Archive of Our Own

Katniss is pronounced dead.

It’s a shock to Primrose. She sits there and tries to process the information into something logical as her mother goes numb with grief, trying to rein her anger and pain into something sharp, something loud, something to fight with as the Capitol declares victory over her sister. They show a series of clips broadcasting her rise to power - which must have been pre-recorded and edited - and then cut to a live feed so the reporters can discuss how Katniss deserved such a violent end.

Katniss couldn’t be dead. Shouldn’t be dead. She survived starvation in 12, two separate Hunger Games, and was the face of the rebellion. The Mockingjay. The Girl on Fire. Prim’s constant, steady rock of a sister. The one whole stubbornly supplied food even when the ground refused to feed them. The one who walked through Peacekeepers with a belt of kills on one hip and a pouch of coins on the other, almost flaunting her abilities as she haggled for their money. Now dead. Dead and gone.

Dead like their father. Dead like Lady. Dead like most of 12. Dead like dead like dead. Not enough medicine. Not enough food. A sickness caught too late. A burn gone too deep. An explosion in the mines.

It isn’t real. It can’t be real. And yet, Rory is holding his mother and younger siblings, as a confused baby Posy cries for her brother. Annie Cresta is sobbing into Johanna Mason’s shoulder, whose face holds a blinding fury. Delly Cartwright is rocking back and forth, repeating the word “no” at an increasing volume. Haymitch has thrown his drink at the projected screen and is hollering something foul as several others try to restrain him.

Real or not real? Peeta had asked that in his sessions, sometimes. Real or not real? Prim feels herself shaking, even though her face feels frozen. She gets up and walks through the chaos of a room, a world, without her sister.

And she plans.

Not thirty minutes later, there’s another announcement. Pictures of Katniss’s TV crew, Boggs, Gale, Finnick, Peeta, Katniss. Katniss. Shown last to make a point. Shown in order of the Capitol’s hatred of them. Then the screen changes, and it’s showing President Snow, whose face is showing signs of sallowness and skin taking on a pale pallor, if the extra fillers and heavy blush are any indication. Finnick told a story of a snake poisoning himself with his own supply for all to hear. But Prim, a healer’s daughter, knew that before the broadcast.

President Snow smiles as he congratulates the Peacekeepers for killing her sister, her friends, her neighbors. The names run through Prim’s mind on a loop: Gale, Peeta, Finnick, Katniss. With Katniss's death, he predicts, there will be a turning of the tide in the war, since the now demoralized rebels will have no one left to follow.

Prim is dressed in her medic uniform, braiding her hair methodically as the President slanders her sister. She is alone in their compartment, as Buttercup is out hunting and her mother, no doubt, is still trapped in her grief. But Prim can’t afford grief, can only feel fury as she assembles her kit and straightens out the last few wrinkles in the stiff, heavy material she wears. Just like her first and only Reaping outfit, the shirt is too big, but there’s no Katniss to tuck it in or a mother with pins to make it stay, so she tucks in the material herself.

And then Beetee, wonderful Beete, hits a switch from somewhere in 13, and it is no longer President Snow but President Coin who takes up the screen with her voice and her presence. She identifies who she is to those watching and gives a eulogy to Katniss’s memory, using her death to continue a call to action.

And Prim is heeding the call.

Then Snow is back, looking constrained in his fury. He tells the world that Katniss is now a dead girl who could save no one, not even herself.

It is, hopefully, the last mistake he will make. 

Prim pens a short note to her mother, signing it with two flowers, then exits the compartment as the Anthem of Panem takes over, braid swishing behind her.

“Send me to the Capitol.”

“You are not of age yet, Healer Everdeen.”

Primrose stands, shoulder straight, hands clasped in front of her. She stares at President Coin the way she’s seen Katniss do a hundred times to anyone who dared to cross her - brows straight, mouth flat, eyes hard. There is not an inch of give in her.

“Dismissed.”

Prim stays where she is for a moment. Katniss is dead. Her mother has probably withdrawn even further into that blank, terrifying world she escaped to after her father’s death. Haymitch is either trying to fight someone or trying to get drunk. Rory is watching over his family, the eldest of them all now that Gale is gone. Any allies she has here, they might be otherwise occupied with the war or themselves.

Except one.

Prim nods, once, then leaves.

“I need you to help me break into the Capitol to kill President Snow.”

Johanna Mason, Victor of both the 71st and 75th Hunger Games, takes one look at Prim standing in the doorway and promptly laughs in her face. Prim stands there, unsure if she should let the laughter run its course, or channel Katniss and demand her cooperation.

Then, without warning, she roughly grabs Prim’s arm with a vice-like grip and draws her inside her apartment. The door is slammed shut. Annie Cresta is on one bed, arms around her abdomen, silent as the night. There is a bundle of bandages on the table separating the two beds, faintly smelling of pine, atop Annie’s wedding veil.

