over with. I'm sick of the Hunger Games and how the Capitol glorifies them. I just wish I'd gotten the point sooner."

"You get it now," I told her.

It was something I had told Cato when the first Games had ended. He had told me that he'd finally realized that it wasn't all worth it. The only thing worth it had been me. He had finally understood it. Now it was Dara's turn. I was glad that she'd realized the truth of the Hunger Games. I was just sorry that it had taken losing her sister and her home to realize it. I thought about hugging her but I knew that we weren't to that point yet. I just had to be grateful that she respected me enough to tell me what I needed to hear. To not give up on Cato.

Sniffling slightly, I pressed my palm into my forehead. "Pull yourself together, Mockingjay," Dara said fiercely. I jumped slightly. "We're all fighting this war and we need everyone to win it. Even you. Especially you."

As much as I hated to admit it, Dara was right. I nodded at her thoughtfully, not actually bothering to look her in the eyes. It was time for me to pull it together. I did have a lot more mental clarity being here in Two and out of Thirteen. It was better. Out here I could manage my emotions and focus on the war. It was time to end Snow's reign of terror. Once everything was at least on the path to getting fixed in the world I could turn my focus back to Cato. Eventually, I would turn my focus back to him but there were so many other things to deal with right now.

Risking a look over at Dara, I noticed that she was staring firmly at the Nut. What did she think about all of this? "I'm sorry, Dara," I finally said. She looked up at me curiously. "About everything."

"Don't be sorry. We all have shit we're sorry for. We could drown each other with it. Don't keep saying it," Dara said.

"Right," I said, unable to think of anything better.

Dara looked at me for a long time. "District Two stands with the Mockingjay. You should know that," she said. The corners of my lips threatened to turn up in a smile. She wasn't everyone in Two, but her voice must have meant something. "I loved Clove more than anything, even though we might have fought all the time."

"She didn't deserve what she got," I admitted.

No part of me had liked Clove but I had never wanted her dead. I hadn't wanted any of us to die. "No. She didn't. Then again, we rarely do," Dara pointed out.

"Are you okay with this?" I asked curiously, pointing to the Nut.

Dara's eyes hardened. "Are you?"

Was I okay with this? I didn't speak again for a long time because I wasn't okay with it and Dara knew that. She knew that this wasn't what I had wanted. I'd wanted to give them a chance. I couldn't condemn someone to this kind of death. It was disgusting and I couldn't believe that it was Gale who had come up with this plan. No, I wasn't okay with this in the slightest. Far from it. But I also didn't know what I could do to stop it. They only listened to me when I was making some kind of speech and I wasn't exactly good with those.

For a long time, Dara sat with me, not saying anything. But I didn't need her to say anything. I actually preferred the silence More than once I would look over at her to try and find the similarities between herself and her sister. They were easy to see. The same deep brown eyes. The same dark hair. The same small stature. The same half-quirked smile. The same freckles. Every now and again I was half-expecting Dara to launch on top of me and hold a knife to my face, threatening to fillet me. How much easier things would have been if she had just done that...

While I was examining her, I had a feeling that she was doing the same to me. At one point in the afternoon, I saw Dara lean over and open a locket she had been wearing. Inside was a picture that I just barely got the chance to glimpse. But I did see it. It was a picture of Clove and her, laughing together on what I assumed was the training floor in the Academy. They looked the same as they had when I had first met them. How soon had that been before the Games? Did they realize then just what would happen because of a little girl from Twelve?

Sometimes I wondered that. What the other Tributes were doing just days before that Reaping that had sent them into the Games. Those people who had affected my life in their own ways hadn't had the slightest clue and I existed and vice versa. So blissfully ignorant. We hadn't even been thinking of each other. I wished that I could go back to those days and warn everyone to enjoy them. Each and every moment. Because those were some of the last moments of peace that any of us would ever get. Dara snapped the locket closed when she realized I was looking at it.

Day turned to night with no word from anyone on what had happened in regards to the Nut. No one ever came searching for Dara or myself. I assumed that they were too busy arguing among themselves on what was right versus what was necessary. I tried to see both sides of the argument but all I could see were bones. The bones of those in Twelve. The bones of those who had died in the mines the day of Mr. Everdeen's death. Even though the air in Two was muggy, I felt a thin layer of goosebumps form over my arms.

It must have been approaching midnight when an armed soldier approached us. He ignored Dara and instead stopped in front of me. "We need you," the man told me.

It had happened then. One way or another, the decision on the fate of the Nut had been made. The soldier gave me no indication of what had happened. He was stone-faced. Not that I was surprised. They rarely had any emotion on their faces. The man was alone. Katniss and Gale were nowhere to be found. Probably busy yelling at each other for either not supporting the other's choice, for being cruel, or not having a backbone. I was glad to not be there for that one. I got to my feet for the first time in hours and turned back to the Justice Building.

Before I could walk away Dara's strong grip locked around my wrist. "Hang on," she said, pulling me back. "Good luck with everything, Mockingjay. We'll be watching."

"Thanks," I said quietly.

She slowly relaxed her grip on my arm. "And... don't give up on Cato," she said, looking a little embarrassed to say it. "Believe it or not, Clove wouldn't have wanted you to."

Somehow I doubted that. I would think that she'd sooner like a see them drop a bomb on me. But I appreciated her words. So I said, "Good luck out here."

