(Fair warning: I kill them here. Thought that would help, but no such luck. I'll have to resurrect something else and try to raise them up in glory. Not like anyone cared at this point, and not like I could expect you to. Anyway. Bye till then.)
(Blow out the candles on all my frankensteins…
… at least my death wish will come true)
In the end, we are the ones crushed.
Like a mountain, like a city, like the world as we've known it.
Blasted apart, like my sister caught in the crossfire.
Cold, dead inside.
I'm standing like a statue as my old prep team flits around me. They are trying to salvage me still, to paint the ruin all pretty and have it perform one last task.
There's a knock on the door and I shoo them out and away when I glimpse the visitor. Gale enters to hand me one last arrow for my empty bow.
For a second, I think about plunging it into his neck, or my own, whatever difference would that make.
None at all, I guess.
We both failed.
I haven't seen him since our last mission, when he fell into an abyss I'd narrowly escaped, only to run into the fire where everything ended.
"Was it the thing you've been working on?" I choke out.
"I don't know yet. You know I left with you before we could finish it," he says. "But does that matter? I left the idea there. That was enough. Too much."
"I left Prim there," I say, unnecessarily. If I'd stayed back like I was supposed to, instead of clawing my way to my last mission that achieved nothing, Coin would have had to pry her from my cold dead arms if she wanted to harm her. And then, if I were the one dead, she wouldn't have a reason to bother. Thinking I was getting my way and finally taking control, I just ended up playing right into her hand. Giving her the power to destroy me in a single stroke.
We are looking into a mirror side by side, still too similar even with our differences, like magnets repulsed by our own power or inexorably drawn together, depending on how we turn.
Mine are partly covered in makeup now, but even the scars on our faces are matching, his misused vengeance burned into my flesh, my unwanted punishment into his.
The ashes in our eyes are the same.
In a sudden fit of rage against everything that conspired to bring us here, to this end, I lash out with my fist and hit the mirror, breaking it to match our faces, to match us.
"Katniss…" Gale snatches my wrist to inspect the damage, my knuckles are bleeding, but not alarmingly fast. If there's pain, I don't feel it. I don't bother to snatch my hand back. A few tears fall from my eyes among the droplets of blood dripping from our intertwined fingers, angry or sad or both. With my head bowed, I can see a fragmented reflection of Gale's face still, staring at me from the shards, contrite, shattered, all anger turned into guilt, clawing inwards.
"I'm sorry. I never wanted it to end like this."
I look up to see a tear fall down his cheek too, and I wipe it away, smearing his face with blood instead. ''I know. It doesn't matter anymore."
Now, I should be able to let him go and think about moving on, for the sake of my sanity and perhaps his too, to let the specter of guilt between us dissolve, to allow the open wounds we've become to heal.
I'm not planning to make it far enough for that, though.
I grab his collar instead, and kiss him for a long painful moment - all teeth, salt, copper and regret.
And goodbye.
My heart may have been unreachable for too long, but he's still a part of whatever is left of me, I'd have to claw him from every inch of skin I'd let him touch, out of every atom of my being. I bite his lip, drawing blood to take one more bit of his essence with me as I leave him behind in this world.
He breathes heavily when I'm done, waits too long to open his eyes.
I turn away and to the sink, stick my hands under cold water, hold them there until it runs clear. Gale joins me to do the same after he wipes my bloodstains off his face.
If only everything could be washed away that easily.
My bleeding resumes as soon as I take my hand away from the cold stream, so Gale rips a strip of fabric off his uniform and crudely bandages my cut knuckles, thumb brushing the back of my hand after he's done.
"Shoot straight, Catnip," he says, very softly. "I'll have your back."
I nod and leave without a backward glance, fragments of the broken mirror crunching under my feet, traces of red in my wake.
.
I face Snow, bound and defeated, and Coin standing triumphant above him.
Both of their eyes are gleaming with deception, a dark twisted joy.
I get my bow ready. My hand is throbbing with pain, but I can still pull the string one last time.
I choose the one that ended up causing me more pain, the one that had more pain to give to whoever comes after.
"The Games are over," I yell as I let my arrow fly.
''I vote NO!" I add as it plunges right into Coin's chest. Her body doubles over and topples over the railing of her balcony, falls down at Snow's feet.
His blood splatters over her slush-gray clothes as he laughs until he chokes, coughing his life out.
I try to ingest my death even as strange hands grab at me to capture me again, twisting my head to bite into the nightlock capsule still hidden in a tiny pocket on my shoulder. Biting into Peeta's fingers instead, meeting the sliver of hope in his sky blue eyes. Feeling it slip right through the cracks in my mind, in my heart, in my soul.
I spit his blood onto the flagstones. I no longer care to be saved, to take his hand and go with him to whatever world that lies beyond our arenas.
I want to die in this one, with the ashes of my sister under my feet.
I scream at Gale to shoot me, but no bullet comes to free me.
He said he'll have my back.
Fucking liar.
.
They lock me high up in the training center, for the third time.
