Continual Change
In light of how she turned out in the end, one might believe she was born under rage and harshness. She was born, however, on a clear winter day. The weather was favorable, as increasingly rare as it was in District Twelve. It was almost a complete sin from the usual patterns of life, and in hindsight, maybe that she was fitting. She was instantly wrapped in the blankets they'd bought and preserved for this occasion, then washed off in warm water they'd heated beforehand. The small newborn wailed and squirmed, because no matter no what anybody else could have predicted at this moment, she was not quite as strong as she had to be.
In the beginning, she was a fragile, hopeful young child, and there was no reason she could not afford that.
...
Her mother was afraid. She did not know how to parent, and she certainly did not know how to handle the stubborn streak that lived so strongly within the two year old before her. Being raised in the merchant class offered some relief from the physical and forceful methods of punishment that could be found within the Seam, but she could not bear the thought of hurting the small life force in front of her. Her husband shared the same ideals and instead found a much more creative and gentle method of feeding their overly defiant daughter.
"Here you go," he said gently while placing a carved bowl in front of here.
The toddler wrinkled her nose at the unsightly soup consisted of root. "No."
"Come on, I bet you'll like it," the man coaxed patiently. "This is even what you were named after."
This surprised the tot into looking fully at her father with her gray eyes that mirrored his own. "Kat-ness," she pronounced deliberately.
"Exactly." He smiled and held the spoon to her mouth. "As long as you can find yourself, you'll never go hungry."
She stared at him, her tiny, intelligent brain struggling to process this information before she finally accepted it and ate the food laid before her.
...
She didn't think too much of her mother being pregnant. Most of her time was spent following around her father or occupying herself with the miscellaneous objects she could find on her adventures around the District. She didn't pay excessive amounts of attention to anyone she came into contact with and they payed her the same courtesy, though those same eyes that looked away were the same eyes that protectively assured her staying out of danger. From young age she just wasn't prone to like people very much and grew to believe people felt the same way about her, and one thing that never quite changed was her obliviousness that so many in District Twelve loved her.
...
Her sister wasn't beautiful when she was born, so naturally the eldest sister was confused to why her parents kept insisting that. As her mother washed her younger sibling off in pre-warmed tub of water, she tugged on her father's sleeve.
"Did I look like that when I was born?" She inquired.
Her male parent smiled knowingly. "Nah, kiddo. But you were beautiful, just like your sister."
"She looks gross," the child stated blandly.
"Maybe to you right now," he replied through a light chuckle. "But you just wait and see. I bet you she'll look just your like your mommy."
The young girl looked to her mother, so thin and blonde and blue-eyed, then to her father who was all strength and dark hair and silver eyes. "But I look like you, Daddy."
"Well, I'll put it this way." He didn't try to suppress his broadening smile as he gently brushed back his eldest's two braids. "You took all my ugly features and made them look good."
This only confused her further, so she looked to the squirming newborn in her female parent's arms. "What's her name?"
"I'll tell you what." She didn't know this, but her father knew that the girl would eventually get short with her sister's loud wailing. "Why don't you go and find the prettiest flower you can find, and then when you come back with it, we'll name her after that."
It took a couple of hours, but after the decisions of Marigold and Weed were terrible names, the baby was named Primrose. Nevertheless, she always insisted upon calling her Prim.
...
The first year was shifty. She began going to school while her sister slowly grew bigger and more eventually. Her white hair slowly turned into a beautiful blonde, like her mother's, and her eyes stayed blue, like her mother's. For the first four months it was a relief for her to school to escape the crying and whining of the infant, but when her sister began nearing her first birthday, she found herself beginning to like her a bit more.
...
She knew why her parents were concerned. Prim was a very bright girl and full of laughter, but she was learning to speak very slowly and wasn't walked well despite being at a year and a half in age. She didn't quite understand the whispered word 'malnutrition', but she know that her father was now gone every morning rather than only a couple out of a week and how late her mother started working at other houses. She didn't like this, but with the sweet face her sister had, she could no longer find herself to be angry with her.
"C'mon, Prim," the five year old prompted. "Come to me."
Her tiny sibling looked up at her from her doll, confusion written all over her face. She was determined to make her tiny sibling understand, though, and stuck out her hand a little further.
"C'mon," she urged. "Come to me. No, you can't do that."
As soon as she started crawling she set her where she started, then walked away a couple of feet. "Now. Come to me- No!"
It went on like this four more times, but eventually, the blonde-haired child stood up on wobbling legs and made her to her. As she caught the toddler in her arms and squeezed her in a tight hug, she was overwhelmed by the pride and affection she felt. She loved her sister, and right now it no longer mattered that neither of her parents were home. She was going to take care of her.
...
The first time she witnessed death was when she was eight years old. It was by accident, but she'd noticed her four year old sister venturing to a house down the street from where they lived.
"Mommy," the smaller child answered cheerfully when she asked why she was going there.
When the two sisters entered, the first thing the eldest noticed was the silence. Nobody was inside, but there was a blanket over what could only be a person. Prim was either too engrossed with reuniting with her mother or too short to see it, but she sent her back outside to look for the others while she ventured to the table where the person was covered. Despite the bad feeling that made her stomach ache, she lifted down the sheet and screamed.
It was Mister Redderick who worked with her father. Sometimes he would come over and play a card game with her father, and once he even gave her a cheese bun from the bakery in the nicer area of District Twelve. She didn't know him, not really, but she had never seen him so pale. Her white foam coming from his mouth and his eyes were milky, staring up into nothing. With trembling hands she shook him, saying his name softly, but he didn't reply.
