The spear leaves the One boy's hand and slices through the air. The cameras cycle back to half speed; the screen splits in two to show his face on one side, grim-jawed and determined as he watches its flight - and Katniss, wide-eyed and shocked but still brave, on the other.
Mom gasps, high-pitched and terrified, the sound half muffled by the hands she flings over her face. Onscreen, Katniss whirls around, drawing an arrow and nocking it in one smooth movement like she always does. (Prim could never get her grip on the string properly, couldn't draw the arrow back far enough for it to fly more than a few feet.) Katniss fires before the boy's arm finishes its downward arc. The cameras track both the spear and the arrow, the shafts wobbling in controlled circles as they whip toward their targets in opposite directions.
He's going to kill that little girl. The spear will go right through her, she's so small (smaller than Prim, even, but with wiry muscles in her arms and legs from climbing) and then she'll be dead. Prim holds her breath, and she's not glad - that would be horrible - but she is relieved. Katniss watches Rue when she sleeps with the same tight jaw and hard eyes and feather-light touches over her hair that she does Prim when she thinks Prim is sleeping. She's not supposed to look at anyone else like that; she's Prim's sister, not this girl's. Prim doesn't wish anyone dead (except she does) but she's been holding her breath since the Reaping and won't let it go until Katniss is back.
The girl is a complication. At least when she's gone Katniss will remember who her real sister is. When she comes back alive Prim will ask Katniss to forgive her for selfish, awful thoughts, for watching the Games like the Capitol does and rooting for a winner, but it will be okay. Katniss will be alive.
The arrow hits the boy in the throat and he staggers back, his mouth an open 'o' and his eyes rolling back in his head. In the next second the spear will hit Rue and Prim has to watch even though a scream builds up in her throat because she owes her, she owes it to the girl to watch her last moments. If she's going to die for Katniss then at least Prim can be there to see it. Gale would say that Prim is complicit (he doesn't use too many fancy words but he likes to spit that one out) but Prim doesn't care.
Except -
Katniss is fast, and brave, and she never ever thinks more than she has to. It's like she has a whole conversation in her head in a second and acts while Prim is still processing. On Reaping Day, Prim's brain hadn't even finished screaming no no no no before Katniss' voice overpowered her. Now, Rue's frozen in place but Katniss shoves her, sends her sprawling backwards into the long grass, and the spear drives itself into Katniss' chest.
It would have hit Rue dead-centre in the stomach and gone through the organs, but it hits Katniss in her ribcage. The crack of bone echoes through the television speakers. The cameras stop, Katniss in mid-fall with her arms splayed out, and then the speed returns to normal with a rushing whoosh and she pinwheels backwards, landing in a heap on the ground.
Mom screams, and Prim's screaming too but only in her head. Outside her mouth is slack and no sound comes out, not even a whimper, and she fights to say Katniss' name but nothing happens.
"Katniss!" Rue's cry pierces the air and the roaring in Prim's ears. "Katniss, no!"
And just like that, Prim finds her voice. "Stop that!" she shrieks, and she flings herself at the projection and claws at Rue's image. Her fingers go right through, the light and colours dappling her skin. Katniss' bloody chest shines across Prim's forearm before she pulls back. Rue drops to her knees and sobs, scrabbling for Katniss' hand and holding it to her cheek. "Stop it!" Prim can hardly breathe, can barely see, and she wraps her arms around herself and rocks. "You have no right! She's my sister, not yours! You don't get to cry over her! Stop it!"
Rue doesn't listen. She draws Katniss into her lap and strokes her face, leans her head down so their foreheads touch and her tears fall on Katniss' cheeks. All over Panem people will be crying (into their popcorn, Gale would say with a nasty, ugly twist to his mouth) but none of them are thinking about Prim. The commentators whisper what a touching farewell this is between such close allies. Mom wails, high and keening.
Katniss' eyes are glassy, rolling back and forth in her head and seeing nothing. Prim's seen this before on their kitchen table, when the men bring in an injured miner and expect Mom to work miracles with a handful of herbs and a needle and thread. Blood and spit bubbles out from the corners of her mouth. "Prim?" Katniss asks, her voice rattling in her throat. "Prim, is that - Prim?"
"I'm here," Prim says, the words tearing themselves loose. "Katniss I'm sorry, I'm so sorry -"
Rue's eyes go wide, but then they soften, big and brown and wet with tears. "Yes," she says, quiet and reassuring. "It's me, Katniss. I'm here."
