Chapter Text
“We’ll be back for you,” says the Peacekeeper, faceless behind his riot mask, which is exactly what I’m afraid of.
They’re the first words anyone has said to me since I was dragged from the back of the hovercraft, away from Johanna and Enobaria, away from the last shreds of anything that made sense. We crossed a helipad, stamped down metal stairs, darted through a quiet street, all in the dead of night, in the cover of deep shadows and haste and disorientation. I could barely tell where I was or which foot to put in front of the other. I barely realized, when we came to the steps of this building, that I recognized it.
The Peacekeeper shoves me out of the glass-paneled elevator and into the District Twelve quarters of the Tribute Center. I land hard on the marble floor, feet from the place where, the night before our first Games, Katniss Everdeen shoved me into an urn for confessing my crush on live television. Only this time, there’s no mess and blood.
Not yet.
I scramble upright in time to watch the elevator doors slide shut on the Peacekeepers. When I hammer the button to call the elevator back, nothing lights up, and no one returns. The hum of the descending car fades. Then it’s just me, in the foyer, in the black.
Alone.
A prisoner.
The Games are over. I suppose. The arena is destroyed at any rate, and how can there be Games without an arena? It feels like a nightmare, like it can’t be reality. I can’t stop playing it over in my mind, trying to make sense of the memories.
The lightning, the explosions, the hovercrafts. My name called out through a hot, dark jungle. A body with a black braid disappearing into the sky.
Katniss is gone. She’s gone.
Haymitch got her out. Or at least he tried to. The Peacekeepers seemed to think she wasn’t dead, but how can they know for sure? I don’t know if she’s alive, I don’t know if she’s hurt. I don’t know where he took her, I don’t know if they made it, I don’t know anything.
Because Haymitch left me behind.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. My fists rest, slack, on the unyielding elevator doors. I try to ground myself against the cool metal, to bring back my five senses and slow my racing pulse. There are no sounds to grab onto, barely any light beyond the artificial glow that seeps up to the twelfth floor from the Capitol below. I’m the only one up here for sure, and I can’t figure out why they separated me from the others. Johanna, Enobaria. What are they going to do to my fellow victors?
What are they going to do with me?
How much time do I have before it happens?
I venture deeper into the apartment. Everything looks just as we left it that last night: chairs pushed in haphazardly around the breakfast table, a deck of playing cards scattered in the living room where Portia and I sat before the interviews. Me, stiff in that horrible Capitol wedding tuxedo; her, teaching me rummy in an attempt to take my mind off everything.
My uneven stride echoes off the walls as I pace through the empty rooms, down the hallway, past the sleeping quarters. I try the door to the roof, but it's locked. I try every other door too. Haymitch’s, Katniss’s, mine. None of the handles will turn.
Being here at all destroys my sense of timeline. It’s like the Games never happened. Like I dreamed them. I still half expect Effie Trinket to be on the chaise lounge when I return to the sitting room. Or, maybe Katniss will burst out of that locked bedroom and demand to know why I haven’t come to sleep in her bed.
Maybe, when I reach the end of the hallway, Haymitch will be there. A few paces out of reach, refusing to meet my eyes, that peculiar flat gruffness in his voice as he says, “I told you to stay alive.”
Stay alive. That memory hits like a fist to the ribs.
I wasn’t supposed to live at all, dammit, and now—
I sink onto the sitting room couch, cradle my head in my hands, and stare blankly at Portia’s playing cards. I shouldn't be here in the tribute quarters. I should be in a prison cell, being squeezed for all the information I have. They must have set me aside for safekeeping because they think I’m of some use. Is it a trick, to lull me into a sense of false security? Or have they already realized I don’t know anything, and instead they’ve decided to use me as—what? As bait?
Bright, hot anger rises. I laugh at the empty room. Bait for who? They left me. Haymitch, Katniss’s rescuers, whoever it was, they left me to whatever wrath would sweep through once they escaped. I was deemed unnecessary. I was the spare. The joke is on President Snow. No one cares enough to come back for Peeta Mellark.
But my laughter dies as soon as it’s sparked. Because now I know that’s not true.
There’s one person who’d move heaven and earth if she knew where I was, if she could get to me.
I do. I need you.
I’m here because of Katniss. Because they still need to get to her. And they think, if they have me, they have power.
Which means I can't let them keep me.
I take in the room with a more calculated eye. A tribute’s assessment—no, a victor’s. A killer’s. Because I am a killer now, aren’t I? If I were to let feeling come back into my hands, there would be the ghost of Brutus’s skin on my skin. The stubble at the base of his skull as I took it in my grip and twisted.
I can’t think about that right now.
It’s not relevant, anyway. I can’t snap my own neck. I have to find another way to take myself off this chess board.
They’ve locked the bedrooms, so sheets are out, and I think also anything to do with water. I go around the edges of the dining room, numb with focus, searching for something sharp. A drawer of utensils, or a knife, anything that might draw blood. But the room is not as untouched as I thought. Or maybe I’m not the first tribute who’s looked for a weapon to use on himself in this room. It’s furnished austerely, with all the possible desperations accounted for.
A table, chairs. A couch. A television. Eventually I try punching the screen, then swinging one of the chairs against it, hoping for some glass shards. I only inflict a few dents. I dismiss the blunted edges of the table and coffee table, balance one of the chairs on its back and consider the squared-off feet instead, only to dismiss them. I kneel in front of various electrical outlets and try to pry off the switch covers, to no avail.
