Hey there! It's been a while since I've written anything, so I'm VERY rusty, but I have recently become a huge fan of this series and this idea/concept, although it probably seems overdone, was calling out to me. I had a lot of free time this summer, so I decided to write it down. My writing is probably a poor reflection of the idea, so for that I'm sorry in advance. Basically, it takes place after the Quarter Quell and follows Mockingjay with some of my own alterations, the big one obviously being Katniss' pregnancy. I tried to stay as close to the plot of the book as best as I could, but some things needed to be switched around and changed for this fic's purpose. Each chapter will be told in the POV of a different character with flashbacks here and there. The title is inspired by Mumford and Son's song "Ghosts That We Knew". Hope you enjoy, review, etc! I'll do my best to update if you guys are into it! Thank you!

-ILoVeWicked

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Chapter 1

Katniss

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District Twelve. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. I was in the Quarter Quell. The arena exploded. I…I…

I don't remember what happens next.

It starts out as a droning hum. As my eyes begin to flutter open, the hum has transformed into a steady beep, evenly spaced and strangely rhythmic. I am now awake, wide eyed and staring into the tile of a white ceiling that I altogether do not recognize but at the same time contains the odd familiarity of tile I have seen many times before. Hospital quarters. The beeps are spread out in intervals of five seconds. They never lull, they never drag. Like intricate clockwork.

Clockwork…

I jolt upward, my head suddenly feeling like the contents of the clock-shaped arena that I managed to explode with my arrow. My muscles are sore, bile burns the edges of my esophagus, and my bones feel brittle, like tiny glass animals captured inside of a glass menagerie.

Like twenty-four tributes, twenty-four past victors, trapped inside of an arena.

The thought finally strikes me that I do not know where I am. Besides the obvious indications that I am being held in some sort of hospital, of course, my exact location is unknown. Am I at home, in District Twelve? I shake my head at the unlikely possibility. Even with the upscale Victor's Village being my new residence, nowhere in District Twelve is a room this sterile and without the familiar sheen of coal dust coating the room's crevices.

Am I under the strict watch of the Capitol? The Capitol wants me dead. It's one of the truest and scariest statements in my introduction that I continually have repeated to myself over the course of the year. If I had miraculously made it out of the arena alive, and the Capitol's hovercraft had been the one to lift me from my crumbling surroundings, why haven't they executed me yet?

The answer is startling, and it injects a shiver into my now convulsing body, powerful enough to shake the very marrow of my bones: they are waiting. They want me alive and well. They want my execution to take place live, in a way that I may experience the pain, the agony, the darkness of death.

My mind is suddenly flooded with the frightened faces of those I can no longer save. Prim hugs her ribcage, body racked with sobs while my stoic mother stares blankly once again into the abyss of death. Gale, his mother Hazelle, his siblings Rory, Vick and little Posy, huddled together in fear. Fear for the lives of their own Hawthorne clan as well as the Everdeen clan I have left behind. Gale's face in particular strikes me. His dark features, his intense stare, and how they nearly disintegrated into his battered, raw body as it lay on my kitchen table the night I chose him. The kiss wasn't enough. And neither was our final argument about running away before the Quell could take hold of me once again. There were words between us that would never be able to be exchanged. Especially after the Quell had been announced. After I had betrayed him.

A long, pinkish scar on my forearm conjures up memories of Johanna Mason, and her knife digging into my flesh, her frantic movements reminding me faintly of Foxface in that moment. Also appearing is chiseled face and body of Finnick Odiar and the focused, wise eyes of Beetee. Had they all survived the explosion? Or were they already sacrificed to the Capitol for their lack of subservience? Worse, I muse, had their involvement with the Capitol been a carefully hidden secret in order to contribute to my eminent demise?

Their loyalty is blurry to me. As blurry as the events of that final evening.

