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I lie awake in my family's tiny apartment. Prim is asleep, sharing a bed with my mother because my nightmares cause me to flail around too much. I can't sleep tonight—not that I can sleep very well on normal nights—but tonight I have a lot on my mind. Seemingly, being the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, should be an easy choice. I hate the Capitol, I hate Snow, of course I want to help the rebellion. I think about Rue, getting speared through the chest, Wiress, her throat slit, all the tributes I've watched die, the uprising in Eight—and I know I should do what I can. But then I think of the smoldering ashes of Twelve, of the man who was shot for whistling Rue's song in Eleven, Annie and Johanna, prisoners in the Capitol—and I'm back to where I started, terrified that my choice will lead to more death and destruction.
My thoughts are a mess, Every time I think I'm on the right path, I can't remember how I got there. Gale thinks the choice is easy. He says that if it were up to him, if there was a button he could press to kill everyone in the Capitol, he'd do it without thinking twice. This seems a little extreme for me, but then, I know people from the Capitol. I know that they're not all bad. Sure, most of them are terrible and shallow, and enjoy watching kids die for their entertainment, but then I think of Cinna, who risked his life for the rebellion and has almost certainly been killed for the act. I think of my prep team, who couldn't stop crying when they were getting me dressed for the last time before the Quell. They might be silly, but they're not heartless.
But then I think of Snow. Wouldn't it be worth it to spill a little Capitol blood if it meant taking him down? I shake my head at this thought, because it disgusts me. That would mean I'm no better than him. Spill some district kids' blood in the Hunger Games to keep the country running smoothly. No. That's certainly not the answer.
District Thirteen seems to have no qualms about spilling district blood, as long as it will help the rebellion. And I suppose if people are willing to fight, then it's alright. But I just don't know. Suddenly the small room is stifling and I need to get out, to walk around, to be anywhere but here. I check the clock. 4:00 am. Just three more hours until 7:00—Breakfast. I've been doing a pretty good job going along with the mandated schedules, at least, I show up for the meals. The rest of it I pretty much ignore. I've wandered the halls more aimlessly than I thought possible, fallen asleep in more closets than I can count.
It's been almost a week since Peeta was poisoned by the rose that was left for him in his house and I've managed to only speak to him twice. One time, on my way back from a restful nap in an unused classroom, and the second when he came to our apartment to deliver us some bread. He's been helping in the kitchens most days, keeping busy, he says, so I haven't seen him at meal times. That's all well and good for me, because I've been avoiding him. I've been avoiding Gale, too. I figure if I can ignore the both of them for as long as possible, they'll forget about me and I'll never have to think about who to "choose." After all, what if I don't want either of them? I'm doing just fine on my own.
I'm not sleeping anymore tonight. I throw off my blanket and climb out of bed. I pull on my father's hunting jacket over my night clothes and slip barefoot out of our apartment, hoping that the barren hallways of Thirteen will seem like fresh air.
They do not. It's somehow more stifling out here. I let out a groan of exasperation.
"Katniss?"
I nearly jump out of my skin. Peeta is standing at the top of the stairs that lead down to the dining hall, holding something cloth in his hand.
"Damn you, Peeta!" I say louder than I mean to, causing him to shush me. This is a residential floor and I doubt anyone wants to be woken up this early. My adrenaline is pumping—I've been jumpier than I used to be since the end of the Quell. Peeta walks over to me and leans on the railing. "You scared me half to death, what are you lurking around the hallways for?"
Peeta laughs at me and I can't help smiling. It's been a while since I've heard him laugh like that. Instead of answering, he shows me what he has in his hand. Wrapped in a kitchen towel is a pile of cookies and a small glass jar filled with milk. I look at him in mock outrage.
"Stealing from the kitchens?" I whisper, but I'm staring longingly at the cookies. They're his handiwork, I can tell by the frosting. He closes the towel, wrapping them out of sight again.
"Come with me." He says and holds out his hand. I hesitate, because this seems like a precisely the type of situation I should avoid if I'm trying to ignore him. But I haven't had anything but the boring, tasteless meals they serve here. They're supposedly calculated to be the perfect amount of nutrition for your body but I end up stealing food from Gale almost every day. And not once have they had cookies. So I take his hand.
He leads me down a hallway, through a door, up a rickety ladder, and somehow, miraculously, to an open window that's nearly twenty feet off the ground. I look at him, stunned. "Where are we?" I ask.
"It's an observation window where you can come during Reflection times." He says, grinning. "It's in a huge fake tree." I lean over railing and see that he's right. We're looking out at a beautiful, green forest, not unlike my woods in Twelve. The breeze on my face feels sublime. "How did you find out about this place?" I say and Peeta laughs.
"They showed it to me my first week here," he says, sitting down and letting his feet dangle off the side of the deck. "I figured you hadn't seen it because you never follow your schedule."
