Thank you for the reviews, and my first ever FAVORITE! That made my day! Thank you! Again, I would rather have constructive criticism than phony compliments- but either of those is better than no comment at all!
Cinna's apartment is obviously new, it has the sterile clean environment of a house that has not yet become a home. But I see signs of him settling in. Scissors rest on a table, snippets of thread cling to the blades, I notice a half opened notebook is filled with sketches of outfits. I smile at him, "So you are still designing?" He smiles at me and shrugs, "Well, I am trying. It's just... Harder to get inspired now." His eyes glaze over with a sorrowful cloud, so I change the subject with the best distraction I have; my children.
"Rose!" I urge her to come out from behind her father, they rarely see new people in our secluded district, and due to our history it is hard for Peeta and I to expose them to as many new people as we should. Shyly my daughter moves forward. "Rose, let me properly introduce you to Cinna. He's a,-" How do I explain a relationship with someone who was my designer? My protecter? My inspiration? My guilt? "He's an old friend of mommie's." I finally say. Smiling easily, Cinna kneels down to her level. "Hello! Did you say your name is Rose?" Ducking her head bashfully she nods. "So are those your favorite flowers then?" She gives him a scornful look, she does not look like me often, but whenever she gets scornful or stubborn I feel she is me in miniature. "No! I didn't choose my name so why would it make me love those flowers the best?" Cinna's smiles becomes more genuine, "Ah, how foolish of me! So what is your favorite?" She doesn't hesitate, "I like ALL the flowers, if I had a favorite it may hurt the other's feelings!" For the first time in years, I hear my friend laugh again. "We'll that is very wise Rose! And very fair." Giggling Rose backs away, her eyes grow big again as they look hungrily over his scars, taking them in. I should chastise her for staring, but I don't want to draw attention to it.
A weight thuds into my legs, and I almost fall forward. This doesn't even phase me, since the time Roran learned to walk he has always preferred running into me to stop rather than simply slowing down. I am hoping he outgrows this soon, he is getting big enough to bruise my legs. I bend down and hoist his solid weight into my arms. "Roran baby, this Cinna! Can you say hi?" Burrowing his face into the crevice of my neck that he loves, he mumbles, "HIIIII!" I try to coax him out to properly say hello, but he just tries to hide his face even more. Cinna laughs, and Peeta moves to take our son from my arms.
"Well, should we sit down?" Cinna asks, motioning towards a couch as poofy as a marshmallow. I sit and feel the cushion give way around me, almost suffocating me in its slick leather. "Katniss, would you like to sit next to me?" Peeta asks this tactfully, but I see the smirk playing around his eyes. I move to a chair that is not trying to swallow me, and once I am seated, for a handful of moments the three of us adults just kind of gape at each other in silence, shocked we are all in the same room together again. Meanwhile the kids sit on the floor poking each other and occasionally giggling.
Cinna shakes his head, looking back and forth from me, to Peeta, to our kids, back to me, again and again. " I just can't believe that I am seeing both of you again let along that you are both married with children..." Peeta smiles his easy smile, "It is pretty hard to believe sometimes, even for me. It took so long to convince her after all!" They both laugh at this when I feel the heat of my blush engulf my face. "Peeta come one, do you always have to say that? After all considering we were so young when we... Meet, it was not such a long time before we got married." Cinna chuckles, but I think I see a flash of something in his eyes. Sorrow? Nostalgia?
Before I can wonder, Rose is besides me, resting her cool hand on mine to grasp my attention. "Yes sweetie?" I ask. "Mommy are we going to eat soon?" I realize I have not fed her or her brother since the breakfast on the train. Feeling like an awful mother I exclaim, "Oh I am so sorry, I forgot we hadn't eaten! Ok, let the grown ups talk a bit and then we will get some food!"
Cinna stands up, "actually I thought we could order food in, so we may want to do that now." The next few hours are a blur. The kids are awestruck by the variety of food on the takeout menus, we eat dinner leisurely, but though we talk, its only about unimportant small things. There is no mention of the games, or Cinna's capture, no word is uttered about our competing in the games or lost loved ones. I can feel Cinna is holding back, I can't help but wonder if it is because I brought my family. So after the meal is over and the kids are bobbing there heads falling asleep, I suggest Peeta take them to the hotel we are staying at while I talk with Cinna more. He agrees and soon Cinna and I are alone.
