Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
Feedback: Always a pleasure to receive.
AN: Edits have been made to Chapter 46 as my beta and I realised that we'd lost track of Prim; the overall plot is still the same, but a few details have been added to clarify where Prim was during the assault on the mansion.
We're just a couple of chapters from the end of this fic, and then this series will be going on hiatus; I'm trying to prioritise working on a few other fics right now, but be assured I'll be getting back to this storyline eventually.
Falling Hope, Rising Threat
"Done and done," Monty stood back from the wall with a satisfied grin. "That's their programs wiped from the hardware."
"Good," Anya said, delivering a final punch that knocked Ultron's head off his shoulders. She followed it up by placing her hands in the robot's neck hole and tearing the body in half down the middle, nodding in satisfaction at the pulverized mechanical form. "And that body will never be used again."
"Octavia, Finnick, help me get these people out of here," Clarke said, looking urgently between the fallen cyborgs and her teammates.
"Vision, help us make sure ALIE and Ultron are dead," I put in, before turning to the original Avenger and my first true ally. "Thor, Peeta, once we've got everyone out of here and we know the programs have been contained and eliminated, destroy this house."
"With pleasure," Thor affirmed, giving his hammer a brief swing as he looked around himself. Peeta said nothing, but raised his arms and let his repulsors give off a brief glow to confirm he understood.
"Everyone else, check around and try and evacuate anyone you find-" I began.
"You stupid child!"
I wasn't sure what I expected to see when I spun around in response to that angry yell, but it definitely wasn't ex-Chancellor Jaha, eyes wide and mad with a face full of rage and pain, staring at the rest of the team with an enraged glare while holding Clarke from behind, one hand locked around the neck of my new second-in-command.
More important, however, was the fact that his other hand had a glowing repulsor glove over it, the weapon aimed right at Clarke's head. If that went off at such a close range, it would literally blast my new teammate's head off and end her life before any of us could do anything.
"They are all dead. This world is dead and you killed it," Jaha spat.
"…Right," I said, looking uncertainly at the man, cursing that we would now have to deal with this particular idiot.
"Let her go, Jaha," Octavia demanded, generating two icy blades in her hands.
"Or what? You'll kill me?" Jaha scoffed. "Maybe you can, but not before I kill Clarke."
"Jaha, we both know that's something you don't want to do," Bellamy said, trying to take a calm approach.
"And how would you know? You don't know me! You don't know a damn thing!"Jaha snapped, eyes wild and maddened. "We had peace! Peace right in front of us! And you destroyed it!"
"That wasn't peace," I said to him. "The human race would have been controlled-"
"Like 'free will' actually matters!" the former Chancellor shouted back. "Someone is always controlling us! I should know, I controlled the Ark for years! Every society has those in power setting the agenda, setting the stage for the play that everyone else has to perform. Oh, you can choose what you want to eat, how you want to dress, but those big choices, those choices that determine if you go to war or make peace, if you live or die, if you have to kill… there is only the illusion of choice." He looked back at me. "Just like every choice you are making isn't your own. Your choices were predicated upon an unjust system. But the city of light… the city of light would not let humanity feel this pain that we're forced to live with! This horrible worthless world that we are standing on is nothing but the result of the sins of our ancestors!"
"You're wrong," I countered, already fighting down my rage at the implication of his words. "Everyone on this team made their own choice to fight for the people who couldn't protect themselves; we're doing this to create a better world because we want to do this-"
"You're trying to bring back a civilisation that's already dead!" Jaha laughed. "And you dare to call me mad? All you are doing is prolonging the suffering of every survivor on this planet! We had a chance to transcend, to go past these limitations. To be more…" He briefly directed a wistful gaze upwards before he turned to face me directly, a snarl on his face. "And you ruined it!"
"We just decided nobody in their right mind wants the kind of freedom you're offering, you nut," Johanna countered, flexing her fingers over her axe. "We're giving everyone the chance to live their lives and find ways to be better; you just wanted to make sure they lived the lives you wanted them to live."
"Jaha," Clarke said, her tone controlled even as he had her at his mercy. "Please be reasonable. You're outnumbered; even if you have me as a hostage, do you think you can just walk away from the Avengers?"
Hearing, that Jaha gave off a burst of horrifying laughter. It was something I had never heard before, but it sounded... broken.
"Haven't you been listening, Clarke?" Jaha said. "I hate this world; why would you think I want to live in it?"
