Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3)(24)

"Oh, Finnick. I'm so sorry," I say.

"No, I'm sorry. That I didn't warn you somehow," he tells me.

Suddenly, a memory surfaces. I'm strapped to my bed, mad with rage and grief after the rescue. Finnick is trying to console me about Peeta. "They'll figure out he doesn't know anything pretty fast. And they won't kill him if they think they can use him against you."

"You did warn me, though. On the hovercraft. Only when you said they'd use Peeta against me, I thought you meant like bait. To lure me into the Capitol somehow," I say.

"I shouldn't have said even that. It was too late for it to be of any help to you. Since I hadn't warned you before the Quarter Quell, I should've shut up about how Snow operates." Finnick yanks on the end of his rope, and an intricate knot becomes a straight line again. "It's just that I didn't understand when I met you. After your first Games, I thought the whole romance was an act on your part. We all expected you'd continue that strategy. But it wasn't until Peeta hit the force field and nearly died that I -" Finnick hesitates.

I think back to the arena. How I sobbed when Finnick revived Peeta. The quizzical look on Finnick's face. The way he excused my behavior, blaming it on my pretend pregnancy. "That you what?"

"That I knew I'd misjudged you. That you do love him. I'm not saying in what way. Maybe you don't know yourself. But anyone paying attention could see how much you care about him," he says gently.

Anyone? On Snow's visit before the Victory Tour, he challenged me to erase any doubts of my love for Peeta. "Convince me," Snow said. It seems, under that hot pink sky with Peeta's life in limbo, I finally did. And in doing so, I gave him the weapon he needed to break me.

Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, "How do you bear it?"

Finnick looks at me in disbelief. "I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking." Something in my expression stops him. "Better not to give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart."

Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece. 

"The more you can distract yourself, the better," he says. "First thing tomorrow, we'll get you your own rope. Until then, take mine."

I spend the rest of the night on my mattress obsessively making knots, holding them up for Buttercup's inspection. If one looks suspicious, he swipes it out of the air and bites it a few times to make sure it's dead. By morning, my fingers are sore, but I'm still holding on.

With twenty-four hours of quiet behind us, Coin finally announces we can leave the bunker. Our old quarters have been destroyed by the bombings. Everyone must follow exact directions to their new compartments. We clean our spaces, as directed, and file obediently toward the door.

Before I'm halfway there, Boggs appears and pulls me from the line. He signals for Gale and Finnick to join us. People move aside to let us by. Some even smile at me since the Crazy Cat game seems to have made me more lovable. Out the door, up the stairs, down the hall to one of those multidirectional elevators, and finally we arrive at Special Defense. Nothing along our route has been damaged, but we are still very deep.

Boggs ushers us into a room virtually identical to Command. Coin, Plutarch, Haymitch, Cressida, and everybody else around the table looks exhausted. Someone has finally broken out the coffee - although I'm sure it's viewed only as an emergency stimulant - and Plutarch has both hands wrapped tightly around his cup as if at any moment it might be taken away.

There's no small talk. "We need all four of you suited up and aboveground," says the president. "You have two hours to get footage showing the damage from the bombing, establish that Thirteen's military unit remains not only functional but dominant, and, most important, that the Mockingjay is still alive. Any questions?"

"Can we have a coffee?" asks Finnick.

Steaming cups are handed out. I stare distastefully at the shiny black liquid, never having been much of a fan of the stuff, but thinking it might help me stay on my feet. Finnick sloshes some cream in my cup and reaches into the sugar bowl. "Want a sugar cube?" he asks in his old seductive voice. That's how we met, with Finnick offering me sugar. Surrounded by horses and chariots, costumed and painted for the crowds, before we were allies. Before I had any idea what made him tick. The memory actually coaxes a smile out of me. "Here, it improves the taste," he says in his real voice, plunking three cubes in my cup.

As I turn to go suit up as the Mockingjay, I catch Gale watching me and Finnick unhappily. What now? Does he actually think something's going on between us? Maybe he saw me go to Finnick's last night. I would've passed the Hawthornes' space to get there. I guess that probably rubbed him the wrong way. Me seeking out Finnick's company instead of his. Well, fine. I've got rope burn on my fingers, I can barely hold my eyes open, and a camera crew's waiting for me to do something brilliant. And Snow's got Peeta. Gale can think whatever he wants.