"I follow my schedule." I grumble. If he's noticed, surely one of the uptight military citizens of Thirteen had noticed and I don't want to lose my napping privileges.
"You come to meals," he says, rolling his eyes. "But that's all you do and you know it." He's right. Also, he's noticed that I come to meals, even though he's been in the kitchen. Why do I care about that? I sit down next to him and he sets the towel full of cookies between us on the floor. I help myself to a beautiful sugar cookie, decorated like a sunflower. It's delicious, of course.
"You've outdone yourself." I say, more to my cookie than to Peeta.
"One of the cooks gave me a small sugar ration," he said, taking a bite of his own. "I think she feels bad for me. I had to improvise a little with the ingredients because it really wasn't much. But I think they turned out alright." They're delicious.
We sit in silence, eating and passing the jar full of milk back and forth. I'm reminded of the time on the train when we drank warm milk with cinnamon and watched a tape of Haymitch winning his Games by using the forcefield against his fellow tributes. Peeta must be thinking something similar because he says, "No forcefield here." He tosses a chunk of cookie out away from us. He's right, it just falls to the ground.
"What are you doing?" I ask and snatch the towel away from him. "These are precious commodities in Thirteen. We could trade these for anything we wanted if I wasn't going to eat them all." Peeta laughs and holds up his hands. "Have as many as you want." he says. "It'll make me feel better about sneaking around the kitchen in the middle of the night."
"What were you doing, anyway?" I ask, remembering that I have no idea why Peeta was outside my apartment at four in the morning. He shrugs. "I haven't been sleeping very much." he says. "Tonight I was just lying in bed and I thought why not have a snack if I'm gonna be up anyway." I frown at him, still clutching the sweets. "But why were you outside our apartment?" Peeta rolls his eyes at me. "Katniss," he says good-naturedly. "I live next door to you."
I'd forgotten. I knew this, of course. He'd been given a small, single-person apartment right by my family's when he was released from the hospital. I think that they thought we'd want to be close together. I look out at the night. It's so nice to be aboveground, seeing the stars, feeling the air.
I decide that I want to get a better view of the stars, so I turn around and lie down, the top of my head teetering on the edge of the outlook floor. Peeta does the same. There are no lights here, not like in the Capitol, the last time I really saw the night sky. It doesn't count in the arena because it was all made by the Gamemakers. But these are the stars I could see in Twelve.
Twelve. Gone. Destroyed. By the Capitol. Because I stood up to them. What am I going to do? I know that every day I wait to tell them if I'm going to be the Mockingjay or not is a day lost, because I'm not doing anything, just wandering around, biding my time, agonizing over the choice while people are dying out there. If they're right and the propos could really help—
"What would you do, Peeta?" I ask suddenly, turning on my side towards him. He looks over at me inquisitively. "They want me to be their Mockingjay." I say. "Every time I think I know what to do, I realize that I have no idea." Peeta smiles softly, turns towards me, and takes my hand in his. His hand is warm, sturdy. I realize how much I've missed him since I've been ignoring him. I also realize how close our faces are.
"It's a hard choice." he says, and I know he understands like no one else has. "On the one hand, the Capitol is terrible and should be taken down. But on the other…"
I know what he's thinking. On the other hand…there's so much on the other hand. The people that could get hurt, killed more likely, for doing what I tell them to. And then there is Thirteen, who seem to have good intentions, but I really know very little about them.
"I don't really know why," I say slowly, "But I don't trust Thirteen. Not the way I want to."
Peeta nods.
"There are good people," he says. He's been working in the kitchens and has probably gotten to know some of them, which is more than I've done. "But there are rumors. Or, not rumors, so much as what people seem to think will happen. People seem sure that if the Capitol is defeated, that President Coin will, you know, take over for Snow."
I frown. That doesn't seem exactly right. Sure, Thirteen has the soldiers and the weapons that are enabling the districts to have a fighting chance, but that doesn't just give her the right to be the new leader of Panem. Does it?
"We should choose." I blurt out. Peeta raises his eyebrows. "Who, you and me?" he asks. I shake my head. No, I certainly don't want to be responsible for any more choices.
"The people." I say slowly. "The people in the districts should choose. If they pick Coin, then sure, okay. But just because they want to overthrow the Capitol doesn't mean they're signing up for a President Coin." Peeta nods.
"That seems reasonable to me," he says and brushes a strand of hair out of my face. I close my eyes and he continues to run his fingers through my hair. Before I really know what's happened, I've inched closer to him and my head is against his chest, and he's wrapped his arms around me. The sense of comfort and safety I always feel when I'm in his arms is here now. I feel sleep coming over me but I remember that I'm lying on the floor of a very public observation deck and try to force my eyes to stay open.
What am I going to do?
