Chapter Twenty-Two

On the ground floor of the Training Center, there is a small lobby, and off of that, a huge supply closet. This is where I take her, where Portia took me to bind my hands the night that Katniss shoved me into an urn. Ignoring the searing pain that is starting to tremble up my arms, I ransack the room of all its first aid supplies, bandages and medicines. I've heard not to put medicine on a major burn, but to bandage it, at least, so I cut out patches of fabric bandage and apply to the open spots on her back. Other parts - her neck, a little on the back of her arms - look milder, so I apply some antibiotic cream to these.

I can feel a throbbing pain on my forehead. Some stinging pain in my upper legs. But I know that the worst of my own injuries are on my trembling arms and, after a long period of hesitation, I look down at them. My shirt sleeves have burned away and the back of my arms look curious - bubbly in parts, ashy in others. We need medical treatment, both of us. But outside this building, I don't know who is available - Rebel medics or Capitol soldiers, and I certainly know of no one I can trust. There's only one person I can trust.

Haymitch - Haymitch will be searching for us. He'll be frantic, looking for us. Maybe, since we left Tigris' shop this morning, and went out in view of the Capitol cameras, he's been able to spot us, occasionally, on whatever feed is available to him, back in 13. With all the cameras - with all the action - at the City Circle, there must have been some footage of what happened, maybe even of me taking Katniss into the Training Center.

I hope so, because I'm slipping. I'm shaking and at first I wonder vaguely if the mutt is coming out again. But nothing is silver - it's shock; I'm just going into shock. So, I prop myself up against a metal shelf and gather her into my arms, and let myself trust in Haymitch, and go ….

The smell of him enters before he does. I have a clear memory of him being cold sober in 13; unpleasant but level-headed, an adult for once. But the Capitol has no restrictions, and he smells oh-so-familiarly of white liquor and, faintly, of sick.

It was, of course, Haymitch who found us. Plutarch was apparently preoccupied, but the whole thing - the double bombing of the children and the assault on the mansion - aired live on the ever-vigilant television sets of Panem; at least those still remaining, which in the case of District 13 is all of them. So, it's good that the rebels won that day, because anyone paying attention could have found us, and who knows what would have happened. But Haymitch put in a call to someone Plutarch trusted, and we were taken - both unconscious and in shock - to the hospital, just two more patients in a sea of patients. And, on our way there, the government of Panem toppled. We entered the hospital as wanted rebels. We were admitted as rebel victors.

Sort of. I mean … in this period of transition, who are we all, really? Lucky, for one thing - for once. I woke up swathed in foamy medicine, just conscious enough to nod vaguely when they told me they'd be putting me out again to start the procedure of grafting fake Capitol skin to replace the parts of me they couldn't save. There are no burn wards or plastic surgeons in 13, or anywhere else. It's not unlikely that in other circumstances, I might have lost another limb. Or worse.

Since then – a painful period of recovery, body and mind. The sensitive grafts – the painful remains of my living skin. The sleepy, white-haired psychiatrist, Dr. Aurelius, who has been shadowing me ever since my residency in the burn unit began – asking me questions, questions, questions again – until I begin to wonder if I was better off on the run from mutts in the underbelly of the Capitol. I only just got my leg back, yesterday – for all the good it does me, as there is almost nowhere to go.

Dr. Aurelius follows Haymitch into the room, but I ignore him.

"You're alive!" I say to Haymitch, frowning into his watery eyes.

"Wasn't really in any danger of anything else," he says.

"Well - it's good to see you. I'm not sure who is or isn't anymore, really."

"Katniss is."

I'm silent for a moment. "Yes, I've seen her. Haven't talked to her."

"Get in line," he slurs. "She's talking to no one right now."

I close my eyes for a moment and her last, anguished cries fill my head. Prim! Prim! Every morning I wake up, having forgotten that this impossible thing has happened, only to be haunted by the call again. Dr. Aurelius won't tell me why – what does he know about why District 13 chose to send her to the front line? But I feel like he is being deliberately obtuse. He's clearly part of the underground rebel network. He certainly seems to know all the same people Haymitch does.