Johanna’s mirth is gone as suddenly as it appears, a serious expression on her face. “I know you’re upset-”

Prim wrenched her arm from Johanna’s grip, voice cold. “My sister is dead. The closest thing I had to a brother is dead. The people who followed my sister so that this war could be ended are dead. The word “upset” doesn’t even begin to cover what I feel.”

Johanna nods, sitting on her own bed. Prim remains standing as Johanna continues. “Okay. I know you’re pissed, but trust me. The last thing that is going to happen is you making it to the Capitol to kill the president personally. You’re not even of age to be a soldier. And how are you going to get there? Do you even know how to kill?”

“Poison is just medicine that’s been reassigned a different use.” Prim says, echoing words she’d heard when she first began training in 13. She rattles her healer’s kit for emphasis. Johanna laughs again, but it’s flatter this time.

“Of course Lover Girl’s sister is just as deadly as she is,” Johanna says, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “Okay, so you can theoretically kill. How are you getting there in the first place, Everdeen?”

“Beetee.” 

Prim and Johanna turn in unison to look at Annie, who is staring at them with wet, green eyes, a determined look on her face. She stares at Prim for a moment, then unfolds herself and walks over to a drawer, pulling out a sheet of paper and scrawling several pictures on it. “Give this to Beetee. He’ll know how to help you.”

Prim nods, holding onto Annie’s hand for a moment longer than necessary. Word is she’s pregnant. Maybe if Prim is fast enough, Annie can have a child born into a time of peace.

It takes almost an hour to find Beetee, but Prim eventually tracks him down. He is in the lab again, dark circles around his eyes as he fiddles with some sort of flamethrower device. She knows he’s been jerked around by the upper War Division of 13 for advice and abilities, and feels bad for a moment she’s interrupting what could be a rare moment of down-time for him.

But Katniss is dead. Gale, Peeta, Finnick, Boggs, Cressida - everyone. Everyone who followed Katniss to ensure the revolution would be televised is gone. 

A lifetime ago, a little girl with two braids stood in the summer heat as her name was called from a clear glass bowl holding slips upon slips of paper. Hers was one in hundreds. The odds were entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered. Her name, chosen. She had made it all of thirteen and a half steps to the Justice Building before a voice cracked through the air like a bullet, crying out with the finality of an animal experiencing death.

“I volunteer as tribute!”

Prim walked forward now, hands clutching her medkit the way they had clung to Katniss a scant 17 months prior. Her hair was in a single braid this time. There was no escort to call her name. No crowd of children to part from. And yet, she could not stop walking forward.

Her hand slipped into her pocket, pulling out the paper Annie gave her. A parachute, a medical cross, a tree. Beetee took a long look at the paper, then very deliberately let it catch fire. He rolled his chair back and adjusted his glasses.

“Follow me.”

Prim walks.

She does not tell her mother in person. The note will suffice. Prim stands in Coin’s office once again as Beetee lays out a careful plan, marking Prim’s importance in being present as the rebels take the Capitol. Coin considers it over steepled fingers, grey eyes finding Prim’s blue in an almost perfunctory manner.

“You believe you can carry out this mission successfully, Healer Everdeen?”

“Absolutely.”

She motions for Prim’s left hand, then stamps the back of it with “MEDIC” in red ink. She picks up another and the word “SOLDIER” appears on her right.

“Congratulations,” President Coin says. “Report to Command for your first mission, Soldier Everdeen.”

Prim snaps into a salute, then exits the room, Beetee behind her.

She leaves District 13 two hours later.

The first place they land, surprisingly, is 12. There’s a train waiting for them there, she’s told and they have to move quick under the cover of darkness. A cargo car packed to the brim with adults and teenagers older and more weary-looking than her slump over every available surface as Prim picks her way over to a semi-clear space. She’s been given a pack and a more robust medical kit to go along with her standard-issued one from the med-bay in 13, but other than that, she has no tokens. The only thing changed about her uniform were her shoes, from the standard hand-me-downs to a shiny new pair of hiking boots. 

Right before the train takes off, she scoops up a small rock the same gray as Katniss’s eyes and places it in her pocket, where it clinks against a small vial that no one noticed - or asked - about.

The trip itself is rough. There are no updates from 13 the entire time they’re on the train, and everyone is so on edge that, save for the rumbling of the train on the tracks, it’s silent. There’s no place for hygiene and one car for everyone to relieve themselves. Prim keeps her hair in its tight braid and chews Sassafras bark in lieu of brushing her teeth, but there is no entertainment and no talk in a place like this, so she focuses on the blurring landscape and the pebble in her pocket. After two days, they pull into a mountain tunnel that leads directly into the Capitol, careful to follow the thin strip of neon green paint that marks where the trail is.

One hour passes, two, then four. The temperature drops and the wind picks up, but they don’t stop until over six hours have passed and they have reached the rebel encampment, which is buzzing with activity despite the freezing weather. Prim is immediately directed into the makeshift med-bay, a covered area where rebels in varying states of health lay on beds, or more commonly, on bloodstained canvas on the ground. There are fires in barrel drums around the area, offering a little warmth here and there, but the cold persists. 

