The monitors that dot District 13 reflect the logo, like hundreds of refracted eyes. A sea of faces swells in the central shaft, the cafeteria, the clinic. Ten minutes earlier, the monitors had sparked on to reveal Flickerman, somber and shocking. He told them that there would be a very special broadcast shortly. "You won't want to miss this," he'd said.

Ten minutes earlier. Ten interminable, unbearable minutes, in which Katniss contemplates any number of things Snow could show. All of these things, of course, involve Peeta. Peeta, who had given District 13 the warning it needed to send its citizens deep. Peeta, who they had not seen or heard since.

Katniss eschews the company of others to sit with Finnick in his hospital bed. Like her, he understands what's likely about to happen. She doesn't pull away when he reaches out to clasp her hand.

The anthem swells, and the Capitol TV logo fades to a sickening white, the same one that Snow's camp has been using for months. This time, there are no people in the frame, no chairs. If Katniss hadn't known better, she'd think there was some kind of glitch. But as the camera pans, it exposes nuances of depth in the room, walls, the hint of a raised platform. Then, at last at last at last, the backs of four people. Like in Snow's previous propos, these people are dressed in pure, simple white.

Katniss crushes Finnick's fingers.

Snow's voice breaks in. "Ours is an elegant system," he reminds them, calm as ever. "You protect us, we protect you."

On cue, the camera switches to a close-up of the first person's face, panning to the next, then the next, slow and stately. Faces she recognizes, all, though she doesn't know their names. Peeta would know their names. Some of the faces are flagrantly weeping, garish makeup running.

"These people have unfortunately chosen to dishonor our system."

The camera holds on a face whose name she does know—Portia. Like the rest of them, her eyes are lined with gold. Unlike the rest, her expression is serene and certain.

Wide shot now, the four of them standing, their arms and legs shackled with a simple cuff, limbs unnaturally still, likely frozen. Off-camera, there's an unmistakable sound—a chorus of firearms being cocked.

"Now," Snow continues. "They will bleed."

The scene shifts again, expanding to four men in full Peacekeeper regalia but a few yards away, pointing their rifles directly at the foursome. It's so quiet, you can hear the breathing, the staunched sobbing.

Katniss' heart is a lump of coal in her chest.

In perfect unison, the Peacekeepers get ready. They aim. They fire. Bodies crumple, blood sprays. The formerly pristine walls are a macabre spatter, bodies askew.

"Panem today. Panem tomorrow. Panem forever."

Hard cut to the Capitol seal, no music this time. As one, people across thirteen districts stare and stare.

Katniss and Finnick look at each other.

When it's clear the show is over, no grand finale like they were dreading, Finnick flicks off the monitor. Katniss faceplants into the mattress, hyperventilating. Snow just executed Peeta's prep team. On live TV.

But the question is: Where's Peeta?

No one knows. He hadn't been there when they'd tried to get him out, either. For Katniss, they'd tried, her ultimatum. Beetee used his big brain to concoct a labyrinthine plan, plots within plots, and she should have known. Like his elaborate scheme in the Arena, this plan also doesn't go quite according to. Oh, his gas vented and his bombs burst and Gale's group of volunteers grabbed everyone they could find—Johanna, Annie, a couple of Avoxes. Everyone to be found. But the one was nowhere to be found. Their information was wrong. Peeta wasn't in the Tribute Center. He wasn't anywhere.

So the question remains: Where's Peeta?

It's worse, the not knowing. The not seeing.

After that day, the world doesn't see Peeta again. So they don't see the Mockingjay again, either, no more wind beneath her wings. With Peeta disappeared and likely dead, Coin has no more leverage against her.

Yet even without Katniss, the people keep fighting, thirteen districts.

The Mockingjay sleeps, hibernating in this winter of the soul. Sleeps while the districts clash and the bombs fall. Sleeps while Gale and the rest of Squad 451 blaze a trail directly to the heart of the cancer that afflicts this country, the bloated monstrosity that preys off its own flesh, the flesh of its own children.

At long last, she wakes to a chorus of distant cheers, hoo-ra! At first, she thinks she's back in the Capitol, listening with Peeta to the raving hordes celebrate all night before the Games, listen to them. But then Katniss wades from the past, to the present, where she's not in the Capitol at all.

Somewhere in the silo above, people celebrate.

This is the first thing she hears, when she wakes.

