The first chapter of this fanfiction is not very well liked. That’s probably something to do with the fact that I killed off most people’s favourite character, haha! I wrote this as an alternate ending for anybody who wishes Katniss had survived. (Note: In my eyes, Chapter 27 is the end. This was just for fun.)

There is an unexpected knock on the front door.

“Thresh! Can you get the door?” I yell. We aren’t expecting anybody, so I don’t know who it is. I’m getting Kat dressed now she’s had a bath.

Thresh runs in a worryingly eager way to the door. Internally, I groan. I can’t even trust him to answer the phone without saying something silly.

I sling Kat under my arm and race Thresh down the hall.

“I’ll answer the door. You take care of Kat,” I plop Kat on the ground and she waddles over to him. For some reason, though he cannot be trusted to do anything, he is always well behaved around his sister. I brush myself off and open the front door.

In front of me is a ghost.

It looks very real. I could probably reach out to touch the brown side-braid. She has on the same blue dress she wore to the reaping the first time I saw her face. The gray eyes stare into mine, and it feels eerie. This person died years ago. I practically saw her die.

“Hello, Rue,” says Katniss Everdeen.

I stand there gaping at her.

“I think you’re probably a little surprised to see me.”

A little surprised? That’s a huge understatement.

“You’re dead!” I yelp.

“Clearly,” she rolls her eyes. “I’ll explain what happened. May I come in?”

It seems unsafe to let a ghost into your house, but I hardly have a choice.

I show her into the living room, where Thresh has got out some building blocks for Kat.

“Katniss, this is my son Thresh,” I introduce her.

She doesn’t comment on our name choice. She offers him her hand, and he shakes it suspiciously.

“And this is my daughter… um, Katniss. Kat for short.”

“Hello Kat,” she says, kneeling down to Kat’s level. Kat looks up at her with wide eyes. “We have the same name.” Kat nods.

“Leave them to play,” I say. “Please tell me how you’re still alive.”

We sit down on the sofa, watching Kat and Thresh out of the corner of our eyes.

“Before I start, who is their father?”

“Plough. You probably don’t know him. He helps out in the fields sometimes, like today. Thresh was his cousin,” I explain.

“Thresh? The boy who helped you after I “died”?”

I nod awkwardly.

“Awesome. About that, by the way. It was all very painful, being blown up against a tree. And losing a leg, don’t ever try that. It was very painful at the time, and even now it itches and I can’t scratch it.” She pulls up her skirt a little to show that her foot is fake up to the knee. “I don’t actually remember much of that, to be honest. I was knocked out when I hit the tree. My heart may have even stopped. When I was pulled up onto the hovercraft, they check you over to make sure you really are dead. Apparently, it’s happened before that people aren’t actually always dead. Whenever it’s happened before, they’ve just been executed quietly, by an injection on the hovercraft on the way back to their District. I was lucky. Plutarch Heavensbee found me; he was a gamemaker and a rebel. He managed to smuggle me to District 13, where they patched me up and made me healthy again. Then I was made in charge of the rebellion.”

Things are starting to fit together.

“So it was you,” I say. “You were the one who ordered me to kill Snow.”

“With some influence from Coin, yes. Though I made the majority of the decisions and plans, ultimately everything that happened had to be passed through her. She would request an operation, and I would organise it. In return for doing all this, I was given my life.”

She hadn’t explained one thing.

“Why did you wait so long to come see me? For twenty years I thought you were dead,” I feel a little irritated that she lead me on like this.

“I had to stay hidden for twenty years. It was for safety reasons; if there was a rebellion from the Capitol a couple of years after they were overthrown, they couldn’t target me if they didn’t know I was alive. As a precaution I was hidden completely in District 13. My mother and Prim knew I was alive, but no one else. Besides Plutarch and Coin and people involved with saving me, I mean.”

Prim kept this from me for so long.

“But now,” Katniss says brightly, “I am allowed out and about and can make my own life. I’m probably going to go and see how Gale is doing. I heard he moved to District 2, I think. I really want to make something of my life.”

Doesn’t she realise? “You already have!”

She sighs. “In political terms, yes. But I never wanted to be a rebel during my teenage and young adult years. I want to have a family and have friends and have fun. And I want to be able to see you.”

I reach my arms around her and hug her tightly.

“I missed you so much,” I whisper.

“Me too,” she replies.

Then she says, “You really lived up to your namesake. I’ll bet anything Snow rued the day he created the Hunger Games.”

We both laugh at her silly pun.

Katniss is alive. It’s really Real.