Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Primrose loves Katniss, who is Seam dark and Seam true and sees everything.

“Where are you going?” Katniss asks, frowning, and Prim kisses her forehead.

“Nowhere,” Prim lies.

…

Prim hates this bed, specifically. She hates the threads of sheets she could never afford and the softness of a mattress that barely creaks. She digs her fingers in, hating it. There’s hot breath on the back of her neck. There’s weight on her hips. She hates this.

Hating this doesn’t mean that she won’t keep coming back, again and again. Hating this doesn’t mean that she doesn’t kiss Cray on the mouth and smile shyly when he asks to see her again. Hating this doesn’t mean Katniss starves.

Prim is Town light and Town deceitful. Prim is pretty, Town or Seam, and she looks tiredly at her face in Cray’s polished mirror and thinks of cutting it off.

…

Prim has her name in the Reaping fifteen times. Katniss has hers in only once.

“Don’t be scared,” Prim says.

“I’m not,” Katniss says, defiant and naïve, and Prim is so glad that her little sister gets to live like that.

…

Katniss hates blood and fuss. She’s happier with frogs in hand and dirt between her toes, and Prim lets her run wild no matter what the neighbors say. Prim never got to be wild. She watches Katniss wrestle Gale in their yard and knows she’s done the right thing.

Their mother is a ghost Prim remembers to feed because she’s a good girl, still, but their mother is locked away in a place no one can touch. Prim is all right with that. She’s made her peace, because there’s no purpose to holding a grudge. It burns out what people need to stay alive. She tells Katniss their mother is sick, and it’s true. It’s just not a sickness most understand.

Prim holds them all up, healer in the daylight and seller after dark. Prim gives and gives, because Prim has a heart too wide and hopeful for their lives.

“Dandelions,” Prim said, once upon a long time ago, rooting up plants with Katniss, “They’re edible. You’ll like them.”

Her little sister, all bone and ruin. Her little sister, heartbroken and grieving.

So Prim went to Cray when she was twelve with stuffing in her shirt. She hates it, but she’s never been sorry, and one day she’ll be able to set up real business on her own without the slippery help of the Head Peacekeeper. And she manages, because no one but the jealous would ever call her a whore. The Merchants might not want to give her the time of day, but after the sun goes down where else will they get the herbs and tinctures for their most embarrassing conditions? Who else will help anyone?

She has a cat and a goat, to go with her sister and mother. Creatures biting and fierce, creatures dull and senseless. Buttercup slams against her ribs when she curls up on the floor after Cray, and Prim cries into his coarse fur. Lady ambles stupidly across their meager patch of grass, and Katniss pulls too hard on her teats, but Prim can’t be there all the time.

“Katydid,” Prim murmurs, hugging Katniss against her on the nights she can sleep, “Be good.”

Katniss chirps like a cricket. Prim loves her so much; she loves her more than she could ever love anything else, her fierce and fearless sister.

…

“I volunteer!” Prim screams, too high and too light, but it doesn’t matter, not at all, because Rory drags Katniss back while she bites and claws at him, and Prim goes forward. She goes forward.

They don’t get to have Katniss. They can have anything else, even her life, but not Katniss.

Then they take Rye Mellark and Prim knows she’ll have to die, but that’s all right. She saved Kat. That’s all she needs.

…

What’s Rye Mellark to her, anyway?

She tried to go to Cray when she was eleven, the first time. There was nothing else left for her. Kat’s baby clothes were in tatters and she’d sold everything that was left to them but what they needed to stay alive. More than that, actually. Prim huddled across from the garbage across from the Mellark bakery and wished she was brave enough to try.

“Hey,” Rye said, shoving bread into her nerveless hands, “Run. My mother will—just go.”

So Prim went, clutching the warmth of rich, hearty bread to her stark ribs.

He gave it to her because she’s beautiful and she’s sympathetic, Prim rationalizes. He fed her because he expected a return. Except—except, he never has, not once. He’s stayed funny and irreverent and apparently oblivious to her, and Prim just wants the right kind of people to live. It’s not her. But it might be Rye and Katniss.

He has a little brother just Kat’s age. Prim doesn’t know how to get jaded, not after all this time. She doesn’t know how not to care.

Katniss made her promise to come home, but Prim knows she won’t.

