slaughterhouse (seventy) five

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a hunger games fic

Summary: "You should have listened, you know. When he begged you to kill him." A visceral reaction to Mockingjay. Title repurposed from Vonnegut. Dark, possible triggers. Starts after Gale asks, "So, now that we're dead, what's our next move?"

Chapter 1

"Our next move," Peeta says, "is to kill me."

His words are hummingbirds—they thrum, they mesmerize, they shock us silent. The type of silent you are when you know something horrible to be true. Those who remain of Squad 451, Jackson and Finnick and even the Leegs, they look this way or that way or any other way that is not at him. Or at me.

And it's true. We should kill this puppet who wears Peeta's face. This person who threw Mitchell into that pod, the person with bleached mad eyes intent on crushing my skull—this stranger sitting broken and almost tearful in front of us now—this isn't Peeta. For all I know, Peeta—the real Peeta—is already dead.

Maybe I was right earlier. Maybe he really is a mutt.

Kill Peeta, Bogs had said.

Do you want me to kill him? Gale had asked.

Kill me, Peeta confirmed. Now, his blue eyes spear into mine, no longer the shy flit-and-away from when we were young and sitting in school, worlds apart.

I wonder: Is it really murder, if a person begs to die? Or is it humane, like putting down a lame animal? I think of wolves with human eyes, Rue's eyes. And now Peeta, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Gale shifts, the first of us to move. Of course. His private offer to me hadn't been a bluff.

"He's right." His voice rings out into the silence, authoritative, rational, changing wavering to decisive. No one will meet Peeta's gaze; they're all looking at Gale. Gale, as he stands there so tall and firm and almost-wise. Gale, who raises his sidearm and points it straight between Peeta's eyes. A quick, clean kill. Leave nothing for the Capitol to recycle.

I've seen him do this a hundred times.

But before a single beat of my heart, before I even register the motion, my bow is up, arrow notched. The creak of the string as I draw back divides the silence.

At the sound, this familiar sound, Gale's eyes shift to me, jaw slack. In disbelief, because I've never pointed a weapon at him, not so much as a blunt butter knife. Back in the forest, he teased me for being so adamant that we keep our arrow tips and our knife edges pointed in innocuous directions.

"Afraid you'll trip, little girl?" he'd say, and I'd always scowl and retort that he'd best tend to his own boat feet. I wasn't afraid of tripping, of letting an arrow fly unfettered. It is merely something my father taught me: Don't aim at those you don't plan to kill.

Don't aim at those you love.

So Gale can't believe my aim. Yet in a single glance at my face, my stance, he knows. He knows I'm serious. I won't shoot to kill, but I will shoot.

Just as assuredly as he will shoot Peeta.

I don't even have to speak, to command him to lower his weapon. This is how well he knows me, how well we communicate even in silence. Together, we lower our weapons.

Words erupt around us, flowing into the stillness—disbelief, agreement of Gale's intent, some in our party wanting to turn back, others adamant that we should complete the (fictional) mission.

Gale and I, we just stare at each other over the melee. How easy it was for him to raise his weapon to Peeta. How easy it was for me to raise my own. Peeta is also silent, framed by a couch the electric color of his eyes. Although I'm pulled by the gravity of his gaze, I can't look at him. I can't see what's likely in his face: disappointment, anger, contempt. Certainly no emotion I expect.

Gale looks away first.

Talk dies as I shift minutely to speak. Heads turn toward me, faces open. Trusting. Believing that I can somehow make the tough decisions and deliver them from the mouth of Hell. Even though I can't choose between a hunter and a baker.

"No one kills Peeta," I say. "I need him." Gale's face darkens further, ears pink, and I add, "For the mission. He may remember something about the mansion layout that will help."

No one questions my logic.

Not out loud.

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When I move, they follow. Even Peeta.

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Later, when we're alone in the bowels of night, Peeta asks, "Would he have shot me?"

