Chapter Twenty
*Update*
Whoever she thinks she can't survive without.
For a few minutes, I try to puzzle through this statement. At face value, it's ridiculous. Katniss needs no one to survive, physically. And when it comes to emotional survival, I think the short list would have to be her mother and sister. Between Gale and me … well, that's never been clear to me, and is less so now, with my scrambled memories. She's never been too keen to lose either of us - but as for being unable to survive without one of us?
I really don't know. Haymitch seems to think so, but he's such a misanthropic loner - what could he possibly really know about this sort of thing?
Why does it matter?
That's the thought that stops me short. It's absurd to think that I would even be any part of a discussion about Katniss' future - if there even is such a thing as a future. I tried to kill her just a couple of days ago. I came close to losing it on her at least once after that. At best, I represent a previous possibility now closed off - someone who might have been, until the Capitol changed me. Gale's clearly patronizing me by pretending otherwise.
I get no more sleep for the rest of the night; these thoughts fill me with anxiety. Katniss is up herself in a few hours, and she releases me from the staircase, wordlessly, before rousing the others. We go upstairs for breakfast and to watch television. District 13 has broken into the airwaves again, and they sit on them for a while. We watch their strategy for ridding the streets of pods - they collect the abandoned cars from the outer neighborhoods and roll them up ahead of the troops, setting off most, if not all, of the pods.
We see an interactive map, showing roughly the locations of the rebel troops. Although there have been incursions all around the outer neighborhoods in the Capitol - effectively making ground escape very difficult as the rebellion encircles the city - the primary thrust toward the center of the city originates from the direction of the train station. Three separate squads are making roughly parallel paths toward Snow's mansion. While we're not given specifics - the separate incursions called simply the A, B and C lines - they seem to be a couple of dozen blocks in from the train station, and, with the disposal of pods, making rapid progress.
Katniss does not look particularly happy about the advance of the rebels, and Gale remains unmoved. "This can't last," he says. "In fact, I'm surprised they've kept it going so long. The Capitol will adjust by deactivating specific pods and then manually triggering them when their targets come in range."
Sure enough, this is exactly what starts to happen. We watch live as a couple of units of soldiers, following along a recently "cleared" stretch of street, are killed by an exploding row of rosebushes. I look at Gale when this happens and wonder how it came to be that he would have such authority, such instinctive knowledge of these matters. I'm pretty sure I never really thought about him in the past, except to be fairly jealous. Handsome, confident, clearly able to take care of himself. Angry … angrier than Katniss, now that I've seen it up close - the anger not impulsive, as it is in her, but controlled and controlling. It's his compass, his strength - his reason for being, at least for now. After the war, maybe not, hopefully not. But with 12 gone, what will he do, what will he be, where will he go?
"I bet it's killing Plutarch not to be in the control room on this one," I say, thinking about the Gamemakers' delight in tightly-controlled mayhem. This is what I know. It might be all I really know, now. How the Capitol is not angry - how it is just so dispassionately cruel.
Following this setback, the rebels concede the airwaves back to the Capitol. It's strangely hard not to feel sympathy for the reporters, their bright and cheerful hair and clothes bizarrely mismatched with their grim and - underneath a show of neutrality - increasingly fearful expressions. A young, attractive woman - the kind of woman who has been a staple of Capitol broadcasts for forever - outlines the blocks and neighborhoods where the latest mandatory evacuations have started ... and you can see she has the dazed look of a tribute, name called at the Reaping. She must know - she must understand - that it is the beginning of the end. But it takes a while for the truth of that to settle in.
Katniss lays out her map, and, with Cressida's help, marks the locations of the evacuating neighborhoods, and by that we can see roughly how far the rebellion is from us. Close - but slowed down again, now that their gambit with the pods is over.
Katniss goes over to the little window in an alcove behind the counter - this faces the main street - and carefully peers out for a couple of minutes. "Evacuees," she murmurs.
Tigris offers to go out and see what she can find out about what is going on in our part of the city. We go back downstairs, and Katniss is restless, getting up to abruptly pace around every once in a while. I sit down with Pollux and Cressida, and Cressida helps me learn how to communicate - with a kind of shorthand made up of hand gestures - with him. By no means can we have a comprehensive conversation, but I feel so sorry for him. He's not a soldier - he just came out to film war propos, and here he is, part of the most wanted group of people in Panem, his friend and brother gruesomely killed. And unable to talk about it. I feel some sort of obligation to him - since Darius and Lavinia were killed just to torment me - to show him the humanity of which they were robbed.
