"Can I talk to you?" Katniss whispers in my ear as soon as we've made our way to another block and made ourselves comfortable on the couch in some very colorful apartment.

"Sure," I say.

She stands up and motions for me to follow her to another room. I shoot Finnick a curious look before getting up myself and following her. Why she wants to talk to me in private instead of Gale is a mystery to me but I can't wait to find out what she has to tell me.

"Ok," she starts as soon as she's closed the door of the pantry. "You have to help me."

"With what?" I ask skeptically.

Her face gets a desperate look. "Johanna, I have no idea what I'm doing!"

I don't know what I expected to hear but it's definitely not this. "I already knew that but the question is, why are you telling me?"

"Because I need your help!"

She's making frantic gestures with her hands and is almost jumping up and down in desperation.

"Yeah, I got that. But what exactly do you want me to do here, Katniss?"

"I… I don't know… I just… What the hell have I done?!"

She literally has her hands in her hair and is probably about to tear off half of her scalp.

"Ok, just calm down for a second. Finnick and I already knew you were improvising. And we know it's because you want to kill Snow and not deal with Coin and we get that, we're in the exact same position."

She looks at me and finally nods a few times. "Ok. So what would you do now?"

"Honestly, I'd try to get rid of the others and just do everything on my own."

"Sounds like your Hunger Games," she says.

"Sounds like the best plan too. But we can't do that anymore. You're already stuck in the lie so you can only continue lying."

"I can't do it alone. I already have Gale's help but…"

"You want Finnick and me to help you as well," I finish.

She nods but bites her lip as if she wants to say something else but isn't sure if she should.

"Just spit it out," I say.

"Peeta."

"What about him?"

"I can't leave him."

"Then don't leave him. What's the problem?"

"Gale."

"You seriously need to stop answering in names. What about Gale?"

"He doesn't trust Peeta."

"Do you?"

"I don't know… But you do, and so does Finnick. I don't know if I can trust him but I can't leave him behind. It's not fair."

"Ok, then I repeat: don't leave him behind."

"Gale will object, Johanna! I need you and Finnick to defend Peeta, I need you to convince everyone Peeta can be trusted!"

"Oh yeah, since we haven't already done that the past few days…"

Katniss sighs and looks genuinely sorry. "I know I wasn't of any help but I just didn't really know how I should feel about all this. I mean, one second he's trying to be normal and nice and the next he's trying to kill me. So if you could just have his back for a few more days…?"

"Peeta really is my friend, Katniss. I'll always have his back."

I move past Katniss and open the door to go back to the living room. Her words made me slightly upset. It's like she was insinuating that I didn't really care about Peeta, that I was just faking it for some reason.

I get back to the others just in time to see a newsflash about the wave, Peeta losing it and our deaths.

"There's no aerial footage. Boggs must've been right about their hovercraft capacity," Castor says.

Oh yeah, since we're all so interested in what kind of footage they used.

Everyone stays silent for a long time until Homes speaks up. "Finally, a bit of luck."

Finnick is looking at the floor, Katniss is looking nervous and Gale has that hard facial expression that says he's tense too and Leeg 1 might as well just have another breakdown by the looks of it.

"No one will believe it in 13," I say to lighten the mood a bit.

"Why not?" Katniss asks me. "It looks real enough."

"But they know us! Haymitch and Annie and Gale's family. They know us. They know we can't have died like that. At least not everyone. We're smarter than that and they know it. I'm sure they won't believe it," I object.

"Well as long as the Capitol and Snow believe it, I'm happy," Gale states.

"As if Snow is buying it. He just wants to break the rebels' spirits and calm down the Capitolians," Finnick says.

"Finnick is right," I agree. "Snow just wants us to think we're safe but now it's even more dangerous because we don't know his next move."

"Speaking of moves, now that we're dead, what's our next one?" Gale asks.

Peeta's voice makes heads turn when he announces that our next move is obvious: killing him.

"Don't be ridiculous," I snap in unison with Jackson.

"I just murdered a member of our squad!" he shouts back.

"You pushed him off you. You couldn't have known he would trigger the net at that exact spot," Finnick says in that typical soothing voice of his that always calms me down. It doesn't really calm down Peeta though.

"Who cares? He's dead, isn't he?" Peeta is crying now and I hate it when men cry. It's not right. "I didn't know. I've never seen myself like that before. Katniss is right. I'm the monster. I'm the mutt. I'm the one Snow has turned into a weapon!" Peeta continues.

"It's not your fault, Peeta," Finnick tries again.

"Okay, listen," I say. I walk over to Peeta and put my hands on his broad shoulders. "Yes, Snow turned you into a weapon. But his weapon is not working the way he wants it to work. Snow doesn't own you anymore. You're one of us, you're on our side, not Snow's. And we're not killing one of our own. Do you hear me?"

Peeta hesitates. "You can't take me with you. It's only a matter of time before I kill someone else. Maybe you think it's kinder to just dump me somewhere. Let me take my chances. But that's the same thing as handing me over to the Capitol. Do you think you'd be doing me a favor by sending me back to Snow?"

"That won't happen," I say firmly.

"I'll kill you before that happens," Gales says. I turn around to glare at him even though I understand why he's saying it. I would do the same thing.

But Peeta doesn't believe Gale. "It's no good. What if you're not there to do it? I want one of those poison pills like the rest of you have."

"No," Finnick and I say.

Then Katniss finally speaks up as well. "It's not about you. We're on a mission. And you're necessary to it." Then she turns around and quickly changes the subject before Peeta can object. "Think we might find some food here?"

Katniss, Gale, Messalla, Homes and Leeg 1 start hunting for food while Castor, Pollux, Finnick and I stay behind to look after Peeta. I feel like an evil and over-controlling baby-sitter but I'm secretly really scared that Peeta will try to hurt himself or run away.

The hunting party comes back with several cans of food and for a few moments while we're eating in silence, everything seems fine.