Disclaimer: I own nothing.

This takes place in between Catching Fire and Mockingjay, in the portion that Katniss doesn't tell us about. It's a scene from Prim that shows what I think might have been going on with our heroine during her time of hiding in closets. I hope you enjoy!

Irreparable

The first thing I recognize when I enter the compartment is the sound of the shower. Since I saw my mother before leaving the medical wing, there is only one option as to who is in the bathroom. Katniss. She's left the door open and I sigh before taking off the sterile medical coat one of the District Thirteen doctors gave me.

"Katniss?" I call.

I'm not really expecting a response but I'm disappointed when one doesn't come. Katniss hasn't said much since coming to Thirteen. The special doctors told my mother that she's in system overload. Finding out about Twelve and Peeta and the plan to get her to be the Mockingjay all at the same time pushed her into herself.

Haymitch called it bullshit.

Everyone from Twelve knows the real reason. My mother knows better than everyone and I think that's why she's keeping her distance when Katniss is awake. Sedate my sister and my mother is right there by her bed, holding one hand while Haymitch takes the other. It's like a makeshift family surrounding their dying child. Wake her up and neither of them knows what to do so Mother focuses on healing everyone else and Haymitch sticks to Command. Although, considering President Coin isn't too fond of the fatherly vibes Haymitch is giving toward Katniss, this might not be by choice like it is with my mother and her work.

Some nights, my mother takes shifts as a night nurse just to avoid my sister. That leaves Katniss as my responsibility.

I walk toward the open door of the bathroom. Now I know what it was like for Katniss when our father died, jumping forward to head the family. It's my turn to pay her back for protecting me all those years. It's my turn to take care of her.

Katniss hasn't even drawn the curtain. She's curled on the floor of the shower, her knees tucked right up to her chin, still in her regulation District Thirteen clothes. Despite the water flooding over her, they're still dirty – greasy and soiled from her days in the supply closet. My sister spent the last three days in that closet. Gale, Haymitch, even Rory took shifts walking by to make sure they still heard her muffled sobs through the door to ensure one of the Thirteen guards didn't drag her away somewhere. When Gale tried to take her out the first night, she screamed so loudly guards came running.

Dr. Aurelius, one of the only doctors Haymitch can actually stand to listen to talking about my sister, insisted they leave her there. The guards, and President Coin for that matter, looked less than impressed. But, since he's the head doctor around here, they listened.

Most of the other doctors are horrible.

It makes me sick following them around sometimes while they talk about her in casual conversation. They forget I'm shadowing them when they turn to each other and mention the Everdeen girl and speak about her as if she's an animal to be tamed. Her restraints were spoken about like pigpens. The fact that she's still classified as mentally unstable was nearly a joke to be laughed about, the doctors claiming it was a bit of a broken heart.

It made me want to vomit. These doctors, some barely older than Gale, had never been forced to watch the Hunger Games. They didn't understand what she was going through, what they did to her. This was all a game to them – who can cure the beautiful broken Katniss Everdeen.

It was President Coin who used the phrase first. I had actually been invited to that meeting. She had gathered around a group of people that Katniss would be in close contact with upon her release from the medical wing. The goal was to ensure we understood our dire positions as protectors of the Mockingjay, a role she's in no position to accept or decline as of yet. She reminded us that Katniss was still mentally unstable. That she would need to report to have psych evaluations every day – of which, I think she might have gone once, but I'm not sure – and assimilate into District Thirteen like the rest of us – of which, she has not, I'm sure this time. She's under absolute lockdown when it comes to objects she can potentially use to harm herself. We were to ensure that our beautiful broken Katniss returned to the fiery creation of her first Hunger Games, the star the districts needed to see.

She's no closer to that than she is to forming a coherent sentence.

"Katniss?"

She doesn't look up. Her tears mingle with the beads of water pounding her face and it's hard to distinguish the tears from the shower water. The low rumbles of her chest alert me to her mood tonight. I've come to recognize her moods based on her actions. Sobbing means she's upset. No tears and a harsh scowl indicate anger and possible lashing out, so I have to tread with caution. On those nights, I usually ask for Gale's help, because when she hits him it doesn't leave a bruise. Empty stares typically accompany moans for Peeta, for Rue, and for other kids and adults she watched suffer in the Hunger Games and the Quarter Quell.

