Chapter Nineteen
Katniss pulls me to my feet and I look around - and see how few of us are left. Katniss and me. Cressida and Pollux. Gale. Holy shit.
"How far to the street?" Katniss asks Pollux.
He points upward and puts one finger up.
"Come on," says Katniss, grimly.
She starts up the ladder, followed by Pollux and Cressida. I look at Gale, and he gestures me up.
"You're injured -" I start.
He's clutching the side of his neck and blood is flowing freely under his fingers. He shakes his head. "Up," he says hoarsely.
The ladder leads us up into the utility room of someone's apartment, exactly like the one we started in on our underground journey. Yesterday.
As I stumble out of the room, I see a woman lying on the floor, dead with an arrow in her heart. I glance from the woman to Katniss - who is leaning wearily against the wall, eyes closed. The Capitol woman seems harmless enough - fluffy magenta hair with gold butterfly pins. Matching lipstick and long, long black eyelashes. She is wearing a silky blue-green robe, open to a snow-white nightgown.
"We need to search the house," says Katniss, opening her eyes suddenly. "She called out to someone."
But we find no one. It's a two-story, two-bedroom apartment just like the last one, with a very similar layout, if different decor - perhaps a little fancier: no surprise - given how much closer we must be to the heart of the city.
We all meet downstairs in the living room, and I sit on the velvet sofa, pick up one of the throw pillows, and bury my face in it. Sickened by the thought of Jackson, Leeg 1, Homes and Castor - and Finnick, especially Finnick - bitten and decapitated by those horrifying mutts. I want to scream - I also want to cry a little bit. But, most importantly, I don't want to lose my shit again. And between the flood of memories and the engulfing fear, I'm surprised the world isn't shiny, yet.
"How long do you think we have before they figure out some of us could've survived?" asks Katniss.
"I think they could be here anytime," says Gale. "Probably the explosion will throw them for a few minutes, then they'll start looking for our exit point."
"Cressida, can you tell where we are?"
"Oh, yeah. The mansion is just a few blocks away - that way. We're facing away from it."
I look up and see Katniss looking around, wearily. Pollux chokes suddenly, and puts his hands up over eyes that are streaming with tears. Gale is holding the back of a chair for support.
"Let's check her closets," says Katniss, with a sigh.
I don't follow, just toss away the pillow and strain the cuffs, make my wrists hurt again to reinforce concentration. I go to the window and peek out myself. I just see a typical Capitol street and the low-slung apartment buildings in their bright, glassy greens, yellows and reds. There's no visible sign of the war here.
I strain my neck and look as far to the sides as I can - toward the taller buildings of the city center. I can't believe I'm back here, within blocks of my prison. Facing that building - what will that be like? What would Haymitch say if he knew how close I was to the place of my torture?
Haymitch. He thinks I'm dead - that all of us are. And Prim. Delly. Unless there's been chatter about us when they discovered we weren't and started chasing us, I guess.
The others return with a handful of clothes - coats, shoes, makeup. Katniss makes a bee-line for me, and, frowning at my bloody wrists, she pulls out the key to my handcuffs.
I jerk my hands away from her. "No. Don't. They help hold me together."
"You might need your hands," says Gale.
I look at Katniss. She saved me - I'm not going to take any chances with her life. "When I feel myself slipping, I dig my wrists into them, and the pain helps me focus."
She licks her lips and nods.
She throws a smock over my uniform in front and a coat in back, takes off my boots and replaces them with some brown shoes that look a little bit like they are made of snakeskin or something. Then, with shivering fingers, she fumbles with the makeup, painting my mouth and eyelids, putting liner around my eyes. Her proximity to me is both comforting and disturbing. And something is wiggling around in my mind. Her grin as she paints my face with a brownish-green lotion under the bright pink sky.
Your eyes look the same.
She shakes her head. "I'm no prep," she sighs.
I hold up my hands. "Do you want me to …?"
She glances over to the others. Pollux is already disguised, and Cressida is working on applying makeup to Gale. "Can you?"
"I think so." I take a look at the collection she has laid out on the coffee table below us and pick at the various brushes. It strikes a nerve within me, the feel of the brushes, even these stubby ones. I paint her face with a lotion that considerably lightens her skin. Find a dark color to brush around her eyes - dramatically altering their shape. A dark green lip color, to match a wig she has brought out.
Now it's my turn to shake my head.
"What?"
"I painted your face once. Real or not real?"
"Real." But she doesn't elaborate.
She puts on the green wig and selects a short, brown one for me. Then she goes into the kitchen and bathroom, rummaging for food and first aid supplies.
