"STEP-daughter." Sydney corrected her hastily. Coin's daughter? This wasn't just another one of her minions out to spy on us. This was someone who had been brought up by President Coin. She probably knew all the ins and outs of being an evil, manipulative bitch. If I didn't trust Sydney before, I sure as hell didn't now.
"I raised you." President Coin answered coldly. "Isn't that what matters?" She flashed us all her evil smile. I thought back to when Sydney had shook my hand earlier that day. I thought her smile had a wicked quality, but she held nothing against Coin. No one could replicate the perfect combination of cunning and spite that spread across President Coin's lips. "Well I better be going. District thirteen doesn't run itself."
She walked back out the way she had come after shaking hands with Commander Jacobs. "Alright well don't just stand around." He said, addressing the rest of us. "Finnick, Furman. Combat zone now. Let's see if you can follow that. The rest of you go to the firing range. Rifles don't shoot themselves."
My team filed out of the room and headed to their assigned stations, but I stayed behind. Sydney held the door open for me to follow, but I shot her a dark look and she quickly closed it behind her. It was only Jacobs and myself in the control room. We were silent for a while. I stared at the ground, trying to control my anger before I talked to him.
"You have an issue Soldier Everdeen?" He said. I took a deep breath, attempting to calm myself.
"How could you let this happen? You've welcomed the enemy right onto our doorstep. No doubt she's going to report back to Coin on everything we do. She obviously doesn't trust Gale anymore ever since he and I started talking again, so she put another informer with us. It isn't safe. She could kill me while I sleep." I could hear the anger creeping into my voice.
"Katniss, I know you fear Coin. Hell, we all do, but I can't exactly refuse her. She 'recommended' that Sydney be put on the squad, and I had no choice but to give her the spot." I couldn't believe someone as strong as Commander Jacobs let Coin push him around like that. "She's only Coin's stepdaughter, so they don't share any blood. They don't exactly seem too chummy judging by their interactions, so maybe she isn't in with Coin. I've never seen her before, so obviously Coin doesn't think she's important enough to invite to command meetings."
I started to argue, but he held up his hand. "I understand where your coming from, but don't worry, we'll keep you safe. Besides, Sydney seems kind enough, and she didn't embarrass you in the simulator when she easily could have." I let out a frustrated sigh. Arguing with him was pointless. I walked towards the door and headed to the shooting range, hoping that a bow in my hands could take my mind off of this.
"Everdeen." Jacobs called from behind me. "You can't help who your parents are. It's not as if she chose Coin to be her stepmother. Just like you don't have a choice of who gets to be on this team, so it'll be a lot easier for you if you just give her a chance." I let his words sink in, and I started to reply, but I decided to just give up. It was hopeless to try to get Jacobs or anyone else to understand. Coin wasn't threatening their families.
I stepped out of the command center and headed towards the shooting range. Everything in my life was so far out of my control. I had to watch my every move. I had absolutely no say as to who I did and didn't spend my time with. Coin controlled every aspect of my life in district thirteen, and I hated it. As I got closer to the shooting range, I studied Sydney's movements. She was talking to Peeta animatedly about something, and even he seemed won over by her fake charm. It was only a matter of time before she had everyone fooled. She would put on this act so she won them all over. She would pull them away from me, and I would lose the only protection I had left.
Peeta looked up from his conversation with Sydney and smiled at me. He tried to say something, but I ignored him. I was frustrated with how he was acting, with how they all were acting. I grabbed a bow and walked to the far end of the shooting range to stand by myself. Usually I loved training with my team, but right now I wanted to be alone.
I pulled the bow string back and took a deep breath. My eyes narrowed and I focused solely on the target in front of me. The panel to my left lit up and I selected a target practice program. I took a few warm up shots and each one hit spot on in the center of the dummy that stood in the middle of the lane. Then, moving targets started to shoot out at me, and I took each one down easily. As time went on, the program got more and more difficult, and I lost myself in the shooting. I focused all of my anger and frustration onto those little clay targets and the dummies that shot across the lane. Finally, the buzzer sounded and my time was up. I let my bow arm fall to my side, satisfied with my work.
"Wow." I heard her voice from across the room. "You're better than I thought." Sydney sent me a friendly smile. I turned towards the rest of my squad and realized they had all been watching me. In that moment, I had a strange feeling I couldn't place. Fear? Doubt? Rage? No. It wasn't any of those. It was that for the first time since I joined squad 451, I felt like such an outsider. They would never understand what I was going through. They had promised to help me, but they couldn't see that the problem was right in front of them.