He brings over a pot of coffee and we sit by each other He is the first to speak. "I am sorry Katniss, I know we have so much to talk about but I just didn't feel like talking about such horrible things around such innocent ears." I nod, "Thank you for that, I really don't want to have to tell my kids about my past just yet." "They really are beautiful!" He tells me with a sad smile. Did he ever have children in his life? People he cared about? I want to know these things about him but now is not the time. "So- I am here. Can you tell me now how you escaped?" The smile slips from his face as he becomes deadly serious. "Well I guess I have put it off long enough... Where do I begin..." He picks up a cup of coffee in front of him and stirs sugar into it for what seems like hours. He is stalling. "You know, if you don't want to its perfectly fine for you not to tell me." He shakes his head, "no I want to tell you I am just piecing it all together and looking for the right words."
"It all started with the wedding dress I suppose. I was so enraged when I had to design it for you, I knew you didn't love Peeta at the time, I knew you were not ready. But I got orders to create your dress so I wanted to make it fabulous." I close my eyes and remember the dresses I had to try on, there were so many but they all had the same amount of intricate detail... "And I have to admit I was proud of those dresses! Every one could have been perfect for you. Then the announcement came and I learned you were going back in the arena. Well, I won't go into details, but I was furious. Enraged. That was when I actually began seriously looking into the rebellion rumors I had been hearing about. Some members had approached me, but at the time I didn't want to take any major risks, so I declined. Almost before I could go looking for them, more members of the rebellion found me just hours after Snow made his announcement.
"I only met with them a few times, we didn't want anyone to suspect I was a sympathizer to the rebels, but we met enough times that we formulated a plan. It was my idea to personify you as The Mockingjay, to make you a symbol. I remembered your pin and of course people in the districts had already grabbed it as a sign of hope. I got to work designing your outfits for the rebellion, but I wanted to do something more. I asked, but they said I was needed too much, that if i blew my cover I may not be ready to make you the Mockingjay. But I knew we couldn't wait to show the districts you were the symbol they were waiting for, we had to act fast. So I decided to, well, give your wedding dress some modifications."
Cinna takes a deep shuddering breathe, and drinks from his coffee before continuing. "The whole time I planned for the dress to turn I felt confident in what I was doing, I didn't care if it would put me in danger, and I figured you were already in danger and this would hardly affect you. But the moment you finished turning and I saw you in that dress the magnitude of what I had just done hit me like a ton of bricks. I had endangered both of our life's, I made snow even more determined to kill you, and I had put myself in severe mortal danger. But when no one came to take me away that night, well I was stupid enough to cling to the slim hope that maybe I would go unpunished for what I did. Of course, you where there when I was taken, I don't think I need to go into details."
We both sit in silence, I don't know what he is thinking about but I am trying to not remember how the metal hands pounded into my friend, how I was utterly helpless as he was dragged away from me, to be killed I thought. "Well the only good thing I would say about when I was taken is that I was not taken to President Snow. If that had happened I am sure I would have been killed. Rather I was taken to a highly guarded prison where I was... Interrogated. It was not pleasant. The worst part was that I was never actually given any important information, even when I wanted to give in and tell them everything I could, I did not know enough to satisfy them. I still don't know how long I was there,it felt like years, but looking back I realize it couldn't have been more than a few months."
Running his hands through his hair, he continues. "I know I should have been killed, from the first day I was told that as soon as they got the information they thought I had that I would no longer be needed. I knew I had to escape, but I didn't know how. Luckily a handful of rebels infiltrated the prison I was at, and managed to hack some records. It was arranged that I would be shipped to anothe prison under another inmates number and name, but I was told there was a catch. Because I would be transferring under another records the rebels would no longer be able to keep track of me, and I was told it may be a while until they found me again- if ever. On top of that I later learned the rebels who helped me where caught and killed- they never got to tell anyone that they had saved me." I sit on the couch absorbing the information as more and more pieces of the puzzle fall into place. I am finally learning the events that led to me believing him dead.
