Hope is the only thing stronger than fear

the rescue

Today I might lose my best friend. My hunting partner.

I try to imagine a world where Gale's voice has ceased. Hands stilled. Eyes unblinking. I'm standing over his body, having a last look, leaving the room where he lies. But when I open the door to step out into the world, there's a void. Peeta would be there, trying to comfort me. But there would be nothing he could do to take my mind off of the person I just lost. The person I love like a brother.

"Do you want me to have them sedate you until it's over?" asks Haymitch. He's not joking. This is 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 are they now? How is it that until Peeta and I were thrust upon him, there was no one at all in his life? What did Snow do to them?

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

"They're gone," says Haymitch.

"How long ago did they leave? I could catch up. I could—" What? What could I do?

Haymitch shakes his head. "It'll never happen. You're too valuable and too vulnerable. And besides, do you really think Peeta would let you go alone? If you went, then he would be put in danger. There was talk of sending you and Peeta to another district to divert the Capitol's attention while the rescue takes place. But no one felt you could handle it."

"Please, Haymitch!" I'm begging now. "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 I can't. Haymitch's footsteps are still echoing in the outer hall when I fumble my way through the slit in the dividing curtain to find Peeta sprawled out on his stomach, his hands twisted in his pillowcase. Although it's cowardly—cruel even—to rouse him from the shadowy, muted drug land to stark reality, I go ahead and do it because I can't stand to face this by myself.

As I explain our situation, his initial agitation mysteriously ebbs. "Don't you see, Katniss, 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! We wouldn't have to worry about our action's being taken out on Johanna, Finnick, or Annie."

Well, that's a sunny  of our situation. And yet there's something calming about the idea that this torment could come to an end. And leave it to Peeta to see the light in the darkest of places.

The curtain yanks back and there's Haymitch. He has a job for us, if we can pull it together. They still need 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."

"Yes, a distraction," says Peeta. "A decoy of sorts."

"What we really need is something so riveting that even President Snow won't be able to tear himself away. Got anything like that?" asks Haymitch.

Having a job that might help the mission snaps me into focus. While I knock down breakfast and get prepped, I try to think of what I might say. President Snow must be wondering how that blood-splattered floor and his roses are affecting me. If he wants me broken, then I will have to be whole. But I don't think I will convince him of anything by shouting a couple of defiant lines at the camera. Besides, that won't buy the rescue team any time. Outbursts are short. It's stories that take time.

I don't know if it will work, but when the television crew's all assembled above-ground, I ask Cressida if she could  out by asking me about Peeta. Peeta gives me a funny look as if to say, "Ask about me?" I give a small smile. I take a seat next to Peeta on the fallen marble pillar where I had my breakdown, wait for the red light and Cressida's .