Prologue

Once upon a time, Gale Hawthorne fell in love with a girl on fire that had a braid and could shoot an arrow through a squirrel's eye from over 100 yards away. Once upon a time, that girl started a rebellion, and she ran away to hide in an underground District where she realized that she was missing something in her heart.

Once upon a time, the thing that she was missing came back and that thing was a boy who had forgotten about love. And then she reminded him, and some other things happened, but Gale doesn't really care.

Once upon a time, she asked Gale to kill her, but he couldn't, and then the bombs that he thinks he created blew up and the girl with the braid lost her little blonde sister. And now she's living with the boy who has the nightmares and the paintings and the bakery, and she's off loving him and telling him what's real and what's not.

And the boy who she left behind is a vacant shell that fills itself with alcohol and cheap reminders of what used to be.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the mix of everything, the boy met another girl from a forest who was fire, and she shoved some things out of his heart in order to make room for herself, but the girl with the arrows stayed no matter how hard the girl will the axe pushed.

Once upon a time, the girl with the axe called him gorgeous and understood what it was like to lose absolutely everything because she had lived through it, and the boy ensnared and asked her how to cope.

Once upon a time, Johanna Mason pushed the mockingjay hard enough, and she taught Gale Hawthorne how to fall in love with someone else.