At some point, someone mentions visiting District Twelve and it is the first time that Katniss shows any engagement with the conversation sprawling out around her. It doesn't entirely surprise her, to hear the suggestion come from Plutarch. As little as she knows about what happens in the highest levels of Thirteen's command, she at least knows that Plutarch's suggestions are always the ones that push farther beyond what everyone else in Thirteen has deemed most reasonable.
Of course, of course that's the case, but Katniss forgets to bristle at the way a Gamemaker thinks. She's too occupied with trying to pay attention.
"You understand that this is an unacceptable risk." President Coin's voice is as intractable as ever: rife with discipline and force for how quiet and even it is.
Plutarch leans back in his seat a little. "If I may, Madame President, I'm beginning to think that every risk will be deemed unacceptable."
"With all respect, Mr. Heavensbee, we have survived a war and the annihilation meant to follow by doing precisely that."
Katniss wonders how often Alma Coin is confronted with someone who will argue with her. She's seen no one else attempt to do so, but Coin holds her own entirely. There is no heat in her voice — not the kind of defensiveness and stubbornness that Katniss knows so well they're twined up in the closest chambers of her heart. The cadence of Coin's voice rarely wavers — rarely scatters into confusion or bites down into fleshy, hot anger. It is always just so — it is always Thirteen in its expression: sure, swift, precisely measured. Nothing less and nothing more than precisely what it needs to be.
Even in the face of Plutarch's Capitol sensibilities.
Something vindicated and bright kindles in Katniss' chest at the thought.
"All that means is that it will take something new to move beyond the status quo."
"Events are already in motion without the complication of losing the edge we have worked so hard to gain."
A nation sparking up in pockets against the weight of the Capitol — fighting against the years of cruelty that have settled like so much thick ash after a fire. Beating their fists against walls of Peacekeepers only to come away bloody and broken at the very best. Already in motion — her fault, entirely, even if she won't agree to what they've asked of her. What she already is, without her knowledge or consent.
Twelve — Twelve must be bad. Must be dangerous, even in its decimation.
There is a part of her that lunges forward at the chance to see it for herself. To set boots on the soil — the rubble, now — of her home. To see her meadow, her lake, her little home in the Seam and her father's hunting jacket stowed away within, the only things that were ever hers in a way that felt real. Even if they are all gone. Especially if they are all gone.
Then she looks at Coin.
Plutarch Heavensbee is good at wearing his face well. He's good at affecting that little expression that looks like it's almost a knowing smile, and almost vindicated but not precisely either. It must have worked for years in the highest circles of the Capitol — the way he can stay jolly and unfazed, never caught by surprise and always willing to play along. But there are cracks that show here, the farthest from the Capitol that anyone Katniss knows has ever been. There is a weight bearing down by the miles of stone and soil above their heads that pull at his surety, and Thirteen's strict adherence to eliminating anything unnecessary clashes with Plutarch's self-satisfaction.
Coin, on the other hand, is Thirteen. Her voice, her unbroken sheet of hair, her colorless eyes that cool and still everything they look at — she doesn't need the harsh inflection of anger to assume command; there is nowhere here that she does not control.
She is as at home here as Snow was in Katniss' house in the Victor's Village.
Instinctively, Katniss says nothing.
"She has a right to see it, if she wants to." Gale, though, is not so tamed.
It very nearly makes her smile — for its familiarity, for its very precise Galeness — but then it also chokes her. She spins outward from the conversation at hand, not in the half-lucid way she'd been drifting through before, but with the force of a kick to the chest. If she wants to — as if it's her choice. But worse — much worse — what if is? What if this is something that she can ask for? What are the consequences — how much will she have to pay to buy this leniency from Coin? How can she predict what the consequences will be?
"I understand President Coin's point."