I think of Gale's face when one of his snares is effective. I think of Gale braving the whipping post, for me.

"Yes."

Peeta ponders this for a long moment as a train rumbles through the nearby Transfer. Then, "Would you have shot him?"

And I don't even have to think. "Yes."

In shadow, Peeta's face is foreign, alien. He says nothing, no doubt unable to reconcile the images of the girl in his brain with someone who would save his life.

I want to reach out, feel that he's real.

I don't.

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We've descended into a grave. Around me, people die. What remains of our squad (whose number is the temperature at which books burn) is culled from few to fewer still by the mutts who know my name. I watch skin drip like wax down a burning candle. I watch Finnick snuffed out, just like that. No final grand gesture, no sacrificing himself to save others, no gasp to tell Annie how much he loves her. Just gone.

It could have been Gale. It could have been Peeta.

There's a moment when it still could be. They're both down there, the two of them, and one or both might not come up. Peeta is climbing with his hands cuffed. Gale might take this opportunity. One flick of his wrist, and Peeta could lose his footing. Or it could be an accident. I'd never know.

But then his head pops through the porthole and it's Gale, following close behind, who's clutching his neck, Gale whose uniform is shredded.

Still, I kiss Peeta to bring him back. He bites my lip hard enough to draw blood.

Kisses are their own type of weapon.

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When it's dark, Buttercup incarnate watches over our sleep. Guarding us from the night.

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Citizens of the Capitol trudge by on their bizarre, hodgepodge pilgrimage to their perceived Mecca, as though someone at the City Center will save them. How easily propaganda has swayed them, how effectively luxury has numbed them, that they drift like sheep.

When we hear on the monitor that Snow is opening the mansion to refugees, I know that this is our chance. Somehow, we have to be one of them. We have to be invited in to his lair.

"I won't go with you," Peeta agrees. But that's because he wants to hang back, create a diversion. I'm shaking my head, fiercely, because I think I know exactly what he considers a diversion.

He'll wait a few minutes until we're out of sight (give us a nice one-one-thousand, two). Then he'll shed his wig and costume, stand calmly in a stream of humanity, hold his head high, and wait. He'll be the diversion.

This time, the crowd won't make a mistake.

I can't protect him if I'm not there. But I can't protect myself if he's with me.

"No," I say. "You stay here. If I have to, I'll chain you up."

Lips white with pain, Gale looks at me. Behind his eyes are accusations he won't voice. Contrary to my stated reason for keeping Peeta alive, I don't want him anywhere near that mansion. I want him in the back room of a shop that sells fur underwear, handcuffed to a stairwell support. Where he'll be safe.

But then Peeta says the only thing that could make me change my mind.

"Please," he says. "Don't leave me behind."

Not again.

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In this final arena, Tigris performs a final miracle, remaking us into sheep. In pairs, we join the herd. All but Peeta, who sets out against the tide. I can't even look back on him, one last time. I hadn't said goodbye.

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Chaos ensues. We're separated from Cressida and Pollux. Pods shoot and boil and liquefy. Blood makes rivulets in the snow. The ground opens between Gale and me, a physical manifestation of our psychological rift. When I see him get captured, I don't even kill him.

"Go!" he says, thinking ever of me. But he's also alerted his captors that he's not alone. A Peacekeeper leans out the apartment window, searching. Before we can make eye contact, before he can see me watching Gale a final time, I duck my head down, shuffing my hood up. It's instinct, to blend casual like this, all those years I sauntered past Peacekeepers, pack laden with contraband.

Somehow, it works; I don't get shot in the back. As I slink into an alley, I feel it—I'm on my own. I'm me, singular, as I approach the hordes of civilians and soldiers who separate me from my final prey. And past these scurrying ants, the anthill itself, a fortress of impenetrable stone.

My mission is a farce, doomed from the beginning. Squad 451 perished for nothing. We were supposed to be for show.