Suddenly struck by a horrifying realization, I brought my bow out and notched an arrow, trying to find a way to aim for Jaha's head without hitting Clarke.
"Katniss, what are you doing?" Johanna asked, looking uncertainly at me.
"You know now, don't you?" Jaha smiled madly in my direction. "You've taken everything I had to live for; this is all I have left."
"Suicide by cop?" I said, recalling the expression from some of those old crime dramas I used to watch with some of my mother's friends. "That's your endgame?"
"I told you, you destroyed my peace; all I can do now is show you the futility of what you are trying to fight for," Jaha explained. "This world is already broken, no matter what you tell yourselves. No matter how much you talk about being heroes- being 'Avengers'- killing me in cold blood taints that. And if you don't kill me, at least Clarke will be dead, and then I'll go after someone else until you end me. That's the only way this ends."
"This isn't what Wells would want-" Clarke tried to choke out, her fingers scratching desperately at Jaha's arm even as she failed to gain a good grip on him.
"You don't even have the right to say his name!" Jaha screamed in Clarke's ear, the repulsor glowing brighter then and I knew I was running out of time. He was going to fire soon and I was going to have to make a choice. "My son is dead because of you! He was forced down to this wretched ground because of you! And why, why Clarke? Your elaborate revenge for murdering your father?"
"I never said you murdered-"
"Before I end your life just be honest with me!" Jaha roared, his madness showing worse as he had it closer than ever to Clarke's head, making me hesitate on my shot. "You wanted to make me suffer for taking him away from you, but he made his choices. He was in a position of authority, a responsibility to so many lives. But instead of respecting it, he made the wrong choice and that is why he had to die. Just like you have made wrong choice after wrong choice and that is why you are going to-"
When a gunshot ran out, I was briefly tensed for the possibility that we were about to have a medical emergency on our hands, but that concern was ended when Jaha released his grip on Clarke and fell backward, blood pooling from a wound in his side. As Clarke immediately retracted her wings and moved to examine the wound, I turned my own attention to tracing the source of the shot and wasn't entirely surprised to see John Murphy standing a short distance away, smoking gun in hand as he aimed it at where Jaha had been.
His eyes looked absolutely certain for someone who had gotten knocked in the head less than an hour ago. I decided to focus more on making sure he didn't use that gun again rather than stress about the fact that he had one at all. As Clarke moved to Jaha's body, I walked over to Murphy, one hand outstretched for the weapon while the other hovered close to my shield.
"You don't need to take it from me," Murphy said. "This is the end."
"You're done?" I said, keeping one hand near my shield even as I kept my gaze on him.
"I'm done," Murphy nodded, looking past me at Jaha. "I did what I had to do."
Deciding not to question that particular detail right now, I turned back to where Clarke and the other former Ark residents had crouched down to examine Jaha. For the moment, too many people present would just make things complicated, but I could understand that these people needed to answer the obvious questions for themselves.
"Can you do anything?" Octavia asked Clarke.
"I… don't think so," my new second shook her head, her hands examining Jaha's wound and then tracing over his chest to determine the path of the bullet. "As far as I can tell, the bullet went in at an angle that punctured a lung, ricocheted off a rib, and exited from the back…"
"In other words, not something we can easily fix?" Bellamy asked.
"I could sew the hole to stop the bleeding, but given the rate of blood loss, the way he's breathing…" Clarke shook her head, taking a final check of Jaha's pulse before she looked back at me. "Even if we had a hospital close by… or if I had Prim to help me right now, he'd still be dead within minutes."
"…It's all right," I said at last, after taking a moment to properly assess Clarke's reaction to that discovery. "You… I'm sure you did what you could."
"It's what needed to be done," Murphy spoke once again.
"You could have done something non-lethal!" Peeta replied as I turned around to see my old Games partner walking up to confront Murphy, the faceplate removed but his expression the most intimidating thing I'd ever seen on the face of the boy who had given me the bread. "He wasn't even looking at you; his whole focus was on the rest of us! You weren't in his field of vision; you could have just shot him in the foot or the leg and it would have been enough for us to free Clarke and take him down without killing him! What gave you the right to make that call?"
"He did," Murphy replied, calmly staring back at Peeta before he pushed past the new Iron Man. To my surprise, he actually got down on a knee and held Jaha's hand, and there was some sort of sign in the dying man's eyes. He looked back to Clarke. "Can you do anything for the pain at least?"
Clarke just nodded at that, checking her portable medkit almost on automatic, even though I could see that she was just as confused about this as the rest of us.
