XVIII
…
We stood on the train platform, Haymitch, Katniss, and I. We were waiting for the train that was carrying Cinna to arrive any moment. We stood on the snow covered ground and in the chilly air and waited.
The snow.
The snow came the day after Katniss had left me a note saying little to none information about where she had gone or what she was doing or who she was with or anything for that matter, but that she would be back. Thankfully, she did come back and the next day it snowed. And it snowed for a week straight.
She didn't leave the house and neither did I. Haymitch had came over just as the snow began to fall and ended up spending the week. No one came to visit, not even Gale Hawthorne whom I figured she had spent the day with before it snowed.
She came home that day silent, silent and mad. Mad mad. Not the type of mad she got when Mitch pushed her buttons nor the type of mad she held for Mrs. Mellark nor the type of mad he had for Buttercup and all his being nor the type of mad she had toward me when… well I don't know when or what I did. The only person I had seen her mad the way she was was for Gale Hawthorne.
Dinner that night, a little over a week ago, had not gone well and neither her nor he hid their dislike and anger well. Gale directed his, anger and dislike, toward me and Katniss directed hers toward him.
The next day she left the note and then snow came the following day.
In that time, more than it had happened before, Annie Cresta had drifted in and out of my mind. Not Annie Cresta the victor from District 4 of the 70th Hunger Games either, but her being… I was more set of the idea of Annie Cresta. The Annie Cresta label of a basket case, crazy, crack up, insane, mentally ill was what I could not seem to relieve my mind of.
I feared and worried Katniss would end up like her. It was one of my greatest fears.
She was bad then she was good and then she was bad again. I just didn't know what to do or how I was supposed to take it or why this was happening. Haymitch had brought it up one time when she was out on one of her walks. He was concerned too, so concerned he had been going out of his way to find out ways to help her out.
And he did, he did find a way. It wasn't morph like he, we had used only a handful of time before, but sleep syrup. Through the grapevine, he found that was what they gave Annie Cresta when she was having a bad day or wouldn't sleep or couldn't control her emotions or was… not right. He was so worried; he had even ordered some from the Capitol.
It wasn't used. The sleep syrup sat under the sink in the kitchen. Neither one of us mentioned it to Katniss and neither one of us would nor would we use it if necessary.
It was -
The rumbling of the train pulled me from my thoughts, causing me to look down the platform where a Capitol train, the only kind of train, was speeding down at a million miles an hour.
Turning my head to Katniss, a board smile began to spread across her lips.
Cinna was one of those people I didn't understand. He was different from all the other stylist in the Capitol. He was kind and personal and humane. He didn't treat Katniss as a canvass or an animal or anything that could be considered less than what she was, but he treated her like an actual human being. He let her have as much say as possible in what she wore. And he wasn't just there to dress her, but he was there to support her. He like Mitch had become someone she considered family.
And since the Tour was approaching and he was here to prep Katniss, not only to dress her, but to teach her how to act and how to walk in what she called "death shoes." He was also coming at Mitch's request to help her with her talent. Haymitch had mentioned it to me and what they had come to decide was that Cinna would allow her to use some of his original designs that he had created when he was my age that were never published or seen.
Yet, I thought there was another reason though, too, another reason why Mitch had requested Cinna to come so early before the tour. I thought he was here to make her the Girl on Fire again, give her her spark back. Because that was what she needed, her spark, that was what was needed for her get out of this… slump.
The smile on her face now, even before seeing Cinna, was proving Haymitch right. Cinna would give her spark back or at least some of it. Cinna would help bring her out of her slump the slightest bit. Cinna would do anything and everything in his being to help.
Coming to a halt, the train stood still like a statue. And in the moment, snow falling and wind blowing the door in front of us opened. A Peacekeeper in white stepped out and then Cinna. Cinna came out in his usual apparel of black and gold with only a simply, light backpack strapped over his back. And at the sight of him, Katniss smiled even bigger before her body took over and she was embracing him in a hug.
"I missed you," I hear her mumble against his shirt.
He smiles. "I missed you too, Girl on Fire."
She cringes at the name the tiniest bit, but not as much because it is Cinna calling her so; he is calling her the name he had given her and not the imaginative figure the Capitol made her out to be.
After a minute, they pull apart and Cinna turns his attention to Mitch and I. He gives Mitch the nod of the head which Haymitch curtly replies with. Then he turns to me, holding out his hand which I willingly take.
"Good to see you, Cato."
"You too."
…
We sat around the kitchen table late at night, long after Mitch was sure Katniss was out for the night. Cinna and I sat looking at Haymitch, wondering why he had requested us stay up late up into the night. We sat wondering what he meant by the word "plan" which he had muttered earlier on in the day when asking, commanding that we stay up late long after Katniss was asleep to talk.
What was this plan? What did it involve? What was its purpose?
A million questions like that ran through my head now, wondering why we needed a plan or why in fact Haymitch thought we needed a plan.
It wasn't me who asked though. No, too caught up in my own mind, it was Cinna that broke the silence.
"What is this plan?" He asked.
"It's like during the Game," Mitch says, "We're going to play it like we did in the Games."
Cinna confirms, "Innocent, silent, and mysterious."
Haymitch nods and shakes his head at the same time.
This time it's me who speaks up. "What are you talking about?"
"You have to have a face." Cinna tells me. "For Katniss we used the innocent, silent, and mysterious face."
I nod remembering the face they used for me as well as for all District 2 tributes: arrogant, strong, and brutal. That was the face the Capitol citizens wanted and that was the face that would get you sponsors and so that was the face I wore, unwillingly.
"Expect-" Mitch cuts in, "Were dropping innocent."
"Why?"
"Trust me," Mitch breaths.
Cinna raises his eyebrows. "And replacing it with what?"
"Killer."
"Killer?" Cinna ask.
"Killer?" I ask. "Career killer?"
Haymitch nods.
"Why?"
Cinna looks to him, his eyebrows, wondering the same thing which I had just asked allowed.
Mitch takes a deep breath, looking down at his shoes and them back up to where Cinna and I sit at the counter.
"It will make her more desirable than she already it, make her more secure."
I begin to open my mouth to ask what he's talking about, but her cuts me off before I can fully open my jaw.
"Just - just trust me on this."
Cinna nods in agreement, but I don't.
Something wasn't right. He wasn't saying something. There was something more to it all. There was a reason behind it that he wasn't sharing with us. There was something big that he wasn't sharing with us. It was something important, so important that there was no doubt in my mind that it had an effect on Katniss, but the rest of all.
"Mitch." I stress, but he shakes his head.
"Not now."
"Mitch," I plead, "You're going from pre-Games Johanna Mason her to past-Games Finnick Odiar, what is it."
"Not now." He says again. "You don't need to know yet and it may not be anything to need to know about anyway. I'm just… taking precautions."
I watch him for a moment before unwillingly nodding my head.
"And now," Cinna ask.
"Now?"
He nods.
"You, we go on like before, back to normal."
Cinna nods his head in understanding and I don't. There was no normal, I don't think there ever was and now with whatever Haymitch wasn't sharing with us I was sure that there wasn't going to be anything in the category of normal for a while.