"Prim -" Katniss says again, half-choking, like it's the only word she remembers how to say. "Prim I'm sorry. I wanted to save you. I tried so hard -"
"You did save me," Rue says, but she's saying it all wrong, firm and strong and soothing like an older sister, because that's what she is in her family, the oldest just like Katniss. It doesn't sound like Prim at all, but Katniss is floating now, far away, and it doesn't matter. "It's okay. You saved me."
Katniss' breaths come short and fast. She tries to talk but the only sound that emerges is a low, croaking gurgle (saliva buildup in the throat, Mom said once) and this is wrong, all of this is wrong, this was never supposed to happen. "Sing?" Katniss asks finally. It's barely recognizable as a word; the Gamemakers add a helpful subtitle for people who aren't used to deciphering the last requests of the dying.
Rue nods. She brushes Katniss' hair out of her eyes and sings a slow, mournful song about the sunset at the end of the work day, how the apples in the orchard glow with golden light. It's not a Twelve song, not at all, and Prim grits her teeth. It's not supposed to be like this, and so she pushes away the sound of Mom hiccupping and shaking, the melody of the song that's wrong, all wrong, and sings Deep in the Valley instead.
Rue sings, and Prim sings, and Katniss' expression slides into a soft, dreamy smile.
Prim almost forgets until the boom of the cannon jars her back, and the cameras pan out to show Katniss, bloodied and twisted in Rue's lap, with the body of the boy from One sprawled and forgotten in the far corner of the screen.
Finally the cameras leave the glade, cycling through the remaining tributes: the boy from Eleven, sitting in his field, picking up ground snails and cracking their shells before popping the slimy bodies into his mouth; the girl from Five, slipping pale and wraithlike through the trees; the pair from Two, hunting together without talking; and Peeta, alone by the riverbank, painted with mud and shivering with blood fever.
Prim takes one breath, and there, that wasn't so hard. She takes another, and another, and somehow the world keeps spinning and the birds keep singing and the sun keeps shining, as if they don't realize there's no point to anything anymore. She turns around, then sighs and kneels down, taking Mom's hands in hers and running her thumbs over the knuckles. Mom's fingers are bloody, the fingernails torn down to the quick.
"C'mon Mom," Prim says, using her doctor's voice. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Prim doesn't bother to go to school the next day, but she does make herself get out of bed. She doesn't remember very much of when Dad died, but she knows that Mom just lay there, not moving, and Prim had to put bits of food in her mouth. Katniss even had to scrub her down with a bucket of water and a cloth because she wouldn't bathe or eat on her own. It's important to make the effort, to keep the brain from falling into grief, Prim tells herself. Mrs. Hawthorne stops by and takes Mom to her house; she asks if Prim wants to come, but Prim thinks of the Hawthorne boys, noisy and boisterous and trying to help cheer her up by pulling her hair and putting worms under her nose, and says no thank you.
Prim splashes water on her face and changes into a different dress from yesterday, but she stops when it's time to do her hair. Katniss used to braid her hair for her when Mom's hands shook too much, and now she'll never help Prim with her hair again. Never tuck in the back of Prim's shirt and call her 'little duck', never tweak the ends of her curls and tell her she looks like an angel until Prim starts making silly faces at her cat.
The thoughts press up behind Prim's eyes and try to push through as tears. If Prim starts crying she's afraid she'll never stop, and so she slaps her cheeks until the pain makes her gasp and she forgets about the pressure building up inside her head. The Capitol attendants brought them a new television after the Reaping as a replacement for their ancient, flickering set (it's a perk for the families of each year's tributes) and Prim wonders when they'll come take it away. It's not like they need it now that Katniss is dead.
But they haven't yet, and so Prim turns on the television and watches. Nothing has changed since last night; the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen announces there are still six tributes alive.
Rue leaves to search for Peeta around mid-morning, Katniss' backpack and quiver full of arrows thumping big and awkward against her back as she manoeuvres down over the slippery rocks. She left the bow with Katniss, placing it on her chest and folding her hands around the curved metal so that she lay like a fallen warrior from one of those old paintings.
(Katniss was always a fighter, so it's a fitting enough final image for Panem, but Prim can't stop thinking of Katniss' fingers, how nobody knows how gentle they were in spite of all the cuts and calluses, stroking Prim's hair and drying her tears at night.)
