black milk of daybreak
Even after she's dead, Prim still looks the same. Her hair still flops in the same, straight braid, and her shirt swells with the same lump in the back – duck tail, Katniss called it.
Sometimes, she runs a hand down her front with the most bewildered expression. Sometimes she recalls that this is as young, as beautiful, as golden as she'll never be. Sometimes she remembers.
Mostly Prim watches Katniss cry. Her sister does it – a little each day – for years. It makes Prim so tired to watch it, so tired to remember that, of everything – after everything – it was Prim who broke the Mockingjay in the end.
The stoop outside Katniss' house is covered with roses – primroses – for her, she assumes.
It's a big house, she remembers, and to her surprise, it's her mother's room that lies empty. Somebody else is living in Prim's room.
She watches carefully, through the weeks, as Peeta holds Katniss' hand, not too tightly, not too loosely, just sweetly, just softly, quietly and wonderfully, and part of Prim smiles – and part of her longs. For that.
For touch.
Peeta, Prim decides very quickly, is the bravest, strongest person she knows – knew.
He puts Katniss together, piece by shining piece, gluing together the Mockingjay's broken facade with his deft, gentle fingers, and that is something only he has been able to do.
Prim can only watch from the doorway.
That hurts, that helps, too.
He, they, do it with aching patience – putting the world back together again – inch by inch, person by person, brick by brick, together.
They dig District Twelve out of the rubble in pieces. In peace. After a while, Peeta goes to help with the burial groups, but Katniss turns her head away and only ever helps them paint, or build or inscribe.
Katniss, Prim remembers, always had the prettiest writing.
Sometimes she pretends that she's here for her, for Katniss – sometimes, she's not sure if she can't, or won't, go to see her mother, whether she feels betrayed or just heartbroken that her mother will never come back to Twelve.
She watches Peeta and Katniss hold each other sometimes – it's not wildly, or passionately, or madly. It's a little quietly, a little desperately in the night.
Sometimes, she searches for another face in the rebuilding teams – one she grew to know. It takes a while before she realizes Gale isn't coming back to Twelve either – and that hurts, too. Watching Rory grow up, Hazelle grow old, with that hole in their house (their heart). Watching them learn to forgive Katniss for breaking their boy's heart (and that helps, too).
Her sister and Peeta get married in their work clothes – Peeta streaked with brick dust and earth, Katniss with heavy eyes and the thick blue tunic that their father had worn. The ceremony is quick – no one but the two of them, and they kiss, when they kiss, softly, tiredly.
Prim feels a lump in her throat-which-is-not-a-throat. A love that comfortable, that well-worn – something so bone-deep in them. But then, she decides, it must have been strong to have survived a war so many other things didn't. That Prim didn't, when she was touched by the last of the Mockingjay's flames. (She thinks briefly of Gale and Katniss – how that hadn't survived either, once Prim was dead.)
Prim is the first one to notice how Peeta stares at the little ones when they stroll through the shop, and if Prim had tears, she would weep them for the love in his beautiful eyes. At first, he only shoots Katniss shamefaced looks from the doorway, but slowly, he puts his gentle, honey-sweet voice to use – whispering to Katniss before they sleep, murmuring in her ear over meals –
Over the rising swell of her belly, Katniss peers out the window, and writes in her book – her memory book. Prim has peered over her shoulder so many times, to see the loving swirls of her writing, the soft smile on her face, has looked away every time she turns to one page, the page Katniss never writes on, but only touches.
Peeta watches her, too – Katniss outlined in the gold of sunlight. This is the moment when Prim believes that Katniss is beginning to be again – glowing again, a candle in the sun.
There's one broken day during that summer, when she weeps tears-that-are-not-tears from eyes-that-are-not-eyes, struggling to grasp the roses on Katniss' doorstep, to pluck one for Katniss' beautiful knotted hair –
"I'm sorry," she whispers into the unbroken stems, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry -'
"I was wondering." Peeta begins, on one of the sunniest days. "What to name her." Katniss turns to him with a tight set to her mouth, as though she knows what is happening, and says nothing.
Peeta proceeds, entirely unfazed by that look. "I was thinking," he continues, "Of calling her Prim -"
"No." says Katniss, turning away. "Never."
Peeta's voice drops, gentler and sweeter than before. "They're … beautiful flowers, primroses," he begins again. "Maybe even the most -"
"I've already lost her." Katniss says, and her voice is so heavy, so leaden, that Prim feels it like cinders on her skin, like being burned up and shattered by the flames (again). Katniss turns to Peeta. "I'll never give the world that chance again."
But when the child comes, weeping fitfully in her arms, that is the name Katniss whispers brokenly into her untouched face. "Prim, Prim. Oh - Prim, Prim."
Prim crouches next to her, peering concernedly into her face. "Don't cry." She tells her, "Oh, don't cry, Katniss. It's wonderful. She's beautiful. She's beautiful."
But Katniss only turns to Peeta. "How did you know?" she asks, her whisper hoarse.
His own tears drying on his face, Peeta says, "I didn't," and reaches for his daughter, curling up next to his wife to take the baby into his arms.
Prim is filled with a rush of pure elation, something she hasn't felt in a long time. This is the moment – here is the moment – she has been waiting for. Here is when she finally believes Katniss is whole –not flaming, not burning with the Mockingjay's glare, but bright with a soft, shining joy Prim has never seen on her face.
"Hello, Prim." Peeta says, voice breaking. The echo in the air is only for Prim, and she turns into her own father's arms. He smells of coal dust and sweat and her mother's flowery scent, and he's wearing the tunic Katniss wore to her wedding. He says the words along with his daughter's husband.
"Welcome - Welcome home."