Author's Note

I wrote, edited, scrapped and rewrote this chapter more times than I care to admit, and I'm still not entirely satisfied. Please let me know what you think, because I am incapable of thinking any more. I tried, but it turns out that my brain went on strike and didn't even bother to tell me. Many thanks to all of my readers for your support and encouragement.

"I want in." I snap a sheet of paper up next to my face so my father can see it clearly. He turns ghost- white. I do, too, a little. You've crossed the Rubicon now, Margaret Undersee. No going back. But I keep it together. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I see my spat with Gale in a new light. A training session. Like what Katniss is doing now.

"Where did you get that?" he asks. At first I'm annoyed at the question – of all the million other things he ought to ask or say or do, that's it? Then I realize, as his hand trembles when he adjusts his glasses on his nose and swallows with effort, that this is the only thing he could force out.

"In the drawer with the false bottom in the desk." I say flatly, trying to make it clear with my tone of voice without being entirely disrespectful that I will not accept evasiveness. I must walk a very fine line here. It's taking a lot of concentration. I didn't sleep at all last night; I went to bed feeling like my every nerve had been set alight between the excitement of my discovery in the den and the emotion of the Ceremony in the square. Stacked on top of the night before that, when I didn't rest particularly well due to a fit of crying, it's left me exhausted and impatient. Dad didn't get home till the wee hours of the morning, and it took some careful planning to corral him into the den without provoking suspicion. I didn't want him to catch on to what I was up to and give him the chance to make an excuse and avoid me, and I didn't want the slimy Capitol news reporters staying with us to sniff out a story (or worse). I found a lot more than I bargained for when I disassembled that drawer. Enough that I knew I was in over my head before I even tried to do anything on my own. Enough that I was convinced that Plan A might be the best course of action after all.

"You found that?" It's clear from the panicked twinge in his voice that he is seriously concerned about the fact that his sixteen-year-old daughter so easily found the hiding place for a sheaf of treasonous documents.

I'm too tired at this point to be anything but brutally honest. "I was a little surprised myself. A drawer with a secret compartment? And it's not even written in a cipher. But I guess something that cliché would be easily overlooked? No coding needed?"

"You read it?"

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. My tone is already drifting dangerously close to snottiness. No, I was saving it and hoping you'd read it to me as a bedtime story. I reign myself in by reminding myself that the stupid questions are just the shock talking. "Yes. I read it. That's why I want in."

….

I spend the better part of Sunday in the woods, which is nothing out of the ordinary except that for the first time in a week it is almost comfortable. I feel that I can take my time again, that I don't need to rush through the motions so I can escape the memories here. I still miss Katniss, but it's easier to think of her now. The sense of loss has transformed into something more like a sense of waiting. She is absent now, but she will return. This flicker of hope is an uneasy, alien thing for me. But at this point I'll take what I can get. I can adapt to uncomfortable situations. I've done it all my life. Sometimes it takes a while. There are worse things than hope to get used to.

I think of Katniss in her burning costume as I clean up my neglected bow and arrows. A light in the darkness. She did not inspire hope – she demanded it, and sparked it to life in all of us. Even me. And I'd thought I'd long passed the point when I would ever be able to feel it. I suppose I have Madge Undersee to thank for that, too, but I don't want to thank Madge Undersee for anything, so I choose to ignore it. As I inspect the grip on the bow, it occurs to me that ignoring the fact that I ought to thank the girl leaves me nothing to think about except… just the girl. The way she had turned to smile at me. How it was not a condescending, I-told-you-so kind of smile, but something earnest and full of joy. That her messy disaster of a ponytail was actually quite becoming…. Fine. Thank you, Madge, I think, and I roll my eyes at myself. There. I acknowledged it. Ah, there we go. Annoyance is easier. Moving on.

I busy myself with examining the fletchings on the ends of each bolt. About a third of the arrows in the quiver need them replaced. Katniss would be irritated with me. I can see the exact look she would have on her face: forehead not quite creased from frowning eyebrows, grey eyes half-lidded, mouth in a tight, straight line. This is something I've always been a little less than diligent about; as far as I'm concerned, fletching an arrow is a pain in the ass and therefore merits my attention only when absolutely necessary. Katniss was always much more conscientious. But I've been especially lazy of late. Even for me. I set the worst of them aside and promise to make myself repair them as soon as I get my hands on some good feathers.

I shoulder the quiver and the bow and set out to check my lines of snares. I get a fair catch from them. A pair of rabbits and a squirrel in the woods, and a fat raccoon and muskrat closer to the stream. I'll keep a rabbit, the squirrel should sell at the baker's (provided his harpy of a wife doesn't answer the door first), and the other rabbit and the raccoon will likely be easy to trade. The muskrat will probably go to Greasy Sae, because though she seldom pays the best prices her standards are reliably low. I learned a long time ago that those who can afford to buy meat tend to have more prejudices about where it comes from. I reset the snares, but I don't bother with new ones today – today is not the day to linger on the lines. No, today I will hunt. Like before she left. I owe her that.

….

"I can't let you get into this mess, Magpie." After shock, panic, anger, and fear wash across his features, my father settles on desperation, and tacks on the embarrassing pet name he uses for me in a last-ditch effort to persuade me to back down.