The first thing she sees is Mother, slumped in a nearby chair. Katniss wants to shake her, to wake her, ask her if they found Peeta, are they cheering because Peeta? But something in the set of Mother's body, the looseness of her limbs, her frayed hair, it alerts Katniss to something deeper. She takes a closer look. Detritus surrounds her, a spilled blanket, tissues like moth balls. Mother has been here for a while. Waiting.

So Katniss waits as well. Curls her knees into her chest and clutches at her shins, impossible to tell the passing of time, no sun down here.

When Mother opens her eyes, she doesn't startle to find Katniss awake. Her eyes don't brighten with the knowledge, she doesn't come forward to clutch her hand. She just slumps and stares, hollow.

And Katniss knows.

The color of Mother's eyes is death.

Really, Katniss knew the moment she saw her sister's slim shoes sitting neatly by the door, her only pair.

"What happened?" she asks. Neutral and quiet, like she's asking about the weather.

Mother starts to cry. It's a long time before she can get it all out, and the story comes in fractures. She tells Katniss that her sister was in a square. In this square, a target, where there were children, where there was compassion, there were also firebombs.

Katniss thinks of Beetee. She thinks of Gale, of his theories about the best of ways to kill the most of people. She thinks about sirens, about her sister waiting for her the day their fathers died, sitting with her white hands folded, staying right in her seat at school, right where she was supposed to be.

Prim was supposed to stay here, safe in District 13, Katniss thinks. I volunteered to take her place. It should have been me there, in that square. I should be dead, a thousand times over. Not her. Her, so light and innocent and right. Not me, the dark one. I kill, she heals. I die, she lives. That was the deal.

I volunteered.

Those were the rules.

It makes sense now.

How Mother can just stop, a windup toy.

Without Prim, without Peeta, it's easy to just be still, to sink somewhere into herself so deep. She sleeps again, this time at the bottom of her father's lake. Open her eyes to the light, everything so dark and distant. Nothing can touch her down here, safe in this cocoon.

Wake up, and a nurse is drawing the curtain. Wake up, and a nurse is adjusting the worm in her arm, and she floats away. Wake up, and a nurse is flipping her over, undulating in the currents. Wake up, and there's someone standing at her door. Tall, broad. From the stance, she knows it's Gale.

She doesn't wait until her eyes adjust to the unbearable brightness, until she can see his face. She turns her head away. Yet she can still hear him, in the silence. His breath, his heart. She wonders if he'll speak. Try to tell her he's sorry. But he doesn't speak. There's nothing he can say. He knows this. Which is why, in only a few short moments (a lifetime), she hears his whisper of a walk away.

She sinks back, down and deep.

Wake up, sweetheart.

This voice, she knows.

"Peeta?" she gasps and rasps. Her head lolls.

"No. It's me." His face swims. Hair blond, eyes blue. But a washed, watery blue.

"Where's Peeta?" she asks again, the only question.

"Well, shit," he says, scratching at his stubble. "They didn't tell you."

Old Man and his wife used to walk, arm in arm, around the square. Every day at noon, when classes let out for lunch. Old folk were a bit of an anachronism in District 12, even for the Townies. The children didn't quite know what to do with them, didn't know how to feel about them, these glimpses into their future. These time-warped, mind-addled, snow-headed creatures.

The wife's name was Birdie.

Old Man promenaded Birdie proudly, gently, like they were out a'courting, two kiddos in love. He spoke to her softly, a running commentary about the beauty of the day and how fine she looked, and hey, there's our neighbor, see our neighbor?

Some of the kids in the lunch hall, noses to the window, would laugh and point, imitating the man's prattle like mockingjays. But not Katniss, never Katniss. She could see it, the majestic sadness. The dignity in the face of death.

Birdie, of course, never said anything at all. She just shuffled along, unfocused gaze looking at something only she could see.

For her body was there.

But her mind was not.

The ragged man who calls her sweetheart tells her that they found Peeta. He was buried deep in the bowels of the mansion, wires snaking from his every orifice.

He's alive, just barely.

"I need to see him," she demands, already extracting herself from the bed, prying and yanking.

"He's not here," Haymitch says, hands firm on her shoulders. "He's in the Capitol. They can't move him just yet."

"Then take me to the Capitol."

"Hold on," Haymitch says, hands still firm. "There's else something you should know."

The way he says it, she knows she's not going to like this something. Haymitch is nothing if not good at being the bearer of bad news.

And then he tells her, that they got Peeta out, alright. Only, he's not quite Peeta. Oh, it's him, it's his body. But his brain is, well. They did things to him. They took out the parts of him that made him Peeta.

Haymitch tells her that Peeta, he's like Birdie now.

His body is here. His mind is not.