It all takes a while, or it feels that way. Maybe it’s been minutes, or maybe hours. They could come back for me any second, and I can only keep one thought clear: I can’t let them use me again. I can’t let them use me to get to Katniss.
Eventually, desperate, I try striking myself on the head with one of the chair legs after all. This hurts like hell, and bleeds worse, but it doesn't do the trick. I don't have enough force even to knock myself out, let alone never wake up again.
I end up back on the couch, a warm red trickle tracing down my cheekbone and a pulsing headache building at my hairline where the bruise will form. I regret the attempt with the chair. All it’s done is made it harder to think. For a long time, I stare unseeing at Portia’s cards. The city skyline tinges purple and pink outside the window, signaling dawn.
It’s strange to see another sunrise. Twenty-four hours ago I was in an arena, waking up tangled together with Katniss, preparing for the plan, for the fight. I thought it was going to be my last morning, peaceful on that beach. And yet, the mornings keep coming.
I sit in the numbness for a while, watching color spill across the eastern sky. Wondering if Katniss is safe. Wondering what’s going on in the streets below. Surely everyone knows by now that something has gone wrong with the Games. We were live on TV, after all. When did the Capitol manage to cut the feeds?
I wonder about Johanna and Enobaria, too. Johanna knew something. It was there in her voice at the end, cutting through the dark and confusion. The way she tried to stop me, get me to listen.
Enobaria is another matter. We all agreed not to trust Districts One and Two, same as any other Games, so I doubt she knew of the plan—to whatever extent there was a plan. But the Capitol might not care. Nothing like this has ever happened before—a disruption of the Games, a rescue attempt. They’ll be looking to make examples of us. She’s still a victor. Even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, and all.
What is taking the Peacekeepers so long to come for me?
As the sunlight strengthens and yellows, I notice my hands are trembling. I still can’t feel them—I still don’t want to. I begin standing Portia’s cards against each other into paper houses, just to busy my fingers. Over and over again—first a cluster of little shacks, reminiscent of the Seam back in Twelve. Then a row of sturdier things, more like Merchant Row. Then one big pyramid almost three feet tall.
The Peacekeepers carry guns. Maybe when they come back, I could grapple them for one. Even if it doesn’t work, I could provoke them into shooting me. Or if they take me out of here, onto the street, there will be cars. I could step into traffic.
Whatever I try, it will have to be then--when they move me--if they move me. Wherever I end up next will be worse. There must be a prison. There won't be weapons there.
I wonder if I’ve just been left to starve. That would be an irony, dying in the middle of all this finery. There’s no food, and no water, and the thirst that dogged us in the arena has worsened overnight. My dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I don’t have a bathroom either, since those have all been locked away with the sleeping quarters. I try not to worry about these sorts of needs, but as with any discomfort—as soon as I notice them, I can’t stop feeling them.
I’m suddenly aware of how disgusting I am. Of the dirt—and other things—caked under my fingernails. How bad I must smell. Of the heavy, oily-clumped feeling of my hair and my scalp, of the holes and stains all over my arena undergarments—of how I don’t even have real clothes to wear, not since the poison fog that took Mags.
Mags—who went back into the fog so Finnick could carry me out instead. Except it wasn’t me they were trying to save. It was Katniss. Because they saw how she felt about me before I did.
And I’m furious all over again that they’d just leave me here, knowing that. Knowing how much it will hurt her. Leaving me here is wasting Mags’ life, and Ophelia from Six’s life, and—
And maybe they did it because Katniss isn’t alive to care, anyway, and—
And if they did get her out, they could have gotten me out too.
But instead they left me.
I remember another thing then. District Eleven, the feeling of trapped heat and the taste of dust in my mouth as we stood among the discarded attic trinkets. Haymitch and Katniss woodenly explaining everything they’d kept from me about our first Games. I remember feeling this same anger. I remember breaking a lamp. I remember feeling like my mother, out of control, hating myself for it.
I have to know what I’m walking into, I told Haymitch.
From now on, you’ll be fully informed, he told me.
And instead, I was told nothing. Left behind like nothing.
But I’m not nothing. Not to Katniss, anyway. And now I’m scared. Not just for her—but also for me.
Of what they’ll do to me, now that the whole world knows she needs me.
´#
It’s almost a day and a half before the Peacekeepers come back. In the meantime, I relieve myself in the hallway of the sleeping quarters, since I can’t get into any sort of bathroom. The smell has crept all through the apartment, and I’m dizzy from dehydration.
Six Peacekeepers have been sent for me, which means six guns I could steal, except I don’t, because they’ve brought Portia along.
They have a pistol pressed to her skull as they storm out of the elevator. I falter halfway through a movement that was meant to be a lunge, a leap, some attempt for a weapon. I am prepared to die, but am I prepared to watch more innocent people die because of me?
In the instant I waste asking this question, my opportunity disappears. Two Peacekeepers stay with Portia, one gripping her arms and the other holding the muzzle against her ear. The squad leader barks, “Hands in the air, no funny business.” The other four swarm me, wrench my arms down and back, yank a zip tie painfully around my wrists. Then they frog-march both of us back to the elevators.
Portia’s face is a mess of blood and bruises. Her black curls are flat and unkempt and her clothes in disarray. There’s a lot of damage. Layers of cuts and grime. Layers of abuse. I have a sinking feeling she’s been in a prison—and for a while. Since before the arena breakout.
“Are you all right?” I murmur to her, as the elevator plunges earthward.
She stares at me as if she doesn’t understand the question. One of her eyes is still artificially purple, if red-rimmed; the other contact is lost. Her brown iris swims in a mess of burst blood vessels.
