Chapter Twenty-Three

There's a gasp from the crowd, then a second of stunned silence; into that silence, there comes one maniacal sound. Snow - laughing. That sound triggers the madness.

I can feel the crowd surge behind me, know that it is a matter of time before it spills past the ropes. But I'm caught by a movement from Katniss. She is preparing for neither flight nor fight, as, in otherwise perfect stillness, she brings her bow up to her lips, as if in a goodbye kiss, and lowers it.

I've sprinted up to her before I am even aware that I have left my place. How I know, what I even know, is a blur to me. I just know. It's there, just where it is on the 13 uniforms. The tiny hidden pocket that holds the pill. I can feel it pressed against my palm as I grip her arm. In that same second, her teeth come down on my hand, drawing blood.

She looks up to me, wild-eyed and confused. "Let me go!" she snarls, trying to jerk her arm away.

"I can't."

And the crowd overtakes us in a sudden wave, surging around us. When the hands grip her - District 13 soldiers - the pocket rips off in my hand and the nightlock pill falls to the ground. She's still just staring at me, rabid in her disbelief, as she's lead away. Then she starts struggling with the soldiers, and she cries out, hoarsely, for Gale. I can hear her as she vanishes from view, but I stand still, letting the waves of the people - who are now headed straight for the mansion steps - ripple past me. I don't even glance up at the screens because I know - he won't do it. Gale is as incapable of putting an arrow or a bullet through Katniss as I am incapable of leaving the arena without her.

Haymitch grabs me by the arm and drags me away before the waves of the angry mob drown me.

Are there times I second-guess my decision? Yes, yes, of course.

"It is necessary to sort out fact from fiction," says the examiner. "In case you have been coached into your answers, as you were in the past. For instance, when you expounded on your non-existent relationship with the defendant during and immediately following the 74th Hunger Games. We were all broadly convinced that you loved her."

Objections are raised, so I have time to pause - somewhat confused - at the microphone while cameras flash and the eyes of the nation turn to me again, greedy for the tale of romance they are used to hearing me weave. Maybe now - more than ever - with so many dead and displaced, so much distrust, so little understanding of what will happen next, they need this from me - the comforting story, anchoring them to the past.

Once I am allowed to speak, I continue - with everything suddenly clear to me. I don't glance at Haymitch - this could be misconstrued. But I have a familiar feeling, as if I can read his mind. That I - safely earnest in my ignorance and sincerity; safely connected to my audience by my wide-eyed instinct for them and their wide-eyed trust of me - can speak without coaching and somehow be the perfect mouthpiece for the team. For him, for her, for me.

I do, however, catch sight of Gale in the audience. I spare a thought for what he has suffered through, watching these broadcasts of me laying claim to that which I have never really owned.

"Not everything that was said was true," I concede. "But - I did love Katniss Everdeen. From the time I was 5 years old until last year, when the Capitol convinced me that she was a monster of their creation, designed by them to harm me."

Silence - and some shocked faces - greet this announcement. "What you have to understand is that it was more than just their specific brainwashing techniques that caused this. Even before I was captured - long before - the trauma from being a part of the arena caused me to think - even to behave - in ways that I can't really even explain that well. The first time I thought Katniss was a - a muttation - was on the way home from those first Games. I dreamed she attacked me in the arena. Many times over the first months home - several times over the year before the Quarter Quell - this dream recurred.

"Yes - deception was a part of the Games. And self-deception, too. It's exactly how you play them. For me, if you recall, I used my love for her as a strategy against the Careers. For this strategy, I witnessed horrific killings. I participated in them. So - it got turned around and mutated. Love was mutated. Everything that I had to use as a sword and a shield in the arena was twisted by its use."

Now, I do glance over at Haymitch, briefly, and I see the approval - the affirmation - on his face. This is what he knows. And - it's what I know, too. Now, in this moment. How I participated - fully but unknowing - in the creation of the mutt. It was never her. It was always me.

"That's me. For Katniss - I don't know specifically what form her scars took. We didn't discuss these things. I know she screamed in her sleep. Throughout the Victory Tour, it was every night, and she needed me with her in order to sleep again. I know - you all know - that her motivation - first and foremost - was the protection of her sister. I think you all suspected that she was not being sincere - reading those awful speeches for the Capitol on the Tour. She did it because her terror for her sister was so intense, she would have sacrificed anything to keep her from harm.