Her mother was suddenly in the doorway, and it was in the same breath she was pulling Katniss away from the corpse. She was saying something about sleeping and asking why in the world she was there in the first place, but she was not truly listening. Her parent was talking far too fast for her to be telling the truth, a lie-detecting mechanism she'd learned from her father. Her mother was liar and even though she didn't connect why for a year or so after, this fact still made her begin resenting her just a little.
...
The first time she witnessed the death of an animal was when she was nine and half years old. Her father woke her up before the sun, urging her in a whisper to get dressed if she wanted to go with him into the woods today. He'd warned her two weeks prior that this journey was illegal and getting caught meant death, a term which she know understood from both school and from her father's further explanation, so she dressed quietly and followed him like a shadow.
She wasn't able to kill anything her first day, but her father shot a squirrel right through it's eyes. Unlike with Mister Redderick, she found herself more fascinated than horrified.
"That's how we get what we eat?" She asked while staring at the lifeless animal.
"That's right, Kat," he replied in his normally upbeat tone that hid his weariness. "You know, you don't have to help me if you don't want too."
"But I do want too." She frowned the same disapproval that mirrored his own.
"The woods are a scary place," he said, his upbeat tone now much more serious and concerned. "If I ever got you caught-"
"I won't get caught. Nobody can find us out of the fence, just like you said," she stated. "We're safe out here. I'm not afraid. I can do this."
He looked to his ever-defiant, stubborn eldest and managed a weak smile. "Of course you can, kiddo. I know you can."
...
It wasn't real. She forced herself to repeat what she somehow knew was a lie as she fetched her seven year old sister out of class, to even voice it to the fearful child clinging to her hand as they went out of the square. Two by two the miners came up, each one battered and injured. Her mother did not move to help them as they came up even more slowly and instead stood with her two daughters as the last corpse was on the surface.
Everything else in the shaft, the Peacekeeper announced, was ash. They were not sorry for the losses the families were bearing, she knew that. She was aware of her mother collapsing onto her knees, of her sister crying though she didn't fully understand yet. She stood firmly, staring at the destroyed shaft and watching her childhood explode just like her father.
...
She was afraid of the woods at the first. She ran at the noises and loathed herself for that inhibiting tick, but she did pick berries she'd learned weren't poisonous and eventually snagged a hare on the edge of the forest. She experienced new intimidation as entered the Hob alone, and even though she knew Greasy Sae was taking pity on her by making giving her soup for the pathetic kill, she was grateful for it.
...
She was dead just like her father. She was certain of it as she laid in the rain, starving and plagued with the faces of her little family. Her mother, sick and beyond any light. Her sister, poor and helpless little Prim, hollowed cheeked and still smiling at the person who had sworn to keep them feed. They were all dead because of her.
Something inside her stirred when she heard Mrs. Mellerk screaming at her son, heard the slapping. He stumbled outside with the two loaves of burnt bread, and she felt a small ounce of pity for the pathetic merchant boy. She didn't know what to feel when he tossed those loaves toward her then left.
...
The hope Peeta Mellerk gave her hardered. She preened it within herself to make it strength, strength she kept in order to survive. She unconsciously blocked out and resented her everyone-for-themselves toned District, focusing on her improving hunting. It was to the tune of her resentment she avoided and hated Gale Hawthorne, the far more skilled and experienced boy whom she shared the woods with. He was nothing but competition, but she didn't hate him enough to not be terrified at the thoughts of cannibalism she'd had during a hard two week period.
...
In the end, it was Gale Hawthorne that led to her accepting District Twelve as a home she could entirely tolerate. He built her reputation in confidence within the Hob, and they traded hunting techniques after time observing another. Having a hunting companion aside from her father filled a hollow area inside of her soul, and while the notion was sometimes painful to think about it, at least they shared it.
...
She could no longer think highly of her mother, whom was all but completely dead to her. She could no longer do anything for her father, who lived in her but far from the world. She loved her sister, and despite her friendship with Gale and despite her regard for her District in general, she could only be secure in her feelings for her twelve year old sibling. It was not hard for her to volunteer because of her absolute certainty, but even though she wavered in apprehension with Gale's goodbye to her, she physically couldn't be as scared or helpless as she was the day her father died. She had changed far too much, become far too strong and brave, for that.
...
She did not claim to be a decisive person and this showed through horribly as she went from the darling of the Capitol to the rebellious Mockingjay. She regretted her treacherous decisions in trusting within Cinna and letting herself become as hollowed out as old Haymitch, and she resented herself for the attachments she desperately threw out to so many individuals that were killed because of her. She was falling apart, her sanity lost in her mind but only truly anchored to the love she felt for Peeta, Prim, and Gale. Without their survival she could not live and she would be entirely broken.
Peeta's betrayal was forgivable in her mind. It was so obvious how it was not his fault, and her fragile love had no other place to fall but within him. The associations she made with Gale were far too painful now.
...
All her life she'd been a sin from the regular patterns of life. She'd not known strength but then gained far too quickly, only to lose it in the sense of her believing it. She is strong none the less, in the way she raised two children under a Panem she led to purity. But she is so fragile, so ruined and destroyed with the horrifying traumas she had to endure. She does not love fully, for she physically cannot. She has changed far too much, become far too shattered for that.
In the end, she is a beyond-her-years victim of war and loss, but there is no longer a reason for her to be anything more.