Tonight she's upset. About what I don't know if I'll ever find out.

I don't try speaking to her again. She won't answer. Her eyes won't even flicker at my voice. So instead I turn off the water so I can take off her dirty clothes. The shirt drips brown water as I lift it over her head. I lean her against the wall and out of her fetal position so I can take her pants. Those items soak in the sink while I turn back to her. One look at her underclothes and I take those too before turning the shower back on so the water can run over her.

I've seen naked people before so it doesn't bother me that I'm cleaning my sister. What does bother me, and makes me choke a little as I take the bar of soap and start scrubbing the dirt away, is that it's not bothering her. Katniss wouldn't even look at Peeta when he was dying. She always looked uncomfortable when she wore clothes that showed even the slightest amount of skin – a bit of her midriff, bare shoulders. That part of her, at least tonight, has been shattered.

Everyone keeps repeating the phrase – beautiful broken Katniss – but she's not beautiful. She has the air of once being my sister, the gorgeous girl I always wanted to look like, but she's lost it to grime and grease. She's not broken. Broken implies that we can fix it. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who sees her for what she truly is – irreparable. My Katniss is gone.

While I clean, I come to the conclusion that it's been more than three days since she's showered because she's covered in so much grime. We're supposed to ration water here, but we're allowed showers. Katniss's hair is so stringy I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't had a shower since arriving. Her skin is still completely hairless, right down to her forearms, so it makes it easier to clean. That is the only thing I can find to be grateful about concerning the Capitol at this moment.

The door to our compartment opens. Must be Mother coming back. She won't come in. She'll go to her bed and listen as I clean Katniss and put her in the pajamas she's been issued with but never worn, preferring her yucky grimy closet clothes. When I hear footsteps in the doorway, I know it's not my mother back from her shift.

It's Gale.

His eyes flicker for only a moment on my sister before they fall to his feet. "Sorry," he mumbles.

"It's okay," I tell him. "Can you get a towel for her?"

He walks out as I scrub the soap out of Katniss's scalp. When I was little and Katniss would give me my baths, I would love when she scrubbed my hair. The feeling of her chewed-to-bits nails on my scalp relaxed me to the point where I fell asleep on her more than once.

This won't be the case for her tonight. Her wails tell me she's not enjoying this at all.

Gale stands just outside the door and it makes me chuckle, even as I turn the water off, satisfied that my sister's skin is wrinkled and an entire shade lighter. He knows that if Katniss were in her right mind, she wouldn't feel comfortable with this scene at all and respects it. For the briefest of moments, someone is respecting beautiful broken Katniss.

I wonder, had it been Peeta, would this scene be anything new? Haymitch would make crude jokes about them sleeping together on the train all the time before the Quell announcement. Katniss always covered my ears, sending her mentor glares that could kill. Peeta's face would turn rosy red. My mother would conveniently leave the room for something. Had the broken beauty that used to be my sister given herself to her district partner hoping he could fix her?

I'm thirteen. I'm not blind. I know that people have sex for more reasons than just making children. Before, I had always thought Haymitch's jokes were just that – crude humor used to embarrass the kids he looked at as some odd mixture of his best friends, his sworn enemies, and his own children. Now, I wonder. I mean, back when I thought Peeta had been serious about the baby, I had opened my mind to anything.

"Gale!" I call.

As much as he's not going to like it – for being such a slag heap veteran, as Rory said, Gale's awfully shy – he's going to have to help me get her out. Despite the fact that I can count every last one of her ribs, she's still too big for me to handle on my own, especially soaking wet.

He knows it's coming because he does it swiftly. He takes her out of the showering area and wraps her in a towel. Suddenly Gale and I have taken over the position as Katniss's substitute parents. I watch as Gale carries her out of the room and sits down on the bed, rocking her back and forth, pressing his lips to her temple and whispering in her ear that it's okay.

Her tears don't stop. I wonder, sometimes, if they ever will. She had years of unshed tears gated up and guarded, now being released at full force. It must be like the cloud that bursts – it'll just keep raining until there isn't anything left to rain.