“Oh, Peeta,” she whispers. “Do what they say, won’t you? Just do whatever they say.”
We’re forced into a long, black car waiting at the curb—a limousine, which feels bizarrely out of place. There is no opportunity to break loose and try my odds with the traffic. It is a tight fit inside thanks to all the Peacekeepers and their guns and uniforms. There is an empty bucket toward the front that looks meant for water, or ice. I try to get a look out the windows, but the driver presses a button to black them out, and after that I start getting carsick.
“Where are the others? Juno, Gaius, Aquilla?” I whisper to Portia, who sits with her head between her knees.
She gives a muffled whine, then throws up. The Peacekeepers shimmy their boots away from the thin dribbles of sick. There’s nothing in Portia’s stomach but bile.
The limo finally stops. We’re dragged out of the darkened interior and into the familiar, manicured gardens of the presidential mansion. The last time I was here was the victory banquet. I remember the ballroom full of clouds and string quartets, all the tables groaning with delicacies. The little trays full of liquid that would make you sick, so you could eat forever, mindless of the consequences.
We cut across the drive to a wing of the mansion that was not part of the festivities. It’s no less grand. Our footsteps echo off tall ceilings, marble floors, crown molding and walls hung with gigantic oil paintings. I’d stop to appreciate them under different circ*mstances, but the Peacekeepers set the pace, dragging us to a huge, deep green door at the far end of the long hallway.
It’s far enough that Portia can't quite walk the whole way without flagging. She’s favoring her left ankle quite badly. I try to catch her when she stumbles, but I don’t have my hands, and the Peacekeepers tug me back. Her knees crack against the floor. The walls echo the painful sound back at us. Our captors prod her back up with the butts of their rifles.
Inside the room at the end of the hallway is President Snow.
He sits behind a wide, ornate wooden desk, three neat piles of paper lined up at his fingertips. His white hair matches his white suit and the white rose pinned at his lapel. He's so blinding, stark against the somber majesty of the rest of the room. Arrayed to either side are half a dozen unfamiliar officials in drab military dress. My Peacekeeper escort fans out to either side, pulling Portia into my line of sight. She’s trembling. But President Snow only has eyes for me.
I’ve met him twice before. First, when Katniss and I were crowned victors, and then after I proposed to her on national television. He hardly looked at me either time, so focused on the girl on fire like the rest of the country. I didn’t appreciate the force of his ice blue eyes back then. Now he uses them to pin me down for study. His oddly puffy lips thin as he considers me fully for the first time.
“Peeta Mellark,” he says, at last, drawing out the syllables.
I hold very still. This man is nothing like any other threat I’ve known. Not like the arena, or the other tributes, or even my mother, whose temper was never subtle, whose wrath never built slowly. I understand at once what had Katniss so spooked all those months. What made her desperate enough to get engaged to me before she even knew her own feelings. Everything about this man is coiled tight, and arranged that way with cunning, simmering intention. Like a whip, like lightning. Like a snake.
“Where is she?”
I ask without meaning to. I’m not expecting Snow to answer. I just suddenly, overwhelmingly, need to know.
A thing like a smile flickers across his lips, never coming near his eyes. He flicks a finger at one of the Peacekeepers. The man snaps a baton loose from his belt and cracks it across Portia’s thigh. She drops to one knee with a whimper. I lurch for her, but I’m grabbed, held fast.
Snow says, “There is little point in pretending ignorance, Mr. Mellark. We’ll come to the truth one way or another.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I grit out. “All right? Whoever blew up that force field, they left Katniss and me out of the whole plan.”
“It’s interesting you mention Miss Everdeen.”
One of the low, flat objects on the desk is a projector. From it, at a twitch of Snow’s finger, a video springs to life. It’s all harsh shadows and confusing shapes at first, but two human shapes resolve quickly enough, the thick green of the jungle squeezing in close around them. There’s the bright, golden spiral of Beetee's wire going slack as it’s cut. That's when the shadows become distinct people to me: Johanna Mason and Katniss, both with their hands on the coil, frozen as the realization washes over them.
Then, there’s a blur. Johanna brings the coil against Katniss’s head, knocks her senseless into the ferns. A knife blade gleams; there's an unintelligible whisper, and a scuffle. Johanna rises with blood on her knife and a red handprint on her chest, and tears off into the trees. The camera lingers on the patch of jungle floor until Katniss staggers to her feet, a picture of gore, and braces herself against a tree with that familiar, full-face grimace that means she is fully concentrating.
The scene changes. Katniss is somewhere else now—I recognize at once the unnatural girth of the lightning tree. She crouches over a seizing, fetal form on the ground—Beetee—then rises with that damned knife I loaned to him. The spare golden wire trails faintly from it. Confusion is plain in the slash of her dark eyebrows, in the twist of her mouth as she struggles to understand what it's for. Maybe, struggles to block out the sound of my voice calling for her faintly in the distance--by now, she's stopped calling back for me.
Her gaze settles on a patch of empty air, then seems to sharpen. She unwraps the wire from the knife and rewraps it around one of her remaining arrows. This task is illuminated in blue grumbles of light from above as the midnight storm gathers. She rises, faces the force field.
And lets the arrow fly. The feed goes in a flare of white.
It's all … rather damning.
Snow returns his attention to me.
“Would you like to continue arguing that Miss Everdeen was not involved with the radicals who infiltrated the Quarter Quell?"
