From a Tumblr post, where the sentence you're assigned has to be the first sentence of your ficlet. I got "Why is it suddenly purple?" A perfect excuse to go fluffy, maybe... but I didn't go fluffy.
TW: cancer TW: character death.
"Why is it suddenly purple?" Katniss whined, holding the vividly coloured polo shirt with 'volunteer' printed on it at arm's length, as if it would bite her. Her best friend rolled his eyes.
"New sponsor," he shrugged from where he was digging through a box, looking for one in his own size, and she scowled.
Katniss Everdeen had been volunteering at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Panem for years now, along with her friend Gale Hawthorne, and the annual Teddy Bear's Picnic was her favourite event. It was not just a fundraiser for the hospital, but a chance for some of the former patients to gather together, to enjoy treats and share stories on blankets spread all over the great lawn.
She manned the B*A*S*H tent; Bear Ambulatory Surgical Hospital. Sewing up minor tears in kids' special stuffed animals and brushing out faux fur matted from countless hours of cuddles. It was a silly thing maybe, but the faces of the children who brought their beloved toys to her for some TLC were worth a few hours of pricked fingers. But she wasn't sure it was worth wearing the purple monstrosity.
"What was wrong with the blue ones we had last year?" He didn't answer, and her scowl deepened. "Wait, you already knew about this, didn't you Gale? Why didn't you warn me?" He glanced over his shoulder at her and sighed.
"Look, I know you hate purple, I get it, but it's just for a couple of hours. Then you can burn the damned thing if you want." He was looking at her quizzically; she knew he couldn't understand her hatred of the colour. It was just a colour, after all. To him.
But not to Katniss.
For Katniss, the colour purple represented loss.
It was six years earlier that Katniss was first introduced to the hospital, but not as a volunteer. It was six years earlier that her beloved little sister, Prim, came down with a flu that just wouldn't go away.
When the doctor pronounced it cancer the bottom dropped out of Katniss's world. Just 16, she was already accustomed to caring for her sister, and the girls shared a special bond. She would have done anything to take her sister's place.
Prim was only 12. Their single mother was a nurse at the very hospital where Prim would be treated, but she worked long hours and double shifts, so more often than not it was Katniss who accompanied her sister to her appointments, their mother popping in and out when time allowed.
Right from the outset Prim was more fascinated by the medical equipment and testing than afraid of her diagnosis. And though the chemo infusions were rough, left her sick and weak, she faced them all with grace, smiling at everyone, charming the doctors and her fellow patients alike.
Over the months at the hospital the sisters met so many other children cycling in and out of treatment. Some would ring the bell, proudly announcing the end of their infusions, celebrating that they'd beaten cancer. Some simply never came back. Prim made friends with everyone.
Katniss, more reserved, more focussed on Prim, barely paid any attention to the other patients. All but one.
Peeta Mellark.
Prim was just a few weeks into treatment when Peeta showed up for the first time, all crazy blond curls and smiling blue eyes, and dropped into the treatment chair beside her.
Maybe it was his similarity to Prim - both fair, both aggressively optimistic - that allowed Katniss to let down her guard. But for whatever reason she quickly developed a friendship with Peeta, chatting with him daily as he took his infusions while she sat beside a napping Prim. They discussed favourite colours and future plans, his dreams of owning a bakery like his grandfather, her desire to get Prim into medical school. They talked about families and challenges. He made her feel safe. He made her believe that life could be good again.
Peeta was unfailingly positive, even as his muscular wrestler's body wasted and atrophied, even as those silky golden curls she adored fell out.
And then he started wearing the purple beanie.
Not any purple, no, not for Peeta Mellark, artist and future baker. He wore royal, majestic, jewel-toned purple. The kind of colour that made him impossible to keep her eyes off. A colour that she scowled and told him she hated, even as she admired how it made his blue eyes look almost luminous.
He wore it to make her laugh. To make her laugh when she was worried, to make her laugh through her tears.
And she loved him for it. She loved him for just being him.
She never told him, not in so many words, but they made grand plans about the places they'd go when he was healthy again, the dates he'd take her on, the travels they'd share. He painted a future she never even knew she wanted.
He was her first kiss, his lips cool and chapped, hers sloppy and unpracticed.
Prim got worse and worse; it became obvious that she wasn't responding to any of the treatments, she slept more and more in the chair that dwarfed her frail figure. It was Peeta who comforted Katniss, who assured her it wasn't her fault, who gave her strength. No matter how weak and exhausted he was, he'd open his arms to her and she'd snuggle in beside him, even as the poison to kill his own cancer cells drip drip dripped into his arm.
Prim was one of the kids who just didn't come back. Instead they brought her home to die.
Four weeks later Prim was gone and buried and her mother back at work, and Katniss was left to pick up what remained of her life.
She snuck into the hospital, horrified that she'd abandoned Peeta for so long, determined to see him, to hold him and hug him, to cry on his shoulder, to tell him everything.
But he wasn't there.
She asked questions the nurses wouldn't answer. The other kids in the room said that Peeta, like Prim, simply hadn't come back. She tried asking her mother for information on Peeta but she got nowhere. She spent months scanning online obituaries, googling his name, searching Facebook for any clue as to what had happened to him.
She never found out.
That horrible November when she was sixteen she lost her sister and her first love, both at the same time. And purple came to symbolise pain, for her.
The day was perfect, her repair booth busy. She sewed up bears and bandaged dollies, listened to the stories her young charges told. It was exhausting, but gratifying.
Gale was serving snacks, but she could hear his booming laughter right outside of her tent as he listened to a knock knock joke. He was great with kids, and Katniss knew he and his fiancee planned to have a whole bunch of them. She tried not to be jealous of him, of the way his face lit up when he talked about Madge, of his future laid out with such certainty.
But then he dragged her out, insisting that she come have some of the goodies before they were gone.
"This is why we're wearing purple," he said, directing her to a long table stacked with purple plates and purple napkins, covered with exquisite treats. "The new sponsor baked all of the snacks this year." Delicate macarons in the same deep purple as their shirts. Mini cupcakes piled high with frosting and dotted with purple sprinkles. Gorgeous cookies with flowers painted on them. Everything was so gorgeous it seemed a shame to eat any of it.
But of course she would.
She was balancing a plate and marvelling at how lifelike the flowers were when she saw them. Cookies painted with primroses. Perfect yellow blossoms unfurling in the shade. She picked one up reverently, tears pricking her eyes. She was enveloped in regal purple and cradling a small representation of her sister, and all at once she was 16 again, aching over the loss of the two people who had meant the world to her.
She slipped away, still clutching the cookie like a lifeline, settling beneath a tree just far enough from the festivities that she wouldn't bother anyone.
She'd only been slumped there a few minutes, staring at the cookie, when footsteps approached, heavy and slightly uneven. She swiped away an errant tear before looking up. Blue jeans, even in the midsummer heat. White t-shirt, peeking out from beneath an apron in the same in-your-face purple as her polo, and most ridiculously, one of those giant poofy baker's hats, also in purple. This must be the person responsible for the purple everywhere.
She wanted to scowl, but the light was shining through golden curls, haloing the stranger. Her breath caught in her chest. And his eyes narrowed thoughtfully at her, his blue eyes, magnificent blue eyes turned electric by the colour of his hat. He was an angel, a memory made solid in front of her.
"Katniss," he whispered, his voice deep, awed, and new tears spilled down her cheeks as she scrambled to her feet.
"You're back!"