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Chapter Text

The war ends, and Katniss is an empty gun, still smoking from the last bullet she had misfired. That’s all she is now, in their eyes; a smoking hunk of scrap metal, no longer keen on obeying the hand that pulls its trigger. She is useless to the cause, useless to the new government, and, above all, useless to finish what she had inadvertently started when she put those nightlock berries into her palm two years ago. 

No one is waiting for her when she steps off the hovercraft, and there is, to her relief, nothing worth keeping up appearances for. She is almost glad that her mother isn’t here to see her emaciated form or the way her ribcage prods violently against her skin, just like it had when she’d nearly starved at the ripe age of eleven. History is wont to repeat itself, after all, and Katniss knows firsthand that it isn’t an enjoyable experience, watching the harrowing film reel as it begins to replay.  

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. I should be dead– I really should be dead, but here I am anyway, kicking up a feeble storm.

The sight of the Victors’ Village stirs up a strange feeling of comfort within her, which she quickly quashes as soon as she recognises it. With a stern pat on her shoulder, Haymitch slinks off to his own house and leaves Katniss standing before hers, her eyes blank as they glaze over the stately skeleton that had once sheltered her dead sister. 

In the brick-and-mortar belly of the skeleton, a fire crackles and blazes, filling every neglected crevice with woodsy smoke; it reminds her of happier times when grey, charred wisps had meant food and warmth instead of rubble and destruction. She glances towards the open kitchen, at the blackened stove covered in dust bunnies reminiscent of snowfall, and turns away so fast her head spins. 

She sits in the living room– funny, for she’s the only living thing to have sat in it for months on end–and watches the fire dance. She sits there for a long, long while, and the fire rises to lick the mantelpiece as if aware it’s got an audience before crouching low to slobber against the metal grate. She sits there until the sun rises and the moon crouches in the sky; she doesn’t get up when someone pounds incessantly on the door, rattling the metal doorknob. 

“Katniss? Katniss, are you in there?”

Greasy Sae eventually lets herself in after another two or so minutes of rapid, rapid knocking, a basketful of food swinging off her arm; tailing her like a wayward duck is Sae’s granddaughter, her small hands clutching a scrap of oily, fried dough. Katniss doesn’t say anything to them; she doesn’t need to. She likes to think that Greasy Sae sympathises with her current predicament well enough; there really is nothing like wanting to starve, to isolate, to kill yourself, and fail to do so. 

Maybe Katniss’ mind has decided to play tricks on her again, but she thinks she can see some semblance of understanding lingering in Greasy Sae’s old, wrinkled eyes as she fries half a dozen eggs on the stove. Those old eyes give Katniss’ frail body a once over, and a tut escapes the woman’s lips. 

“Goodness. You’ve seen better days, haven’t you?”

Blank young eyes meet spirited old ones. “Haven’t we all?” Katniss replies, her voice hoarse from both a lack of water and a lack of use. She coughs and tries to clear her throat but gives up after another moment; she won’t speak to anyone else today, and she’ll have to go through the whole ordeal again tomorrow. 

“Doesn’t mean that you’ve got to stay that way. Sally? Fetch Katniss here a glass of water, won’t you?” Sae calls, and the young girl comes running from the parlour, the piece of fried dough in her hands replaced by a skein of blue, blue yarn. 

“Katniss? Fetch me the yarn basket, won’t you?” her mother asks, her voice reverberating in the hollow of Katniss’ addled mind. 

“I don’t know what you knit for,” Katniss says, crossing into the parlour and passing her mother the structure of woven wicker; the blue skein of yarn stands stark against the others. “You could send for anything you wanted, you know; they’d bring it down from the Capitol.” 

“I’m making a blanket,” her mother says frankly, casting yarn onto her wooden needles with a surgeon’s precision, “and handmade items always hold better going into the future. There’s more… structural integrity to them.” 

