Chapter Text
Knitting is calming, soothing even, and Annie loved it for that. The screams and the sights of the Games disappear with the movements of her needles. It is something she can focus on. The idea came from Katniss’s mother, but it’s Johanna who got her the needles and wool the first time, and she’s grateful for it.
Johanna is also the one who taught her, and it had been a surprise that she even knew how… but she had always been a surprising woman after all.
She has knitted for everyone that she knows now.
Sometimes, she even knits for people who are dead. It distressed her at first, but then Johanna suggested they could lay those on the tombs of the people they’ve lost. It’s strangely sentimental, coming from her, and just for that reason, Annie considers it for a moment… but she eventually decides against it, and gives them away to survivors.
The dead don’t get cold. The living do.
She makes scarves too, and socks, and just about everything she can think of. It’s just a way to keep herself sane at first, but she realizes she trully enjoys it, and even when the pain of all her losses starts to go a little, she keeps knitting. It helps dealing with the memories, with her fear of being a bad mother, with the idea that Johanna might disappear one day like everyone else.
"You should sell these," Johanna grumbles one night, clearly annoyed that she can’t get on Annie’s lap because there’s a half finished sweater there. "Then they’d be useful at last."
Annie laughs, too fast and too high, because Johanna has been wearing one of her sweater for three days now… one of her earlier works, an ugly thing that’s full of holes… and the smaller woman claims that it’s comfortable and warm, and that after years in the Capitol, she’s done with being fashionable, thanks.
Annie laughs, until she realizes that the sweater is all that Johanna is wearing. The sound dies in her throat then, and before she can say anything, the other woman’s lips are on her, kissing her demandingly while her hands grab the wool and needle to throw them aside.
She smiles into the kiss.
Knitting helps her stay grounded, but other things work just fine too.