I set my jaw. It’s difficult to think when I can hear Portia’s harsh breathing, feel her terrified eyes on the back of my neck. Never have I needed to speak more precisely, and never have I been less prepared to do it well.
“It doesn’t look great,” I venture, finally. “But Katniss never said anything to me about a plan to break out of the arena. As far as I knew, we were just trying to save each other. We both know she’s a poor liar.”
“I’m surprised you still feel that way,” says Snow.
“I know her.” And this feels true for the first time. Saying it aloud, believing it, grounds me.
Snow hums, and steeples his fingers. I brace for the Peacekeepers to hit Portia again, but he does not give another signal. Just lets me sweat it out. It’s impossible to say what he’s thinking. I’ve never met anyone whose face betrays such a complete lack of emotion.
“For the time being," he says, at last, "I think it will serve us best to assume you are telling your idea of the truth, Mr. Mellark. I'd like to move on. I have something I’d like you to do for me. Or something I’d like you to do for the nation, if you find such a framing more palatable."
"What do you mean?"
"I’d like you to sit for one more interview with Caesar Flickerman. It will be a national broadcast. I’d like you to call for a ceasefire between the criminal uprising and the Capitol.”
“I told you, I have nothing to do with any uprising.”
"That is beside the point. We can all agree that you have a gift for oratory. I believe that your support of a ceasefire would be… influential to the relevant parties.”
Snow’s missed the mark pretty badly if he thinks I’m one for flattery. Anyone could get on camera and call for ceasefire. Caesar himself could do it; he’s certainly more talented a speaker than I am. This isn’t about me being some especially powerful figurehead; there’s some other reason he wants me to do this. I just can’t guess what. I’m too angry, and scared, to think it through.
“I won’t do anything until you tell me what’s happened to Katniss."
Snow flicks a finger. There’s the thud of a boot meeting flesh, and a guttural noise from Portia. I shut my eyes, shame rising hot in my chest at my flare of temper. I have to be more careful. I can’t let them hurt Portia for no reason. But my thoughts are so clouded. The dehydration and the lingering carsickness and the light, weightless feeling in my head from too many days without enough food, it is all crowding in on me.
President Snow, watching my every blink and tremor, seems satisfied with his effect on me. He says, “Katniss Everdeen has been—depending on your choice of interpretation—either rescued, or taken captive, by insurgents from the former District Thirteen.”
“Thirteen?” I repeat blankly.
I know what District Thirteen is. Or, more accurately, what it was. They were the source of the rebellion that led to the Dark Days. The district itself was located somewhere north of District Twelve. They were graphite miners. The Capitol wiped them off the map to end that war. Sometimes they show television footage of the still-smoking nuclear wasteland that used to be Thirteen’s town square, just to emphasize the futility of resistance.
The president is cueing up that desktop projector again, this time with a different video. A jumpy hidden-camera view of a hovercraft landing at the edge of a rubble-studded forest. Figures dressed in camouflage carry a stretcher out of the hovercraft. There’s a split second when you can see clearly who’s on it. A small girl in white underclothes, her long dark braid trailing off the edge of the stretcher. Her head lolls to the side, showing her soot-stained, slack face clearly. She looks boneless, paralyzed, but there’s an unmistakable flutter of eyelashes. Then they rush her onward, into the mouth of a waiting underground bunker.
“District Thirteen,” Snow repeats, ignoring the way I’ve lurched forward at the sight of Katniss, ignoring the guards who yank me back.
I hardly feel their hands on me. She was alive. She was alive, I saw her, she was alive. She was on a stretcher, her face uncovered, rushed into that bunker by four men. That isn’t how you carry a corpse. For a wild moment, I feel alive again, almost manically joyous.
Haymitch really did get her out.
“District Thirteen,” Snow says again, his ire rising, because he sees I’ve stopped paying attention. I snap my gaze back to him with effort, for Portia’s sake. He goes on.
“I shouldn’t call it a district. It is a small group of self-styled rebels with an eighty-year-old grudge. Whether Miss Everdeen has joined them as a captive or a willing co-conspirator is beside the point. She’ll undoubtedly be installed as a figurehead to promote insurrection and chaos, used to foment the uprisings in the districts that are being armed by District Thirteen weaponry. She will be called upon to stir up the grievances of her fellow citizens and urge them on toward unnecessary and destructive violence. It is clear that this was the rationale behind this tasteless disruption of the Quarter Quell. Thirteen has become fixated on the idea of Miss Everdeen as some sort of savior, though we both know her to be little more than a weak-kneed young girl.”
“She’s not weak,” I snap.
“I must impress upon you, Mr. Mellark, that there will be devastating consequences for the people of Panem if these radicals are allowed to gain a foothold.”
He waves a hand at the projector, which lights up a third time. I’m starved for another sight of Katniss, but instead it’s a bunch of damned graphs. They look like things from my old history textbook: population trends, markers of genetic disease. The first line wanders downward with time. The second trends up. I’d try to care, but it all feels so abstract.
“I do not care about your personal politics, Mr. Mellark; this situation is beyond such petty squabbles. The bottom line is this: if we allow another war, we risk the very extinction of the human race. There are simply not enough of us left to bear the genetic burden of further loss of life.”
“Then don’t use the nuclear bombs,” I say, almost dismissively. If he wants to discuss history, I can discuss history. That's how they put Thirteen down before. The Capitol nuked them. Killed off an entire district, all its people—or, at least, enough of them that we thought the whole place was gone. I guess I can see how it would be a problem for humanity, if we had that kind of war again, but why would the Capitol risk it?