Peeta's stats appear in the bottom-left corner when Rue gets close to him, including a little health meter that estimates he'll be dead in another three days without treatment. That's a little generous, Prim can't help but think, with no one there to help him out of that mud. It might be keeping his temperature down, but his blood will be full of bacteria now. His body is poisoning itself from the inside out.
In the end Rue actually trips over him. She falls with a clatter on the stones and nearly slides right into the water; she's small and her pack is heavy and for a second Prim thinks that's it, she'll fall in and her supplies will drag her down and she'll die. But no, Rue catches herself with her hands digging into the mud and drags herself back up onto the large flat rocks. She lies there for a second, panting, then crawls over to Peeta.
Rue glances around for the Twos, but the riverbank is clear. "Hi Peeta," Rue says softly.
Peeta breathes shallowly, his eyes glazed. He probably spends his days hallucinating; the cameras haven't bothered with more than a quick pass during recaps for days now. "Hey Rue." Just talking that much splits his lip, blood mixing with the mud he's smeared on his face. "Good to see you. A lot of cannons lately."
"Yeah." Rue crouches and rocks back on her heels. Prim can't read the expression on her face, thoughtful and serious, and it sets off a warning in her head. There's only one winner, and Rue was never Peeta's ally. "Katniss was yesterday. I'm really sorry, Peeta."
Peeta lets out a shuddering breath and closes his eyes. Tears slide down the sides of his face, tracing pale, clean lines through the dirt. "Katniss -" he whispers. He shivers harder. "What happened to her?"
This time Rue flinches, and she scrubs her hands over her knuckles where she washed the last of Katniss' blood away. "The boy from One. He had a spear." Peeta hisses out a breath between his teeth, and Rue shifts in the mud. "I sang to her. She went fast, I think."
"I loved her." Peeta squeezes his eyes shut even tighter. "I really did. She didn't know until I said it, and I know she didn't feel the same way, but I wasn't lying. Maybe if I'd told her sooner we could've - but I'll never know now."
Prim hisses out a breath between her teeth. Ever since Peeta Mellark made his announcement in the interviews, the commentators have barely even mentioned Katniss' sacrifice for her sister, making it all about Peeta and his feelings. A lightning flash of anger stabs Prim straight through her chest; Katniss was everything to her, and she deserved more than to be the prop in some boy's one-sided love story.
Peeta weeps now, but for the first time Prim understands how Katniss could look at Mom crying and speak to her with such ice in her voice. Peeta doesn't care that Katniss' death means her mother and sister could go back to starving. He doesn't care that Prim lost the one person who understood her more than anyone else. All he cares is that he never got to be her boyfriend. It's not fair.
"It'll be okay, Peeta," Rue says, and there's the danger voice again. It's soft but determined, and it makes Prim think of someone slowly drawing a knife, holding the blade edge-up so the sun won't flash on the metal, like Katniss tried to teach her. Rue reaches back, and she unzips the hood of her jacket, wrapping the canvas material around her hand. Peeta doesn't bother to answer, or even look at her, turning his face to the side and crying silently. It'll be a miracle if he doesn't die overnight.
Rue stretches one leg over Peeta and straddles his chest, then lowers her hand and clasps it down hard over Peeta's mouth and nose. "It's okay," Rue says again, insistent and calm and almost eerie. "You don't want to bleed to death, it's awful. This won't hurt."
Peeta's arms tear free from the mud with a wet sucking sound; he scrabbles at Rue, pushing at her chest, her ribs, her wrists, but it's been days and he's too weak. After a minute he lets his hands drop. There's nothing inside him left to fight; maybe nothing outside, either. Everybody knows that Mrs. Mellark hits her boys, and Peeta has an older brother who could have volunteered for him but didn't.
Prim's stomach twists, but when she tries to turn her head and look away, her neck sticks in place. She watches, frozen, until Peeta's eyes roll to the side and, finally, the cannon fires.
Rue scrambles off him onto the rocks, slipping and sliding sideways in her hurry until she makes it to the scrub-grass on the bank. A few seconds later, she turns and throws up onto the ground.
Nobody wants to watch a little girl vomit after she's killed someone, and so the camera switches to the other tributes. The boy and the girl from Two look up at the sound of the cannon. "Twelve must've bled out, finally," the boy says, and looks pleased. "So much for the girl on fire and her little loverboy, hey?"
The girl shrugs and continues sharpening her knife, the blade going snick snick against the stone curled in her fist. "I told you they wouldn't last. Wait for the parade to make sure, then we'll hunt the rest."
