It's the little things.
For my father, it was a match.
It's always a match, down there. You try spending fourteen hours a day bent half over in the dark and muck. Try it and see if you aren't jonesing for a hit of those joysticks that are Strictly Prohibited but that somehow still slip onto each of the silver snake trains, just like the white liquor that masquerades as water but burns like fire.
One little joystick.
That's what your friends had said, too. One little taste, they dared, dangling an innocuous, skinny tube between bared teeth and lips. Like the straws they use in the Capitol to preserve their neon white teeth. And you looked over to see that one person, that girl or guy with the little dimple or the little mole right there. Little things.
So it's just this once, you agreed, reaching and smiling and belonging. But what you didn't know is that once quickly becomes twice and then thrice and then you're sucking on that innocuous little straw like it's the only air you can breathe. And then you're that punk down in the mines, stepping off into a side tunnel for just one little taste. Won't hurt nobody. Until, of course, it does.
For my father, it was a match.
For Panem, it was a few poison-plump berries in two palms. It was three fingers. It was a single slip of paper naming a slip of a girl.
For Peeta, it's a bit of steel no wider than his thumb.
Ø
There's a reason the Game Masters no longer give tributes guns. Too quick, too easy, like falling asleep.
A twitch of a finger, and my world explodes. Literally, as the instant Peeta pulls the trigger, the same moment Peeta blows his brains out, something else blows the nearby wall in.
Everything goes sideways, and I land on palms and knees. My mouth is open in sound (I can't hear), head ringing, reaching for a Peeta that is no more (I can't find him). The floor tilts, shaking me from my precarious perch to the ground. Rubble grinds into my cheek. Above, the ceiling creaks and flakes.
This was caused by so much more than a bullet. Someone, somewhere has directed a firebomb our way. Another finger, on another trigger. Perhaps Snow, as he'd reached for some unseen control panel. Perhaps one of the Rebel ships, seeking to chop off the head of the snake. The air around me screams and sizzles, frustrated in this lifeless place to find nothing to burn.
Then, as suddenly as it all began, it stops. For a moment, all is silent, all is calm. I lay and I just breathe. Breathe and breathe and wait for the sky to fall. Peeta's dead and I with him. My eyes begin to drift shut.
In the dark of death, something moves. A mere shift of rubble, but I know, I just know that it's some new horror that's been unearthed. I'm thinking it's Snow, come to finish me off at last, sifting through the ashes of his empire. Or perhaps a mutt with eyes like an electric sky. Or maybe Peeta himself, rising from the dead, a final mission branded into his brain—kill Katniss.
Slowly, very slowly, I raise my head to the sound. It's dark now, almost too dark, but in the meager light cast from a gaping wound in the ceiling, I watch a figure rise from behind a nearby mound of concrete.
And there's a sound, a click click click like claws on marble.
My fingers clench around a nearby rock.
Again the sound, but the figure doesn't move, doesn't come closer. It just sits, hunched, head bowed.
Click, click, click.
That sound, it's almost metallic.
At the thought, I propel myself upward into a crouch, whirling so I'm facing the person head on, grimly ready for whatever is next. Despite my movement, the figure still doesn't move, doesn't acknowledge my presence. The person seems to be mesmerized by something in their hand. Something that glints like a gun.
Click, click, click, goes the gun.
And I see this and I hear this but I can't understand this because…
Peeta is dead.
"No," the person moans, as if in answer, and the gun goes click, click, click. The person sounds remarkably like Peeta. But it can't be because Peeta can't speak. Peeta can't move. Peeta is lying somewhere in a bed of blood.
I can't understand and I can't understand and then…
Then I do.
It click click clicks.
Our Game Master gave us only one bullet. One bullet that Peeta used earlier to shut off Snow.
I scrabble up, slipping on detritus in a mad dash for Peeta. Peeta's alive. Peeta's alive and is moving and is still trying to kill himself with the gun he's holding in his hand.
Click click click.
"We have to go," I say, clutching Peeta's arm, wrenching the foul instrument from his grasp. He lets me but then recoils, cowering beneath the nearby table, latching himself to one of its legs, handcuffs clinking as though they can somehow restrain him still.
"No." He shakes his head, thick and slow. I pull on his arm, but I'm not strong enough to move him. Above us, the ceiling groans. We have only seconds.
