Survive Somehow

Prologue

She's eight years old and she's on deaths door and she can't help but think that this isn't fair.

She can no longer walk. She's too thin, too weak, she's far too wasted away. But it's okay. She knows there is nobody coming to save her.

Death is relentless and it set it's sights on her and her family and it won't stop til it gets them, even if it has to go by the slow, agonising hands of starvation.

She is eight years old and she should not have to be stuck with the knowledge that she is going to die soon.

It is this day that a part of her dies as she lets the hatred for the ones who could fix this but who doesn't care enough to try seep in.

---

She's nine now. Life isn't good, life will never be good, but things are no longer horrible. At least not for her.

Her sister had saved them when her mother refused. Katniss is strong and without her, the everdeen family would be gone by now, wasted away to nothing but dust and memories.

It is because of this that Katniss hardly smiles. A little girl grown up too fast. Prim knows it's wrong but she can't help but hate her mother more and more each time Katniss has to step up to the plate and take the responsibility of keeping them alive.

She'd do anything to lessen the burden of that which is why she's here, walking towards a peacekeeper with a small sack of game thrown over her shoulder.

Nobody told her to be wary who you try to sell game to.

---

She's nine and she's tied to a pole with the whole district watching as the whip collides with her back, shredding the skin like a knife to butter. She can't stop the cry from escaping her mouth, no matter how hard she tries.

She can her Katniss yelling, screaming, fighting, and pleading. She knows it will do no good.

The capitol knows no mercy.

Be strong, Prim. It'll all be over soon.

The mantra repeats in her head with every strike of the whip to her back and she knows it's true, but whether it'll be over by death or the peacekeeper finally boring of the torture he's inflicting, she doesn't know.

In this moment, she wants nothing more than to be able to make him regret it.
----

And she's finally ten and she's watched as Katniss hardened more and more with everyday and she thinks she's finally figured out how to help.

"Teach me to hunt."

Katniss stares at her in a new light, as if she's no longer Primrose Everdeen, but a stranger in a familiar body.

In a way, she is. Primrose Everdeen would never hurt even a fly, let alone deliberately set out to hunt and kill an animal for her own needs, which is why she decides she can no longer be Primrose Everdeen.

"And call me Prim from now on?"