Others might be debating if and how to kill me, but nobody comes to ask me what I'd prefer, and the bare cell offers no possibilities of making a final escape.
Only my mind slips off an edge, beyond inhibitions, and I begin to sing, every song I've ever known.
It lasts days. Weeks. Maybe months. I don't know.
I sing.
The only thing left of me is my voice, but nobody wants to listen anymore.
No visitors come when I'm awake, nourishment and medicine seep into my veins when I sleep, keeping me alive, caged and trapped in my own body.
Only nightmares keep me company.
Of my father descending to the mines for the last time, dying over and over in mother's glassy eyes.
Child killers and child corpses, rising back to life as mutts, teeth and claws glinting in every shadow.
Peeta's fingers slipping around my throat.
Prim's lips forming my name as she bursts into flames.
A hood slipping over Gale's head and a noose around his neck.
I wake from that one with a long, long scream.
.
It's still ringing in my ears when Haymitch comes to get me, leading me into a hovercraft through a trapdoor in the ceiling.
Pulling his victor out of the arena one last time, I guess. Alone.
I'm clawing at him until he assures me the other one is in good care.
That's all I want of him now.
.
I wait until we are back in Twelve to ask about others.
My mother has gone to Four, building a new hospital in a new place, and I'm almost relieved. I wouldn't want to ask her why she'd led Prim go to the Capitol, wouldn't want her to ask why I've gone there myself.
Only when I ask about Gale, Haymitch shrugs and waves his arms, suspiciously eager to be someplace else.
"Pretty much where he volunteered to go. Don't you worry, sweetheart."
I grab him by the sleeve, not letting him go. "Where exactly?"
He shakes his head, too hard, too fast.
"You know," I say in a low growl, jabbing a finger into his chest. "We're done lying to each other. You know that too, right?"
Haymitch grabs my accusing hand and speaks, very slowly. "We needed to dig up as much dirt on Coin as we could to justify you killing her and to get you out. And to make sure nobody would think following through with her policies is a good idea. You know some of it fell on him too. She gave him more credit than he was due in the files she'd left, both about the Nut and the City Circle. Just to have a scapegoat in case someone wanted to dig too deep into her glorious victory, I guess."
The air seems to have gone a few degrees colder. I've seen the face he's giving me now once before, on the hovercraft when he told me Peeta was taken by the Capitol. I wrench my hand out of his. "Why nobody called me and asked me? What was I? Too crazy to speak for myself? To speak for him? Not like I'd bother to defend myself, but if the other choice was…"
"That was a part of the problem, sweetheart," he cuts across me. "And a part of getting you acquitted."
My nightmare appears fresh under my lids; the Hanging Tree is playing in my head. I don't want to know. I need to know. "What happened to him?"
"They put him on trial too. Made an example out of him." He smiles wryly and mimics the Capitol accent; whoever has something to do with law probably still uses it. "Lest the crimes committed in pursuit of freedom be repeated. Or more like to placate Two and whoever in the Capitol they wanted to keep loyal. Didn't help they caught him aiming at you after you'd killed Coin. Hard to tell what side he was on, right then."
I open and close my mouth, strangled from inside out. My side. Always mine. I see Haymitch's last words clearer than I hear them; see his hands forming a noose in the air.
"He's dead, Katniss. I'm sorry."
I don't know what I do after that.
I think I scream.
I think I want to hit him but collapse against Haymitch instead, my tears staining his dirty shirt.
I think I hit him for real when he tries to shush me, to tell me it's gonna be okay, that life goes on. That I should just wait a little, that Peeta will be cured and coming back after all.
I can't bring myself to care anymore.
There's not enough of me left to need him, not enough to take back whatever he meant to me, to be whatever I might mean to him now.
Beyond the barricade is not a world I want to see, not a world I want to be saved for.
Not after knowing who died to create it.
.
Gale fulfilled his promise after all, but not in a way I wanted him to. He went too far beyond the line trying to fight for me, more than once.
Perhaps I should have wanted him punished for some of his plans, but never like this. Not in a way that had him coming to the tree first, that made him the one who left me behind when all I wanted was the opposite.
Peeta's words come back to me, from a time when I was watching him through a screen, Gale tense at my side. It costs everything you are.
I should have known.
The price to pay for freedom that should have been ours without a fight couldn't have been less than too much.
.
I paid most of it already, there's just one installment left.
.
After days I don't remember beginning or ending, I force myself to exist on. Pretend to be holding out, delight Haymitch and Greasy Sae by asking for things to be delivered by the next supply train. Three blank books, feather pens and bottles of ink. A primrose straight from a greenhouse in the former Capitol, because the winter hasn't let up enough to allow real ones to bloom yet.
I trade it all for my mockingjay pin. It's probably worth way more than its tiny weight in bloody gold now, but I don't care.
I've given too much for it already.
.
Peeta and Delly are supposed to arrive by the next train, but I don't wait around.
I'll believe they are happy and safe.
Always.
.
I bury the pearl in the flowerpot, tuck it to rest between the roots of the primrose.
Leave it beside the plantbook, with an artless sketch of a hawthorn I'd added to the last page.