But it's beneficial for me, too, it turns out. To do something good - to learn something new. To have something to really concentrate on. Learning hand signs for "yesterday" and "tomorrow," for "grief."
"Why can't we just wait for the rebellion to take the Capitol?" I ask Cressida in a low voice.
"Maybe we can," she says, with a shrug. "But we probably won't be able to hide out for that long. Anyway, I'm not sure Katniss wants 13 to catch up with her. She never really had much patience with Coin."
"Why not?"
Cressida looks at me for a second. "It might have started when they left you behind in the arena."
"Oh." I've no love for Coin, myself, but …. "Coin told me it was me she wanted, not Katniss."
"And that makes it any better?"
She's right, I think suddenly. I've spent so much time noticing Gale's misunderstandings of her that I have forgotten my own. Katniss and I - in the arena - our goals were the same, really – though they worked in opposition. She had decided on my life just as I had decided on hers. Separation by the arena was an impossibility, not survivable. Ever since the allegiance we made in the first Games. And it wasn't love or friendship - though that was all wrapped into it, to varying degrees. It was about the basic, fundamental human need for unity, for alliance - an impulse that has been sorely lacking in Panem, perhaps dating back to its founding.
And that, I realize, is why those berries - that decision - sparked a rebellion so hot and fierce that it has thoroughly burned Panem in the year and a half since. And how wildly Snow miscalculated the reasons why. It wasn't because Katniss was in love with me - or even because they believed she was.
It was because she wasn't - and she was still willing to die rather than leave me behind.
And since I misinterpreted what happened in that arena - and focused so much on my grievances afterward - I misunderstood how powerful and fragile was the thing that she had started. How powerful and fragile was the thing that she felt for me. Perhaps, if some good is ever possible to come out of the torture and hijacking, maybe it is this: stripped of my old romantic feelings for her, I can finally actually see it.
I can also see why it was so important for me to be here, back in the arena with her. What Coin's purpose was, I can't begin to imagine. But this is where I am supposed to be. Friendship and love still tangled up in it, yes, but mostly this - our deep alliance that doesn't allow us to be separated. Not for me and what used to be my childhood crush – not for her and whatever limited help I can offer her – but for Panem. Whether we burn down the Capitol or burn to death, we need to be seen doing so together.
After lunch - and we're down now to a handful of canned foods - Gale says, "Tigris is taking a long time."
Katniss gets up again and makes a restless circuit of the room.
"What are you saying?" asks Cressida. "Do you think she was arrested?"
"Or turned us in for the reward," says Gale, with a shrug.
"No." Katniss and I say it at the same time - Katniss because it was her idea to trust Tigris, I think, and she can't bear the thought of being responsible for leading us into a trap. Me, because I don't want to go down that road right off.
"It's a big city," I say, with an apologetic smile to Katniss. "If she had contacts - like some more of Plutarch's people - maybe she had to go a long distance. If she wanted to turn us in, she could have flagged down a Peacekeeper within minutes."
"I hope she isn't injured," Katniss frets.
"Same here, obviously," says Gale, with a touch of exasperation, looking at his watch. "But we need to stay aware. If she's not back tonight, we need to get out of here, ourselves. That's a fact."
"I agree," I reply quickly.
But by six o'clock, we hear movement above us in the shop, and we wait in silence while we hear a shuffling and incidental noises. It doesn't sound like someone conducting a search, at least. After a while, the panel at the top of the stairs slides open and Tigris calls us upstairs.
As we get up, we hear and smell the sizzle of something frying. Tigris has got a hold of some ham and potatoes and is frying it on the little hotplate she has in the little kitchenette behind the dressing rooms. She serves it out and all of our eyes are wide - it's since camp at the train station that we've had hot food.
"Fur underwear's a valuable trading commodity," she purrs, pleased at our grateful sighs. "If the banks weren't frozen, I would make a killing right now. But there are more refugees than shelter right now. The Peacekeepers are going door to door in the houses around the Avenue, forcing them to take some of the refugees, but there are still dozens of them camping in the City Circle."
She turns on the TV. After a propaganda program finishes - some sort of documentary about how ruthless and cold-blooded District 13 was during the Dark Days - a special report comes on. A Peacekeeper, standing in front of a flag, reminds all the viewers that the temperatures will be below freezing tonight, and they are obligated to take in as many refugees as proscribed by emergency order something-or-other, which specifies how many people should be in any given dwelling based on square footage. This will be enforced very strictly.
