It's been days... or maybe it has even been weeks since Haymitch returned me to District 12 before I finally gather even enough strength and desire to explore beyond the worn path between my chair, the kitchen, the restroom and back. Grief it turns out is suffocating in and of itself. Even if you don't fight it, it is exhausting.

It's not much of a journey, but I venture beyond the confines my chair to survey the dining room and the foyer. As my eyes focus on the lazy dust motes floating across the glare of sunlight on the foyer floor, memories flood back of Prim's exuberant hugs to welcome me home from town, the woods, or wherever, really. I had never really considered this my home, not my real home, like the one in the Seam, but whatever it was to me then pales in comparison to what it is now. It's practically a prison, or perhaps a sanitarium is more descriptive. I brace myself against the door jam as I take in the dining room and it brings to mind scenes of times when my mother was capable and more in her element than she had been in years. Her hands keeping busy hosting dinners for Peeta and Haymitch as we trained for the Quarter Quell, roasts and stews that filled our bellies and warmed our hearts. Or the times soothing and treating patients that came for help, like Gale after his whipping. I remember how I couldn't stand to see him battered and broken. My Gale, the old Gale, the one before the rebellion, before he designed the bombs.

That train of thought bring me through a fuller range of emotion than I thought possible now - warmth, sadness, emptiness, regret, anger. The brief mental journey is so taxing, that I almost miss seeing a collection of belongings stacked precariously on one of the ornate dining room chairs posted by the far wall.

The pile is encased in my father's well worn hunting jacket and topped with my bow. I tentatively graze two of my fingers along the smooth curve of the bow's wood as I have done hundreds, if not thousands of times before. This specific action used to calm my nerves and ready me for survival in the woods. Now it only reminds me of who I was then, who I failed to protect, and how I wish I could go back to the time when I needed this bow to survive again.

Underneath my hunting gear are stacked some clothes and a few school notebooks with Prim's careful print. I've had enough for now, so I take my father's jacket, wrap it around me, as if it could protect me from harm, and retreat back to my chair. I bury myself in its supple leather, breathing its familiar musky aroma and lose myself in the parade of memories that start when my father wore this jacket and merge with the years when this became my uniform for retreating to the forest. My mind is tripping on all of the memories of people important to me that were taken from me by the Capitol by death or ripped from me by circumstances contrived by the Capitol or Coin. Are Haymitch and Sae really the only ones I have left?

I return to my stupor again, with only Greasy Sae to break the silence. She dutifully arrives in the morning, rousing me from my half-dazed slumber. Her daily arrival marks the end of the nightmares and the transition to the semi-consciousness of daytime. The bright sunshine of most days is too caustic, I prefer the occasional late afternoon thunderstorm with its grey skies and drum beat to soothe my raw edges.

A few mornings later I wake to Sae murmuring in hushed tones in the kitchen. I strain to make out who she's speaking to, with no luck, until Haymitch strides through the door to check on me. "Awake yet, Sweetheart?" The nickname I associate with Haymitch's trademark sarcasm is almost comforting now. How things have changed. "I see you found your things your mother set aside from 13," he says motioning with his elbow to the jacket I hide under. I nod in understanding. He glances away and admits 'Your mother's in District 4 now, helping rebuild the hospital there... Her knowledge will be really useful to them, they really need her there." I feel my eyes water, but not enough to actually shed a tear, as I try and comprehend how broken we are that we can't even fix each other.

The days pass as I continue to drift from nightmare-laden night to dazed waking state. Sae is patient, offering food when I am conscious and she gratefully provides little other stimulus.

My unconscious mind crafts a myriad of nightmares, many variations on the same themes. The good old stand bys featuring the Snow's bloody breathe and beady eyes chasing me through the forest or the chameleon district 13 folks turned Capital mutts have given way to more chilling visions. The premise in these are simple and constant, but the details change with each replication. The one set features Peeta with his calm demeanor and piercing blue eyes. It's just us, and we're having lunch or he's baking or painting. Then suddenly something sets him off and he starts attacking me or Prim. Sometimes he just starts tearing apart our surroundings shouting nonsense, or worse yet Coin or Capital Propaganda. Equally disturbing are those nightmares where Gale emerges from a burning mine looking more machine than a man. Sometimes he's his old self, but then starts manipulating traps and other times the machine-man just starts to hunt Prim down, and I can only watch. Perhaps the strangest one is from the Capitol, when Gale and I got separated when the street opened up. In this version it's Prim in a peacekeeper uniform hauling Gale up by his collar and dragging him away as I am left screaming.

It becomes routine to wake from these visions several times a night with a start and drenched in a clammy sweat. Even once my breathing regulates I know I won't drift back to sleep for a while and am left to with my thoughts, which are just as depressing and frightening. My exhaustion extends to the day, resulting in a hazy consciousness punctuated by a meal, and then more of the same nightmarish thoughts and visions.

