Thresh is dead.
So is the girl Katniss calls Foxface. And Cato… Cato cries and begs for death in the Cornucopia below. And the coldness of death draws nearer in the icy night. Katniss has tied a tourniquet to stem the flow of the blood, but I've lost so much already. It's a challenge of who can outlast the either. Katniss will outlast us both. Surely there must be a way to end this now. I want Katniss to just take the arrow from my tourniquet and end it one way or another.
It goes on and on and for some reason I see the faces of the dead in the sky, surrounded by a gray haze. I'm outside of my body watching myself slit that girl's throat again. Her blood turns into a swarm of tracker jackers and now there are the bodies of Glimmer and Ariel, bloated and nigh unrecognizable. Cato screams and moans. Juice drips off Foxface's chin. No, it's blood. And it's not Foxface. It's Katniss on the floor of the cave. I've done it. I've won the Hunger Games.
That can't be right.
There's a light boring down through my eyelids. I wake up in a white room. I try to sit up, but I'm tied to the bed and there are all sorts of tubes coming out of my arms. What has happened? I close my eyes again and try to remember.
Yes, yes I remember it now. I have won the Hunger Games, but only because of Katniss. She's the real victor. When the rain stopped we went out. Then I had, in fact, killed Foxface. Not intentionally, but she'll be credited to me either way. And then the sun was boring down on us, the stream was dry, and then… Then the mutts. Glimmer and Marvel and Clove, all of them at once, growling snarling, snapping at my flesh.
My eyes snap open and I try to sit up again, only to be pulled back against the bed. But I tug at my bed covers and manage to pull away the corner covering my left leg. Where my left leg should be.
I resist the urge to scream. But it's weird. Below my left knee there is nothing, but somehow I still feel it. If I hadn't paused to think, if I had just drifted back off to sleep, I would think it was still there. Frustrated, I try to move the phantom limb, but of course nothing happens. There's nothing there. Just then I feel a cold liquid in my veins, something coursing through one of those tubes, and I'm unconscious again.
I don't dream this time. Or the next. I don't know how many times I wake up and try to grasp something that is not there only to be put back to sleep before finally I'm awake and there's nothing restricting me. I remember this time that my leg is gone, so as I start to jump up I very nearly knee myself in the face. When the shock has worn off, I take a moment to look down and examine the new limb I have been granted. Somewhere ahead of me a door slides open.
"Oh good! Just in time. It's going to be a big, big, big day!" I'm not even paying attention to her. I'm paying attention to the metal and plastic thing that lies where my left leg might have been. I look up just in time to see Effie give me a sympathetic look. "Oh yes, unfortunately they couldn't save the leg. But look at you now!" I swing around so my legs – one real, one artificial – are dangling off the bed. "It will make a marvelous replacement?" She pauses. "Well, I'm sure Portia can dress it up quite nicely"
I can't help but shake my head at Effie's priorities. She helps me off the bed and points to some pants and a shirt that have been laid out for me. I end up needing a little help with my legs, but I'm hardly listening to Effie's tuts and tsks. I'm still processing. I'm alive. I'm clean. All the scars have been wiped from my body, even those that I had before the Games. The Capitol has made me cleaner, newer, healthier than I've ever looked – minus a leg.
Katniss' stunt with the berries worked. So the Capitol has decided they'd rather have two victors than none at all. I keep playing that last scene over and over in my head. By the lake, Katniss and I, her victory assured. Then she pulls out the berries and for a second I think, I thought, she was going to kill herself for me. Well, yes and no, it turned out.
Once I'm dressed, Effie leads me down the hall, yammering away as we go, but I'm not really listening. I'm both trying to figure out how this new leg works (it seems to respond just as easily as the old one) and trying to fit together those last few scenes before it all went dark. Trying to understand why I'm here, alive, out on the other side of the Games.
By all accounts, I should have died. I wasn't surprised when the rule change was reversed. What I was surprised with was Katniss' reaction. I mean, she had nearly convinced even me in that cave that she cared for me as much as I cared for her, but that last act of defiance surprised me still. How clever it was, and how dangerous. Was it really worth the risk for me? The Capitol could have just let us go through with the double suicide. No victor this year, or maybe named one of us a victor post-mortem. That wouldn't have sat well with either the districts or the Capitol, though. What would they have done come the victory tour, conveniently scheduled between the yearly Games in order to keep the Capitol's control fresh in everyone's minds? Trotted out the mentor and the stylist. But no victor.
My head's still a fog when I reach the room with Portia and Haymitch. Katniss isn't there. I want to talk to her. No, what I want is to kiss her. Take her in my arms and feel her heartbeat, her steady breathing. How else can I be sure that this is all still real? But they don't want me seeing her until we're reintroduced to the public. Days must have passed in that room, tied to that bed. While they kept me asleep, they nursed my body back to health, healed my scars, fitted me with my new leg. I'm still not ready to be presented quite yet, though.
The prep team helps me with the shower and double checks to make sure I haven't been growing back any facial hair. That was all lasered off before the Games. Turns out it's a little unnerving when an eighteen-year-old with a full beard massacres a baby faced twelve-year-old. More than usual. I'm ready then for Portia who suits me up and gives me a reassuring smile. If she says anything, I don't remember. I'm thinking about Katniss. About those berries. That double suicide that almost happened all because she wouldn't kill me and go home alone.
There's a wall up in the room under the stage and I know Katniss is on the other side. If only I could just talk to her. If only I could see her for just a moment before we perform this last show for the Capitol. I think about going over to the wall and knocking, if only to get some sort of response, to know she's really back there. Instead I wait patiently on my plate. I hear the roars from the crowds as each member of our team is introduced. The prep team, Effie, Portia and Cinna, Haymitch. Then it's our turn.
And then I'm being lifted to the stage. I'm past ready to see Katniss again. I don't even care what else is going on up there, who's watching, what else gets said. All I know is that I'm alive because she's alive and that means something. When we're up there they'll show it all to us again and it will give me time to think, to decide what is going on. The stage lights blind me at first, and the crowd deafens me. But then I blink and it all comes back into focus. And there's Katniss, dressed sweetly in yellow. She's no longer the fearsome girl on fire. And I suppose I'm no longer the tragic lovestruck boy with the bread.
We are victors.