Peeta started to walk towards me, but I turned away from him and walked out of the training center. I couldn't be here now. I couldn't be with them. I got into the elevator and pressed the button that would lead me to our apartment. I knew I would get hell for this, but I didn't care. I wanted to be alone.
For the next two weeks, this is how training was. Every day I got more and more angry at my team as they grew closer and closer to Sydney. It became impossible for me to hold conversations with them. At lunch, I would stare down at my food and listen to their laughter. I could have easily joined in, but as long as she was there, I wouldn't. I had to fight Coin in every way I could, and that included showing that I wasn't going to give in to her games. She had put Sydney here to spy on me, but I was on guard. The more quiet I was, the less information she would get from me.
It was causing problems between Peeta and I. I could feel myself pulling away from him, but I couldn't stop it. He tried to tell me that Sydney was a good person, but instead of listening to him I yelled. I called him a traitor and asked how he could support someone who was so close with Coin. I saw him grow closer and closer with her every day, and I couldn't stand it.
"Katniss…Sydney isn't President Coin. She can't help who her step-mother is. Her father died a long time ago and she has no one else to care for her." He said during one of our particularly bad arguments, which had started with me chastising him for talking to Sydney.
"O I'm so sorry, Peeta. I didn't mean to insult your friend like that. She must have had a really hard life growing up as the daughter of the most powerful woman in thirteen. She must have struggled every day." I spat back at him. "You know, I'm glad you have her to talk to because I'll never understand how hard it was for you to grow up with food on the table every day. You can share those misfortunes with her because I'll never relate." I knew what I was saying was harsh, but it was true. Peeta and Sydney had both grown up in privileged homes. He had more in common with her than he did with me.
"Don't be like that Kat…you know that—" but I had already walked out the door and slammed it behind me. That was the first night Peeta and I had spent in separate beds.
I expected Sydney to do everything she could to undermine me and make me look bad in front of my team, but for some reason she didn't. We continued to do our duo missions, and every time Sydney and I set a record for whichever simulator we were using. In the ring, I watched her fight every member of my team without mercy. She almost broke Finnick's arm, and Peeta got a concussion from a particularly nasty kick to the head. But for some reason, when I stepped into the ring, I always beat her. At first I thought it was because I was a better figheter than I had previously thought, but as I watched her kick the ass of every other member of my team, I knew something wasn't right. I started to throw the fights. I would leave an obvious opening where she could easily trip me and take me down, but she wouldn't. I would throw lazy punches, which she easily blocked, but she wouldn't retaliate and knock me out.
It was on a particularly difficult morning that I had had enough. Peeta and I had that vicious fight the night before, and we had slept separately. We still hadn't made up, and he hadn't said a word to me all day. When Jacobs announced that Sydney and I were supposed to fight, I knew it wouldn't end well. "Everdeen, Harper, in the ring. Boxing match."
We stepped into the ring and shook hands. I went to the side and wrapped my hands, then laced up my gloves and turned around. We wore gloves because this was a boxing match, which meant that tackles and holds weren't allowed, so having a good grip wasn't necessary. The padded gloves lessened the blows. Jacobs stood as referee, not trusting the team members to be alone ever since the fight between Gale and Peeta. He gave the signal for us to get ready, and I put my hands in guard. Then he lowered his arms. "Fight!" He shouted, taking a step back.
Sydney and I circled for a while before I decided to throw the first punch. I aimed it straight at her head, and she blocked it easily, pushing my arms aside. I stood there with my chest completely open, and she didn't swing back, so I lashed out and kicked her in the thigh. Her leg buckled slightly, but she backed away from me before I could follow up. Again and again I came at her, but she didn't hit me. Everything that had been building up for the last two weeks finally boiled over, and I just stopped in the center of the ring. I threw my gloves on the ground and looked at Sydney. She gazed back at me warily, unsure of what I was doing. Then I charged at her.
She tried to take a step back, but I tackled her to the ground. I pinned her down and punched her in the jaw. She put her hands up to protect her face and I hit her in the side. She leaned to the side and pushed me off of her, struggling to stand up. I got up and she was doubled over, coughing. I could see blood running down her face from where I had hit her. I ran over and shoved her shoulders.
"Hit me!" I said angrily, shoving her again. "Why won't you hit me?" I kept shoving her until she was up against the ropes, and still she didn't shove back at me. She blocked my attempts to swing at her again, but she let me push her into a corner. Finally, I felt Jacobs arms around me, pulling me back.
