Chapter 30

"What do you mean, you didn't do anything?"

"Does it look like I can do anything? In case you haven't noticed, sir, I-"

"Alright, you two, cut it out! She's coming to!" This voice is harsh, gruff.

I groan as I blink my eyes open, bright lights immediately flooding my vision. I flinch away from the light, closing my eyes tightly.

"Can she hear us?" The voice is familiar, but my head is throbbing from the white light.

"Shut up," the other voice growls as I feel a hand press to my forehead. I turn away from it, croaking, "The light."

Immediately, the light goes off and blissfully welcomed darkness envelopes me. I open my eyes slowly, blinking repeatedly to clear my vision.

"Welcome back, sweetheart." Haymitch holds out his small flask of liquor, but its batted away by another hand.

"Really? Alcohol?"
"It clears the mind," Haymitch grumbles back defensively, but he tucks the silver container away in his coat pocket obediently.

"Katniss, can you hear us?"

I push myself to my elbows from my reclining position so I could bring a hand up to my forehead. "What happened?"

An unfamiliar voice answers me. "You fainted. On the steps. Then you hit an ice patch and fell. But you're lucky you landed in the snowdrift at the base of the steps."

I look up to see a Capitol officer, his face stern as he glares across at Cinna, who is standing a few feet away. I try to glare at the officer, but my voice sounds like its been through the wringer. "Get away from him. I know him."

Cinna approaches slowly, cautious in case the Capitol guard decided to pull anything. But as soon as he's close enough, I launch myself at him. He's alive. One of those deaths that have constantly haunted my dreams. One of the people I trusted and was taken from me. One of those who suffered because of me.

I hug him tightly, my shoulders shaking as I cling to him. I can feel the tears pouring down my face, but they're tears of joy. Tears of relief.

That's one less death on my conscience.

Cinna buries his head into my hair and whispers quietly, "I'll always be betting on you, Katniss." I only hug him tighter. I don't know what to say. And I don't really want to either, for fear that this is all a hallucination and that it will all disappear if I say something.

I pull away slightly to look at him, to really look at him. He's gaunt. Underfed, malnourished. Thin. Too thin. His bones stick out prominently on his cheeks and the only normalcy on his face is the gold eyeliner. "Cinna-"

He shakes his head, stopping me. "Let's go sit down somewhere," he says quietly, leading me out of the room. We were in the Justice Building, where they probably dragged me in after I collapsed.

He leads me to a bench located near the Justice Building's entrance, indicating with a dip of his head that I should sit.

"I can't believe you're here," I confess.

His eyes are warm despite his poor condition. "I can hardly believe it either."

"What happened? How did you... the guards..." I trail off, remembering how they entered the Launch Room only moments before I was to be released into the Quarter Quell Arena and beat him with metal studded gloves until he was bleeding and unconscious. I swallow hard. "I'm so sorry, Cinna-"

"Its okay," he says firmly. I'm shaking my head when he responds. "I know what I did. I was asking for it. It should be me who should be asking your forgiveness."

"Me? Why?"

"I transformed you into the Mockingjay. Whether or not you're aware of it, I turned you into the rebels' figurehead." He bows his head before glancing up and saying, "I'm so sorry, Katniss. I heard about Prim, your sister."

The tears. This time I squish them down for Cinna's sake. "What happened to you?"

Cinna's mouth forms a tight smile as he sits near me. "The Capitol knew what I was up to as soon as you put on that wedding dress. When the dress transformed you into the Mockingjay, it spread the symbol of rebellion across the nation, which was exactly what the rebels needed- support. They opted to punish me, to try and obtain information concerning the rebels since I was obviously in on the plot."

I don't know whether to be hurt, angry, or to pity him. On one hand, he had basically forced me into the position of Mockingjay, which inevitably led to the deaths of Prim, Finnick, Boggs, and countless others I will never forget. Yet I can see why he had done it. The Capitol was wrong- too power hungry. Too ready to prosecute innocents.