Furthermore, he says, President Snow himself has prepared his own mansion to receive refugees tomorrow; and an emergency session tonight is expected to expand the previous emergency order to include shopkeepers.
"Tigris, that could be you," I say, in alarm.
"Also," continues the Peacekeeper, "you are reminded that we are under military orders and there is no reason to take the law in your own hands. A young man was killed today by a mob, apparently because of a resemblance to wanted rebel, Peeta Mellark. If you suspect you see a rebel, contact law enforcement, do not take any other action - you put yourself and your fellow citizens at risk."
I start as they show a photo of the victim - who is tall and willowy, with fake looking beauty marks on his face under thick, bleached curls.
"People have gone wild," says Cressida, and I just feel enormous pity for this boy who was killed in my name.
The rebels take over after this and show their progress of the day - they must have figured out some new way of getting rid of pods, which they are just not airing on TV for the Capitol forces to see, this time. Katniss, looking at her map, shows one squad - Line C - to be only four blocks away.
She looks more anxious than happy at this news, and she's very quiet and thoughtful as we finish our meal, now with a peaceful program - an aerial video montage of the Capitol and its surrounding mountains, in happier times, set to some stringed instrumental music - in the background. Once, I see her look up at me, with a small frown, but whatever disturbs her, she doesn't say out loud. I've reached peace - for the first time in months - ready now, again, to face death or whatever waits at the end of this road. Finally, she stands up and wrings her hands.
"Let me wash the dishes," she says.
"I'll give you a hand," says Gale, collecting the plates.
I watch them go, then I shrug and just hope he can talk her out of whatever desperate plan she is formulating. I turn to Pollux and expand on my knowledge of his hand language. Where there are words he can't explain, he mouths them - or their spellings, if that doesn't work. In this way, I find out where in the city he was raised, how he got into camera work, how Castor got him in with Cressida after he was sprung from the sewers. I don't ask what he did that the Capitol turned him into an Avox. I know, from past experience, that it will have probably been ridiculously trivial.
After a couple of minutes, Katniss and Gale come back and sit back down at the table, Katniss clutching her map.
"I've decided," she says, "that the time is now. Now that refugees are crowding around the mansion, and tomorrow they will be let in it - now is the time to try to infiltrate it. We'll put on our disguises again, and leave early tomorrow, and get to the City Circle. By we," she adds, taking a deep breath, and glancing at me briefly, "I mean me and Gale. We know we can't go out in a group of five. Cressida and Pollux could help us by going ahead as scouts and seeing - how many Peacekeepers are in our way, how they are sorting people to be let into the mansion. Peeta, you …." She stops, and looks at me, her mouth trembling a little.
"I agree that I'd be a risk to the rest of you," I say slowly, staring at her in turn. "And I've been thinking about that, too. If you're going, I could go - at a safe distance behind you."
"To do what?" asks Cressida.
"I'm not sure exactly. The one thing that I might still be useful at is causing a diversion. You saw what happened to that man who looked like me."
Katniss slightly shakes her head. "What if you … lose control?"
"You mean - go mutt?" I ask with a smile. "Well, if I feel that coming on, I'll try to get back here."
"And if Snow gets you again?" asks Gale. "You don't even have a gun."
"I'll just have to take my chances, like the rest of you." I look at him steadily for a moment. I've never really been able to read his expressions, so I'm not sure what's going through his head, but after a moment, he reaches into his uniform pocket and pulls it out - the little purple pill that the rebels have called nightlock. I hold out my hand and he puts it on my palm. Indecisive, I let it lie there for a moment, pondering it. "What about you?" I ask him.
"Don't worry. Beetee showed me how to detonate my explosive arrows by hand. If that fails, I've got my knife. And I'll have Katniss," he smiles. "She won't give them the satisfaction of taking me alive."
I look over at her, but her expression is simply bleak. "Take it, Peeta," she finally says, reluctantly. She reaches over and closes my fingers over the pill, as if afraid if she sees it there too long, she'll change her mind. "No one will be there to help you."
We go downstairs to sleep our last night in this place, and this time, when I go over to the stair rail to be cuffed to it again, she shakes her head.
"Katniss," I say.
"This might be the last night you ever get to sleep," she says stubbornly. "I know you can't be sleeping well, and you need to be alert tomorrow."
"Katniss."
"Do you really -" she says. "Do you really think you are in danger of attacking me tonight?"