We didn't say anything else. We might not have particularly liked each other but it seemed that we were finally able to respect each other and what we had been through. I gave Dara a slight nod as she gathered up her rifle and turned back toward the Town Square and her own troops. I watched her leave before turning back to the soldier, hoping that Dara would live through the rebellion. Someone in that family deserved to carry on Clove's memory. It didn't occur to me until after we had departed each other's company that I hadn't seen her parents.

As it turned out, the meeting over the potential bombing of the Nut was a long one. But the call did happen, the decision was made, and within an hour of me leaving Dara, I was suited up in my Mockingjay outfit, with my bow slung over my shoulder and an earpiece that connected me to Haymitch in Thirteen - just in case a good opportunity for a propo arose. They had at least forgone makeup, aware of the lack of time we had. We waited on the roof of the Justice Building with a clear view of our target. Down below I could see the hovercrafts preparing to launch.

My stance was rigid as I leaned back against the stone walls to watch the hovercrafts launch. Everyone had long since left the meeting room we had all been in earlier today. I tried to look and see if I recognized anyone on the roof, but they all looked the same. The earpiece was silent. No warnings from Haymitch yet. He had been noticeably quiet since I had come to Two anyway. Likely trying not to make things any harder for me. Stories below me I could hear the engines winding up on the hovercrafts. My earpiece crackled slightly as it picked up their interference.

"Red Flag, this is Blue Leader. Form up on Charlie Tango, fifteen-hundred meters out. Weapons system, check. Commencing an attack formation," the leader of the first hovercraft said.

"Roger that," another man called.

"All bombers are outbound," the leader said.

Three hovercrafts raised into a synchronized pattern in the air. I stared off and watched as they headed to the Nut. My heart sank into my stomach. There were hundreds of people in that place. Maybe thousands. Here we were, watching as we killed them. It was like standing in the arena all over again. I felt like a Career, watching the weaker players in the Games fall right into my trap. A shadow appeared at my side but I didn't look over to them. I already knew who it was and I wasn't quite in the mood to speak with them.

"What's the difference, Aspen?" Gale asked. I turned to him. "Crushing the enemy in a mine or blowing them out of the sky with one of Beetee's arrows. It's the same thing."

"We were under attack in District Eight," I snapped, turning back to the Nut. How didn't he see the difference? "And that hovercraft wasn't filled with civilians."

"Doesn't matter. Even if those civilians are just mopping floors, they're helping the enemy. And if they have to die, I can live with that. No one who supports the Capitol is innocent," Gale sneered angrily.

Even if they were just mopping floors... Did Gale really not understand the point of doing what you had to do to survive? I would have thought that after seeing what the Capitol had done to Cato, Gale would have finally truly understood the kind of people we were dealing with. The kind of people who would force you into someone else's bed or they would kill your family. The longer I looked at Gale, the more that I could picture him wearing that magnificent purple fur collar - specifically designed to identify a Head Gamemaker.

Where had my best friend gone? "With that kind of thinking, you can kill whoever you want. You can send kids off to the Hunger Games to keep the Districts in line," I told Gale.

He merely stared at me. Gale was willing to do anything and sacrifice anyone to win this war. That was what the Capitol was doing. He didn't understand that he was acting just like they were. Just like the loyalists, he thought that he was right. There was no difference. As I opened my mouth to say something to him, the first of the bombs dropped on the Nut. I looked up to see the lights dimming all around the mountain as rocks cascaded down the side, caving in the tunnels and trapping all those who would try and escape. I turned away and closed my eyes, heartbroken.

"It's war, Aspen. Sometimes killing isn't personal. Figured if anyone knew that, it was you," Gale said.

My eyes shot open as I turned to him. "I, of all people, know that it's always personal," I sneered.

Haymitch had once told me that my friends and family would never truly understand what it was like in the arena. The feelings I had and memories that haunted me. I supposed this was the first time I really understood what he meant. Gale would never understand that even those nameless Tributes - these nameless mine workers - had stories and lives. Things that we had just destroyed. Even if we didn't know each other, I knew that it was always personal. There were cheers echoing all around the rooftop as they celebrated the first wave of the bombing of the Nut.

"Don't worry, Aspen, there will be survivors," Gale said quietly.

The survivors weren't the point. The point was that we had done this in the first place. As Gale walked off, obviously sensing that I didn't want him near me right now, I tried to keep myself from throwing up. I couldn't believe what we had just done. We had killed the miners, just the way they had done to us in Twelve. How could we have done that? Condemn someone to die just the way Mr. Everdeen and Mr. Hawthorne had? How as Gale okay with doing something like this? I finally found Katniss hiding in a corner. The two of us sat together with clasped hands.

She must have been thinking of the day her father died. "Are you okay?" I asked her.

"No," she responded, looking quite green.

"Go inside," I told her.

At least she wouldn't have to see or hear it. "No... I need to see it," Katniss said determinedly.

It must have been something she needed. I didn't like it but I also knew that she wouldn't listen to me. So, the two of us sat together and didn't speak. We just watched. That first wave of our hovercrafts was initially ignored by the commanders in the Nut because in the past they had been little more trouble than flies buzzing around a honeypot. But after two rounds of bombings in the higher elevations of the mountain, the planes had their attention. By the time the Capitol's antiaircraft weapons began to fire, it was already too late.

