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She holds a baby in her arms that she didn’t carry, but the baby is hers. A little baby so small and fragile, and she’s afraid when she’s first handed her, because what if she can’t protect this tiny, fragile baby in this cruel world? The world is better now, but she still can’t trust it. She never could trust much of anything.
She’s stabbed in the arm, and Johanna tells her to stay down. A throbbing pain, one more injury, so many injuries, she doesn’t know how to ever get the strength to get up again. She feels broken in a thousand pieces, but she has to keep going, there’s no other choice, people depend on her.
She holds Rue in her arms, a fury seemering inside of her. There’s cruelty in the world, she knows that already, everything about the games is just cruelty, and she would never trust it to be any different, but somehow this is worse. Rue is so small, so young, so innocent, and even if none of them truly deserve this, Rue deserved it least of all.
She’s tired of the boot over their necks. She might have lived her entire life and never let that indignation tip over into rage, taken in the smaller abuses, held onto the pain and suffering without fighting against it, but they crossed line after line and she can’t stand it anymore. She has to do something.
Prim is called, and it’s her worst nightmare. This she can’t accept, anything but this. She volunteers in her place, and she never feels like herself again. Something died inside of her that day, but it doesn’t matter, because at least it’s not Prim. She can take the suffering in her place if it’s not Prim, if she can keep her safe.
She kills so much that it becomes too easy. Something that she barely has to think about. There’s someone in her way, she can kill them. It shouldn’t be this easy, but that’s just the person she is now, and she doesn’t know how to go back from it. Maybe there’s no going back.
She sees her two best friends at odds, and doesn’t know how to make them focus on what’s important. They are like family to her, and she loves them in the way that she can, they’re her people, and she hopes that all of them can get through this alive. She doesn’t know if that’s a reasonable hope anymore, but it’s the only one that she can have.
The Mockingjay pin is her only treasure, and she guarded it with care. She tries to give it to Rue, but she won’t take it, insists that she keep it instead. It’s her lucky charm, and it stays with her rather than with Rue. Only one of them leaves the area alive, but she’s not entirely sure, by the time that she does, that this means that she’s the lucky one.
Her body aches and it never stops aching. Old wounds that never quite healed, or maybe they did in her body, but not in her mind. She thinks it’s both, a bit of each, but she doesn’t know which ones are which. Only that she’s in pain, always in pain. She just has to learn to live with it. She learns to live with much, maybe she learns to live with all. There’s no other choice now, that’s what happens with the ones who survive.
She tells Peeta about the baby. Not asking him, but not making a decision yet. He must see in her eyes, she can’t let an innocent person down like this, even if she doesn’t want to be needed by people anymore. He tells her that they have the room, and that she was great with Prim, she’ll be great with the baby too. He knows before she does that she made a decision.
She’s like a cat that she hates and isn’t even hers, and that’s just adding insult to injury. She wonders if that’s why Prim loves that cat so much, but she still can’t stand it. The feeling is very much mutual. Maybe when two beings are too much alike, that’s just what happens. Maybe they see in each other the things that they hate about themselves.
Peeta holds her hand and tells her that he understands. He doesn’t need more from her than she can give him. She’s his best friend, and that’s enough, he wants to be her partner, and help her, be by her side. There will never be anyone that she’ll fall in love with, and there will never be anyone she would rather marry than a friend, and he’s one that she can count on for anything. It’s an alliance, and they’re keeping each other alive.
The pregnant girl is maybe about her age, but she looks so much like a girl, not a woman yet, innocence and terror in her face. So thin and fragile, like she might topple over with the belly. She knows of the Mockingjay, and she asks her, taking her hands between both of hers, she pleads. She has a baby that she can’t care for, and she trusts her when she wouldn’t trust anyone else.
The Capitol sits her and Peeta on thrones and parades them around. The champions, the star-crossed lovers, all lies, always lies. She sits on the throne and feels like a doll, like a toy, like a puppet, and she knows that she’s being used. She knew that she would be used from the start. But she still sits on that throne and lets herself be shown, like she’s not even a person anymore. Sometimes, she needs to remind herself that she is, it’s too easy to forget. She’s afraid that one of these days, she won’t remember anymore.
