I spend more time dreaming, than I do awake.
Whether those dreams are nightmares, or otherwise, does not matter. Even the good memories are bittersweet, now.
All that had given my life meaning – warmth, color, motivation – has been taken from me.
I would like to blame President Snow, or President Coin, or Panem as a whole, or even myself, but when it comes down to it, maybe there is no one to blame. Unlike how Peeta and Primrose had made me believe, goodness, kindness, and patience are worthless values. On the contrary, the world does not care about any of that. Nothing matters. Reality is unwaveringly unforgiving and will maliciously ignore the paltry existence of hope.
I no longer have to try hard to imagine why the other Victors had dwindled and diminished themselves through the years. Drinking themselves to the grave. Shooting up morphling. Embracing their individual, Capitol assigned caricatures; celebrating and elaborating on their murder of children that they probably hardly even remembered.
My own form of self-harm comes in the shape of sleeping pills. I prefer to sleep, to dream, to waste away in my bed.
At least in my dreams, my loved ones still exist.
Tonight is no different.
As I lay down to sleep, I am pulled under, like the tide pulls at the sand, deep down into the dark.
I break surface to find myself faced once more with Peeta Mellark.
Summer sunlight warms my face. I can almost feel the heat of Peeta's body – as if he were real – as I lay with my head in his lap. The Capitol unfolds below us, from atop the Tribute Center. There are flowers betwixt my fingers; haphazardly made into a crown. I open my eyes, looking up into what I remember Peeta to look like.
The sunlight glints across his hair, haloing him in light.
He smiles.
Sometimes I can recall the feel of his fingers running through my hair.
Other times there is only the warmth of his palm brushing my cheek.
In my dreams, he gets to be warm again.
Our conversation had been muted that day, but his words reach me across time.
"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever," he says.
"Okay."
"Then you'll allow it?"
"I'll allow it," I had said, only that one time.
If not for the Quarter Quell, maybe Peeta and I could have become something.
That instance, in which I had allowed him to love me, could have led to more.
Those kisses that we shared, on that arena beach, amidst the salt and sand, made me feel something deep within myself.
All of it – the falseness of our first Hunger Game, the grueling Victory Tour, the Quarter Quell, the rebellion – were all a sick joke. The true plot of our otherwise tragic star-crossed love story.
If only we could have let that love story play out until the very bitter end, but the Capitol had changed him. They had wrought Peeta into something less human. Something meant only to kill me. And, of course, the boy with the bread would be the one person to claim driven mad by love.
Peeta leans towards me, his eyes hopeful.
"You'll allow it?" Peeta asks me again, off script, and I jerk awake, gasping.
I barely get myself from the bed and to the bathroom sink fast enough. What little dinner I managed to consume last night retches itself back up.
I splash cold water across my face with shaking hands. I scrub at my skin like I can wash away the past.
On my bedside table, there is my bottle of sleeping pills. I pick them up. Rattle them. There is less than I would like there to be. They only give me so many at a time. I want to take more, to retreat back into my fantasy world. But I know if I do, I will be left wanting on a later date, and I will regret it. I do not go back to my bed.
I abandon my home and walk the barren streets of District 12. The stars burn overhead, undisturbed by the streetlights, and the summer air is tinged by meadow flowers. I walk past the vandalized Victor's houses. I briefly consider disturbing my old mentor, but Haymitch will likely be unresponsive at this time of night. It is a wonder he has not died of alcohol poisoning since the end of the war. After being forcibly sober in District 13, I doubt his body has the same tolerance it had; but, if Haymitch is anything, he is like me: a survivor. His body will fight the daily battle, of desperately filtering out the copious amount of alcohol he consumes, no matter the cost.
I walk in a straight line towards town square. There, I know what I will find.
The lifeless statue set in the middle of the square, of the Mockingjay, with her bow raised in a combat position, looks nothing like me.
The statue is a woman I do not know. The Old Katniss Everdeen. Someone who had a little sister. A star-crossed lover. A best friend. Allies. A mother and father. A home. I have none of those things anymore. I am not her.
I trace my hand along the concrete base of the statue, then slump, defeated, against it.
I look up at the moon. So unchanged. The only recognizable piece of home.
The rebuilding of District 12 has left nothing of the past. An entirely different layout. Buildings far taller than any that had existed here before. Reliable electricity. No fence. Streetlights at every corner. Paving; no more gravel paths. The mines themselves have even had a facelift. There is no longer a Seam and a Town; at least, not physically. While the New Capitol may intend to build District 12 as an unsevered whole, there is still what is left of the survivors, who hold fast to their previous prejudice. Except, there are so few of them, the prejudice will likely die out in the next two or three generations. To further this, there are the newcomers: people from District 13 who have elected to abandon their underground bunker, and those from other Districts who are more often than not reassigned to District 12 in order to help repopulate the tiny coal mining society. Turns out, the New Capitol still needs coal.
