Primrose Everdeen enters the Hunger Games, and Peeta Mellark vows before the camera's grasping, dark-lensed eyes that he will do whatever it takes to return her to her sister. They do a tight close-up on her face when he kills himself.
She can still feel them watching her, so she tries to show as little emotion as possible. For the rest of her childhood, her face stays blank.
Primrose Everdeen enters the Hunger Games and allies with Rue. They are a matched set of poplar and ebony, two baby mockingjays sharing a branch, with the same delicate cheekbones and long-lashed eyes; the sponsors love them.
Prim and Rue (oh, they both have plant names! Isn't that just the most darling thing…) do everything right. They run away from the Cornucopia hand in hand. Rue keeps watch with her slingshot, gaze darting about the clearing's edge, while Prim sleeps contentedly with her head resting in her ally's lap.
The Capitol's gaze softens. Women with turquoise scales circling their eyelids and men with teak antlers let out a collective, "Aww." The tightness in Katniss's chest loosens enough to allow her to breathe, and she starts to think that, maybe, her Prim might actually come home.
Cato kills them both on the last day.
He snaps their tiny necks barehanded, and Katniss only realizes that she's crying when she can no longer see the screen.
Primrose Everdeen enters the Hunger Games, and her heart beats like a rabbit's as she boards the train.
"I'm Rue," the slight girl with the perpetually smiling eyes says, extending her hand. "You're Prim, right?"
To no one's surprise, they become allies; to everyone's surprise, they manage to run and hide and tree-climb their way to the final eight.
"Which one do you think should win?" a Gamemaker asks her colleague. She takes a deep draft of her double espresso, slurping the foam.
He shrugs, pushing up his glasses. The gesture seems so automatic; she thinks he would move in that way even if she snatched the carnelian-framed spectacles away. "Let me check the viewer interest statistics… oh. Oh."
She wheels her chair closer, leaning to try and see the screen; her orange wig bobs. "What?"
"We've got another Finnick."
The female Gamemaker swallows. Panem, they're both so young… -but she shoves the pity aside. It is not her job. "Then we'll just have to make sure that they survive."
A landslide rolls from the mountain; boulders crush Cato's head. (We won, Prim half-laughs, half-sobs, flinging herself into Rue's arms- it's over and we can go home.
Rue knows that nothing, not even an apple, is ever truly free. She doesn't know why the Capitol has allowed this, but she wonders. Yes, she says, stroking Primrose's ash-blonde hair. We won.)
The day before they would have returned home, Haymitch arranges to meet with Prim on the roof. Sipping a glass of whiskey, never looking directly at her, he tells her what Snow has made her and what she must do.
Prim's world lurches. It's not true, it can't be true-
She sprints down the stairs, and doesn't see Rue until she practically knocks the other girl over.
"Seeder told me," Rue whispers, her voice low and hoarse. Prim knows without looking that the other girl's tears match her own.
They lie down gingerly on either side of a neon orange man who, he proclaims, paid three months' salary for the privilege.
What would her sister think? She imagines Katniss's eyes hardening into deadliness, Katniss loading an arrow and skewering Primrose's purchaser. Katniss saying: you are my sweet tiny Prim and I will always protect you.
Afterwards, Prim buries her face in Rue's shoulder and weeps hysterically; only when Rue begins to sing do her gasps dissolve into quieter, calmer sobs.