She holds her daughter’s hands and teaches her to dance to music that she can barely hear, turning her head to the side every so often to make sure that she has the rhythm. There’s lightness in her daughter’s heart, maybe more than she ever had, even as a child, and she wants to preserve it, even if it means pretending that she’s happier than she is. But in a way, she is happy, even if it can’t quite reach all of her, even if there’s a part of her that never left the arena, she’s happy with the now.
They sign papers and don’t have a party. Their wedding night, they stay home and eat bread with stew, and Peeta tells stories, while she mostly listens. She knows that he’s like her in a way, he lost something that he can’t recover, and he can never be fully happy again, but she hopes that one day he’ll find at least enough happiness. That’s all they need, just enough to help them carry on.
Her treasure and her symbol is used around the Capitol as fashion, just another fad. It’s empty on them as just everything else that they do is empty, and all the gold that they throw into making these copies doesn’t give them any value because of this. It’s not about the pin, but about the symbol, and she wants so much to keep believing in that symbol, even as all hope seems to keep fading away from her, dying as all else in her feels dead. She wants it to have meaning for her, and she fears that’s slowly being lost too.
People don’t understand her and Peeta, and they mostly don’t understand her. She doesn’t really care about it, she never much cared about what others thought. There’s too much in life to worry about, too much to care about, to spend her time correcting misunderstandings. He’s her husband because there’s no other word for it, no other bond that people might recognise, that would let them have their daughter together. She doesn’t need to be in love for there to be love, and for him to be her family.
The first time that she tries to use a bow and arrow is a disaster, but she soon learns it’s a matter of practice. She keeps on trying, and she keeps getting better at it. It’s the one skill that she has, but it’s useful, and it helps her have enough to eat, at least enough to stay alive. What she doesn’t want to learn, but learns anyway, is that killing people is just the same. It’s just a matter of practice, and soon she becomes better at it as well. Later, she’ll wish it’s a skill that she doesn’t have, just as she does with archery.
Someone must know about the pregnant girl and the baby that she gave them, a toddler now, because one day she gets home and there’s a baby wrapped in a burlap sack waiting by their door. There’s a note that says, ‘I’m sorry, please take care of him, tell him that I love him’. There’s never any doubt in her mind, she takes the baby inside. By dinner, Peeta is doting on his son, and showing him to his sister.
She doesn’t dare count the years until she won’t be at risk for the reaping, because it means getting closer to the years that Prim will be at risk. She could take dying, she thinks. It might be easy, even, and it should be quick. But she can’t take losing Prim, and so she can’t anticipate any safety for her if it won’t mean safety for Prim as well. She doesn’t think that she can imagine a world where there’s safety for both of them.
Sometimes, she can’t get off the bed, and Peeta comes to her room just to make sure that she eats, refusing to leave until she does. Sometimes, she has nightmares that she can’t shake and he has to wake her, holding her down to keep her from hurting herself. Sometimes, she needs to be reminded that they won, as much as they could have, and that this is real.
Sometimes, she hears him screaming from the other room, and has to take him from his nightmares, repeating over and over that he’s safe until he can believe it. Sometimes, he’s in so much pain that he can’t stand his prosthetic and she gives him a shoulder to help him walk. Sometimes, she takes the children for a walk because she knows that at times people just need to be alone, and he doesn’t want them to see him cry until they’re old enough to understand.
She never gets back what she lost at that reaping. She gains many things, but she never gets that back, something inside of her is just gone, and it can never come back. It’s as dead and buried as every person she lost, as every person she killed. But she builds a life, and she builds a family, and she carries on living. She has no other choice, but she doesn’t resent it, even as she wishes that someone else could have had this chance in her place.
Her children are happy, and they grow up not to be afraid of the world that they live in. They grow up laughing and dancing, they smell the flowers and aren’t afraid of bullets, they go to sleep on warm beds with full bellies and have more dreams than nightmares. That’s the best victory that she could ever hope for, even if it costs so dearly.