The train is the same one we've always had, but it's almost like a distorted, rundown version of its former self. Keeping up with aesthetics is not a priority in the new Panem. The train is clean, yes, but its ornateness has been stripped away. There are no flowers, no shiny knobs or automatic sinks. No chef, no magazines. No wasted resources of any kind. I don't need any of that anyway. It's still familiar though. It's still ours. I sit in the last car and watch the world rush away from me.
"Is it weird that this sort of feels like home?" Peeta asks, leaning against the doorframe. I remember him saying something similar as we barreled helplessly toward the Quarter Quell.
"No," I say softly, resting my chin on my knees, not shifting my eyes from the disappearing pine.
"What are you thinking about?" Peeta asks, maintaining his post at the door.
"Rue," I answer honestly. Peeta doesn't press. As we race toward Maya I think of the little girls I've let down. I've let go. That I've lost. Rue. Prim. The red-headed Avox girl. Stabbed and blown-up and tortured. What am I doing?
"Can I sit with you?" Peeta asks. I nod. He takes a spot on the bench beside me, sitting with his legs crossed. He positions a sketchpad on one of his knees and starts sketching. I watch Rue take shape on the page. Her round face, her wide eyes. Peeta lost so much in the hijacking, but he remembers her so specifically.
"I forgot her nose turned up like that," I whisper, resting my chin on his shoulder. Peeta smiles a little. When he finishes he props the paper up and lets me take it in. "Rue was clever," I say wistfully. "She was such a clever girl." A memory of her rushes forward, so potent I can feel her tiny hand pressed against my cheek as she whispered a scheme in my ear. "Can I see that?" I ask. Peeta hands me the paper, watching me. "The pencil too," I add, and he drops the tool in my hand. I set the book to my knee and start writing in the blank space in the margins of the page. I write about her smile. Her wit. Her secrets, but minus the intimate details that would make her blush. I write about how she spoke of her dad – big hands, big heart. How her mom never cried except for one time Rue skinned her knee. How her family was brave. When I finish I stare at the page. "I don't want to forget anything else about her."
Peeta reads what I wrote, smiling. A look of peace seeks out a place on his face.
"We should make a book," I say suddenly.
"What do you mean?" he asks, smirking at my curiously.
"Like my family's plant book, but instead we keep the people we lost inside. So we don't forget. So no one forgets," I ramble. "After we die, and her parents die, and her siblings die…. After everyone that knew Rue dies, the only record of her will be the Capitol archives. Film from the Games, and her interview and… She was so much more than the show she put on for the Capitol. She was a person before she was reaped." I stare at her sketch. I stare at the words I scribbled. "I want her to live in these pages as who she was, not how she left us," I stumble over my words. I don't think I'm making any sense, but Peeta has a serious look in his eyes.
"I'd like that," he finally answers. I feel like a weight is lifted from my chest. A tiny one, barely noticeable until it's gone, but absent now nonetheless. I feel myself heal a little. "Can I do a page for my dad?" he asks in a small voice.
"Yes. Yes! We should do a page for everyone," I answer. The corner of Peeta's mouth smirks just a little. And so the train barrels us away from home, and we sit there, drawing and writing and remembering. We laugh at each other's stories. We erase things and try again until they are perfect. The sun slips out of the sky. At some point I shifted to lying on the floor on my stomach, and I don't realize I've fallen asleep until Peeta shakes my shoulder gently.
"We should go sleep. We'll be at the launch site in a few hours." He's right. The train doesn't go to 13. We are heading to 11 to meet a hovercraft carrying supplies from District 5. Maybe it's because I'm heading to her home, but I spend the night dreaming of Rue. For the first time it's not about the horrors of her death, but rather the smiling, bright little girl that shared my sleeping bag. I dream of her laughing at my face when she placed a chewed up wad of saliva-soaked leaves on my arm. Her soft breath whispering in my ear. Her devious grin. I remember the morning I knotted her hair in a braid out of her face, and she told me we were really allies now.
I wake up just past dawn. I roll over and find Peeta awake, staring at the ceiling.
"Hey," I whisper, curling my body into his. I tuck my knees under his legs and let my face rest on his chest. I hear him breathe. I listen to his heart the way I used to in the cave, eager for each beat.
"Hey," he whispers back, idly bringing his fingers to my hair and playing with it.
"What are you doing awake?" I ask quietly, not wanting to break the reverie of sleep.
"Drawing in my head," he answers. I realize the ceiling is his canvas for his eyes. I roll on my back and stare at it.
