After Gale's whipping, Katniss wakes at the table with Gale still clutching her hand and Peeta quietly watching over them both. Peeta sends Katniss to bed without asking for explanations about her abandoned escape plan, and Katniss is struck again by how much he gives her. In bed, Katniss has a nightmare that blends Clove, muttations, and her own facial wound, then wakes to a blizzard and uses the isolation to face what staying in District 12 really means.

Katniss forces herself to think through the danger of resisting the Capitol: arrest, torture, execution, and the possibility that her loved ones could suffer with her. Her fear nearly overwhelms her when she thinks of Prim, but she realizes the Capitol has already hurt Prim, Rue, and countless other children. That thought hardens Katniss's resolve. While Prim and Katniss's mother treat Gale with soothing snow coat, Katniss begins thinking not about escape supplies but about how rebellion might actually work in District 12.

When the storm clears enough for travel, Katniss brings Peeta and Haymitch into town so they can talk away from the Victor's Village. Katniss announces that she wants to start an uprising, but Haymitch laughs it off and insists it will not work. In the square, Katniss sees that conditions have changed while they were snowed in: Peacekeepers are everywhere, machine guns guard the rooftops, and new tools of public punishment stand in plain view. The Hob is burning, and Katniss and Peeta soon learn from Hazelle that fear, sickness, and the mine shutdown are already pushing families toward disaster.

As the days pass, Katniss sees how thoroughly District 12 is being crushed. The mines stay closed, food grows scarce, tesserae requests rise, wages fall, hours lengthen, and brutal punishments become common again. Gale returns home, but his family's hardship deepens, and Rory is forced to take tesserae. Katniss helps Haymitch hire Hazelle as his housekeeper, while Katniss's mother turns their kitchen into a free clinic for the district's sick and injured. Katniss also realizes that most people in District 12 are too frightened and unused to open lawbreaking to rise up as easily as she imagined.

Katniss finally breaks the ban on the woods after a crate of Capitol-approved wedding dresses arrives, convincing her that Snow still means to use her marriage for his own ends. Wearing Cinna's winter gear, she sneaks under the fence and fights through the snow to the lake, partly for air and partly to say goodbye to the place she loves. Near the lakeside house, Katniss is suddenly covered by an armed woman in a white Peacekeeper uniform. Katniss turns with bow drawn, but instead of attacking, the woman drops her weapon and holds out a small stamped cracker, stopping Katniss in shock.