Work Text:
Every spring is the only spring--a perpetual astonishment (Ellis Peters)
“Katniss! Katniss it’s spring!” Prim’s braids are flying after her, as she hurries into the house at top speed. There are grass-stains on her clothes and her eyes are shining as bright as the sun. She’s five years old and undeniably, irrevocably happy.
Her sister smiles just for her and agrees that yes, this is nice and it’s a good thing that the winter is finally over and that the weather is so warm already. She doesn’t pay any attention to the flowers, but Prim does, snagging them up and giving them to her mother who smiles and hangs them to dry from the ceiling.
There’s a set of new flowers hanging there eight years later, as Prim’s sister has just taken her place in the Game and doomed herself. She stares at them (she’s done crying, she’s been crying for twelve hours exact and has run dry now) and wishes that she were older and braver and that the Capitol didn’t exist.
It feels like spring when Katniss comes home: like the feeling she got every time she got outside, expecting cold and dead leaves to greet her and instead seeing the soft green of the grass and the trees. Like being reborn. Katniss is home. Katniss is safe.
Prim knows that spring only lasts for a few months, that after summer comes autumn and winter, and in winter, everything dies. And she’s too old and has seen too many people do, to still hold on to the hope that they can have an eternal spring together, her and everyone she loves and the rest of the world as well.
Winter comes as Capitol falls and Prim remembers the feel of soft flower-petals, picked for her mother and her sister to see.