Thank You, God, for everything.
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own The Hunger Games. My prayers toward those who have suffered because of the bombs and fire at the Boston Marathon. :(
~ Katniss's Point of View ~
He's dead. Just . . . dead. That damn yellow cat, who could survive through thick and thin, through a rebellion and District 13, and even me, is gone.
I found him lying in the kitchen this morning. He was sleeping on an old rag that I had wanted to throw away but he had claimed it as his own. He slept on it. And now he has died on it. From old age, probably. Not some sickening disease or injury. But old age. I've seen enough mountain cats to see when they're old and just gone.
I sit at the kitchen table, cradling a warm mug of tea in my hands. I stare at him for I don't know how long. I don't know what to do with him. He's just there; from all the deaths I've seen, this is the quietest. People have died screaming on my mother's worn down kitchen table from mine injuries, from gone-wrong pregnancies to whippings leading to loss of blood. I usually ran out at seeing the death on our table. I try to run from death, but it catches me anyway. Catches everyone, no matter what, but sometimes as a forced matter. Rue would have died eventually, I know. But she didn't have to die by the hand of a boy being forced to murder.
There's a knock at the door. Someone calls my name. It's Peeta.
I don't say anything, just stare at the dead cat. Peeta comes in anyway. He always does. I rarely answer him, but he knows. It's our routine. He comes over every day without fail, usually bearing bread, after checking on the reconstruction of the bakery.
"Hey, Katniss," he says in a gentle voice. He puts his bag on the counter and starts discarding his wintry clothes. It's cold out. Not yet Christmastime but after the Fall Festival. I don't even remember if they had it this year. I think Peeta had said something about Haymitch and Effie going to it. Effie had enjoyed herself. Haymitch had not.
"It's getting a lot colder out. Probably going to snow soon," Peeta says. I barely hear him. My ears feel muted, like when my left ear had completely been cut off from noise back in the arena. I wince and try to block the memory out of my head. My ears work fine now. They do they do they do.
He finishes taking off his jacket and turns to me. He wears a smile, reminding me of his sixteen-year-old self. "Want to go on a walk today, Katniss? Before it really does snow?"
I don't say anything. Buttercup's limp and lifeless. He always used to stare at me with those yellow, ugly eyes and meow loudly, harshly. Poor Prim tried to get the two of us to get along, for his sake. So I wouldn't kill him.
Suddenly I'm glad he died because of age and not because I killed him. About the only thing that has died that way.
"Katniss? Do you want to?" Peeta finally looks to see what I see. "Katniss!" I turn my eyes to him slowly, taking them off Buttercup at the last possible second. Peeta's face is shocked; I can see why. The cat's finally gone. After everything.
"Prim's cat," he whispers.
"About time," I say. I sound so emotionless, blank, practically pleased that the cat is dead, dead, dead. But I'm really not.
And suddenly I'm sobbing, choking with tears. Pain comes to me, and I never thought I would ever cry at seeing that cat gone. But he was the only thing left of Prim. He was a remnant of her kindness and goodness. The reason he lasted as long as he did was because of my sister's healing hands. The hands that blew up in a bombing that I made happen.
Peeta's arms wrap around me; I lean into him. The sobs come out harder and harder, the pain of losing everything around me crawling in and settling inside me, crossing its arms and looking smug at what I've done. Everything around me dies and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing.
Peeta whispers my name, tries to call me back from the dark place I'm in. He's trying and I'm not. That's us.
"Katniss, Katniss, it's okay. It's okay, Katniss," he says. Nothing helps, and then he begins to use a very firm but loving voice. "You are Katniss Everdeen. You are eighteen-years-old. You took care of your sister's cat until it grew too old. There is nothing you can do." He tears himself from me and forces me to look straight into his blue eyes. He gulps and whispers, "Katniss, I am Peeta Mellark. And I'm still here. Please don't go, Katniss. And please don't cry," and he buries his head in my shoulder and holds me until the sobs subside and all I feel is emptiness.
He breaks apart from me and frames my face in his hands. He says, "I'll get him a grave. It's okay, Katniss. It's okay."
Peeta heads out into the cold and breaks a plot by the primrose bushes. I watch out the front window as he does so, and then busy myself with putting on my winter clothes as he wraps up the cat in his rag and places him in a cardboard box. We didn't even have the money to afford wooden boxes for coffins in District 12. Why pay someone to make a box out of perfectly good firewood for someone's final resting place?
The people who died in the bombing of District 12 have no coffins. They lie, forever asleep, in the Meadow, which is no longer a place of refuge for the living. Only a place to stay for the dead.
We head out and Peeta lowers the box into the ground. I watch as he covers it with handfuls of dirt, putting as much care into that burial as he does with everything else. He stands up, lets out a breath that is like a cloud of fog, and says, turning to me, "Do you want me to say anything?"
"There's not much to say," I say quietly.
He turns back and looks down. I'm sure he's about to put a hand on my back and lead me back to the house when he says, "Buttercup, I didn't know you very well, but you meant an awful lot to Prim, and that's all you needed to be."
Peeta takes a step back, looks to me, and before we can leave I'm kneeling on the cold ground, gulping and whispering, "Buttercup, I never liked you. You were nothing more than another mouth to feed to me. But you meant everything to my sister. You made her happy. You made her . . . life amazing. She loved you, you stupid cat, and for that I'm grateful."
I reach over and snap a branch from a primrose bush. It snaps off easily in the cold. I gently lay it on top of the earth mound and then stand up. There. That looks nice. Flowers are traditional to put on graves. I've always thought that. It somehow makes the death a little beautiful. A little brighter. Not so ugly.
Peeta wraps his arm around me, and I don't flinch from him. I say, "Goodbye, Buttercup. Catch a mouse for Prim for me."
We walk back to the house, leaving the little grave with its fluttering, dead flowers in the cold.
Snow starts to fall, and then it starts to melt away.
I had completed this and then Fanfiction didn't save, like, four hundred words of it, so it sucked that I had to rewrite the ending. Whatever. Thank you for reading! Good night, all! God bless you!