Mockingjay - Peeta Mellark (3)

}12{ - The Rescue Mission

She was going to be sick.

She couldn't lose them.

"My baby brother? They sent my baby brother into the Capitol?", Luke choked, covering her face with her hand, "I think I'm going to be sick-"

"Do you want me to have them sedate you until it's over?" Haymitch asked.

He was not joking.

This was a man who spent his adult life at the bottom of a bottle, trying to anesthetize himself against the Capitol's crimes.

The sixteen-year-old boy who won the second Quarter Quell must have had people he loved- family, friends, a sweetheart maybe- that he fought to get back to.

Where were they now?

How was it that until Peeta and Livia were thrusted upon him, there was no one at all in his life?

What did Snow do to them?

"No", Livia said, "I want to go to the Capitol. I want to be part of the rescue mission."

"They're gone." Haymitch explained.

"How long ago did they leave? I could catch up. I could-"

What?

What could she do?

Haymitch shook his head, "It'll never happen. You're too valuable and too vulnerable. There was talk of sending you to another district to divert the Capitol's attention while the rescue takes place. But no one felt you could handle it."

"Please, Haymitch!" She was begging then, "I have to do something. I can't just sit here waiting to hear if they died. There must be something I can do!"

"All right. Let me talk to Plutarch. You stay put."

But she couldn't.

Haymitch's footsteps were still echoing in the outer hall when she fumbled her way through the slit in the dividing curtain to find Finnick sprawled out on his stomach, his hands twisted in his pillowcase.

Although it was cowardly- cruel even- to rouse him from the shadowy, muted drug land to stark reality, she went ahead and did it because she couldn't stand to face this herself.

As she explained the situation, his initial agitation mysteriously ebbed, "Don't you see, Livia, this will decide things. One way or the other. By the end of the day, they'll either be dead or with us. It's... it's more than we could hope for!"

Well, that was a sunny view of their situation.

And yet there was something calming about the idea that this torment could come to an end.

The curtain yanked back and there was Haymitch.

He had a job for them, if they could pull it together.

They still needed post-bombing footage of 13, "If we can get it in the next few hours, Beetee can air it leading up to the rescue, and maybe keep the Capitol's attention elsewhere."