Song Suggestion: Daughter-Run (LCAW remix)
A/N: So I am going to answer some reader concerns:
Updates: Sorry, the length of the chapters will stay the same. I am an extremely busy mother of two. If I made them longer, it would be months before an update came. On the upside, I am consistent!
On Hannibal: He doesn't like Prim. He took Katla for a reason and pretty much already stated he didn't want anybody else. He's a flirt, like Rory. Not many people were worried about this, but I decided to smooth it out for the few that were.
Thank You: ElektraMackenzie, SergeantJohnston, 3vlee, Lucy Greenhill, Bea, Sandraanataliaa, DHTDesty, artdecades,HeyBirdy, and Eight Guests! Thank You so much for reviewing. You are the fuel to my writing.
The Cost of Freedom
Prim brushed through wet hair, braiding it to the side like Katniss used to do. Prim's hair was fine and after it dried hundreds of wispy pieces would stick out. She had just taken a shower, letting the dried blood on her thighs turn red again and drip down the drain. Each movement made her wince with tingles of pain. On the outside she was now clean, her skin scrubbed until it burned red and raw. However, her insides refused to feel renewed. She felt dirty, ugly, as if she betrayed everybody.
"I'm sorry Katniss," she whispered to nothing. She tried to be quiet, tiptoeing around the room not to wake Coral. For her plan to work, the little girl had to stay asleep.
There wasn't any time to brood or to feel.
Prim dug through the closet in search of something in particular. Most of the items of clothing Cato provided her with were dresses, fine ones lined with beads and made of silk or other delicate materials. She pushed those aside with a jerk, the hangers screeching across the metal bar. It took thirty minutes of picking through the clothes, tugging some off the hangers and flinging them to the side in frustration until she finally found what she was looking for. Towards the corner of the closet, almost invisible in the swaths of expensive tulle and beads, she found a pair of black slacks—the type used in Capitol Games training. A matching shirt hung on the hanger with it. It wasn't long sleeve, but it would have to do.
She slipped them on quickly, slicking against her body almost like a second skin. Over it she placed a thick wool coat, and put on some shoes for training as well. She tried to layer as much as possible. At the last minute, she found a pair of dainty white gloves. They were ridiculous, but they would have to do.
It wasn't as cold outside anymore during the daytime. The snow dripped from the trees some days, melting down into small rivers. Put the nights still howled with hostility, the bite of nature coming out for bitter revenge, just to give a reminder of its power. Once outside, there would be no shelter. Prim knew the risks, but she also knew the consequences of inactivity, consequences directed towards her soul.
She had to do something. Even if it meant jeopardizing everything. Even if it meant defying Snow's orders. She could sacrifice herself, but wasn't made to sit back and watch another person go through the same torment.
Prim went to the bed, fumbling with the sheets before ripping the pillowcase off the pillow. She stared at the makeshift bag for a moment, walking around in the circle in a daze, trying to grasp what she needed to do next. There was something she was forgetting, Prim just wasn't sure what. After another circle, a little "oh" popped out of her mouth. She hurried back to the closet and stuffed an extra pair of shoes and jacket in the bag and then slung it over her shoulder ready to go. Nothing else in the room would be practical to bring, and anything else useful would be in other parts of the house and too dangerous to get.
Her body and mind would have to do.
Before she left, Prim remembered something important. She fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist, the tracker disguised as jewelry. Cato assumed she wouldn't take it off since the attack from Jace, and she was using his assurance to her advantage. It took a moment to figure out the mechanisms that kept it cinched tight on her wrist before it popped off. Once gone, she rubbed her wrist and held the tracker in her hand unsure what to do with it.
She almost ran out of the room then, an anxiousness building in her chest as she inched closer to executing her plan. But stopped at the doorway. She gazed at a sleeping Coral, trying to ignore the zaps of guilt that kept electrocuting her.
"Do you wuv me?"
"More than anything."
"And you'll never leave me?"
"Never."
Never, never, never. The promise infected her heart with a disease, so painful she almost gave up and snuggled back in bed.
Prim walked over to a sleeping Coral and smoothed down the little girl's curls, maybe for the last time.
"I love you, don't you ever think different." She leaned over and gave her smooth cheek a tiny peck. She'll think I hate her. Prim realized this with a heavy heart, but there was nothing she could do about that. "If I could, I'd bundle you up and..." Prim stopped herself before the idea could take root.
Before she changed her mind, Prim withdrew her hand, giving one last longing look before walking out the door in search of Katla.
Five Minutes Later
No one guarded the study. Prim was hesitant about entering in case she ran into Hannibal, or if it was some sort of test or trap.
When she finally gathered her courage and tiptoed into the room, she discovered why no one bothered to guard it. There was nowhere for the poor girl to go.