"For a time, that included protecting Snow from the coming rebellion. So - when Dr. Aurelius says that she confused them - the rebellion, as led by Coin, and Snow - I think this is what he means. Katniss' instinct for protecting people - her sister, Rue, me, District 12, everything - was mutilated and twisted. By arena on top of arena. And then war. She - she must have finally snapped under the trauma of it - much as I did - and fallen back on what she knew, by what she had been conditioned to believe: appeasing the Capitol to protect what she loved."

This is all wild conjecture, of course, I think wearily, as the cameras snap again and the crowd starts humming when I fall silent. And I am certainly considered a biased witness. But - if this is a sham trial, anyway, conjecture and bias will have their place. And - if nothing else - I think I've put a layman's explanation on top of Aurelius' somewhat difficult-to-follow testimony. It's funny how - the Games being over regardless - I'm still playing this role for the Capitol just as if I'm on stage with Caesar Flickerman for the very first time. Half of it all - my half - is perfectly true. In fact, it became more true the more that I said. The other half is making sure that they view her in the most sympathetic light, in the most human terms. What she was really thinking - why she actually did it? I may never know - nor do I need to - nor do I want to.

What I want now is peace. The peace of her safety. The peace of my freedom. The option to leave here and never come back here to perform at their whim. Never again.

Since both men who control my life are in the courtroom right now, I have to wait for the day's activities to finish, confined to a small conference room in the rear of the Capitol's Justice Building. I watch, wearily, the rest of the day's testimony on one monitor. On another monitor – though I try not to glance at it too often, since I object so strongly to its existence – is a live feed of Katniss, alone in her confinement.

They put her in our old suite in the Training Center, stripped her of the Mockingjay clothes, dressed her in paper robes and locked her in her old room. She has no real human interaction of any kind. Avoxes bring her her daily meals and her medications and we have watched her go through a series of desperate rebellions – try to wean herself off of morphling, and eventually stop eating.

Haymitch – who, now that he has to remain sober and alert during her trial, visits me more often – assures me that she is being closely monitored and interventions are planned, if needed, but in the meanwhile, her own determination to waste away is some of the strongest evidence on her own behalf – that she was crazy out of her mind when she shot Coin instead of Snow, and should not be executed for the crime. Haymitch even thinks we can keep her out of jail.

I watch the television linger on the face of Paylor, the war commander from District 8, who was sworn in as president of Panem after an intense emergency meeting of the combined rebellion forces. This, according to Haymitch, was one of the first truly positive things to happen since the end of the war. He likes Paylor, which is quite an endorsement – Haymitch reserves his affections like no one I ever knew, including Katniss. The tribunal of 13 district representatives is stacked, he says, with pro-Katniss sympathizers (and he's on the tribunal himself, which should assure me). But everything could go south. It really could. And I'm not sure what my head would do with me if I was compelled to watch Katniss' execution.

The monitor I'm ignoring flashes in the corner of my eye, signaling that programming is being switched. I nearly sigh out loud when I recognized the titling of one of Plutarch's mini-propos. He, of course, is managing the public relations aspect of Katniss' trial, with a series of sad documentaries detailing how everything in Katniss' life let her down – her father's death, her sister's death, me – everything. It is through these that I have started to watch – all unwillingly – the video from the Quarter Quell, which is interspersed freely throughout these videos. It's hard to ignore that which I've been trying to dismiss for quite some time now – the affection for me on Katniss' face during that Game. The affection I returned with attempted murder.

The door opens – I became so wrapped up in the stupid video that I did not notice that the court had cleared for the day on the other monitor. Aurelius … or …?

"Haymitch," I say, in relief.

"C'mon," he says.

We walk together out of the back of the courthouse, up toward the neighborhoods north of the city center which is where I live now. Things are broken here – gaps in the streets where bombs fell, scattered glass. People shuffle along, covering their faces. With the Peacekeeper units dissolved, the Capitolites – at least the ones I live with in the residential treatment center – are nervous, and not without cause. There are problems. Rebels who turn to looting abandoned homes. Homeless Capitol citizens attacking rebels. There are neighborhoods to avoid, curfews, a mandatory census. No one misses Snow – but no one likes to be disenfranchised. It's going to be a long and painful road – reconciling District rule with the Capitol.