Peeta's voice always has that warm quality, as if someone took summer honeysuckle and threaded it through all his words. He always sounds so clear and present in every conversation — he had with Haymitch on their trains to and from the Capitol, with Caesar Flickerman, and now with the intractable members of Thirteen's elite. It's that same tone, measured and careful, that you have to use when you're feeling out how far your control goes, how much of you is owned by someone else.
Peeta — kind but also clever. Smart, quick. Katniss' heart trembles but she still can't bring herself to look over at him.
He's not sitting far from her — even this private conference room is as small as everything else in Thirteen — but then, he hasn't been far from her in all the weeks they've been here. Hospital rooms a few doors apart, compartments in the same wing now — Peeta has always been just in arm's reach the entire time they have been here, and Katniss' body sings with the knowledge as much as it seals itself against him.
"You do?" Gale asks, voice sharp.
"We must be the most wanted people in Panem — Katniss especially. Being above ground at all is probably a risk. But being in District Twelve —"
"There is no District Twelve. There's nothing left. You think the Capitol is going to be watching a pile of rubble?"
"I think it's dangerous to underestimate how much the Capitol sees."
There's a little heat in Peeta's voice now, though it doesn't approach the snap that Gale has been able to manage since he was young, and it takes everything Katniss is and has to continue looking fixedly on the overly-polished table in front of her. If she sees Gale, he will surely ask her what she thinks about all of this — ask her to make a decision when she still has no idea what that decision will provoke in retribution. If she looks at Peeta —
— She doesn't know what will happen. Without having to make sure that he is alive taking up all the space that emotion has been allowed to occupy in her chest, Katniss can't begin to fathom what she needs to feel.
If there is anywhere safe to look in this room, it is at nothing.
But Peeta's not wrong. Even buried far further than six feet under, she can still feel the weight of the Capitol's gaze.
"Well," Plutarch says, his even tone shaded with that edge of contented humor cutting through the simmering tension, "We still have a little time before we need to make this decision. Time that we can use wisely, either way. I say we start with safer steps, build from there. Make the best with what and whom we have available. Does that sound reasonable?"
Even though she is still staring straight ahead, Katniss knows Coin is looking at her.
"Has your answer changed yet, Katniss?"
Katniss she calls her — as if they are friends. As if Coin knows her well enough to forgo the way Coin calls everyone Soldier or General. As if Katniss has done something special to deserve some measure of familiarity.
Take me to Twelve, she wants to say.
"No, it hasn't," is what she says instead, unable to lift her gaze until later, and only because fear pulls at all of her sensitive parts. "But I understand. About Twelve."
Coin doesn't drop her gaze. Her eyes stay fixed, silent and unyielding on Katniss, until Katniss feels the slush in their depths chill her from the outside down to the chambers of her heart. Coin's lips are settled in a thin line that doesn't look unpleasant, her hands folded neatly on the table's surface. But Katniss knows — like a rabbit would, like a tribute would — that they are on the precipice of something dangerous.
Then the spell is broken. Coin nods.
"Thank you for understanding," she says, and Katniss is nearly dizzy with relief. The right move, finally. Finally she's learned something, finally she's playing this game with more power and knowledge than she's ever had. Alive and safe — she can keep herself alive and safe. She can keep everyone alive and safe, if she makes moves like this. "Mr. Heavensbee, let's start collaborating on the basics."
"Fantastic." And Plutarch does sound pleased, in that strangely honest way of his.
"Everyone else, you are dismissed to attend to your schedules."
Katniss' legs ache a little, and she notes that with a commonplace frustration. Even more upright and mobile than she has been in some time, the lightning still lives in her hollows and slows her down in a way that'd be dangerous anywhere but here. She stretches a little when she's up, and is halfway to the door when Peeta's voice stills her.
"Katniss —"
No, no — not here, not now, not when she doesn't know what to say or feel, not with Coin and Plutarch so close at hand, not surrounded by everyone who needs something from her that she absolutely cannot give —
"Peeta," Coin says softly, "Would you mind staying? I have something that I would like you to consider."
