CHAPTER ONE
October
Dung. Body odor. Bile.
Waking up was always the hardest part.
Katniss laid rotting beneath the safety of ragged, threadbare blankets. Her cold fingers traced lines on the sheets, just feeling, as her toes curled and uncurled. As her breaths shuddered in and out.
Prim was gone.
A simple, sorrowful sigh. Katniss took her away, gave her to her hunting partner's mother to take care of and raise, because how they were forced to live wasn't living. She was trapped between her love and her selfishness. She wanted Prim next to her, to stay, despite how terrible the beatings were getting. The cold space that lurked beside her made her want to spit and scream, because she'd always been enough to take care of the small, fragile girl. And now, she wasn't.
She wasn't.
And Prim was gone.
»
"Katniss, you'll go out 'nd get me some squirrel, won' you?" Dad's words were full of slurs, spit flying and drool dripping. Katniss could hardly understand him. She dipped her head in response, anyway.
"Of course."
"Be back before sun set, don't want no dogs eatin' up my daughter."
Their father was a drinker. He drank away the last of their money, the last of his sanity, his everything. In his mind it was better than thinking of his dead love. Better than remembering that his beautiful, loving wife was scattered in ashes among the yellowing field next to Merchant's Square.
Katniss' hands clenched. Shoulders tense, jaw tight, she could not respond.
She was out the door. Splintering in the wind, fragmenting into tiny particles of broken glass, flying. Running. When all else failed, she knew how to run. The bleak, wintry air grated its sharp teeth against her cheeks, but she would not stop.
Katniss was a girl of petals: wilting, dying, growing, beautiful, black, blue, pink, red, purple.
»
Gale liked to brag from Merchant Square all the way to the dust-coated huts of the Seam that he was the strongest man in Twelve. Katniss had always thought he'd been, at the least, beat by one other. "Hey, Peeta."
She had to hold in a sigh as the warm, almost too-hot air of the bakery nipped at her numb fingers and nose. The bakery always made her feel better. Human. Real. Her eyes slipped to the figure standing with its back turned, skilled hands rolling spheres of speckled dough into a field of flour. Peeta beat Gale in looks, too, she thought. Curly blonde hair, sky blue eyes, dimpled cheeks matted with seemingly endless constellations of light freckles — she had never really had a chance against him.
His gentle smile dropped when he saw her.
"Katniss."
She and Peeta had been best friends since they were twelve. They told each other almost everything — almost.
He scrubbed his flour coated hands against his apron before stepping away from his station, closer to run his thumb over her bruised jaw and busted lip. She drew back.
Katniss knew. She knew she should not be ashamed. But, she was. And she hated it. Hated the pity, the anger, the fear, the sorrow that danced across his eyes when she showed up like this. Like some broken sparrow.
"It's fine," she drawled out, kicking her foot into the worn tile floor as he turned, striding across the room to the sinks. That's a luxury she'd love: running water, just awaiting the touch of her finger. She watched the curls bounce at the back of his shaking head. Her dry throat tightened as she struggled to watch the cool, clean water run over the cloth.
"You're bleeding, you know that, right?"
She licked her bottom lip, cringing immediately after. "Yes, I know. Surface wound; I'll live. It was probably just because I was biting at it again."
He let out an unbelieving breath as he turned around, motioning for her to sit on the table behind him with a jerk of the head. They were best friends, tentative lovers. They had this thing where they each knew what the other meant without the need for words. Even though Peeta liked to talk a lot.
He tapped her knees before he stepped between them. She lifted her hand to his face as he dabbed at hers, softly kneading at the edge of his frown, dropping it only when his eyes rolled.
She wanted to ask him if he's seen Prim.
"I haven't seen her." Peeta supplies, his brows pinched with guilt. She could feel her heart clench.
"In a way, I'm glad nobody's seen her. Dad asks about her, a lot... At least she's safe with Hazelle."
Peeta's eyes were soft. Searching. Pleading. Katniss looked away. "You can always get her back, you know," he says softly.
But she can't. He knew they had it bad at home, knew that their father was strong and irrational in his discipline. But — she hadn't told him everything. He hadn't seen everything. He didn't know that she was whipped into unconsciousness with belts, that what drove her to sending Prim away was her father's blind shoving and pushing until Prim fell onto broken glass from a smashed mirror, screaming with unrelenting rage. Their father lost whatever stability he had once had. He lost whatever semblance to a father he had kept after their mother's death.