I'll give him credit. It almost works. A small part of me wants to be eight years old again, still too young to be embarrassed by my nickname, love a boy who despises me, have a friend Reaped for the Hunger Games, understand why my father is so afraid in this moment. To be holding world-shattering plans in one hand. World-shattering. Ignorance is bliss, they say, and some things can never be un-seen, un-known, un-felt. In the hours he's been away, my father has missed the fact that I have not missed that our world is a profoundly broken place. He's missed that that small, wishful part of me has eroded away to nothing more than an echo.

"Too late," I say calmly as I shake my head.

My response seems to snap him back to his senses, because his voice becomes stern. He is unaccustomed to blatant defiance from his daughter. To be honest, so am I. "No. You are a sixteen year old girl-"

"Who has a friend in the Games and who goes to a school where three quarters of her classmates don't know if they'll get to eat supper when they go home. This-" I wag the papers between us "-can change that. I can't sit here and do nothing anymore."

The anger and desperation mix into something that looks painful. "Yes, you can. Being part of this could cost you your life. Your life, Madge."

He says the words like I don't understand what they really mean. He thinks that I haven't thought about it, that telling me that I might die for this might convince me to take his advice. He's wrong. I've had my head around this for a long time. My father did not raise a stupid daughter.

"As far as the Capitol is concerned, I already am. It's going on in my home. If you get caught, if you fail, I die. Whether I do or even know anything or not. I die. If I'm lucky." The next part hurts, but if I let him see it, all is lost. I'm confident though, because there is something that my father does not know about me. "You put me in this position. I didn't get a choice. So from my perspective, if you don't let me help it leaves me one option: I take these to Peacekeeper Cray and save my life." It kills me to say the words, and essentially blackmailing my father is the most painful thing I have ever done. But outside, I am only cold and heartless.

He looks for a moment like he might actually fall out of his chair from shock and rage. His face turns beet red, he seems to cease breathing altogether. I stand my ground. Then, after a moment, he softens. He sits back in his chair, defeated, befuddled, and maybe even a little proud. "I know my daughter, and she would not do that. But otherwise, I have to say I'd have believed you if you were anyone else." He sighs, takes off his glasses, pinches the bridge of his nose, and I feel like I've just passed the audition.

I feel lower than I ever have for putting my father though this. But I have a good reason. When I started reading through this collection of jumbled, handwritten notes, I'd expected to find details on how he would tamper with the tesserae rations or fudge the budget books – things I'd long suspected he was doing to try in some small way to make life a hair's breadth easier for the citizens of Twelve. I wasn't thinking nearly big enough. Pieces of the plan had been slowly falling into place for years, and the next is critical. As the Hunger Games go, so goes the Capitol; if we fix the Games, wreck their outcome, we break Snow. And to fix the Games, we are going to kill Seneca Crane. My father never really knew about my ace in the hole, and he's beginning to understand how valuable it can be. I'd never go to Cray. But when properly motivated, I am an extraordinarily good liar.

….

I follow the creek for a while to get further from the places where I'd set my traps. Water sources draw game, so I choose a comfortable-looking tree near a wide spot in the creek, swing up onto a branch and settle in to play the waiting game. Hunting requires a lot of sitting still and being patient. There is a reason I don't do this with my brothers. Rory might get to that point in a few years, and I know he wants to learn, but if I let him start now we'd all starve.

Little by little, I tune out the sound of the water over the rocks to listen for the rustle of prey. If I turn my head just so, and keep the branch on the other side of the tree just outside my field of vision, I can almost pretend Katniss is perched there, still and silent as I am. The breeze brings a soft rush through the trees and the dappled sunlight dances on the forest floor below and makes the stream glitter. The darker shadows of denser leaves make thin rivulets of light visible as they fall to earth. An azure dragonfly flits through the golden lines like a little airborne gem, and it reminds me of Madge and her pretty, messy ponytail.

I see a chipmunk dart through the low foliage and across the creek. I ready my bow in an instant; the rodent is too small for an arrow, but I hope that something larger might be chasing it. After a second another one tears by, but nothing else in pursuit. I continue to listen carefully, but only the chatter of birds fills the air. I remember how Katniss liked to make the mockingjays sing, and without thinking, I whistle a few notes. Far away, a bird whistles back. A pause, and it sings again as if expecting an answer. I check myself and stay silent, certain that I've already frightened away any nearby game with this lapse. Then I catch an uglier, less melodious sound in the distance, only for a moment. Geese. A brief fit of honking gives them away farther downstream.

I slide down from the tree and pick my way quietly along the bank of the stream. Around a gentle bend, over a fallen tree. Ahead, bright light signals the edge of a clearing. I slow my pace and watch through the foliage; small heads bob on long, skinny necks. As I ease toward the treeline and kneel down I know they see me as little beady eyes turn my way, but I'm not concerned about it. Geese are not especially intelligent. They honk amongst themselves, but they don't flee. I nock a bolt and raise my bow, choosing my first target carefully. If I do this right, I should get a fair number of them.

It takes a loosed arrow to spur them to action, and they run and start to take flight as one of their comrades keels over with a weak bleat. Except for the one closest to me. It hisses angrily and spreads its wings in a waterfowl temper tantrum. Some geese make up for lack of brains by being meaner than hell. I ignore it, since it doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon, and zero in on the rest of the flock. I pick off three more in quick succession before they are too far away. I don't want to lose my arrows. Besides, four geese is a damn good haul. And I get the feathers I need. Two birds, one stone. The angry goose finally gives in and starts to retreat. I consider making it five, but I let the mean one go on principle.