Katniss has never been this endeared and grateful to Coin; every part of her nearly breaks with the relief — and then she makes the mistake of turning.
She doesn't remember what she was going to do — shoot Peeta a look, perhaps, like she might have weeks or months ago. Familiar and superficial, an insincere apology written into her expression, a what can you do? sort of look. Or something better and less selfish — something like acknowledgement that says we'll talk later.
But Peeta's looking at her with everything that is quintessentially and uniquely Peeta — with equal parts selfless worry and wanting and understanding, all vulnerable and easily read by anyone looking at him, and Katniss' stomach rebels, pounding against her soft parts and her ribs.
She presses an arm against her middle to hold herself together and rushes out of the room.
• • •
"— Prim."
His nurse has been in here for more than a few minutes by now, and Finnick's pretty sure that she's already tried talking to him at least once. So by every right, his saying her name shouldn't be taken for what it is — the culmination of long moments spent diligently piecing together floating pieces of memories that he'd known were there but couldn't quite grasp. He'd known this young nurse, but everything is so fluid and knit from gauze that it had taken him a few moments to spin the disparate pieces into a whole that made sense: the girl who had pressed thick, sturdy rope into his hands; the girl who had screamed for her sister (so long ago now, so long ago); Katniss' expression when he'd said that her sister had helped him — Prim, Prim is her name.
She should, rightfully, chalk this up to whatever everyone says about him. To the diagnosis of mentally disordered or lingering damage from — something. Or whatever it is that takes Victors and breaks them.
But her — Prim's, Prim's — expression brightens, and in the difference he sees where shadows have begun to creep in, shadows that shift and vanish in the light of her smile.
"That's right," she tells him, as if she understands that he'd been recognizing her rather than asking for something — as if that is something to celebrate with a gentle look and a gentle word. Strange, but Finnick warms, and after looking around for it for another moment, he finds his smile, too.
Prim is small. She is short, and her hands are tiny, and the medical uniform is in her size but it still manages to look a little big on her frame. And yet she moves with a kind of unassuming grace — learned and practiced amidst the tools of the healing trade that Finnick does not recognize. Before he can track her movement, she is standing at the very side of his bed.
"How are you feeling, Finnick?"
"Mm." The sound rolls in the back of his throat, less acknowledgement and more just — there. He searches for an answer, but he's already losing the thread of the question and he needs to tie that back together first before it can slip from him.
"Is that helping?"
He hadn't realized his fingers had started working with the rope again until Prim points it out, honest optimism like a chime in her voice. Finnick looks down at it then back up, hands clenching tighter against the rough, solid slipknot as he hangs onto the thread of conversation with everything he has. The texture grounds him, and there — that's answer enough.
"Yeah," he tells her, voice a little stronger. "It is. Thanks — thank you."
"Of course," she replies, so sweet and matter of fact. As if she has not done something so enormous as given him a lifeline.
I need you to get better.
That, he remembers.
Finnick moves enough to get one elbow underneath himself so that he can leverage his upper body up, off the stiff, thin pillows, and sit up properly. Prim doesn't make a motion to help him; she stays close, watches him, but only grins softly when he manages it. And when Finnick catches sight of the white bandages wrapped around his forearm, she similarly says nothing, even though Finnick clearly remembers other nurses and aides and doctors narrating his life to him at his every glance and half-formed sentence.
Even though he knows things, he does. It just takes him a moment.
It just takes him a moment but then the images come back — the darkness of arena, the heat of the jungle, the sweat and condensation clinging to his skin. Taking a knife, digging out as little flesh as possible until he found the tiny, pulsating tracker. Leaving it behind — scrambling to keep the fraying edges of their plan from falling apart entirely — his world exploding in a shower of white-hot sparks.
Finnick barely remembers Prim's name most of the time, and they certainly don't have a language of gestures and expressions all their own, the way he has with — he has with — (Johanna, left behind; Johanna, in the belly of the Capitol; the thought rushes in like the tide to swallow him then out when it's through with him) — but when he nods up at her, she nods back as if this, too, she understands.