When I open my eyes and turn to him, who I know is treating her, too, I frown. " Not speaking? What's this?"

"Some form of transient aphasia brought on by severe emotional trauma," he says, unhelpfully. I hate it when he falls back on his medical terminology. "Most likely temporary."

"Most likely ..?" Despite the ambivalence I feel when I try to think about her, my gut reaction to getting news about her - especially news like this - betrays the strong feelings that are still down there, somewhere, below the layers of my own emotional trauma. "What if it's not? What happens then?"

Dr. Aurelius shrugs. "Treatments. But I think she is just waiting for the right stimulation to speak again, really. Don't worry about that, I -."

"Is she still here?"

"We're moving her today," says Haymitch.

"Moving her where?" In stray moments between skin treatments, physical therapy, head therapy and sleep, I've started to wonder: where? What comes next after the end? If this was a happy story, there would be home and happily-ever-after. This is not a happy story. There is no home. Love and sanity are in pieces - and apparently not just for me.

There's a quick glance between the two men. "Snow's mansion."

"Snow's -" I cough on the word. "Snow's …?"

"Plenty of empty rooms there," mumbles Haymitch, but then he looks up at me intently, and it reminds of something.

You always see the whole thing right away. At least as far as she's concerned.

"Coin's idea?" I ask him. My limited exposure to Coin left me under the impression that she was a bit of a manipulator (but without any real delicacy to her methods). And now, looking back on it, it seems clear she sent me - a still-fragile mental case - to the Capitol with no regard for Katniss' safety around a boy who had been weaponized specifically to kill her. So Katniss' physical health is not her top concern; nor her mental health, apparently.

Haymitch nods, his eyes glinting. Our ability to communicate wordlessly might not be as refined as his psychic link with Katniss, but it's getting there. I can tell he's pleased that I've figured something out that he dares not speak aloud. The thought depresses me, really. Some part of me that does truly remember the last year and a half is sick and tired of the need for lies and obfuscation. Here, at the end, we should at last be able to speak plainly. But apparently - things have not changed all that much.

I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. It's getting long and unruly, and my fingers snag in the curls. It would have been Calla's job to straighten that out - once upon a time.

"I want you to come with us," says Haymitch.

For a second, I forget about Coin and something bursts into life - or back into life - within me. Is Haymitch - is Haymitch - actually including me, for once?

"No," says Aurelius right away.

And I shake my head. "No, I can't, Haymitch."

"But - you're ready to be released."

"Not to be - around her." I squint.

"Mr. Mellark is right," says Dr. Aurelius over Haymitch's sound of protest. "It won't be good for him. It won't be good for her."

"That's psycho-bullshit," says Haymitch. "You don't know them. They need each other …."

That hurts, I think vaguely. It's like he's accusing me of abandoning my post, or something. I put my hands to my temple and rub them, wondering – is he right? I figured I was done. Done. It's the end of the thing that started the second that Effie Trinket called my name and I clambered up on a stage as Katniss' district partner in the Games. Everything we have done and undone, unraveled, burned, burned, burned – there is literally nothing left.

I slump down. Like a film behind my eyes, it is playing – the entire sequence of what happened to Katniss when her father died and she began the process of starving to death. And I couldn't – I couldn't let that happen. There are so many more people now, though, in her life. Surely – surely not – surely it is no longer up to me….

I smell Haymitch as he grips my arms. With an effort, I stop the manic rubbing of my head and am overtaken by exhaustion.

"Hey - hey, hey, hey," he says awkwardly. "Doc - do something."

There is nothing but silence from Dr. Aurelius. I slump forward so that my head is on Haymitch's chest and take deep breaths to clear my head. Then, as the silvery memories recede, I straighten up and grip the edges of my bed. But I don't look at Haymitch - I look down at the floor. "It's your job, now," I tell him. "I can't help her anymore."

The day is warping strangely. Clouds flutter now at great speeds and the sun flickers like an unsteady light bulb over the grass and the pale flowers. Just below my perch on the rocks, the ground shimmers and shivers, silver and blurry under the lights and shadows. I shake my head, try to set the vision right, but it won't change, so I finally just accept that it continues to be a silvery sort of day.

