Author's Note: I'm posting this within an hour of leaving my apartment for my 35th birthday trip. (It falls on Thanksgiving and I'll be landing in Spain.) I loved so many things about the new movie and especially that this subject matter (the trial) was left largely untouched. I'll try to write another chapter or so when I have wi-fi. You'll recognize a lot of the dialogue from this chapter for very obvious reasons.

Chapter 3

Peeta

Peeta knew very well the current view of Katniss. She was both a hero and a victim of the uprising, so her progress towards recovery was closely monitored. At any given time of day, Alma Coin could ask for her blood pressure, current medications and whether or not she'd eaten her vegetables and someone would care enough to know. There were also people who could tell whether she screamed in the night or sleepwalked. Informers could even provide details on the way she responded to an armed guard.

Peeta knew this perspective very well because he lived in that fishbowl of a life. And he knew that, buried under the damage and the terror and horror that Katniss must be feeling, a part of her would have normally felt insulted by it.

With Coin in charge, however, none of them were entitled to feel anything. They were privileged to have an opinion, but it was up to her to treat it as doctrine or the rantings of the unstable. Instead of feelings, they were expected to be grateful for her charismatic leadership and near-divine wisdom. After all, it's how most people in the Districts had seen the Mockingjay.

Today, no one had told him what to think, but he was surprised to find himself included in the victors' council at all. He was as fit to be included as Johanna Mason, who had the tremulous, affronted look of someone who was wondering when she could get back to her morphling; or Annie, who had cried twice since they were brought here. When Katniss was ushered in by an abnormally somber Effie, he hoped that this was a sign that she was no less hysterical than the rest of the survivors.

You wouldn't know it to look at her, though. She had been trussed up in the Mockingjay uniform and other than the look of someone interrupted mid-suicidal thought, she seemed as stalwart and solid as she had ever been.

"What's this?" she asked in a voice that still had not lost the slight rasp of disuse.

"We're not sure," Haymitch replied. "It appears to be a gathering of the remaining victors."

They were as few in number as if they were nearing the end of another stay in the arena and Katniss' gaze stopped on each of the empty chairs as if she were trying to remember who should have been sitting there.

"We're all that's left?"

"The price of celebrity," Beetee deadpanned. "We were targeted from both sides."

He had been the one to suffer the least damage, comfortably murdering people with his clever little bombs while others bled and died and burned in the name of his victory. The targeting was from those who, like Katniss, remembered that not all of his victims had been residents of the Capitol. Because no one could have theoretically foreseen the tragic losses on both sides, no one but the families and friends of people like Primrose Everdeen wanted him dead.

"The Capitol killed the victors they suspected of being rebels. The rebels killed those thought to be allied with the Capitol," Beetee elaborated.

"So what's she doing here?" Johanna demanded, her glower directed at Enobaria.

"She is protected under what we call the Mockingjay Deal."

Peeta had not noticed the opening of the door until Coin spoke, since he had been trying his best not to draw the attention of Katniss. She had been buried too deeply in her pain to deal with him, but it was not an experience he looked forward to.

"Wherein Katniss Everdeen agreed to support the rebels in exchange for captured victors' immunity. Katniss has upheld her side of the bargain, and so shall we."

Which was also probably why Peeta had not been accidentally shot on sight by now.

"Don't look so smug," Johanna snapped at the only victor to actually look happy to be here. "We'll kill you anyway."

Enobaria's fixed grin invited her to try, but this was not the time to throw down gauntlets.

"Sit down, please, Katniss," Coin invited.

He knew that she had the option to sit near him, to side together as District 12, but she slid into place between the woman who was here in loco Finnick and the man who had helped design her sister's death.

"I've asked you here to settle a debate," Coin announced once Katniss had taken her seat. "Today we will execute Snow. In the previous weeks, hundreds of his accomplices in the oppression of Panem have been tried and now await their own deaths."

She paused as if expecting applause, but no one even bothered to voice their approval.

"However," she continued blandly, "the suffering in the districts has been so extreme that these measures appear insufficient to the victims. In fact, many are calling for a complete annihilation of those who held Capitol citizenship. However, in the interest of maintaining a sustainable population, we cannot afford this."

There was talk of genocide and the woman worried about low fertility rates.

It was at that moment that Peeta noticed Katniss finally evaluating his presence and appearance. He saw her gaze linger on the new burns and scars, much in the way she had once taken the whole of him in at their reunion in victory. For the first time since Prim fell, she met his eyes and he did not feel threatened or uncomfortable under her scrutiny; he felt equal. Even when Coin spoke again, they did not look away from each other.

