The Girl Who Should Have Been Her Mother
AN: Really really wanted to know what happened to Gale, and so I made something up. I guess I just wondered whether or not he'd ever moved on, or if he'd always grieved Katniss, or if he felt bad for everything, and then I came up with this idea. Enjoy (or not, it's kind of bittersweet. Also, I'm not even really sure if it's good or not, so if you could let me know in a review...).
The girl was nervous about meeting the girl who everyone always said should have been her mother.
The way her dad told it, he loved the girl. They'd been friends for years, united by poverty and a need to feed their families. The girl, of course, had never known hunger. She had grown up healthy and well-fed, thanks to her dad. But, he told her, things were different then. In District 12, where the girl had never been, people were always hungry. And so he and the girl who should have been her mother stuck together, helping each other feed their families.
Somewhere along the line, Daddy always said, it became more than friendship for him. He started to look at her differently, see how pretty her long dark braid and big gray eyes were. But he said she never felt the same.
But things had changed, he told her, when the Capitol (which had fallen before she was born, he would always remind her) pulled the girl who should have been her mother into their cruel Game. Daddy would never tell her what the Game was, only that the girl who should have been her mother survived, when most people didn't, but she was changed. She was different, and, more than that, had met a boy.
Daddy said it was complicated for him, that the boy was nice. He was polite and cared about people and had the most magnificent words, but all of that only made Daddy angry, because he really wanted to hate him for stealing away the girl who should have been her mother. But Daddy told the girl how he couldn't. He couldn't make himself hate someone so good.
And then the war began. Daddy would never tell her anything about the war, just that the girl who should have been her mother was the public face of the rebels' side, and that Daddy was a high-up soldier. Nothing more than that.
And that a weapon he'd designed had done something unforgivable, inexcusable. That the girl who should have been her mother left without another word to him. And that she had every right to.
He never told her how sad he was that the girl who should have been her mother wasn't in his life. Daddy wasn't like that, wasn't like the boy who had magnificent words and could say everything. Daddy would never tell how he was feeling, but his daughter could always tell.
Daddy never found anyone else.
Of course, he had obviously found someone, because she had been born. But Daddy wouldn't even tell her her name. Said it was just a girl. And then he would tell her all about the girl who should have been her mother.
The girl sniffed and rubbed her eyes as she stared out the train window. Daddy died just two weeks ago. Got sick. Left her alone. She wished she could make herself be sensible enough to not be angry. She had no right to be angry with him.
Grandma took care of her for a bit, but the girl could tell she was sad. Too sad. It was Uncle Rory's idea to send her to District 12. He convinced her that the girl who should have been her mother should know about Daddy. The girl didn't care about her. But she wanted to see where Daddy had lived when he was her age, where he had gone out in woods each day to feed his family.
She wanted to feel him, his presence. She wanted to be where he had been. Maybe she even wanted the girl who should have been her mother to tell her something about him, something that his brothers and sister and mother couldn't tell her. A secret that only the girl who should have been her mother knew.
The train stopped, and the girl got off. Alone. Grandma told her that she was old enough to ride a train by herself, didn't need someone to supervise her, and the girl agreed. She wanted to be alone.
But Aunt Posy told her the real reason no one would go with her. And it was something Daddy had never ever said one word about.
Fire. Fire. Burning people everywhere. Friends turn to ashes. Houses burn down. During the war, Aunt Posy told her, District 12 was destroyed. None of them had been back since the day that Daddy led 800 people to safety, leaving the other 7000 to burn.
Yes, the girl could see why none of them wanted to go back. And she was grateful, because she wanted to be alone.
She had directions to the house. Not sure how Grandma had gotten them, but she did. Maybe the girl who should have been her mother still lived in the very same house.
All she knew for sure was that Grandma hadn't told the girl who should have been her mother that she was coming.
The girl knocked on the door quickly, three times. Knock knock knock. It was not a girl who opened, though.
It was a man with blond curls and big blue eyes. Early thirties, the girl estimated, though she couldn't be sure. In his arms was a baby girl with dark wispy hair and the same blue eyes.
"Hello?" the man said, though he was confused, the girl could tell, and so it sounded like a question.
The girl hesitated.
"Does a woman live here?" she finally asked. The man nodded, giving her a questioning look. She stared him down.
He opened the door wider and the girl stepped through into the simple living room. The man closed the door behind her.
He set the baby girl on the floor and she immediately busied herself crawling around the pale carpet. Then, he walked over to the stairs and called up them.
"Katniss!" he cried. "There's . . . a girl here to see you."
Katniss, the girl thought to herself. The girl who should have been my mother is Katniss.
The blond man sat on the couch and gestured for the girl to do the same. She did.
"So," the man said, "who are you?"
The girl was suddenly terrified. Who are you? Why was it such a difficult question? She knew her name. It wasn't difficult.
But it was.
"I-I-" the girl stammered.
But then the woman, Katniss, was coming down the stairs, and the girl sighed in relief, because she didn't have to answer. Didn't have to say anything.
