"I'm so sorry," I whisper. I lean forward and kiss him. His eyelashes flutter and he looks at me through a haze of opiates. "Hey, Catnip." "Hey, Gale," I say. "Thought you'd be gone by now," he says. My choices are simple. I can die like a quarry in the woods or I can die here beside Gale. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay right here and cause all kinds of trouble." "Me, too," Gale says. He just manages a smile before the drugs pull him back under.

My spirit. This is a new thought. I'm not sure exactly what it means, but it suggests I'm a fighter. In a sort of brave way. It's not as if I'm never friendly. Okay, maybe I don't go around loving everybody I meet, maybe my smiles are hard to come by, but i do care for some people.

You can tell by the way the girls whisper about him when he walks by in school that they want him. It makes me jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.

But what was it Haymitch said when I asked if he had told Peeta the situation? That he had to pretend to be desperately in love? “Don’t have to. He’s already there.

I search his eyes for the slightest sign of anything, fear, remorse, anger. But there's only the same look of amusement that ended our last conversation. It's as if he's speaking the words again. "Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other." He's right. We did. The point of my arrow shifts upward. I release the string. And President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.

I drink in his wholeness, the soudness of his body and mind. It runs through me like the morphling they give me in the hospital, dulling the pain of the last weeks.

My lips are just forming his name when his fingers lock around my throat.