…

“My little brother has the biggest crush on your sister,” Rye says, tightly, sitting as far from her as he can. Prim smiles sadly.

“I hope they get together,” Prim says, without a tremor, “Kat loves his bakery designs. She never says it, but she always drags us down there on your fresh day.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, raw and haunted. She walks over to pick his hand up. Squeezes.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, and she knows she’ll die, so she could say more. But she doesn’t. And maybe she’s not so sure she won’t make it, actually. Maybe she has some hope after all. And then she’s sorry for Rye, who saved her life once, but will never do it again.

…

“Diamonds,” Cinna says, and Prim shines as bright as she can while she’s crying.

…

She’s hopeless in training. She can point and aim a blowgun, but that’s it. If she’s up close to someone she could, theoretically, find all their weak points—but if she’s close to anyone they’ll slit her throat before she has a chance to do that.

They call her the shining girl, but she’s not sharp or hard or precious. She’s just Prim Everdeen. She was born to help, not hurt. How is she supposed to do this? What is she supposed to rely on? Maybe she should just run for the Cornucopia and die as fast as she can.

But who will take care of Katniss?

What is she going to do with herself?

Prim thinks of dark, honest Kat under Cray’s thick weight.

…

“Tell me how to win,” she says, steadily, to Haymitch, “Or no one will sell you liquor again. I swear. I’ll say it before the countdown ends. I’ll make sure.”

People love her. And she loves Katniss. She can make this happen, even after she dies.

“You’re smart,” Haymitch says, after a long, long silence, “I can’t tell you how to win. What I did won’t work for anyone else. But I can tell you that if you’re the smartest person out there, you’ll have a chance.

Stop looking at weapons. Look at survival. You’re a healer, right?”

She’s a healer. She knows exactly what things will kill people the quickest, because she’s not cruel, and sometimes in District Twelve—

Sometimes you do what you need to.

She thinks of Cray’s weight.

It’s easy.

…

On the second day Prim decides she could kill Rye, if she needs to, but it’d be easier to tell him that he’s strong and he can survive the Cornucopia. Haymitch looks at her stroking Rye’s elbow and she thinks he understands. Prim has heard about Maysilee, because she listens to people talking. They don’t look at each other. But Haymitch knows her.

Prim thought she could live with dying but no one else will save Katniss. No one else will love her sister like she needs to be loved. And Prim volunteered. She owes her sister this much; she owes her everything.

Maybe she won’t survive. But that doesn’t mean she gets to stop trying.

(If she lives, she decides she’ll kill Cray. They’ll have to let her, if she does it right after the Games.

If she lives, she knows she won’t really kill Cray, because there are people who need her. But maybe she can make him go away.)

Rye is strong and brave and saved her life already. He saved her whole family. Prim needs to kill him. It should be harder, she thinks, to understand that, but she has also been in charge of amputations since she was very small and her mother had no stomach for it.

…

On the third day she realizes she inherited her father’s excellent sense of aim.

…

“Stay alive,” Haymitch says, and she hurts for him, this strange and broken man she’s only known for a few days. His eyes are lakes of horror, though. His hands shake when he brushes back her weightless blonde hair.

“Run,” he says, “Run from the Cornucopia. Don’t stop. I’ll get you what you need.”

…

At her interview Prim sat as tall as she could, but she was made tiny by the Careers who came before her—almost everyone else, too, because she barely scrapes five feet and ninety pounds. There are children bigger than she is.

But she sat there in her white, diamond studded dress, and said: “I volunteered because I love Kat more than anything. She’s my whole world. I want to go home to her, so much. Could you help me?”

And it was so artless the crowd roared.

…

“Slut,” Marvel whispered into her ear, pinning her against the spear stand.

She thought about the irony.

…

Prim knows the names of every single person going in with her, so she knows that she’s standing between Hayley from 6 and Ruth from 9.

When the countdown ends she whirls on her stand and doesn’t listen to those little girls dying.

…

The worst part of the Hunger Games is that Prim is actually well equipped for this. She’s used to blood and death and screaming. She knows how to shimmy up trees and lock herself in to sleep. Cinna hasn’t painted a target on her back. She sits in about the same place as the clever boy from Five and the tiny girl from Eleven who shatters Prim every time she thinks about her.