It's snowing when we step outside - a startling change from the heat of the underground tunnels. The apartment is on a busy intersection, so we are instantly surrounded by people, and - as we try to keep our faces down in our layers of clothes - we can hear them talking in low, unsettled voices. As we wait at an intersection where there is some kind of light system directing both vehicle and foot traffic, we can hear the words "rebel," "hunger," and "Katniss" quite distinctly.
After crossing the street, we turn a corner and run right into a troop of Peacekeepers, marching in the opposite direction … maybe even back toward where we exited the tunnels, where they will find a dead woman and a ransacked house. We're running out of time.
As the Peacekeepers pass, I look up and I can see it, just a little bit to the right - the back of the Remake Center, just a few blocks away. And, just beyond that, I can make out the top floors of the Training Center. My breath catches.
"Cressida," hisses Katniss. "Can you think of anywhere?"
"I'm trying," she says.
We walk another block, and then we are startled by sirens - a little like the sound of the emergency broadcast. Through the open window of a nearby apartment, we can see someone's TV light up and our faces appear - we are wanted, again. The roll call includes Castor and Finnick, so their information isn't entirely accurate. But it's bad enough.
"Cressida?"
"There's one place. It's not ideal. But we can try it."
We follow her a few more blocks up, to where the apartment buildings are giving way to townhouses, separated from each other by narrow yards. After glancing around a bit, Cressida goes right through the side yard of one of the houses, to a back garden, barren except for some dormant herb plants, that stretches along the row of houses, apparently a common garden. At the back of the garden, there is a small, quiet street that runs along some tall brick buildings - quiet, unobtrusive shops. There are a couple of people walking through - the small street connects two larger streets - but we go unobserved.
Cressida suddenly says, in a high-pitched voice, "Here it is! Fur undergarments are so essential in the cold months! Wait until you see the prices! Believe me, it's half what you pay on the avenues!"
As she finishes, we stop in front of a shop, the window of which is filled with mannequins wearing furry underwear. Cressida pushes into the shop, setting off a chiming sound, and gestures for us to hurry in. We walk between racks of fur toward a counter at the back of the dim shop.
The woman behind the counter looks up at us with a start, and the rest of us - except Cressida - start in our turn. But after the first shock wears off, I recognize her, if only vaguely. She's enhanced within an inch of her life, but she was already, seven years ago or whatever it is now when I last saw her, in the Games. And on tape, I think. Her skin is very tight and her nose has been surgically flattened. Black and gold tiger stripes have been tattooed on her face, and long whiskers implanted around her nose. Her eyes are gold and the pupils like black slits.
Cressida takes off her wig. "Tigris," she says. "We need help."
Yes, that was the name. She was one of the more famous and celebrated - or derided, really in 12 - stylists of the Hunger Games when I was young. She was the District 4 stylist - at least that was her last assignment. The year Annie won. I remember watching the Games - and, more recently, the recap of them - and the commentators were already starting to make fun of her latest surgeries - something about a tail - and how she had gone too far. Which for the Capitol, is saying something.
"Plutarch said you can be trusted," Cressida continues.
That's odd. Or maybe not - I haven't given much thought to the Capitol side of the Rebellion - not since Snow told me about it. I have a vague memory of Johanna talking about it - after she had given up the information she knew - but no details. I guess it makes sense that old, discarded stylists would be part of it.
Tigris looks from us to a television on her counter, and I'm starting to wonder about how wise this all is, when Katniss removes her wig and scarf and steps up to the counter.
Tigris gives a low - growl? She's certainly taking the act all the way. Then she gets down off her stool and disappears in the racks of fur behind the counter. There's a sliding sound, and then her hand appears through the fur leggings, gesturing us to follow. Katniss and Cressida glance at each other, and Katniss shrugs, then we all walk back behind the counter and see that Tigris has slid back a panel in the floor, at the base of the back wall. There's a steep stairway leading down - underground again.
Katniss hesitates for a long time. We've come a long and hard-fought way to this place, and not to get caught in a stylist's trap. What if …?
"Did Snow ban you from the Games?" she asks abruptly. "Because I'm going to kill him, you know."
Tigris' mouth opens in something like a smile, and Katniss takes it as a sign. She goes down, and we follow her.
Katniss finds a light and turns it on, revealing a small cellar with concrete floors. There are no doors or windows. Just a faucet in one corner and piles of mildewy fur pelts.
We look up as Tigris closes the panel above us, and we hear the squeak of wheels as she pulls a clothing rack over the panel. We're officially stuck here for the moment.
"Gale," says Cressida, suddenly. She and Katniss gather together some pelts, remove his Capitol cloak and wig, his crossbow and a knife, and ease him down onto the bed of furs.