Haymitch and I haunt the Victor's Village as if true ghosts of the past. Two constant reminders of the Old Capitol's cruelty. Things to be whispered about. President Coin announced at her inauguration as the interim president, that Panem would never forget: about our history, our origins. Haymitch and I are good reminders, I think – the reason we have been permitted to stay around. But I think to give a true reminder of what has passed, of what was lost, what others should fight to protect, it would not be the Mockingjay statue in the middle of District 12. It would be of Peeta, or Primrose, or Gale, or Madge, or any one of those lost in the firebombing. Something that represents hope – not something that inspires violence, or makes propos of combat, or causes uprisings, or symbolizes fire…
Come the dawn I have no choice but to stand up and move on. Early rising townspeople frown at the sight of me.
They are weary of this new creature that I have become. I do not blame them.
There is a car idling in front of my house as I walk up the street. No doubt some government official come to check on me or to make sure I have not done anything to worsen the state of the healing district. Or to give me more pills.
I pick up pace.
A stranger hails me as I approach.
"Katniss!" the man calls.
I do not recognize him. He is not the doctor who brings me the pills; therefore, he is worthless to me.
I ignore him and walk to the door. He follows.
"How are you?" the man asks, entering the house behind me, completely uninvited.
"The same," I say.
"Well, that is to be expected."
He awkwardly stands in my kitchen.
When I say nothing more, he offers me his hand to shake.
"My name is Emilianus," he tells me. "I have come to check on you. Many are concerned for you and your progress."
"You're not my doctor," I say, but it comes out more like an accusation. "Why are you here?"
"It is well known, Miss Everdeen, that you are unhappy here."
"It's fine here," I say. "It's like home."
"I think it is in both yours and the townspeople best interest if you were to leave District 12 and return to New Capitol. President Coin is fond of you! There are numerous –"
"I don't want to live in the Capitol."
"New Capitol," Emilianus corrects me.
"I don't care what you call it," I say, spurned on at the mention of President Coin. "Now, leave."
The man looks as if he wants to say more, as if he has come here with a prepared speech. He takes one last look at my steely scowl, before he reluctantly turns to go.
Halfway to the door, he turns back and asks this: "If you could go back and change what happened, what would you change?"
"Nothing can be changed," I say.
"So you think," says the man, and then he turns again. He pauses.
His hand reaches into his coat. He pulls out a bottle of pills.
"I almost forgot," he says, holding the bottle out for me. "These are from your doctor."
I cannot stop my hand, wrapping around the bottle. There is three times as many pills as I am usually allowed. I can make no sense of why, or how, and the man gives me no time to ask, before he is out the door and getting back into his car.
I cradle the bottle between my two hands; disgusted by the joy it gives me.
I angrily leave the kitchen and find myself in the upstairs hallway. At the end of the hall is Primrose's closed bedroom door. I have never been able to go in there since her death. Everything in there is just as she left it, gathering dust.
I lay in my bed, seething, hugging the bottle.
I do not trust the man, that Emilianus.
I can tell by his attire and his name alone that he is from the Capitol, and not the new one either. He is likely among those few that were pardoned by President Coin at Heavensbee's request.
What he said to me was taunting and uncalled for.
Why would he say something like that? Why torment me? Why pretend anything could be different when the world was such an unforgiving place?
"I won," I mutter to myself.
The rebels won. I had won. At the expense of everyone I ever cared about.
"I won, I won, I won," I repeat. "Real. Real. Real."
Eventually, the anger subsides. I am left feeling hollow. I pop open the bottle. I pour out an acceptable dose, but then as I stare at the little blue pills in my palm, the urge is there. To ensure I never wake. To stay forever in the dreams.
I pour more in my hand. Then tap out a few more. Until there is so many, they spill over onto the sheets.
My heart is pounding. I tell myself I am not afraid. I have faced death too many times to let it scare me.
What are a few more?
It takes three swallows to get them down. My body fights it, making me gag. As if it knows.
I roll over, palm clasped over my mouth, seeking out those dreams. I close my eyes in a plea for sleep.
I reach out for the memories. A hand clawing out from the dark. In search of sunshine.
Only, tonight, my dream is different. I do not immediately surface into a memory.
When I open my eyes, eager for the sight of Peeta's face or Prim's, there is just wilderness.