A crisp giggle sounds from the figure reading on the other side of the couch, and Katniss snaps from the memory before her mind’s eye can focus on the blonde spectre present in every one of her nightmares.

“Where’d you get that?” Katniss asks. The blood in her veins strains hard against gravity as she stands up, a prizefighter pummelling his opponent. Before she knows it, she’s upright and holding on to the table for support, the muscles in her legs shaking after hibernating for so long. 

The girl– Sally– simply stares back, her youthful features reflective of the delicate strokes painted on the dolls that Katniss had always wanted to buy for her sister. Her dead sister. Her withered, dead sister, Prim. 

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My sister’s name was Primrose Everdeen. She was thirteen years old when President Coin toyed with her kindness and got her killed. She was thirteen years old when President Coin killed her. She was thirteen years old when she–

“Sally, give that back,” Sae says, glancing warily between her granddaughter and the half-starved girl before her. “How many times have I told you? You don’t take things from people without asking.”

Here are three truths: the eggs Greasy Sae had cracked minutes ago start sizzling on the pan, the unearthly smell of bacon grease fills the air, and the ball of yarn is gently set onto the kitchen table by a contrite-looking little girl, her doe eyes trained apologetically on Katniss’ face. 

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. The government doesn’t know what to do with me, and I don’t know what to do with myself. 

Katniss exhales. “No– no. You keep it. You take that and you keep it.” Katniss is much too tired to fight a child for a material scrap of memory; no one she knows can knit, anyway, and she’s not about to start learning. When Sally still stands reluctantly by the table, Katniss all but shoves the skein into the girl’s hands– she can’t bear to look at it.

Slowly, Sally looks up at Katniss and offers her a smile. “Thank you, miss.”

Katniss doesn’t know what to say in response, so she doesn’t say anything at all. The rest of the morning passes uneventfully; she eats little, drinks copiously, and pretends to not hear Greasy Sae say goodbye when she leaves. She also turns a blind eye to Sally, who painstakingly stokes the embers in the grate before she bounds after her grandmother. 

She goes back to watching the fire. It licks and it crouches, but above all, it burns; Katniss had done that, once, in a dress designed and cut and sewn by another ghost of her past. She wonders if Cinna will be among the cast haunting her in her sleep tonight; Finnick and Rue and Prim could use some company.

Outside Katniss’ window, the sun sets and the moon rises. Rain falls, pattering against the sloping roof and rolling off it in thick streams of water. In her youth, she had stood underneath the sky when it wept, joyfully drinking the skyborne gifts that sprung many a puddle in the Meadow; Prim had never seen the fun in it, but Gale and she had always–

The moon sets, and the sun rises. She does not sleep, and the rapping comes again.

Chapter Text

Here are another three truths. The sun rises in the east, a steel ball burning orange from the inside out. In reciprocation, for nothing is allowed to step foot into this world for free, the moon sets in the west, chasing hungrily after the fading light. And despite her appetite for watching this ritual play out day by day, Katniss Everdeen is fooling no one– not even herself– when she insists on staying up for the third night in a row.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I have been back in District 12 for four weeks. I haven’t slept in three days. I woke up screaming the last time I fell asleep. I wonder if I’ll be having nightmares for the rest of my life. 

When sleep finally claims her, it is swift and initially merciful. She sails on the smooth, undulating river of peace for a while; the green grass seems to stretch forever, the dandelions sway gently in the mellowing wind, and for once in her life, Katniss doesn’t feel the need to shake herself awake. 

She swerves around a riverbend, and there, yellow and flowering, is a bush of primroses. They’re unassuming enough: she wants to reach out, wants to pluck a bouquet’s worth of flowers and cuddle them to her chest, but the ashes oozing from the soil stop her in her tracks. 

Katniss’ blood runs cold. Her stomach twists itself into an unbreakable knot, and she suddenly realises that she has been knocked backwards into the tranquil, unassuming river. 