I zip open my pack and pull it out. A leather sketchbook - beautiful reddish-brown with a fancy butterfly-shaped clasp and thick, crisp, pristine sheets of paper, slightly beige in color. There are a lot of blank pages remaining in the book. Very symbolic - of all the work left undone. But what there was completed - was beautiful. She had made a study of flames in all manner of forms; flames are not easy to draw - take it from someone who knows - not as easy, for example, as the ashy aftermath. But she had poured herself into the task.

And she drew me a lot, as well. She had to - I had to be fitted perfectly and precisely for all occasions. But it's strange for me to see myself as the subject in so many drawings. I take on a certain somber importance in these sketches.

And she takes on a certain somber importance in mine. I'd like to capture her mischievous smile. Or at the very least her calm serenity. But I find it hard to even draw the sunny color of her yellow hair, which was her only Capitol affectation. All the colors I use now are mute.

It's Aurelius who eventually tells me. I suppose it's true enough that the District 13 version of me could never have handled it - I suppose it's also true that I suspected it all along, anyway.

I've moved to the residential treatment center, which is further out from the city center. It's - by Capitol standards - very modest: a two story building with small studio apartments. Haymitch shadows us the day of my move; as my legal guardian for another month or so, he has to sign all the paperwork taking away my rights to leave until discharged or by court order or special permission. I wonder if he'll ever come to visit - that's not really his forte, even when we lived right next door to each other. At least he's not drunk, today - although it is early.

"How - is she?" I ask him, while he wanders around my room, checking everything out. There's not much. There's no functioning kitchen, as I will be required to eat in the common area so my interaction with sharp utensils can be monitored. There's no television, which should be a relief after all the time I was forced to stare into a flickering screen. But the trials of President Snow and some of his surviving associates are ongoing, and from Haymitch's hints, they seem to be waiting for Snow's execution to figure out what to do about Katniss.

"Still not talking." He gives me a look like it's my fault. "If you -."

I shake my head. "If she asks for me, I'll come. But she won't." I smile at his exasperated look. I don't know where the knowledge finally came from - maybe it's because my emotional detachment from her actually makes her a little easier to understand. I just know that when she is hurt, she retreats - not from me, as I always thought, but into herself. My presence would be a distraction, just as it was before, from her dealing with the trauma. The more so, now. Because now it's the same for both of us. "Are you bugging Gale about this, also?" I ask.

He looks at me like he's caught me fishing for information, but shrugs. "Hawthorne's in 2."

Weird, I think.

"Well, you'll have to see her eventually," Haymitch persists. "You'll be part of the big execution hoopla. Wouldn't it be better to see her in private, first?"

I frown at this, having not expected it. I have no taste for it. I don't know what it is about me, but it's always been the case. To celebrate a death - even the death of a monster - it is not in me. I try to drum up some salivating hunger for vengeance - after all, this is the man who programmed me to kill the last person I would ever want to see hurt. But he didn't quite wipe out the boy who is so queasy about killings and that - I think with a sudden glimmer of optimism - is something to rebuild myself on.

Haymitch is poking through the empty drawers in the bedroom when Dr. Aurelius rejoins us.

"OK, everything's all filed. We'll have to renew it when you turn 18, if necessary. What do you think?"

"I think he needs clothes," grunts Haymitch.

"Well, we can purchase some - in the meanwhile, isn't there anything he brought from 13?"

"No, but -" Haymitch lifts his head. "I know where some of his older clothes might be. I'll give you the address on the way out, but we'll have to make some calls."

Haymitch's mysterious idea becomes clear when Aurelius comes back some time later with a couple of boxes full of clothes - some of which I remember very well, some of which are familiar to me just because she was. Portia. For a moment, hope springs up in me, and I look behind Aurelius, almost expecting to see her.

Most of the clothes are formal wear, but there are some casual slacks and sweaters - a blue coat I wore last winter - the tee-shirts I wore on the train between fittings. "Where did you -?"