I am in the woods of District 12.
I am crouched against a tree with my old hunting bow in my hands. My fingers are so tightly wrapped around the wood, I have to forcibly relax them and adjust my grip.
I take a moment to breathe. The dream feels eerily real.
I can smell the distant approach of rain. The leaves overhead whisk in the breeze.
A twig snaps behind me. I turn, bow raised.
"Oops," says Gale. "Didn't mean to scare you."
I start to glare, but then I take him in fully.
The dream is too real.
Gale died in the Capitol dressed like a rebel soldier.
This Gale wears the hand-me-downs from his dead father with their patched holes and sloppily sewn seams.
Gale cocks his head to the side.
"You alright?" he asks.
I lower my bow.
I wonder why I am dreaming this dream. Why this moment is so important. I cannot recall this memory, the way I can for other dreams. While those dreams can go off script, they have never been entirely fictional. There are so many notorious Gale related hunting memories that could have come up; yet this is not one of them, and still, this dream feels more real than all those others.
"Katniss," Gale says.
He takes a step closer to me, reaching out to me. I tense, even before his hand rests on my shoulder. I half expect his touch to jerk me awake, but it does not. I look up into his face, marveling at all the minute details this dream has etched into him: the lines in his irises, the scar on his left ear.
"Are you alright?" he asks me.
"Yeah," I say. I relax. "Everything's fine."
"Good. Let's finish up the snare trail and get back before school starts," he says.
I follow him through our woods.
After the rebellion the woods around District 12 were never the same. The rebuilding efforts had impeded on our woods, and the reach of the firebombs had forever impacted the local wildlife.
In this dream, it is the same woods from my childhood.
The familiar snare trail is untouched by fire, by change.
Gale, who meanders through the pre-dawn routine, is unchanged.
I cling to this simplicity. I choose not to question the surrealness of the dream.
Gale and I part ways at the Meadow. I am walking through the Seam, and I spy my old house. The chipping paint. The wind-beaten shudders. The roof that needed to be replaced five years ago. Primrose stands in the front yard, milking her beloved goat, Lady. I cannot stop myself from rushing over and embracing her.
"Katniss," says Prim. She is laughing and pushing me away. "What're you doing?"
I will not let go of her, even as she swats me away.
I hug her to my chest, dazzled again at how finite the details in this dream are. Prim is so small between my arms.
"I love you," I say to her.
"I love you, too," says Prim, rolling her eyes.
She finally wriggles free of my hold and reaches down for the pail full of goat milk.
"Did you get a good haul?" she asks me, indicating the game bag around my shoulders.
I shrug the bag off.
"Just a rabbit and a squirrel," I say.
"The baker does love his squirrels," says Prim.
I am standing there, before my little sister, in the old Seam, in my old body, when it hits me. This is not a dream. I pinch myself. It does nothing but inflict pain. I enter my old house. My mother is sleeping. I walk over to the bed Prim and I share, and even when I lay in it and close my eyes and will away the dream, I do not wake.
There is no reason to wake. I am awake.
Somehow, someway, I am back to the beginning.
It only takes asking Prim a few questions to figure it out.
I am fifteen. The reaping that will change my whole world is less than a year away.
Three years – three long, grueling years – are simply gone.
I am barely able to contain my initial panicked reaction. I step out the back door and fall to my knees. I peer around at the familiar impoverished neighborhood. The Seam, just as it was, before the firebombing. The sun is just rising. The sunlight is both too bright; and yet, not enough. I cannot yet feel the warmth. The details of the past surround me but feel jumbled and bleary.
I rub my eyes. I look down at my hands.
There are no scars. At least, not the burn scars.
I have scars on my hands from my childhood. Scars that were taken away from me after my first Hunger Games.
I remember the pills. How many I took. Maybe I am, actually, really dead. This is simply where I have been deposited, on the other side. But if this was not real, why does it feel like it is? Why is everything just as it was?
Prim is calling my name inside the house.
A ghost made real.
I have to compose myself. At least, for Prim.
I have mastered composure for her sake for years following my father's death.
Even though my hands are shaking as I change for school and tuck away my gamebag, I manage a smile for her.
It is all for her.
Even if it is not real, and I am dead, and this is truly a fantasy, I am an eager participant.
I walk my little sister to school. It is the same routine we had maintained for years before that fateful reaping day. As we pass through town, I spot people who were killed during the firebombing of District 12 going about their days: walking to school, marching out to the mines, opening their Town businesses for the morning.
I see it all. I feel it, and somehow, I feel detached from it.
