Mockingjay - Peeta Mellark (3)

}11{ - Fresh Roses

What would break her?

It was the question that consumed her over the next three days as they waited to be released from their prison of safety.

What would break her into a million pieces so that she was beyond repair, beyond usefulness?

She mentioned it to no one, but it devoured her waking hours and weaved itself throughout her nightmares.

Four more bunker missiles fell over this period, all massive, all very damaging, but there was no urgency to the attack.

The bombs were spread out over the long hours so that just when you thought the raid is over, another blast sent shock waves through your guts.

It felt more designed to keep them in lockdown than to decimate 13.

Cripple the district, yes.

Give the people plenty to do to get the place running again.

But destroy it?

No.

Coin was right on that point. You don't destroy what you want to acquire in the future.

Livia assumed what they really wanted, in the short term, was to stop the Airtime Assaults and keep Livia off the televisions of Panem.

They received next to no information about what was happening.

Their screens never came on, and they got only brief audio updates from Coin about the nature of the bombs.

Certainly, the war was still being waged, but as to its status, they were in the dark.

Inside the bunker, cooperation was the order of the day.

They adhered to a strict schedule for meals and bathing, exercise and sleep.

Small periods of socialization were granted to alleviate the tedium.

Their space became very popular because both children and adults had a fascination with the babies.

The power had been coming and going; sometimes the lamps burned at full brightness, other times they squinted at one another in the brownouts.

At bedtime they turned the lamps to near darkness and activated safety lights in each space.

Livia's muscles were rigid with the tension of holding herself together. The pain over her heart returned, and from it she imagined tiny fissures spreading out into her body- through her torso, down her arms and legs, over her face, leaving it crisscrossed with cracks- one good jolt of a bunker missile and she could shatter into strange, razor-sharp shards.

Unable to sleep, Livia carefully extricated herself from her blanket.

She checked on the sleeping babies in their beds, which were essentially just large baskets.

Livia brushed the hair from Calum's forehead and he let out a huff as his teeny nostrils flared.

She left her section, tiptoeing through the cavern until she found Finnick, feeling for some unspecified reason that he would understand.