Those who were less fortunate also raid my brain. Madge's twitching body makes me shut my eyes to remove the sting in remembering Finnick's agonized face as he lost his beloved mentor. Wiress' tinny "tick tock" matches the cadence of the machine at my side. Cinna, in all of his simplistic, noble glory, beaten, battered, and bruised right before my eyes just as I entered the arena. The fervent beating inflicted on my stylist by Capitol surely indicates his death, but a glimmer of hope swells in my chest as I hold on to the unknown that he may have pulled through and survived.

My mind wanders to the face I have been trying to avoid subconsciously. His eyes fill my clouded memory first. Soft, blue eyes that grew suddenly hard when topics he was most passionate about arose. Around the eyes begins to form the familiar outline of his delicate facial features: the curve of his jawline, the small arch on the bridge of his nose, the wrinkles of his forehead when he was in deep thought, and the curtain of shaggy blonde locks covering his eyebrows.

Even if I tried, that face could not be removed from my memory. It was the face that plagued both my dreams and my nightmares. The face that I had taken so much time to study. Especially after the Quell had been announced, I remind myself again, wincing. Especially after I betrayed Gale.

Heart in my throat, I squeak out his name, uttering the first word I have said in who knows how long, "Peeta".

The nausea from earlier resurfaces and I ease my quivering body back down onto the narrow hospital bed. I am so consumed by my thoughts that I fail to notice how the beeping of the machine beside me has drastically picked up its pace. The calming metronome of what I now realize is a heart monitor has spiraled out of control. Flashes of red and green and yellow dot my eyes and nearly blind me as I suddenly begin to thrash around in the bed, ripping tubes from my wrists and my nasal cavities and clawing at what is left of my broken heart.

They won't take me, I decide. I'd rather die now than let them take me.

A swarm of men and women in white surround my bed, shouting commands at each other that even I can barely hear over my shrieks. Two burly men pin me down by the arms. One grabs me directly over Johanna's wound and triggers a shooting pain that transfers all the way into my brain. I scream louder and attempt to jerk my head up to bite one of the men in white.

But as I do, I catch a glimpse of a familiar untucked tail of a shirt. Prim's eyes are wide, her face is frantic, but her hands remain steady as she injects a syringe into my back.

Whether or not my sister has betrayed me or the Capitol is continuing to toy with my mind, I do not know. Because my world suddenly goes black once again.

THGTHGTHG

When I awake, the beeping has once again steadied. The tubes have been restored to my arms and face and the sheets on my bed have been folded over my chest snuggly instead of sitting at a mangled heap at my feet. My mind, however, has not erased the image of what appeared to be my sister assisting in knocking me out amidst a swarm of white lab suits. No, I think. Prim would never join the Capitol willingly. I shudder at the thought of my sister being used as a human prop in my death plot.

I groan and there is a light knock on the door. I suspect a doctor coming to take a look at the might-as-well-be-dead girl and resist even bothering to go through the effort of lifting my head. Instead, I turn to face the wall, away from the intruder.

I'll take any opportunity to act in defiance that I can muster up.

"Oh good, you're up," the sing-songy, almost mocking tone of Finnick Odair chimes. My eyes become unblinking orbs and I rocket upward once again. The room starts to spin and Finnick's strong hands are on either side of me, steadying me and preventing me from falling out of the bed.

"Careful, Katniss. Katniss, it's me. It's Finnick," he says soothingly. I brush a wisp of hair from my eyes and peer into his own eyes, as blue as the ocean he calls home. There is relief, happiness, and a twinge of guilt in his gaze.

He is roaming free, and as far as I know, he is not coming at me with any syringes. He seems safe. I am not letting down my guard, however. If the Capitol is behind this and has control of Prim, who's to say Finnick Odair, the Capitol's pet himself, isn't involved?

Yet, at the same time, the way he stares me down sincerely leads me to trust him, even if it causes just a little crack in the armor. There are suddenly so many questions I want to ask him about where we are, who has us captive, where the others are. Where specifically one other is. But my thought's jumble together like a newfangled knot and all I can utter out is a meek, "What's going on?"

Finnick laughs. The sound is airy, like his belly laugh as he taunted with me with a sugar cube just weeks before the Quell, but there is a tentative undertone in his laughter that is now unmistakable.