Katniss was very pretty. She had dark hair, but it wasn't long and braided like Daddy always said it was. It was shorter and hung down around her shoulders, loose. Her skin was a deep olive color, her eyes a very fair gray. Actually, she looked a lot like Daddy.
Katniss walked over to where the man and the girl sat, stood over them. Probably very commanding, the girl decided. A lot like Daddy.
"My dad knew you," the girl said to her. "He talked about you a lot."
Katniss raised an eyebrow.
"Who was your dad?" she asked.
The girl took a deep breath. She wondered if Katniss would remember him, if Daddy was as important to her as she was to him. Maybe lots of boys fell in love with her. Maybe he was just one of many boys in her life.
"Gale Hawthorne," the girl finally said, and she decided that her Daddy was important to her, because she watched as her eyes widened, and the man jumped up and wrapped his arms around her and she just stood there, eyes wide, big strong arms around her.
"How is he?" she finally asked the girl. "How is Gale?"
And then the girl felt guilty. She shouldn't - it wasn't her fault that her dad got sick and died, just like that - but she did. Because the woman obviously still cared about him. Obviously hadn't forgotten him. But the girl still had bad news to bear.
She cursed herself silently as she felt the tears gathering in her eyes, like little tiny pinpricks.
"Daddy died," she whispered. "Got sick and died. Just like that." She gave a half-hearted snap.
She looked up at the man and the woman. Katniss was staring at her, memorizing her. The girl knew that she would see very little of her father there, though. Only the eyes, big and gray. Everything else, from the petite body to the curly red-brown hair, had presumably come from her mother.
Katniss was trying to remain composed, the girl could tell. Doing a good, job, too.
"Who's your mom?" she asked. The girl shook her head.
"Don't know. He never said anything about her, and I never met her. Actually," the girl glanced nervously at the blond man, obviously the woman's husband, "he always told me that you should have been my mom."
"How old are you?" Katniss asked. The girl shrugged.
"Almost fourteen." The man sighed.
"Wow. He waited two whole years, did he?" he said, only it sounded rude, sarcastic. The woman nudged him.
"Peeta, hush." There was awkward silence.
"So are you the boy who was too nice to hate, who had magnificent words?" the girl finally asked. The man, Peeta, looked startled, and ran a hand through his messy blond curls. Katniss laughed faintly.
"Yes, yes he is." More awkward silence. Peeta bent and picked the little crawling girl up off the floor and held her protectively in his arms.
"We still don't know your name," Peeta finally said. He and Katniss and even the baby girl turned to look at her.
"Primrose," the girl said. "Primrose Hawthorne, but mostly people call me Prim."
Prim watched Peeta and Katniss react to this - and react they did. She decided that it was a good thing that Peeta was holding the baby because Katniss surely would have dropped her. Her face paled and her mouth dropped a little open and her eyes widened and Prim could see them filling with water.
Peeta shifted the baby so that she was balancing on his hip and he was holding her there with one arm. He wrapped his other around Katniss.
"He loved her, too," he whispered. "He never would have hurt her. You know that."
Prim turned her head away. This just felt too private.
But she was filling in missing pieces in her head. Everything he dad had ever told her about the girl who should have been her mother, the strange reaction to her name.
A weapon he'd designed had done something unforgivable, inexcusable. The girl who should have been her mother left without another word to him. And she had every right to.
Prim was struck with the realization. Her daddy's weapon had hurt someone, maybe even killed someone. Primrose. Someone Katniss loved very much. Peeta's words.
He loved her, too. He never would have hurt her.
No, Prim decided. She knew her dad very well, knew how much he wished he could take back that inexcusable thing. He wouldn't have hurt her.
"Who was she?" Prim asked quietly. Katniss sighed.
"My sister. My little sister. She was your age."
Silence. Silence. Silence. Prim hated it. She'd wanted to know more about Daddy, she'd wanted the girl who should have been her mother to tell her things no one else could.
She didn't want to know that her dad killed a thirteen year old girl named Primrose. She didn't want to know that she was named after a girl he'd killed.
It made her angry, furious, that he'd never told her this. If she'd been thinking rationally, she would have seen why he had kept it from her, but she wasn't. She was torn between disgust for something he'd done nearly fifteen years ago, and grief for the one person who'd cared for her all her life.
Why was it that they were separate people in her mind?
Maybe they were. They had to be. The man who Katniss had walked away from, the man who had killed a girl named Primrose, surely was not the same man who had raised Prim, protected her from the cruel past, sang quietly to himself while attempting to cook, poked her belly and held her close when she cried.
Prim wanted to tell Katniss all this, tell her that her Daddy was surely changed from the man she'd walked away from. But she wasn't the boy with magnificent words either, and she couldn't think of anything to say.
And so Prim sat there, watching the girl who should have been her mother try not to cry, watching the boy with magnificent words try to comfort her even as he wiped a tear or two away himself, watched their little baby girl nuzzle her head into Katniss' shoulder. And trying to keep from crying herself, for Daddy, for the girl who should have been her mother, and for the little girl she was named after, who her dad had killed.