I'm standing in a puddle of ice, urging myself to think think think. This isn't a game, where a Game Master might intervene now lest the audience get bored. What can I do that will make one iota of difference in this mayhem? Find the nearest Peacekeeper and drop my hood? Walk up to the main mansion entrance and knock?

To start, I move. Walk toward the bullseye of the City Circle. Try to act ditsy, like a wilting flower, which isn't difficult given my watery limbs. Through the gap in my hood, the mansion walls seem to grow impossibly tall.

The square is filled with lambs penned by a barricade. The crisp air has slapped their cheeks pink, and they huddle for warmth. What kind of parents would allow their children to serve as a human shield? But I already know. Parents like mine. Parents who have no choice. Or who no longer exist. Perhaps the square is filled with orphans.

I stand at the far edge of the concrete barrier—a mere four feet tall, but it might as well be a hundred. I'm no longer a child; they won't let me in. But I'm close enough now that, if I reveal who I am, I might be taken to Snow. There are two Peacekeepers several meters away, barking on their radios but otherwise doing nothing to help their fellow citizens. I can tell them I have an important message from Coin. President's ears only.

I take a step toward them.

Impossibly, some unknown Game Master intervenes after all. A firebomb detonates close, almost too close, and I'm thrown to the ground.

The Rebels have arrived.

For a moment, I can't breathe, can't see, can't hear. But as my vision clears, I focus on a miracle, a gaping window (a gleeful maw) on the second story where there hadn't been one before. Chunks of concrete cascade down, providing a tenuous ladder.

Right where the two Peacekeepers had been standing.

I scrabble over the rubble, too loud, too exposed. But there's no one over here because they're all over there, diverted to where the Rebels are swarming like tracker jackers. My hands singe against heated rock, but I press on because I have to, hauling myself up onto a ledge. With a single nudge, the slab that had been my boost tumbles away.

No one can follow my path.

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I've stepped into an alternate reality, a world inexplicably untouched by the mayhem mere meters away. The Capitol has always been like this, opulence hiding oppression.

Quickly, I shed my Capitol trappings, stuffing my furry cloak behind a low couch. Bow in hand, I begin to hunt.

No one stops me as I stride down a corridor lined with jarring colors and shapes that pass here for art. No one stops me as I kick open door after door, all ajar, all leading into vacant rooms. (Vacant, even as children freeze outside.) In one, I pause, because I've been here before. In another lifetime. The room is stripped bare now, all indications of my presence erased.

I jog on, and the carpet beneath my boots thickens, becoming impossibly more lush. I travel for so long, my arms ache with the effort of keeping my bow semi-taut. Too long, given what's happening in another time, another place. Occasionally, I freeze and flatten at the distant tramp of boots, likely contingents of Peacekeepers. Somehow, they're always headed away. Reinforcements for the square, perhaps. Or perhaps an indication that I'm tracking in the wrong direction. Maybe I should follow them, see if they'll take me to their leader.

I'm about to turn around, backtrack in the direction of all the activity, when I smell it—a curdling waft of something familiar. Something from my past. Something not entirely pleasant but that hints entirely of Snow. For the first time, I falter. It's not a scent I'd willingly follow, but follow I must.

The smell blooms as I approach a door set into a wall of frosted glass. The door opens soundlessly, like everything else in this place.

I step into a nightmare. Inside, the stench of decay is so stifling, I can't catch my breath to scream.

They're everywhere.

Roses.

Crawling trellises to the ceiling, choking out a meager skylight. Dangling from arches like swollen spiders. No matter where I turn, they're there, reaching tendrils out to grab, to snag. I cringe away, not wanting them to touch me, not wanting to brush even a single leaf. But even as I retreat from some, others snag in my hair, my bow. Pressing on, I'm terrified, nearly succumbing to the smell, to the fear of what could be lurking around each bush.

Then, a chilling sound, one that I've heard before.

Katnissssss.