Katniss pulls off her own layers of Capitol clothes, takes the scarf she was wearing and runs the faucet until the water is clear. With the dampened scarf, she cleans Gale's neck, but the blood doesn't stop coming.
"Hand me the first aid kit," she says, with gritted teeth.
With a strong sense of deja vu, I watch her open up a suture pack and, with a look like she's going to be ill, stitch the neck wound. The black stitches are uneven, but they seem to have done the trick. She roots around the first aid kit, until she comes up with some lotion and a gauze pad, applies these, and then hands him some pills, and watches while he swallows them. "You can rest now," she says gently. "It's safe here."
Then she looks over at me, and I'm already thinking of nothing but a cave and some bandages and fever pills when she comes over, removes my own Capitol clothing, sits me down and examines my wrists. She uses the other end of her scarf to wash away the blood, then applies the antiseptic lotion and bandages them beneath the cuffs. As if anticipating an argument from me, she says, "You've got to keep them clean, otherwise the infection could spread and -."
"I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss," I interrupt. "Even if my mother isn't a healer." It's so strange - it's like there are two of her in front of me, now, all in the same person. This girl, so weighed down and burdened, hollow-eyed and grave - whose love for me may have ended in bitterness, but not her concern. And the solicitous girl in the arena, whose love for me may have been feigned, but not her concern.
Her eyes glisten at my words. "You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?"
"Real. And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me."
"Real." She shrugs. "You were the reason I was alive to do it."
"Was I?" I struggle with this for a while, struggle against the false memories that rush to the surface. That she dropped the tracker jackers on me and then, in her mutt form, dropped from the trees and swiped my leg - the wound that nearly killed me. But I know that isn't what happened. She was never a mutt. It's just - hard - to remember exactly.
To keep myself from sliding away, I strain against my handcuffs, until the pain comes back. Then I breathe deep and meet her eyes. "I'm so tired, Katniss."
"Go to sleep."
I shake my head. "I can't. What if I - in my sleep … you have to cuff me to something, so I can't - do anything." I glance around and see that the staircase has a metal handrail that is narrow enough to do the job. I nod over to it.
"Peeta, you'll never be able to sleep like that."
"Yes, I will. I'm tired enough. I won't sleep if you don't restrain me, Katniss."
Shaking her head, she helps me up and we walk over to the foot of the staircase. I sit, mutely hold out my hands and she pulls out the key. I find the clicking sound of the lock more pleasant than I expected, and I try not to make a big deal out of rubbing my wrists once they're freed. With an encouraging smile - because she looks stricken, as if she's about to hurt me - I put my arms up against the metal bar. She leans up - her hair is in my face - to work the cuffs back on my wrists and loop them around the bar. As they click back in place, a very bad joke comes to my mind - probably something I heard from Johanna - and I press my lips closed on it.
She watches me skeptically as I ease myself down and lie, head resting against one of my outstretched arms. It's not comfortable, but, before I know it, I'm asleep.
I must sleep for hours - long hours like I haven't slept since 13. When I wake, I'm well rested, except for my arms, which are starting to cramp. Katniss and Cressida are awake, and Pollux and Gale are stirring. When everyone, except me, is sitting up, starting to ask - what now? - Katniss stands up abruptly and cuts through their questions.
"Look, I've been thinking …" she starts, nervously. "I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry. There's no mission - from Coin - to kill Snow. I lied about it - I - it was my own mission - for revenge." She bites her lip and looks down at the ground. "And I meant to take it on my own, but I jeopardized everyone - by pretending it was - authorized. I'm sorry - it's my fault that they're dead. Messalla and Leeg 1 and Jackson. Homes. Finnick. Castor … Pollux, I am so sorry."
Since all this is news to me - though I guessed some of it - I can only watch the reactions of the others. It's Gale who finally speaks. "Katniss, we all knew you were lying about Coin sending you to assassinate Snow."
"You knew, maybe. The soldiers from 13 didn't."
"Do you really think Jackson believed you had orders from Coin?" Cressida asks. "Of course she didn't. But she trusted Boggs, and he'd clearly wanted you to go on."
"I never even told Boggs what I planned to do."
"You told everyone in Command!" says Gale. "It was one of your conditions for being the Mockingjay. 'I kill Snow.'"
Katniss looks up at him, shaking her head. "But not like this. It's been a complete disaster."
"I think it would be considered a highly successful mission," says Gale. "We've infiltrated the enemy camp, showing that the Capitol's defenses can be breached. We've managed to get footage of ourselves all over the Capitol's news. We've thrown the whole city into chaos trying to find us."