I realize with a pang that if I had been as gifted as Cinna, I probably would have done the same.

"They came after I finished loading you into the Launch tube. Probably to unnerve you and to capture me. They wanted you dead too, you know." I nod, knowing all too well what the feeling was like. "They beat me until I blacked out, then dragged me out. When I awoke, I was in a cell. Snow was sitting outside of it, waiting for me to come to."

I shiver, imagining myself as Cinna. Waking up, every part of me body aching and bleeding. Maybe even a few broken bones. But excruciating pain radiating from where each of those blows had rained down.

Then, having to see Snow's eerily pale skin and thin, beady snake-like eyes staring back at you from the shadows? To smell the cloying scent of roses, so utterly artificial that it reeks too strongly, more than any natural rose? To smell the blood on his breath, even if you're sitting as far as you can from him?

Its almost too much to bear.

"He questioned me, but I refused to answer. He left me alone for a few days, with hardly anything to eat. I was sure that they were going to starve me to death. So instead I took the blanket in my cell and the rags from the floor and began to tie them together to try and make a thicker garment for warmth. They caught me and Snow ordered that they torture me for information."

He stops, taking a deep shaky breath. I place my hands on his shoulders, rubbing my fingers over the tense muscles. He sighs, mustering up his courage, I think.

"They hurt me. Cut me. Took pieces from me every day. I bled, but I never broke. Not once. I would never let them in on the plan that could free Panem." He pauses, before continuing on, his voice deepening in what could be rage, sorrow. Perhaps even anguish.

"Then one day, when they saw me working on my blanket again, they dragged me out and took me into this terrible room. There was blood everywhere. None of it was mine. Fresh. Old. The walls, the floor." He's shaking now, and I hold on tightly to let him know I'm there. "They placed me on a table, locking me down with thick metal cuffs. I didn't fight. I learned a long time ago that fighting only made it worse. But I can't imagine anything worse than what they did next."

His trembling cannot be stilled as he whispers quietly now, his voice shaking. "They took my arms. They said that way I wouldn't channel my emotions into my work anymore. That I wouldn't be able to contribute to the rebels' plan. That I couldn't hurt anyone, not even myself."

I feel sick. My breakfast from this morning threatens to make a reappearance, but I struggle to keep it together for Cinna's sake.

"The pain was terrible. I wanted to die. To kill myself somehow. But without arms, its almost impossible. They kept me alive by tying bandages around my shoulders to staunch the blood flow. It didn't do much, but it kept me alive. That's all they wanted anyways."

"Why didn't they let you keep your arms? If I knew you were alive during those interviews, I never would've let that happen to you," I plead. But he shakes his head.

"This was far before your interviews in 12. You had just been evacuated from the Arena. As far as I knew, my job was done. You were safe. You had the clothes I designed specifically for your appearances in 13 and on television. You had the armor to protect you."

Its those words that make the guilt rise up immediately. Cinna had already doomed himself willingly for the sake of Panem. For my sake. I owe him more than I can even express.

"I was left down there when the war started. There wasn't much to hear about down there- there were few prisoners and most were too traumatized to speak. I could catch the occasional bit from the Peacekeepers when they were called to duty, but not much. I only knew that the rebels pushed forward a little day by day and that you were safe."

I hug him tightly as he finishes his story. "When the war ended, no Peacekeepers came to feed us. We all assumed they were dead and accepted the fact that we were doomed down there to starve to death. But the new Capitol had sent out search teams to look for any survivors. Luckily, they discovered a hidden passageway down to the cells and freed us just in time. One unlucky Capitol man had already died, but the rest of us were clinging to life."

Tears are streaming down my face now as I hold the broken man, who is also crying now. We sit there, me holding onto him as tightly as possible, trying to reassure him that everything will be okay.

I pull away after a few moments to sniffle and look him in the eyes. He looks defeated. Destroyed. The broken spirit of a man who lived for creation.

"Stop crying, Cinna," I plead quietly, "Your eyeliner is going to run."