Here, below the still waters, she is surrounded by the knobbly bones of the children caught in the crossfire— the confused children of the Capitol who had never known pain in their lifetime, and the bleeding children of District 12 who were far too used to it. Prim stands amongst them, her forehead haloed by dried, crusting blood; Katniss frantically tears her eyes away.

She is drowning, she registers. She is drowning, and despite every voice in her head screaming at her to let the waves drag her under, she kicks and claws against the current, and–

Sunlight pierces through the window, working its way between her eyelids and brightening the tortured folds of her mind. For once, she is grateful for the sun– the blinding sun, the scorching sun, the ravaging sun–for how radiant it is. 

Blearily, Katniss rubs at the gunk in her eyes, watching as it sticks to the pad of her finger like granulated sugar. Her shoulders ache something fierce from falling asleep slumped against the table; face twisting as she stretches out the crick in her neck, she takes a moment to glance at the world existing beyond the grimy glass. The world that, despite everything it’s been through, continues to breathe and work and live, when all Katniss wants to do is curl up underground and– dare she say it– cry.

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old, and the world beyond my window has likely watched seventeen generations of Everdeens breathe and work and live. Surely it knows more than a seventeen-year-old soldier; surely it can carry on, despite the war. Surely it can make an excuse for a seventeen-year-old soldier whose sister, too young to fight but too old to stand idle, has been killed by her allies. Surely the world beyond my window doesn’t expect me to carry on as I used to.

She stares at the woodgrain pattern of the table and contemplates going for a long, long dive in the lake, but she finds that she can’t quite bring herself to do it. For some reason, something inside her keeps her tied to the earth, to the house, and to the chair that she hasn’t moved from in three days. And so Katniss sits, stoic and soulless as a marble idol, watching the sun track an arrow’s path across the sky.

The phone rings, sometimes, piercing as the call of some demonic bird. Katniss doesn’t answer; she knows who’s waiting patiently on the other end of the line, and she doesn’t want to be mentally prodded over radio waves by Dr Aurelius– not right now. Avoidance is something she’s an expert at, after all. 

Katniss sings whenever the phone shrills, her voice breaking on the high notes of the ballads her father had taught her as a child, and finds that she no longer needs to clear her throat when she greets Greasy Sae and Sally in the morning. Sometimes, if she leans out the window and warbles for a while, she can see the mockingjays still for a beat, silent as the notes float to their ears. Perhaps this is what she lives for, these carefully crafted moments of contentment where Katniss blissfully feels… well, nothing. 

She’s in the middle of an old folk song when someone raps on the door. It isn’t the hurried pounding that Katniss has grown accustomed to, but something wispy and violent all at once. It’s not Greasy Sae, but someone else. Katniss debates pretending to be asleep, but her curiosity inevitably gets the best of her; she calls, “It’s open!”

Drunken stumbling echoes through the brick skeleton, unevenly laced boots colliding against the flooring, and Katniss immediately knows who it is. 

“I thought you’d left,” she says, after a moment. She doesn’t recognise her speaking voice, for it’s finally returned to what it’d been like before she’d screamed herself hoarse that day in the Capitol, the ground before her splattered with her sister’s blood. 

There’s a bottle of translucent liquor in Haymitch’s left hand; half of it is empty, and the remainder sloshes about the bottom with every wobbly step he takes. When looks up, his sandy head of hair matted like the coat of a mongrel trotting the streets, she sees that his eyes are hazy, enshrouded by an alcoholic fog. 

“Can’t leave,” he slurs. He glances around, settling into a chair opposite Katniss. “I’ve been assigned to care for you. Leaving would be desertion, and I don’t want Paylor coming after me.” 

“Since when have you cared about what Paylor does?” 

“Since he started controlling how much booze comes in,” Haymitch says frankly. He drinks, and slams the bottle onto the tabletop; Katniss flinches involuntarily. “And I’m your mentor; I can’t just let you waste away.”

“You let yourself waste away.”

The fire belches smoke: Haymitch burps and the air smells of expensive Capitol champagne. “I’m not mentoring myself. Have you been picking up Dr Aurelius’ calls?”

