LEGENDS ▹ the hunger games au

xxi

THE SURVIVORS

START simple.

Start with what you know is true.

My name is Katniss Mellark, it used to be Katniss Everdeen. I am forty—two years old. My home is District 12. My family was in the Hunger Games. The Capitol hates me. I escaped. Peeta escaped. My children did not escape. My son is dead. My daughter was taken prisoner. She is thought to be dead. Most likely she is dead. It is probably best if she is dead...

Katniss couldn't go any further.

A familiar pain stabbed at her left temple and she pressed a shaking hand against it. Right on the spot where she had collided into the beam of the hovercraft. The memories swirled while she tried to sort out what was real and what was not real. The effects of her concussion still hadn't completely subsided and combined with the drugs to control her pain and moods, her thoughts had a tendency to jumble together.

She tried to use the technique the doctors in Thirteen had suggested.

She had to start with the simplest things she knew to be true and work toward the more complicated.

Simply put: "I lost my children in the Arena."

This was all that Katniss said when she woke from the medically induced coma that the doctors put her in on the hovercraft. There was no relief in sleep nor in waking. Since she woke up and found the nightmare was real, all she had been able to think about was them.

Rye and Will. Will and Rye.

My children did not escape. My son is dead. My daughter was taken prisoner. She is thought to be dead. Most likely she is dead. It is probably best if she is dead...

Despite the technological advancements of District 13, there was no way to know if Willow was okay, if she was even alive. Even with the combined assistance of the victors from Three, Plutarch still had no way of contacting his operatives in the Capitol. He was of no help. Haymitch could be dead for all she cared. President Coin, the leader of District 13 and the supposed rebellion, could also offer her no answers so Katniss avoided her too.

They left her there. To die.

This was something that Katniss would not — could not — forgive.

Peeta couldn't forgive it either. Wherever he was. He was always doing something, talking to Command and pacing floors and punching walls when he couldn't find peace. He sat with her the entire time she was in the hospital, but now that she was about to be discharged... she didn't know where he was most of the time. That was fine. She didn't look for him, either.

Katniss sank. There were days when she thought there was no getting out of it, that she would simply drift down into the nothingness forever. Perhaps dying was the only escape from the dark, twisted sadness growing within her. Maybe Coin was right. Maybe the Games really did destroy her.