With about a minute to go, I make my way downstairs, hearing my steps echo through the relatively empty house, until I reach the living room. Turning on the TV, I settle into the couch, tuning out the news broadcast until the rebels take over.
Yesterday, Daphne told me to be sure to watch the propo today. She didn't tell me anything about it, but I'm sure it's just more dazzled up footage of our victory in 2. Still, in order to humor her and keep abreast of everything, I decide to watch, and to my utter surprise, I see a very familiar face light up the screen. It's Finnick's insane lover, Annie Cresta, but you would never know it looking at her. I pull forward on the couch to get a closer look. Although she's wearing a bright green dress, it's obvious what's going on.
A second later, the camera shifts to Finnick, whose eyes are glued to his bride, walking down the aisle.
I'm completely thrown off. I thought we were in the middle of a war, and if anyone was going to have a wedding, it was going to be Katniss and Peeta.
I don't know what to make of this. It seems so wrong, after all that footage of death and suffering, but then I guess that's just every day stuff, and as I keep watching, the past few days almost melt away, because you can't feel anything but happy for them, just seeing how they're looking at each other.
We're probably airing this to rub our win in the Capitol's face, but whatever the agenda behind the video, I know that two people are genuinely happy in the midst civil war and although I don't know what it's making everyone else feel, it fills me with hope that one day things will be better.
As I loosen up, I curl up on the couch and peel my eyes away from the bride and groom at times to look around. The wedding hall is filled to the brim with all sorts of mismatched people who don't look like they belong at all, but you know that Finnick and Annie don't care, and that makes me not care either.
At certain times, the wedding is interrupted by my uncle, but not for long, and not often. During those moments, I just keep staring at the screen, knowing that all their efforts at the station are pointless. And after we took District 2, maybe everyone's looking for something happy, even if it's the happiness of their enemies.
With the announcement that the Capitol had lost the majority of its weaponry and man power, all revelry had ended and the streets emptied once again.
With all this tension and real threat looming over us, my uncle convinced my father to make me stay home from work, despite my protests, and I am once again just nothing, doing nothing.
But I really don't want to get into all that again, so I watch the wedding and let my old habits resurface.
"That's a really good angle on her," I say to myself.
"Mm, they should have done a close up there."
"Just a dab or two of eyeshadow would have done it."
"The lighting is a bit off."
After the ceremony is dancing and I laugh at what can only be described as District 13's first attempt, and I think it's wonderful, how District 12 and Plutarch Heavensbee is having an influence there. And I'm sure it goes both ways. The sharing of culture. Didn't people used to do that way back when?
When it's over, I turn off the TV and lean back. Now with that out of the way, I know all that's left is more fighting and jumping up, I go off to find Cassie to help her rearrange the house.
A week later, distant sounds of construction begin and the first displaced family moves in. It seems ridiculous, the traps and soldiers marching around this area of the Capitol of all places, but we know it's real when they air shots of rebels marching through our streets. My heart pounds with each new face and when they're blown to bits or escape the traps.
By the next week, I've managed to sneak Aella and her parents into our house too. We give her parents the lounge and Aella moves into my room. I'm glad to have an ally and my closest friend with me and sometimes at night we climb onto the roof and try to see the fighting for ourselves, but they're always too far away.
With the country in a state of war and 6 families stuffed into our house, the television is never off and I begin to loathe it. I'd never realized how much our lives revolved around that stupid thing, sucked into whatever topic, never questioning the obvious biases.
Everyone is either silent or in a state of panic. Aella and I try to calm everyone down, try to humanize the Districts, but it doesn't work. We become frustrated, seeing as this is the only outlet we have to help in the cause, but then, the Capitol has never really viewed them as human, so it was kind of a stretch anyway.
One time the woman living in my old studio accuses us of being sympathizers, and in a near hysterics, almost gets the other families to mob us. But luckily my father was home at that time, and he vehemently rejected that notion, which made me wince, and said that he didn't care what the President said, he would kick them out if they ever threatened his family again, and that quickly ended that, but it still hasn't stopped her from glaring at us every time she sees us. And I think she's even taken to spying on us, which makes any kind of substantial communication between Aella and myself almost impossible, but she falls asleep really early, probably a symptom of depression, and that works out fine for us because at night, the children have trouble sleeping. Too many nightmares.
That's when we try to comfort them, while their parents are lying in stupors induced by their sleeping pills. They go through them like mad. I even gave them my old ones. But anyways, at nights, Aella and I lie in bed whispering about the rumor that Katniss is coming to kill President Snow until the knocks start.
Then we jump up and let the kids in. There's three of them, aged between 5 and 9. They were insufferable the first few days they were here, but then they just started whimpering about going home and became so pathetic that I couldn't help but like them.
When we open the door, they shuffle in quietly, with barely a word.
"Remember, don't tell your parents," Aella reminds them.
They nod, and afterward, we begin playing. Card games, guessing games, throwing games... and we even make videos with my tab, making up skits on the fly. And in between we get to talk.
"How do you feel about what's happening now?" Aella asks.
"Bad," Leon says.
"That's how the kids in the Hunger Games felt, too. It's not a nice feeling, huh?"
He shakes his head.
Around midnight, the children tire out and collapse on the floor. We pick them up and take them back to their rooms and tuck them in. It's really sweet and I think that this is what a family must be like when you have nothing else. No servants or television, just each other.
During the day, when we can't avoid the TV, we, or, really just me, try to guess where the footage is airing from, but they never show any identifying marks. All we know is that the fighting is within the city boundaries, but not close enough to my house to be a threat to us, but it's so quiet, that when we sit outside, we can hear the gunfire and see the smoke.
We're sitting on the sidewalk arguing about which one of us would be more useless in combat, when Leon runs out to tell use that Katniss is in the Capitol.
We run back in and sure enough, there she is, standing in the middle of a lavish neighborhood in stylish war attire with a retinue of soldiers behind her.
"She looks pretty," Nicki says, before being scolded by his mother.
"She's trying to kill us!" His father says.
"Why did they let her get away with that trick in the Hunger Games she played with Peeta? They should have killed them both!"
"They were way too lenient on them!"
It escalates, the worse sort of verbal abuse I have ever heard, and I want to make them stop, but I can't, so I turn to Aella to pull her away, when her mother screams and the room goes silent except for the TV.
Then glaring at them, she says, "Stop it! You're scaring your children."
And we all look at them and see them sad and terrified of their parents. They grumble out of pride but pick them up and comfort them, and things remain civil after that, but I wonder how long it will last. We've already had two incidents and we don't know how long this war will last.
One night, Aella decides to sleep with her parents instead, and as I pass their room, I hear them talking, and I miss being able to talk to my mother and father about the things most important to me, and I'm sorry that the most important things to me all my life were the newest dress and the cutest Victor.
When I manage to get a hold of Daphne, it seems that she's not doing much more than us. The time for spies is over. The war is in the open now, and it's all up to the soldiers. And she has no information about anything since all resources and energy and time are being spent on the physical war... so I just hope that they don't forget about us... and then Katniss gets blown up.
Watching it with all the squatters, at first I hope that it's a trick by the Capitol, but they wouldn't be so stupid as to pull something like that when it's so easy to prove that she's alive. And then President Coin announces the tragedy.