Part Two of Three

Sometimes, I wish Katniss had died in the Hunger Games.

An overwhelming feeling of shame always accompanies this thought, but I can't help it. I know she would never have allowed me to go to the Capitol as long as she was of Reaping age as well, so wishing she hadn't volunteered is futile. Wishing itself is useless, I know, but I can't stop.

I see the dejected and calculating look of worry that crosses Katniss's face when she thinks she is alone, and I watch her anxieties manifest as she practically tiptoes around our new house in the Victor's Village. I see her skin blanche whenever she crosses paths with Peeta Mellark, and even the mention of Gale Hawthorne makes her eyes grow distant and worrisome after a few weeks. She spends more time in the woods than she ever has, even though we have more food than we could ever need.

While my waist grows so much that Mother has to order a whole set of new dresses for me, Katniss's eating becomes more restricted and her face becomes more haggard than it looked during the winter we very nearly starved. The freckles that dotted my nose when I was a small child return after many late summer days spent lounging in the sunshine with books and drawing paper. But even the newest and most thrilling Capitol books cannot occupy my mind as I watch my sister fall apart.

Nighttime is the worst for Katniss; many nights, she wakes the entire house with her screams and pants. Nothing we say or do can calm her when these fits begin, and after a while she stops sleeping altogether. One evening, I watch as Mother slips some herb into Katniss's tea. Though her cries do not wake us that night, the next morning she sobs for hours in the hall closet, claiming that she was drowning in her dream – that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't wake up. Mother vows to me that she will never give Katniss that medicine again, and Katniss goes back to long days and nights spent growing weaker both physically and mentally.

Katniss barely speaks to me most days. I'm not sure if she is trying to shelter me from the demons she is hiding away throughout the day or if she just can't relate to me anymore, but either way it hurts. Does she think that I've somehow remained pure throughout her agony?

I watched my sister parade around the Capitol, surely humiliated in her outfits. I've watched her lie on television for my own safety and the safety of our family. I've sat awake all night while she languished in a tree, so sure that she would die I couldn't even cry through my terror. I watched her pass out after painful tracker jacker stings, I've seen her defenseless at the hands of a would-be enemy. I've watched her narrowly avoid death by a Career, and cried with her as she sang a dying girl to rest. Through the blood and watching her put arrows through her competitors – just children themselves – how could I have possibly remained the same girl she left earlier in the summer?

The president visits, and he takes our last semblance of security with him when he leaves.

I snoop and listen in on conversations until I piece together what exactly it is that Katniss must do to keep our family safe – marry Peeta Mellark, have his children, live a life that is a charade, and eventually watch her children die at the hands of the Capitol. The realization that her love for me has trapped her in a vicious cycle of love and loss for as long as she will live is enough to send me running as far away from the Victor's Village as I can manage with the new fence in place. I collapse into the mud not too far from our old house in the Seam, and my salty tears mix with fat raindrops as a storm begins.

During the weeks that Katniss is away on the Victory Tour, I create a new routine for myself. I wake early and take a long walk in the snow – the only thing that can clear my troubled mind – and then spend the morning next to the fire reading everything I can about medicine, plants, and caring for the injured. I take a nap after lunch and spend the remainder of the afternoon tidying the house and shadowing Mother as she works. She teaches me how to create salves and other remedies from the plants in our woods, and I grow more adept with each passing day.

Peeta Mellark proposes, Katniss comes home, and the Everdeen family prepares its oldest daughter for marriage.

My routine continues, though instead of spending my afternoons with Mother, I spend them with my sister. She still refuses to talk to me, but after so many years of watching pain flicker across her face in varying degrees, I know she saw terrible things on the Victory Tour. I don't ask, though, and of course she doesn't tell me anything. The only relief comes in the form of Peeta Mellark, who is a constant, steady source of comfort for my sister.

I'm quietly proud that I'm able to care for Gale after he is whipped, that I am able to provide some comfort to Katniss during a time of harshness and brutality by caring for her best friend. I'm able to keep a level head throughout Gale's moans of pain as Mother and I tend to the open, oozing cuts on his back, and it is during those hours that I spend hovering over Gale and later Katniss, after she breaks her ankle, that my calling in life is solidified.