"Her studio - her and Cinna's studio." I feel the man's eyes on me, as I set down the boxes to sort through. I frown to myself before I turn around, steeling myself to ask a question I don't want to know the answer to. But he's taking something out of his pocket and staring at it. "The building manager let us go upstairs to her apartment, to see if there was anything else there of - yours. We didn't find any more clothes, but Haymitch recognized this."

He hands it out to me - a small notebook. It's vaguely familiar to me, as well. When I flip it open, I see my own handwriting, and I gasp, memories flooding in. The pages are full of information about the fighting history and styles of 22 of the tributes from the Quarter Quell. I do - I remember giving this to her the morning of the Games. "She's dead, isn't she?" I rasp.

"Yes," he replies bluntly. "Live on television, shortly after you were rescued by 13."

The bile I was unable to call up earlier on my behalf, rises on hers. Fuck. Fuck. "No one told me."

"They probably thought it would - hamper your recovery."

"More like they knew I would blame them for leaving her behind," I say, with a return of my District 13 bitterness. "Damn it!" I throw the notepad on the sofa and push my fists into my eyes. Sweet, gentle, wise Portia - the one person on the team who was always on my side. "Can you leave me alone for a while?" I choke.

I hear the door close behind him, and I let the anger – the rage and despair – flood over me. Whatever slight feeling of optimism there was in me is throttled to death now. SO many people dead. SO many lives wasted. And all because of us - Katniss and Peeta, star-crossed-fucking-lovers, hopelessly entwined, our union causing conflagration and destruction and madness.

And on those thoughts, it stirs again in me - the mutt. The wolf with the beautiful eyes, whose existence - I have not yet admitted to Aurelius - preceded my hijacking by many long months. She was my creation. The product of trauma and self-pity. The weakness they exploited to break my mind.

I pick up the notebook again and flip through it - not reading the notes but looking at my doodles in the margins - to banish the creature before she makes her usual attack on my once-whole leg. Then I come to the last non-blank pages, and that's when I remember why I gave this to Portia, to keep safe. One picture - spread out over two facing pages - was the unfinished one I drew about an old myth told to explain the seasons. In it, the daughter of summer is emerging from a crack in the earth that is the entrance to the underworld, her arms outstretched to greet the sun - and her mother, who I never did get the chance to finish drawing.

On the next pages, a portrait of Katniss I drew on the rooftop of the Training Center - there's no confusion about it, I can see the rooftop garden behind her. Her face is peaceful, youthful, with the hint of a smile.

And then it hits me. All those bloody tapes. Watching myself stare sloppily at her in the first arena, no context given as to why or how I came to feel that way about this girl who had never given me the time of day. Unable - still unable - to watch any of the second arena, which evokes some mysterious terror in me every time I see the water and the jungle. All the talking about it - the piecing together of memories out of dust - real or not real.

But this - this is me. My memory made manifest on the paper. When I stare at the pencil strokes on the page, I don't just know how I felt when I drew it. I feel it. I feel it. Happiness. Delight in hers. Contentment - despite everything that had gone wrong with my life, or was about to.

Love.

It's only the second time that Haymitch has come to see me in my room at the residential facility, and somewhere between three and four weeks since I moved in. I don't know if he's mad at me for refusing to go with him to the mansion, or if he's just spending all his time drunk. I've needed the space from him, anyway; needed time to mourn Portia, to forgive Haymitch for not telling me about her death. To start working on the few things that I can fix – my own head, primarily – and try not to worry about the things I cannot.

He's not drunk this morning, though he has the red-rimmed, hollow-eyed look of someone who usually is. I try not to be mad at him - I can't be mad at Haymitch, I owe him too much - but this thing where he's drinking himself to death just doesn't cut it in a world where all the rest of my family, and most of our people, are already gone.

"You look good," I tell him, with an ironic smile. Despite his absolutely haggard appearance, he is dressed up today in the District 13 uniform that always looks so uncomfortable on him.

"Well - today's the day."

I blow out a sigh. "That was fast."

"The peace," he says, "is fragile - so is Coin's government. I guess it's one of those rules of victory - get rid of the previous figurehead as quickly as possible."

"I can see that," I say, nodding slowly. "And I'm not advocating for Snow. Still - our old rules don't really seem to have worked all that well."