"Peeta!" I scream, gripping his cheeks in my hands, willing his vacant eyes to focus on my face. Instead, they focus on something else, something lower. I follow his gaze to see him reach a trembling hand for the curl of my braid, polishing it between his fingers.
"Shiny," he says. I can't see Peeta anywhere in his eyes.
Above us, the ceiling gives a final sigh and relinquishes its load. Peeta's hand clutches at my braid and he yanks. So hard that my head snaps and I see stars.
Before everything goes dark, I think, This is how my father died.
Ø
When I wake from the dead, I'm swathed in sheets that slink. There's sweet on the air, as of something puffy and pink. I'm still in the Capitol, then. Or perhaps hell.
My first thought is of Peeta.
"He's here." It's mother, rising from a chair. I must have spoken his name. She steps closer but doesn't touch me, expression wary. "In the infirmary."
"Can I see him?"
Mother falters at that.
"Not yet," Prim chirps, bouncing herself onto the foot of the bed.
They fill me in. In a remarkably accurate impression of Effie, Prim informs me that the odds were in our favor (the last time I ever want to hear about odds). That the table, that marble monolith of a table, protected Peeta and me from a bulk of the falling sky, courtesy of a Rebel firebomb. My scalp is still delicate where Peeta yanked on my hair, forcing me to join him under the table. Saving me still.
Rebel soldiers searching for Snow recognized us, dug us from the ruins of the Capitol. I have a concussion, some bruises and scrapes from falling permacrete, but the table protected our vital organs from the worst of it.
But the most vital organ of all—Peeta's brain.
They don't have to tell me about that one. I already know. Peeta is worse off than I am because the last-minute "tweaking" the so-called doctors did further scrambled the eggs he has for brains. So they're still working with him, trying to coax him back to himself. Like taming a wild animal.
It may take months. It may take years.
It may not work at all.
Ø
We watch Snow's trial from the monitor in my room. Fitting.
It's short. There are no witnesses for, too many against. The appointed defense attorney presents the shortest, most vague rebuttal in history. Uses a lot of big words I don't follow, which is probably the point—say a lot without saying anything.
Representatives from each district vote, quick and unanimous. Snow is guilty of too many crimes to name. The penalty for his guilt is death by firing squad.
Namely, me.
I kill Snow, I'd told Coin, and she remembered.
Ø
Two days pass, and then I'm standing on this platform, and people from thirteen (minus one) districts are silent, waiting for me to perform this honor, wishing that they stood in my place, that their hands held my bow. They've produced it for me, how kind of them, how symbolic. Normally, my bow feels like an extension of my arm. Today it feels foreign, like a prosthetic limb that's an inch too long.
I'm standing a few paces from Snow, so close that it will be easy. Closer than Cato had been. As close as Marvel was from Rue.
Snow doesn't even look at me. He doesn't look at them. He stares off into the nearby woods, serene, as though enjoying the twilight of another day. Maybe if he'd look at me, it would be easier. Maybe if Prim weren't looking. She and the other children lining the crowd, up front where they can see. I think about the Mockingjay and how it's supposed to be a symbol of freedom, of life. Not death.
I draw the string back, so far back. Hold it for so long that my arm begins to tremble.
The crowd holds its breath.
Then I lower the bow, the notched arrow slipping to the floor.
The crowd begins to murmur. I make no move to retrieve the arrow, arms hanging loosely by my side.
"Something wrong?" a nearby soldier whispers, breaking protocol. He knows who I am. I don't know any of them.
I drop the bow as well, and it clatters twice before growing still.
No big speech, no rousing words condemning this last, heinous act.
I just…walk away.
Ø
No one stops me.
I step off the platform, away from the crowd. Soldiers edge aside to let me pass, three fingers making the sign of respect. They understand what it's like to kill.
Only one thought penetrates my haze: find Haymitch. And find him I do, not far from the banquet table. Of course there's a banquet table; it's a Capitol execution, what an occasion. He's sauced, but I've seen worse.
I plant myself in front of him. "Take us home."
He doesn't tease me. Doesn't ask questions I can't answer. Instead, he grabs a final flute of something that sloshes and grants my wish. He can't stomach the Capitol any more than I.
Later, I learn that President Coin stabbed Snow herself, right through the withering rose over his heart. The crowd did not cheer. Many of them were still looking after me, wondering whence their Mockingjay had flown.