That is, until I spot Peeta Mellark walking across the schoolyard.
I stop walking without meaning to, rooted in place.
I have had many dreams about Peeta since his death. None of them have been like this.
Peeta walks on two good legs, smiling at his friends. The sunlight does not halo around him, like in my dreams. The way he holds himself, with that easy confidence. The warm smile. The double knot of his shoelace.
He is so solid, so real. He is so alive, so unchanged, so… untainted.
He is not the mad boy that had taken that bullet for me.
He is not my Peeta, either, not really, but he is something untouched by the tragedy.
Prim tugs at my hand.
"What's wrong?" she asks me.
She follows my eyes to the boy with the bread. She gives me a weird look.
I shake my head to clear it.
"Sorry, I thought I recognized someone," I tell her.
I drop Prim off at her class door, and then find myself in my own classroom.
I have a momentary struggle to remember where my assigned seat is, but then I see Madge Undersee. The teacher had always sat us next to each other, so naturally I must sit beside her. I take that seat and cannot help but stare at Madge's lowered head as she scribbles words out in a notebook.
Madge notices my stare. She gives a shy smile, then returns to her work.
I have no idea what to say to these people.
Even if it is not real, I hesitate to act like nothing matters, or as if there are no consequences. Before waking up to this reality, I was certain nothing mattered. Now, with all those things – the people – I had lost, in reach, alive, well, I am not sure this is true. I am not even entirely sure all of this is not real.
I am starting to understand – in a limited way – how it felt to be Peeta, after the hijacking. Not knowing what is real or not real. Other people acting as if it is quite obvious. Making you feel as though you are truly crazy.
Madge is dead in my reality. All of them should be dead. It is jarring to know this old reality, but to see that it is plainly no longer true. They are like new people. People I have never met or have known. I will have to know them all over again.
Except, it is hard to look at them and not see the future I know.
How could I explain to Madge that she will one day give me the golden mockingjay pin that was once her aunts, and that it will in a years' time become the face of a rebellion that will bring down the Capitol?
But then I realize – that could be changed.
Anything could be changed. Whether this is all in my head, or real, it can be what I make it. Peeta could still have two legs in this new future. Madge does not have to burn down with District 12. Prim and Gale do not have to die in the Capitol. President Coin does not have to take over and reinstate the Hunger Games. There are so many other regrets, so many mistakes, betrayals, that could be reversed or corrected…
Except, how could it be changed? How can I stop something that feels inevitable?
I am overwhelmed by it all. I let the impossibility of the task consume me.
That is, until Peeta Mellark walks into the room.
I stare at him.
I cannot help it.
Old Katniss would never have done this. I barely took note to him before the reaping; now, I blatantly watch him take his seat.
Peeta glances up, catching my eye.
He looks startled by my regard. Then he smiles.
The warmth that spreads through my chest jars me.
As if before that moment I had not realized how cold I have been, how unmoved, how numb I had become. The hope that snakes into my heart is unstoppable. Somehow, someway the hope ignites in me that old fire. Flames that had been subdued by the war, by the bloodshed and loss.
I continue to stare at Peeta without smiling back. For an uncomfortable amount of time and with far too much intensity.
Peeta looks away, but then looks back.
Unsure, he gives a weak wave of his hand.
My hand moves, returning his wave with a meek wriggle of my fingers.
His smile widens, and then he turns back to his desk with some new vigor. As if my half-hearted wave, my one insignificant first acknowledgment of his existence, has given him a high that will carry him throughout the day. Perhaps the week.
I look down at my desktop, startled by how hard my heart is beating. I pick up my pencil with a shaking hand.
At first, I think to myself that I wish I could feel what Peeta is feeling. The simplicity, the untainted moment, without the past – or, well the future – or whatever that reality was – tinging our interactions.
Then I realize what this means: I am in love with Peeta Mellark.
And he is alive, at least in this new reality. He does not yet know the sting of my false affections. He does not think I am a twisted mutt, made by the Capitol, to destroy everything.
Prim is just doors away and will be waiting for me in the schoolyard when classes are over. We will go home to our mother. We will have what there is to eat for dinner. Gale and I will go hunting the next morning… and then back to school…
All of it, over again. My life, suddenly full; ladened with hope, warmth, color. I squint down at my hands. Whether this is real or not real, I do not care. Those little blue pills, spilling over onto the sheets, have given me exactly what I want.
A second chance.
With the perspective I have, the knowledge, there is a whole new world of hope, to not just survive – but to thrive, to wrap myself around those that I care about and protect them, to preserve those things that make life worth living.
Something I had failed to realize, that first time around.