Prim turns off the television, hands shaking. With Peeta dead and Twelve finally out, it hits Prim hard. There will be no victory packages this year, just like every year, but now there's no Katniss to feed them, either.
Prim walks into the kitchen and takes a low, slow circle around the room, checking every cupboard. The bread that Katniss brought home on Reaping Day is long gone; no one is allowed to take tesserae during Games Month, and Katniss' last ration is down to a handful of dusty grains in the bottom of the container. That day in the Justice Building, Katniss told Prim to sell cheese from her goat, but breeding season won't start for another month or two at least, and Lady went dry after her last kid stopped nursing.
Panic swells up inside her, and for a second Prim lets it take her, pushing the air out of her lungs and squeezing her head. She presses her hands to her eyes, and a handful of tears leak past her palms and trickle down her wrists. She bites her lips together until they hurt to keep herself from making noise. Katniss is the reason Prim and Mom are still alive - she fed them, she kept them safe - and now she's dead.
The sobs try to claw their way out of her, but Prim will not let them. She won't. It took more bravery than Prim will ever understand for Katniss to stand on that stage, for her to go into the Arena; how much harder could it be for Prim to keep going?
Katniss kept their family alive, but she was sixteen, and Prim is only - no. The tears dry up when Prim does the math, because no, Katniss was twelve when Dad died, the same age as Prim is now, and Prim doesn't have a younger sister to feed. Sure, Katniss could shoot and Prim cries when Buttercup brings chipmunks into the house, but. But.
Prim laces up her shoes, slowly wrapping the string around her finger and pulling the loops through. The Seam hits her like a wet washcloth as soon as she steps outside, the sticky heat heavy and pressing on her lungs, but Prim ignores the hairs clinging to her neck and the sweat running down between her shoulder blades. Her shoes kick up clouds of dust no matter how lightly she treads, and the sharp tang of coal dust stings her nostrils. Games month is a holiday in the Capitol, but here in the outlying districts people still have to eat, and so they work.
Rory is out front of the Hawthorne house, scowling and twining a loop of wire around a pair of sticks. "Twelve lost again," he sighs in an imitation of the men's grumbling when he hears Prim coming, but then he looks up and his eyes widen. "Oh, I didn't - I'm sorry, Prim." He scrambles to his feet, brushing his hands on his trousers, and his eyes dart back and forth while he tries to figure out the polite thing to say.
Prim doesn't wait to hear it. "Where's Gale? Is he working today?"
"No, he traded a shift away after -" Rory winces. "Well, after. I think he's out in the clearing, where they used to - I mean."
"Thanks," Prim says, and it comes out shorter than she means it to but she doesn't have time to stand around playing nice. She knows the clearing; Katniss used to take her there, back when she still thought she could teach Prim to hunt.
It doesn't take her long to reach the district boundary fence. Prim kneels down and holds her hand near it, waiting for the faint click and prickle of the hair on her arms that would tell her the electricity is on. Nothing, and so Prim slips through the gap, stopping the wires with her hand just in case someone walks by and wonders why they're bobbing. She's never been out here in full daylight, but it's almost nice, in a way. The woods aren't so unsettling when the warm yellow sunlight dapples through the leaves, instead of the cold pre-dawn grey and eerie mist.
Prim finds Gale at the crest of the hill, legs pulled up to his chest and forehead resting on his knees. He sucks in a breath when she sits down, the grass tickling the backs of her legs. "I can't look at you right now," he croaks out, his voice a dull rasp in his throat, and Prim wishes she were bigger, just for a second, so she could hit him.
"Then don't look at me." She's calmer than she thought she'd be. Katniss' death replays behind her eyelids whenever she closes them, but Prim keeps her eyes open and looks over the swell of the trees. "I want to offer a trade." Gale doesn't answer, but he doesn't tell her to go away, either. "You're busy now, in the mines. I know you don't have time to come out here every day anymore. Show me how to set the snares and where to put them. I'll come out in the mornings, check them, reset them if there's a problem, and bring anything that's been caught back to you. All I ask is that you let me keep one animal every time. You can still have most of it to feed your family, but you'll keep your promise to Katniss."
Gale inhales a mess of snot and tears, but still he doesn't tell her to leave. "I don't have time to make the rounds of the Hob for you. I'm down in the mines by then most days, and you gotta know who to sell it to."