"That's enough Katniss." He said. "You aren't supposed to fight without gloves, and this was supposed to be a boxing match, not a wrestling one. Punches and kicks only, no tackles. In case you don't remember the rules."
"How is it a boxing match?" I said, wrenching free of his grip. "She won't even hit me." I turned back towards Sydney, addressing her. "You nearly kill every single other member of the team. I watch you. You don't hold back. Every time they leave you an opening you punish them for it, but when you fight me, you let me win. Why would you do that? Why can't you just—"
"Because you hate me!" She shouted. She slipped off her gloves and threw them onto the mat. "I don't know what I did, but for some reason you hate me, and I don't want to make you even more angry by hurting you. I thought maybe if it seemed like I was trying to help you, it would show you that I wasn't your enemy, but I guess it doesn't matter what I do." Her voice fell to a whisper, and I thought I saw tears well in her eyes. "You'll never accept me as a member of this team." She turned on her heel and ducked between the ropes. She walked straight out of the ring and towards the elevator.
I stood still, stunned by what had just happened. I didn't know what to think. She wanted me to accept her? It was almost like she wanted us to be friends. No doubt she was just trying to trick me, but for some reason I felt awful. I looked down at the ground. "You know Everdeen." Jacobs said. "For someone who has been ostracized for their entire life based on where they're from, you sure are quick to do the same. I thought that out of any of these people, you would understand that sometimes you can't help where you came from, but you were the quickest to judge and the quickest to hate." He turned away from me. "Alright team I think that's it. We have a party to get to! Try to look nice." He finished sarcastically.
I waited until everyone had left, then I headed back to the apartment. I didn't want to face them. I knew I was wrong, and I knew I was acting like a jerk, but I couldn't help it. I had to be on guard. I went back to the apartment and walked into my room. I found my prep team there, waiting for me with open arms and scoffs about how I had let myself go again.
The generals of thirteen had decided to reward all of us in the army for our continued service by throwing a ball in our honor. Everyone living in district thirteen was invited, and it was set to be the largest party anyone there had ever seen. I thought I had the last of balls and extravaganzas when the victory tour had finished, but it seemed like I would never escape frivolous dresses and shoes that pinched my feet. I had been living the life of a soldier for so long, that sometimes I forgot I was the Mockingjay. I couldn't just look like any other girl at that ball. I had to be extraordinary, and that's why my prep team was here. They rushed me into the bathroom to freshen up while they began discussing what to do with my hair and makeup.
I stepped into the shower and let the hot water run over me. I tried to forget what had happened earlier in the day. I tried to wash away the shame, but so far it wasn't working. I got out and dried myself off. When I stepped out of the shower, Octavia immediately shoved me into a chair and went to work on my hair. I sat back and closed my eyes, letting my prep team do the work for me. Usually I played along with them and made an attempt to laugh at their jokes and listen to their stories, but today I didn't feel much like laughing. Eventually they stopped trying to talk to me and just talked quietly amongst themselves. I felt bad because I knew this kind of thing is what they lived for, but I just couldn't share their excitement. When they had finished plucking my eyebrows and putting my hair into a ridiculous, albeit absolutely beautiful, updo, I got up from the chair and went to go pick out one of the dresses I had stored in the back of my closet.
"No no Katniss!" Flavius said excitedly. "We have something special for you to wear. Usually we have a strict policy about wearing a dress more than once, but we figured that we would make an exception just this once." Flavius moved aside, and Venia pulled back the cover to expose the dress I was to wear that evening. My jaw dropped to the floor and I felt tears sting my eyes. Venia was holding a brilliant dress covered in gems of red and orange and white. It was my dress from the interviews in the first Hunger Games.
I could see Cinna in every stitch. I remembered his soft smile, his words of encouragement. I remembered how he had made me beautiful. How he had made me into a symbol of hope and honor. He had turned me into the girl on fire with the same dress that I was staring at now. "I…I don't know…" I tried to find the words for my prep team. I tried to thank them for bringing Cinna back to me, but when I tried to say something the words caught in my throat. There was nothing I could say to this moment.
"It doesn't light on fire anymore." Octavia said finally. "But it is still as beautiful as always."
I went over to my prep team and hugged them. There is nothing I can say or do to thank them for this. I strip out of the bathrobe I had been wearing and put on my gorgeous gown. My prep team puts the finishing touches on my hair and makeup and gushes over how gorgeous I look. I thank them they seem to sense I need a moment alone, because they dismiss themselves and say they'll see me at the party.
