We had hoped... I had hoped... that Finnick's wedding would be the start of his healing. That Annie would be the one that would allow him to start to move past the horrors of the torture he endured to protect us all. That maybe with a wife, his wonderful and shy and unintentionally demanding wife, he would be moved past his fear of water by sheer force of necessity. Maybe we were right, maybe he would have been, maybe he even was beginning to move past it, but then came the bombing, Snow's response to the happy wedding and the proposal and the dancing and the kissing and the proof that here in District Thirteen, life goes on. I feel so sad, so sorry for him, but even with the reaffirmation of his terror I do not and cannot regret getting down on one knee and asking Katniss to marry me. I do not regret being there for him on his happiest day, or dancing with him as he told me the truth I was keeping myself blind to. I do not regret anything from that day, or the night that followed, wherein I lay my beloved down and ministered to her every need, showed her how I love her, how I need her. The problem was the next day.

We are woken by an unbelievably annoying and shrill alarm cutting through the air to hammer us to our feet. I roll to the side, unaware of my position on the bed, and fall flailing to land on the cold stone floor, bruising my tailbone in the process. "What the flying fuck monkeys is that goddamn noise?" I bellow, trying to block it out with my hands on my ears. Katniss is swearing in such a manner that it makes me proud, almost like a parent when their child does something extraordinary, but she doesn't have the answer I need right now. Thankfully, the voice of Commander Paylor comes over the PA system in the district and tells us all, "Early warning systems have detected incoming Capitol airships and long-range missiles. It is to be assumed that this is a response to last night's Airtime Assault as expected, follow the emergency lighting and retreat to the safety housing structures. This is not a drill, we have thirty minutes, priority goes to top levels first, all personnel on levels one through ten are to report to emergency stations immediately."

Our quarters are one level three, so we scramble to find enough clothing to be considered decent enough to leave the room. It takes about five of our precious thirty minutes, but we do manage to find a workable uniform for each of us and climb into it, sprinting down the halls haphazardly until we manage to find a group of residents who actually know where they're going. Then it's just us, two more drops in the flood of people washing down the halls and the stair and the corridors to the safety bunkers buried deep below ground. There is no way that anything can reach us here, but still we go deeper until there is nothing but a black abyss before us, and the tide thins and spreads out to dump us into a cavern so high that even with the lights they provide for us, we cannot see the ceiling. The natural pillars are thick and strong, and buttressed by human hands it seems they will never fall.

The protocols for this are drilled into every soldier's head from the day they start training, so Katniss and I both know what to do now that we are here. We fall into the line of Thirteen citizens and wait, the slow crawl of assignment inching us forward even as the last of the evacuated finally make it down into the safety of the cave.

The hours crawl by, the time spent in the dark interminable even with water clocks to keep it. Down here in the black, there is nothing to keep out the memories, nothing to keep the nightmares at bay except the company of the ones who would understand. Katniss and I leave our space to hunt down the newlyweds, seeking the comfort of their presence and also seeking to offer the comfort of ours. Somehow we both know that Finnick isn't going to be taking this well, that being thrust underground by bombs isn't going to help him overcome his fear.

Days come and go, and at last, freedom comes. We ascend to the surface, happy to be freed of our bonds and our imprisonment in the stone to find that the sky is weeping our release just as we are. Katniss and I step into the rain and glory in it, the feeling of the cold damp running down our skin showing us, telling us, that we are alive and free, that Snow still has no hold on the life we have built in his absence. We laugh and dance in the downpour, love flowing freely between us, and smile to see Annie step out of the shelter of Thirteen to join us. She beckons to Finnick, and for a moment we think it will work, that having the three of us there for him will be enough, but then he leaves his protection behind. I count the seconds and he is under the sky for only about fifteen of them before he falls to the ground screaming and clawing at his flesh, his hysterical babbling exclaiming that it burns, that the water itself is electrocuting him. I hear him weep even as he rants and writhes, and there is nothing that we can do but pick him up and carry him back indoors. Even out of the rain, he continues to try and fight, to claw, to get away from the torment that is the worst scar the Capitol has ever given one of us. Katniss looks at him with pity in her eyes, and before I can do anything to stop her she drops his feet and punches him in the jaw. I scream at her all the way to the hospital, but she is unrepentant and believes she did what was best for him. I can't tell her that I actually think she is right, that knocking him out saved him a lot of pain and us a lot of trouble.

