Underground
I can’t believe he’s actually gone. Because no matter how hard I try to wrap my head around it - sitting here, staring at the blank grey walls of the compartment I share with my sister and mother, the actual acceptance of the fact that he’s dead is avoiding me. Slowly, I manage to sit up, and the whole world looks disjointed and wrong. How can there ever be a world in which I exist, and he doesn’t? Where I crave his arms of sanctuary, but he’s not here to provide it anymore.
When I look around I can almost bring myself to believe that it is better this way, he would have hated it here, the blank, uninspiring, and sterile walls the only thing to draw or paint. But then again they wouldn’t have allowed him to paint, just like Haymitch isn’t allowed to drink, and I’m not allowed to hunt, they would have had him training and doing propos. Just like the rest of us, being paraded around again. Little puppets, attached by unbreakable strings.
I miss the outside world, but I’m not allowed to go up there anymore. Not after I tried to run, whilst on an authorised hunting trip with Gale. The little weasel stopped me, he used to talk about running all the time, I guess priorities change. I know mine have, and I see now that his have to. Our hunting trips were never authorised or monitored or tracked. They are now, and I know for a fact that the old Gale would have seethed at the fact, he just plays along now. He once implied that I was the Capitol’s lap dog, and by extension President Snow’s. Now he’s practically sucking the dicks of every official here, he tells me it’s because he wants to keep our families safe. I don’t believe him. The irony is not completely lost on me.
I shake my head then, and a slow sad smile graces my face. Who am I kidding? Not me, not anybody here in this wretched place. I want him here, I want him, more than I want to breathe. I guess he is here, lying cold, stiff, and unmoving on a sterile stainless steel table, naked. I saw him myself, they had to drag me out of there because I refused to leave. They told me I was in shock, Johanna told them that it was because I’d never seen him naked before, Haymitch laughed bitterly and I told them both to shut the fuck up, before bursting in tears.
Guess all that time I spent pushing him away was a waste of time. Nothing could have prepared me for the pain I feel right now. It might even be worse than the sorrow I felt when my father was blown to bits in the mines. A sense of loss; for something I never really had, never fully got the chance to grasp onto. It hurts differently. When I miss my father, I can think back on simpler times, to comfort me and help me get through it. Now, when I’m missing him, it cuts deep like a knife, because I have to wonder to myself if any of it was even real. And I know that I did that, I filled us both with so much doubt of each other, and maybe a little resentment.
I resent him a little, for leaving me here. Trying so hard to survive the shit show we created. Lucky him, he gets to be lowered into the ground, whilst I’m left here. Crying about something I never really had in the first place, something I never will have. Part of me wants to curse him, for letting me push him away, and then pushing me away himself. But I guess that’s a me problem.
When Prim started to brush my hair, I lashed out. I wasn’t my mother, not yet anyway. Then I cried, and started to panic because it felt like the world was crashing down on me. Almost as if some of the realisation hit, that he was gone now, forever. That it was my fault. Fear, that it was always going to feel like this, like the world was drab, grey, and pointless without him. Dread, that I might actually turn into some sort of version of my mother, or worse, Haymitch.
Haymitch cornered me today, said we needed to talk. He took me up, above ground. We spent the first ten minutes walking in silence, I don’t know whether he was trying to come up with something to say to me, or if he was just letting me take it all in. The twittering birds, bounding rabbits, scampering squirrels, and the tall pine trees. After so long underground, it’s a relief to inhale air that hasn’t been processed again and again and again. To see colours, even the grey ones that indicate a harsh winter to come. It occurs to me that he will forever stay underground, buried under six feet of earth.
“It gets easier, you know,” Haymitch tells me, his face looks pained. Paired with his sallow looking complexion, it’s not a great look. I’m reminded of the youthful Haymitch I saw on a screen, fighting for his life in an arena with double the contestants. It feels like a lifetime ago, when I sat curled up in Peeta’s arms, hurtling to our deaths a second time. Is it normal to feel so old? I have to remind myself I’m seventeen. That’s right. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I’m seventeen years old. I’m the Mockingjay. Peeta is dead. It’s better this way.
“I know,” I tell him. Everyones telling me so; that it gets easier to live with the pain, the loss. My mother told me so on the first evening of knowing, I just ignored her. The image of his pale, bruised skin, and ashen matted curls, branded into my mind.
I look at Haymitch, who’s busy patting himself down for his now non-existent hip flask. I have to wonder who he lost. I guess I’ll never know, to be honest I’m not really sure I want to. I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to care. Instead I take another look at our surroundings, we’re moving further and further into the woods. Haymitch has a surprisingly agile and quiet step. The little forest critters barely register us here, they aren’t animals that are used to being hunted. So trusting of us, unbothered by our disruption, that I’m sure even Peeta could have walked through here without scaring the whole animal kingdom away.
Watching these animals attend to their business, preparing for winter, I’m reminded that life goes on. Will go on. With or without him. The whole world will one day forget he ever existed, maybe I will too. Forget the small details about him that send a crippling pain into me whenever I think about it. Maybe that’s why it gets easier, we forget, and the pain becomes more manageable because there isn’t as much to miss.
“Did drinking make it easier for you?” I ask.
“No,” He replies, “It just numbs it, the pain. You know you should be feeling something, anything, but you don’t. By the time you figure out what’s making you feel so empty though, it’s too late to stop.”
“Oh,” Is all I can think of to say.
Haymitch sighs sadly, scrubs his hands over his face, before grumbling something about heading back. I nod dejectedly, and follow him as we head down the stone steps, further and further, until it feels like the whole world is towering above me. Crushing me. And I want to scream that it’s not fair, that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, that I can’t go on. But I have a duty to these people now, a duty to finish what I started. So I continue to put one foot in front of the other, continue to gulp down the processed stale air. And make Peeta one last promise that he won’t ever hear.
I will make sure that the feeling of pain and terror is the last thing President Snow ever feels.
