In the mansion, they handcuff and blindfold me. I'm dragged through hallways and stairwells, until I'm finally deposited in a room. I hear the door slam behind me, and I lift my blindfold to discover I'm in our old room in the Tribute Center, only this time, I'm alone. The room is full of ghosts. I see Cinna and Portia, laughing at the dinner table and passing a bottle of wine. I see Haymitch and Effie in the corner, whispering to one another. Peeta is there, he's everywhere. He's in my room, he's in his room. He's perched on the windowsill, looking down at the city. He's in the bathroom, pushing the buttons on the shower and laughing at the different soaps and scents that come out. The door to the roof is locked, but I'm sure he's up there too.
I go to my old room and strip the Mockingjay suit from my body. There are no other clothes in the drawers. Cinna's creations are gone. I curl under the covers in my underwear and pull the sheets over my head. I miss Peeta. I miss Gale. But mostly, I miss Prim. While she was never here at the Tribute Center with me, I carried her with me everywhere I went. She only went with me to the forest once, and I still saw her in every flower that bloomed, every fawn that munched on spring grass.
Prim haunts me much like Rue did. I picture them together, where no one can hurt them anymore. I picture Rue reaching out her tiny hand, and my sister grasping it. I imagine Prim braiding Rue's hair. It brings a smile to my face, but smiling makes me feel dizzy with guilt, and I quickly purge it from my lips.
Much like in the hospital, I lose track of time. Necessities are slipped to me through the door - clothes, food, toothpaste, drugs. I have a litany of pills I'm supposed to take - anti-rejection meds for my skin, morphling for pain, sleeping aids and antibiotics. I don't take any of them. I flush them all down the toilet, except the morphling. The morphling I hide in the top drawer of my dresser. I may need that.
As the days and weeks go on, I spiral downward. My skin starts to fray away from me. It's painful and I think I deserve it. My thoughts stagger between my kills and the deaths for which I'm ultimately responsible. I think back to the rubble that used to be my home - to the bodies littering the streets, frozen in scenes of horror. Mothers with arms cradled around infants charred to the bone. Kids hiding under their beds. The elderly curled in a rocking chair, unable to flee and fully aware of the impending inferno. The couple found wrapped around one another in a closet. Those are all on me. I walk to my dresser and open the top drawer. Scores of morphling tabs roll around. I scoop them up with my hand. This should be plenty.
I go to the bathroom and run a bath. This way, if I only pass out, at least I'll drown. I lower my body into the lukewarm water. I swallow the fistful of pills and I slip into oblivion. I wake up in my bed hours later. My hair is dry and braided, my pajamas are fresh, and my stomach is churning. Apparently I'm not allowed to die, either. What? Are they keeping me alive just so they can execute me? I assassinated their President in front of thousands of people. I sit up in bed and scream, "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? COME ON! COME AND GET ME!" I pound my fists into the bed and tear it apart. I beat the pillow until feathers burst out. This is the most exertion I've had in weeks, and I lay on the floor exhausted. I look around me and I'm surrounded by feathers. I sweep my arms up and down and make a feather angel, like Prim and I used to do in the snow. I stare at the ceiling, and out of nowhere, my voice slips from my lips.
Deep in the meadow, under the willow
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes
And when again they open, the sun will rise.
I sing the lullaby for Rue. I sing The Hanging Tree. I sing the Valley Song. I sing every song I can remember, until sleep takes me.
I'm shocked the next morning when Haymitch enters my room. "Your trial's over. Come on. We're going home." Home? I don't have a home. 12 is gone. I can't go anywhere, I don't have any shoes. I'm not thinking straight. I don't understand.
Haymitch, in maybe the only sweet gesture he's ever made to me, takes my hand and leads me up to the roof, where a hovercraft is waiting for us. I duck my head and step inside. I'm still disoriented. The sun is really bright and the distances are blurry. He buckles me into my seat and I focus on my companions for this journey - Haymitch and Plutarch. The hovercraft lifts into the air, and we are off.
"You must have a million questions, Mockingjay!" Plutarch exclaims. It takes all of my self control not to spit on him.