Haymitch shrugs. "Not my problem, anymore. Not yours right now. But you have to get dressed so we can go."

"Oh. OK." I open my closet and stare at the hanging clothes, vacantly looking for the 13 uniform that somehow made its way back to me here. "Um … is …?"

"The Mockingjay?" he says, with a touch of irony. "She's talking again. Not much, and certainly not to me but - yes. Just in time, too."

"What do you mean?"

"She's got a job to do today," he says.

Hmm, well. I frown and pull out a coat. It's a blue coat and it still smells like Portia - like an evening flower, aromatic. The kind that sleeps all day and just comes out in time to perfume the hot summer air as the sun goes down. This scent will always now remind me of her gentle fingers twisting though my hair and her hot tears on my face, and the whispered words - her last contribution to the rebellion - before I went out to join Snow on his broadcast. There are so many reasons for me to work at this - to try to get better, to unscramble my brain. But one of the most important is that I have to somehow carry her forward with me, to not sacrifice everything she did for me. Everything else - everything - I did for Katniss, I do for Katniss, I will always do for Katniss; but some part of me will always live for Portia.

Haymitch signs me out and we walk together through the City, approaching the President's Mansion from the back.

The bombing of the children was Snow's last, spiteful act of terror on Panem. Another miscalculation - this one more surprising than most. He killed very few rebels with this maneuver and managed to turn the last of the loyal Peacekeepers against him. These were Capitol children - born safe, born protected. Until they were expendable, like all the rest of us. I don't know what these people - the Capitol citizens - so narrow-focused and blinkered, so sheepish and indulged - will do under the reign of no-nonsense, no-waste, joyless Coin. I try to imagine them all – pressed into mandatory military service, all dressed in gray, hair all cut to regulation lengths. That might finally be enough to move these people to action. She'd better watch out, in case they've acquired a taste for toppling dictators.

At the back gate of the mansion, Haymitch flashes a scowl - the only identification he needs here - and we walk through the back gardens. They are covered by a thin layer of snow, except for a tall, rather expansive greenhouse.

Once inside, we head over to some office with a large, round table, where we join - to my surprise - Johanna, Annie and Beetee. Even Enobaria - the other survivor of the Quarter Quell, who I haven't seen since the hovercraft that pulled us out of the destroyed arena. They all wear the 13 uniform, too, and I think, really? Because it's fairly clear that a statement is being made here. That the victors belong to 13, that we endorse Coin. I certainly wish I had got the memo.

I've just sat down when Katniss enters.

She belongs to Cinna - at least for this day. She wears the Mockingjay outfit, which is like the opposite of the 13 uniform; specially designed for her, not an ounce of it recycled; fitting everywhere on her, instead of nowhere; beautiful instead of plain. She's been expertly prepped, her hair styled to hide that half the length of it had been burned off at the back. Makeup applied. Scars covered up. Except for the hollow look in her eye, she could be the 16-year-old girl who first took the Capitol by storm, wreathed in fake flames, instead of mutilated by real ones.

She sweeps the room with her eyes, startled, and says, hoarsely, "What's this?"

"We're not sure," Haymitch answers. "It appears to be a gathering of the remaining victors."

"We're all that's left?" she asks.

I look to Haymitch, hoping to hear him deny it, to tell her she misunderstood him. Because - that doesn't seem possible. Before the Quell, there were 59 living victors of the Hunger Games. During the Quell, we lost 18. And then Finnick. That's 40 left, by any count. Could 33 of them have actually died in the war?

"The price of celebrity," says Beetee, in his matter-of-fact way. "We were targeted from both sides. The Capitol killed the victors they suspected of being rebels. The rebels killed those thought to be allied with the Capitol."

I can't appreciate the irony of this - that being reaped for the Quell actually increased one's chances of coming out alive at the other end - because I'm so blown away by the utter waste.

"So, what's she doing here?" asks Johanna, gesturing toward Enobaria.

"She is protected under what we call the Mockingjay Deal," says Coin, entering suddenly. "Wherein Katniss Everdeen agreed to support the rebels in exchange for the captured victors' immunity. Katniss has upheld her side of the bargain, and so shall we."