"So teach me that, too." Gale snorts, wet and incredulous, but Prim doesn't let that stop her. Having a plan, whether it works or not, keeps her hands settled. "I mean it! Tell me where to go and who to ask and what's a fair price. I might even get better deals than you, because you look strong. People might feel sorry for me. You're already teaching Rory, right? Then we can split up and both go."
Gale doesn't say anything for a long time, and Prim tips her head back and looks up at the white clouds racing across the sky, glad for the breeze out in the open that wicks the dried sweat away from her skin. "I need this," Prim says, and she was doing so well sounding strong and brave but now her voice cracks and skitters up high and oh, there the tears are. "Gale, she's dead and what if I'm not like her, what if I'm not strong enough, what if I go to sleep tonight and tomorrow I just don't get up -"
She tries to pull it back, but it's too late. Prim lowers her head into her arms and rocks back and forth as the tears leak out of her faster than she can breathe them in. Katniss is dead and Prim will never see her again, and what's worse is that she's in a Capitol mortuary, and will they know how to do it right? Do they learn the rituals for each district? Did they put flowers on her eyes overnight? Did someone sit with her for the first twenty-four hours to keep her soul company? At least when she comes home they can bury her right, head facing the sunset -
"Shit," Gale mutters, and then he shifts, wraps an arm around Prim's shoulders and pulls her in close against his side. He smells like sweat and soot and cotton, and he rests his cheek on Prim's hair and hugs her tight. "I'm sorry, Prim, I just - I love her." He says it fast, like the gush of blood when you pull something free from a wound. "She was amazing and I loved her and I never said it, and now she's just that merchie boy's crush and I had to say we're cousins and I'll never get to tell her."
Boys are weird. Annoyance prickles through Prim like sitting on a nettle, and for a second she almost shouts at him. He's just like Peeta - who cares about his feelings when Katniss is dead? Part of her thinks the nice thing would be to tell Gale that Katniss loved him too, to give him a bit of comfort, but Katniss never talked to Prim about it and the idea of making her memory into a lie to make him feel better makes Prim sick. And so she doesn't say anything, just reminds herself that Gale was the other important person in Katniss' life and that means Prim has to share her grief.
"Peeta's dead too," Prim says after a long time, and Gale's arms stiffen around her. "The little girl killed him this morning."
"Will you promise not to tell my mom if I said 'good'?" Gale asks, his voice bitter. "I mean, not good, but. If he came back and not her, I think I'd kill him myself."
This time Prim actually laughs, and she watched him die and it was horrible and it's not funny but it feels good to laugh even though it's horrible. Maybe this is what drinking feels like; maybe that's why Haymitch Abernathy does it. She'd rather laugh at things that aren't funny than turn cold and dead and empty. "Me too."
After a while Gale sighs, pulls away and scrubs his face with his sleeve. "C'mon, I'll take you through the trap line. Wasn't anything there when I checked this morning, but my mind wasn't really - y'know." He lets out a long breath, and he drops his hand to the back of Prim's neck and shakes her, just a little, friendly and reassuring. "You're a good kid."
Prim was a kid on Reaping Day, small and terrified and helpless. Now she's no taller, no bigger and no stronger, but she feels more, somehow. It might all disappear when she goes back home and walks into Katniss' empty room and sees their dad's jacket (orphaned twice over now) hanging on the wall, but for now, until the bubble breaks, it's like some of Katniss' strength has flowed into Prim and made her see how everything might not be impossible.
(It's a nice thought. That night Prim wraps herself up in the jacket, her nose buried in the leather, and the only reason she doesn't cry herself to sleep is because she's afraid she'll ruin it and what would Katniss think about that.)
Prim doesn't watch the rest live. It's not like any of it matters, not anymore, and she has the animals to feed and Mom to keep an eye on, and now she checks the lines every morning. Prim does tune into the recaps before she collapses into bed, but that's it.
It all falls like a good snare anyway; the boy from Eleven bashes the girl from Two's head in with a rock; the boy from Two stalks him for two days and takes a whole hour to finish him off. The girl from Five finally starves to death, and then it's Rue and the Two boy and the commentators sigh over what's sure to be a disappointing final finish.
"He should have gone for the little one first," says one of them, clucking her tongue. "That was poor planning. A Career should know better."