"You know, Katniss," Peeta says softly and I look up at him. I notice that he has a few soft, rogue hairs on his face. Probably because it's the middle of the night and he hasn't shaved yet. I have to resist the urge to reach up and touch them. "We should probably get back before we fall asleep here." So he was feeling the pull of sleep, too. It's so easy to drift off when we're in each other arms. For some reason I find myself thinking about the small apartment he has to himself. But I know that I can't ask to stay there, not when I've been avoiding him so obviously, not when I haven't made up my mind.
I sit up reluctantly and he follows suit. I want to tell him that I'm sorry, for…for so many things. His family, his district, even his leg. But most of all, I want to apologize for not being able to—to what, exactly? To make up your mind. I suppose that's all it really is, but it seems like it's more complicated than that. It always seems more complicated than that.
"Katniss," he says and I realize that I'm leaning on the railing, looking straight down at the ground. He touches my back and all I want is for him to hold me again. "I want you to know…it's okay for you to take your time. Whatever you decide, I'll be right there with you, I'll support your decision." Wait, what's he talking about? Is he talking about being the Mockingjay? Or about…something else? I must be scowling because he grins and kisses my forehead and our faces are so close and before I know it I'm kissing him and I don't want to stop. The feeling in my chest, the hunger for more.
But he breaks away and I expect him to look angry with me, because here I am, kissing him when I haven't made up my mind about anything. But he's grinning, or really smirking, and he looks like he knows something I don't.
"What?" I ask and I hear the mild hostility in my voice. He just chuckles. "Nothing." But I don't buy it. "Why are you laughing?" He doesn't say anything, but just keeps grinning at me. He tries to put a strand of hair behind my ear but I swat his hand away.
"Alright, alright." he says and I continue to glare at him. "It's just, that's the first time you've kissed me, you know, just us. No cameras." I stare at him. That can't be true. Can it? I think back to all the kisses that Peeta and I have shared. The cave, once we we'd won, the interview with Caesar, the Victory Tour, the Quell—we'd kissed hundreds of times but he was right again, it was always in front of the cameras. What does it mean that I've kissed him without an audience? I know how he'll interpret it and it makes my stomach churn.
"It's okay," he says kindly. "It can mean whatever you want it to mean, I don't mind. I'm just happy being with you." I feel some of the steeliness I've been trying to put on melt a little. "You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know." I hear Haymitch's voice in my head. I look at Peeta and I know he means it. He's kind and good, he's always been kind and good.
When I get back into our apartment, I see that Prim is awake. She watches me walk in and take my jacket off before climbing into my bed with me. I hand her one of the cookies. She's thrilled, but looks down at the icing and I know she knows who frosted them. She looks at me, quizzically.
"What?" I ask, feeling defensive. "You were out with Peeta?" she asks innocently. A little too innocently. "We—I couldn't sleep. He couldn't either, I bumped into him outside, that's all." I say, tripping over my words because she's looking at me with a knowing look. I roll my eyes and ruffle her hair.
"Thanks for the cookie," she says, and thankfully doesn't bring up Peeta again. "Why couldn't you sleep?"
"Nothing. Just bad dreams." It's automatic. Shutting Prim and my mother out of things to shield them.
"You could tell me, you know." she says, "I'm good at keeping secrets. Even from Mother."
She's really gone then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail, the one who needed help reaching the dishes, and who begged me to see the frosted cakes in the window. Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can only hear so much.
"Tomorrow morning, I'm going to agree to be the Mockingjay," I tell her.
"Because you want to or because you feel forced into it?" she asks.
I laugh a little. "Both, I guess. No, I want to. I think I have to, if it will help the rebels defeat Snow. It's just…I'm worried about, well, a lot of things. But I don't think I trust Coin not to swoop in and declare herself president if the rebels win."
Prim thinks this over. "You don't like Coin?" she asks.
"It's not that I don't like her," I say slowly, trying to sort out what I think. "She seems capable. Smart and fair. I just think that the people, the districts should be able to choose the president. And I don't think that's what Coin has in mind."
Prim nods. "Katniss, I don't think you understand how important you are to the cause. Important people usually get what they want. If you want to make sure the districts have a say in what happens after they win, you can."
I guess I'm important. They went through a lot of trouble to rescue me. They took me to Twelve. "You mean…I could demand that the districts would be able to choose? And they'd have to agree to it?"
"I think you could demand almost anything and they'd have to agree to it." Prim wrinkles her brow. "Only how do you know that they'd keep their word?"
I remember all the lies Haymitch told Peeta and me to get us to do what he wanted. What's to keep Coin from reneging the deal?
"It will have to be public," I say. "I'll make Coin announce it in front of the entire population of Thirteen. I'll say it in the propos, too."
Prim smiles. "Oh, that's good. It's not a guarantee, but it will be nearly impossible for them to break their promise."
I feel the kind of relief that follows an actual solution. "I should wake you up more often, little duck."
"I wish you would," says Prim. "You know, I could also be helpful when it comes to…you know, boy trouble."
I feel my face getting hot and I try to look away.
"Another time, maybe." she says and gives me a kiss. "Try and sleep now, all right?"
And I do.