Her instincts kicking in, Camille dropped to the floor and could only hope that Finnick had done the same behind her. Sliding across her stomach, Camille twisted her body so she pulled herself up into a sitting position, tightening her wire around her wrist and ready to throw it at where Einon had been standing before.

She saw that, instead, he was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

A soft voice came from behind her, saying, "Camille."

Slowly turning, she blinked up in wonder at Finnick, who gently pulled her up. As she turned again to look at Einon, she allowed her eyes to look past his body to see that Peeta was standing at the top of the staircase, still holding a Capitol-issued service pistol in front of him like he was planning to shoot Einon again in case he rose in the same spot as a zombie.

"Good shot, Mellark," Finnick said, his narrowing carefully at the sight of Peeta. "What are you doing here?"

"We infiltrated the mansion. Ever since the explosions outside, the Peacekeepers have left Snow's side to protect their families, and it was easy to take over from there," Peeta said, slipping the gun into a holster at his waist. His eyes were still on Einon as he softly asked, "Who was he?"

"My… my ex-boyfriend," Camille said, finally speaking with a hoarse voice as she pushed out of Finnick's arms and ran the rest of the distance to Einon's body, allowing tears to streak down her face. "He was… he was Hijacked. And hateful, angry with me for deserting him."

"You didn't desert him," Finnick said in a conciliatory tone, resting a gentle hand against the small of Camille's back as he squatted down beside her. He watched as she drew a hand across his eyes to close them, then brushed back some of his dark hair the way a loving sister would.

Peeta's voice was tight. "We need to get back to Snow's office. We think we have everything under control, but there could still be some rogue Peacekeepers hiding throughout the the mansion."

Camille's head snapped up. "I'm not going to leave him, lying alone in the hall like this."

"We'll pull him into this room until we can come back for him the proper way," Finnick said gently, giving Peeta a dangerous look to warn him about arguing with him or Camille. Wisely, the blonde kept his mouth shut as they dragged Einon's body into a room, shutting the door behind them after a long look from Camille and Finnick's firm hand on her arm pulling her away.

She was relatively despondent when they all gathered to "celebrate" their victory, but the mood in the room was dark for the rebels who had lost so much. It was revealed to Finnick and Camille by Haymitch that somehow, Katniss' younger sister Prim had died in a mysterious bombing right outside the Capitol's front gates, which also killed several of the Elite's children that had been corralled there for so-called protection. Coin swore up and down that it was a sick play by the Capitol, but there were more than a few looks of doubt sent her way when she stated that in front of the crowd that gathered outside the mansion for her first unofficial address, the first of several to come as Panem finally began to heal, all while the rebels' wounds seemed only to fester.

A few weeks passed as small skirmishes were broken apart and the districts finally began to heal after decades of injuries. Coin kept Katniss' team busy, sending them as the public convoys to the remaining districts. While Gale, Haymitch, Peeta, and more went across Panem to make public appearances, Camille and Finnick went with their own envoys to 3 and 4, to also visit their families and friends and spent a week in each district before returning to the Capitol.

It had been three weeks since the day Camille had infiltrated Snow's mansion and the rebels had come to take it over. It had also been three weeks since she had last seen Finnick, and every night she went to sleep without him beside her, she felt empty. No matter how much she twirled her net-and-wire ring around her finger, it couldn't replace the feeling of his callused hands over hers, or the scent of his citrus and sand.

There were so many questions that the District 3 denizens asked her, but so little Coin allowed for her to address. Whereas Camille had expected some grandiose welcome home party in which her heart swelled with love and opened with freedom, she received only the first part of her dream. Having to relieve some of her worst memories – the loss of Mags and Einon, among others; her torture in the Capitol; the moment Georgia and Haymitch first came to her to recruit her – dug into her soul a bit more every time, and she was weirdly thankful when she boarded a train to return back to the Capitol, and she was the only passenger in her car.

She used the entirety of her return to the Capitol looking out at the destroyed Districts of 1 and 2 as she passed through. Although every district, she knew, lay in ruins, somehow Districts 1 and 2 had gotten the worst at the end of the war, with actual genuine warfare occurring with weapons and aid from District 13. She knew somewhere in District 2, Gale was commanding forces in the Nut; in District 1, Peeta would have just left. The plan was for most of them to return back at the same time, just days before Snow's public execution, and just in time to see what they thought would be the final end of the war.