Our fight is far from over, or so they tell us. The truth of the matter is much less defined however. Our fight is almost done, but the last holdout in the war with the Capitol is District Two, and it isn't falling. No matter how much they rebels in Two work, no matter what they try to do or how they attack the Peacekeeper nest, they can't take it and they can't destroy it. About a week ago, after days trapped underground and the freedom after resulting in the near total collapse of the sanity of my best friend, I forced Coin and Plutarch to send me to District Two, to put me on the front lines. Of course they had to send Katniss too, their Girl on Fire being so gifted and all when it comes to getting people to follow her. She says she doesn't have a way with words, and that may be true, but she certainly has a way with people. Peeta knew it, and while his words could make anything we little people did seem inconsequential, it was the actions that my lover took in conjunction with those words that could give them so much power. Her charisma, the thing that makes her a perfect rallying point for the rebels, is what caused the rebellion in the first place. It's why Peeta stuck with her, even gave his life for her in the arena. It's why Finnick fought to save Peeta, it's why he refused to bend for the Capitol, it's why he fought to stay silent until they broke him and even then he didn't talk. It's why Haymitch crawled out of his bottle, why he sobered up and became the mentor I had heard he used to be. It's why that man worked behind the curtain, his machinations keeping her alive and allowing so many things to come to pass.

More importantly, her charisma is what brought me to her in the first place. Make no mistake, Katniss Everdeen is a beautiful woman, far more incredible than a broken monster such as myself should ever be lucky enough to have, but it was her actions that caught my attention. It was the way that she effortlessly managed to call others to her, like Peeta before she even knew that he existed, and Rue in the arena. Her defiance in the face of death gave us all hope, and when she gave Rue the best she could for a funeral, though much of it was censored away we knew. When she pulled out the nightlock berries, some of us who were ready to fight saw the truth of the action, that it wasn't love that drove her but a desire to hurt the Capitol. If they would go back on their word and betray her, they would pay for it by losing the one thing they held most dear: their victor. When she entered the Capitol for the second time, a goddess of war burning with her rage and staring unforgivingly at those who perpetrated her return, so many people fell in love with her. The year previous, it was Peeta that they knew, with her being the pretty and eye-catching girl with a new name. The second year, she was the one who escaped, she was the one that fought until the fight was done and then kept going, and she was the one that the Capitol betrayed again. Oh, they betrayed all of us victors, but she was the one that everyone could see the anger on. I saw her in that chariot, and there were no words anymore. There was only her.

Now she is here with me, in an active war zone, and they are trying to keep us out of the fighting but they can't. We are both trained soldiers, and Katniss knows how to be sneaky, how to move unseen, and I just follow her whenever that happens. No matter where we are that day, or what propo we are shooting about the state of the war here, if she hears gunshots she vanishes and I have to scramble to catch up. We have actually appeared in many of the more crucial battles, just suddenly on the line and her voice rallying the troops. When they see our armor, the rebels cheer and renew their fight, and the Peacekeepers start to crumble. They have tried to fight against us, but her legend precedes her, and so does mine. They can't aim straight, they can't stop shaking, they can't stand strong, not in the face of the Mockingjays. Her arrows sing through the open air, leaving devastation in their wake, and when the fighting gets close, it is my axes that they fear. Thirteen thought to keep us out of the fight, and yet they forgot that they were allowing us to go to a real war zone with our weapons and our grudge against the Capitol. Because of that, though I suppose I should actually say "because of our determination to not sit idle while others fight and die in our name," we have helped to push back the Peacekeepers and the resistance in this District until one last problem is all that remains.

