Katniss was always there. Before, in the happy days I really don't remember, before Dad died, she was happy and a bit of a rascal. She was always singing, always skipping. After Dad died, everything fell apart for us. Katniss says Mom stopped functioning, shut up in herself and her grief. Katniss never let me take the full weight of our hardship. She always told me it would be all right, even when our food had run out. Yet when I remember those days, I think I can see in hindsight the desperation eating away her bubbly joy, burning away her childhood and leaving behind an impregnable maturity. Nothing could stop her. She never let me know any hardship she could spare me but took everything upon herself. Her love for me is her one tender spot, and it is a ruling passion. She has been mother and father to me.
On the day of that fateful Reaping, I was afraid. I wasn't afraid of Katniss' getting chosen when I was younger. I was sure she was so invincible that even the Reaping could not touch her. Even later, while I knew in my mind that she could be chosen, I somehow failed to fear such a thing as I should have, except in the last few years. That last reaping, I was full of anxiety for myself and her. I don't know who I was more worried about, honestly. Katniss kept comforting me, telling me I wouldn't be chosen, as if she could know, could guarantee my safety. When she told me, again and again that nothing would happen to me, that I would not be chosen, that I was not going to the Capital, I did not know, and she did not know consciously, that she was guaranteeing my safety with nothing less than her own life. Subliminally, though, I think she did know.
When my name was called, I think my heart stopped. I don't know how I managed even to keep breathing. Katniss ran to me, and I saw the look on her face as the peacekeepers sought to restrain her. It was that look that undid me more than anything that happened afterwards. For one impossible moment, that strength and courage which had stood her through all our troubles was shattered. With the sound of my name, they had broken her, yet she healed in a moment. She did not cry, although I know she wanted to. She volunteered even with poise. She would break rather than be broken; she chose death as though it were the only sensible thing to do. In in a game about killing and callousness, she showed love by a simple subversion. This subversion was innate within her. The courage to do it was only waiting for an opportunity. The love had been part of her from childhood.