"Don't call me that," I say back with as much contempt as I can muster. It doesn't seem to phase him in the slightest. Plutarch continues on as if we are old chums. After I assassinated Coin, there was mass chaos. Effie smashed the reaping bowl, which I saw. The children were rushed from the square by guards and returned to their homes. An emergency election was held, and Paylor was elected President. The reaping was cancelled, The Hunger Games were cancelled. Snow's body was found in the marble tunnel, but reports left out that it was plagued with Mockingjay arrows. My trial was televised, where Plutarch and Dr. Aurelius painted me as a mad girl, a shell-shocked lunatic with little to no grip on reality. Witnesses from 13 testified about the time I wandered the halls "mentally disoriented" when the Capitol took Peeta. After my criminal exoneration, I was to be released to Dr. Aurelius's care. In an agreement hatched behind closed doors, it was determined I would return to District 12, accompanied by my mentor and now guardian, Haymitch. I was to continue my sessions with Dr. Aurelius over the phone. But I could go home.
"So what now? For the country, I mean?"
"Now we're in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated," he says. "But collective thinking is short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. But who knows? Maybe this time it sticks. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of the human race."
Plutarch continues to babble on about his new job, and asks if I'd be interested in participating in his new singing program. I'm not. We briefly land in 3 and drop off Plutarch. Haymitch and I continue home. We land in the middle of Victor's Village. I'm still barefoot and in my pajamas, but I meander up to my door. Haymitch follows me inside.
"Everything's pretty much how it was. I'll give you some time to settle in, sweetheart." He squeezes my shoulder but hesitates at the door. "Can I leave you alone here, Katniss? Do you want to come home with me?"
The idea of staying with Haymitch actually makes me laugh out loud. He gives me a sideways look. "I'll see you in a few hours, then. For dinner." He closes the door behind him and I take in my empty house, in my empty village, in my empty district. This place is full of a new set of ghosts. Gale, lying on his stomach on my kitchen table, his back flayed. My mother and sister, hovering and silent and serious, putting him back together. I wander to my bedroom and find my father's hunting jacket in my closet. My other belongings from 13 sit on my dresser. I put his jacket on. It's heavy and musty. It feels bigger than it used to, but I know I lost weight during my trial. The idea of food make me crinkle my nose. I collapse onto my bed and stare out the window. I can see Peeta's house, empty. His ghost sits next to my bed, drawing in our plant book. His blonde eyelashes are almost transparent as the sunlight crosses his face. He looks at me and smiles. Prim leaps onto the bed next to me. My heart breaks.
The sun sets and I am frozen in bed. Haymitch comes up to my room and tells me dinner is ready. I can't imagine him cooking, not like I'd eat even if it was lamb stew. I tell him I'm not hungry. Haymitch understands grief. He whispers goodnight and closes the door. The night passes and I'm in and out of consciousness.
The next morning, I hear rummaging in my kitchen. I assume it's Haymitch, until a delicious aroma creeps up my stairs. I sneak out of my room and perch at the top of my stairs. Greasy Sae is in my kitchen, stirring eggs on the stove and frying bacon in a pan. Haymitch sits on a stool and tries to steal bits of potato from a pot, and she swats his hand with a wooden spoon.
"Dear God, woman!" he cries out as he rubs his knuckles. I can't believe Haymitch is up this early. I can't believe he's sitting in my kitchen, eating potatoes and not a liquid breakfast. He clings to his coffee as though it is anchoring him down, and I can tell his head is splitting. Haymitch is sober. Sae just glares at him. She's never been one for a lot of words. I creep my way down the stairs and sit on the stool next to Haymitch.
"Coffee?" Sae asks, and I nod my head. I've never really liked coffee. Peeta always puts a bunch of cream and sugar in it to get me through it, but I've really never understood the allure.
"Where's Peeta?" I ask Haymitch quietly.
"He's in the Capitol still. He is in therapy with Dr. Aurelius. He hasn't been cleared for travel yet." Haymitch replies.
I guess it makes sense, and I just nod my head automatically. I can't imagine he'd want to come back here. This district is a graveyard for his family. His bakery was burned to the ground. I'm a shell of a person, I can't take care of him. I can't nurse his wounds, I have too many of my own. I don't expect I'll see him again. Maybe Peeta can finally move on. Maybe the look we shared on the stage over the sea of guards dragging me away was really a goodbye. It should be. He should find someone that will love him without dead sister baggage. Someone with an open heart. Someone who will give him children, and a real marriage, and a life worth living. That someone isn't me.
"Where's my mom?" I ask. For the first time since my father died, all I want is my mom. I want her to stroke my hair and tell me everything will be alright. I want her to make me eggs, not Sae.