Oh, I think. He doesn't really understand how her mind works.
"Trust me, Plutarch's thrilled," Cressida adds.
"That's because Plutarch doesn't care who dies," Katniss retorts. "Not as long as his Games are a success."
And that's how her mind works, I think, as Gale and Cressida continue to press their point. Or at least how it has worked since the arena. Death is personal now - even the ones deemed "necessary." Because - when you've killed in the arena, it's not on your own behalf - it's for the benefit of the Capitol, and that makes you pause - or it should - before you waste other people's lives in someone else's cause.
"What do you think, Peeta?" asks Katniss, suddenly, looking over to me.
I haven't followed the discussion, so I'm not sure if she's asking me to address something specifically, but I don't think so, somehow. I search my heart for the answer. "I think … you still have no idea. The effect you can have." I slide my arms up so I can struggle to a sitting position. Something that maybe got lost amidst all the distracting romance strategy stuff - something that maybe I never fully explained to her … how much I admired her, even when we were kids, quite apart from how infatuated I was with her. How there's always been something about her. "None of the people we lost were idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow."
She looks at me closely for a moment, then she comes over and reverses the maneuver from last night - leaning over me to undo the handcuffs from the metal bar- watching me rub my free wrists for a moment - then gently replacing the cuffs.
She sits down and pulls out a paper map, spreading it out on the floor. "Where are we, Cressida?"
Cressida sits down next to her and points. "Five blocks. And, we're in a zone where all the pods should be deactivated."
"Our disguises should get us there, with maybe some enhancements," says Gale.
"Then what?" asks Katniss.
"The mansion is sure to be heavily guarded," adds Cressida. "And the pods can be activated at any moment."
"What we need is to get him out in the open," Gale says. "Then one of us could pick him off."
"Does he ever appear in public anymore?" I ask.
Cressida shakes her head. "I don't think so. At least, in all the recent speeches I've seen, he's been in the mansion. Even before the rebels got here. I imagine he became more vigilant after Finnick aired his crimes."
Interesting. I wonder … aren't we moving a little fast here? Might not Snow's own unpopularity be used against him? I wish we knew more about the players in Plutarch's underground, people who might know more about what has really been going on in the Capitol and how to infiltrate the mansion.
"I bet he'd come out for me," Katniss says. "If I were captured. He'd want that as public as possible. He'd want my execution on his front steps. Then Gale could shoot him from the audience."
"No," I say at once, thinking about Katniss taken to the cells underneath the training center. That's what Snow would do, first. "There are too many alternative endings to that plan. Snow might decide to keep you and torture information out of you. Or have you executed publicly without being present. Or kill you inside the mansion and display your body out front."
"Gale?" she asks.
He hesitates. "It seems like an extreme solution to jump to immediately. Maybe if all else fails. Let's keep thinking."
Now, I'm annoyed at Gale, and maybe I'm not thinking as rationally and dispassionately about our "mission" as I should be, but there's no possible way I'm allowing Katniss to deliberately let herself be captured. I'd give myself up first. I'm already broken - she has a shot, at least, of living some kind of normal life after all this is over.
After a few minutes, the panel at the stop of the stairs slides open and Tigris calls down to us, her voice a low growl. "Come up. I have some food for you."
As we climb up, Cressida asks her if she contacted Plutarch.
"No way to," says Tigris with a shrug. "He'll figure out you're in a safe house. Don't worry."
Up in the shop, Tigris has laid out some hunks of bread, old cheese and mustard on her counter. I ate better in my cell, rotten food notwithstanding.
"We have some food," says Katniss, guiltily.
Tigris waves her words away. "I eat next to nothing. And then, only raw meat."
That's a bit creepy, but we're in no place to question the woman's eccentricities. Katniss scrapes the mold off the cheese and divides it and the bread up among the five of us.
We sit behind the counter and watch the little TV that's on top of it. A rolling news broadcast shows that the Capitol has narrowed our little squad down to the five us. They are offering a huge cash reward for information leading to our capture. Show us to be dangerous and violent. They have some grainy footage of the battle with the Peacekeepers in the tunnels. Then a tribute to the woman Katniss shot in her apartment, who worked for the administration in some capacity.
"Have the rebels made a statement today?" Katniss asks Tigris, who shakes her head. "I doubt Coin knows what to do with me now that I'm still alive."
Tigris laughs. "No one knows what to do with you, girlie." As we prepare to go back downstairs, Tigris presses a pair of fur leggings on Katniss, who only takes them after some wrangling.
Downstairs, we try making plans again. Cressida asks us if there is a view from the Training Center into the back of the mansion, where Snow might go.