"You probably have a lot of questions. I know I did. Let's get you into a chair and I'll take you to see Haymitch."

Haymitch. A face that I had forgotten to think about before suddenly ravishes my memory with hope. If Haymitch is in my proximity, Finnick, myself, and even Peeta must be safe, right.

After Finnick wheels me down several unfamiliar corridors that resemble neither District Twelve nor the Capitol, I am brought into what appears to be a control room with my once trustworthy mentor, a woman with a taught, wrinkly face and pristine white hair, and Plutarch Heavensbee, the creator of the arena that I destroyed.

"There she is: Sleeping Beauty!" Haymitch drunkenly jokes, whiskey still in his hand. His alcoholism is sadly the only thing in my life that has remained consistent since my awakening. He stands and tumbles toward me, but I curl into myself and impulsively reach for Finnick's arm. Finnick, however, has disappeared from my side and has taken a place at the table beside the older woman.

My hands ball themselves into fists, and I venomously repeat the question I asked Finnick earlier to Haymitch, "What's going on?"

"Ms. Everdeen, allow me to explain," says the woman, rising from her place at the table and obviously sensing the hunger in my eyes as I think of the best angle to punch my former mentor in the face. I cannot read this woman as easily as she reads me. Everything about her is a grey cloud of ambiguity. "My name is President Alma Coin, and I am the leader of District Thirteen."

Bonnie and Twill, the two women from District Eight that I met in the woods before the Quell, suddenly emerge in my mind, their elaborate plan to escape to the rendered fictional District that nearly everyone had shaken off and deemed nonexistent. I dismissively lower my head, knowing that Bonnie and Twill's chances of survival were about as slim as my own during that pivotal time.

"District Thirteen is gone," I state matter-of-factly to the woman. If this is the Capitol's way of getting me to fall for their plan, they need to find better actors than the alleged President standing before me. President Coin chuckles ever so slightly and glances back at Plutarch, who I haven't been able to look into the eyes of on account of feeling extremely and unnecessarily guilty for destroying his precious clock. Coin continues speaking.

"Or so the Capitol thinks. Years after the war, District Thirteen began to rebuild itself into a nation bigger and stronger than before. However, construction took place underground in order to go undetected. Our main goal, of course, has been to overthrow the Capitol." As she says this, the corners of her mouth upturn into a twisted smirk.

Plutarch Heavensbee neglects to rise when he begins to speak. His tone is hushed, yet bristling with excitement, and I am immediately unnerved. "That's where people like me come in. The Rebels, we're called. I constructed the arena in hopes that you would figure out the clock shape and the force field, which you did with ease, my dear." He says this as if I deserve some sort of medal for exploding my fellow victors and for risking my life, as if I've already agreed to take on the new nickname of 'Rebel'. I think about the night of my engagement party, when he showed off his pocket watch, and glower at him.

"So you knew? You knew all of this was going to happen?" I ask, directing the question to anyone who cared to answer, since my trust in each of them had diminished greatly.

Haymitch bows his head. Suddenly his words, "Remember who the real enemy is" contain a bitter irony. "Yes, Katniss. Unfortunately, I knew it for a while. Whether or not I went into that arena, I was going to be involved in some way."

"I knew too," Finnick admits, averting his eyes. "So did Johanna, which explains her jabbing your arm to remove your tracker. Beetee knew as well. The victors from three, four, six, seven, eight, and eleven were all somewhat informed before going into the Quell."

My jaw has plummeted downward. The alliances, the elaborate plan with the Lightening Tree…It all makes perfect sense now. My cheeks have turned crimson in embarrassment that I let each of the people in this room use me as a marionette doll, a toy in their own twisted game of rebellion.

"So what you're saying is that I was the only one not in on this sick joke, then?" I ask icily. Traces of a slight smile tug at one corner of Haymitch's mouth.

"Well," he says, "we needed some level of innocence to get the job done right. You were never a very good actress, sweetheart."

I am about to lunge at him when Coin speaks up.