“He’ll cover for me,” she says. “Why are you here?”

Haymitch takes another swig. “I’m checking in on you. Greasy Sae tells me you haven’t been moving much. Go hunting. Get outside; breathing in smoke all day can’t be good for you, Katniss.”

“What does it matter?” His nagging is getting to her head. “I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“You’re home,” Haymitch offers. “You’re back in your old stomping grounds.”

She fixes him with a glare cold enough to wake the dead. “My home was bombed,” she grinds. “My father is dead. My sister is dead. My mother is in District 4, and she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t belong here; not anymore.” She feels like a scratched record; why doesn’t he understand? 

“You know that she loves you.”

“I do,” Katniss says woodenly. “I know that she can’t bear being back here. Neither can I.” 

“But you came back anyway,” Haymitch says, voice dripping with satisfaction.

Katniss reaches for the bottle; Haymitch pulls it away with a motion far too swift for her, and she nearly growls with frustration. “I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?” 

He waits for her to finish seething. 

“I can’t look around the house without thinking of Prim. I can’t go outside without hearing Gale Hawthorne’s voice. I can’t– I can’t stay here and know that Peeta’s not down the road.” District 12 is haunted by a litany of ghosts, both dead and alive. She wonders what Gale is doing now; she wonders if he’s seen Prim gazing accusatorily at him in his sleep. 

(In her dreams, she hunts with the Gale she knew, setting traps in the grass and crouching behind boulders as they watch deer trot across the ground. It’s always a rude awakening when she realises that he’s not the same person anymore; sometimes, Katniss spends her time wondering if she ever knew him at all.)

Haymitch doesn’t say anything after that. The chances are that he isn’t sober enough to offer her the insightful response necessary for such a statement, which is fine by her; she doesn’t want anyone to redirect her train of thought. Still, part of her yearns for guidance in traversing the waters of guilt.

He lets her take a sip from the bottle before he leaves; she spits the tentative mouthful onto the floor and he snickers, simultaneously amused at her inexperience and enraged with her for wasting the precious last drops of his alcohol. Katniss can live with that, for she’d probably run out of room trying to write down the names of everyone who’s cursed her name under their breath at least once. 

When he slips through the door, she thinks she’s seen the last of her mentor’s shaggy-headed figure, but he comes in the day after with a trap in his hands. It’s rusty, and Katniss can tell right away that it’s not big enough to hold anything larger than a small hare, but she turns it over when Haymitch sets it down anyway, dirt shaking loose from the contraption. 

The metal feels cool against Katniss’ fingertips, a welcome reprieve from the almost oppressive heat spurring from the fire burning before her. “Where’d you get this?”

“Never you mind that. You get on outside.” He nudges her heel with the toe of his boot. “It’s a nice day.” A beat, and then, “You can’t stay in here forever, you know.”

(Oh, she knows; she’s just trying to stave off that day until it’s staring her in the face.)

She contemplates going for a while: the woods seem to be whispering her name, the words carried on the breeze that flutters by her window. Katniss almost follows the siren’s call, but she eventually shakes her head no; she’s thought far too much of Gale today. Going into the woods would be like stepping into a lucid nightmare. 

To her relief, Haymitch doesn’t press her any further: instead, he declines Greasy Sae’s offer of breakfast and disappears just as quickly as he’d come. His words stay in her head, rattling like dice at the bottom of a glass. 

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. I should’ve gone hunting today, but I didn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Is reconstruction always so difficult? Was it this hard for my mother when my father died? Where is Peeta Mellark? 

She sings for the rest of the afternoon, and tries not to think of the dread creeping into her bones. 

Chapter Text

She doesn’t want to be here.

The study brings back too many memories and sparks far too many unwarranted journeys into the dark, cloistered recesses of her mind. When Katniss had been in this room last, she’d been taking tea with Coriolanus Snow, glaring warily at the tiger who had sat opposite her with a wan smile screwed onto his face. 