“Of course, we could set our nuclear weapons aside,” says Snow, “but then what would stop Thirteen from using theirs?”
Finally, I refocus on him. Thirteen, in possession of nuclear bombs? That is an interesting detail. I never imagined that there might be an opponent Snow cannot crushthoughtlessly beneath the Capitol boot.
Katniss could be safe out there, with these opponents. That could be the whole reason for this meeting. She’s out of his reach, and it needles him.
I really am his only loose end.
“I’m done giving interviews for you,” I say. I flatten my voice against any attempt at argument, and trying to harden my resolve against however they will take this out on my stylist. But President Snow only sighs, sharply, as if impatient with me.
“Perhaps I have not been clear.” Another wave, another scene change on the projector. Now it shows a split screen. On one side is an unfamiliar map crisscrossed with unfamiliar borders. It only makes sense when I read the the numbers. Twelve, in the center. Eleven, to the south and west. Eight, directly next door. Thirteen above. This is a map of the eastern districts. I imagine uprisings licking at the edges of the map, like flames blackening paper.
Then I take in the other side. It is more technical, but clearly a targeting system of some kind. A red-dashed trajectory line leaps from the technical side across to the map on the other side, landing directly on the number Thirteen, blanking it out with black ripples.
“Right now, what Panem needs to survive is for the Mockingjay legend to end. We can accomplish that by your calling for a ceasefire—or we can accomplish it in a messier way. Right now, we can afford the cost to the gene pool if we bomb Thirteen. A few more months of all this, and we will no longer have the luxury. The time to choose is now. Antonius—” he nods at the officer who’s moved forward— “awaits my command.”
Is he serious? Would he really go straight from dire warnings about humanity on the brink of extinction, to bombing Thirteen off the map for the second time? Is the threat of extinction even real?
It's impossible to say. There is a clearer question—am I willing to risk Katniss on the chance he is toying with me? Because that was her on that stretcher. Unconscious, beaten up, but alive—yes, I’m almost sure of it—alive. It could be faked just as easily as the statistics could have been faked. But it could just as easily be real.
My job, my only job, is to make sure she stays alive.
Will it really hurt anything for Capitol Peeta to sit in front of a camera one more time, say a few more meaningless things? It would be a sort of insurance, wouldn’t it? A sort of backup plan?
“Should I take your silence for an answer, Mr. Mellark?”
“No—I mean, yes! Yes, fine. I’ll do the interview.” The words burst out of me in a sudden, frantic rush.
“You’ll give an interview, and call explicitly for a cease fire,” Snow clarifies. “In exchange, we will stay our hand and allow Thirteen a chance to make the right choice on their own.”
“Sure. All of that,” I say, because I refuse to believe that it might matter.
Snow smiles in satisfaction.
#
The Peacekeepers remove Portia and me to a room down the hall. My prep team waits there. Gaius, Juno, and Aquilla look in better shape than my stylist—lacking in makeup, but also lacking in bruises. Juno still has her white paisley tattoos, and a few stubborn rhinestones cling to Aquilla’s uneven false nails, but otherwise their eyes are scrubbed clean of glitter and sparkle and their fashionable clothes have been replaced with prison greys.
They have a stripped-down version of the travel prep kit they used on our Victory Tour. There is a gurney and a rolling clothes rack with a pressed white suit. The room is simpler, but it is still elegant. High ceilings, upholstered chairs, and built-in bookshelves, though the latter are mostly empty. It is a guest suite of some sort, with a sleeping room off to one side and—at last—a bathroom.
The Peacekeepers take off my zip tie restraint, sending feeling back into the tips of my fingers in a rush of pins and needles. It feels like the bristle of Brutus’s stubble. For a moment, I forget where I am, until someone barks at me to “go take a f*cking bath.”
For a moment I think I’ll get a chance to be alone with a tub of deep water, but two of them stick around while I relieve myself and I have to do all the washing up with company. So that’s both frustrating and humiliating. But I guess it wouldn’t be wise to hurt myself now—not if Snow has a finger hovering over the button that could bomb Katniss and her rescuers into oblivion.
No. It wouldn’t be wise to upset him in any way.
I take the most thorough bath that I can, since I don’t know when I’m going to get another one. I scrub at my hands until the feeling leaves my fingers again, and I find my way back to a numb sort of calm. Or the closest approximation of it.
My preps start in on an abbreviated version of their full-body polish. They work in tight, jerking movements, fumbling tools and avoiding eye contact. Once, I try to whisper, “When did they detain you?” and a Peacekeeper snaps, “No talking,” from his post by the door. All four of them—Portia included—flinch as one animal.
I try to answer the question for myself by looking at them. Do they seem thinner? Maybe, but the Games started less than a week ago, so it has to be my imagination. Do any of them have bruises? Maybe under the grey clothes, I’m not sure. Are the Peacekeepers waiting to abuse my preps, or were they just not part of the scheme the way Portia obviously was?
If this is how Portia looks, I wonder what’s become of Cinna, who has surely been in league with Haymitch for many months.
It is just as well I can’t ask any of these questions. I imagine they have sorrowful answers.
When my hair is coiffed and my skin is glowing, when the wound at my hairline is erased and the chafe marks from the zip ties have been painted over, I’m buttoned into the white suit—a simpler echo of the wedding tuxedo I wore for that final night of tribute interviews. It has a high, zipped collar that chafes at my Adam’s apple every time I swallow.
Then I’m escorted back into the office that belongs to the President of Panem, which has, in the interim, been transformed into a recording set.