"Ms. Everdeen, you may not realize this, but you have become a symbol of resistance, and you didn't have to lie or cheat your way into doing it. Your act against the Capitol with the nightlock last Games was entirely your own doing and not someone else's ploy. To taint you with any falsity would have been too risky. But you haven't been acting alone. The unrest has always been there. The Rebels have come from all Districts and the Capitol alike for years now, taking numbers to join our cause. You have been the spark of the revolution we have been waiting for. The Mockingjay, they are calling you. We have been building up resistance in each of the Districts, and as you are well aware, many of the Districts have begun uprisings."

"One of them," Haymitch chimes in, "was District Twelve."

"You said that District Twelve would most likely never rise," I assert, jabbing an accusing finger at Haymitch. "That we'd never get enough people to band together…"

"Well, enough people did. There were uprisings all over the District. The Capitol, unfortunately retaliated and bombed the District as soon as the Games ended. Only a few lucky hundred survived," Haymitch retorts bitterly, knowing that each word continues to twist the knife that feels like it has wedged its way into my chest.

For what seems like ages, I am paralyzed. All at once, I am overwhelmed with grief. I sink to the ground, my breath hitching and sobs racking my body. Prim and my mother, the two people I made sure to protect with every move I made, gone. Madge, my unspoken ally and only female cohort, blown to smithereens. Gale, the boy I told myself that I loved, lost forever. What was his last action, his last thought, I wonder. Did he die in the woods, where he was truly happy? Was he thinking of me as his final moments ticked by? Did he die trying to protect his family as they huddled in his strong arms? I think of Posy's tiny eyes wide with fear as she is engulfed in flames and the sobs come on stronger.

Flames. I am the Girl on Fire. I am responsible for this, on some level. Haymitch and Finnick are at either side of me, trying to soothe me in my desolate state, Finnick with his warm hand on my shoulder and Haymitch lowering his flask to his side and sitting awkwardly beside me on the floor.

"Ms. Everdeen. Ms. Everdeen. Katniss," President Coin breaks in, easing the moment of hysteria. "I know exactly what you're thinking. Your friend, Gale Hawthorne, his family, your friend Madge, and your mother and sister were among those that survived. Mr. Hawthorne and Ms. Undersee led a group of hundreds through the woods and they are now members of our rebel forces to honor them for their bravery. That group was the only group from District Twelve to survive the attack. Others, such as Mayor Undersee and the Mellark family, were less fortunate."

I sigh with relief and let a euphoric laugh escape my lips. They're safe, I cheer to myself. Everyone I love is safe. For Peeta, who has lost his entire family, this is not the case. I wonder how Peeta has taken the news.

"Most of the survivors came from the Seam," Haymitch adds. But I am no longer listening, for President Coin's mentioning of one word has sparked my interest and all I can think about is the boy with the bread. Beside his father, his family may have not been the most affectionate, but Peeta surely loved them.

"Peeta," I croak. "Where is he?" The four of them are suddenly at a loss for words as their eyelids flutter in bewilderment, as if I would not have asked eventually. They play in a game of a four-way staring contest to see who will speak first, and just by watching them alone, I assume the worst.

Peeta is dead. The hysteria begins to creep back into my throat and I fight to suppress it. Haymitch is the brave one who utters the words:

"We don't know. Our hovercraft was unable to lift him, Enobaria, and Johanna in time. As far as we know, Capitol has all of them in custody."

Suddenly, all of the thoughts I had conjured up for myself when I thought the Capitol had taken me resurface and are multiplied, like the tidal wave in the arena that struck at eleven o'clock. My sadness quickly morphs into anger as I realize that Peeta was not in on the scheme either. He didn't know a damned thing about District Thirteen and its plot. He was just as important to the plan as I was, but not important enough to be the Mockingjay. Not important enough to be saved.

"They have Annie, too. I know they do," Finnick chokes out. I can tell that the levis holding back his tears are bound to break at any second. "Not because she knows anything. But because they know it will hurt me. They have to be hurting all of them, I just know it. They're better off dead at this point."