The first wave of bombs were only designed to catch their attention. To make them think that it was just another small scale attack from the rebels in Two. Just as Gale had said, it would be enough to draw fighters up toward the top levels of the Nut to ensure that no damage had occurred and to rescue any injured. That was when the bigger bombs would be set off, likely killing anyone just below the surface of the mountain face and forcing the survivors to flee - running straight into our troops.

Gale's plan exceeded anyone's expectations. Beetee was right about being unable to control the avalanches once they had been set in motion. It was a near disaster once the Nut had sustained heavy enough damage. It was almost impossible to see the mountain through all of the dust and debris flying through the air. The mountainsides throughout Panem were naturally unstable, but weakened by the explosions, they seemed almost fluid. If no one had been inside, I would have said that the destruction was beautiful.

Whole sections of the Nut collapsed before our eyes, obliterating any sign that human beings had ever set foot on the place. It was like starting from scratch. We stood speechless on the roof of the Justice Building, tiny and insignificant, as waves of stone thundered down the mountain. Burying the entrances under tons of rock. Raising a cloud of dirt and debris that blackened the already dark sky. Turning the Nut into a tomb. My stomach lurched painfully as I clasped a hand over my mouth. We were too far away to hear them, but I knew screams were echoing through the night.

Against my own free will, I imagined the hell inside the mountain. Sirens wailing. Lights flickering into darkness. Stone dust choking the air. The shrieks of panicked, trapped beings stumbling madly for a way out, only to find the entrances, the launchpad, and the ventilation shafts themselves clogged with earth and rock trying to force its way in. Live wires flung free, fires breaking out, rubble making a familiar path a maze. People slamming, shoving, scrambling like ants as the hill pressed in, threatening to crush their fragile shells.

My head was spinning with the thought of what was happening inside of the mountain. I knew what it was like to be unable to find my way out of a disaster. The inability to form coherent thoughts from a concussion. The ringing of your ears followed by a deafening silence after blowing out an eardrum. The burning flesh - both the pain and smell overwhelming - after being hit by a fireball. Suddenly I was back in the arena, desperate to find a way out, desperate to save those people inside. They hadn't asked for this. They were dying because of us.

"Aspen?" Haymitch's voice was in my earpiece. I tried to answer back and found that both of my hands were clamped tightly over my mouth. Katniss was pressed against the ground. "Aspen!"

On the day her father (the only one I had ever known) died, the sirens went off during my school lunch. No one waited for dismissal or was expected to. The response to a mine accident was something outside the control of even the Capitol. Katniss and I hadn't been all that close yet but I had considered us friends. More than anything, she was still like a sister to me and I knew that she would have been panicking. Her father was in the mines. We both knew it. I sprinted straight from the lunchroom into the hallway, throwing both kids and adults out of the way.

Katniss was already in tears when I found her. I grabbed her around the wrist and pulled her away before she could speak. Being slightly larger, I was able to trample the crowd to push toward Prim. Together the two of us ran to Prim's class. I could still remember her, tiny at seven, very pale, but sitting straight up with her hands folded on her desk. Waiting for us to collect her as we had promised we would if the sirens ever sounded. Neither of us could ever understand how she had remained so calm in the utter chaos of the day. We had always admired her for it.

The moment she saw us, she sprang out of her seat, grabbed our coat sleeves, and we wove through the streams of people pouring out onto the streets to pool at the main entrance of the mine. I remember how hard my heart was beating as I stared at the entrance, people bloodied and coughing as they stumbled out into the streets. I remember praying that they hadn't just lost their father. Together the three of us pushed through the crowd looking for Ms. Everdeen. She was the only one - besides myself - who knew just how deep in the mines Mr. Everdeen had been that day.

They must have thought that I was old enough to know. I didn't dare tell Prim or Katniss when they asked me. I just told them that it would be okay. I had said it to so many people and it had never once been true. We found Ms. Everdeen clenching the rope that had been hastily strung to keep the crowd back. In retrospect, I guessed that I should have known there was a problem right then. Because why were we looking for her, when the reverse should have been true? My heart sank the moment we saw her. I knew it already but refused to believe it.

The elevators were screeching, burning up and down their cables as they vomited smoke-blackened miners into the light of day. With each group came cries of relief, relatives diving under the rope to lead off their husbands, wives, children, parents, and siblings. I could see it in their bodies. The tenseness growing firmer and firmer with each passing group. I supposed that somewhere in the crowd was Gale and his family looking for his father. But he, just like us, was waiting for a ghost. We stood in the freezing air as the afternoon turned overcast, a light snow dusted the earth.

All three of us were shaking desperately but refused to move. I tried to send Katniss and Prim back home but they both refused. So, I held them both under my arms and waited. I knew right then that I would have to act as their mother while she was indisposed. The elevators moved more slowly after an hour and disgorged fewer beings. I knelt on the ground and pressed my hands into the cinders, wanting so badly to pull Mr. Everdeen free. If there was a more helpless feeling than trying to reach someone you love who was trapped underground, I didn't know it.

Most of the night afterward was a blur. Katniss and Prim huddled against me. Trying to reassure Ms. Everdeen that he was still in the mine helping others. The wounded sporting missing limbs and horrific burns. The bodies of those not lucky enough to survive. The waiting through the ice-cold night. Blankets put around your shoulders by strangers. A mug of something hot that you didn't drink. And then finally, at dawn, the grieved expression on the face of the mine captain that could only mean one thing. A scream that I could never let out.