When they closed the door, I took a deep breath. I walked over and stood in front of the full length mirror that stood next to my closet. I gasped when I saw myself in the dress. It was just like the first time I had worn it. The jewels that covered my body glinted and sparkled in the light, making the dress come alive. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I was transported back to a different time. I wasn't in district thirteen preparing for a ball in my honor. I was back in my room on the top floor of that building in the Capitol, waiting to be put on display for all of Panem.
In a way, things weren't really that different. I was still being oppressed by an evil President. I still fought for my life every day. I sighed and moved closer to look at my face. I tried to find the soldier from squad 451, but all I saw when I looked at my reflection was Katniss Everdeen, Mockingjay. I was no longer the helpless girl who stood by and let President Coin rule her life. Being here in this dress reminded me of who I really was. I wasn't just another pawn she could push around in her manipulative games. I was Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire, and I wouldn't let anyone control me.
"You look amazing." I heard a voice behind me and I spun around. Peeta leaned against the doorway. He was dressed in a tuxedo with red and orange detailing, similar to the one he wore to the interviews, only a little less obnoxious. He looked just as handsome as he always had, and I was glad that we matched. His blond hair was slightly jelled, and a small smile played on his lips. "Just like you always do." He started to walk towards me slowly, looking me up and down. "Déjà vu isn't it? Just like when—"
But before he could finish I kissed him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close to me. Coin wanted me to lose everyone, and by ostracizing my team and Peeta, I was only helping her. Being angry at Peeta was stupid, and I hated that I wasted that time with him. I pulled away and rested my head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry." I said quietly.
"You don't have to be sorry." He answered, resting his chin on the top of my head. "I understand that you feel out of control. This Coin thing is really stressing you out, and I don't blame you for being upset. You're right to be on guard, and maybe I was too quick to dismiss your opinions. So I'm sorry too." He pulled me back and rested his forehead against mine. "I know things seem hopeless right now, but we've been through so much worse. We survived two Hunger Games against all odds, and we did it because together we're unstoppable. I promise to stick by you no matter what, and I know that we can get through this together. And when it's all over, we'll move back to district twelve and grow old together, and our lives will finally be normal. I promise I will do everything I can to help you Katniss. We're going to survive this just like we survived the games, together." He kissed me softly on the lips and grabbed my hand, leading me out the door.
I was speechless. I couldn't describe how much I loved Peeta Mellark in that moment. He was the strongest person I knew, and I believed every word he said with all of my heart. This man would die for me, and I would die for him. I tried to find the words to tell him that I felt the same way. To tell him how much I needed him and loved him. I didn't know what to say. After all, words were Peeta's area of expertise. I decided there was only one way I could show Peeta how much I loved him.
"Marry me." I said softly. He turned around and stared at me.
"I will. We talked about this. When we're ready, when the wars over, we'll get married."
"I don't want to wait Peeta. I'm ready to marry you now. I don't care if we're too young or if there is a war going on that could kill either of us any second." I was done waiting. I felt like all I did was stand around and wait to be told what to do.
"I don't want you to do this because you need to control something. I want you to do this because you're ready. I want you to be sure."
"Honestly Peeta." I laughed. "I've never been more sure of anything." He smiled and kissed me again.
"Wait a second. I'll be right back. We have to do this the right way!" He ran out of the room and down the hallway. The right way? What did that mean? But before I could think about what he meant he was back.
He pulled out a small box that looked a hundred years old. "I had this in my room. It's one of the only things they found in the rubble near my house. It's the only remaining Mellark family heirloom." He knelt down and opened the box. Inside was a gorgeous diamond ring. It was a large single stone on a platinum band with three small stones on either side. It was as ornate and beautiful as any ring I had seen when we had visited the Capitol. When Peeta had proposed to me fakely during the victory tour, he had used some flashy stone on a gold setting that Effie had picked out. This was much more classic. It was much more Peeta.
"Katniss Everdeen. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?" He gazed up at me with his perfect blue eyes and flashed me his signature grin.
"Yes." I took his hand and helped him up off of his knees. He slipped the ring over my finger and gazed into my eyes. Why had anything else ever mattered to me besides this boy? All of my problems seemed to go away when I looked into his eyes. In them, I saw my future. I saw myself growing old with Peeta. I saw passion and love and courage, but most importantly, I saw hope. We would survive this. I knew we would. He pulled me into him and our lips crashed together. He cupped his hand on my cheek and pulled me closer to him. This would be a moment I would remember forever. I felt his tongue moving against mine. I memorized the feel of his hands on my cheek and the small of my back. I never wanted to forget how strong the muscles in his chest were under my hands. I was going to be with Peeta Mellark forever, and that was something that no one could take away from me.