The boy from Two sits at the lake with a fish in his hands, speared through with the end of his sword, but he's not cooking it or eating it. He's just tearing it apart and flinging bits of meat at his feet, crushing the bones in his massive fingers. He hasn't stopped talking either, a low, growling mutter like rolling thunder or trampling hooves that turns Prim's stomach inside out. The cameras don't always catch it, but when they do Prim flinches back: gonna kill them gonna tear them apart tear their insides out make necklaces of their intestines you didn't like jewellery but I bet you'd like that make them all pretty for you -
In a way, the boy from Two and his ugly, terrifying rage feel like the only true moment of the Games so far. He's a killer - he laughed with a girl's blood still splashed across his face and joked about making Katniss the literal girl on fire - but he's hurting, too, now his district partner (friend? something else?) is dead. Prim doesn't want him to win - can he even win or is he too far gone, can any of them win, what does winning even mean - but she understands anger and helplessness and deep, gut-gnawing grief.
The cameras cut to Rue, curled up on a tree branch and looking up at the sky, eyes shining in the darkness. "Help me," she whispers. Mom flinches, and Prim reaches over and grips her hand, the cuticles red and cracked because Mom picks at her skin if Prim isn't there to tell her to stop. For a second Prim thinks that's it, a plea to the darkness, but then Rue sits up, balancing herself on the branch and digging her fingers into the bark. "I can win," she tells the cameras, determined even with sunken cheeks and fever-bright eyes. "Just give me a chance."
"She can't win," Prim whispers. "What is she going to do?"
It's ridiculous. If Katniss couldn't win in an Arena almost made for her, how is this girl going to do it?
Except she doesn't want Rue to win. The thought hits her in the gut like a fishhook, burying itself deep and working to pull every dark, ugly secret out of Prim and hang it on the wall, shining and dripping for all to see. Because if Rue wins - if a little twelve-year-old girl with no fighting skills and no chance can win - then that means Prim could have won, and if Prim could have won then Katniss didn't have to volunteer, and if Katniss didn't have to volunteer -
The two-note tone of a parachute cuts through the silence, and Rue scrambles up the tree to pluck a silver canister from the branches. The cameras zoom in on the mix of awe and gratitude on her face as she raises the palm-sized tube and three little poison darts, the way her expression hardens into determination. "Thank you," Rue says, and she slips them into her pocket, zips it shut, and melts away into the darkness.
"No!" Prim bursts out before she can stop it, and she wrenches her hand free from Mom's and claps them both over her face, fingers digging hard into her cheeks.
Mom whirls around to look at her. She takes Prim by the shoulders and pulls her in for an embrace, stroking her hair and murmuring in her ear. "It's all right," Mom says, soothing. "See, they're going to help her. She's going to win."
Mom doesn't understand, and for a second Prim struggles as the words no no no batter the inside of her skull like a trapped bird, but then the small rational part of her kicks in. It's good Mom doesn't understand; she's already minus one daughter, let her think the one she has is still the good little girl she almost lost. And so Prim lets Mom turn off the TV and rock her there on the hard, threadbare sofa while Prim pretends she's not wishing for a crazy monster boy to win just so that Katniss didn't die for nothing.
He doesn't win. Rue finds him the next night when even the endless drive for revenge can't keep him awake any longer, and she creeps out onto a tree branch and fires all three poison darts into his neck. He stiffens, then thrashes, then goes still, and Rue grips the tube in her small fist and heaves fast, shallow breaths until the cannon fires and the victory trumpets play.
Half the Seam cheers. If one of their own couldn't win, then at least the little girl from the second-worst district is a good substitute; anything better than another Two waltzing in and prancing off the with the crown yet again. Prim slips through the streets as people clap each other on the back and pass around jugs of terrible moonshine; she makes her way to the Hawthornes', just in time to run into Gale as he slams the door closed and storms out into the street.
It's getting dark, but Prim still catches the hard line of his jaw and the furious set of his eyebrows. "They act like it makes a difference," Gale spits out. "Like it matters who won, if it was that girl or that boy, like it's important -"
"But it's not," Prim finishes for him, and Gale looks at her, eyes narrowed. "It's pointless. All of it is pointless."
"I'm gonna go hunt," Gale says, crossing his arms. "I feel like killing something. You wanna come?"
Prim doesn't want to kill anything, but she might - maybe - feel like watching Gale do it. At least this way it'll get eaten after; at least here it makes sense. "Sure."
Gale bends down, lifts her up and places her on his shoulders. Prim leans forward with her hands clasped together on top of his head and lets him carry her out to the fence and the wilds beyond.