The Miner's Wife

Chapter 26: Epilogue

The girl was furious, and behind the stage after the show, the boy was stunned into silence as he watched the girl protest vehemently. Peeta couldn't be sure, but the expression on the boy's face hit close to home. The boy's feelings were hurt.

The girl had no choice but to play along, though.

"I can't believe I haven't thought about the star-crossed lovers thing myself," Haymitch said to Peeta one night in the bar. "It's genius." But of course, 12 never had a pair of tributes that could have been passed off as lovers, let alone someone who had an actual chance at winning the Hunger Games.

Never had Peeta gotten less sleep in the Capitol than he did that year. Mentoring his own tributes, both 16 - the girl Seam, the boy surprisingly Town - made him feel sick inside. As mentors, he and Haymitch were the only ones in the Capitol the two children could trust. Peeta had never managed to save one of his tributes, not once, but he always tried. But this year, he knew he would be sacrificing his tributes' lives to save someone else. He just hoped it would be worth it.

Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee expertly set up the Games to show off the pair. To maximize the attention, Heavensbee even managed to change the rules of the Hunger Games. For the first time in history, there could be two winners - if the two last remaining tributes came from the same district.

Panem loved it.

But Snow did not, and no one could go against the President's last minute orders during the very last night of the Games. Maybe the dying President had spies among the rebellion? Or perhaps he simply didn't care for the star-crossed lovers? Either way, the rule change was revoked. There could only be one winner after all.

Peeta could see that something died in them both as the two children looked at each other, knowing that one of them would have to murder the other. The girl quickly drew her bow, aiming the arrow at her district partner's heart. All of Panem held their collective breaths.

The boy threw his knife away.

"It doesn't really matter if she kills him," Peeta thought to himself as he helplessly watched the drama unfold with his fists clenched. "She will see his face in her dreams every night for the rest of her life, but at least she will be alive."

Until then, the girl had been nothing but a piece in the Games that, unbeknownst to her, were rigged by the Gamemakers so that she would win. But at that moment, faced with having to kill her district partner, she did something unexpected.

The arena was full of an array of poisonous plants that year. Apparently, this was one of the few things the President had specifically asked for in the design phase of the Arena. The properties of some of the plants were taught to the tributes during training, but not all. With very few other sources of food available in the Arena, unless you were a Career, it was a particularly cruel twist; several tributes had already died a long, painful death from eating poisonous plants. The tributes from 11 were fortunate enough to live in a district with a similar climate to the arena, and as a result, they had been able to identify and avoid the poisonous plants relatively easily.

Peeta watched as the President's preference for poison worked against him.

The girl reached down and plucked a handful of leaves from one of the plants. The boy, holding her eyes, followed suit. Before any further announcements could be made, they placed the poisonous leaves into their mouths. Peeta watched the star-crossed lovers embrace each other, both bloody and their clothes torn, as chaos erupted in the training center, and probably all of the Capitol as well.

No victor? There had never been any Hunger Games without a victor. The Capitol needed its victor. And what's more, the rebellion needed the victor, too. Peeta felt his heart pound in his chest. Was the revolution going to end before it had even begun? As he stared at the screen, unable to avert his eyes, he couldn't help but notice one thing.

Neither of them had swallowed the leaves yet.

Heavensbee hastily declared them both victors of the 92nd Hunger Games, and as the star-crossed lovers spit the leaves out of their mouths, their fingers still intertwined, the live feed was cut off from all of Panem.

As Peeta stood in the hallway of the infirmary between the rooms of the new victors, he couldn't believe it himself.

"At the end there," he said to Chaff. "They looked almost real."

"I know," Chaff replied.

A small group of victors, summoned by Heavensbee, discreetly slipped away from the festivities that always followed the end of the Hunger Games in the Capitol. Beetee's device disabled the bugs. They could speak freely, at least for a little while.

"This is it," Plutarch Heavensbee said, nodding towards the screen. The girl's brown eyes were surprisingly calm as she lifted the deadly leaves to her mouth, ready to die instead of following the rules of the Games set by the Capitol. "She is the face of the revolution."

Peeta wondered if the golden girl even knew yet. Did she even have a say in this? Would she want to be the symbol of a revolution? He couldn't imagine how anyone could want that.

He met Cashmere's eyes from across the table, and there was a small smile on her lips.

"All Panem needs is a spark to light the fire," Heavensbee said, his voice triumphant. And Peeta realized that the Head Gamemaker didn't care what the golden girl wanted.

Did he himself care? Peeta wondered. He realized he probably didn't. The girl would never be free, anyway. She was a victor. She was destined to be used by someone; it was just a question of by whom and for what purpose. Was being the symbol of the revolution better than being a prostitute against your will? To mentor children destined to be murdered, year after year?

Maybe, maybe not.

That night, Peeta had a dream. Surprisingly, it wasn't a nightmare.

It was spring, and he was in the Meadow with Katniss, Ivy, and Arrow.

There was someone else there, too. A young girl, maybe five or six, with black hair and blue eyes. She held her brother's hand. The boy was little more than a toddler, with blond hair and Seam gray eyes. As he and Katniss watched their children play, Katniss looked up at him with laughter in her eyes. She had a dandelion tucked behind her ear, and she smelled like sunshine. He leaned down to kiss her, and she smiled against his lips.

That's when he woke up, in a cold, lonely Capitol bed. He kept his eyes closed as he was - for once - unwilling to let go of a dream. He tried to hold on to the feeling of Katniss in his arms, but the touch of her soft lips against his own slowly faded. In that moment, he knew.

Whatever the rebellion asked of him, he would do it. He would do anything for the chance to watch his children play in the Meadow.