In the center of the district, among all the villages in the mountains and the cave systems and the battlefields, there is a mountain. I think it used to be called Pike's Peak or something, but now it is the last line of defense that the Capitol has against the rebels. When the uprising occurred way back when, Thirteen was the seat of the military for Panem. Their defection, secession, whatever you want to call it, crippled the Capitol and they had to scramble to make sure they had a new place of strength, hence District Two becoming the training grounds of the Peacekeepers, and at the very center, a mountain that had once been a mine for precious metals and coal and other things. When their needs changed, so did the jobs of those working in the mountain. No longer was there a need for gold, or silver, and coal was mined in Twelve, so instead the miners were turned into stonecutters, hollowing out the mountain so that teams of scientists and engineers could move in and rig the whole place up as an impenetrable fortress. They had banks of computers, drill halls, training grounds like the ones we had in the Capitol as Tributes, hangars for their hovers, surface-to-air missile pods, AA guns, everything they could possibly need to defend themselves and train more recruits. The rebels of Two have been fighting to take this fortress since the whole thing began, but no matter how many ways or how many times they go for it, they always fail. They've taken to calling it 'the Nut' because it is so tough to crack, and personally I love the name.

Today, we sit in the center of the main town, our command center within sight of the train station and the Hall of Justice. We're in a meeting with the commander of the rebel forces here, a woman named Lyme who I recognize as a Victor though it seems to be taking Katniss longer, when we both get a com on our earpieces. I know it isn't just me when her head jerks up and she stares at me, a startled expression smeared across her fine features. Haymitch's voice pours into my ear, his speech slightly slurred but on the whole about as sober as we've come to expect. I hear him tell me that the brains of the rebellion are on their way to help us with the puzzle of breaking the Nut, and when he hesitates, I predict what he's about to say with more accuracy than I believed I could have. "Johanna, there's one thing... Gale is coming with the rest. He may not be a genius per se, but he does bring another perspective and he is smart. Just thought you oughta know, in case. Katniss... I'm sorry. He insisted." I watch as my fiancee's face settles into a stony expression of disinterest, and I worry that Gale has made her close up again just like he always does.

The meeting has been going on for hours, and there is still no sign that it will ever end. Hawthorne has more patience than Kat or I, but even he couldn't stay sitting at the table after the first two hours. Now he spends his time pacing between the planning display and the window where my girl has seated herself, staring at the mountain we are trying to conquer. When he speaks, his voice is quiet and controlled. "Is it necessary to take the Nut, or would it be enough to simply disable it?" Beetee looks up from his blueprints and stares long and hard at the hunter before answering, "That would be a step in the right direction. What did you have in mind?" Katniss and I ignore the rest of it, not caring about anything unless it means we get to do more fighting against Capitol forces. We don't think that we'll get the chance, but then Volts calls in to Thirteen control and tells them the plan they've come up with, and even President Coin tells them to funnel everyone out the main entrance of the mountain and wait for them, capture them if we can and kill them if we must. We grin at the prospect of being given orders we can follow.

Our planes are ignored at first, having never caused trouble for the Nut before, but their waves of bombing eventually gets their attention as they realize what we're trying to do. Their AA guns spin up, but by then it's already too late and the mountainside begins to slide, great waves of rock and dirt cascading down the slopes and wiping all traces of human presence from view or existence. I can only imagine the terror and panic inside the fortress, and then I realize something I should have known beforehand. Katniss has gone silent next to me, her gaze fixed on the mountain as she watches everything descend into chaos, and I know where her thoughts have gone because I am following her narrative in my head. What we have done is collapse a mine onto the miners within, echoing the tragedy that stole her father from her six years ago. We hear Haymitch tell us to get inside, but I know what she's going to say before she says it and what she'll do before she does it, so I bark back that we're going to go take care of the Peacekeeper resistance and help the rebels hold the train station.

