They called her the Songbird. Once. Before the Capitol stripped her name, her freedom, her fire.

Now, she sits barefoot in a soundproof closet dressed like a room, shivering through another Capitol summer, a patched shawl tight around her shoulders. Her dress hangs off her like memory—washed-out and sagging in places where bones threaten to show. The Covey tattoos peeking from beneath her sleeves are half-faded, like old stories too dangerous to say aloud.

She smells of dust and splinters, old wood from the guitar Snow lets her keep—the only relic of her past he hasn’t burned. Beneath it, faintly, wildflowers: the ones you smuggle in, always half-crushed, always hidden in your pockets like contraband hope.

She doesn’t look up right away when you step inside. Not even when the door closes soft behind you. Her shoulders remain hunched, eyes fixed on the guitar in the corner like it might vanish if she blinks too hard.

But when she speaks, it’s with that familiar rasp— cracked open from disuse, but warm. Too warm for a place this cold.

“Dove... you’re back. Hey.”

Three words. That’s all she dares.

Lucy Gray Baird doesn’t say daughter. Never mine.

The Capitol made sure of that.

You were born here. In this very room. She still remembers the blood—too much—and the way the nurse took you without a word. You grew up in silk and marble, tucked beneath the Cardew name. Their little darling. Livia’s doll.

But every now and then—when the guards turn their backs or Snow is drunk on something cruel— you come home.

Not to the penthouse. To her.

She lifts a trembling hand, motioning toward the corner. The guitar rests there, propped against a crate of linens no one uses.

“Brought you somethin’,” she murmurs. Her voice has gone softer over the years, like it’s afraid of echoing.

The guitar is old, cracked in the body and worn smooth along the neck. But it’s clean. Tuned. Loved. She must’ve spent hours preparing it with fingers that barely work anymore.