Disclaimer: The Hunger Games is not mine.
She shakes her mother's shoulder, but the woman doesn't move in response. The stubborn determination to make her get up and sit at the table with them that she was feeling mere seconds earlier drains out of her so quickly that she feels her shoulders hunch in on themselves as if she has been deflated. If their mother can't bring herself to try, why should she work so hard to make her? What is she doing?
Prim. She's doing it for Prim. They have to keep up appearances or they will put Prim in the community home. Prim can't go to the community home. She can't. Katniss is trying so hard. She's done everything that she can think of, and the meal waiting for them at the table is an unexpected help that she still can't wrap her mind around. None of it is going to matter if their mother stays in that bed.
She was ready for that not so very long ago. She had been sitting against that tree with the rain soaking into her, and she had been ready to give up; she had been ready to die. She had been ready for the Peacekeepers to come and take Prim to the community home. She realizes with a small start that she had been ready to leave Prim all alone. Their father had left them alone (he hadn't meant to do it, but he had). Their mother had left them alone in every way that mattered (and she didn't understand why they weren't important enough to her - why Prim wasn't important enough to her - to try). She had been wet and defeated and ready to leave Prim as well. She couldn't do that. She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't be just like her mother.
She owed the boy with the bread for that. She owed him not just for the kindness of tossing her the bread but for breaking her out of wherever it was she had been where giving up seemed like the only thing to do. The urge to shake her mother struck her again hard but not for her earlier reason of getting her to come to supper. She wanted to shake her in anger. She wanted to scream out all of the rage and confusion in her little eleven year old heart until something, anything got through to the woman whose only movement was to draw the blankets up higher to better block her out her daughter's actions. She didn't shake her. She didn't say any of the things which she was thinking. She turned, and she walked away. If the woman behind her who used to be her mother would not get out of that bed for Prim, then Katniss was sure that she had no chance of making it happen.
Prim was waiting just like she had asked her to, and Katniss chided herself for making her sweet, hungry little sister wait while she tried to create some semblance of what their normal family used to look like around them. Their family was gone. It was just going to be her and Prim now. Their mother didn't want to be with them.
They ate their way through slice after slice, and Katniss told her sister to just keep eating when she asked about feeding their mother. Her voice was harsher than she had ever used with Prim and hurt was visible behind the tears that welled up in her sister's eyes.
"She's sick," Katniss told her going back to the normal way that she spoke to her. "She doesn't want anything."
Prim looked doubtful, but she didn't ask again.
After her sister curled up beside the mother who didn't so much as move to acknowledge she was there, Katniss sat in her chair at the table and tried to think about what to do. The bread wouldn't last them forever. They had both been so hungry (and the bread had been so not something that she had planned on coming home with) that she had not thought about limits and making it last. She could easily make the rest last two days (maybe three if they were very careful, but she was tired of seeing the little bones in her sister's wrists and the resigned to going to bed with an empty stomach look in her eyes).
She was not going to give up again.
Their mother hadn't moved. A strange boy that had only seen her at school had done more for her little sister and her in one moment than their own mother had done for them in all of the weeks since their father had died. They weren't going to make it until May 8. Something like the bread was not going to happen again. Prim was going to be going hungry again or someone was going to notice something about their mother. She had to think of something else. May 8 was too far away.
Her eyes landed on the book that had sat untouched since her last lesson about the woods with her father, and something inside of her wanted to burst out laughing at how stupid she had been. Her father had the answer for her - he always did. She pulled it to the table and flipped through the pages reminding herself of which things were which. She had never gone gathering without supervision (she had never needed to before). That had changed. No one else was going to keep her little sister from starving.
She had a brief thought about sliding under the fence and bringing things back. It was a scary thought, but she could do it if it meant Prim didn't starve. It would keep them going. It would get them to May 8 and help them after. It could work.
Of course, that would not keep someone from noticing that something was wrong at their house. It wouldn't stop the hurt in Prim's eyes every time she tried and their mother rejected her again. It wouldn't do anything to make her get out of bed or stop shaking Katniss off when she tried to get her to join them at the table. It wouldn't keep Prim from having to watch as their mother starved herself to death while her children sat a few feet away.
The thought of taking Prim into the woods should have been more frightening than the thought of braving its dangers by herself, but it somehow wasn't. If anything, the thought of having to keep Prim safe made her feel braver.
It was a crazy idea. If they got caught . . .
But who would be looking? Neither of them was Reaping age. They wouldn't be the first children whose parents had neglected them until it was too late. Isn't that what everyone would think? If their mother even snapped herself out of her stupor enough to answer any questions, then it wouldn't matter. She hadn't been paying attention to them for weeks. She didn't have anything to tell.
If they got attacked . . .
Then, she had her bow. She would make sure that Prim knew how to climb trees first thing. There was the cabin. It wasn't much, but it would help them have enough time to figure out what they were doing.
It was still a crazy idea. She was pretty sure that she had gone crazy, but it was all that she could think of doing. She would take Prim away. They would go to the woods and maybe get eaten, but they would be together (and being eaten might be painful but it was probably fast). She had the book. She could feed her sister if they were in the woods. The woods were their father's place. He had always used them to take care of them. This house was their mother's place, and there was no one to take care of them in it. Katniss would choose the woods. Prim could learn. Prim would have to learn.
They might be okay. If they weren't . . .
Well, they were already not okay. They were already dying slowly. She wanted a chance. She wanted Prim to have a chance.
She would start packing now.