What did we just do?

"Aspen! Are you there?"

Katniss was still down on the ground. I could see the tears threatening to overflow from her eyes. My hand reached out for her when I remembered that she wasn't the one who was calling out for me. It was Haymitch. Haymitch was probably making plans to have me fitted for a head shackle at this very moment. In the background, I could hear Seneca telling him to calm down and speak to me calmly. He knew, just as well as I did, what I was thinking of right now. I dropped my hands and forced myself to act normally.

"Yes," I said.

"Get inside. Just in case the Capitol tries to retaliate with what's left of its air force," Haymitch instructed.

"Yes," I repeated.

Everyone on the roof, except for the soldiers manning the machine guns, began to make their way inside. I reached out for Katniss and grabbed her underneath the arms, pulling her up and dragging her with me. As we descended the stairs, I couldn't help brushing my fingers along the unblemished white marble walls. So cold and beautiful. Even in the Capitol, there was nothing to match the magnificence of this old building. But there was no give to the surface - only my flesh yielded, my warmth taken. Stone conquered people every time.

As I walked through the halls I tried to imagine what this place looked like two years ago. On the inside, probably relatively similar. Maybe fewer people in soldier outfits. More Peacekeepers. A happier air. I tried to imagine Cato and Clove wandering through the halls, led by Peacekeepers, their families waving a final goodbye. Looking to the Nut, thinking that they would never have to work there after they won the Games. My hand dropped from the wall. Just like the Nut, this place was a tomb. Dreams came here to die.

"Katniss?" I called as we walked.

"It was like dad all over again," she replied.

"I know."

"Will there be survivors?"

"Gale says so."

"What do you say?" Katniss asked.

"I say my opinion was only one. I was outvoted. There might be some survivors. But who did we leave behind?" I said.

Her face went stark white. I knew that I shouldn't have said it but it was the thought on my mind. Katniss swallowed harshly and walked forward with me. We didn't talk much as we were led away from most of the other soldiers. I didn't want to be near them anyway. They were celebrating the deaths of all those innocent people. We walked out of the main corridors and into a slight offshoot of the building. The holding room for the Tributes. It looked a bit like the one in Twelve. We were quickly pulled away from where someone could keep an eye on us.

We sat at the base of one of the gigantic pillars in the great entrance hall. Through the doors, I could see the white expanse of marble that leads to the steps on the square. I remembered how sick I was the day Cato and I accepted congratulations there for winning the Games. Worn down by the Victory Tour, failing in my attempt to calm the Districts, facing the memories of Clove and the other dead Tributes, particularly Coral's gruesome, slow death by mutts and the boy from Nine's brutal death at my own hands. I began shivering again.

Boggs crouched down beside us, his skin ashy in the shadows. "We didn't bomb the train tunnel, you know. Some of them will probably get out."

"And then we'll shoot them when they show their faces?" I asked.

"Only if we have to," he answered.

"We could send in trains ourselves. Help evacuate the wounded," I said.

"No. It was decided to leave the tunnel in their hands. That way they can use all the tracks to bring people out. Besides, it will give us time to get the rest of our soldiers to the square," Boggs explained.

"Getting ready to kill them?" Katniss asked.

"If need be," Boggs told her.

A few hours ago, the square was a no-man's-land, the front line of the fight between the rebels and the Peacekeepers. The place that I'd had my conversation with Dara hadn't really been safe, considering how close we were to the front lines of the fight. I'd had a feeling that soldiers were watching us from a distance. Boggs explained that when Coin gave approval for Gale's plan, the rebels launched a heated attack and drove the Capitol forces back several blocks so that we would control the train station in the event that the Nut fell.

Well, it had fallen. The reality had sunk in. Any survivors would escape to the square. It would be mere minutes until they would begin leaking out. They would likely want to escape the Nut as soon as possible for fear of another possible attack against the survivors. They would realize that they had a better chance of fighting rather than trying to wait it out. I could hear the gunfire starting again, as the Peacekeepers were no doubt trying to fight their way in to rescue their comrades. Our own soldiers were being brought in to counter that.

"You're cold. I'll see if I can find a blanket," Boggs said.

Comfort for someone who had done something like this? The last thing I wanted was to feel even slightly good about this. I wanted to feel the guilt. I opened my mouth to speak but Boggs was gone before I could protest. I didn't want a blanket, even if the marble continued to leech my body heat. All I wanted was to turn the clocks back and stop this. I wondered if Dara might have been on the front lines of the attack. During our talk, I had never thought to ask her what her position was with the rebels. If she held some power or if she was just a regular soldier.

"Aspen," Haymitch said in my ear.

"Still here," I answered.

"Interesting turn of events with Cato this afternoon. Thought you'd want to know," Haymitch said.

Interesting wasn't good. It wasn't better. But I knew that I had to listen to him. I knew that I owed Cato that much. Plus I had a good feeling that even if I didn't listen, Haymitch would use that as an excuse to fit me with the headgear he had been threatening for the past few weeks. Still... I didn't want to get my hopes up for nothing. After all, he didn't say that Cato had had some miraculous recovery, which I knew was a stupid thought to have anyway. I didn't want to hear it, but I didn't really have any choice but to listen.