Prim strips off her pack and begins pulling out supplies, tending to those she knows have the best chance of making it, preparing syringes of morphine for those who need an easy passage into the night. She knows, without being told, there’s no way she would be allowed to operate on someone too far gone, but just like Katniss with her squirrels and rabbits, some part of her thinks if they tried, they might be able to save them.

After four hours, she is ordered to eat and rest. Prim has never felt so tired in her life, and it’s only been three days since Katniss died. She drinks the soup they give her without tasting it, and falls asleep to the sound of distant gunfire and the dying. Four hours later, she’s up again despite the darkness, and given a small canteen of water to drink and wash up with, alongside two small pieces of bread and a tin of fish. After scarfing down the offered food and cleaning up as best she can, she goes back to the medical tent. Almost everyone except for those who arrived last night have been reduced to reusing gloves, bandages, and syringes on the wounded, and there’s more people brought in every hour. A large light has been set up in the middle of the room, offering some illumination, but most are forced to use flashlights to get by, with some patients even holding them for the medics. There is a mandatory thirty minute break in the middle of the day where Prim gets to use the bathroom and drink a little more water, but the thought of food makes her ill, so she refuses.

Primrose works diligently, doing her best to forget her mother’s face, her father’s eyes, Katniss’s voice singing as the mockingjays fall silent. Every rebel she takes care of is another person that gets to go home. Every person that passes is someone else who she’ll see later in her father's sweet old hereafter. Somewhere around dinnertime, she too is reduced to reusing medical supplies, sterilizing them with the fire and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. The memory of Katniss and Peeta once staving off a hungover Haymitch from buying rubbing alcohol to drink enters her mind, then is quickly replaced as people arrive into the med-bay as soon as they are taken out, to be transported back out or buried.

Then, she gets the news. Sitting down, washing away tears she never noticed had fallen, someone shouts through the camp, and others confirm it.

Katniss is alive.

Prim is given another scant four hours of sleep, but is also slipped a cup of coffee upon waking. Coffee is only a recent luxury she’s known - her father traded for it a few times when she was younger, and in between Games her mother was able to afford to buy the beans at the market in 12, but this is the first cup she’s ever really tried for herself. It’s bitter and harsh, but warms her and energizes her, grounding her back to the cold mountains of the Capitol and the chilling air trailing its fingers over her face. She drains the cup and is given a bowl of soup after - heartier than the previous day’s, with actual meat and vegetables in it. She recalls Rory pointing out to her, in the dining halls of 13, that the soldiers who were about to be shipped out were always given a little extra food the day they were set to leave. She supposes, between the news of Katniss’s continued survival and another pushback against the Peacekeepers during the night, that this was as good a time as any to ship people out directly to the frontlines.

Immediately after her meal, Prim finds she is proven right. She is ordered to operate on whoever else she can save for the next hour while the Hovercraft arrives, and then she is to board with the rest of the medics so they can fly out directly to the President’s mansion. Prim flies between patients, heart pounding in her chest - she is close, so close, to seeing Katniss again. But there’s work to be done first, patients to sedate, subdue, sum injuries of up. Prim ties tourniquets with steady fingers and injects medicine into arms without blinking, marking down which rebels will make it and which ones won’t in precise handwriting. The only thing that pulls her out of her concentrated stupor is the announcement that the Hovercraft has arrived. 

Prim files in line, the last to join and the smallest of them all. Jackets and a final meal are handed out as people board - two slices of bread, an apple, a tin of meat, a pill for energy. Four large canteens of water have been filled for their use, and they are passed down the rows of people strapping themselves into the seats lining the walls. Those who cannot sit are forced to stand and hold onto the straps attached to the ceiling, but Prim is declared too short, and another, much taller medic is made to trade with her. He gives her a small smile even as she apologizes and buckles up, waving her off. Before Prim can get another word out, they’re off in the air. It’s all she can do to eat and take a few more sips of water, making sure her braid is tight and her jacket is buttoned. Then they’re landing, given instructions to huddle in a building while they wait for another rebel commander’s signal. Only 20 yards away are Capitol children, huddled just like the rebels, exposed to the elements in a barricade in front of the president's mansion. More citizens are marching up to the front steps, and Prim thinks one of them looks familiar.

Then, it happens:

Another hovercraft appears, this time with the Capitol seal on it. Silver parachutes are dropped to the children, who scoop them up eagerly. Five seconds pass, and over a dozen of the parachutes simultaneously explode. Prim knows something’s gone wrong because the signal is given immediately, and she rushes out with the others in order to aid the wounded. Her braid whips out behind her, the red band and white cross around her arm signalling to others she’s there to help.

A child with burns down his arms cries out in the pain and cold, and Prim rips her jacket off in order to cover him. There’s shouting coming from behind her, and she swears she hears her name being called in the wind behind her. Her head whips around of its own accord, looking for the source.

“Prim? Primrose?!”

She turns and locks eyes with Katniss. Feels the pebble, the vial of nightlock in her pocket. She’s safe. She’s finally safe. 

“KATNISS!”

And then a flash of light, pain, and nothing.