mockingjay

You'll never be able to let him go. You'll always feel wrong about being with me.

Katniss. I remember about the bread.

Whatever strength, courage... madness keeps us going, we find it, in times like these. You have it, soldier. It's what kept you alive all this time.

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.Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead.The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat."No, Katniss! No! You can't go!"But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does.

I search his eyes for the slightest sign of anything, fear, remorse, anger. But there's only the same look of amusement that ended our last conversation. It's as if he's speaking the words again. "Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other."He's right. We did.The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string. And President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.

I think about going to the lake, but I'm so weak that I barely make it to mymeeting place with Gale. I sit on the rock where Cressida filmed us, but it's too wide without his body beside me.Several times I close my eyes and count to ten, thinking that when I open them, he will have materialized without a sound as he so often did. I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pairof lips.

What will break me into a million pieces so that I am beyond repair, beyond usefulness?

Frankly, our ancestors don't seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn't care about what would happen to the people who came after them.

Are you preparing for another war, Plutarch?" I ask."Oh, not now. Now we're in a sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated," he says. "But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.

Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.

Why...do you find this...distracting?

Well, don't expect us to be too impressed. We just saw Finnick Odair in his underwear.

Slowly, with many lost days, I come back to life.

They'll either want to kill you, kiss you, or be you.

Are you, are you Coming to the tree They strung up a man They say who murdered three. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where the dead man called out For his love to flee. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.Are you, are you Coming to the tree Where I told you to run, So we'd both be free. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.Are you, are you Coming to the tree Wear a necklace of rope, Side by side with me. Strange things did happen here No stranger would it be If we met at midnight In the hanging tree.

I don__ stand a chance if he doesn't get better. You__l never be able to let him go. You__l always feel wrong about being with me.___he way I always felt wrong kissing him because of you,_ I say.Gale holds my gaze. __f I thought that was true, I could almost live with the rest of it.

Because it doesn't matter anymore, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it.

I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My on going struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.