"We showed him that clip of you singing 'The Hanging Tree.' It was never aired, so the Capitol couldn't use it when he was being hijacked. He says he recognized the song," Haymitch said.

For a moment, my heart skipped a beat. Cato was remembering something. He had actually remembered something that had to do with me and apparently he hadn't lost it. It sounded like he hadn't had a meltdown even with the connection to me. It wasn't the same as him remembering his love for me or anything of the sorts, but it sounded like it might have been a step in the right direction. Then I realized that it was just more Tracker Jacker serum confusion. The elation deflated in me like a balloon.

"He couldn't, Haymitch. He never heard me sing that song," I muttered.

"You so sure about that?" Haymitch asked.

That was when I realized that he was right. He might have actually remembered the song. He might have even remembered me singing it to him. That afternoon that we had spent on the roof together before the Quell... I had sung every song I knew at his request. The one good thing about the roof was that the wind was so loud up there and sections of the roof were cut off from the security cameras - like the spot we had laid in. There was no physical evidence of that day other than in our memories. It might have been the one memory he had of me that wasn't tampered with.

He had asked me about the story behind the song and I had told him. I had also mentioned that Mr. Everdeen used to sing it wherever we went. He was teaching me. He had taught Katniss not long after, once she was old enough to recite it. He used to sing it to me when we went to the bakery. Come to think of it, I could remember Peeta being there sometimes. He, like Katniss, must have been around six or seven. We all used to stop moving to see if the birds would stop singing. They always did. It must have been just before Ms. Everdeen banned the song.

"Did he remember me singing it to him?" I finally asked.

"Don't think so. No mention of you anyway," Haymitch said. I let out a breath. His other memories of me were too strong. He remembered the song, but not me singing it to him. "But it's the first connection to you that hasn't triggered some mental meltdown. It's something, at least, Aspen."

Katniss, who could hear Haymitch speaking to me, leaning over and grabbed my hand. "He might actually remember you singing it to him soon enough," she whispered.

"Yeah," I said because nothing else seemed suitable.

What was there to say when the only thing I wanted to do was cry? Cato still didn't remember me. Only my voice. The voice that was always surprisingly like Mr. Everdeen's, seeing as he had taught me. He seemed to be everywhere today. Dying in the mine. Singing his way into my memories and connecting me to Cato's muddled consciousness. Flickering in the look Boggs gave me as he protectively wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. Shadowing over Katniss's pained face. His advice would have been so wonderful right now. I missed him so badly it hurt.

It seemed that I was always missing someone. Mr. Everdeen was just the latest. Soon enough I was sure it would be right back to Cato. He didn't even remember me from that day up on the roof. I was hoping that it might be the one memory he would be able to retain. But that probably just added to his confusion. He was probably trying to forget that. The memory must not have been that wonderful to him. Not if the one thing he could pick out of that day was the song. Not if he couldn't remember our words or actions. At this point, I would have rather been watching the Nut collapse.

The gunfire was a welcome distraction. It sounded like it was really picking up outside. Katniss sat huddled under the blanket with me. A guard came by to offer her to join in but she immediately rebutted the offer. He looked firmly off-put by her answer but she wasn't going to do it. The man ran off without even looking at me. After a little while, Gale hurried by with a group of rebels, eagerly headed for the battle. I called out to him but it was like I wasn't even there. Katniss looked at him with disgust. I didn't petition to join the fighters, not that they would let me.

My life was far too precious. I had no stomach for it anyway, no heat in my blood. Not like I once would have. I wished that Cato was here - the old Cato - because he would be able to articulate why it was so wrong to be exchanging fire when people, any people, were trying to claw their way out of the mountain. He would know why this was bothering me when even I couldn't explain it. Or was my own history making me too sensitive? Weren't we at war? Wasn't this just another way to kill our enemies? Was Gale right? Had I snapped at him too quickly?

The earliest hours of the morning arrived quickly. It was so dark that huge, bright spotlights were turned on, illuminating the square. Every bulb must have been burning at full wattage inside the train station as well. Even from my position across the square, I could see clearly through the plate-glass front of the long, narrow building. It would be impossible to miss the arrival of a train or even a single person. I would be one of the first to see them. But hours passed and no one came. With each minute, it became harder to imagine that anyone survived the assault on the Nut.

All I could imagine was the hundreds upon hundreds of bodies that must have been trapped in the Nut. Was there a chance that no one could escape? Had we misjudged and accidentally cut off the train tunnels? No. Someone would have said something. If there were any survivors, they could come out. They knew that there was still one functional exit. There was just a good chance that they were too afraid to. Either that or perhaps they were gearing up to try and attack us. For once I found that I might have sided with Two.

It must have been nearly daylight when Cressida came to attach a special microphone to my costume. "What's this for?" I asked.

Haymitch's voice came on to explain. "I know you're not going to like this, but we need you to make a speech."

"A speech?" I repeated, immediately feeling queasy.

"I'll feed it to you, line by line. You'll just have to repeat what I say," Haymitch reassured me. "Look, there's no sign of life from that mountain. We've won, but the fighting's continuing. So we thought if you went out on the steps of the Justice Building and laid it out - told everybody that the Nut's defeated, that the Capitol's presence in District Two is finished - you might be able to get the rest of their forces to surrender."

