I look at the bushes, the clods of dirt hanging from their roots, and catch my breath as the word rose registers. I'm about to yell vicious things at Peeta when the full name comes to me. Not plain rose but evening primrose. The flower my sister was named for.
Years after being planted, the yard is spotted with yellow dots ranging from small buds to a few mature blossoms. I see them as I go to walk down the path toward the woods, but their color catches my eye. My feet stop before I know they do, my thoughts tracking back to the girl with the duck tail. The girl with the compassion I lacked, enough to do my mother's hair when I refused to acknowledge the woman's existence and to save a cat that resembled a decaying summer squash. Evening primroses, as my father taught me, are biennial herbs. Healers, then, like she was. My father told me that primrose flowers can be infused into tea as a mollifier of nerves and headache. Best, he said, to use the leaves during the month of May, when wild primroses were at their peak.
The month of May, when she was born, would need as much headache-reducing herb as it can get.
Placing my game bag on the ground beside me, I curl into a squat and view the flowers behind watery eyes. Suddenly compelled, I stretch out, my fingers seeking the delicate folds of the lovely flowers, pinching lightly to detach it unceremoniously from its root. I do this with a few more, placing them gently into the palm of my other hand, until I had over half a dozen. The cluster of yellow reminds me of yellow chickadees, unaffected by muttation of any sort.
I take the primroses inside and find a small vase, unpatterned and a bit drab. It reminds me of our old house. I set the flowers inside, adding some water to the urn. Hearing the door open behind me, I turn to look who it is, probably Sae, but my foot stumbles on something soft on the floor. Buttercup yowls and scampers off at being trod upon, but I am not so lucky. My balance being off without hands to steady my footing, I trip and drop the flowers, sending the vase crashing to the floor. My palms fall in the pottery shards, cutting deep into my hands.
"Katniss!" Peeta calls, tossing my game bag onto the table while running to my side. That's the first thing that came back from the old Peeta. That unyielding desire to keep me safe, even from himself. Peeta kneels beside me as I carefully lift my hands, facing them palm up, where blood has already started to flow. Peeta watches with a look of concern, then confusion, then suddenly he is retreating backward, stumbling, His blue eyes hold a look of glossy fright, and I know then that all the therapy and medication in the world with never completely undo the Capitol's torture. That look signifies a tracker jacker memory, one to make me seem life-threatening to Peeta. My focus no longer on the pain from my hands, I squat perfectly sit, ready to bolt if Peeta can't regain hold. If the programming to kill me wins over. His fists clench white-knuckled, his arms crossed tightly to his torso as he breathes jaggedly.
"After our…first interview," Peeta grits out. "You pushed me into a vase?" The second part comes out softer, uncertain. "There's barely anything shiny…"
As Peeta trails off, the memory surfaces for me. There's nothing shiny because that was real, I had shoved Peeta into an urn. I was mad at him because I'd thought his confession of love toward me made me look weak.
The memory might have been enhanced, but Peeta saying there wasn't much shininess to it—our way of detecting which memories the tracker jackers tampered with—because that was a memory where I had been threatening to Peeta. Maybe not life-threatening, but I remembered the bandages they needed to put on his palms.
"Real," I whispered.
As if that signaled the end of his episode, Peeta relaxes, his eyebrows still knit in confliction. "You weren't trying to kill me?"
"Real," I cringe, knowing that the Capitol didn't need to implant completely fake memories to make me look like a monster. "I wasn't."
But Peeta had already pushed past it, pushing himself off the ground back toward me. He plants a gentle kiss in my hair. "Okay. Let's get those shards out of your hands, Katniss."
I let him tweeze out the pieces, hissing like Buttercup each time. I think of the mutual loss that that cat and I share, the comfort we gave each other. I think about the boy in front of me, scarred and scared like me, but still good, just as Finnick and I once discussed. I know Peeta will heal me, maybe even better than primrose tea.
I'm going to see Mockingjay Part 2 tonight (11/25) and I couldn't contain my excitement. Mockingjay is my favorite of the trilogy, with its dark aura and heavy coping, like nimbostratus clouds. Thank you for reading, and please review!