Katniss doesn’t want to think about it, so she wills herself not to. 

My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am 17 years old. There is a sturdy-looking box on the desk made of cardboard. I open it and find my father’s hunting jacket, the plant book, and my parents’ wedding photo. They looked so young, then. I don’t think I’ll ever look as happy as they did here.

She brushes her fingers over the locket Peeta had given her when they’d been in the clock arena, waiting for the horrors that spilled like bats from each section. It had been like peeling back the waxy skin of an orange, Katniss reckons– a segmented orange that she’d have lots of trouble stomaching. It takes her a minute to realise that it’s real, a solid weight nestled in her palm.

A sheath of arrows and two bows sit at the bottom of the pile. This is it, she thinks. Her whole material existence has been condensed into a piddly handful of sentimental items, items that would mean nothing to someone else. She would throw her head back and allow bitter words to slip through her lips if she weren’t so grateful to have everything back in her hands.  

She’d come for the bow and arrow– Greasy Sae had tipped her off and told her of the box’s existence down the hall– but now that she’s staring them down, Katniss can’t bring herself to take them out. 

Somewhere outside, a shovel slams hard against the Earth, and Katniss instinctively pinches herself hard to wake from whatever nightmare this is. She hisses in pain, but no gut-wrenching scream tears itself from the linings of her throat. She’s awake, and someone is digging outside her door. Perhaps it’s her grave; perhaps they’ve relocated Prim’s headstone. 

She storms down the hall with certainty thrumming through her veins, a certainty that she hasn’t felt since she’d stood before the president’s mansion, her bow buzzing with mounting apprehension. Something’s wrong; something has changed overnight, but she doesn’t know what. 

Katniss doesn’t register that she is outside until it’s far too late, the weather teetering on the threshold of spring just as she falters five paces beyond her front door. 

She freezes when she sees him standing there, wisps of his sandy blonde hair clinging to his sweaty forehead. His cheeks flushed with exertion, Peeta is rhythmically overturning the earth in front of him, the muscles in his arms straining; next to him is a wheelbarrow filled with five bushes, dry and scraggly. He’s here , she thinks, her eyes drinking him in– Peeta Mellark’s familiar frame is the oasis at the end of the way, and she is a parched soldier, grateful and exhausted. He’s back. He’s home.

At first, his eyes fail to meet hers, but when they finally do, Katniss is beyond relieved to see that they’ve reverted to their beautiful shade of blue, watery but crystalline all at once.

“You’re back,” she says. 

“Dr Aurelius wouldn’t let me go from the Capitol until yesterday,” Peeta replies. His skin is covered in burns, and he wears a half-frown as he looks her up and down. “And he told me that you can’t avoid him forever. He knows that you’re ignoring him.”

Katniss wants so badly to be angry with him, to snap at him for daring to meddle in her business, but she’s far too happy for resentment. She looks at the bushes again. “What are you doing?” she asks, slowly diverting the conversation from further accusations. 

He hesitates, as if unsure how to phrase what he’s about to say next. “I went to the woods this morning,” Peeta explains, “and dug them up. I thought we could plant some along the house: you know, for her.” 

It takes Katniss a moment too long to realise that they are evening primroses, with dirt dangling from the roots of the bushes like hanged men. “For Prim,” she says. They are not for Snow. These are primroses; they are not white, or musky, or a part of the tools used to destroy her psyche. These are for her sister. Her dead sister. “That’d– that would be nice. Thank you.” 

My name is Katniss Everdeen. My sister is still dead. Peeta Mellark is home. He’s planting flowers in her honour. I left the house for the first time in months, today. I don’t know if I’ll be okay, but I hope so. I really do hope so. Peeta Mellark is home. My sister is dead. The sky is blue. My name is Katniss Everdeen. 

It takes everything in her to tear herself away from him, but she does. There is a rose in her room that she needs to burn, after all.