"No, but - it doesn't work like that."
"Peeta," she says, in a low voice that maybe I can only hear. "Trust me."
"I do," I whisper. "It's not you I can't trust."
She smiles a bleak little smile. "Anyway, I'm guessing I won't really sleep tonight, anyway." She stares down at my handcuffed hands and shakes her head. "I trust you," she says.
The only reason I agree is the niggling little fear in my head that she might leave me there, cuffed to the stairs, when she leaves in the morning. I curl myself down next to the stairs anyway, on the other side of the room from her, where maybe my sleepy brain will forget that I am not confined. I start to strain my cuffs, to find the pain that has kept me focused. But I'm really not in danger of losing it. If anything, I'm hyperfocused, thinking about what tomorrow will be like. It's hard to visualize the situation we'll go into. I've never mingled in a crowd larger than the one at the Reaping Ceremony, let alone one filled with people who would give me up - at best - if they recognized me.
It is a fitful night. My dreams disturb me. They're not nightmares - not like the ones I'm used to, anyway, with straight-up horrors of mutts and tributes with swords and knives. I have a dream about Finnick, standing on the beach in District 4, looking out over the ocean, as if it was brand new to him. I try to ask what is bothering him, but I can't speak - my voice doesn't work, as if my own tongue has been cut out. His intent look changes suddenly, and he runs toward the water. The waves rise up to meet him and crash all around him, soaking him, but he emerges, and he is holding something in his arms - a body, its long dress and hair dripping lifeless over him.
Katniss wakes me in the morning. She looks tired, grim, sad - but she has that set look again. That lift to her chin, that hardness to her mouth. She is all willpower and determination. We eat the last of our canned food, save one can of salmon, which we take up to Tigris as a parting gift. She stares at it as if no one has ever given her anything before - then she zooms around us with a sudden determined energy. She covers us in layers of clothes that completely hide our rebel uniforms. Then layers us again in coats and cloaks. She covers our boots with furry slippers. She secures our wigs with hairpins and redoes our makeup with a deft hand. I marvel at her work when I look at Katniss – who I would know anywhere - and see that her face is contoured and caked almost past recognition with pale makeup. Her eyes made slanted with eyeliner. Her eyelashes extended. She's dressed in a long, red cape, and when she puts up the hood, it conceals more than half of her face.
"Never underestimate the power of a brilliant stylist," I say. Tigris blushes behind her striped mask, and hands me a large, purple handbag.
The television is on in the background, but it is still just showing canned programming. Cressida and Pollux prepare to leave - they will go first, as scouts, as Katniss suggested. At just 6 o'clock, Tigris goes to the shutters of her back office window, waiting for a lull in the crowd, then gives a thumbs up after a couple of minutes. She goes to unbolt the front door and Cressida and Pollux slip out, with one last "take care," from Cressida as they go.
Katniss comes over to stand next to me, holding out the key to my handcuffs. She unlocks them, then stuffs them somewhere inside her layers of coats.
It's … December or January now, I think. I may have lost track of time, but I think I can count four or five months since the Quarter Quell ended, if by nothing else than the change of the seasons. For all of that time, I have not been free. I've been imprisoned by Snow, or held under strict confinement by 13, or under constant guard by my unit. I rub my bandaged wrists, feel the ooze of the blood underneath them. I flex them, missing the strain of the cuffs, but still able to call up the pain from the scabs I have not let set.
When I look up at Katniss, with a faint smile, I see that there is panic in her face. She looks like she is on the verge of calling everything off. Maybe she's going to order me to stay here, to stay imprisoned for just a little while longer - just until this is all over.
But maybe she also understands - that I can't dismiss the call of the arena, either. Not when she is there. "Listen," she says. "Don't do anything foolish."
I know what she's talking about. "No. It's last-resort stuff. Completely."
Suddenly, she throws her arms around my neck, forcing my head down until my chin rests on the top of her head. She smells … she doesn't smell sweet, obviously - she smells like sweat and dirt and blood. But - she smells also - so familiar. Something indefinable. Something like home. I'm not sure if I should or not - I've been so careful not to touch her - but there is no resisting it, and at last I raise my arms and put them around her. Breathe with her. Try to put all my regrets and apologies into this very last embrace.
"All right then," she says, her words tickling my neck. She lets me go, and I feel - strangely unfinished. Gale is watching us from the doorway. As usual, his expression is shrouded.
"It's time," says Tigris.
And she goes.