"What are you drawing?" I whisper, weaving his fingers in mine. His thumb runs idly on the back of my hand.
"I'm trying to figure out Johanna's eyes," Peeta breathes. Johanna wasn't open. She had layers and layers to dig through. Capturing her on paper won't be easy. "She always looked like the words in her head weren't the words coming out of her mouth," he adds. "I don't know if that makes sense."
"It does," I answer, turning my head and pressing a kiss onto his shoulder.
"They were green," Peeta starts.
"With gold flecks," I finish. He rolls on his side and takes me in. We silently watch each other for a few minutes. His hair has gotten long and nears his eyes. His skin has bronzed in the summer sun. My fingers trace tiny circle on his palms.
"I'm nervous," I spit out, my stomach tied in knots. "I have no idea what to say tomorrow."
"Just tell her the truth," Peeta responds, tucking a piece of hair behind my ear. He's right. I have to do this. I won't be able to say goodbye to Boggs until this is done.
The next day is a blur. I want more time to figure out what to say, but before I know what's happening we've left the train, boarded the hovercraft, and landed in 13. We are greeted on the Hangar deck by unfamiliar faces. Many of the leaders of 13 are now in the Capitol building a nation. The people left are strangers to me. Effie's made all the arrangements, but I still feel like I'm walking into a death trap.
Nothing's changed. Even after our liberation, the people of 13 wear plain gray clothes. They all have similar haircuts and perfect posture. Most of the refugees have left, returning to their districts of origin or finding a new place to call home above ground. Those that are left in 13 are natives. They look at me like I don't belong. It's not all of them. In some faces I find gratitude, but in most I find some sort of hostility. A guardedness. They look at me like I'm a wolf in their sheep pen.
Peeta and I hand a slip of paper from Effie to the commanding officer on the deck. He reads it then grunts an order to one of the soldiers at his shoulder. We are lead from the Hangar.
We follow the winding halls of District 13. I generally know where I am, but I can tell Peeta lost his way a long time ago. He didn't spend hours wandering these halls like I did. When we reach the dormitory area, we stop in front of a door labelled 1207. The soldier gives a quick rap on the door and then dismisses himself to a guard position against the far wall. My stomach knots as Peeta shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He looks nervous too, but he's trying to bury it for my sake.
The door opens. I don't know what I expected Boggs's widow to look like. Broken, shattered like my mom maybe. Lost. Instead, the woman that looks down at me seems measured. Calm. She reminds me so much of Boggs it makes my skin hurt.
"Hello, Katniss," she says evenly. She doesn't even seem shocked to see me, or if she is she's hiding it.
I don't know why I am surprised she knows who I am, but I wasn't expecting it. My mouth feels sticky. The speech I rehearsed is stuck in my throat. My tongue feels too big against my teeth and I try not to choke. "Hi," I manage.
"What are you doing here?" she asks. Her voice is almost pleasant, but measured. I try to find some emotion behind it but I can't. It's more analytical than accusatory. I remember Boggs – stoic, calm. Of course I'd find these same traits in his partner. Her jawline is defined. Her skin is smooth across her high cheekbones. Her teeth are as straight as her back. I feel myself slouching and right myself.
"I… I wanted to say how sorry I am," I ramble. My face burns. An apology will only ease the guilt I'm carrying with me. A burden I'm now forcing on a widow, a partnerless mother. I have no right to stand on this woman's doorstep and seek out comfort. I am so selfish. She watches me, perplexed. She doesn't want my pity. We are probably more similar than I realize. Standing in front of her, though, I forget what I'm doing here. All I am is the girl that left her husband to be swallowed by a wave of toxic tar. The one who left him helpless in the street.
"Why don't you come in?" she asks politely. I nod quickly and she steps back, holding the door open for me. I look to Peeta but he squeezes my hand and drops it. I told him I wanted to do this alone, but in this moment I shoot him a panicked look of regret.
"You can do this," he whispers, but I'm dizzy with nerves. "Katniss, just tell her what you told me." He steps back and presses his back against the wall, taking post beside our guard.
I enter Boggs's home. Where he used to sleep. The walls between which he wasn't a soldier. He was a husband. Father. Lover. Friend. Between these walls, he was himself.
At the table in the center of the room, Maya sits scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. Her black hair is interrupted by a streak of bright green. Her mother catches me eyeing it.