"This is why you picked me from the start, wasn't it? Because I am a survivor," Murphy spoke to Jaha while Clarke looked in her med kit for something for the pain. "This entire journey we had, outliving everyone else that came with us… we got to know each other a bit; enough to share some personal parts of our lives with each other, anyway. You were broken ever since losing Wells, and you tried to move forward, but you wanted to find meaning in this world. All the others wanted the same thing, except me. I came before all of you, and as messed up as the Ground can be, there's still life to be had. You needed to know it was OK to just… stop looking and accept things as they are."
Jaha looked at him for a moment before looking upward. There was nothing there, and yet he smiled. "Thank you... John..." the man rasped out, blood dripping from his mouth.
"Rest Theo. Just rest." Murphy said in a simple tone. His eyes still fixed on something that only he could see, Jaha's eyelids slid shut, his breathing lessening until it finally ceased.
"...he's gone," Clarke pronounced after checking his pulse. She looked back to Murphy who had a pensive look on his face. "Murphy, that was… surprisingly respectful; I never thought you-"
"It's not the usual me, yeah, but it needed to be said," Murphy replied. "Just don't expect it again any time soon. You know who and what I am, Princess."
"And there's the jackass we all know and loathe," Octavia said with some snark.
"You realize that we're not going to let you be any kind of warrior after this?"
"Whoever said I wanted to be a warrior, or an Avenger for that matter?" Murphy rolled his eyes at me. "I'm just the guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time; story of my life. This shit is over, and I'll be fine just going into some kinda retirement that doesn't involve fighting people now."
I decided not to mention that 'Avenger' had never been in the cards for him from what I'd seen of this guy so far, but this wasn't the time to argue about details like that. I made a mental note to make arrangements to keep an eye on Murphy for a few more months once we got back to the mainland, but for the moment I felt… I decided to say 'confident'… that we wouldn't have to worry about him any time soon.
"So what do we do with this guy?" Johanna indicated Jaha's corpse. "Hate to sound like one of those people, but we don't exactly have the facilities to transport a corpse on board."
"Isn't there a medical area?" Clarke pointed out.
"Intended for short-term treatment and to basically keep people alive until we can get home; it's not designed to keep a corpse secure, and I'm not sure I want to deal with the dignity issues of moving that guy around once we get to the other end," Johanna clarified. "Besides… look, to be blunt, does anyone need him back at your place?"
"Need him?"
"I mean does he have any family left? Anyone at all who'll specifically miss him?"
"…No," Clarke looked cautiously at Johanna. "What are you thinking?"
"We just bury this guy and leave his body out here," the axe-wielding Avenger finished with a shrug. "We can say whatever we want when we get back, but if nobody's going to mind about not having somewhere specific to mourn why go to the trouble?"
It was potentially morbid, but Johanna had a valid point; if nobody was going to care about his death, why should we bother taking Jaha's body to be buried somewhere more public?
With the decision made to bury the fallen Chancellor somewhere on the island, the next few hours just seemed to fly by. I was left feeling almost numb at the subsequent revelations, because even if Jaha had been crazy, he hadn't been entirely wrong. As we learned after the battle, not everyone captured by Ultron and ALIE survived. Those who had been mostly or completely converted into cyborgs didn't survive being disconnected, but whether it was the loss of the City of Light or a final screw you from the rogue AIs before we finally beat them, nobody was sure. Those that were still alive remained unconscious for the moment, but again nobody was sure if that was because of the way we had severed the link or something else. All I knew was that I spent that time basically giving orders on automatic, having the others either move the unconscious outside until they woke up or place the dead in a funeral pyre, motivated by Anya's suggestion that this would be the best way to truly free them. Prim took some time to check over everyone we retrieved, but seemed to accept our basic explanation for what had happened to the rest of the people in the mansion. So far everyone seemed to be physically capable, even if my sister guessed that they'd need more detailed attention once we got them all home. Once everyone was awake we should be able to squeeze the survivors into the ship for the trip back to the mainland, but for the moment the pyre was the main priority.
As we finished setting up the pile of wood, I noticed a few people were absent from our group. Octavia got my attention and pointed into the direction of a small grove of trees. Walking over there I found Murphy, Bellamy and Clarke standing over a freshly dug grave, but it didn't take long to work out that this was where they had taken Jaha's corpse. Unsure what else to do now that I had found them, I stood to the side and watched as the two new Avengers and their tentative ally stood over the grave.
