The Divergent Games

Chapter Sixteen: Tris

Chapter Sixteen: Tris

After everything that went down with my mother, I couldn’t bear the thought of not getting answers. I had been planning on going to the dorm after that, but I changed my mind and found myself standing in front of the Tattoo parlor. I walked right in and found Katniss sitting there, looking as though she were waiting for me.

“Ah, I knew you’d come back. But, I’m afraid we can’t talk here. Come on. We can go somewhere else.” She gets to leave, and dumbfounded I start to follow. We climb a rugged rock wall that leads up to another street/hallway. She leads me through a door that turns out to lead into an apartment. I walk inside and look around. She motions for me to sit down at the island while she starts to prepare something to eat.

“You hungry?” She asks me. In all truth, I was in fact very hungry. I nod and she smiles. She goes into the fridge and pulls out a large chocolate cake. “My husband makes the Dauntless cake here himself. We always have extra. Go on, have a slice.” She hands me the large knife and I’m getting ready to cut myself off a sliver, but she gives me a disapproving glance and I widen the slice, causing her to smile with approval.

I must admit, it was the best thing I thing I’d ever had. “This is delicious.” I say through a mouthful of cake.

“Okay, I know you didn’t come to just eat cake, so what do you want to know?” Katniss says.

“Everything. In detail. I want to know. About the Capitol, about the Mockingjay, about you. You told me that you were the Mockingjay. And most of all… I want to know about me. Who am I Katniss?”

“Okay, I’ll start with the Capitol. I already told you about the Games, but I didn’t really tell you about the Capitol. The Capitol was the head of Panem. They hosted the games and they were weird, very weird. They wore crazy colored wigs and outfits, tons of makeup. They looked more like clowns than humans. Anyway, they had a President, President Snow, who wanted to kill me, but I killed him before he got the chance. In other words, the Capitol was the Palace and the courtyard, and everyone else was the nasty village peasants.”

“So basically, the Capitol was like a government?” I ask.

Katniss scoffed. “Please, they were more of dictatorship. Anyway, onto the Mockingjay. Mockingjays were actually birds: jabberjays and mockingbirds bread together. I wanted to become one. It was sort of a metaphor: the capitol got rid of the jabberjays because they were “disloyal” to them, so the jabberjays breeded with the mockingbirds, forming the Mockingjays. They couldn’t control the Mockingjays, so they wanted to get rid of them, just like President Snow wanted to do with me.”

“Okay, what did you do as the Mockingjay?” I ask.

“I lead a rebellion. I overthrew the Capitol, but I didn’t do it myself. My husband, Peeta Mellark, was with me. My friend, Haymitch, and my sister Prim. As well as your mother and father.” She told me.

“Did you always plan on overthrowing them?”

“No. I always wanted to help do something about them, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I was going to be a leader. I was just a girl from District 12 with hope that one day things would get better. I had volunteered for my sister, and from that point on I had become the Mockingjay. But enough about me. You want to know more about you and your parents. Correct?” I bob my head up and down, telling her to continue.

“Well to start, you might wanna know they aren’t you real parents. As I told you before, their names were Gale Hawthorne and Annie Cresta. Your mother married Finnick Odair, one of my good friends, and he passed away. She had a son before Finnick died, but her son ended up dying somehow. She married Gale, who was once my best friend but we had grown apart after the rebellion. They had another son, but that was it. They had no more children.”

She must be talking about Caleb. I always wondered why everyone in my family looked alike except me. But I’m still confused about me. “But then, how did they get me? Who are my real parents?”

“I’m getting there. Anyway, one time, Annie and her son-“

“Caleb.” I interrupt. “His name is Caleb.”

“Right. One time, right before the Faction war began, Annie and Caleb had left. We don’t know where they went or why, but I had a feeling Annie knew that something bad was going to happen. Gale had stayed in the former District 2, when the war broke out. I was still in what was former District 12. I had two children, one boy and one girl. My daughter had blonde hair like her father, and his blue eyes as well. My son, well you’ve met him. He looks exactly like me.” She wasn’t lying. Gale was a mirror image of her.

“Wait, did you name your son after your son after my “dad”?” I ask using air quotes on the word dad.

“Yeah, I did. Your father didn’t think it, but I had missed him so much after he left.”

“What did you name your daughter?”

“Her name was Primrose Rue Mellark. We called her Prim for short. Her first name was my sister’s. She had died during the rebellion. Rue was a girl in the Hunger Games with me. She reminded me of my sister so much, but she was killed while we were in the arena.” When she says the name Primrose, I instantly remember that that was the name my adoptive father called me.

“How’s my little Primrose doing?” Primrose has been my nickname for as long as I can remember. Dad said that’s because he and an old friend of his used to have a lot of Primroses around their houses when he was younger.

“Did you have primroses around your house when you were a kid?” I ask Katniss.

“Yes. My mother loved them. Anyway, back to the subject. The night that the Convergent, the people who wanted to take over the government, attacked, we were all huddled on a hovercraft. We were carried here to Chicago, where we were locked and kept. There were thousands of people, Tris. A sea of people. My daughter and son had been knocked unconscious on the hovercraft, so my husband and I had to carry them. When we were in what you could call the human storage room, I saw Gale, the older one, and two of my good friends, Haymitch and Effie. I tried to go to them with Peeta, but I fell, and tat was the worst mistake of my life. I dropped Prim, and luckily Gale managed to catch her, but the crowd was pushing us separate ways. Gale still had her in his arms and I couldn’t get her. I prayed he’d take care of her. And he did. She’s alive, and healthy, and beautiful.”

“Wait, Katniss-“I try to cut in.

“No, shh. Just hold on. I hadn’t seen her, or Gale, or Haymitch or Annie until your choosing ceremony. I haven’t seen Effie, either, but I think she’s dead. But my daughter, my Primrose, is here in this compound. I think it’s fate that she came back, fate that she chose Dauntless at her choosing ceremony, because I’ve finally found her.”

There is one thought going through my head. If everything Katniss is saying is true, then there’s only one explanation for who I am. “Katniss, you had two children, but lost one that. If Gale and Annie only ever had one son and he took in your daughter, then that means...” I can’t say it. I just can’t. I look into Katniss’ eyes, begging for an answer, and she opens her mouth and gives me one.

Tears are in her eyes when she says, “Yes, Tris. You are my daughter. You are Primrose Mellark.”

A.N./: Finally, the cat’s out of the bag! I’ve been dying to write this chapter! Tris is Katniss’ daughter, even though I think you all have been assuming that for some time now. I don’t know if I wrote it that great, but oh well! Hope you liked it! Please remember to vote, comment, and share! Thanks! <3