"They weren't happy, but I think she looks beautiful," Boggs's wife responds. Maya raises her face to me and smiles before focusing again on her work. She draws a mystic serpent, her pen tracing each individual scale with more patience than I've demonstrated in my entire life. This family isn't broken. When they lost someone, they didn't splinter like my family did. They didn't fall apart. They grew together, like two saplings bracing each other against a wind. "So, Katniss. What are you doing here?" Boggs's wife looks at me critically.
"I, um, well," I sputter.
"Noah never liked indecisiveness," she replies. I know this. I realize I'm slouching again and straighten my back. I take a deep breath.
"When District 13 was bombed, Boggs's saved me. I didn't make it to the bunker and he ran out and brought me to safety. We ended up stuck in a closet all night," I start. Her eyes don't react. She knows this story. She heard it from him. "We talked about our families. All night he talked about you and Maya." A small smile creeps to the corner of her mouth, but when I blink it's gone. "I don't know you, not really. But I feel like I do."
"I feel like I know you too," his wife says. When he was with me he talked about them. And when he was with them he talked about me.
"I was with Boggs when he died," I manage. Maya's pencil pauses on the paper, but she moves it again, although she's clearly listening to us carefully.
"I know," his wife answers. The Capitol showed the footage." So she saw me. She saw me run from him. She saw me leave him before he was consumed by tar.
"I didn't mean to leave him. I mean, I did, but–"
"You didn't have a choice. He was already gone, Katniss," she says. The way my name fits in her mouth strikes me, and I realize it's because everyone else from District 13 calls me Soldier Everdeen. Who is this woman that says my name and dyes her daughter's hair green?
"Did he tell you to run?" she asks. Tears sting my eyes and I nod my head furiously. She smirks. "That's Noah for you." She steps to the sink and pours me a glass of lukewarm water. "He talked about you all the time, Katniss. Noah respected you. He thought you could end the War and he was right." I feel a knot burgeoning in my throat. I try to sip the water. "He told me before he left he wasn't coming home. That he had to deliver you to the Mansion. That was his purpose." Her eyes move away from me and watch her daughter. "We said our goodbyes. We made peace with it."
I don't know what to say. I thought she'd be angry. Compulsive. Broken. But the woman in front of me is anything but. She's resilient.
"I made him a promise," I finally say. "I told him I'd take Maya to the sea." At that, Maya stops pretending not to listen. Her wide, blue eyes shoot toward her mother. "He told me he stole her colored paper. That she imagined what sand felt like. That she would escape from here in her imagination and that when the War ended, he'd help her escape in real life. But at the end he knew he'd never be able to. So I promised him I would."
It's silent for an uncomfortable amount of time.
"We aren't allowed to leave 13," she finally replies. I see Maya deflate.
"What do you mean? The War is over. You are free to go anywhere you want," I answer.
"Thirteen isn't like the other Districts. We need one another to survive. Some of us are permitted to leave, yes, but those that are considered critical to the success of the district have been detained," she explains.
"And you are…. critical?" I ask.
"Yes. I am a botanist. I am designated as essential personnel and therefore we are not allowed to leave." It's the first time I hear any emotion in her tone. Defeat.
"What do you mean detained?" I ask carefully. She stares at the wall.
"We have to stay," she replies evenly.
"Would you stay? If you didn't have to?" I ask meeting her eyes. I find that fire in my belly. I remember the strength that got me through the Games. Through the War. That strength Boggs's had faith in.
"No," she answers honestly.
"I'll be back," I say, every bit of nervousness evaporating from my being. At the door I pause. I turn back to her, looking over my shoulder. "Boggs's told me you were smart. You read books to fall asleep at night. He said you two would dance after Maya went to bed. That you like things neat and he drove you crazy leaving his shoes next to the door. But he never actually told me your name."
She smirks. "Ruth."
"Ruth," I repeat before stepping outside and closing the door. Peeta immediately stands straight.
"How was it? Are you okay? What happened? Is she coming?" he babbles. My stomach feels hot like embers. I stoke the flame until my jaw sets. I turn to our guard.
"Who's in charge?" I ask sternly.
"General Hill," he replies, taken aback by my forcefulness.
"Bring me to them," I respond, not breaking eye contact.
"Those aren't my orders," the soldier retorts.
"That's fine. I served with President Paylor. I'll just give her a call and have her arrange–"
"Right this way," he barks, turning on a heel. I take off after him, Peeta in tow.
"What's going on?" he asks under his breath.
"I found my Mockingjay song," I respond, my sister's words like honey in my mouth. It's the same song it's been all along.
Freedom.