"She couldn't do it, sweetheart. There are too many memories here," Haymitch tries to take my hand, but it's not like him and it feels fake. I withdraw. I push my eggs around my plate. My mother has never been one to shoulder grief with dignity. She didn't take care of me when I was a child, starving and crying out for my dead father. I don't know why I expected her to take care of me now. Why would she come back here and comfort a fire mutt?
"I'm not really hungry," I say and excuse myself from the table. I thank Sae quietly and go back upstairs. This ritual continues for some time. Sae making breakfast. Most of the time Haymitch is there, even though it's too early for him and I can see the bleariness in his eyes. I stop showering. I don't change my clothes. I don't see the point in any of it. I walk past my sister's room and drag my fingers across the door, but I can't go in. It's like a time capsule. I can see where everything is in my mind's eye. Hair ribbons on the desk in front of the mirror. Dresses Cinna sent for her lining her closet, even though, if she were alive today, she'd have outgrown them by now. I know why Coin's heart had frozen. Losing a child is a special kind of torture, and Prim was as close to a child as I'll ever have. I cared for her when our mother could not. She was mine. I'd die for her. I volunteered to do just that. It feels cruel that she's the one gone now, and I'm stuck standing outside her room like a woman trapped in a widow's peak. Buttercup somehow finds his way back home. We find a mutual place with our grief. We aren't friends, but I don't feel like I need to drown him.
Spring finally comes. The earth starts to come back to life, and so do I a little. I've spent the winter locked in my home, but today, I want to go outside. I try to brush through the rat's nest that was once my hair, but it's stubborn. Maybe I'll just cut it off. Or maybe Effie could send me something. She's been sending me little things here and there. A bottle of olive oil. A balm for my skin. Earrings that I'll never wear. Gale sent me a letter. I didn't open it. I threw it in the fire and watched the flames consume it. Peeta writes almost every day. I keep his letters in a drawer in the kitchen, but I don't read them.
I tie my hair in a knot on top of my head and put on my father's hunting jacket. I make my way out to the Meadow. When I first returned home, the earth had been turned up. They used this area as a mass grave when they cleaned up after the fire bombings. But now, little spurts of grass shoot their way from the earth, and crocuses cover the field. I am careful to step around the perimeter. I don't want to walk over anyone's grave. The fence has mostly collapsed, and I easily climb over it. I barely make it to my meeting spot with Gale before I am gasping for breath. My lungs burn, I feel acid eating at the muscles in my legs. I lay back on the rock and stare up to the sun. I feel the warm rays hit my cheek against the cool, Spring air, and for just a moment, I doesn't hurt to be alive. For just this one moment it's me and the woods. My woods.
After a while, I head back home again. I see my old house in the Seam next to the Meadow, and I try not to look at it. As I head up out of the path to Victor's Village, I see a familiar figure crouched in front of my house. He grasps a shovel and his wide shoulders flex as he pushes the blade into the earth. He drops to his knees and begins burying the roots of a plant along my walkway. His blonde hair falls in his eyes. I want to run, but my legs feel like lead. I just move toward him, silently, until he sees my shadow. He turns and looks up at me, his blue eyes raised to mine.
"Peeta," I breathe his name into the cold air. "You came back."
"They wouldn't let me leave until yesterday. I took an overnight train to get here."
"What are you doing?" I ask, surveying the plants in the wheelbarrow, the two buried in the earth of my yard.
"I found these at the edge of the woods. I thought maybe we could plant them by the house. For her." His voice is timid, and he drops his eyes to his feet. I see the tiny roses blossoming on the plant, and I feel sick. Why would he bring these here? I could live a hundred years and never see another rose. Then I realize… these aren't just any rose. These are primroses; the plant my sister was named for. All at once the walls I had built up fall, and I wrap Peeta in a tight embrace. I bury my face in his neck, and he tries to hug me back without getting the dirt from his hands on my clothes.
"I don't care, Peeta, just hold me." He wraps his fingers in mine, soil crunching and dirtying my skin, my clothes. We stand there in silence for a long time, clinging to each other. My legs are tired but I don't care. Finally, we break apart and I help him plant the remaining bushes. I wipe my hands on my pants as the last one takes root in the ground. I look at Peeta, give him a half smile, and walk into my house. I close the door behind me.