"It's probably going to scar," she tells him, and there is a sadness in her voice that he doesn't understand. "I'm sorry."
But there is nothing as relieving to behold — something all his own, written into his skin, not erased by the Remake Center the next day so that the entirety of his body can belong to whomever has asked for it. Something ugly and irreparable, something that he gave himself to survive.
"No." This is firmer, more aware — Prim has to understand how much she has done. How little she has to be sorry for. (He understands, for a glimmering second, the enormity of Katniss' first sacrifice. He understands what a tragedy, what a horror, it would be for the Capitol to lay claim to Prim's honesty and her care that comes without an ulterior motive. What a horror it already is, for her youth and childhood to have been owned by the Capitol and, now, Thirteen.) "That's fine. That's more than fine. Okay?"
This scar — this mental disorganization, this floating quality the world has taken on — it's nothing that's in vogue in the heart of the Capitol. They're not beautiful — they are all ugly and dangerous and, most likely, pathetic. And they are his which makes them real and he'll cherish these broken parts in a way that he's ever cherished anything that matters. Until they're taken away, too.
Prim watches him carefully, and he wonders if he's finally convinced her, too, that he is a lost cause. But then she nods again.
"Okay."
Okay — okay — okay. They are alive and as far from the Capitol as they can be even if they can't ever outrun it, and that is okay. He'll live with that, for now. He'll have to.
I need you to get better.
"Prim —" This time, it is half a question, and Prim perks up for it. Finnick searches for the words through the choppy, dark open from which they come and go. "I — can you tell me what's still wrong with me? I know that they must have told me already but I don't — always remember —"
"Ah."
It must be hard for her, to be the bearer of bad news. Finnick recognizes the cues in her voice the same way he has always read and understood body language — the hesitation, the little catch around the sound she makes — and he's struck, again, with how young she is.
He doesn't want to hurt Prim. He really doesn't.
"It's alright, I can —"
"No." Decisively, Prim sits at the edge of his bed. She looks him in the eye and does not duck her head, and Finnick is caught in the orbit of her confidence. It must be hard for her, but here she is — doing the hard thing, and doing something good. Maybe it's a familial trait.
She presses one hand against the blankets, and one hand on her lap. "You had a concussion when you first arrived, and a few burns. There were some dysfunctions in your muscles, too, that must have come from the lightning. From your most recent checkup, your mobility is nearly back to average, and your eyes are responding well to light. The skin grafts have healed entirely, and your risk of infection is low."
About halfway through, Finnick's mind wants to unmoor itself from the dock and drift out with the current, but he holds on with a white knuckled grip and makes himself mentally repeat each diagnosis that Prim rattles off. Concussion, burns, muscular dysfunction. No more concussion, no more burns, no more dysfunction. All that's left, then, is the plastic of the bracelet still wrapped around his wrist — all that's left is the neatly printed mentally disordered and the rope in his hands.
He breathes in memories of Johanna and images of where Annie might be, and tightens his fingers around the rope. Those, too, want to drag him away from the focus he's fought for, but in yet another ironic twist, those are what he wants to focus for. Annie. Johanna. Mags. Prim and Katniss. Maybe Peeta, too, if he stills Finnick as an ally.
But he's not a healer, and he doesn't know what it means to recover from things that can't be touched by medicine and surgery.
There is a part of him that doesn't want to say anything more; he's had his fill of hurting people, and he has enough blood on his hands for a lifetime. He doesn't want to put young, kind Prim in a position to find solutions for problems that she shouldn't be forced to deal with.
Except, he doesn't know who else to ask.
"How do I — how do I get better?"
Prim makes a noise in the back of her throat — sad, but maybe not pitying — and Finnick allows guilt to wash in with the next tide. But then she cycles too, washing in with sorrow but out with determination, and she reaches over to the bedside table and takes the rope he has not touched yet, unwinding it and smoothing it straight between both of her hands.