Enobaria throws her grin - gold-tipped teeth and all - at Johanna.

Johanna looks as murderous as she did the night that the Quell ended. As I know now, Enobaria and Brutus disrupted the rebels' rescue plans that night, leading to our capture and the weeks of torture. I have to cut Johanna some slack, even if I don't share her rage. "Don't look so smug," she tells Enobaria. "We'll kill you, anyway."

"Please sit down, Katniss," says Coin, closing the door.

Katniss takes the free seat between Beetee and Annie, opposite me. She's holding a small glass of water containing a single white rose. She hasn't looked at me, yet, and I don't know what she's thinking or feeling – her face is a mask. I don't know whether or not she's thought of me, during these weeks of recuperation and muteness - of mourning for Prim who, in defiance of all common sense, and my own determination to believe it not to be true - let alone anything right or decent about even a war, died in the conflict from which her sister labored her ass off to protect her. Something for which someone, somewhere should answer. I glance at Coin; I mean, who else would have authorized such a thing.

"I've asked you here, to settle a debate," says Coin, stirring me out of my reverie. "Today we will execute Snow. In the previous weeks, hundreds of his accomplices in the oppression of Panem have been tried and now await their own deaths. However, the suffering in the districts has been so extreme that these measures appear insufficient to the victims. In fact, many are calling for a complete annihilation of those who held Capitol citizenship. However, in the interest of maintaining a sustainable population, we cannot afford this."

I force myself not to roll my eyes, and glance over at Haymitch, just in anticipation of the sarcastic face. The seriousness of his expression gives me pause. Who, specifically, did she poll to get at these "many" people calling for, in effect, a genocide? The rebels of 13, who sat back for years sacrificing exactly zero children to the Games? Who sat around watching them with exactly nothing at stake? Just like the Capitol?

As if I hear my words echoing back to me, I look up suddenly and see Katniss' eyes on me – dark gray, almost black. Smudgy. Changed. Her gaze makes me feel suddenly, unaccountably anxious, and I blink away, retreating into the lost world of what I feel for her - a strange, dark, disquieting place.

"So, an alternative has been placed on the table. Since my colleagues and I can come to no consensus, it has been agreed that we will let the victors decide. A majority of four will approve the plan. No one may abstain from the vote." Coin pauses, with a slight, really unnatural-looking, smile on her lips. "What has been proposed is that, in lieu of eliminating the entire Capitol population, we have a final, symbolic Hunger Games, using the children directly related to those who held the most power."

Someone's breath hisses in the silence. "What?" asks Johanna, sharply.

"We hold another Hunger Games using Capitol children."

A sick, hot feeling swirls around in my gut. "Are you joking?" I ask her. Because it seems like something that someone - living through the last few years - would only suggest as a dark and twisted joke.

"No," she says, coolly - not looking at me. "I should also tell you that if we do hold the Games, it will be known it was done with your approval, although the individual breakdown of your votes will be kept secret for your own security."

The bile in my gut rises. Oh, so … if this does happen - and clearly it can't, although Coin seems confident enough … but if it does happen, my name - our names - will be attached to it. Forever.

"Was this Plutarch's idea?" asks Haymitch, sounding like someone just hit him over the head.

"It was mine," she replies. "It seemed to balance the need for vengeance with the least loss of life. You may cast your votes."

"No!" I burst out. "I vote no, of course! We can't have another Hunger Games!"

"Why not?" Johanna says, suddenly, her eyes hard and angry. "It seems very fair to me. Snow even has a granddaughter. I vote yes."

"So do I," says Enobaria, unexpectedly stepping up to agree with Johanna. "Let them have a taste of their own medicine."

What the fuck? I think desperately. How can they not understand? How can they still not understand? These tributes who were made to pay for the supposed crimes of their grandfathers and great-grandmothers? Snow has a granddaughter - so what? Let her make her own end. "This is why we rebelled! Remember?" I say desperately. I look across the table. "Annie?"