I ready her pajamas and stumble upon a few of her belongings. They were taken off her when she first arrived to District Thirteen and Haymitch had them given to my mother. I look at the items. Peeta's token from the Quell– the locket with pictures of Mother, Gale, and me. A silver parachute. The mockingjay pin she wore in the arenas. Peeta's pearl.

I take the pearl in my hand, setting her pajamas on the dresser and run my thumb over it. It is smooth and shiny, bright white in color. It's just as beautiful up close as it was looking at it on the screens in the square, where our attendance had become mandatory. I shut the door to the drawer but keep the pearl in my hand, passing Gale her pajamas.

"Dress her?"

He raises his eyebrows at me. "Why not you?" he demands. He doesn't want to do, not like this. Katniss's loud sobs have stopped but she still has her eyes clenched shut, shaking from what the doctors are calling day terrors. I trade him the pearl for the clothes and for a moment I think he might change his mind but he doesn't. Instead, he slides her off his lap so she's sitting before me on the bed.

Gale holds the pearl in his palm as I dress Katniss as if she's the doll that's no doubt destroyed back in District Twelve. I lift her arms and hum to her. I'm not nearly as good a singer as she is, in fact I can barely carry a tune, but it seems to calm her like it does me, so I sing.

"…A bed of grass, a soft green pillow…"

Her eyes are dead. Dark gray, the same shade as the coal dust that blanketed our home, they are no longer bright and lively. Katniss always had such pretty eyes – so light I thought I could see through them, speckled with different colors in different lights. Sometimes they had flickers of green or brown but mostly blue, like mine. I was always so jealous because her eyes were so interesting and mine were so monotonous, one single tone of dark blue, the color of blueberry juice.

Once I have her dressed, I lay her down so her head is on the pillow, her wet hair loose. That's when I look back to Gale, whose eyes haven't left the pearl in his palm, and notice his shirt is soaked from her. I feel bad but he doesn't seem to notice, instead crawling up beside her and kissing her forehead. Any progress I made with my singing is halted because she starts to wail at the touch.

Gale sighs and reaches for her hand, placing the pearl inside and closing her fingers around it.

"Hey, look what we have," he says, as if he's cooing a colicky baby. "It's Peeta's pearl. Remember he gave it to you?"

Katniss stops wailing and looks up at Gale. "Peeta?"

He shakes his head but continues to smile. "Yeah, the pearl Peeta gave you on the beach. " He takes her other hand and guides her pointer finger to rub the pearl in her palm. "He gave it to you because he loves you and as long as you have it you have his love."

I watch in awe of Gale because he seems to have the magic touch. Katniss sits up a bit, her eyes curiously looking at the pearl in her palm, her head cocked to the side like a child delirious with fever who doesn't quite understand everything that's happening around her. She even gives a little smile and looks up at Gale.

"There," Gale says, cooing her again like he would an upset Posy. "See? You have nothing to cry about. Everything is going to be okay."

"Stay with me?" she asks.

I can't believe it. Gale, who hates Peeta more than anyone and was probably thrilled to know he was stuck in the Capitol, is using him to calm my sister. And it worked. This is the most I've heard her speak since her arrival to Thirteen. The most lucid she's been in my presence. Why hadn't I thought of the pearl before?

"Sure," Gale says, reaching to tug on her wet curls. "Anything, Catnip, if it will make you feel better."

As soon as it came, Gale's magic touch is gone. Katniss starts to scream, dropping the pearl on the comforter and putting her head in her hands. My eyes widen as her screams fly out of her mouth – ear piercing and loud enough to wake the dead. Gale obviously doesn't know what he's done either, but whatever it was has triggered another one of Katniss's panic episodes. The door to our compartment flies open and my mother stands in the doorway, Haymitch behind her, as if they were standing guard waiting for it to happen. They're actually good with her like this – when she's lost to screams and terrors, rather than when she's crying or staring off into space.

My mother sits beside her as Gale slides off the bed to allow Haymitch to come in. Katniss's mentor tries to pry her hands from her face but she just keeps screaming, her eyes now clenched shut, her body locked in rigor. Haymitch takes her face in his hands and leans close to her.

"Hey, sweetheart, look at me. Look at me," he coaxes. "Katniss!"