In my new Remake Room in Special Defense, my prep team slaps me into my Mockingjay suit, arranges my hair, and applies minimal makeup before my coffee's even cooled. In ten minutes, the cast and crew of the next propos are making the circuitous trek to the outside. I slurp my coffee as we travel, finding that the cream and sugar greatly enhance its flavor. As I knock back the dregs that have settled to the bottom of the cup, I feel a slight buzz start to run through my veins.

After climbing a final ladder, Boggs hits a lever that opens a trapdoor. Fresh air rushes in. I take big gulps and for the first time allow myself to feel how much I hated the bunker. We emerge into the woods, and my hands run through the leaves overhead. Some are just starting to turn. "What day is it?" I ask no one in particular. Boggs tells me September begins next week.



       
         
       
        

September. That means Snow has had Peeta in his clutches for five, maybe six weeks. I examine a leaf on my palm and see I'm shaking. I can't will myself to stop. I blame the coffee and try to focus on slowing my breathing, which is far too rapid for my pace.

Debris begins to litter the forest floor. We come to our first crater, thirty yards wide and I can't tell how deep. Very. Boggs says anyone on the first ten levels would likely have been killed. We skirt the pit and continue on.

"Can you rebuild it?" Gale asks.

"Not anytime soon. That one didn't get much. A few backup generators and a poultry farm," says Boggs. "We'll just seal it off."

The trees disappear as we enter the area inside the fence. The craters are ringed with a mixture of old and new rubble. Before the bombing, very little of the current 13 was aboveground. A few guard stations. The training area. About a foot of the top floor of our building - where Buttercup's window jutted out - with several feet of steel on top of it. Even that was never meant to withstand more than a superficial attack.

"How much of an edge did the boy's warning give you?" asks Haymitch.

"About ten minutes before our own systems would've detected the missiles," says Boggs.

"But it did help, right?" I ask. I can't bear it if he says no.

"Absolutely," Boggs replies. "Civilian evacuation was completed. Seconds count when you're under attack. Ten minutes meant lives saved."

Prim, I think. And Gale. They were in the bunker only a couple of minutes before the first missile hit. Peeta might have saved them. Add their names to the list of things I can never stop owing him for.

Cressida has the idea to film me in front of the ruins of the old Justice Building, which is something of a joke since the Capitol's been using it as a backdrop for fake news broadcasts for years, to show that the district no longer existed. Now, with the recent attack, the Justice Building sits about ten yards away from the edge of a new crater.

As we approach what used to be the grand entrance, Gale points out something and the whole party slows down. I don't know what the problem is at first and then I see the ground strewn with fresh pink and red roses. "Don't touch them!" I yell. "They're for me!"

The sickeningly sweet smell hits my nose, and my heart begins to hammer against my chest. So I didn't imagine it. The rose on my dresser. Before me lies Snow's second delivery. Long-stemmed pink and red beauties, the very flowers that decorated the set where Peeta and I performed our post-victory interview. Flowers not meant for one, but for a pair of lovers.

I explain to the others as best I can. Upon inspection, they appear to be harmless, if genetically enhanced, flowers. Two dozen roses. Slightly wilted. Most likely dropped after the last bombing. A crew in special suits collects them and carts them away. I feel certain they will find nothing exraordinary in them, though. Snow knows exactly what he's doing to me. It's like having Cinna beaten to a pulp while I watch from my tribute tube. Designed to unhinge me. 

Like then, I try to rally and fight back. But as Cressida gets Castor and Pollux in place, I feel my anxiety building. I'm so tired, so wired, and so unable to keep my mind on anything but Peeta since I've seen the roses. The coffee was a huge mistake. What I didn't need was a stimulant. My body visibly shakes and I can't seem to catch my breath. After days in the bunker, I'm squinting no matter what direction I turn, and the light hurts. Even in the cool breeze, sweat trickles down my face.