Blindly, I crouch, listening for scrabbling claws on the flagstones lining my path, waiting for a fresh batch of slithering lizards, me protected this time by nothing but flimsy flora. But there is no pursuit, no movement. Just expectant, sinister silence.

The sound starts again—Katnissssss, it says, Katnissssss—and my skin prickles as I finally perceive where it's coming from. It's coming from everywhere, from all around me. It's coming from the roses.

As I watch in horror, nearby buds unfurl, swiveling like cameras, fixing an unblinking gaze on my position. Katnissssss, they say, and Katnissssss, others agree, a swelling chorus that gets picked up by waves upon waves of blooms. There must be thousands of them. And they know exactly who I am.

I think: So this is how I die. Not surrounded by my friends and allies, not underground, but alone, in a swarm of roses. I wait, expecting the roses to snake out and tangle me up. It would be just like Snow to engineer the heart of this place as a final level of defense. Brutality disguised with beauty.

But the roses don't move. They just stare and stare and stare.

Come, Katnisssssss, they sigh.

And I think I finally understand. This time, the voice is not a threat to be eluded. It is a siren to be followed. They want me to follow it. To sure death.

Ahead, leaves rustle, but no wind stirs the air. There, through an opening in the foliage, I see a door on the opposite wall swing shut. There, then, is where I should be, the only door that has closed to me.

I steel myself: I'm here, I'm ready, I'm going to kill Snow. Here, in the depths of the snake's lair, surrounded by his minions and his terrors and his roses, it does not matter. Somehow, I'll kill him.

I'll burn, but he'll burn with me.

Fire behind my eyes, I yank open the door and swivel my bow into a yawing opening. Nothing stirs. Not even a flesh-eating mouse. The air seems to breathe.

But the moment I charge into the gloom, the Peacekeepers descend, like vultures to carrion. They wear gloves, but these gloves are not white. They're red like blood, like roses. The President's personal guard, then.

He's close.

Blood-dipped hands strip me of my weapon, frisk me for others. The hands aren't gentle. They're rough and thorough and aware that I'm a something-year-old girl. But then the hands retreat. They close the door behind me, and I'm abruptly alone and defenseless, a Mockingjay in a cage.

It's over in less than a minute.

I inspect my prison. An entire wall is nothing but a screen spitting static, breaking at the grumble of a far-off explosion. Maybe a control room of some sort, likely where the President records his broadcasts.

I sit, trying just to breathe.

He knows I'm here.

He knows why I'm here.

He has anticipation down to an art.

Finally, finally, finally, the other door across the room opens, slow and regal, the type of grand entrance that Snow favors. A man steps forward. Pale hair, pale eyes, pale skin. But the paleness is wrong. Too slight. Too tall.

Not Snow, then.

The monitor shimmers, illuminating the figure.

It's Peeta.

Peeta, who hadn't turned back to the safe house after all. Peeta, who is somehow here, back in the stronghold of Snow's mansion. Peeta stands in front of me now.

Where I am, so shall Peeta be.

Except.

This is not my Peeta.

I know from the way he saunters into the room, from the frost coating his eyes, from how his familiar face twists into something unfamiliar. This is a perversion of Peeta. Light dances, and I see it, all over his face. The garish makeup Tigris had applied is smeared, askew.

"Katniss," he says, and even his voice is different, the sibilant hiss of a mutt. His eyes are black holes, devouring everything in their path. We stand, frozen to our opposite walls, nothing between us but a low table and two chairs.

The snow on the monitor resolves into President Snow, making his grand entrance at last. Even now, when his life is forfeit. His visage is so large that his plump limps could swallow me whole.

As his face crystallizes, so does my understanding. He's not running. And if he's not running, it's because he can't. He knows he's drowning—and he'll take others with him.

"Coward," I spit.

His lips stretch in a cadaver's smile. "Perhaps. But it's the cowards who live. I'm the ultimate survivor. It's one of many things you and I have in common."