Katla, wide-eyed, had her wrists shackled with metal handcuffs. Her feet were tied too, with a string attaching her feet to her hands. A piece of cloth wedged itself between her teeth. She probably screamed when she woke up, Prim thought.
Something shiny glinted on the desk above her head, looking like a silver pictograph that Cato probably viewed recently. Besides that, the room was normal, everything in its place from last time. Prim couldn't help but give a brief glance to the pool table and then focused again on the girl.
Tears still streamed down Katla's cheeks along with a bloody nose, though she didn't have any wound. It probably came on from stress or the struggle. Katla fought, that much was for sure. Her dress was torn. Her feet shredded. Her hair matted. Cuts crisscrossed her body in various locations.
When she noticed Prim, she rattled her wrists against the metal legs of the desk she was tied to.
"Shh," Prim said, startled out of her trance.
Now or never. Prim ran forward and tugged at the rope at her feet. Upon finding the knot at the back, she picked at it until it frayed and finally loosened the strands. Her fingers fumbled a couple times in their haste and anxiety, but after several minutes, she finally got it free.
Once free, Katla's leg flew in the air, her toes whooshing only inches from Prim's nose. Prim fell on her butt in surprise, blinking away the shock.
Katla just tried to hurt her, like a caged animal lashing out for protection.
"Don't you want to be free?" Prim asked in confusion.
Katla's eyes widened. She stared at Prim warily for a moment before nodding her head, yes. Her arm came up to her mouth and tried to push down the cloth wrapped around her head and stuffed into her mouth as if she wished to say something. It didn't budge. Kalta glanced at Prim with large brown eyes, dead eyes. They might have once held life, but now there was only something small flickering, the rest was dull and flat. It took Prim a small second to recognize the look of hope. She was staring at Prim with hope.
Prim got off her butt and came closer to Katla, just out of arm and leg reach, just in case she decided to throw a few more violent moves.
"Ok, I'm going to take the cloth out of your mouth, but you have to promise me you won't scream."
Prim waited until Katla gave a small nod, and then she reached forward and unknotted the cloth at the back of her auburn hair. It tangled in the hair, and Katla emitted a few whimpers when Prim picked them out. It also got stuck in Katla's necklace, an ugly thing, just a circle of steel with an empty center. Prim wondered about the meaning of the necklace for a moment, so out of place on the girl, but ignored it. They wasted too much time already. Hannibal or Cato could enter the room at any moment.
"Sorry, they didn't tie these very good." Finally, she got it loose enough and tugged it down. Kalta took a few grateful gasps of breath. Red streaks, chafed from the cloth, tilted upwards on both sides of her mouth, giving her an unnatural raw smile even when she frowned.
Katla glanced at Prim as if she was looking at an alien.
"Why are you helping me?" Katla asked.
"Because I'm trapped too."
Katla's eyebrows furrowed before rising as if in recognition.
"Oh, I know you. You're Primrose Everdeen, right? Cato's...oh... the papers made it seem that you wanted... that you and him... " She finally deadpanned, glancing around her as if realizing why Prim was releasing her." That bastard. That fucking bastard. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It seems to run in the family—"
"Where are the keys?" Prim decided to cut her off early. It was the first time since her capture that someone validated that what he did was wrong, and Prim was afraid if Katla went any longer that she'd start to cry, and crying was detrimental to escape and survival. Two things on the top priority list at the moment.
Katla's face fell. "Hannibal has them."
"Oh," Prim said and sat back on her heels. She wasn't sure what to do next.
Was this the end of the escape plan? Granted, it was a pretty poorly thought out attempt.
That was about the moment, Prim saw something glinting out of the corner of her eyes, insisting on her looking up. She had seen it before, but had ignored it in favor of more important things. Now with a moment of transience, she followed her mind's eye. She had thought it was a pictograph, but it wasn't. There they were—the keys, their salvation, sitting on the top of the desk.
It was awfully cocky of Hannibal to leave keys sitting above his captive's head, even if there had been no way she could have reached them.
"No he doesn't," Prim smirked. She reached and picked them up, bringing them in front of Katla's eyes to jingle them. "I guess he's the stupid brother."
And Katla smirked back.
"You have no idea."
In a spark of bravery, she left the tracker bracelet in place of the keys, erasing any doubt on how Katla escaped.
Less than Five Minutes Later
They escaped through the window with the broken lock on the first floor in an abandoned bedroom, a grey room with a somber streak, the only color a splash of yellow flowers above the bed, the one Prim found on Coral's birthday to bring her out into the snow. The window was still broken, but it took both of them tugging on it to slide it open.
The cold hit them like bricks, and they tried to tighten their coats around themselves. Prim, having thought ahead, brought extra shoes and coat in her makeshift pillowcase bag. She hadn't been able to find another training outfit, and having only silk dresses, Katla had to make due with her old tattered dress.