Cinna continues. "So, I was sent away. I never did learn the name of the prison I was at, but I do know it was built specially for war prisoners and that it was somewhere in the north. They had some pretty rough people locked up there, but I later learned roughly a quarter of the prisoners where like me. Rebels who had been saved from the death sentence by being condemned to a prison for who knows how many years. It was not the best place to spend a decade, but at least I was alive, and I always hoped I would be rescued- And of course finally I was.
A couple hours later I am walking away from the apartment, processing all that I learned. I eventually got Cinna to talk more about what the prison was like, but every time I approached the topic of his capture in the Capitol he would keep his mouth closed. But from what I learned my friend has been through horrible unthinkable things, and as I walk through the cool night air I feel utterly grateful that he has managed to survive. We are going to see him again tomorrow, and then it will be time to go home. Home. Where I can walk through my forest, where Haymitch will spend evenings at our house when he is not drunk, where I can feel safe. How is it that I have only been gone for a day when I miss my home so much?
Suddenly the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and I feel as if I have walked into a dream. A wave of déjà-vu washes over me but I don't know why. I look around. What, is this? Oh no. Waves of panic wash over me, suffocating me, muffling my thoughts. The houses stand tall around me as I stand on the edge of the square. This is where thought I was going to die, where I watched people fall into a bloody abyss as thy slid of the ground. This is where I watched people have the skin melted off of them, and that means that not far from here is where I watched my sister die. My instincts scream at me to flee, turn around, run until I locate the hotel where my family is staying. But I feel like I have to honor Prim and see the place where I lost her. Where I failed to save her.
As if in a dream I see my feet moving one after another, as I walk around the edge of the square. Do they still have the death trap beneath my feet? Do the people here know where they are living? Then again, they probably don't. After all my own children don't know that one of there favorite places to play is essentially a graveyard. I emerge from the square, and I am stunned. The mansion that Snow lived in is gone, I don't know what happened to it, if angry rebels tore it down, if a fire envelope it, all I care about is what has taken its place. Slabs of cold marble are lined in sorrowfully elegant rows, is this a graveyard? I think it is until I walk up to one, run my hands over it and see the small engraved letters spelling out a name. "Sarah Ripta". Who was she? Who were all of these names that I see coat both sides of this slab? I realize in a way this is a graveyard. It must be a memorial for those who lost there lives in the war. So does that mean...
There are well over a hundred slabs here, each finely covered with hundreds of names that appear not to be in any particular order. So it takes me hours before I find any names I recognize. Though I run my fingers over names like "Finnick Odair" and "Cato" and "Clove" I have not yet found the name I look for. I start crying when I find Rues name, and when I see Mags name on a slab something crumbles inside of me. But it is not until I have looked at a couple dozen stones and read the names of too many people who have died that I find her. In the third row, almost at the bottom of the slab I see the name Primrose Everdeen. I collapse to the ground and begin sobbing. We never found my sisters body, never gave her a grave, this is the closest thing I will will ever have to her again.
I finally let the thoughts emerge that I have been resisting since I learned of Cinna being alive. Why couldn't it have been her? If someone could have still been alive, why couldn't it have been my sweet little sister who was so strong and brave? Who went against orders to help save children not much younger than herself? If I could have chosen I will not lie, I would have picked her life to be the one that was saved. The whole evening I was with Cinna I could not stop thinking of it. What would she look like now, what would she be doing? Would she be a doctor? Would she have started a family of her own? It kills me that I will never know what she could have been like. I hate that in my mind it was my fault that she died.
I am crumbled at the base of the Alan of rock for a few moments more, allowing the sorrow to fill me. I want to stay here forever, I feel like I never want to move again I am so heavy with sorrow. But I remember my family waiting for me at the hotel, it's time to go back to them. It's time to move on. I press my fingers to my lips and then to her name, I wish I could kiss or hug her again. I will just have to go and give my children a million kisses and hugs. I walk away from her stone, wiling away tears. Maybe tonight I will tell my children a story about there wonderful aunt. Tomorrow we will see Cinna again and I will go home. Life has to move on, and right now it is pretty good. I have to accept that and leave my last behind. As I walk home I look up at the stars, and for the first time in a long time I almost feel at peace.
Ok I think this is a pretty goo ending, I will leave it unfinished for about a week in case I get a wonderful idea, but till then consider it over! I am so glad so many people read and enjoyed my story, I have plans for Avenger, Divergent AND Harry Potter stories, so don't forget about me!