I don't know why it wasn't there before.
Doesn't matter.
Now it is.
.
Soon after, I fill my old game bag to bursting, tie an extra blanket over my shoulders and set out. I leave everything behind, the ashes, the fledgling bits of reconstruction that's already begun, and don't plan on coming back.
Flurries of late snow settle on my shoes rimmed with cinders as I trek through the woods, my feet following the most familiar path of their own accord.
The rock where Gale and I used to meet is too wide and so cold, the gray surface starred with frost. I huddle there alone, hugging my own knees for a little warmth while the wind plays with my hair, brushing the tendrils from my face like Gale would have done.
He's never coming back.
I have to keep reminding myself as my eyes search for his ghost in the trees.
The blackberry bushes around are bare and lifeless, a prickly mess of thorns. I break off brittle brown twigs and wrestle them into a wreath, bloodying my fingers. Leave it there on the rock as if it were his grave. Our grave.
I rise slowly, with aching joints and empty heart, and continue on.
.
Snow piles up, covering my tracks.
Good. I'm sure people will come looking for me after Sae or Haymitch raise an alarm when they find out about my disappearance, and some survivors from Twelve might think of the place I'm aiming for, but I won't be discovered too early.
Slower and slower, I drag myself to the house by the lake, my body so weak I hardly make it.
I'm alone but not a stranger, I remember everything as we've left it, the hearth, the pile of wood, the crooked iron poker from the rubble of Gale's old house.
Everything ready for me, but I don't use it.
I don't want to make a fire, not anymore.
I dump my things in one corner and get out again, colder but lighter now, and step onto the lake itself, the thin ice creaking dangerously under my feet but firm enough to hold my weight.
For a moment, I think of stomping hard and shattering it, of letting the cold water drag me down. Wouldn't be much colder, much darker, much number than I already am.
Still, I resist the temptation. I'd set out to do one more thing, to piece the fragments of my mind together before I move further on, even if it's not for me.
So I slide back to the frozen shore, wade through the snow back to the tiny house. President Snow might be gone but the winter still lasts, spring only an empty promise.
Inside, I nestle into the blankets and eat a small meal of hard bread, stale cheese and dried berries, a sad mockery of the breakfast I'd eaten with Gale, before the journey that led me here began.
Then I start to write. Bleeding my heart out with the ink, filling the white pages with sharp, untidy scrawl, burying all my dead in them. Exhuming myself for the living, if anyone ever finds them.
.
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold…
.
Everything is cold now and my hands ache, but I keep writing, trapping ghosts in shaky strokes of black ink, sometimes smudged with tears. Using up my meager provisions as snow drifts high against the closed door, wafts in through the tiny pane-less window that provides a beam of light to see by, but not enough space for me to slip out of.
Not yet.
Kindling a fire after all, melting handfuls of snow in a small metal cup, trying to capture the liquid heat inside as I drink it almost boiling.
Staring into the last embers long after everything burns up, everything except my bow and the tree books, now filled but for the last few sentences.
I think I see Prim's face in them, in the white fluff drifting up with wisps of smoke when I blow on them to keep them going just a little longer.
And then I left so that I'd be free at last, left to seek everyone I've lost.
I feel myself drifting closer to her, the little white and pink bird that tried to hold me above the abyss.
For better or worse.
Not for long.
I'm done playing games.
I press my last quill into the embers, watch the feather disintegrate.
Like Prim.
The warmth doesn't last long after that, and winter seeps unhindered into my weary bones.
Hours stretch and the night clears, I watch the stars move in the sliver of sky visible through my window. A moonbeam finds me, the cold silver light beckoning me to follow.
To soar away like everyone else. Like Prim.
Her world ended in fire, mine will with ice.
It was never supposed to go like this,but the oblivion is sweet, creeping like a final dose of morphling through my heavy limbs.
.
All sides of my makeshift bed are cold and
I'm falling asleep.
.
I dream of things, of everything good and warm that's been taken from me, that I've left behind, that will never be.
Of children playing in the meadow after it has grown green again. They could have been mine, in a different life, if everything wasn't too much, if it weren't too late. But they will be there, and perhaps someone will tell them my name
- Peeta would, his voice would paint me in colors I never knew I possessed, and he'd ruffle their golden hair with cinnamon-scented fingers –
perhaps a mockingjay will perch by and whistle an old melody.
Rue's melody…
…her soft brown eyes, I remember…
…her laugh, Prim's laugh, her warm body curled next to me, little Posy falling asleep against my other side as both our families piled up on a single rickety couch.
Father's songs, mother's embrace when I was small enough for her to lift, when I trusted her completely.
.
Sunlight on my skin, summers in the woods, sour apples roasted over a campfire.
.
The heat of Gale's body, the pressure of his lips. His hands gentle, untainted with ashes and blood.
I can almost feel them reaching for me, from somewhere where we both can be free again.
.
It's not real.
.
It's just cold, so cold I no longer feel it.
.
I think my lips freeze into a tiny smile.
.
(Among so many others
there on the other side
waits the only person with whom I can be myself.)