After the Games
I made Prim a little older in this story. Katniss is still sixteen, but Prim is 14 instead of twelve or thirteen like she was when she was reaped.
The sounds of Katniss' screams jolted me awake again, but I didn't move. I didn't get out of bed to go comfort her like I used to when she first came home from the games. My mother and I realized quickly that trying to wake her from her nightmare was futile, even violent on particularly bad nights. So I just stayed where I was and waited for her cries to quiet like I knew my mother was doing in her room.
Katniss finally fell back into a deep sleep when the sun was starting to rise, and I managed to sleep for another hour before I got up and began to get ready for the day.
My room is spacious, but sparse. The are constructed of long wooden planks, and my walls are bare, but painted light blue. My bed is pushed up against the wall under a large window, and the window lacks any sort of covering because I like the wake early to the sun on my face. There is a wooden dresser on the wall across from the bed that holds my clothes and there is another door that leads to a small bathroom.
I remember before the games when I used to dream of what it must be like to be a victor. I imagined the house, and the food, but most of all I imagined the room. I imagined having a space just for me, just for some quiet, and filled with all the things that would give me comfort. However, the reality is much different.
Now that I have the room, I don't want to fill it with anything. The price for it was too high and all the space and silence that I wished for is disrupted every night by the sound of Katniss' screaming.
It hasn't been all bad though. Now that we no longer have to fear starving to death or freezing in the winter, we have sort of become the district doctors. Before my father died, that was what my mother used to do, and now she teaches me. It took my mind off the games when Katniss first left, and it keeps my mind off the games now when they refuse to leave her.
After I finish getting ready for the day, I head down into the kitchen. My mother is already sitting at a small wooden table by the kitchen sipping tea from a mug, and my cat is sitting on the sill behind her. She looks up when I enter, and I can see the bags that are heavy underneath my eyes, the same bags that probably mar the skin underneath my own. A full night of sleep has been a rarity since Katniss left for the games, and even now when she has returned.
I move to the stove where there is a pot full of cooked oats and I pour myself a bowl before going to sit across from my mother. Nothing is said, and after I finish breakfast, we both go outside to the garden to pick herbs.
The garden is a small patch of green just outside the back door, and as I sink to my knees and place my hands into the cold, wet earth, a feeling of peace envelopes my mind. My hands follow their own pattern next to the hands of my mothers as we pick what we need, and plant what we need more of.
An hour later when we have collected what we needed, we head back into the kitchen to wash the herbs and see Katniss sitting at the kitchen table eating some bread. She looks up when we enter and smiles at me. I give a small smile back.
My mother and I were walking through the district, each carrying a medical bag to see if anyone needed assistance. So far we had already helped a small family of three, whose child had fallen ill from the cold, and an old man who was probably only to survive for a couple more weeks.
It had been a couple of hours when I saw Peeta running towards us, his face full of urgency and worry. When he finally reached us, he said in a rushed voice, "The peacekeepers…they got Gale. They whipped him! They're taking them back to your house now!"
With those words we began to run back towards the victors' houses. This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Ever since Katniss had defied the games, the amount of peacekeepers in the area increased, and the rules became even stricter. They even enforced a curfew. Failure to comply with the regulations meant you were whipped in the square, or even worse. Killed.
My mother and I had already helped heal a number of people who had defied the rules, and with Gale's connection to Katniss, I wasn't surprised that he was their next victim.
We reached house just when Haymitch and Katniss were dragging Gale through our front door. Peeta ran up to help them and my mother and I rushed behind them. I ran and moved all the supplied off the counter in the middle of the kitchen so that they could lay him down on it. Then my mother and I rushed to the kitchen table and began to work.
My mother started grinding herbs together in order to make medicinal paste, and I grabbed bandages and a bottle of alcohol from the cupboard.
Then we rushed over to Gale. "Hold him down," I told them. Katniss and Peeta each grabbed one of his arms and pinned them to the table. Haymitch stood in the back observing. I opened the bottle of alcohol and stared down at the numerous lash wounds that covered his back.
When I had first seen wounds like these, I vomited, but now I was almost able to look at them with barely any nausea, but the same amount of horrow. I began the poor the alcohol across the wounds, and Gale began to squirm and whimper, trying to avoid the sting, and Katniss and Peeta clutched his arms tighter. I could see Katniss flinching and the tears on her face out of the corner of my eye.
When I was finished, my mother handed me a pot of paste and together we began to sprend it over his wounds. He had finally stopped struggling and I heard my mother's voice telling Katniss to go get some snow from out in the yard. When we finished with the paste, we both began to wrap his back in bandages.
Katniss returned with the snow and my mother and I spread it over his back. Then there was nothing else we could do. I glanced up at the window and saw the sun was beginning to set. My mother had already began to pick up the supplies and I went to help her, but before I went I grabbed a chair and set it beside the counter for Katniss.
It was obvious from the look on her face and her grip on his hand that she wasn't going to be leaving for a while. She nodded her thanks to me and then began to stare at me with an inquisitive look on her face. I raised my eyebrow at her questioningly, but she just shook her head then then sat down besides Gale. That's when I noticed the slim cut on her cheek.
I walked closely to her and set my hand gently on her cheek. "What happened, Katniss?" I asked.
She looked at me with a soft expression and answered, "Nothing, little duck. It's just a small scratch.
"Just give me a second," I told her. Then I went back my mother's bag where she had put the leftover paste. Then I walked back to Katniss as I opened it, and then gently spread it over the cut. When I finished I could feel her gaze on me and I looked up into her eyes.
"When did you get so good at this?" she asked quietly, as so not to wake Gale, although he probably wouldn't be waking anytime soon.
"When you were gone." Then I went into the living room where my mother was asleep on the couch. I grabbed a blanket from the cabinet and then spread it softly over her sleeping form. Then I climbed the stairs into my own room, sat in my bed, and gazed out the window.
The setting sun had cast an orange glow over my room and I layed down and stared at the ceiling, marveling at how different I felt. Only a year ago, I knew of bad things like the games and starvation, but it was different somehow then it is now. I felt older, maybe that was it.
Before, I still had my innocence, but now its gone. Before, I used to have Katniss taking care of me and mom, but now it was me taking care of both of them, even if they didn't realize it. They're both so broken, and so am I, I guess, just not in the same way. They're broken by experience, but me, I am broken by observance.
I now am able to see how truly awful the world is where I couldn't see it before, but now there was also something else: change.