Off to one side of the president’s desk, they’ve set up two high-backed chairs under a flood of studio lighting. Portia and my preps are gagged and then arranged into a line along the far wall in sight of the recording set. They are flanked by armed Peacekeepers. The threat is clear: Go off script at all, and they pay.
Caesar Flickerman rises from one of the chairs to press my hand between both of his. The smile he gives me is short of his usual wattage. He looks all right compared to the rest—dressed in his usual clothes, anyway, not flanked with overt aggression by any Peacekeepers—so either he has Snow’s trust, or he’s gone to some pains to reassure the President of his loyalties.
“Peeta, Peeta, Peeta. It is truly good to see you alive and well.”
I manage a polite smile. It is nothing new, after all, to pretend feelings that I do not have.
“We’re filming here in the office?”
“The President will be back in a few short moments, and then yes, we’ll begin.” Caesar runs a hand over his lavender hair, which is stiff with hairspray. The barest hint of sweat beads through his makeup. “He has, ah, some specific points that you’ll need to address. A teleprompter will be running behind my chair for you. I’ve a copy of the script for you to review before we get started.”
He hands over a data pad. I scroll briefly through the notes. It’s a lot of pompous nonsense, almost as bad as the stuff Effie used to write on my Victory Tour cards. Effie. I wonder what’s become of her. I wonder if anyone thought to get her out of the Capitol. Since my prep team is still here, I’m not optimistic.
There’s a placeholder at the top of the script: Mellark describes his experience of the end of the Games. They seem to trust me enough for free rein here, except I’m to emphasize Katniss as a pawn of the insurgents, a rogue actor rather than a figurehead. I don’t think Snow believes this, but I’m happy enough to oblige. It can’t hurt to make Katniss sound a little more toothless. Suppose this whole revolution thing doesn’t work out for District Thirteen. Would there be any sort of peaceful life available to a failed mockingjay, a former rebel icon? I doubt it, but just in case—I can lay a few planks of groundwork.
After that, Snow wants me to repeat all the stuff from the graphs. The statistics about the precarious situation of the human race, et cetera. And he wants me to call for a cease fire, in those exact words. Fine. It will not come off well to the rebelling districts, who I assume will eventually have to watch this interview, but I’m not concerned that they’ll take me seriously. Maybe the Capitol once did, but the districts belong to Katniss. Snow will find, before long, that the Mockingjay is a one-woman act.
The President returns to the room with his military entourage and settles behind the long, grand desk. Caesar takes the chair on the right, and I take the one on the left. It is patterned with the same paisley print as Juno’s skin, only in burgundy and gold. Snow nods at the cameraman; a red light winks on, and we’re given a countdown. Then Caesar, who has been looking haggard until now, switches on that thousand-watt smile, and it all fades to background noise. He and I have that same gift of slipping effortlessly into a skin that is not ours. We could be back on the tribute center stage again for a third time. For a moment, there's no crisis; the Quell never happened.
“Good evening, dearest patriots of Panem. I’m Caesar Flickerman, and it is my privilege to be speaking to you from the President’s Mansion. I am here tonight with a very special guest, who has made time to help us clear the air after the disturbing events that disrupted our great national remembrance, the Quarter Quell, just a few short days ago. Please do me the honor of welcoming Victor and tribute from District Twelve, Peeta Mellark.”
The camera pans just slightly as Caesar sweeps out a manicured hand. And—this is unmistakably familiar ground, in the end. This is just another rendition of Capitol Peeta, a game I can play flawlessly, as long as I don’t look too hard at the shadowy lineup of victims beyond the glow of camera lights.
“So… Peeta… welcome back,” says Caesar.
I incline my head to Caesar and let a sad, somber sort of smile pass over my face. This is a greeting I’d give Delly whenever I saw her in town back home, after Thread and his new Peacekeeper squads arrived. A distant, gentle friendliness, served at a safe distance.
“I bet you thought you’d done your last interview with me, Caesar.”
“I confess, I did. The night before the Quarter Quell…” A beat too late, he seems to think better of bringing that up. Loyal or not, Caesar Flickerman is on thin ice too. “Well, who ever thought we’d see you again?”
“It wasn’t part of my plan, that’s for sure,” I say.
My plan. Let’s talk about my plan, let’s keep moving forward, I mean to imply. Caesar leans in and picks up the cue.
“I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive.”
“That was it. Clear and simple. But other people had plans as well.”
I am trying my best to keep the frustration—no, the betrayal—out of my voice, and I think I manage it. Unconsciously, I have begun to trace the paisley pattern with my fingertips. I glance down at the fabric instead of at the shadows along the back wall. It is an easier reminder of how careful I must be with my words. I ought to say something more here, bat the conversation back to Caesar, but I am caught up in the incredible danger, and I let the pause hang a little too long. Fortunately, my interviewer is ever the professional. He doesn’t let me stumble.
“Why don’t you tell us about that last night in the arena? Help us sort a few things out.”
The arena. Yes. That’s safe enough, ironically. The teleprompter winks a line of green words at me from behind Caesar’s coiffed purple hair. Mellark describes his experience of the end of the Games.
It looks simple. But it wasn’t simple at all.
This is the problem. This is what none of the puppeteers of this conflict understand. To them, in their control rooms and command centers and mansions, the chess board is so clear. The emotions, the fear, are all at such a remove. This conflict is about statistics and strategy and the fate of nations. They never stop to think what it might be like for the pawns.
When I speak, I start slowly. I am no longer allowed paints, but I try to create a picture.