The thought of any part of me being like any part of him is nauseating. The glow of the screen, the lingering stench of roses, Peeta's eyes in the face of a mutt…my stomach swims.

"You should have listened to him, you know." He flutters a hand toward Peeta. His gesture, his tone are so cavalier, so incongruously confident.

There's something wrong.

"What?"

"When he begged you to kill him."

Something very wrong, indeed. Horror fists my gut as I realize what his words imply. Snow knows that Peeta begged me to kill him. The Capitol is always watching. Snow's watching me now, watching the horror spread to my face, watching it glaze my eyes.

"Yes," he says. "You didn't think you made it here on your own, did you? Past the thousands of cameras in the Mansion alone? Past the hundreds of dots that weren't on your precious Holo? Which, by the way, was based on intel I allowed the Rebels to steal."

I think about how, one by one, the members of our squad were Reaped. Slowly, purposefully.

Snow's watching me carefully. "Yes, now you see. Even Peeta abandoned you in the end. He was kind enough to offer himself as a distraction. Only, not for you."

Kill me, Peeta had begged. Consciously or not, he'd known.

"He won't hurt me," I say.

"Oh, I think he will." Snow regards me dispassionately. "I had hoped, of course, that he'd get lucky and kill you back in District 13. The element of surprise and all. But we both know better. He's weak. He's always been weak."

"You're wrong," I deny, instantly. "He's not weak, he's…" But I don't know what he is. Soft yet strong. Cunning yet kind. A contradiction in every way.

Snow expels a laugh. "He's in love with you. It makes him weak."

Peeta's love for me has cost him so much. Maybe too much.

"Or, I should say," Snow continues, "he was in love with you. We've fixed that. His initial field test wasn't successful, so I had the doctors make some final adjustments."

I can't stop the strangle at the thought of Peeta being given more venom, more terror, more lies.

Snow cocks his head, curious. "I thought I'd be doing you a favor. Having someone professing their undying love to you when you don't return their feelings—it's tiresome, no? I've had my share of sycophants."

Peeta sneers at me, oblivious to words, to Snow, to anything but hate. His body strains forward and shakes like a beast on a chain. I see no restraints; although still encircling his bloodied wrists, his handcuffs range free, the chain joining them slit.

Still, he does not take a step toward me.

Maybe he's fighting his own mind.

Maybe, just maybe, he's remembered that he loves me.

But I think it more likely that Snow's dominion over him is total. One word, and Peeta will be on me like a rabid dog. This is why you put them down. While you still have a chance, before they can rip out your heart. My fingers clench around a phantom bow.

"What are you waiting for?" I whisper to Snow, Peeta, both.

"Nothing. Now that you're here and Peeta's here, we can begin."

On cue, lights illuminate the table between us. There, spotlighted in the center of gleaming marble, is a hand gun. For the first time, Peeta's eyes leave my face. They fixate on that gun, a few paces from him. A few paces from me.

A final Cornucopia.

He goes still, awaiting command.

"What is this?" I ask, but I already know.

"A game, my dear. A final game. Because I need only one of you. Doesn't matter which one. My life, in return for yours." He raises a hand, runs a finger down the camera lens. As though it's my throat. "Of course, I'd prefer that it be you."

Finally, I understand why he isn't running. Why a hovercraft hadn't already whisked him away to some idyllic hideout in far-off hills, where he could retire in luxury.

He needs leverage.

He knew that we'd come to him.

He'd planned on it.

We're everlasting pawns in his game.

Snow whispers, "Who's it going to be, Mockingjay? Prove to me, once and for all, that you don't love him. Or die."

A few more minutes, and the Rebels might find us. A few more minutes and a shell could take out this entire wing. A few more minutes, and this war might be over.

We don't have a few more minutes.

"Burn," Snow whispers.

At the word, Peeta lurches forward, a zombie.

I've always been faster than Peeta, quick. He's solid, heavy, built for endurance and strength; I'm a lightweight sprinter. In short distances, hand-to-hand combat, I've always had the advantage.