When she arrived at the Capitol, a convoy was awaiting her to take her back to Snow's mansion. Although they had won the war, there was still abject poverty, famine, and strife in all of Panem's denizens, and a small portion of them were willing to blame it on the rebels. Days after they had taken over the mansion and sent out a propo to the entirety of Panem announcing that the war had been won, Georgia had been cornered in a Capitol alley and saved by a group of rebel supporters who found a gun inside her attacker's pocket. It turned out that one of his children had been killed in the mysterious bombing just outside of the mansion's gate that had killed a whole corral of children, and he wanted someone, anyone, to blame.

It took them a bit longer to get through the crowds and debris to the mansion that awaited them, but it took Camille no time at all to return to her room she had been using just after they had taken over the mansion. The moment she flew through the doors, his scent hit her like a wall: salt, citrus, sand.

Finnick turned from the desk, his sea foam eyes flashing before he smiled. "Cam."

She ran to him as he stood, welcoming her into his even more tanned arms, his scent stronger than ever considering he had spent the last few weeks at home. Her face dug into the crook of his neck as he held her tightly against him, the tension in his shoulders gone while he felt that hers had some intensified.

Pulling away from her and seeing the firm set of her jaw, he asked, "What's wrong?"

"It still doesn't feel right," she admitted, earning a surprised look from him that also had a tint of hurt in it. She quickly shook her head and said, "No, no, Fin. This is actually the only thing that feels right, and being with my family, but… but this."

Finnick's face was full of confusion. "This?"

"This," Camille repeated, gesturing to the room around them and, Finnick knew, to everything that surrounded it. "Being in this mansion and preparing for a celebration. Making up a speech to show my support for a woman who I'm not so sure isn't just a tyrant. Relaxing when I feel like I should be ready to pounce again."

He tried to calm her by placing gentle hands on her arms. "Cam, after what we've been through, I don't think any of us will every properly calm down."

"That's the problem, though," Camille said, shaking her head. "We should be able to. We shouldn't second guess this ending, or where it is headed next."

Finnick stared at her blankly. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that we imagined that victory would be beautiful, that we would walk through the gates and be welcomed and liberate people… but we were wrong," Camille said, pacing the room in front of Finnick. "Coin doesn't want what's best for the people. She still, even now, wants vengeance, for a country that was never really hers to lay claim to. We may not have the years that Coin does, but we do have years as citizens and victims of Panem that she does not, and I believe that we truly understand the state of this nation. That understanding is why we fought."

"I don't think you're wrong, Cam," Finnick admitted gently from beside the bed, moving so he sat at the edge of it and became closer to Camille, "but what are we to do? We just overthrew one tyrant. How can we possibly overthrow another, especially without Thirteen's support?"

"Not all of Thirteen supports Coin, either," Camille said, still pacing. "Boggs' last words to Katniss were to not trust her."

"Yeah, but Boggs alone, even if he was in her second in command, wasn't enough. Plus, he's dead. We need a leader that will inspire the masses, and a leader that will take control. We can't just have free reign, everybody fending for themselves. The districts should be brought together, but right now, they're no more than factions, trying to fight for what they as individual groups want, rather than what they as part of a nation want," Finnick said, shaking his head. "We'd need someone to unite everybody, and I don't think we can ask that of anybody else right now."

"Well, it's not a question of what we can do. It's a question of what we need to do," Camille replied firmly.

Finnick sighed, standing up as he walked over to where Camille was keeping her eyes trained on him. Pressing his lips together, he gathered up Camille's hands in his before he looked down at her, allowing an exhausted smile to escape. "You will never let us just rest, will you?"

"Not until this is finished. Not until our freedom is actually won," Camille said, tightening her own grip around Finnick's hands as she looked up at him, her blue eyes sparking with passion. "Finnick, we've lost too much at this point not to fight for perfection, we've fought too much to become content and complacent. We imagined a nation that was not oppressed, not tyrannized by some self-claimed leader. We have a chance to stop it here before Coin gets out of control. It is our duty."

"Our duty as what, rebels?" he asked, his voice laced with exhaustion again as he let go of Camille's hands to pull his fingers through his own golden hair.

"As human beings," Camille insisted, her fingers resting gently against his forearms. He shook his head and turned away from her, taking a seat on the bed again as he rested his head in his hands. He didn't have to look up to know that Camille was keeping her distance, as her voice sounded from further away as she said, "Finnick, we're not done. I can't… I can't move on, wondering when Coin will show her true self. I know you're tired, and that you don't want to fight any longer, but I can't stand here idly and throw false support at a leader I don't trust. And I know that it isn't fair to you, but I thought you would come with me."