“That last night… to tell you about that last night… well, first of all, you have to imagine how it felt in the arena. It was like being an insect trapped under a bowl filled with steaming air. And all around you, jungle… green and alive and ticking. That giant clock, ticking away your life. Every hour promising some new horror. You have to imagine that in the past two days, sixteen people have died—some of them defending you. At the rate things are going, the last eight will be dead by morning. Save one. The victor. And your plan is that it won’t be you.”
Distantly, I feel my pulse kicking into higher gear. But I’m out of my body now. I’m back there in the swamp, in the sticky confusion. In the hundreds of moments when I could have done what I had set out to do, when I could have died, and instead—on a fatal, animal instinct—I hesitated.
“Once you’re in the arena, the rest of the world becomes very distant. All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you’re going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it’s very costly.”
“It costs your life,” says Caesar, who looks entranced, which satisfies and maddens me in equal turns.
“Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life,” I say, almost sharply. Where I know my fingertips still brush the paisley print armrest, I feel only Brutus’s stubbled skull. “To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are.”
Caesar nearly flinches when I say murder. The Games aren’t spoken of in this way, not on national television, not to the districts. You aren’t meant to think of the Games as murder. They are a penance paid by the districts for the Dark Days. Tributes are sacrifices. You cannot murder someone who is already dead.
Just barely, Caesar stops his unease bleeding through. Instead, he repeats, “Everything you are,” in a nearly sacred hush. Almost as if he understands. But I know he’s just trying to dramatize the moment, carry us forward. And, since it is so important that I remain scripted, I let him.
“So you hold on to your wish,” I continue. “And that last night, yes, my wish was to save Katniss. But even without knowing about the rebels, it didn’t feel right. Everything was too complicated. I found myself regretting I hadn’t run off with her earlier in the day, as she had suggested. But there was no getting out of it at that point.”
“You were too caught up in Beetee’s plan to electrify the salt lake,” says Caesar.
“Too busy playing allies with the others.” Who certainly were not playing allies with us. Not with me, anyway, if they were willing to risk leaving me behind, willing to consider me collateral. I hope Haymitch sees this broadcast, wherever he is. I hope he hears my anger. I just want someone to look into my eyes and understand what they’ve done to me.
“I should have never let them separate us,” I say suddenly, my leash on my despair slipping. “That’s when I lost her.”
“When you stayed at the lightning tree, and she and Johanna Mason took the coil of wire down to the water,” Caesar clarifies.
I don’t like the way he says it. Like he’s trying to pick apart details, put Katniss and I on separate sides of a meaningful line.
“I didn’t want to! But I couldn’t argue with Beetee without indicating we were about to break away from the alliance. When that wire was cut, everything just went insane. I can only remember bits and pieces. Trying to find her. Watching Brutus kill Chaff. Killing Brutus myself. I know she was calling my name. Then the lightning bolt hit the tree, and the force field around the arena… blew out.”
“Katniss blew it out, Peeta,” says Caesar, with a false, impossible gentleness. The red recording light bleeds mercilessly into the dark around the studio lights. “You’ve seen the footage.”
It dawns on me for the first time that Caesar’s been given a script for this interview too, and it’s not the same as mine. I feel suddenly, violently ill. I am trying to create cover for Katniss in front of these cameras, but are they using me to create a more elaborate snare?
“She didn’t know what she was doing,” I snap. “None of us could follow Beetee’s plan. You can see her trying to figure out what to do with that wire.”
“All right,” says Caesar, dubiously. “It just looks suspicious. As if she was part of the rebels’ plan all along.”
Now I understand how the whole segment will be. They aren’t filming this live, and they have the Games footage. It will be so easy to piece this interview together with the clip Snow showed me, of Katniss and Beetee and the knife and the arrow, the way she sighted and shot and brought down the whole force field. As if she knew the entire time what the golden wire was for.
It’s absolute hogwash. Utter madness. They didn’t see the look in her eyes on the beach that night. When I tried to tell her it was time, that she needed to let me go. They didn’t see. We were in that arena for each other. I, to save her; she, to save me. Nothing else. Haymitch and all his machinations were an indistinct background blur, nothing that mattered.
I leap out of my chair and pitch forward on my unbalanced legs so suddenly that I have to catch myself on the arms of Caesar’s chair. He flattens himself into the high back, barely concealing his alarm as I get right up into his face. I feel that slipped-leash anger again, that desperation, where I don't know what's on my face. I just know that I have to make them understand.
“Really? And was it part of her plan for Johanna to nearly kill her? For that electric shock to paralyze her? To trigger the bombing?”
I have lost control of both my tone and my temper. I feel a breath from the arena again, the sky full of fire and hovercrafts. Caesar is a laughable, pastel doll between my fists. “She didn’t know, Caesar! Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive!”
Caesar, as always, does exactly the right thing. He does not shrink any further. He places a manicured hand against my chest, against my racing heart. There is force in the gesture, repelling my assault. There is gentleness, too. I misspoke. I am sorry. And the way he meets my eyes, it almost feels like he means it.
“Okay, Peeta,” he says. “I believe you.”
Maybe he does, and maybe he doesn’t. More importantly, there’s a muffled sound of boot on body from beyond the cameras. My rage being taken out on my prep team. I let go of Caesar’s chair as if burned and rake my fingers through my hairspray-stiff curls. They stand up haphazardly in the wake of this assault. I must look crazed. I fall back into my chair, trying to gather myself. Caesar waits until I have accomplished it.
“What about your mentor, Haymitch Abernathy?”
I know my face changes. I can’t help it, and right now I don’t care. “I don’t know what Haymitch knew.”
