Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

by Suzanne Collins

“Ally.” Peeta says the word slowly, tasting it. “Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancée. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I’ll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out.”

Thinkin of that tiktok edit

At a few minutes before four, Peeta turns to me again. “Your favorite color . . . it’s green?” “That’s right.” Then I think of something to add. “And yours is orange.” “Orange?” He seems unconvinced. “Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset,” I say. “At least, that’s what you told me once.”

AHHHHH I AM NOT OKAY

When I look up, I see it has taken Gale differently. His expression says that there are not enough mountains to crush, enough cities to destroy. It promises death.

Triggering the bomb that blows off his legs.

SUZANNE OMG

“Don’t trust them. Don’t go back. Kill Peeta. Do what you came to do.”

“Our next move . . . is to kill me.”

The one where the man wants his lover dead rather than have her face the evil that awaits her in the world.

Once again I’m battling not only for my own survival but for Peeta’s as well.

I press my lips together at the memories of rain dripping through stones, my inept attempts at flirting, and the aroma of my favorite Capitol dish in the chilly air.

Now this place tastes like the arena, too.

And then they begin to show images of the dead, just as they did with the tributes in the arena. They start with the four faces of our TV crew, followed by Boggs, Gale, Finnick, Peeta, and me. Except for Boggs, they don’t bother with the soldiers from 13, either because they have no idea who they are or because they know they won’t mean anything to the audience.

But for better or worse, I am not motivated by kindness.

I slip it into my pants pocket, where it clicks against the pearl.

Peeta sounded like his old self, the one who could always think of the right thing to say when nobody else could. Ironic, encouraging, a little funny, but not at anyone’s expense.

The memories they altered with the tracker jacker venom have this strange quality about them. Like they’re too intense or the images aren’t stable. You remember what it was like when we were stung?”

“But people don’t need wings to survive.” “Mockingjays do.”

“Because that’s what you and I do. Protect each other.”

“Katniss.”

SCARY

I position my arrow to penetrate his brain. He’ll barely feel a thing. Suddenly, he’s sitting up, eyes wide in alarm, short of breath. “Katniss!” He whips his head toward me but doesn’t seem to notice my bow, the waiting arrow. “Katniss! Get out of here!” I hesitate. His voice is alarmed, but not insane. “Why? What’s making that sound?” “I don’t know. Only that it has to kill you,” says Peeta. “Run! Get out! Go!”

THATS WHAT WE DO. WE PROTECT EACH OTHER

Cutting through the sewage. Roses. I begin to tremble.

They are white, four-limbed, about the size of a full-grown human, but that’s where the comparisons stop. Naked, with long reptilian tails, arched backs, and heads that jut forward. They swarm over the Peacekeepers, living and dead, clamp on to their necks with their mouths and rip off the helmeted heads.

The smell of Snow’s roses mixed with the victims’ blood. Carried across the sewer. Cutting through even this foulness. Making my heart run wild, my skin turn to ice, my lungs unable to suck air. It’s as if Snow’s breathing right in my face, telling me it’s time to die.

I lean in and kiss Peeta full on the mouth. His whole body starts shuddering, but I keep my lips pressed to his until I have to come up for air. My hands slide up his wrists to clasp his. “Don’t let him take you from me.”

Always,”

AH

“You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?”

“It was one of your conditions for being the Mockingjay. ‘I kill Snow.’ ”

“I think . . . you still have no idea. The effect you can have.”

“I bet he’d come out for me,” I say. “If I were captured. He’d want that as public as possible. He’d want my execution on his front steps.” I let this sink in. “Then Gale could shoot him from the audience.”

“To make sure Katniss is still here?” asks Peeta. “Something like that,” Gale admits. There’s a long pause before Peeta speaks again. “That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her.”

“Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can’t survive without.”

There’s not the least indication that love, or desire, or even compatibility will sway me. I’ll just conduct an unfeeling assessment of what my potential mates can offer me.

The little girl who was watching me kneels beside a motionless woman, screeching and trying to rouse her.

Caught in the cross fire are the refugees, unarmed, disoriented, many wounded.

First I get a glimpse of the blond braid down her back. Then, as she yanks off her coat to cover a wailing child, I notice the duck tail formed by her untucked shirt.

And that’s when the rest of the parachutes go off.

I am Cinna’s bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end.

A badly burned girl with no wings. With no fire. And no sister.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ve saved him for you.”

My mother buries her grief in her work. Having no work, grief buries me. All that keeps me going is Coin’s promise. That I can kill Snow. And when that’s done, nothing will be left.

Closing my eyes doesn’t help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness.

Could it be that I am near the garden where the evil things grow?

“The colors are lovely, of course, but nothing says perfection like white.”

“Well, you really didn’t think I gave the order, did you? Forget the obvious fact that if I’d had a working hovercraft at my disposal, I’d have been using it to make an escape. But that aside, what purpose could it have served? We both know I’m not above killing children, but I’m not wasteful. I take life for very specific reasons. And there was no reason for me to destroy a pen full of Capitol children. None at all.”

But I wasn’t watching Coin. I was watching you, Mockingjay. And you were watching me. I’m afraid we have both been played for fools.”

Everything was in her grasp. Except me.

Whatever problems we may have with each other, we prefer resolving our differences one-on-one.

I’m searching for something to hang on to, some sign of the girl and boy who met by chance in the woods five years ago and became inseparable. I’m wondering what would have happened to them if the Hunger Games had not reaped the girl. If she would have fallen in love with the boy, married him even. And sometime in the future, when the brothers and sisters had been raised up, escaped with him into the woods and left 12 behind forever. Would they have been happy, out in the wild, or would the dark, twisted sadness between them have grown up even without the Capitol’s help?

“Was it your bomb?”

“What has been proposed is that in lieu of eliminating the entire Capitol population, we have a final, symbolic Hunger Games, using the children directly related to those who held the most power.”

WHAT

All those people I loved, dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now.