𝑳𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝑹𝒆𝒅 || 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑯𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝑮𝒂𝒎𝒆𝒔

𝟓𝟕 || 𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕 𝑷𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒔

THE CELLAR WAS DARK, and they were completely cut off from the outside world. The only sound was Pollux's cries echoing throughout the room, and Evelyn leaned her head against the walls and closed her eyes. She didn't want to talk to anyone, especially Apollo, who was fidgeting with something he pulled out of his pocket. She couldn't tell what it was, but it was probably some trinket he made and brought with him.

"Gale's going to need stitches," Cressida announced, gesturing towards Hawthorne, sitting on the floor and looking at his leg.

"Apollo, too," Evelyn added. His leg wasn't too bad, but it was still bleeding, and if it bled for too long, it would turn into a much longer time. She hoped that all of this would be over soon. The war, the games, Snow's presidency. Everything over the last couple of years had drained her of everything she had, and now she just wanted to sit down in a quiet place, maybe somewhere in the forest or by a lake, and let the rest of her life pass by in a blink of an eye. No more memories, no more nightmares. But that was a fool's dream.

Everdeen, staring at the ground and standing completely still for the last couple of minutes, looked up, her eyes glancing at Gale and then at Pollux, "I made it up. All of it." Her face was filled with devastation, and everyone glanced at her. "There is no special mission from Coin. That's only my plan. Everyone dead is dead because of me. I lied."

"We know," Cressida told her, her voice quiet and slow, "We all knew."

"The soldiers from 13?"

"They did, too. Do you really believe that Jackson thought you had orders from Coin? She trusted Boggs, and clearly, he wanted you to go on."

Katniss was silent for a moment, looking around the room with a bit of confusion in her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was so quiet that if Evelyn hadn't seen her lips move, she wouldn't have believed she had said anything. "I never meant for this to happen. I failed. I killed them - I killed Sasha, Boggs." The girl glanced at Evelyn, and then she glanced at Pollux, "I'm sorry, Pollux. I'm so sorry."

After a few minutes of silence, Peeta spoke up from the corner he was in. "Glimmer, Marvel, Mags, Clove, Wiress, Rue, Evan. What do all those deaths mean? They mean that our lives were never ours. There was no real life because we didn't have any choice. Our lives belong to Snow, and our deaths, too. But if you kill him, Katniss. If you end all of this, all of those deaths, they mean something. Cinna, Boggs, Castor, Jackson, Sasha they chose this. They chose you."

After Peeta's absolutely motivating speech, Katniss seemed to calm down, and the group spread out again, hanging out in their separate little corners. Apollo was still messing with the trinket, and Evelyn wasn't sure whether he looked up from it at all during Katniss or Peeta's speech.

"What even is that?" Evelyn eventually asked him, and he took a break from messing with it to look up at her.

"This? Oh, it's nothing," Apollo shrugged, "It's just something my mom made when I was younger, it doesn't really do anything cool, just a knife."