It wasn't safe. Not for Prim. Not for her.
"It's better like this," she muttered quietly, then cleared her throat. "I have to get back. Dad doesn't want me out after the sunset."
His dark expression melted. He brushed his lips against the crown of her hair before he stepped back to let her off the counter.
"See you later, Mellark," she called on her way out.
"You'd better, Everdeen."
»
September
A wave of panic hit her, punched her ribs and squeezed the breath from her lungs. It had been festering since she had stopped her search for game, but it wasn't until then that it really hit her.
Two squirrels and one malnourished rabbit — it wasn't nearly enough to give the Hawthornes and keep some for herself and her dad. Not with Gale slaving away in the mines. Not with six other mouths to feed. Not if her father came home in a furious rage.
The district was getting colder. Winter was creeping up on Twelve's residents. The signs were hidden within the frost painted grass of early morning and thick clouds of mingling afternoon breaths, emerging, prowling. It would snow any day. And then, it would get worse.
Katniss vows that she will make sure they eat. She does not eat dinner from then on.
»
November
School was never really a priority for Katniss. Everybody knew what happened to Seam brats when they 'graduated' into adulthood: the mines.
District Twelve was a 'Coal Mining District' — essential in its resources, yet somehow expendable in its people. The Capitol could care less whether or not they live, so much as whether they would survive long enough to be useful.
Katniss wondered as she laid on the floor, too afraid to move her own body, why. Her blood was weeping from her wounds and seeping into that rotted floorboard, body burning and throat raw from screaming. Her balled up shirt finally removed from her mouth.
She was surviving, hardly. She could count the ribs digging through her grey skin. She could feel her fingers lose feeling as winter huffed its frigid breath across her bare hands. She could feel the fight that had drained out of her, the fire that had been snuffed. She may as well have been dead.
Katniss was stubborn by nature. She was quiet, reserved, but passionate. She hadn't ever thought of herself as broken. And now, she realized she couldn't afford to. She had to focus on picking up her shattered pieces from the mud-crusted bedroom floor of her fifth grade teacher while he smoked his expensive cigars next to the Head Peacekeeper. Her fingers were shaking, too much. They shook and slipped and only then did she realize they were coated in crimson. All at once she abandoned the button of her trousers, leaving them undone.
She was from the Seam. She was seventeen. She was the daughter of a coal miner and a healer. She was the sister of a sweet girl who was barely twelve years of age and too innocent yet had seen too many things.
She was the bleeding girl who couldn't walk straight upon leaving Mr. Thorton's house, the one who was watched by gazes of vipers and sympathetic mothers and hungry men who were just as bad as Cray. She was tripping over her own feet, blinded by a swaying vision, disoriented by a throbbing body and blood-filled mouth. Shamed by the whispers. She tried. She tried so hard to ignore, to keep her head held high, to keep her shoulders back and chin up, because she was Katniss Everdeen.
She was Katniss Everdeen, she heard them. Katniss Everdeen, the slut. Katniss Everdeen, the freak. Katniss Everdeen, the pitiful. Katniss Everdeen, the girl reduced to ashes. Just like her mother.
"Your father owes me a lot of money, Katniss. I'm really sorry."
Her head was throbbing. With hatred. With pain. With sorrow. With too much. Too much. She heaved her weight against the splintered front door of her house, walking on trembling legs that leaked crimson and pain knotting and screaming below her stomach. She did not look back to see Gale as he ran from his house.
"Prim has matured so nicely since I'd last seen her. If I can't get you to agree..."
She shut the door. Turned the ratty lock.
Shut Gale out, shut out his pleas, his questions, his worry.
Katniss walked to the bathroom. Filled the tub with boiled water.
She slipped beneath the surface and screamed and cried where nobody could hear or see her.
And, she resurfaced. She scrubbed her skin until it turned red and raw and her cuts and wounds bled into the hot water, trailing down her body just like her tears.
She did not eat. She did not sleep.
"There's the sweet little girl I remember. You'd make your mother proud."
And she carried on. For Prim.