InsaneJournal

Who: Katniss and Primrose Everdeen
When: Afternoon/early evening
Where: Katniss and Prim's apartment
What: Little sister taking elder but clearly not wiser sister to task for the whole forgetting to sleep thing
Status: In progress


Katniss paused outside the door to her apartment and leaned against the wall of the hallway, tilting her head until it rested against the cool plaster and taking deep, even breaths. Right, first thing’s first, close the eyes for a good minute so they won’t be as bloodshot, then check your clothes over for blood or rips. Breathe deep and relax your stomach to try to keep it from rumbling. Then shoulders straight. Get used to smiling. Think of something to say when you walk in the door. As she thought each step, Katniss forced her body to perform it, looking no further ahead than the motion of squeezing her eyes shut, of straightening her shoulders. If she thought of the reasons she was standing in apartment complex hallway trying to make herself look like she wasn’t so tired she was ready to collapse where she stood and sleep in the hallway, the friend she had to find and the little sister she couldn’t worry, she would have been paralyzed. It had been her first lesson in survival when she had been twelve and trying to learn to provide for a family – don’t try to think of how to provide for a family with no job and nothing to trade, no one could do that. Think of how to get past the fence. Think of how to set up a snare, how to befriend the boy in the woods who can set them better than you. Think of how to put one foot in front of the other until it becomes easy.

Nothing was easy now, however, and Katniss stayed like that, leaning against the wall with her eyes shut, longer than she should have. She had four hours in her apartment before she met up with Rikki for an evening sweep of the town, and in those four hours she had to see her little sister, make sure she ate, eat herself, reassure Prim about her safety, about Peeta’s safety, and then get whatever sleep she could before she went out again. She was hoping that she could find someone else who would want to look through the night. Prim would be sleeping, wouldn’t try to go out alone and wouldn’t miss Katniss, and it was worthwhile to try at night. It was more time spent looking. It meant less sleep, no chance to eat except what she could grab from abandoned gas stations or grocery stores along their route, but she didn’t have much faith in her ability to sleep anyway, not without her nightmares waking up Prim.

Right, she thought, shoulders back, smile, and walk through the door. She propelled herself away from the wall and forced her steps steady as she unlocked and opened the door to her apartment, strolling through and shucking off her boots, calling, “Prim! Dinner!” like it was any other night in District 12 and she was just back from a successful hunt. She hoisted a bag of looted groceries onto the kitchen table and began unpacking it, fresh oranges, the makings of a salad, and something called a “chicken pot pie” that looked easy enough to make in the microwave she’d finally gotten over her suspicion of enough to master. She remembered Peeta standing in her kitchen and laughing as she regarded the device with her arms folded and her brows furrowed, a frozen dinner held up in her hand like a shield. ”Katniss, it’s not going to bite you or poison you. It’s practical. You like practical.”

The memory passed and she found herself staring at three oranges she’d knocked onto the floor without noticing. The prospect of leaning down to get them loomed like the trek up a mountain, and there was a moment when she was certain she was going to just sit down on the floor and close her eyes after all, but Katniss Everdeen hadn’t become a Hunger Games victor, hadn’t survived long enough to participate in the games, by giving in. She leaned down after the oranges and called out to her sister again, “Wash your hands and then come have an orange, they’re a fruit we didn’t have back in 12, you’ll like them, just don’t try to bite the skin, peel them first,” she warned, forcing a laugh that she hoped sounded natural. The almost dizzying rush of gratitude she still got whenever she called to her sister helped with that, to remind her of the reason she was doing this. The reason she had done most everything since she’d been twelve years old and promising Prim that she wouldn’t let them starve.