Who:Katniss and her dad What:Goodbyes When:Tonight Where:The woods on Cindy's property Warnings: None Status: Narrative, complete
“See? They have blackberry bushes here too, even bigger than the ones back in Twelve,” Katniss told her father, motioning towards a tall bush growing amongst the tangle of foliage in Cindy’s woods. “They’re not in season tight now, but in the summer we can collect as many as we can carry I bet,” she added, appraising the bush approvingly before turning to smile at her father. The Everdeens, minus Prim and her version of their father’s ghost, had been out walking the acres that bordered Cindy’s house since Katniss had handed Conner and Clark back over to their mother’s care and come home.
The walk had been her father’s suggestion but Katniss had agreed eagerly, it had been so long since she’d been out in the woods with someone who understood them. To Peeta and Prim the forest was a singular, dark tangle, a mass of growth in which they only differentiated in broad categories, “tree” as opposed to “bush” or “rocks.” She suspected it made them both uneasy to be out here and, though Cindy owned the woods and didn’t seem uneasy anywhere, she also seemed to see them more as a natural defense, a means to preserving solitude and privacy. To Katniss, however, these woods were enough like the ones that bordered District 12 for her to feel at home with them. To her the forest was rich with individual plants whose names and uses and scents she knew like old friends and could use to evoke memories the way some people would look at a scrapbook. The blackberry bush prompted Prim’s face the first time she’d tasted one of its berries in the handful Katniss had scrounged for her, the green of another plant evoked the tang of mint in her mouth as she’d chewed absently on the leaves to stave off hunger while she’d hunted. Being alone in seeing the woods as more than just a mass of trees had made her miss Gale fiercely, but having her father here was even better and that, combined with the fact that she’d slept without nightmares this week and hadn’t had to worry about Prim or Peeta (once Cato had been taken care of anyway), was making her feel almost giddy and entirely childish, younger than she’d felt in years.
There was a branch hanging low across her path and Katniss leaped up for it, swinging and kicking her feet for a moment before dropping back to the ground next to her father, who was smiling indulgently at her. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her hands on the thighs of her pants, “you said you wanted to talk?”
“You used to do that when you were a little girl,” her father said, waving off her apology and smiling Prim’s crooked smile, the kind that crinkled the eyes even before the mouth so that you could watch it spread over their faces. “You’d jump for the branches again and again, even after you knew there was no way you’d reach them, and you wouldn’t let me lift you up to them either, you were going to do it yourself even if it took you years to get tall enough and strong enough.” He flicked her braid over her shoulder, the way he used to when she was a little girl with her hair in pigtails, “It’s good to see you having fun.”
Katniss shrugged and forced a smile, not used to being the subject of memories and family stories and a little uncomfortable with the attention. Prim was always the baby, the one Katniss told the Hawthornes stories about to tease her into getting mad at the indignity of it all, and she had been too young to remember Katniss as a little girl. Their mother had lost the right to play “embarrassing mom” when she’d been willing to let her daughters starve while she was lost in her own grief. Katniss kicked a pinecone and hunched her shoulders slightly. “Prim wasn’t stubborn at all when she was a kid,” she started, intending to change the subject to one of the stock stories she had saved up about her little sister. Instead, her father cut her off with a soft, “Katniss, I’m leaving soon.”
That stopped her in her tracks so fast she almost tripped over a pinecone, and when she’d steadied herself she merely nodded and glared hard at the ground. She’d known this would happen eventually, wouldn’t have wanted her father trapped here as a ghost anyway, but still…
“Katniss,” he said again stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, stepping in front of her so that she was looking up at him, though she refused to meet his gaze. “It wasn’t a gift,” he said quietly, “me being able to see you and your sister again. It feels like one, but it wasn’t free passage, we came to tell you something.” Katniss did look up at that, her stomach clenching a little with unease. “Death sent us, Katniss, the horseman, and you’re not to tell Lucifer,” his voice was different, far-away, as if he were listening to instructions relayed faintly through the air, and Katniss felt the clench in her stomach tighten. Then, just as suddenly, the moment had passed and he was smiling at her again, sadly this time. “I know you don’t know what all of that means yet, but the point is, there’s war coming, maybe worse than what’s already happened, and I need you to promise me you’ll-“
“I’ll look out for Prim,” Katniss cut in, straightening her back and looking him in the eye without reservation now, “You don’t even need to ask. I can take care of her, even through this.”
“I want you to promise me you’ll be happy,” her father continued a mixture of amused and stern and more than slightly sad, “I want to know that you’re going to make a good life for yourself, for as long as you can, even through this. Especially through this.” He reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder and went on, “I’m proud of you, for taking care of your sister and your mother all these years, but Prim’s growing up, and there are people here who care about her almost as much as you. Think about what you want for yourself,” he urged and Katniss shrugged, looking down at the forest floor and feeling her cheeks heating slightly. He doesn’t mean… she thought, and shook her head slightly, embarrassed at how quickly her thoughts had gone back to the house they’d just left behind at the question of what she wanted for herself, how quickly her mind had tried to turn it into a question of who.
Her father watched her shuffle awkwardly and squeezed her shoulder slightly to still her. He didn’t look entirely comfortable either as he cleared his throat (in his mind Katniss was still eleven, all elbows and knees and fierce grins, outrunning all the boys in footraces at recess and bragging about it when she got home) but when he spoke his voice was soft. “I know what happened after I…after I was gone Katniss, and I’m sorry, but you should know that I don’t regret being with your mother, not even for a second. I don’t think she regrets it either. In fact, I’m certain we’d both say it was worth it to have you girls.” Katniss scoffed before she could stop herself, and he raised his eyebrows, “Do you think that the world would be a better place without Prim in it? That your life would be better if you’d never known her at all?” he asked, and she shook her head quickly, “Even with what will happen back in Panem?” Katniss flinched as if she’d been struck at the reminder of her sister’s eventual death, “That’s not the same,” she muttered and her father lifted his hand from her shoulder. “Maybe not,” he conceded, “but you deserve to be happy you know. Even here,” and then he had turned away and was asking her about another plant, what the natives here called a honeysuckle bush, and Katniss shook herself and walked on with her father for as long as she could.