Chapter Text
When the moon fell in love with the sun,
All was golden in the sky,
All was golden when the day met the night
Days pass before she moves, the rocking chair in in her kitchen sequestering her to every single moment beginning with her father’s death. Prim’s well-being slowly abating until all to see was a pair of hollowed cheekbones, a prominent ribcage.
Her mother gradually beginning to slip away. She stopped bothering to dress them, to send them to bed. To walk Prim to school. Eventually she forgot how to speak, to feed her children. And just as Katniss does now, she never left the bed, and on bad days she’d refused to eat. To shower. Katniss thinks she’s very much like her mother now.
Then Katniss began to hunt. She’d brought that first huge load that lasted them almost two weeks. She’d applied for tesserae the first chance she’d gotten. Mrs. Everdeen didn’t notice at first, just let her daughters coax her from bed and into their quaint dining room to a tense, asphyxiating meal.
And then after tip-toeing around conversations for so long, Prim tried to let loose by joking about the dearth of rabbit on the table. It’d clicked for Mrs. Everdeen then, and she’d risen so rapidly her chair had been thrown backwards. Looking almost remorseful, she looked from her chair to her daughters when a resounding bang had sounded. And then the horror of it all had fully registered and she breezed from the room, leaving scared Prim and a stewing Katniss in her wake.
She’d met Gale not long after that, having been hunting for more than a month and a half now. She remembered him from the day he’d received recompense for her father’s death, just as he’d done the same. The bond formed by need had died in the same way, spurred on by the grief of father’s lost in the same mine explosion and absence of sustenance, broken by the need for action and more loss.
And her emotions mingle unintelligibly when he thinks of the boy with the bread. The day that bestowed him his nickname. Of the hunger that was she was excruciatingly aware of, and the one she didn’t even know existed. And because she feels this era of torment is not ending any time soon, she figures she has time. Time enough to revel in everything she can remember about him. Peeta.
If she had the impudence, she’d walk over there, just a house away. Alas, she has neither impudence nor motivation.
So she keeps to her rocking chair, not rocking, just sitting, relishing thoughts of a time where her limits were pushed, her strength was tested. A time where even at her darkest moments, he was able to brighten things with his big smile and heart, even if she was far from sentient of that then.
She thinks of Cinna and Finnick, of Effie and her prep team, Wiress, Mags and Castor and Pollux. Lavinia, her mute slave, who, in reality was friendlier than most, despite all she’s been through, all Katniss could have done.
She also thinks of Madge, whose gift bequeathed her a legend. Instigated a revolution of which Katniss was thrust into the lead role.
And she thinks of her little duck. The sister she cared for during the better part of five years. Who she wasn’t able to save from a death not so unlike that of their father’s.
She remembers Prim curled around their mother in the light of dawn, their fair skin and golden tresses wound around each other in the fog of incognizance. Her dainty frame almost taking up no space in her school outfit that is a size too big. The safety pin holding her skirt whilst the back of her shirt remained to be tucked in.
Peppermints and pigtails and big blue eyes. That’s all it takes before Katniss finally gives in to the swell of her heart in her chest, allows a tear drop to glide swiftly free because even though her house may have been bugged by Snow, miniscule microphones and cameras recording her every movement and sound for his awaiting eyes, there is no one left to watch her. And albeit, now is her at her worst, she probably wouldn’t have kept them in if there was someone behind those cameras.
Because she had watched her sister die as she was cataleptic mere yards away and she was supposed to help her, protect her, bring her home and she failed to do any of that and it hurts.
And considering this era of torment is most definitely not over yet, she continues to cry for what feels like years more.