As soon as they stepped foot outside, they took off in a sprint towards the woods. It was rough going. Prim wasn't much of a runner, and the shoes that she gave Katla were a size to small, and she winced with each step already running on injured feet. They left tracks in the snow, wobbly and uneven. She wanted to erase them, but knew that marks would still be there, and it would waste time.
They needed to put as much distance between them and the house as they could. And fast.
There was no clear plan. Katla thought she knew which direction she was going in by the direction of the stars. She pointed up in the sky, tracing a constellation which district 12 called the ladle. In district 2, they called it the Big Dipper.
"See that star," she pointed to an especially bright one, "My father told me if I ever got lost just to follow that, and it would lead back to the heart of the district."
"Did he expect for you to get lost?"
"My father expected many dangers. And he prepared me for as many as possible."
Prim was glad that he did, for she had no idea where they were going.
They ran for what seemed as if hours, but it really could have only been minutes. The trees whooshed past them, obscuring their view of the stars. After a while, it became a labyrinth, herding them to the center of the woods where the beasts resided.
They ran until Kalta hurtled to a stop. She bent over, grasping her knees with her hands, sucking in deep, trembling breaths. Prim copied her. After their frantic breathing, they glanced at each other. Prim smiled, but Katla's face stayed grim.
"Do you think we lost them?" Prim asked.
"No," Katla answered, and she kept walking with a noticeable limp, "It would take more than a couple miles in the snow for Hannibal to let me go, or I'm suspecting, Cato you."
"Why'd we stop then?"
Katla glanced at Prim from the corner of her eye.
"We need to keep moving."
She didn't answer her question, and it made her nervous.
"We're lost aren't we?"
Prim glanced up and squinted into the night. The trees created a blanket, making it impossible to see the sky clearly.
Katla didn't stop walking. The snow kicked up at places and melted into Prim's boots. Her toes were still warm, but with them soaked, it was only a matter of time before the cold seeped in and started to blacken her skin.
"Yes," Katla breathed so soft Prim almost didn't hear her.
Prim allowed the fear to stop her for a moment before she took a deep breath to calm herself and kept walking, her feet squishing into the wet lining of the boots.
Thirty Minutes Later
It started to snow. At first it was just little flurries floating down and landing on her coat, hair and nose with a gentle tickle. Then the wind picked up, slapping the snow into their faces like knives. It was only a matter of minutes before the world turned white with an only a small punctuation of green or brown from a tree. Visibility turned to only a few feet in front of them. Prim grasped the back of Katla's coattails, so that they wouldn't wander away from each other.
Then they'd be alone in their sea of white.
White, the absence of color, the absence of life. It was nothing and strong, and it covered everything. Prim opened her mouth to say something but sucked in the burning cold. It trickled down her throat and into her stomach, into her lungs and heart. It constricted her entire chest. Nature reminded her that she must save her breath to live. Her warmth inside her body was her only hope left. In the end, it was all she had.
"We need to find shelter," Katla yelled above the whistling of the wind. It howled in their ears with fury.
Prim could hear the unspoken words as well. Or we'll die.
The winds picked up, and they dropped to their knees in an instinctual form of protection, curling their heads down into their chests as if a fetus in the womb.
"I think I see something," Katla spoke again.
Katla's coattails slipped from her grasp. It was impossible to hold on with the wind whipping the fine stand of her hair into her eyes. Katla crawled out of sight. Prim stilled, a shock of panic running through her. Prim didn't realize how frightening loneliness could be, until it was just her and the wilderness.
When Katla crawled back into view, she almost kissed her.
"Over here," Katla screamed into the wind, battling the noise of the flash blizzard. She could barely hear her.
Prim crawled after her and into a small cave, if it could be called that. Stone walls surrounded them, but there wasn't any where to go back and there was only a small alcove for cold and snow to seep into. For the most part, the wind blew the opposite way, keeping a large spot of ground dry.
Prim lay flat, staring up at the small overhang, at her lifeline.
If Katla hadn't found shelter, no matter how meager...
Out of immediate danger, she was better able to access their condition.
The visible parts of Katla's skin were either red and chaffed as if burned, almost peeling, or it was pale, almost translucent. Thin blue veins struggled underneath, pumping frozen blood at a sluggish pace to her extremities. Thin trails of water streamed out of her nose, mixing with her previous bloody nose. Her eyes were wide, frightened, giving away the danger she knew them to be in. Prim assumed she looked the same.
"Do you think freedom is worth a life?" Katla asked. She shivered, violently.
It was then Prim realized that all of their clothes were sopping wet. If the situation was dangerous before, it was now dire.
Prim measured her words before speaking.
"I once knew a boy named Gale who told me that freedom was worth everything. I assume he also meant a person's life."
Katla nodded and stared into the blinding white in front of them.
"Good, because we'll surely die. I just wanted to know if it was worth it."