"No," I say quickly. "Anyway, the Training Center is occupied."
"That's where Peeta was held," confirms Gale.
Katniss turns to me sharply. Taking care to keep my voice calm, I add, "Katniss and I have been on the roof and from all sides - it's at the wrong angle to the mansion - you can't see behind it. Even if there wasn't the force field all around it. I don't know about the other buildings on the city circle. I've never known what they were."
"The Media Center is there," says Cressida. "Which is also the Game Center. There's a hotel-restaurant. And a library and a museum. But I think you're right." She looks again at the map. "The angles of the buildings allow the back of the mansion to be private. And there are high walls and trees around the back. The hospital - here, a few blocks on the other side - might have a better view. But of course it's crawling with people, and is pretty secure."
"We'll just have to try to infiltrate the mansion," says Gale, impatiently. "From the back walls, if we can. And - we can't go out all together as a group. They're looking for five of us now."
Katniss nods. "OK, we'll try that - before I turn myself in."
I don't like the way she has worded that, but I'm not sure how to have the argument with her that needs to be had. She's stubborn when she puts her mind to something. She changes my bandages and then handcuffs me back to the railing. I don't lie down at first. I feel like I need to think. I feel like there was once a time that I was good at thinking things through, seeing alternatives. And if I could just access that ...
I sleep for a moment, and my dreams return to taunt me with the things I still can't quite remember.
"I do. I need you," she says and she leans forward to kiss me, under a sky that sparkles with intense, unrealistic stars. Beneath my fingers, the sand begins to bubble, and I'm terrified again and fly out of the dream, safe - and frustrated. Surely - part of that can't be real. Maybe all of it isn't real. Of course, she kissed me in the arena. That was part of her job. But ...
I wake up abruptly. My back is sore - I fell asleep sitting up against the railing. I blink into the darkness until I find her, curled up under a pile of furs. I wonder if she still has nightmares and, if so, how she has been managing to sleep in between them.
As if reading my thoughts, Gale suddenly sits up and looks around, rubbing his eyes. He looks first for Katniss, then he sees me sitting awake.
"Hey," he says.
I nod.
He gets up and stretches, then walks over to the faucet in the corner of the room. "Thirsty?"
"A little."
He fills a cup and brings it over. Since I can't take the cup in my hands, he has to hold it to my mouth and tip it back for me to drink. Kind of humiliating, but the handcuffing was my idea.
"Thanks for the water," I tell him, and he sits down next to me.
"No problem. I wake up ten times a night anyway."
"To make sure Katniss is still here?"
"Something like that."
Yeah, I'm a little worried about that, too. It would be difficult for her to bust out of the basement without rousing someone, but that doesn't mean that she might not try. I don't think she really intends to bring all the rest of us with her into danger.
"That was funny," I say, after a pause. "What Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her."
"Well, we never have," Gale says.
I laugh, and he joins in. Then, I think - I have a gift for him. And if he was part of the team that rescued me from the training center - and it seems he was - then I owe him at least some peace of mind.
"She loves you, you know," I tell him. "She as good as told me after they whipped you."
"Don't believe it," Gale answers gruffly. "The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell … well, she never kissed me like that."
I shiver. How strangely this conversation meshes with the thoughts I woke up on. I wonder uneasily if maybe part of me only said what I did in order to draw this response from him. To hear Gale say the words, the one person who has no cause to offer me false comfort or hope. To know I am not alone in my jealousy. "It was just part of the show," I say, tentatively.
He shakes his head. "No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." Since I'm not even convinced I love her, this statement only confuses me. All I can think of is how bleak a picture he is painting of Katniss - it can't really be true, can it, that she requires an absolute sacrifice from her lover? We were forced into that situation - someone had to make a sacrifice, and she and I never did end up agreeing on who it should be. But Gale has somehow convinced himself of this - as if - as if - no matter what he did to try to win her over, it never seemed to be enough. Which means … "I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games," he adds suddenly. "Protected her then."
Which means … he really doesn't get her. And he doesn't get what it means to go into the Games, either. Which is forgivable - and for which I should really absolve him. "You couldn't," I say. "She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life."
"Well, it won't be an issue much longer. I think it's unlikely all three of us will be alive at the end of the war. And if we are, I guess it's Katniss' problem. Who to choose." Gale yawns. "We should get some sleep," he adds, as if he hasn't tossed out all possibility of sleep with this conversation.
"Yeah," I say. I slide down the railing so that I am lying down now, and Gale stands up to go back to his own bed. "I wonder how she'll make up her mind."
"Oh, that I do know." I wait in fascination for the rest of his response - coin flip, interviews, a race of some kind? "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."