Xxxx

Finally one day I decide to break the cycle. I gather the courage to return to the dining room to look through Prim's schoolwork. I treat each piece like it is a sacred parchment, though I know likely none of these meant much of anything to her. The papers stuffed into the first binder are soft on the edge, like they've been carried around and handled quite a bit. I scan the sheet on top. Of course she got an A, she has always been good at math, and lucky enough to be able to focus on school... I catch myself...or *had* been good at math. I inhale once deeply and exhale slowly once, twice, three times before I can continue. Still I feel a semblance of pride bubble in my heart as my mind reverts to evenings when I would go over her homework with her after dinner when she was younger. Just the two of us huddled in the dim light of the lantern at the solid table that I was told was made by my grandfather with the help of my father when he was a boy. I pull my fingers down the page, as though it was braille as I think, *she* wrote this. I discern eraser marks where she carefully corrected herself. I soak in the details like how sometimes her eights were figure eights and sometimes stacked circles. Just seeing her writing makes my heart hurt. I flip through the next few assignments, it's more of the same. The grades are all As, I can feel my inner self smile, though my physical body can't yet muster the strength to do so yet.

My eye strays to the last page of one of the homework assignments at the bottom, there's some notes almost like a code in stiff block print lettering in a different penmanship:
LD - OO 4 5 11 16 19 S 8

I fan the pages back and realize there's a similar code on the last page of the previous assignments as well:
Ones says: LD - DP 3 8 14 OO 6 7 21
Another: LD - DV 9 14 OO 6

Being curious I challenge myself to figure out the meaning of the nonsensical letters and numbers. I feel a small victory when I piece together that the numbers on the last page are usually the homework problems she went back and corrected. I wonder if it's the teacher's writing or if they were matched up with another student to correct their work. My persistence is rewarded with a clue. On an assignment halfway buried in the pile, scratched in the margin on the 3rd page I find Prim's handwriting alternating with the same penmanship as the 'codes':

Who was that?
WILLOW
She's pretty
I GUESS
I think she likes you
SHE MIGHT
Do you...
DO YOU NEED TO ASK?
No :) Wait is she...
YEAH, BRISTOL'S LIL SIS
Sorry, I remember her now. I know you miss him.
YEAH, I DO LD. THX.

Now that see full words, I'd recognize that chicken scratch anywhere, it's Gale's. A flash of fury runs up the length of my body. Who does he think he is! It was his damn bomb that ended her life in heat and flame. His anger, his trap! But then the rapid fire thoughts that follow are: What! He was helping her with her homework? Why? Where was I? How long did he do this? Why didn't I know? And who are Bristol and Willow anyway?

There's more than 2 dozen math assignments, almost all of them have Gale's notes at the bottom. I vaguely recall now Prim would regularly meet up with the Hawthornes to study when we were in 13, and maybe even before, but I really never knew more details than that. I had always assumed she was working with Rory on homework. I think to myself, all those days in 13, I hardly gave Prim the time of day, I was so consumed with my own drama related to the rebellion... and otherwise. Now what I would give to spend time asking Prim about her schoolwork, her dreams, her damn cat... just anything. I need to draw a few more deep breaths before I can continue.

Another assignment has this on the back:

Willow's back again :)
U SEE HER 2?
She wants U to see her
I FIGURED, NO THX
Too late, here she comes
SAVE ME!

Further in the stack I find a note with this exchange in Prim's rounded cursive:

G-
Thank you for checking my algebra, even while you are here in Medical. As a reward I snuck you not 1 but 2 extra vanilla puddings- they ran out of your favorite :(

I know you're worried about Kat, but she'll be ok, physically anyway. Just some serious bruising. They've separated Peeta into a secure suite and they've got a great team on him to figure out why he attacked her.

Get better quickly... which actually means staying here until Doc says you're clear. Really, it won't kill you, but I might if you skip out early. Besides what would you rushing out to do?

-LD

"LD" as in "Little Duck"?! Is that what that means in the code too? Wait! She's MY Little Duck, not his! She's MY little sister, not his! ...But then why was HE helping her, not me?

My knee-jerk reaction gives way to guilt when I try to picture the scene, I realize I never did visit Gale after he got injured going to rescue Peeta. And here Prim is bringing him extra desserts. I justify this when I remember that she was always better with people. But then we're not talking about a random stranger, we're talking about my best friend. Well, he *was* my best friend. I had been thinking that ended when we realized it was the bomb he designed that killed Prim, but now I start wondering if I hadn't been eroding our bond before that.

I deem that enough for today, I carefully close the notebook and find my way back to my chair. My body is still, but my thoughts are whirling around my brain - Gale, he was always taking care of her in 12, getting her down into the shelter when Peeta warned us in 13... taking care of them during my first time in the arena, and then getting her and mom out when the Capitol bombed 12... and then I find out he was still taking care of her when we were in 13. I say 'we', but now in a way I'm feeling like I wasn't really in 13 at all sometimes.

I guess I've always known that Gale took care of Prim like his own sister, but I hadn't been witness to it in quite a while. He may not have really been our cousin, but certainly was family. But I can't shake the nagging whisper 'but HE designed THAT bomb,' or shake the images of Prim's last moments of life. I succomb to evening routine of fitful nightmares and eventually to sleep as I try to process these new revelations.

When morning comes I have a goal, I'm going to write a note to Gale. I have questions and want to talk to him about Prim. But I realize in the end those are just excuses. I miss him.

I start writing nearly a dozen times, but I don't know how to put this jumble of thoughts and feelings on paper. A big part of me is angry when I think of his aggressive actions during the war. There were times I hardly recognized my trusted hunting partner within the rebellion strategist he had become. But still he was always protecting us, her... me. I'm not good with words... ironically, I think, if only Peeta could write this letter... I never do get a coherent string of words on paper.