It took all of my might not to tell Haymitch that the only reason there was no sign of life was because we had killed everyone inside the Nut. But I knew that wasn't the truth. We were fighting someone. Not just the Peacekeepers. There had to be some survivors from the Nut who were trying to kill us for what we did. I peered at the darkness beyond the square. I could just barely see into the train tunnel. Without anything coming through, it was impossible to tell what was rubble and what was human. Making a speech out here would be like talking to myself.

"I can't even see their forces," I pointed out.

"That's what the mike's for. You'll be broadcast, both your voice through their emergency audio system, and your image wherever people have access to a screen," Haymitch said.

There was also the whole issue that they hated me. Seeing me on their screens would likely make them even angrier. I decided not to say anything. I likely wouldn't be going anywhere near the people. No opportunity for anyone to try and kill me. I knew that there were a couple of huge screens here on the square. I saw them on the Victory Tour. They showed photos of Clove in her Tribute outfit. It might work, if I was good at this sort of thing. Which I wasn't. They tried to feed me lines in those early experiments with the propos, too, and it was a flop.

"You could save a lot of lives, Aspen," Haymitch said finally.

"All right. I'll give it a try," I told him.

The people of Two hated me but I supposed that this would be an interesting time to see if I could manage to sway them. I got to my feet and walked out slightly. Katniss raised her bow and nocked a regular arrow, aiming for anyone who might have been aiming for me. Soldiers were standing on every side of me. I looked to the right slightly to find Dara standing there, gun raised, watching me. We looked at each other for a moment before she gave me a reassuring nod. I let out a deep breath and took another step forward. If she could do this, so could I.

"Let's focus on what it is you gotta say," Haymitch said through my earpiece. "Now, Plutarch wrote a speech for you -"

"I'm not saying that," I interrupted.

If Plutarch had written it, I wanted nothing to do with it. I would rather wing it and sound like an idiot. "Okay. Didn't think so," Haymitch said slowly. I could hear paper rustling around. Likely him putting away Plutarch's speech. "Let's, uh... But just remember, you're talking to everybody. Not just the rebels, but the Capitol, the survivors in Two. We want them to lay down their arms. So you might wanna experiment with a little sensitivity, warmth."

Even from here I could tell that Haymitch was rolling his eyes. Cato had once told me that I was about as charming as a cactus. He was right about that. I wasn't like him. I didn't know how to make people love me with nothing more than my words. I tried to imagine the people dying in the Nut, trying to bring out some emotion in my voice, but all I could feel was a numb loss. Not exactly the emotions that you wanted when trying to give a rousing speech about justice and enduring pain. Going with Plutarch's words was probably the safer bet, but I couldn't do it.

If I couldn't stomach his words, I didn't want to know what Two thought of them. A few minutes later I realized how strange it was, standing outside at the top of the stairs, fully costumed, brightly lit, but with no visible audience to deliver my speech to. Maybe I could pretend like I was talking to myself. At least I might have been able to calm down slightly if I could think about it like that. Like this was just a rehearsal. Like I was doing a show for the moon.

"Let's make this quick. You're too exposed," Haymitch said urgently.

Anything to get me the hell back inside. My television crew, positioned out in the square with special cameras, indicated that they were ready. It was the first time I had seen them all assembled together in a while. I tried to focus on Pollux's smiling face. I told Haymitch to go ahead, then clicked on my mike and listened carefully to him dictate the first line of the speech. I would just listen and decide what I would and wouldn't say and hope I wasn't about to make an ass out of myself. A huge image of me lit up one of the screens over the square as I began.

"People of District Two, this is Aspen Antaeus speaking to you from the steps of your Justice Building, where -"

The pair of trains came screeching into the train station side by side. As the doors slide open, people tumbled out in a cloud of smoke they had brought from the Nut. My throat caught as the words died on the tip of my tongue. I could vaguely hear Haymitch hissing at me to keep going to let the rest of the nation hear me, but I couldn't focus. They were there. There were survivors. They were terrified... They must have had at least an inkling of what would await them at the square, because you could see them trying to act evasively.

They had survived. They were innocent. They were trying to run from my own people. All they wanted to do was get out of here safe and sound. But we were going to kill them for trying to flee. Most of them flattened on the floor, and a spray of bullets inside the station took out the lights. Screams and bangs echoed all over the square. They had come armed, as Gale predicted, but they had come wounded as well. The moans could be heard in the otherwise silent night air. Even from here I could smell the metallic tang of blood.

Someone killed the lights on the stairs, leaving me in the protection of shadow. Haymitch warned me to be quiet and not make a movement, indicating where I was. A flame bloomed inside the station - one of the trains must have actually been on fire - and a cloud of thick, black smoke billowed against the windows. Left with no choice, the people began to push out into the square, choking but defiantly waving their guns. My eyes darted around the rooftops that lined the square. Every one of them had been fortified with rebel-manned machine gun nests. Moonlight glinted off oiled barrels.

Explosions and fires. It sounded like the Games. This was what we had turned into. Our own versions of Gamemakers. This was wrong. All of this was so wrong. Arms were reaching for me to try and pull me back into the Justice Building but I remained rooted in my spot, watching as another train rounded the corner. I prayed that it would only contain survivors. I couldn't stand more people dead. I wasn't Gale. I couldn't watch the war turn on innocent civilians. All of us killing each other when we should have been focused on one man.