"Teach me how to tie the knot you're making."
• • •
Gale doesn't think that he has ever been so thoroughly deprived of a way to release his frustration. Not when the fence around Twelve had been restored of power, not when Thread had erected nothing short of a public jail in the center of town, not when the Hob had been dismantled. At least then, under the heel of the Capitol's peacekeepers and beaten half to death as he was, there had still been real air to breathe.
He misses the sky. Snowfalls, trees.
He misses his mother, in a way that makes his ribs ache before he can think of Vick and Rory and Posy and use that to violently subdue the flurry of emotion.
This is what the Capitol does — turns every good thing into something stained and broken and torn away from you, and he can't understand why he seems to be the only one who sees that after everything that everyone has been through.
His throat burns — his arms burn, his legs are tight, his chest aches. He's become familiar enough with Thirteen's layout to find his way between the command center, hospital, cafeteria, and the research and development department. Without realizing it, Gale's already making his way through the warren down a few levels until he's at the once-imposing doors separating the technology wing from the rest of Thirteen.
There are always people here, cycling through a set number of newly familiar faces. Beetee is a constant — Gale's fairly certain that if he does have a personal compartment, it's not far, because every time Gale drops in he's at one of the stations, working on schematics or weapons design or updating holographic maps of the Capitol and higher number districts. That's where he is now — poring over something that looks like a map.
"What do we have?"
"Strongholds, and plenty of them." Beetee doesn't look away from his work, but he does zoom out so that Gale can see a greater expanse of territory labeled Three. Some of it he gets — buildings, elevations, diagrams of underground tunnel systems. But the rest of the lines and arrays are beyond what he's familiar with.
"Are you trying to move troops in?"
"Eventually, I believe that will be the plan. But we have our work cut out for us to make that possible." Ever economical with his words and assessments, never lingering on sentiment, Beetee wheels over to a nearby monitor, calling up a map comprised entirely of those strange arrays. "The rebellion has caught significant traction, but largely in the outlying districts. Eleven and Eight are openly opposed to the Capitol's presence, and it seems as if Seven will follow soon enough. But One and Two show little signs of resistance and they provide the Capitol with artillery and manpower."
"That makes sense." Powerhouse districts — Career districts, they've been called, appropriately it seems. "So why's Three of interest right now?"
"It might be our best shot in getting our message to higher number districts, as it controls most of the airwaves and radio signals in Panem. Given that I designed large portions of the system, I'm reasonably confident that we can start to dismantle it."
"And make sure our broadcasts reach bigger audiences."
"Precisely."
There is a certain dissatisfaction in a plan that revolves around words and posed images than physically disrupting the Capitol's presence in and hold on Panem — it just feels less sure, less powerful. Less like a revolution and more like — something else that Gale cannot describe in satisfactory words.
But it's the next step towards destroying the Capitol, so he's not about to argue with it.
"We'll need to have things ready to air — we'll need to write speeches, film things."
"Ideally." Beetee adjusts the way his glasses sit on his nose, moving quickly between maps of what must be the systems of radio and television signals, all maintained in the heart of Three. "But there's plenty to do before then. I can learn the new additions to Three's internal security, and start coding my around them."
Laid out in tangible, real steps that they can follow right now — from right here, buried under bedrock in Thirteen, finally free of the Capitol — it starts to feel real again. Not great, not perfect, but here and doable. He flexes his hand, lets the itching frustration bleed from his tense muscles, and pulls up a chair to sit next to Beetee.
"Alright. Let's get to work."
• • •
note. okay, you caught me. my true motive in writing a rarepair slowburn was to flesh out the political landscape of mockingjay. & i'm only five percent kidding about that. anyway! chapters one and two are now edited & updated, with the rest to follow. i want to deeply thank everyone for their engagement & thoughtful reviews — it's absolutely wonderful! drop a review, let me hear your thoughts!
disasterganes on tumblr / clairenchanted on twitter.