Oh, right, I never crossposted this
Title: Choosing Fate
Fandom: The Hunger Games (series)
Characters/Pairings: Prim-centric
Rating/Warnings: Darkness, angst, Mockingjay spoilers, references to (canonical) character death
Written for: book_las, prompt "[character] becomes psychic."
Wordcount: 500
A/N: Slightly revised from the originally-posted version.
Prim has always had a sense for things. It isn’t good for much; she can’t read minds, can’t place certain bets, can’t foretell anything strike by strike. Mostly she just knows when to brace herself.
----
She doesn’t have the words to describe the pressure on her mind on the day of her first reaping. It’s like stepping down an alley and seeing human shapes in the shadows moving towards you.
She hears her name called and she thinks, dimly, so that’s it, but it isn’t. She knows it isn’t, she knows, every step towards the stage is the roaring of a train thundering up behind her. Stop, stop, freeze time here, now, before it’s too -
“I volunteer!” Katniss screams behind her, voice high and cracked.
- late.
So that’s it.
----
When Claudius Templesmith (Prim hates him so much she can almost taste it, thick and heavy like reek on Katniss’s clothes after a long hunt) announces the rule change, Prim is home. She’s staring at the screen because something is going to change tonight, something; she has spent all day with her head cocked to catch a sound that isn’t there.
It’s in the Arena, echoing tinny and scratched into their living room but heard: Katniss. Peeta, she screams, and Prim whispers the name in concert with her sister and hears the sweetness slipping around the center of it as the T brushes behind her teeth like a kiss.
For the first time, she does not feel the scorn that Katniss would feel for the frantic hope catching on her mother’s face.
----
They invite her towards the front in District 13, when the end of the world is rewinding itself again, and she agrees to go.
Her feet hit the metal of the hovercraft and the flat, echoing clang almost knocks her to the ground.
This, right here, right now - this is how she should have felt when Effie Trinket pulled her name out of the reaping ball. This is what that was meant to mean, this is the dramatic sacrifice. This is wrong.
“Second thoughts, kid?” one of the others asks; by his voice, he hopes she does. “You can go back, you know. You’re young enough that they won’t make you go.”
Prim glances around the hovercraft, at the fragmented impossibility of the people around her. These people, at least, are headed towards the fight to piece limbs back together.
Prim thinks about Katniss, which is what she has always done. Katniss with a berry on her lips, Katniss with a bow in her hands, Katniss shoving through the crowd, frantic and desperate and not at all like a hero and braver than the Mockingjay has ever been.
“No,” she says. “No second thoughts.”
Fandom: The Hunger Games (series)
Characters/Pairings: Prim-centric
Rating/Warnings: Darkness, angst, Mockingjay spoilers, references to (canonical) character death
Written for: book_las, prompt "[character] becomes psychic."
Wordcount: 500
A/N: Slightly revised from the originally-posted version.
Prim has always had a sense for things. It isn’t good for much; she can’t read minds, can’t place certain bets, can’t foretell anything strike by strike. Mostly she just knows when to brace herself.
----
She doesn’t have the words to describe the pressure on her mind on the day of her first reaping. It’s like stepping down an alley and seeing human shapes in the shadows moving towards you.
She hears her name called and she thinks, dimly, so that’s it, but it isn’t. She knows it isn’t, she knows, every step towards the stage is the roaring of a train thundering up behind her. Stop, stop, freeze time here, now, before it’s too -
“I volunteer!” Katniss screams behind her, voice high and cracked.
- late.
So that’s it.
----
When Claudius Templesmith (Prim hates him so much she can almost taste it, thick and heavy like reek on Katniss’s clothes after a long hunt) announces the rule change, Prim is home. She’s staring at the screen because something is going to change tonight, something; she has spent all day with her head cocked to catch a sound that isn’t there.
It’s in the Arena, echoing tinny and scratched into their living room but heard: Katniss. Peeta, she screams, and Prim whispers the name in concert with her sister and hears the sweetness slipping around the center of it as the T brushes behind her teeth like a kiss.
For the first time, she does not feel the scorn that Katniss would feel for the frantic hope catching on her mother’s face.
----
They invite her towards the front in District 13, when the end of the world is rewinding itself again, and she agrees to go.
Her feet hit the metal of the hovercraft and the flat, echoing clang almost knocks her to the ground.
This, right here, right now - this is how she should have felt when Effie Trinket pulled her name out of the reaping ball. This is what that was meant to mean, this is the dramatic sacrifice. This is wrong.
“Second thoughts, kid?” one of the others asks; by his voice, he hopes she does. “You can go back, you know. You’re young enough that they won’t make you go.”
Prim glances around the hovercraft, at the fragmented impossibility of the people around her. These people, at least, are headed towards the fight to piece limbs back together.
Prim thinks about Katniss, which is what she has always done. Katniss with a berry on her lips, Katniss with a bow in her hands, Katniss shoving through the crowd, frantic and desperate and not at all like a hero and braver than the Mockingjay has ever been.
“No,” she says. “No second thoughts.”