Mocking Jay

me. And this is how she has paid for it.
Through a doorway, I catch a glimpse of Gale, stripped to the waist, perspiration streaming down his face
as a doctor removes something from under his shoulder blade with a long pair of tweezers. Wounded, but alive. I
call his name, start toward him until a nurse pushes me back and shuts me out.
"Finnick!" Something between a shriek and a cry of joy. A lovely if somewhat bedraggled young woman--
dark tangled hair, sea green eyes--runs toward us in nothing but a sheet. "Finnick!" And suddenly, it's as if there's
no one in the world but these two, crashing through space to reach each other. They collide, enfold, lose their
balance, and slam against a wall, where they stay. Clinging into one being. Indivisible.
A pang of jealousy hits me. Not for either Finnick or Annie but for their certainty. No one seeing them could
doubt their love.
Boggs, looking a little worse for wear but uninjured, finds Haymitch and me. "We got them all out. Except
Enobaria. But since she's from Two, we doubt she's being held anyway. Peeta's at the end of the hall. The effects
of the gas are just wearing off. You should be there when he wakes."
Peeta.
Alive and well--maybe not well but alive and here. Away from Snow. Safe. Here. With me. In a minute I can
touch him. See his smile. Hear his laugh.
Haymitch's grinning at me. "Come on, then," he says.
I'm light-headed with giddiness. What will I say? Oh, who cares what I say? Peeta will be ecstatic no matter
what I do. He'll probably be kissing me anyway. I wonder if it will feel like those last kisses on the beach in the
arena, the ones I haven't dared let myself consider until this moment.
Peeta's awake already, sitting on the side of the bed, looking bewildered as a trio of doctors reassure him,
flash lights in his eyes, check his pulse. I'm disappointed that mine was not the first face he saw when he woke,
but he sees it now. His features register disbelief and something more intense that I can't quite place. Desire?
Desperation? Surely both, for he sweeps the doctors aside, leaps to his feet, and moves toward me. I run to
meet him, my arms extended to embrace him. His hands are reaching for me, too, to caress my face, I think.
My lips are just forming his name when his fingers lock around my throat.