Snow died that same day Coin did. No one really knows what happened – no official announcement has been made. The mob surrounded him and, when it withdrew, he was dead. Without explanation - or ceremony. Anyway, he's gone. But with my head still under examination and Katniss' fate as precarious as it ever was, really – things seem pretty far from over.

"Nice work today, boy," he says. "Just the right touch of the truth. It makes all the difference – you've always instinctively got that."

"Yeah – my backstory. I remember. That I remember."

Thinking of Snow makes me think of the questions I have for Haymitch – and, since we're away from any potential cameras or recording devices at the moment …. "Haymitch, why did you do it? Vote 'yes' with Katniss?" Because, honestly, all I can think of as a real motive for her to assassinate Coin was because Coin had decided to continue the Hunger Games – yet it was her vote and Haymitch's which guaranteed it, so – it just isn't adding up.

""I didn't vote 'yes,'" he tells me peevishly. "I voted with the Mockingjay. Different story altogether. I could tell she had something up her sleeve."

Now, that is splitting the world's thickest hair. "You had some idea she was going to shoot Coin?" I ask him, disbelievingly – and knowing, now, that he may actually never tell me what was really going on in his head that day. But I'm used to not being told things by Haymitch. It's almost comforting at this point.

"No, of course not," he frowns at me. "I'd have to have been as crazy as she was to figure that out. I could … just see the wheels turning."

I smile at this. No matter where we are – cameras or no cameras, witnesses or no witnesses - he is very careful to promote, at every opportunity, Katniss as having gone completely insane following her sister's death.

"So, there won't be another Hunger Games?"

Haymitch shakes his head. "That idea died with Coin. I confirmed with Plutarch that she never talked to him about it. At least, that's what he's saying now. And everyone else in her Command unit is keeping their heads down."

Well - Katniss' sacrifice, at least, was not in vain. "Well, that's something. I still don't know why you guys had to vote for it."

"Me neither," he says with a shrug. "You'll have to ask Katniss that question."

He leaves me at the 'crazy house' - as he calls it - with that statement hanging in the air between us. I think it unlikely – no matter what happens – that Katniss and I will ever have a conversation again. A dismal thought.

One afternoon, I have a surprise visitor: Gale, who meets me in the visitor's lounge, looking all intense and out of place in his uniform. It's a new one, fitting him better than the recycled 13 uniform. I squint at him, trying to remember the 18-year-old boy he was at the beginning of all this, the boy who came to my house to trade squirrel for bread on the morning of Reaping Day - same as always. He hasn't changed all that much - a little scruffier in the jaw line, a little more serious in the lines around his eyes. In comparison to me - enviously whole in body and mind. But what I took from him - at least as he perceives it - might almost put us in balance.

"What's up?" I ask him anxiously, imagining a worst-case outcome in the trial and Haymitch too drunk to tell me himself.

"Nothing. I'm - heading out, so I thought I'd say goodbye."

"Where are you going?" I ask curiously.

"I got a job in District 2. There are some pockets of resistance and I'm leading a squad to clean them up."

"Oh," I say, blankly. I'm not sure how to follow it up, though I am filled with questions. Why? For how long? Before the end of the trial? "Congratulations."

He glances up at the wall-mounted television, where a recap of Katniss' trial is playing. Two days so far have been spent on a discussion as to whether or not Coin was legally President of Panem, which has some implications on the technicality of the charges. It is all so frustrating. I don't care what Haymitch assures me, something could always go wrong and I don't know how I would live with it, and I just need it to be over.

"You're not worried about …?" I ask him. The silence is making me jittery.

He shakes his head. "About the trial, no. About … how she's going to fix her head after all this? That's a different story."

"She'll need her friends," I say. It's still hard for me to see past this moment - to some future where Katniss' freedom is assured and she even has the chance to work on her head. "Plus," I add, "Dr. Aurelius knows what he's doing."

"You seem better," he agrees.

I laugh shortly. "I've had a lot of time to spend in my head. It's like – approaching a stranger who is snarling at you in a corner. But he has a way of unraveling the fear from the strangeness. Making you look at it. When you can see it … when you know what you're dealing with … Even right now - it's been weeks since I've felt … the way I felt." I shrug. This is more than he probably wants to hear about my mental treatment, which must seem like so much chattering nonsense to this man who seems so - whole. I do - I feel crippled in his presence, by things that have nothing to do with my leg. I still have flashbacks - Aurelius says that this is not going to go away anytime soon, and it is like a steam valve for my head, releasing the memories instead of suppressing them. But I can't help hating the way they make me feel that the arena still has some grip on me that I would shake off if I was just a little stronger.