I would have gotten to the gun first.

Except, I don't move.

I can't.

Every survival instinct I've had, all my years of training, the time I spent in the arena—everything in me tells me to propel myself forward, scrabble for that deadly weapon, and use it to remove the threat to my life. I don't even have to kill him. Shoot him in the leg, the arm, whatever it takes to get him on the ground, incapacitated but still breathing.

I can't move.

I can't move because I know that running toward the Cornucopia is always a bloodbath. I'm good with bows and arrows, not handguns. In the heat of the moment, things happen, fists grapple, and guns go off in inconvenient places like faces and guts.

But mostly, I can't move because right before Snow gave the order, Peeta made a movement of his own—a shake of his head. Slight, so slight, like a nervous, psychotic twitch, but it was there. Perhaps a muscle spasm due to the mind-altering drugs in his system. Or perhaps something else.

So I stand, my back pressed against a smooth wall, and I trust.

I refuse to play this game.

Peeta roars as he reaches the gun, breathing labored as he points it straight at me. The tip of the weapon wavers, but not so much that he'd miss.

President Snow's expression is surprise, pleasure, gloating. "I don't believe it. Maybe you do love him after all."

I don't know. Love, it's not something I understand. But I do know that I will do whatever it takes to save his life. Even at the cost of my own.

"I won't kill him," I say.

"Too bad he doesn't feel the same," Snow says, eyes agleam with the mania of a cornered animal. "After all, how could he?"

And that's when the President gives me a front-row seat to the new memories they've grafted into Peeta's brain. Narrated in the same false cheer I've heard umpteen times in the yearly propo video for the games. (War, terrible war.) How I was directly responsible for the genocide in my own—in Peeta's—district. How I laughed when I personally inspected the results. How I sang about the Hanging Tree and smiled.

Despite how Snow is twisting things, he's not entirely wrong—each narrative has a glimmer of real. Indirectly and directly, I've made Peeta suffer. Peeta and so many others.

The most effective lies are based on truth.

At any moment, a bullet will punctuate the litany of my sins. But as seconds of silence draw on, the light drains from Snow's slit eyes as they look rapidly between Peeta, me.

"Burn," he repeats.

Peeta's trigger finger twitches, but subsides.

"Burn!" Snow demands again.

No response.

Then he's shouting it, screeching it, spittle-blood spraying the screen.

But Peeta doesn't move.

He doesn't move because, in his eyes, I see that he's waiting. For me, like he always has. Like the three days he lay in a cesspool of mud, injured and unmoving, waiting for me to save him. But this time, I can't save him. I can't heal him. I'm on the wrong end of a gun. And he's too broken.

In his eyes, I see that he knows this.

Yet still, he waits.

Disbelieving, Snow says, "This is the girl who pretended to love you."

Peeta waits.

"She abandoned you to be tortured!"

Peeta waits.

"Burn, burn, burn, BURN."

At each word, Peeta staggers like he's taken bullets to the chest. We have an audience of one, yet still I remain stoic, showing no weakness.

Yet still, he waits.

"Fine." Snow is deadly quiet. "If you won't kill her, I will." He shifts off-camera, reaching for some switch.

Peeta waits no longer. He reacts. Instantly. Vehemently. Lethally. A flick of his wrist, the crack of a gunshot, and Snow's face winks out, the light in the room fizzling to gloom. We stare together at a web of glass expanding from a small hole in the monitor. Right between where his snake eyes had been.

Game over.

I launch myself off the wall.

"We have to go. Now!" I say, reaching for the gun. We have only seconds until Snow's Peacekeepers flood the room, or tracker jackers, or black slime, or mutts, or until Snow himself comes to finish what he's started, this final game.

But Peeta doesn't hand me the gun. He doesn't rush forward to join me at the exit to the maze of blood roses.

Instead, he takes a step back.

Points the gun at his own temple.

And fires.