I decide to dedicate my life to healing others.

We are huddled around the television when President Snow reads the Quarter Quell announcement, and when I realize what the words mean, I bury my face in my hands as my mother shrieks. My worst nightmare has been realized. They are taking my sister away from me again.

This time, she won't be coming home.

Katniss runs out the door before I can reach her, and I spend the next twenty minutes wandering through the cold and wetness to find her. She has disappeared, most likely to be alone, and I wonder why she won't allow herself to cry in front of us. Why won't she let us see her pain? For a moment, I am enraged with her selfishness – she isn't the only one hurting! Why won't she include me in her pain? Why won't she let me feel this too?

I call her name for several minutes before my voice goes hoarse and I decide to return to the house. She'll come back to us when she's ready and no sooner than that. When she does come home, she's drunk, which is new for her. I can't say I'm too surprised, but I did expect something…more. She falls asleep soon after, and I hear her vomiting in the bathroom the next morning.

There is something different in her eyes when she hugs me, and I wonder if she sees the way I, too, have hardened with time in the months since my first Reaping. I know I shouldn't, but I find myself bitterly hoping that she realizes how different I am, that she senses how much I have grown.

I bite back a scream of frustration, and she moves on.

She trains constantly in the weeks leading up to the Reaping for the Quarter Quell, and I get back to my earlier routines. Though the circumstances are horrendous, there is something encouraging about the way that Katniss dedicates herself to training and preparing for the Quarter Quell, and I wonder what is motivating her to work so hard.

I want so badly for her to come home, and I hope that her motivation is to come back to me once more.

The Reaping is just as one would expect, and before anyone has time to think, Katniss and Peeta are herded onto a Capitol-bound train without time to say goodbye to their families. This change of tradition doesn't surprise me, but what does surprise me is my lack of concern over the missed farewells. There were no variables on which tributes would be chosen, and I've known for weeks that Katniss is entering the arena again. My lack of care disturbs me.

I try for days to pinpoint what exactly I am feeling, and after a week I decide that it is not confidence or assurance, but rather acceptance of my sister's fate.

While she is training and preparing for interviews, I spend my days as she once spent hers. Katniss's closet becomes my favorite hiding place, and when Mother leaves to attend to a patient, I stay behind and rifle through Katniss's old things. One day, Mother finds me asleep in a closet and wearing our father's old hunting jacket. Another day, I try on every discarded wedding dress left in her closet. The pure, white material seems to mock me, to mock all that we have worked for in the last year. We've reconstructed our tiny, fragile family only to have it toppled again.

Mother begs me to put Katniss's things away and close her bedroom door, and I wonder if we will ever open the door again after Katniss dies. I stay away for four days, but as the opening of the Games draws near, I take to sleeping in her bed. The still-rumpled sheets are the closest I have been to my sister since she left…if I'm honest with myself, I feel closer to my sister now than I did when she still lived in this house.

I wonder why it worked out like this – why my name was chosen from thousands of slips that first day, why Katniss and Peeta survived, why Katniss was sent to die again – and am filled with an intense loathing toward myself. If it weren't for me, if my name hadn't been chosen that first time, Katniss would be safe and have a chance at happiness. From the moment she volunteered, Katniss gave up her entire life so that I might live. She gave up any future she may have had, however bleak, to ensure my own chance at life.

Katniss deserves the very best of everything – she deserves a chance to love herself and grow into a beautiful young woman. She deserves to never worry again about where she will find her next meal. She deserves to be clothed in soft materials and sleep in a warm home every night – to sleep soundly throughout the night and dream of the possibilities before her. She deserves love and marriage on her own terms, and she deserves to see her children grow up to be healthy and strong and free from the cruelty of the Reaping.

But when she volunteered to go in my place, Katniss sealed both of our fates.

The person who has the world and all its opportunities before her?

Not Katniss Everdeen.

It's me.

I'm very grateful to my friend Everlark Pearl for her help with this story. Please check out her wonderful stories if you haven't already.