"He was wrong about the part where I wanted revenge for my dad's death," Clarke said. "I spent a lot of time blaming Wells or my mom for what happened, but Jaha… he was just doing his job as Chancellor. I didn't always like what he did in the job, but he was always focused on trying to keep the Ark together…"
"I know what you mean," Bellamy put in. "I wasn't a fan of him when we were on the Ark, but most of the time he was just enforcing the rules that already existed; it's not like he was doing all that just to be hard on us. I wanted to just blame him back in the day, but after I tried to be in charge myself… I get that it's a different scale, but it was never going to be easy to keep it all together."
"He had some wrong ideas in the end, but he started out with good intentions," Murphy conceded with a shrug. "He just got fixated on the idea that everything has to be perfect or it's not worth it."
Recognising that I couldn't contribute anything to this moment, I chose to step back and return to where the others were arranging the pyre. I might still have trouble dealing with people, but I understood that I wouldn't help anyone by telling the others what I'd just seen. Right now, the best thing I could do for the other three was let them finish their own funeral for Jaha before asking them to join me so we could complete this part of the business. Once the other survivors had regained consciousness, we would return to the mainland, and take everything from there.
When I returned to the main pyre, I saw how Thor, Peeta, Prim, and the others were all gathered around the assembled bodies, but it didn't take long for me to realise that someone was missing. I thought about staying, but decided that I didn't have anything to contribute to this particular moment, whereas if Steve Rogers was absent from something like this he might need someone to talk with. Surprising myself at my willingness to seek out someone to talk with compared to my past desire to avoid such moments, I spent the next few moments walking around the clearing until I found the old man leaning against a tree on the edge of a cliff, staring out at the sun as it began to descend towards the edge of the island.
"You OK?" I asked, sitting down beside my mentor.
"Just thinking," Steve said, looking solemnly out at the landscape before us for a moment before he sighed and looked back at me. "You know… in the end, Jaha wasn't that different from me."
"Excuse me?" I looked incredulously at the original Captain America, unable to believe what he'd just said. "The man was a lunatic who tried to make humanity slaves to an elaborate artificial intelligence network because he-"
"Couldn't move on from his past," Steve said solemnly. "From everything we've heard, Thelonius Jaha was a good man once, but after he saved his people and survived, he didn't know what he could do with himself any more. He set out to find another purpose, and genuinely thought that he found something worthwhile in the City of Light…"
I couldn't entirely deny that statement, as much as I wanted to; ALIE might have been twisted, but if she could have projected her influence into others by remote she probably could have tried to do that to us during that final confrontation. If ALIE had been able to convince Jaha to take the chip to connect him to her in the first place, she must have made some kind of argument that made sense to him; Jaha might have been a fanatic about the original search for the City of Light, but he didn't get to be Chancellor on the Ark by being stupid.
"And you think you're like him?" I asked, looking uncertainly at Steve. "How?"
"I could never stop fighting even when America was lost-"
"But you never fought to enforce your will on others," I cut him off firmly, refusing to allow my mentor to doubt himself. "You fought because you wanted to save lives and stand up for the freedom and the right to choose that defined the dream that America was founded on; you're defined by your dream to ensure that everyone else can have the same freedom, not because you keep fighting."
We sat in silence for a few moments before I reached over to place a comforting hand on Steve's shoulder.
"You could never be Jaha, Steve," I said firmly. "You're Captain America because you want to make sure that everyone else is free; in the end, no matter how much he talked about wanting to bring us together, Jaha just wanted to make himself a big shot once again by creating a world where everyone would remember him as the one who 'united' humanity."
"…Thanks," Steve smiled back at me. "You're a good leader, Katniss."
"Only because I had a good example to follow."
"I couldn't bring it out in you if the potential wasn't there already," my mentor gave me a warm grin. "Even before you were 'just' the Mockingjay, Katniss Everdeen, remember that you were the only girl who volunteered to save someone you loved from almost certain death. As an Avenger, our goal might always be to avenge past wrongs, but we must never forget that our other purpose is to prevent such death in the first place… and I've always known that you'll do your best to do that."
"…Thank you," I said at last, nodding gratefully at him.
With faith that the rest of the team would complete the funeral without us, I settled my back against the tree and stared out at the island as the sun descended.
This had been an emotionally trying time, and we would have to return to the wider world soon, but for the moment, I was content to enjoy the peace before we returned to civilisation.