People don’t remember her, except—Haymitch wasn’t lying. After the first shuddering night he fetches her a water bottle with iodine capsules (she already found the stream) and a tightly wrapped sleeping bag. With the bag and the water bottle, and her knowledge of plants—

“I love you,” she says to the night sky, to her sister, “Go to sleep, Katydid. Don’t worry about me.”

And she sings her sister to sleep, quietly, not knowing if it’s the middle of the day or the middle of the night in Twelve. She sings to Katniss because it keeps her all right.

The first night kills twelve people. The second kills one. Prim knows that means that things are going to change for everyone.

Rye is still alive.

“I love you, Rory,” she says, because she’s never said it to him before, “Please. Take care of Katniss. And Haymitch. I trust you, okay?”

…

On the third day in the arena, Prim meets Daisy.

Correction: Prim saw Daisy well before then, but never talked to her, because she was afraid.

“Hi,” Prim says, now, “Are you hungry?”

Daisy has Katniss’ hollow dark eyes, her sunken cheeks. She has Katniss’ fragile distrust. So Prim calls to the trees when she hears them rustle and is surprised when Daisy actually falls out of them.

And then isn’t, because Daisy is so small.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Prim murmurs, fishing handfuls of supplies out of her foraging, “It’s okay. I’ll take care of you.”

“Thank you,” Daisy says, desperate and wan, curling up on Prim’s lap after her first reluctant feast. Prim offers her berries.

Fourteen down when she stands up. Nine to go.

…

It’s not that Prim doesn’t hate herself in a sharp and awful way, after. But Daisy was the youngest of five. Her family didn’t need her like Prim’s family needs her.

And it’s horrific and evil and cruel and unimaginable. It’s every awful thing a person can think of and Prim wants to chew her wrists open, except.

Except.

And this is the true horror of the Hunger Games: that you end up wanting to win, after all you’ve done, or else it means nothing.

…

Prim is glad that she doesn’t know how Rye dies in the arena, while she’s still in it.

(It tears her heart up like a tractor over a rabbit’s warren but she can’t feel this, she can’t let these things keep happening to her; she loves Rory, she loves Rory, she whispers to him every night and has to keep loving Rory or she is going to tear herself into pieces.)

“Katydid,” she whispers, strapped to a tree with her eyes closed, “Katniss.”

There’s nothing else to say, because she knows her sister will never love her again.

…

When she sinks poison into the lake she’s honestly shocked that all the Careers left die of it.

But then it’s three.

…

Then Fallow drinks, and it’s two.

…

Watt, from District Five. Primrose, from District Twelve.

When it comes down to them it feels almost ordained, like it never could have been anyone else. The clever genius and the poisonous herbalist. It’s a pretty story and a pretty confrontation.

Watt is the first person Prim ever kills directly, at her own two hands, because Watt is staggering and poison dizzy and Prim needs to go home more than anyone else. She needs to think that, anyway.

The hovercraft reaches for her. She goes, not believing.

…

They love her, their tricky, determined little healer-monster. They love her and her light hair and pale skin and blue eyes, and they miss all the olive tones to her and the darkness of her blue. Her fluke of genetics is turned into a norm. Her sister is made a freak of heredity. They like Prim pale and untouched.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Haymitch says, gently, and she hates him more than anyone else because he’s close enough to hurt.

And in the same moment she stops hating him, because he saved her life over and over, and he did it while his heart was mulch. He did it while she was screaming and thrashing in her bloody bed, foam at the corners of her mouth, while she bit and cursed and sobbed. He was there. He didn’t abandon her.

“How are my family?” She croaks.

“They’re fine,” Haymitch says, all wrecked and awful, “You did all the right things.”

Then she sleeps without horror, beyond the average.

…

“I love you,” she tells Katniss, “Please.”

Her sister runs and runs away.

“I love you too,” Rory says, earnestly, but how is Prim supposed to ever love anything again? How could she even start to care about anything?

She’s shattered at the moment she locked her hands around Watt’s throat and knew he wasn’t going to twist free this time. She’s as trapped there as he was. She’s lost in his wide dark eyes and fluttering mouth.

…

Do they even need to ask when they say Katniss might not have to be Reaped?

Not really.

But they do, anyway, and Prim looks at their stark laws and brutal truths and isn’t naïve.