Annie stirs - this girl who I saw every morning for weeks on end, even in her confusion and her torment, resist her captors for as long as she could. Who knows what she's thinking? Who knows what vengeance her widowed heart now hungers for? But I need three people with me, and I'm running out of options. "I vote no with Peeta," she says, looking up at me suddenly with her pale green eyes. "So would Finnick if he were here."

"But he isn't, because Snow's mutts killed him," says Johanna, harshly.

I look at Annie, and she just smiles, slightly. Somehow, she's firm, strong, calling upon resources from some hidden place in her mind - maybe the place where Finnick still lives.

"No," adds Beetee, and I start to breathe again. "It would set a bad precedent. We have to stop viewing one another as enemies. At this point, unity is essential for our survival. No."

Next to him, I see Katniss stir, as if out of a dark thought. She glances at him - and where she always seemed to trust him before, as I remember, there's a hint of suspicion now. My hands start to shake.

"We're down to Katniss and Haymitch."

Next to me, Haymitch is silent. He's looking over at Katniss, who is frowning at the table. He won't speak before she speaks, and I wonder - what? Why? How could there possibly be any hesitation?

And then I realize. Haymitch is a survivor - pure and simple, down to his bones. When he's lost a fight, he'll collect his troops and bow out, wait for another day of clear weather and better conditions. He'll reschedule photo shoots, laugh at a plan for uprisings, make alliances that will have to be broken … later, later. As long as he can survive - to take the fight to the next day. And the next and the next. And he's wary of openly defying Coin, even to the point of hesitating on this vote - this vote which he knows, as well as anyone, should by rights go only one way.

And he's a mentor, permanently our mentor. He's holding on to Katniss with his eyes, waiting to hear what she will say and how he will need to spin it. I look at her, too, my blood growing colder, because I can see her hesitating on this decision, for reasons that are kept carefully hidden behind the mask of her face.

She stares at the rose. "I vote yes," she says quietly. "For Prim." Only then does she look up and it's right at Haymitch.

I look at him, mouth dry. He fingers the tight collar of his uniform and moistens his lips.

"Haymitch, no," I say, desperately. "Haymitch, it's not a question of expedience, anymore. It's not about surviving. It's about history - and the future - and how we're remembered. I don't want to be associated with this atrocity and I know you don't either. Haymitch …."

He glances at me, and all the lines in his face have deepened, as if he's aged ten years in the last ten minutes. But his sharp eyes glint at me. Then he looks at Coin. "I'm with the Mockingjay," he says.

I collapse backward in my chair, stunned - stunned - by the multiple betrayals. Coin's - Johanna's - Haymitch's. Well, Coin can keep the vote anonymous all she wants, but she can't silence me, except by killing me - and that she can try as often as she'd like. I'm used to it by now. There will not be a day that goes by, from here until the end of my life, that I don't denounce this decision. As far as Katniss goes …? I can't condemn her, lost as she is in the darkness that has taken the place of Prim in her heart. She'll go through her own hell, once blood is spilled in the new arena. I just can't follow her this time. But Haymitch? His was the deciding vote - and that will always be the case now. Never to be forgiven.

"Excellent," says Coin, and her pleasure, this time, sounds genuine. "Now, we really must take our places for the execution."

She stands up without ceremony and exits the room. But as she passes Katniss, Katniss hands her the little glass with the rose. "Can you see that Snow's wearing this?" she asks. "Just over his heart?"

"Of course. And I'll make sure he knows about the Games."

"Thank you," says Katniss, with a smile in her voice that has no reflection on her face.

As Coin leaves, people come into the room to swarm Katniss - her prep team … and Effie Trinket. Effie! Who I feared was dead. Adding to the surrealism of this moment, she looks exactly as I last recall her - gold wig, shiny pantsuit. While the prep team checks on Katniss' makeup and hair, Effie drifts over to me and bends down to give me a double kiss. "You've let your hair grow long, my dear," she says to me.

Well - I have no stylists, no prep team. I'm just a 13 prop. I push the loose strands of hair out of my eyes and just smile up at her.

"Let's go," says Haymitch gruffly, holding out a hand to help me up. But I don't take it, pushing myself up and walking away from him without a word. I don't look at Katniss, either. The team's broken, the dysfunctional family finally dissolved.

