The Ancestor

PART I : The Others - CHAPTER I

Makeshift houses are splaced in the yard as we look out into the darkening meadow just footsteps away from our verandah. I still mourn Gale and do not look forward to seeing a night full of horrific surprises for my mind to swerve thoughts about in my traumatic and damaged brain.

I try to put it all back, behind me, like Mother moving away, like Prim's death, like Coin, Snow, my first and last Hunger Games. Peeta comes out interrupting an eruption of tears from thinking about all of what has happened. I think of Prim and Rue, and pluck the courage up to contemplate Peeta's comforting arrival.

"You don't need to check on me every five minutes," I say, abruptly cutting off his supposed greeting.

"But you love me, real or not real!? " says Peeta. I wish so much he could remember everything, I know he has an undeniable love for me, and he knows me as 'The Girl on Fire' and the one he truly met in the first place, but he is still a different man, and I have too much of a self-centred love for him not to want him identical to the one I saw in every arena, and in every training session.

With Paylor in command, I don't know what to expect, I never really knew her, but I can tell I don't want her leading our Panem, what is she going to do with it? With Snow and Coin gone, and with them, Gale, Prim, my mother, and Effie, I don't know where we go from here, the routine is so abnormal it feels worse than before.

Peeta and I sit down to watch the evening television, and just as we sit down, I watch the seal come up in blue, not red, and instantly know, there is unfinished business to attend to. Then opens a striking image of Heavensbee standing at the podium, his smirk-like smile completely absent from his face.

"There is news of a heavy loss tonight in District 1. We fear a breakout is beginning, but not from Panem. Our fears are confirmed, that for the first time in our lifetimes, our peaceful country is assembling with our ancester's natives, and they aren't waiting any longer. We need an army, we need it now. Letters will be received of those I need urgently, do not take this message lightly - the war is not yet over."

His words drag me in and out of my long-lasting sweat-provoking nightmares that stand in the way of any peace I searched for at the beginning of this rebellion. Paylor is dead. Her picture showcasing all her strength, power, and helplessness flashes at the screen as we rewind it in our heads during the night. I will be getting a letter from Plutarch, I need to get to the Capitol.

Another thought strikes me, there are more I know dead, than I feared, Ceasar, mostly, 'The Girl who inspired so much violence, has made Caesar come to a violent end.' I still don't believe he managed all those years being such a Capitol genius, easily interviewing people he knew would be dead imminently. Well, not the 'Girl on fire.'

It almost feels unreal, when I get up, that Plutarch managed to sedate me without me killing him, and end up in the Capitol. "It wasn't easy," Plutarch manages to say, as Haymitch storms in, now drunk, again. "You think it just 'wasn't easy'?" He says as he releases a liqoury odour that fills the room.

I'm apparently 'still healing' and the hospital are helping service my wounds, although I'm perfectly fine. That queues Johanna's entrance. I give her a hug and she tells me what happened in 7 after she got back. Apparently, people aren't happy about my pardon from Paylor, but now she's dead all kinds of havoc can be wreaked.

I manage to make it to yet another technologically advanced meeting room, the Capitol's typical layout, a bit like the one from 13 - but bigger. And with no Coin. It doesn't come as a surprise that in the next hour, we have no progress on what do next. Plutarch tries to fill us in on exactly what's happening, but I still find it a bit hard to take in.

We've spent so many years being so peaceful, even decades before the Dark Days, we have had no interception from the other worlds around us. Does this mean they're tired waiting for us? Does it mean they want me? Surely they must therefore know my disruption to Panem? I feel my lunch returning and leave the room to go and see my mother. Its been ages, and we both now, have the privilege to sob and mourn in person.

It hurts just as it did with my Dad, Finnick, Boggs. I can't undo any of it, but I know I have to move forward and take my path on behalf of their deaths. It's another to the list of things I owe people.

Peeta seems to manage to step in at the perfect time. He begins to comfort me, and I engage in the real world and face my reality. How could they possibly know about me? I am just a town girl. I'm Katniss Everdeen. I come from District 12. I was in the arena for 2 Hunger Games. I formed a Rebellion between all the districts and the Capitol. We won. Now my sister, my friends, my district rebels, my relatives, are dead. Paylor is dead. And now I will be too.

I quickly process everything going on in my mind, when they suddenly whisk me out of my seat and at that point comes all the units of the Capitol who are now in charge. And I don't know one of them. All the faces I saw on the day of the execution were probably killed themselves, and so they have now been replaced. Then nevertheless, of course, Plutarch is in the room about to introduce them to me.

"We have Juden, Archee, Cloy, Maison and Retsy," says Plutarch, rather quizzically, almost as if he doesn't even know his colleagues. They all seem rather the same. But, they actually looked rather scared of me, as if I was a menacing beast unfolding terror upon a meeting room.

I quickly take a seat in a chair, worried I may keel over at the sight of a 12-14 inch gash on Cloy's leg. He walks closer, and I try and shield my self from getting a close up of it. He backs the leg behind him and just his head forward as though to hug me, but then I reach for the table and collapse. Peeta seems to wake me what seems like a couple of hours into the day. He tells me the horrors of last night.

It turns out, the people of Panem, are not happy with my re-entrance into the Capitol. They want me dead, if not dead, then eternally tortured. hatmust have lead to a sudden short uprising, that lead to someone injectingsomething of a poisonous substance into my blood, and he didn't manage to getin, but then came the shootings. And I got avenged so dearly. I wish I'd never set foot here. I wish I'd died when I could. Died and died with no torture. Oh how that seems like such a good idea.

I walk into the next room, fearing a crowd of unhappy peasants greeting me with guns, bombs and all that would kill me in a heartbeat. And there is a face rather unexpectedly, perplexed at my entrance, but head facing the floor.
'Gale?' I say softly, reaching out for the door to close it.
'Yup. You good? You got everything you wanted?' Now raising his voice, he slams the table and returns to his rather flat tone and stares a the floor.
'I didn't expect you to be in the Capital. But, then again I didn't really expect to be greeted by 600 gunshots trying to wipe me off the face of the earth.'

Peeta quickly comes into the room with news of our accommodation and jobs for the week, and Gale is now engrossed in the conversation.
'Could you please leave; this is a private conversation,' Gale says, abrupt to his arrival.
'She's mine. You have no right. You lost that,' says Peeta, rather unusually, with a tone of frustration and aggressiveness.