"When my father died," says Gale, suddenly, "I couldn't stop thinking about it - for a long time. To the point where it got morbid. Like trying to imagine what he looked like, blown to bits." I don't know if he's simply acknowledging that he has some shadow of understanding for what it's like to get lost in your own head. Or if he's justifying his own anger. But it does remind me of one last thing that I owe him.

"I hate it," I say. "I hate it. All of it. Not just that 12 is lost, even though that is - unbearable. I hate it - that we were all so scared and timid, all just clutching at our pathetic little lives, as if they were actually worth preserving. It ended up meaning nothing. They're all dead, anyway. When I was a kid - hell …." I glance at him carefully. "Two years ago, really. I always admired you - and Katniss. Going outside the fence. If there could have been more of that. Fuck, how I hate it."

He just shrugs. For a second, I catch a bleak turn to his expression, but it flits quickly away. "You stepped it up when the time came - that's what counts, at the end of the day. As Katniss' friend …" he smiles, wryly. "Shit, this is harder than I thought it would be. As her friend, I need to thank you for always putting her - first. I'm not going to pretend to be on board with how you decided to do it. In fact, I resent the hell out of it. I know you didn't get a whole lot more out of it than a world of hurt, yourself. But … well … you threw yourself into it, anyway. I'm not sure when she'll ever be in the right frame of mind to thank you, so - on her behalf, you can take mine."

"Thanks," I say rapidly, hoping that he's finished. This is nothing but embarrassing and uncomfortable. I can't tell what hidden message he might be trying to convey to me, but I'm not really ready to hear it - that I know. About Katniss' choices and him and me. It just seems wrong to even hint at it, with Katniss' life in limbo, and Prim dead, and me so addled. "Or - er - you're welcome."

"How long do you think you'll be here?"

I shake my head. "Weeks, months - if I have to be. I don't want to leave here again the way I did - before. And I don't know what I will do when I leave. Presumably, someone, somewhere will need a baker."

He shakes his head. "Probably," he says with a slow smile. "Well - sounds like this is it for a while. I - hope you can figure yourself out, sooner rather than later. Like you say, Katniss is going to need her friends."

He looks up again at the monitor – the look on his face is strange – wistful, resentful; ultimately quite sad. When he leaves, there is an air of something unfinished, like there were things he didn't say. But there are too many other things for me to worry about, so I - .

And then it happens, as abruptly as if the filmmakers had smash cut into it. Her voice – which has been silenced all this time, as she has wasted away, alone in her room – her voice suddenly bursts out of the TV – in song.

Deep in the meadow, under the willow

A bed of grass, a soft green pillow

Here it's safe, here it's warm

Here the daisies guard you from every harm

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true

Here is the place where I love you

Holy shit … holy shit, her voice. My head explodes with the onrush of memories (like the dam bursting, after all). It's exactly like looking at one of my drawings, evocative of things I can't remember but can absolutely feel. It makes me ache for home - the one that's long gone. Racing Ryan to school in the hazy autumn morning. Dipping bread in broth on winter evenings. The pink spray of the apple blossoms. A little girl's silhouette at a window, and a little boy, bewitched.

That same evening, Haymitch comes to call, and he makes me bring my dinner out to the terrace in the back of the building, even though the nights here are still chilly with the last remnants of winter. He doesn't eat anything himself - I catch a faint hint of liquor on him - but just watches me, occasionally gnawing at some callus or something on his finger. When I'm done, he hands me a small pink box, with a ribbon tied around it. This is so thoroughly unexpected that I laugh out loud.

It's a tiny little chocolate cake - done Capitol-style, with incredibly detailed piping and delicate, spun-sugar decorations. "Wha-?"

"Happy - uh - birthday," he says, awkwardly.

My heart skips a beat, but when I do some calculations in my head, it doesn't really come together. "I think that's still a couple weeks away," I say.

"Yeah," he says. "I won't be here."

I frown but wait for his explanation.

"Trial's ending tomorrow. Hold on -." He puts his hands up when I make a sudden movement, about to jump to my feet. "Listen. And keep quiet. It won't be on television. We're going into deliberations first thing in the morning, and then they'll cut the broadcast. We'll release a statement later in the day. It will be 10-3 for manslaughter, the lesser charge, with Katniss released into house arrest and under psychiatric care." He sighs. "Katniss' mother is relocating to District 4, so -."