Finnick stood up, grabbing both of Camille's hands between both of his own, then raising them to his mouth to kiss them. He looked up at her from underneath golden eyelashes, his lips still lightly against her knuckles as he said, "I will stand with you until my dying day. I will support you, will fight with you, will do anything for you."

"As much as I enjoy that sentiment, it has to be for more than me," Camille said seriously, her blue eyes wide. She watched Finnick carefully as he took a few seconds to think, then nodded.

"I will do it for Panem."

Camille leaned up and pressed her lips against Finnick's, her hands over his shoulders while his pulled her up into him by the waist. They had just begun edging back toward the bed when there was a polite knock on the door, a servant's voice calling out, "Dinner's ready."

Sighing, Finnick pulled away from Camille and rested his head on her shoulder, turning his face up toward hers as he gave her his heartbreaker's smile. "Always interrupted."

"One day, we'll have a home of our own," she said, slipping her hand into his as she grinned down at him. "When we live alone, we'll have all the time in the world to ourselves."

"That sounds perfect," Finnick said honestly, smiling down at her before she kissed him once and turned to the door.

One of the mansion servants, who Coin had insisted keeping around until they all got their bearings in the mansion, was standing politely at the door. Before Camille could even ask the servant why she was there, she had answered. "Ms. Everdeen has requested your presence."

Camille threw back a look at Finnick, who nodded once and slipped out the door behind her. They walked quietly throughout the hallways, and the echoing of their footsteps brought chills to Camille's skin. She had been in Snow's mansion far too many times for Victory tours and other parties that to see it so empty made it feel like a ghost town.

She felt Finnick slide his hands into hers as he commented, "Creepy, isn't it?"

Nodding once, they remained in silence the rest of the way until they came to where Katniss and her mother had been staying the last few weeks – in Snow's family's old area. Although Haymitch and Peeta had tried to convince Coin to place them somewhere else, she had insisted, for whatever reason, to make Katniss relieve through her traumas by placing her in the previous home of her tormentor. Due to the fact that she had still been recovering from the explosions that had cost her sister her life, and her mother had been all but comatose after the loss of her youngest, there was little resistance when their belongings had been moved.

The servant opened the door for them, revealing what had once been the den of the devil, but had seen then been redecorated to fit the Everdeens a little more. It also smelled like burning sage because of Katniss' mothers' medicines, which unfortunately brought a sick feeling to Camille's stomach. Back in her original Games, she had used sage as an anesthetic for one of her allies when they had been struck through the thigh with an arrow and she had had to remove it.

It took a second for Camille's blurred vision to clear, and another second to register that they were not alone in the room. Haymitch was sprawled out in the loveseat, looking about roughly two days sober, while Peeta was leaning against the desk and watching Katniss worriedly.

The heroine herself had turned around quickly when Camille and Finnick had entered, her face going into a quick moment of panic before it cleared. "Cam, Finnick. Thanks for coming."

"Katniss?" Camille asked gently, looking over at Peeta and Haymitch while Finnick shifted uncomfortably behind her. The door clicked shut behind them as the servant left. "What's going on?"

"Camille, Finnick," Katniss said formally, giving them each a nod. "We have been discussing something we think you two should hear about from us, and should be a part of planning. Camille, I know how you feel, and I doubt Finnick feels any differently."

"How we feel?" Finnick asked, his voice tight and confused. "How we feel about what?"

"How you feel about Coin," Haymitch butted in. Camille raised an eyebrow in surprise as Haymitch laughed. "Don't act so shocked. One of the mansion servants overheard you ranting and raving to your betrothed about her."

"And I know how much you fought against her in those initial two weeks, because I was, too," Peeta said, leaning off the edge of the desk as he eyed Camille, then Finnick. "We are not the only ones who do not trust Coin. The other districts are wary of her, as they think, correctly, that she has never really been a part of Panem. She does not understand our struggles as well as we do, nor does she even really understand her own people's."

Katniss shook her head, but said in agreement, "She can't be trusted. She has her own agenda, and it's entirely too secretive for my liking."

"So, what?" Finnick asked, still unconvinced it seemed as he crossed his arms over his chest and threw a questioning look at the three ex-District Twelve citizens. "What exactly are you saying we do?"

Haymitch, Katniss, and Peeta shared a series of glances through which their bond was clear. A few tense, silent moments passed through the five rebels before Haymitch replied in his typical dry voice.

"Welcome to the revolution, part two."