I follow Beetee - who is walking slowly, with the help of a cane, through the halls of the mansion, and out again, out to the City Circle, for what I sincerely hope and deeply believe will be my very last time. This time, I look out upon the avenue from Snow's own vantage point. See the crowds below me - the Remake Center at the far end. Everything that happened, and I still can't believe it ended like this, with the Games going on, and in my name.

I go down the steps. Here, in the curve of the near end of the circle - where the barricades stood - where Prim actually died, of all places - here, there is a temporary post erected. It reminds me forcefully of the post where Gale was whipped in 12.

There are no stands set up today, but there is a rope dividing the City Circle in half, and on the other side of it, a vast crowd stands, filling that half of the circle, filling the avenue behind it. There are people on the balconies of the encircling buildings, as always.

When they see me, there is a cheer, long and sustained. There is no guessing why. I was always popular with the Capitol crowds, but I have no idea what my standing could be amongst the free citizens of the districts. I suppose I should wave, but that seems obnoxious. I'm directed to take a place just inside the rope and face the mansion. Haymitch, Annie, Beetee, Johanna and Enobaria stand in a line next to me.

There's a stir above us, and we see Coin appear on the central balcony of the President's Mansion, waving as the cheering rises up behind us, like any garden variety dictator. The screens around the circle flicker to life, then, as the inevitable broadcast begins. We see her face close up - there's a thin but definitive smile. She's never been able to look genuinely happy, that I've ever seen, so it just looks thoroughly fake - although, maybe that's my own mood coloring what I see.

Then the cheers rise even higher as everyone, Capitol citizen, district rebel - everyone - greets Katniss with a stronger, deeper adoration. She was the girl they did this for - just like me - the bright, flickering flame of a girl. If there's nothing left to her but ashes now, they don't see it, yet. She's got the winged armor of the mockingjay, the black bow that has come to signify the defiance of a whole nation. One more job to do. And then - what?

She is directed to stand center, midway between the post and the other victors. Since I'm at the end of the line, I can partially see her face - just her left eye and the corner of her mouth. I get a sudden chill down my spine, for no reason I can rationally describe, just that I've seen this look from her, this grim, set, gray-faced look. Death in her face.

Something ….

Snow is now brought out the front door of his own mansion. It hasn't been all that long since I last saw him, face to face in a small room, with cameras pointing to me and my confused brain running in frightened circles between the things he wanted me to say and the things that really needed to be said. But a lifetime has passed. Mine, for one - those final days of hijacking having wiped out any surety that anything I remembered about my life had ever happened. And his. All those years - forty or maybe fifty of them - securing the Capitol, overseeing the Games, putting out little fires, as Haymitch once said – all that effort wiped out in a relatively short span of time. It's not two years ago that the final two tributes of the 74th Hunger Games came together to this Circle for the first time, bringing fire.

Well, one supposes he had his fun, but if a politician cares at all about his legacy, his is as dark a memorial as one could imagine. Does he know - does he care - that his granddaughter, and the children of his closest compatriots - will pay for his last mistake - his wild miscalculation about the power of the inferno, once a spark finally catches? Or does he take comfort in the fact that, in her suffering and theirs - in Coin's power grab - the legacy of tyranny in Panem is secure?

Fucking depressing.

He certainly looks like nothing will or would ever bother him. There's no fear in his face; he is chained to the post betraying nothing but a mild amusement. When Katniss fits the arrow and raises her bow, he coughs hoarsely, spitting out blood. A sick old man, pathetic, really, when stripped of power.

The silence as Katniss pauses, arrow poised, is the loudest I have ever heard. It roars in my ears, unbearable. There's something …

Katniss' hand jerks slightly as finally, finally, she releases the arrow. It sings through the air, the whistle of death. But the aim is off. The arrow climbs higher, much higher, than its target. This girl - who could strike a squirrel through the eye, wasting none of the meat. Strike Cato's hand, dead center, freeing me from his grip.

Coin's body, shot through with the arrow, tumbles through the silence, off the balcony, down to the ground, to end splayed out on the steps of the mansion.