“Could he have been part of the conspiracy?” Caesar prompts.
“He never mentioned it.” That was always the problem. I never knew what Haymitch knew.
“What does your heart tell you?” Caesar presses.
“That I shouldn’t have trusted him. That’s all.”
It's true enough. Sure, Haymitch got Katniss out like I asked, but if the footage is to be believed—just barely. She nearly died. She might still die. And there was never any need for Haymitch to keep me out of his secrets.
There must be a bitterness in my voice that I have never let through before. Caesar offers me a look of sympathy that seems wrong on his powdered face. He leans forward to pat my shoulder bracingly. This is a stage gesture, though with real feeling in it.
“We can stop now, if you want.”
“Was there more to discuss?”
“I was going to ask your thoughts on the war, but if you’re too upset…”
Right. The ceasefire. I was meant to bring it up by name. I glance at the shadows lined along the back wall of the room. At least all four are still standing.
“Oh, I’m not too upset to answer that.” I take a steadying breath, do my best to put Haymitch aside in my mind, and look right into the camera’s wide, bulbous eye. I try to remember the script. The teleprompter is spitting it out in frantic green text behind Caesar’s silhouette, too fast for me to keep up with, so I summarize in my own words.
“I want everyone watching—whether you’re on the Capitol or the rebel side—to stop for just a moment and think about what this war could mean. For human beings. We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now are numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous. Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that—what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?”
“I don’t really… I’m not sure I’m following…” says Caesar, which is partly a prompt to get to the point, and partly genuine confusion, since I am ignoring all of the hard numbers and data points I have been scripted.
“We can’t fight one another, Caesar,” I say, simply. “There won’t be enough of us left to keep going. If everybody doesn’t lay down their weapons-and I mean, as in very soon—” the projection for the point of no return is several lines of green script back now, but I don't need it to communicate urgency— “it’s all over, anyway.”
“So…” Caesar pauses a beat, then prompts, “You’re calling for a ceasefire?”
“Yes. I’m calling for a ceasefire.” I can’t help sounding exhausted. Why that exact phrasing matters so much, I don’t know, and I can’t find it in me to care. “Now, why don’t we ask the guards to take me back to my quarters so I can build another hundred card houses?”
Caesar gives me a sympathetic smile, but the set of his shoulders shows relief, satisfaction. I supposed I’ve covered enough of what was on the script. He returns his attention to the camera, and clasps his hands somberly in his lap. “All right. I think that wraps it up. So, back to our regularly scheduled programming.”
Presumably there will be a transition here when the broadcast is aired. The anthem of Panem, perhaps. In the President’s office, the only sign of the broadcast’s end is that the red recording light winks out, and someone flips a light switch, illuminating several floor lamps around the room to create overlapping pools of golden glow. They don’t quite touch Portia and my preps, who stand in one of the shadowy stretches in between. Snow, on the other hand, is perfectly visible behind his desk. His puffy lips are thinned.
“Murder,” he says, once the silence has stretched just as thin.
“Murder?” I echo blankly. Then it comes back to me, along with the feeling of Brutus’s skull in my fingertips. Murder innocent people. That’s the phrase I used. I said murdering costs everything you are. I said that’s what you do in the Games. And I knew, from the aborted-flinch way that Caesar looked when I said it, that it was the wrong thing to say.
“You’re under duress, Mr. Mellark,” says Snow, “I understand that we don’t always act our best in such circ*mstances. We don’t always speak in a way that supports the public good. So I will be generous, and I will only issue you a warning.”
He nods at one of the Peacekeepers. Before I can react, the woman draws her rifle, aims it at Juno, and fires. The bullet strikes her in the thigh.
“This will be your only warning,” the President says over my shout of alarm. “In future you will maintain better command of your vocabulary. You are a citizen of Panem, Mr. Mellark. We expect you to speak thusly on national broadcasts.”
I barely hear him. Juno has slumped to the floor. The rest of my team is trying to go to her, but the Peacekeepers hold them back. I am the only one unrestrained, so I cross the room and kneel in the pool of spreading blood on my own. There is so much of it. I press two hands to the wound and red continues to well up. Even after so much violence, I do not know how much blood is too much. Will she survive this? Am I meant to watch her die for my mistake?
I clasp Juno’s hands in my own. They are shaking just as little Lace’s did. My prep feels just as helpless as the young tribute from District Eight. She is going bone white, her paisley tattoos blotting out against her colorless skin.
“You’ll be okay,” I say. “Just breathe. You’re going to be okay.”
“We’re finished here,” says Snow, behind us. “You can take him to Experimental. It will be some time before we need him again.”
The Peacekeepers crowd around me, lifting me from the floor. My white suit is stained scarlet down the calves and the forearms. I don’t let go of Juno until they force me, until I’m afraid I might be hurting her. She is silent in her suffering, but Gaius and Aquilla’s terrified sobs follow me out into the hall. Portia manages just a thin, high keening. This echoes against the high, gilded ceilings until we’re nearly to the front door.
The Peacekeepers are not gentle with me now. I did not understand that they were being gentle before. The vehicle waiting on the curb is not a limousine, but a boxy, metallic truck with grated windows. I’m thrown into it with force. There are no benches and no seatbelts. I rattle back and forth painfully as the driver speeds out the circular driveway to some unknown, more terrifying destination.
I was wrong. The Games are not over yet. Not for me.
Not until Snow kills Katniss.
Or, until I die before he gets the chance. A sacrificial lamb, slaughtered. As it was meant to be from the beginning.
