District Twelve [Wednesday afternoon, Fandom Time]
The day of the reaping was hot and sultry. The humidity of the air hung alongside the tension that came with the new Peacekeepers. The lax security of Twelve - the very security that had allowed Katniss to feed her family for years - had been replaced by total control. Peacekeepers lined the streets. The fence lining the woods had been charged with electricity. The square now boasted a whipping post, gallows, and stocks.
The citizens of District Twelve gathered, sweating and silent, to hear the names called. Of course no one was expecting to be surprised. The crowd was still, though whether that was because of the certainty of the results or the guns pointed at them, Katniss was unsure.
She stood alone, in a small roped-off area. Peeta and Haymitch were in a similar pen, a few steps away. As she waited for Effie to draw the crowd’s attention and reach into the reaping ball for her name, she sought out a camera, making eye contact with it. She wished, to herself, that she could give some sort of reassurance to those who were already watching her, and who didn’t understand the reaping and what it meant, exactly. But all she could do was look, her chin up high and strong.
The reaping itself took less than a minute. Effie, in a shining wig of metallic gold, had to scrabble around in the girls’ reaping ball for the one and only name that was in there. “Katniss Everdeen,” she called, lacking her usual verve - though her smile was still planted firmly on her face.
Katniss moved out of her pen, taking the assembled stage slowly, and clasped her hands behind her back as she waited for the inevitability of Peeta’s presence beside her. It didn’t take long at all before Effie called out Haymitch’s name, and before she’d finished the last syllable, Peeta had stepped forward to take his place. Katniss had to look away from the unhappy look that Haymitch shot her, because she knew how he felt about that. As though Peeta would have it any other way. There was no arguing with him.
There was no fanfare. Effie’s blessing - “May the odds be ever in your favor!” - had scarcely left her lips before Katniss and Peeta were ushered into the Justice Building. Head Peacekeeper Thread was there to greet them. “New procedure,” he said with a smile. They were moved out the back door, into a car, and taken to the train station.
There were no cameras to see them off. No crowd. No goodbyes at all. Haymitch and Effie appeared, escorted by guards, and then Peacekeepers pushed them all onto the train, shutting the door behind them.
The wheels began to turn, and Katniss stared out the window as everything she’d grown up with faded away, her goodbyes to her mother and sister and Gale and Madge hanging on her lips.
“We’ll write letters, Katniss,” said Peeta from behind her. Katniss had no idea how much time had passed. “It will be better, anyway. Give them a piece of us to hold on to. Haymitch will deliver them for us if…they need to be delivered.”
If. Peeta and his ifs. During her first Games, Katniss had promised Prim she'd do everything in her power to come home. This time, she knew there was no hope that she'd reverse this journey. She'd sworn to herself that she would do everything she could to keep Peeta alive. She had decided what to say to those she loved in Twelve, and now she would never have the chance.
She nodded at Peeta's words, going straight to her room. She knew she would never write those letters. Her words had been meant to go alongside with embraces and kisses. They could not be delivered with a wooden box holding her broken, cold body.
Too heartsick to cry, all she wanted was to curl up on the bed and sleep until they'd arrive in the Capitol. But she had a mission -- no. More than a mission. Her dying wish.
Keep Peeta alive.
And as unlikely as it seemed that she could achieve it in the face of the Capitol’s anger, it was important that Katniss stayed at the top of her game. This wouldn’t happen if she was mourning for everyone she loved back home.
Let them go, she told herself. Say goodbye and forget them. She did her best, thinking of them one by one, recalling back to Fandom and trying to draw those memories out as well. She released them like little birds from the protective cages inside herself, locking the doors against their return.
[NFB, NFI, OOC totally welcome. Cut, cribbed, and generally adapted from Catching Fire.]