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The memories swirl as I try to sort out what is true and what is false.
I start with the simplest things I know to be true and work toward the more complicated.
“She’s still a girl and you made her look thirty-five. Feels wrong. Like something the Capitol would do.”
“Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”
Just a few cubes of bread soaking in warm milk.
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want to lose our little Mockingjay when she’s finally begun to sing.”
I meet Haymitch’s eyes from across the room and see my own dread mirrored back. The recognition that with every cheer, Peeta slips even farther from our grasp.
Something small and quiet, like a match being struck, lights up the gloom inside me. This is the sort of future a rebellion could bring.
It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”
The sixteen-year-old boy who won the second Quarter Quell must have had people he loved — family, friends, a sweetheart maybe — that he fought to get back to. Where are they now? How is it that until Peeta and I were thrust upon him, there was no one at all in his life? What did Snow do to them?
Blamed on bad shellfish, elusive viruses, or an overlooked weakness in the aorta. Snow drinking from the poisoned cup himself to deflect suspicion.
“No. My mother and younger brother. My girl. They were all dead two weeks after I was crowned victor. Because of that stunt I pulled with the force field,” he answers. “Snow had no one to use against me.” “I’m surprised he didn’t just kill you,” I say. “Oh, no. I was the example. The person to hold up to the young Finnicks and Johannas and Cashmeres. Of what could happen to a victor who caused problems,” says Haymitch. “But he knew he had no leverage against me.”
Hijacked. That’s the word I heard pass between Plutarch and Haymitch as I was wheeled past them in the hallway. Hijacked.
“Snow executed Peeta’s stylist and his prep team on live television tonight. We’ve no idea what happened to Effie Trinket. Peeta’s damaged, but he’s here. With us. And that’s a definite improvement over his situation twelve hours ago. Let’s keep that in mind, all right?”
Not only does he hate me and want to kill me, he no longer believes I’m human. It was less painful being strangled.
I’m sitting on a log at the edge of my current village, plucking a goose. A dozen or so of the birds are piled at my feet. Great flocks of them have been migrating through here since I’ve arrived, and the pickings are easy.
With my newfound knowledge of Haymitch’s and Finnick’s treatment, all I can think is: What did the Capitol do to her after she won?
lone fiddler who made it out of 12 with his instrument.
the fiddler strikes up a tune that turns every head from 12.
“He started arguing with himself like he was two people.
That’s how they tortured her in the Capitol. Soaked her and then used electric shocks,”
I think of the way Johanna never showers. How she forced herself into the rain like it was acid that day.
No family. No friends. Not so much as a token from 7 to set beside her regulation clothes in her anonymous drawer. Nothing.
There were two Avoxes with me in prison. Darius and Lavinia, but the guards mostly called them the redheads. They’d been our servants in the Training Center, so they arrested them, too. I watched them being tortured to death. She was lucky. They used too much voltage and her heart stopped right off. It took days to finish him off. Beating, cutting off parts. They kept asking him questions, but he couldn’t speak, he just made these horrible animal sounds. They didn’t want information, you know? They wanted me to see it.”
Once again I’m battling not only for my own survival but for Peeta’s as well. How satisfying, how entertaining it would be for Snow to have me kill him. To have Peeta’s death on my conscience for whatever is left of my life.
Apparently, the end of Snow’s reign didn’t equal the end of his terror.
Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, and then raises geese until the next train arrives. Fortunately, the geese can take pretty good care of themselves.