"So, an alternative has been placed on the table. Since my colleagues and I can come to no consensus, it has been agreed that we will let the victors decide. A majority of four will approve the plan. No one may abstain from the vote."

Peeta was the first to break the contact as he turned his attention to the woman. She had casually suggested annihilation and was now proposing that they consider something so abhorrent that the people who had triumphed through murder would balk at it.

"What has been proposed…" Her voice lowered and her tone became more measured, as if she were a lawyer presenting a closing argument instead of a figurehead rallying the troops. "...is that in lieu of eliminating the entire Capitol population, we have a final, symbolic Hunger Games, using the children directly related to those who held the most power."

That caught the attention of every person there and the first objection came from the least-sympathetic member of their group. "What?" Johanna blurted out.

"We hold another Hunger Games using Capitol children," Coin reiterated.

Are you mad?

Are you as bad as Snow?

Are you worse?

"Are you joking?" Peeta asked once he had censored all of his original thoughts.

"No." Coin looked curiously amused by this. "I should also tell you that if we do hold the Games, it will be known it was done with your approval, although the individual breakdown of your votes will be kept secret for your own security."

She didn't want the people hating them individually for their vote or adoring them for their place on whatever counted as a moral high ground here.

"Was this Plutarch's idea?" Haymitch asked next.

"It was mine," Coin confessed. "It seemed to balance the need for vengeance iwth the least loss of life. You may cast your votes."

"No!" He had been straining to withhold the word from the first word of that speech. "I vote no, of course!" When no one else joined the chorus of the damned, his voice rose another few pitches. "We can't have another Hunger Games!"

"Why not?" Johanna challenged. "It seems very fair to me. Snow even has a granddaughter. I vote yes."

Peeta had never met the granddaughter. On a few occasions, he had seen the girl's picture in Snow's private study. She was a darling child with Capitol-bright eyes and hair that she liked to wear like Katniss'. She would be as adored as Rue as a tribute, even if she didn't make it through the first night…

"So do I," Enobaria said predictably and diffidently. "Let them have a taste of their own medicine."

It was the kind of thinking that had instated the original Games. It was the indifference to violence that allowed Peacekeepers to immolate rebel captives while broadcasting "If we burn, you burn with us" over the PA. It was why Enobaria should have never been included in the first place. She was as close to being born of the Capitol as anyone who had lived there at times.

"This is why we rebelled," Peeta insisted. "Annie?"

He had appealed to her, not because she was a sure ally, but because the proposal had set off another stream of tears. He couldn't tell if she was crying because of her usual grief and terror or if it was because of the idea of Finnick dying for nothing.

"I vote no with Peeta,' she said in a voice so quiet that it was nearly drowned out by the hiss of hot air from the vents in the room. Then, more loudly, "So would Finnick if he were here."

"But he isn't, because Snow's mutts killed him," Johanna said brutally.

Annie didn't respond, but curled in on herself, arms folded protectively across her stomach as she turned back to silent tears for comfort.

"No," Beetee voted. "It would set a bad precedent."

Which must have been an unpopular opinion seventy-five years ago, but it was a valid one.

"We have to stop viewing one another as enemies. At this point, unity is essential for our survival." He breathed deeply and took a moment to nod in Peeta's direction. "No."

Coin had to have come here in the hopes of a certain outcome and for all her talk of the victors' opinions being crucial to the future of their peace, Peeta was surprised that she had not yet proposed a counter-argument.

"We're down to Katniss and Haymitch."

Haymitch had always been the one to shoot his mouth off, but he looked as uncomfortable as Peeta with this discussion. He kept his silence for the moment and Peeta turned his gaze back to the girl who had walked into hell for the sake of her sister's safety.

"I vote yes…for Prim."

He wished at that moment that the response surprised him.

"Haymitch, it's up to you."

With one vote to turn the tide, Peeta leaned forward. "What's this?" he demanded. "Do you remember the arena? Do you remember forty-eight kids who never came home?"

He knew that Haymitch kept pictures of a few of them and that several of the fallen tributes had left him their tokens. But those memories did not seem to have enough of an effect, so Peeta dug deeper.

"You won because some fool of a girl killed herself with an ax," he shouted. "Do you want this to be your new legacy? Do you want to be another Snow? Another Seneca Crane? Do you want to have twenty-three new kills to your name?"

Haymitch didn't respond. He didn't even seem to hear Peeta. He was only interested in what Katniss had to say as they tried to rise fromt he ashes of Panem. Without looking at anyone else, he issued his decision.

"I'm with the Mockingjay."