"Survivors! Inbound!" one of the soldiers yelled.

"Ready! Ready! Guns up!"

"On the ready!"

"Guns up!"

Boggs wrapped his hand around my arm, trying to drag me back. "We gotta get you back," Boggs warned me.

Feet behind me were Katniss and the rest of my team, watching the destruction. "Here they come!" a soldier yelled.

"Weapons tight! Weapons tight!" The train stopped and the doors opened. Wounded instantly poured out of the train, confused and disoriented, they staggered around the station. "Everybody, standby! Everybody out! On the ground!"

Boggs released my arm, raising his weapon and running forward. "Put your weapons down. Get on the ground! Put your weapons down now! Weapons down. You!" Boggs shouted at a man who continued to advance. "Put it down! Put it..."

"Put your weapons down!

"Drop it! Drop your weapon! You! Drop it. Drop the gun! Drop it!" Boggs shouted. At that moment, gunshots began echoing through the station. Everyone dropped in fear. "Hold your fire!"

Whether it was the rebels or loyalists firing, I would never know. A young man not much older than myself staggered out from the station, one hand pressed against a bloody cloth at his cheek, the other dragging a gun. My eyes locked onto him. When he tripped and fell to his face, I saw the scorch marks down the back of his shirt and the red flesh beneath. Suddenly, he was just another burn victim from a mine accident. My feet flew down the steps and I took off running for him. Everyone immediately broke into sprints after me. I could hear Haymitch calling me vile names in my earpiece.

"Stop!" I yelled at the rebels. "Hold your fire!" The words echoed around the square and beyond as the mike amplified my voice. "Stop!"

Holding my hand out in front of me, I continued into the station toward the young man. The others hung back a few feet, raising their weapons. "Hold your fire!" Boggs' voice shouted.

"Stop!" I shouted as the gunfire began to dim.

"Hold your fire!" Boggs yelled.

More gunshots echoed as I dropped down. "He needs help!" I screamed.

"Hold your fire!" Boggs yelled, following me.

The man had long since dropped to the ground and hadn't yet made a move to get up. I could only pray that he wasn't dead yet. I sprinted toward him and slid forward on my knees to reach him. I leaned down and wrapped an arm around his torso to help him up. I could feel him breathing quickly. He was fine, just exhausted. I was about to ask the man what I could do for him when he dragged himself up to his knees, wrapped a hand around my braid to steady me, and pushed the barrel of his gun underneath my chin.

"Drop it!" Boggs shouted.

My body locked up as I kneeled in front of the man. I instinctively wanted to back up a few steps, but his grip on my braid was too tight. I wasn't moving. All I could do was raise my bow over my head to show my intention was harmless. Now that he had both hands on his gun, I noticed the ragged hole in his cheek where something - falling stone maybe - punctured the flesh. He smelled of burning things, hair and meat and fuel. His body was bone thin pressed up against mine. His eyes were crazed with pain and fear. Not hatred, interestingly enough.

"Freeze," Haymitch's voice whispered in my ear.

What the hell else did he think I would be doing right now? I couldn't move more than a few inches either way and I didn't want the man to get trigger happy. But this was the wrong time to get mad at Haymitch. I was the one who ran for him. I followed his order, realizing that this was what all of District 2, all of Panem maybe, must be seeing at the moment. The Mockingjay at the mercy of a man with nothing to lose. We were both shaking slightly as the man steadied himself, keeping me held at his level. His garbled speech was barely comprehensible.

"Give me one reason I shouldn't shoot you."

"Drop the gun!" Boggs shouted.

Everyone was watching this. Prim and Ms. Everdeen would see this. All of Cato's family would see this. I was vaguely aware of Katniss and Gale with their weapons locked on the man. But my head was in the way of their shots. He knew that. At the moment, it didn't matter either way. The rest of the world receded. There was only me looking into the wretched eyes of the man from the Nut who asked for one reason. Surely I should have been able to come up with thousands.

But the words that made it to my lips were, "I can't."

Logically, the next thing that should happen is the man pulling the trigger. I even prepared myself for it. Waited for that brief flash of pain before it all ended. But he was perplexed, trying to make sense of my words. He merely stared at me, surprised that I wasn't begging for my life. I experienced my own confusion as I realized what I had said was entirely true, and the noble impulse that carried me across the square was replaced by despair. I had no reason for him to spare me. Everything could be done without me. My existence was making things worse. There was no reason to not kill me.

"I can't. I guess that's the problem, isn't it?" I lowered my bow. "We blew up your mine. You burned my District to the ground. We each have every reason to want to kill each other. So, if you want to kill me, do it. Make Snow happy. I'm tired of killing his slaves for him."

My voice was shaking with unadulterated hatred. Not for the man. As I had said, he had every right to want to kill me. It was all for my hatred of Snow and everything he had done to me and every other District citizen. I dropped my bow on the ground and gave it a nudge with my boot. It slid across the stone and came to rest a few feet from Dean's feet. He and the other Hadley's were watching me with intense stares. But my focus quickly turned back to the young man. I stared at him, waiting for the click of the trigger. Kill me. Do it, please.

"I'm not their slave," the man muttered.

