The walls of this elevator are made of crystal so that you can watch the people on the ground floor shrink to ants as you shoot up into the air. It's exhilarating and I'm tempted to ask Effie Trinket if we can ride it again, but somehow that seems childish.

I take a few breaths to calm myself, step back, and lift Buttercup by the scruff of the neck. "I should've drowned you when I had the chance." His ears flatten and he raises a paw. I hiss before he gets a chance, which seems to annoy him a little, since he considers hissing his own personal sound of contempt.

Even if times got bad, he would never again deny himself the possibility that the future might be happy even if the present was painful. He would allow himself dreams.

I've asked you fifty questions and still have no sense of your life, your family, what you care about. They want to know about you, Katniss." "But I don't want them to! They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to time in the past!" I say.

Someone ought to get Haymitch a drink.

Here began countless days of hunting and snaring, fishing and gathering, roaming together through the woods, unloading our thoughts while we filled our game bags. This was the doorway to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key.

If I can make it clear that I’m still defying the Capitol right up to the end, the Capitol will have killed me... but not my spirit. What better way to give hope to the rebels?