"Is that where she's going?" I ask, unable to contain my questions anymore. "District 4?"

Haymitch shakes his head. "No - Katniss is confined to 12."

"What do you … 12? How can that be? There's nothing …."

"The Victors' Village is intact," he replies, frowning. "Wasn't even touched in the bombing. Katniss is going - home."

I gape at him. "No one told me - there was anything left. It's all … it's all intact?"

"You didn't ask," he says. "Yes - your house, too. And people are starting to move back out there, out of 13. They want to rebuild it."

I wipe my eyes as hope - for the first time, something that feels like hope - lights up inside of me. "For real?" I ask him, in a small voice. It's like … the world has flipped over the right way again, just as soon as I had got used to it being upside down. That there is a place for me to go - a place that belongs to me. And that the last two people in the world whom I have any claim on at all will be there. "So - you're going with her?"

"Have to. To make sure she stays put and calls in to Aurelius until she's officially pardoned - some time once everything is sorted out here."

"I can't … believe this," I breathe. "Thank you, Haymitch …."

"That's not all. They closed the investigation into Mitchell's … death, and there won't be any charges."

"Oh, I didn't -."

"Yeah, no one wanted to worry you about it, but Coin opened it, probably with the idea of making sure you kept yourself in line. Anyway, Hawthorne and Cressida and Pollux wouldn't testify, and Katniss can't, and Aurelius made a lengthy statement on your behalf. Which, also clears you of any possibility of being charged for attacking Katniss. The both of you owe him - more than you'll be able to repay, really."

"I know, I -."

"Oh, he'll benefit from the publicity, trust me. Might even get a position in the government, eventually. Anyway, he's a sensible person - more than most here. He knows Panem needs a bit of a break from the Everdeen-Mellark drama. Matching executions would have been a shade too far, don't you think?"

He grins, suddenly, in an expression so devoid of his usual bitter cynicism that it seems to transform his face. And I feel it, too.

"I have to get out of here," I say, suddenly.

"Yes," he says. "Yes. How soon do you ….?"

It's the second time I've been asked today, and this time, the answer depresses me. "I don't know. I have to do some labs, and after that they have to readjust my medications. I'm finishing up this anger management class in a couple of days. After all that, they'll need to reassess me, and -."

"They can't hold you, indefinitely. And you can continue to be treated - from home."

"I know - but - I want to … I want Dr. Aurelius to clear me. I want to be sure. I haven't been able to meet with him very often during the trial. I still owe him some explanation about – the mutt."

"He was in court that day you explained it."

I shrug. "I'm not sure that act counts as legitimate therapy. Not that it wasn't true – what I said. It's just so much more complicated. There is still this issue – that I should not bring home the same resentments – as the first time."

"Peeta," he frowns at me. "It's rarely as complicated as we think. They fucked us up. We live with it. We've all been hurt by a girl; and, at any rate, she -."

"I - it's not just that she hurt me; it's that - that I let it be more important than the things that should have mattered. Her suffering – my suffering – the things that were going on all around us. I ruined it. I ruined it – mutated it, used it as a weapon."

Haymitch just shakes his head. "That's some crazy shit," he says at last.

This makes me laugh. "I used to think that, too - before I really lost my mind." I feel - good about this, I think. Because if I can tell Haymitch, who is never going to know how to respond to this sort of stuff, I'll finally be able to admit it to Aurelius. "Haymitch," I say, suddenly, "you're leaving tomorrow, aren't you?"

He jumps. "Yeah. So, like I was saying - there will be a verdict announced later in the day, but before that - we'll be removing her, straight from the Training Center, and flying her home. We don't want any more publicity than is unavoidable. Peeta - you're on your own for a little while, and I don't feel right …."

I swallow.

"In a couple of weeks," he continues, "you'll be 18, and my signature keeping you confined here won't have any legal weight. You don't have to stay."

I shake my head, determined not to give in to the temptation he is setting before me. "If Aurelius …."

"We need you there, Peeta. And you need to be there, too. Not here."

"I …." I stare at him a moment. His haunted eyes, the hint of gray I've never seen before in the roots of his dark, wavy hair. Everything he has done for us. "As soon as I can," I tell him.