Mockingjay

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