disclaimer: I own nothing.
When the spear hits Rue's body and Katniss realises the tiny girl's going to die, she at first feels nothing at all.
She's spent far too long crying over lost friends and family. She knows death like she knows her bow; intimate and familiar. She knows the pain of loss like an old friend, a trusted hunting partner.
Death is everywhere in the Seam.
It creeps in through the cracks like coal dust, settling everywhere and impossible to dislodge. It settles like a cloud over the heads of the miners, following them as they go to work every day, always there, just a memory in the back of everyone's minds, until it's not a memory any more, it's fresh and real and painful.
When Rue crumples to the ground and the first word on her lips is Katniss, like the sigh of a gentle wind in the woods, Katniss remembers that after all, she's only a child.
There are children starving everywhere in the Seam.
They lie on street corners, ribs protruding and eyes huge, pleading. People walk past and pretend not to notice the feeble cries and weak tugs on clothes. Everyone's been that hungry. Some don't make it back.
Not everyone has quiet spring mornings spent soaking up the sun and being almost certain of a next meal. When you think about it, Katniss reflects, her family has been lucky in so many ways.
When Katniss cradles Rue's head and cries and sings and feels her heart go up in flames, for some reason all she can see is a flower, withering and dying.
When the flowers bloom in the Seam, everyone smiles.
They grow wild on every street corner in the spring, and for some reason everyone is marginally more cheerful, and when the flowers die every winter the light always fades in people's eyes. When the grey snow begins to fall, people grow quiet and the smiles disappear.
Maybe it's because the Capitol doesn't – can't – control the flowers. Maybe it's the way they're always there, every year, a persistent (if temporary) source of happiness in the Seam. Maybe it's as simple as the bright colours; the pink and purple and red and gold and always, always splashes of green.
When the light fades from Rue's eyes and the song trails off into silence, Katniss feels the flames in her heart fall to ash as a part of her dies.
In the Seam, ash creeps in everywhere.
Coal dust and ash are the two things a miner's child will never escape. Even in places the wind can't reach, dust piles up and ash sneaks in.
The cracks in the palms of old miners are black with the memory of fire.
As Katniss covers Rue with flowers and turns and walks away, the shattered armour around her heart rebuilds itself, stronger than before. Unbreakable.
Don't get attached.
You've got to be tough to live in the Seam.