"Odair, control yourself. We talked about this," Haymitch snaps. He turns his attention to me. "Katniss, I'm sorry. We tried—"

I send a heated glare in the direction of Haymitch, who had promised, albeit behind each of our backs to keep us under the impression that we were protecting each other, that he would save us both.

"Don't even say it. Don't you say you tried everything. Peeta is the one who did everything to try and save me, to try and save you. And you couldn't save him?" I manage through gritted teeth.

Before Haymitch can even consider making a move or saying a word, I spring into action, landing on top of him and tearing his shirt sleeve clean off. I remain straddled over his legs on the floor of the control room, rabid, enraged, clawing at his face and punching him directly in the nose. He is probably so numb due to the alcohol that he cannot feel the pain. He cannot feel my pain.

It takes Plutarch, Coin, Finnick, and a guard to pry me from Haymitch's powerless body. Had Peeta not volunteered for him and had there not been a secret rebellion occurring behind the scenes, Haymitch Abernathy would have met his demise in the Quarter Quell. I am shrieking obscenities and still swinging my arms for what feels like hours until exhaustion and my own injuries cause me to give in to my weakness. Slumped against the chair I have been pinned to, I remove my gaze from everyone and instead to focus on the palm of my hand, smoothed over and erased of any bloodshed, the palm that once held Peeta's pearl.

When I look up, my stomach churns. Finnick is crying silently, turned away from me in the corner of the room with silent tears rolling down his cheeks. Coin and Plutarch are staring at each other with an indistinguishable emotion betwixt them. I swear I see a hint of something giddy being exchanged in their energies and clench my fists.

Haymitch, ice now being held to his swollen eye socket, glares at me. I cannot see it, but I can certainly feel his disdain. "Now that we have that out of our system," he remarks, as if he was expecting to be pounded on, "why don't you have a turn at explaining something to all of us, Sweetheart."

"What the hell are you talking about, Haymitch?" I spit out without so much as a glance upward. "Clearly, I wasn't good enough to keep this dirty little secret, so I can't really explain anything to you that you all aren't already aware of. I'm supposed to be the innocent one, remember?"

"Dirty little secret! Innocent one!" Haymitch exclaims, mocking me, with a bitter laugh. "Like you don't know!"

"Haymitch, please," Coin says. "I think she may legitimately not know."

"How could she not have?" Plutarch asks skeptically. "Mellark even admitted it to Flickerman. They had to have known."

"Mellark was protecting Katniss and winning over the Capitol's sympathy. If he knew, then she would have had to have told him. And if she knew, then this would be the first thing she would be asking about. Clearly, this is not the case," Coin retorts, her calculative answer not adding up for me. Her cold, bony hand is suddenly under my chin, tilting it upward and forcing me to gaze into her hard gray eyes. The eyes frighten me. They force me to listen, even if I don't want to, because they have bored into my soul and latched on.

"Katniss," she says gently, using my first name for only the second time, as if it is the only thing that will get me to take her seriously. "You were unconscious for about four weeks after the games, but do you know why you were considered an extremely critical medical case and you had to be held in special quarters, away from Finnick and Beetee? Do you know your current state?"

"Current state? I'm no more messed up than Beetee or Finnick. In fact, I think my 'current state' is the state of being ready to kill all of you for not saving Peeta," I hiss as I jerk my chin from her grasp.

"Shit," Haymitch whines as he lowers his ice pack. Behind the large scratch that trails down his face, there is a look of pure stun and guilt dancing across his features that I have only seen once before, when Peeta volunteered for him at the reaping. "She really doesn't know."

I am sick of being left out of yet another secret circle, so I stand and shout, "What is it that I don't know Haymitch? What's the big secret this time?"

The room is painfully silent for what feels like hours before Finnick clears his throat.

"Katniss," he speaks up gently, "you're four months pregnant."

Impossible. That's all I can think. The word branded in my starry, dizzy vision. The word bursts into flames as I stare down at my stomach. Since regaining consciousness, I have failed to notice the small curve of something, someone, forming there.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District Twelve. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. I was in the Quarter Quell. The arena exploded.

I am pregnant.