When two worlds collide

Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Katniss POV:

We enter the hospital and I quickly locate Plutarch chatting with a girl. She rises from her seat,

"Hello Katniss!" Her face bright.

Delly.

She is a lot thinner than I remember her brother and her made it but her parents weren't so lucky. Haymitch looks at me for confirmation

"Do you think she'll work, or will any memories overlap with you?"

I shake my head. "No, I don't think so. She should be perfect, although we were in the same class but that's it."

"Oh yes" nodded Delly. "Katniss was always so amazing; I never dreamed she would notice me. The way she could hunt and go to the hob and everything. Everyone admired her so."

From my peripheral vision I can see Tobias's eyebrow rise. He cocks his head to the side with a small smirk of a smile. Haymitch shakes his head with a chuckle.

"Delly always thinks the best of everyone" I explain.

We make our way to the observation room.

Delly walks into the room where Peeta is confined to a bed with restraints, doctors buzzing around monitoring different things.

Her face automatically breaks into a smile, she greets him. "Peeta? It's Delly!"

He seems to recognize her. She tells him about how we are in district 13. She tries to steer clear from what has happened to our true home, district 12. But she finally tells him there has been an accident.

It finally dawns on him, he remembers. "Twelve burned. Didn't it? Because of her. Because of Katniss!"

His eyes go wide and strange. He pulls wildly at his restraints. "She's a mutt the capital created to use against the rest of us!" he yells. He pleads her to not trust me. He blames me. He blames me for him almost dying, for his family, for being a mutt and a liar.

Hands are tugging me away but I can't pull my eyes away from Peeta. The one who once thought I was the most wonderful person, to now not even counting as a person.

Finally Four is the one to step into my view, his face hard with concern as he helps Haymitch get me to an empty hallway, but then returning to the observation window, eyeing Peeta carefully.

I can't do this. I can't be here. Prim was wrong. Tris was wrong. Peeta is never coming back.

"Let me go somewhere. Let me go to the Capital" I say. I look down, pushing my hands against the temples of my forehead.

"Absolutely not," Plutarch says.

We finally agree that if I can't go to the Capital then I'll go to District 2 and help finish the fighting there.

                                                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tris POV:

Prim's voice and running footsteps come charging into my room.

"Katniss left! She left!" she says with an angry huff.

She slams the door behind her.

"She's always leaving," she tells me.

I stand up from the chair I was sitting in and sit next to her carefully.

"Where did she go? What's happening?" I ask.

She gives a soft sigh. "Haymitch told us that Katniss had to take care of something in district 2."

Christina barges through the door of the compartment, "Katniss is on TV! We should go see!" She exclaims excitedly.

Prim and I exchange a worried glance and follow Christina quickly to a control room where Haymitch stands with a microphone pacing as he watches Katniss on a big screen along with many others. I stop mid step when I see Tobias' familiar figure standing idly on the side of the room.

All of a sudden the screen where Katniss had been standing goes dark. Something's happened. The screen comes back, now showing a running Katniss, heading straight for a wounded man. Haymitch breaks the silence by slamming his fists in frustration into the table in front of him. The wounded man raises his gun to her.

"Freeze" Haymitch orders.

Although the order was for Katniss, everyone in the room does so as well. My breath hitches in my throat. And I glance at prim. She doesn't look as shocked as I thought she would be. She just looks... somber.

The man asks Katniss, to give him a reason not to shoot her.

"I can't." she responds.

I expect to hear a shot. But one doesn't come. Katniss begins to lower her bow. She no longer has a weapon leaving her vulnerable. She even kicks it away from her.

"We blew up your mine. You burned down my district. We have every reason to kill each other. So fine. Do it. Make the capital happy. I'm done killing their slaves for them."

"I'm not their slave." The man mutters back.

"I am" Katniss says. "We go around and around killing and no one wins. Not us, not me, never the districts. It's always the capital coming out on top. I'm done being a piece in their games."

The man still has not lowered his gun.

Haymitch has leaned in mere inches away from the screen above him. "Keep talking, talk about when you watched the mountain go down" he instructs.

"When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought... they've done it again. Got me to kill you,the people in the districts. But why did I do it? District twelve and district two have no fight except the one the Capital hand fed us. "

The man looks up at her confused.

She continues, "why are you fighting with the rebels on the rooftops?" she lowers herself closer to him, now on her knees. "With Lyme who was your victor? With the people who were you neighbors, maybe even you family?"

The man looks up at her. "I don't... I don't know" he says. But he keeps the gun trained on her. Katniss rises and continues. Her attention shifting to the people on the rooftops.

She tells them about how miners don't condemn miners to that kind of death.

She spins around at the wounded people around her.

"These people are not your enemy. The rebels are not your enemy!" her face hardens into a hard glare, "we all have one enemy! We all have one fight! The Capital. We can end their rein of power and terror. We need every person, in every district to do it!"

She reaches her hand toward the man, as if offering her hand to all those of Panem.

"Please!" she asks, "join us!"

Silence.

Her words have caused unmoving silence. Then, just behind the man, there's a swift movement. In a second, the sound of the shot echo's and Katniss is tilting back and forth, her knees buckle beneath her, falling to the ground.

The attacker and the man are quickly taken downwith sleep darts. Gale and a man I'm told is named Boggs are running towardher, taking her back toward safety.