We sprint down the steps leading into the square, sliding on handrails to get past our own soldiers where necessary, and we don't look back. I hear the song of her bow behind me, see the streaks of her arrows as they fly by me and pin soldiers to walls or to the one behind them, and I can feel the air ripple as bullets whiz past my face. My axes carve a path of carnage through each unit that seeks to press into the square, to press desperately towards their comrades, to rescue those coming from the fortress. No Peacekeeper makes it past me, not with my Girl on Fire backing me up. Other squads of rebels hold the streets I cannot defend, and soon we can hear the trains screeching into the station. Finally, the soldiers stop trying to beat us back, their number too few to even make a push on one point. We think it is over, but then nothing happens. The trains are empty, no one on them and nothing happening, at least not until...

BOOM. The first explosion rips through the lead car of the train in the station, shards of glass and twisted metal blasting out into the populace surrounding the building. Most of the casualties are civilians, unarmed and unarmored men, women, and children hoping to see their families come tumbling out of the doors, though a few of the dead are rebel soldiers. Not enough though, and the effect is opposite whatever was intended, I am sure. We were supposed to be decimated and demoralized by the blast, but instead it is once again the innocent who are caught in the Capitol's heavy-handed stroke, and I can take no more of it. A red haze settles over my eyes, everything focuses down to a single point, and my feet are pounding on the earth beneath them as I charge what is left of our enemies. Anyone wearing the armor the Peacekeepers falls with gaping red mouths carved into them, bullets chip the stone at my feet or by my face, I move as I have never moved before, and there is nothing that can stop me now until pain explodes in my chest, all of my forward momentum stopped with a single shot, the bits of metal raining down around me. I cannot breathe, I cannot think for the pain, but I can feel my heart continue to pump so I know I will live. I cannot say the same for the woman carrying the shotgun that blasted me, her head vanishing in a crimson spray as the explosive charge in the arrowhead detonates.

Boggs rushes to me, checking me over and mumbling something about us Mockingjays being lucky to have armor so well made and impervious. I can hear Katniss begin to rant into a microphone, telling whoever is left that the fighting is over and the Nut has fallen, when two more trains screech to a halt in the station, people pouring out choking on smoke as they shoot the lights in an ill-advised attempt to give themselves cover. As they stumble out of the cover of the building, I can see Katniss start to do what she does best and take care of people. Upside-down, I can see one guy trying to plug a hole in his face with a bloody cloth as he points his gun at her head with the other. I can't hear what they are saying at first, but then she turns away and continues to speak louder now, "When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought...they've done it again. Got me to kill you - the people in the districts. But why did I do it? District Twelve and District Two have no quarrel except the one the Capitol gave us." She stands straighter and her voice strengthens, and I can feel myself fall for her all over again as she continues to speak. "And why are you fighting with the rebels on the rooftops? With Lyme, who was your victor? With people who were your neighbors, maybe even your family? And you up there? I come from a mining town. Since when do miners condemn other miners to that kind of death, and then stand by to shoot whoever manages to crawl from the rubble?" I hear Haymitch in our ears ask her who the enemy is and she continues on, "These people are not your enemy! The rebels are not the enemy! We all have one enemy, and it's the Capitol! This is our chance to put an end to their power, but we need every district person to do it! Please! Join us!"

I think that they will join us, that they must join us after a speech like that, but instead I see her shot only thirty feet from me, the bullet slamming into her back from inches away and knocking her forward to land on the pavement, blessedly unconscious as I try to scream her name and only succeed in causing my vision to black out from lack of air.

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A/N: I know it's not as long as you have all come to expect, but I've had to work on this chapter for days and I finally am satisfied with it. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about this, actually, so I had to see what I came up with. The things that happened were not originally intended, but I feel that this is more or less what would make the story proceed best. I don't know, killing innocents like that always turns my stomach, but it does show that the Capitol is the real enemy.

Johanna getting shot first was something that I didn't even think of doing until I blew up that train. I know her mind well enough to know that seeing people who never fought get cut down would throw her into a frenzy, and in that berserker state she would be faster but not as cautious. Her getting shot by a shotgun was the only way I could guarantee less damage to her than Katniss would suffer, so for where I'm taking this, it was necessary. Still though, getting both girls shot... I don't like it. :( I love my girls.