I had to say it. He would want to know. If it came down to our roles being reversed, maybe I'd want to know too. Even if there was nothing I could do about it, even if it was ineveitable. But Peeta has a chance here for something that was impossible in Panem. Peace. Happiness. Normalcy. Gale could have it too, if he wanted to. The kind of life everyone is supposed to want. It's too late for me, but not for Peeta.

Not this Peeta.

I realize that I want to protect him from this, even. Though I failed to do so back home, when it really mattered. I would have died to keep him alive, had the rebels not interfered. Yet he doesn't want to be protected, and that was where I was wrong all along. Do I have the right to this? Is it his choice? I don't know. The lines between right and wrong are so thoroughly blurred in my mind.

I take a deep breath to keep it together, but it takes energy that I no longer have. "After the Quell. After I shot the arrow. The Capitol took you."

That in itself says so much, but not enough. It doesn't reveal the long nights spent with Finnick, desperately trying to hang on to something sane. Rope burns and bleeding fingers. Seeing Peeta on the television and yet having no power to help him. But this isn't about me - it's about him. It's about the total destruction of everything he believed in.