Disclaimer: The Hunger Games are not mine.
The day Katniss turns fourteen, she swears she will never bring a child into this world. Sitting on a large grey rock in the woods, one hand reveling in the cool feel of the stream, the other twisted in her braid, she nearly hates her father for it.
They were wrong, she knows, to bring Prim and herself into a world like this: a world with hurt and tears and lies. A world full of angry people who think they can take and take and take and never give. Of the men who are full of burning from their head to their toes. Of others who are to tired to feel anything at all. Good does not belong here. Innocents do not deserve the pain that is thrown upon them.
It is easy to despise her mother for this ignorance, even upon sight the hate fills her up and threatens to spill over, to suffocate her with the force of the pain that comes with her mother's face. Katniss hates abandonment, and a child does not deserve to be left so many times.
Her father, on the other hand, has always been a hero in her mind: his only fault being that he did not take her when he went. He had dark hair and Seam eyes, a gentle voice and a love for hunting that he shared. He sang like the sky was falling and the world was ending and he was the only person left, the only one who could save the world.
This is what she remembers most about him. When the days get long and the food gets thin, her brain turns off with exhaustion and she can't remember what he looked like. Katniss can't remember his scent, for it has long faded from his hunting jacket, and this is when she truly feels alone. On the nights when her heart never stops racing, on the nights when Prim slips from the bed, abandoning her sister for her mother, scared away by her nightmares and Katniss's own tossing. If only Katniss could be that small again, that innocent-lost in the days when hope came in her mother, when safety was found curled up in a bed under warm arms.
Katniss finds safety in the woods, and when the terror reaches up inside and threatens to take hold, she can hear his voice through the trees, through the whistle of the wind, in the songs of the Mockingjays that hover above her head.
Prim dies in flames.
Katniss had dreams of fire, in the days after the Games, wrapped in Peeta's arms during the Victory Tour. She dreams of sparks and dresses made of fire and endings and bittersweet beginnings, of things she should not have done, and things she wished she had.
Katniss spends her days strapped to the sheer metal of a hospital bed, surrounded by white that will never be pure enough to color to darkness in her heart.
Katniss remembers every moment she has ever spent with her sister, every flash of golden hair, every sweet sweet smile. Sometime between now and then she forgets where she is, and she feels the world shattering to pieces beneath her.
Most of the time, she finds she cannot breathe.
The world has become a slideshow of deaths, of faces of people she could not remember the names of, of places she has forgotten to forget. She killed them all.
A nurse with the Capitol's pink hair and rings in her nose, releases her from her bed, filled with a pity that can only be born from never knowing such pain. Katniss hides in the closet in the laundry room, spinning a hospital bracelet around her wrist and chanting her sister's name. Prim, Prim, Prim. She was always so good at being alone, and the life bleeds out of her and pools beneath her, onto a floor that is as cold and hollow as she has become.
Katniss has never been this broken. She is Katniss Everdeen, or so she tells herself. She is seventeen years old. She is the Mockingjay. She has brought down the Capitol. She has escaped the Hunger Games twice. She is a survivor. President Snow has killed her sister. She will kill them all-
She finds just how easy it is to be sad and oh-so-very-sorry. Some fear hate, but she fears regret and closed doors and nightmares that will never go away.
Peeta's gaze takes in her burned skin, her tear dusted cheeks-damage she does not think can be undone. She never wished for the hurt to reach him, and she regrets leaving him. It is her job to save him. Katniss swore. She could have done so much better, she could have rescued him without the war.
A person loves so many things in one lifetime. People that change them, words that fill them, the soft rain in a meadow filled with wildflowers. But Katniss only loves Prim. Katniss can't see anything but her streaks of blonde hair, her little duck tail. Prim grew up sweet and kind and was the only person in the whole world that Katniss was sure she loved.
But nothing lasts forever, and the world is full of things that change us into people we won't recognize tomorrow. Words fall on an empty heart. Katniss tries so hard to forget.
Katniss is sent to Twelve. Is there anywhere else I have truly belonged? She goes to Haymitch. Maybe because he loves the boy like she does, maybe because he has been there the longest. But she knows it is because he has begged for mercy before too. Please don't die, please don't die.
To many people have left us.
It takes Peeta fifteen years to convince her, and no one ever said that she was not stubborn. Around every corner, and behind every door there are memories of memories. Katniss finds she cannot forget anything that is darker than the sky that fills the space above the woods. She can see the stars that flicker through the leaves, and it takes over a decade of peace in the quiet of those trees to let her agree. She was still terrified when that little girl was born. She had made her decision, she had asked for this. But she cried when that baby opened those wide blue eyes.
How will I ever protect you? How can I save you from this world?
The boy was easier. Maybe because he looks like his father, maybe because he smiles at her. He is playful, cheerful, always trying to run with his older, quieter sister. She reminds Katniss of Prim, in the early years-in the silent way she views the world, in the hidden bravery.
He is happy. He is cheerful and ticklish and he never has nightmares, but he comes to Katniss's bed when she does, and he waits for the smoke to fade from her eyes.
There are oh-so-many ways to save a life.
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