"I am," I said, my voice holding no emotion. "That's why I killed Marvel... and he killed Rue... it's why I killed Coral... and she killed Peeta... it's why Cato killed Thresh... and Thresh killed Clove... and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the Districts. Always Snow. I am done being a piece in his Games."

Peeta. On the Cornucopia just before he had died in the first Hunger Games. It was the last thing he had told me. He'd told me to never be a piece in their Games. He understood it all before the rebellion had even been an idea throughout most of Panem. I had been their pawn for so long. No more. Knowing what I might have been tempting, I locked eyes with the man. I hoped that Cato was back in Thirteen, watching now, that he remembered our talks about not being a pawn in their Games as they had actually happened, and maybe would forgive me when I died.

"Keep talking. Tell them about watching the mountain go down," Haymitch insisted.

Interesting time for a propo, Haymitch... "When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought... they've done it again. Got me to kill you - the people in the Districts. But why did I do it? District Twelve and District Two... we have no fight except the one the Capitol gave us," I continued.

The young man blinked at me uncomprehendingly. He might not have understood what I meant, but I didn't care right now. We didn't have a fight between ourselves. The only person who deserved to die was Snow. He was the one who should have been in the mountain tonight. He was the one who should have died. Not any of them. They had to understand that we had to work together if we wanted to win this war. My legs gave way and I sank down onto my knees before him, my voice low and urgent.

"Why are you fighting with the rebels on the rooftops? With Lyme, who was your Victor? With people who were your neighbors, maybe even your family?" I asked him.

"I don't know," the man said.

His hands shook for a moment before his gun finally dropped from my throat. He released his hold on my hair and stumbled back from me. He was still down on his knees. I was shocked that he had let me do. I had honestly thought that he was going to kill me. For a moment I merely stared at him, refusing to believe that he was going to let me go. But he was. He wasn't going to shoot me. I stared at the man for a second longer before shifting my gaze to everyone else, rebels and loyalists alike who were watching. I rose to my feet and turned slowly in a circle, addressing the machine guns.

"And you up there?" I shouted, stepping forward a few inches. "I come from a mining town. Since when do miners condemn other miners to that kind of death, and then stand by to kill whoever manages to crawl from the rubble?"

"Who is the enemy?" Haymitch whispered.

"These people are not your enemy!" I indicated the wounded bodies on the square, pointing to the people who were being pushed into submission by the rebels. I whipped back around to the train station. "The rebels are not your enemy! We all have one enemy, and that's Snow! He corrupts everyone and everything. He turns the best of us against each other." My voice broke slightly. "Stop killing for him," I shouted, my voice low commanding. "This is our chance to put an end to their power, but we need every District person to do it!"

For once I sounded like the Mockingjay. It finally sounded like I was the leader of a rebellion. I stared into the faces of everyone who was looking back at me. Their faces ranged from surprise to honor to unreadable. The cameras were tight on me as I reached out my hands to the man, to the wounded, to the reluctant rebels across Panem. This wasn't just for me. This wasn't just for the people in District 2. This was for everyone in the county. Somewhere I hoped that Snow was hearing me too.

"Please! Join us!" I shouted.

My words hung in the air. No one made a move toward me. In the darkness, I could barely even their faces. I couldn't tell what they were thinking. I couldn't hear any voices. I couldn't tell if they were thinking about killing me or joining me. I looked to the screen, hoping to see them recording some wave of reconciliation going through the crowd. One last chance, Aspen. Say something.

"Tonight, turn your weapons to the Capitol. Turn your weapons to Snow," I growled.

Instead of a wave of reconciliation, I watched myself get shot on television.

A/N: Welcome back! I'm sorry I'm so pathetically lazy. I also have far too many stories going on. But we're slowly approaching the end of Aspen's story. Both sad and exciting. Thanks so much for the follows and favorites! Please review! Until next time -A

Miss-Harry-Potter2123: I'm so glad that the long wait was worth it! Promise that the next one won't be quite as long of a wait! Hope you liked this one :)

Guest: Oh, I'm sorry that this story is painful to read. I'm torn over Gale. Sometimes I can appreciate him and other times I hate him. I see where he was coming from but he treats Katniss like she owes him. He is the 'nice guy' who's not always so nice. Aspen's head has been so screwed up over the past few years that she's been having a hard time with things. She will get back to herself as Cato begins to come back to his old self. There will also be people to help her along. She'll get back to herself sooner than Katniss did in the original since there is a deeper connection between Aspen and Cato than there was with Peeta and Katniss. Hope the pain in this chapter is worth it!

gemsaysfeelings: I'm torn over Gale. Sometimes he's great and other times he's an ass. Hopefully you see both of that with him. And I hope you liked this one!

melliemoo: That's quite alright! Thank you for the review! I'm glad that you liked the talks with Dean and Gale. I felt like Aspen needed a private talk with both of them. Cato's letter kind of came to me at the last minute so I'm so glad that you liked it! Hope I did the strategy plan for the Nut justice :)

peygoodwin: It won't get reversed in the traditional sense, but we'll start to see Cato get back to his old self soon! Hope you liked this one!

Fangirl: Thank you so much! That's always so nice to hear. I wish I could finish the story that fast! I really want to get this one done so the updates might start coming faster. No spell on my work, but your kind words are ever so much appreciated! Thank you for everything and I hope you liked this one!