It doesn't matter, my mother has her hands in the drawer of the bedside table and pulls out a syringe. As Haymitch continues to coax her out of her screams, my mother jabs the needle in her arm. Sedative. Her screams stop and she blinks her eyes before falling forward into Haymitch.

Gale puts his hand on my shoulder and I bite my bottom lip, not realizing it had been trembling.

"Where are you taking her?" I ask, my voice embarrassingly shaky, as Haymitch picks her up, cradling her like a baby he's afraid to drop.

"Medical wing," my mother says. "She's needed there tomorrow anyway for another evaluation. So, this might be a blessing in disguise."

"I'm sure Aurelius will want to talk to you tomorrow," Haymitch grunts. He positions my sister so her head is against his shoulder, both her arms around his neck, one of his arms under her knees while another is supporting her back.

He's right. Dr. Aurelius will want to hear about what happened. He always talks to us after one of Katniss's panic episodes, trying to pinpoint a cause. So far, I've witnessed three. The first had been when Gale told her there was no District Twelve. I had been on my way to visit her and heard her screams from the hallway. The second had been when she woke up from the sedatives and asked for Peeta. Now this.

I wonder if Dr. Aurelius will see a pattern yet. It would be really helpful.

When Haymitch and my mother leave, the room seems surprisingly empty. Gale rocks back and forth on his feet, because he knows he's not supposed to be here and yet he feels as if he can't leave me. That was his deal with Katniss for the first Games – he'd always protect us. I can tell he's thinking about that now because he doesn't want to leave me alone.

"You okay?" he asks.

I nod, but he shakes his head. "Really, Prim?" he says. "I'm not."

My eyes find Gale's and I frown, seeing the lines of worry on his features. He seems to have aged years since we've been in Thirteen, whether it's from the training or Katniss I'm not sure. Perhaps it's a little of both.

"I hate seeing her like this, Gale," I tell him, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. "It's not Katniss."

"It's not," he agrees, leaning against the dresser. "She'll come out of it. She's strong."

Strength is something I don't know if Katniss has any more of because she's already used so much. Sometimes I wonder if she used up her quota when our father died and she had to be strong for those four years. If I could go back and change it, show her that she didn't have to be so fearless all the time, I would. If I could go back and tell her to keep some of that strength for now, I would be there in an instant. If I could go back and keep her out of the Hunger Games, even if it meant going myself, I would.

Because I would rather be dead than see Katniss lose her mind.

When I feel the lump in my throat starting to form, I look up at Gale and change the subject. "You were so good with her," I tell him.

He shrugs. "I did what I had to do."

It wasn't easy. The way Gale's standing, his arms now crossed over his chest, his scowl fixed on his shoes, tells me that he struggled the entire way through that conversation. He wouldn't let it show – not for Katniss's sake – but it hurt him nearly as much to talk about Peeta loving her and seeing her respond as it does to see her wail.

"It took a lot of courage," I say.

Again, he shrugs. "I had to do something," he mumbles. "Doesn't mean I liked one minute of it."

He slams his hand on the dresser and shakes his head, his back to me. "I can't do that again, Prim, I can't," he hisses. "I can't sit around and watch her lose her mind over Mellark. I can't do that."

"She feels guilty," I tell him, repeating what Dr. Aurelius told us after she clawed Haymitch's face to shreds upon finding out about Peeta's capture. "No one really knows why she's acting like this. Once she can tell us – "

"It's because she loves him, Prim!" Gale shouts, his back still to me. "She loves him. You saw her with the pearl. It was written all over her fucking face!"

I don't say anything. Gale fills the silence.

He takes a breath. "I just don't want her to suffer anymore. I don't even know what that means. If it means Mellark comes back I'm going to rip my own heart out. If it means keeping her sedated for the rest of her life then – I don't know. I can't win."

I know that Gale loves my sister. Before the Hunger Games, I used to dream about them getting married. I also know that Gale wants to fix her. He wants to be the one to put the bandage on and smile at her as she thanks him for saving her life. He doesn't want to see that she's lost already. Lost to supply closets and episodes of panic and fear and loneliness. Lost to her own mind and all the trauma that she's seen. He doesn't want to see it, so he's been denying it.

This outburst shows me that he can't deny it any longer. He sees what I see. Our Katniss – the one that would hunt in the woods and scowl at the world – is gone and replaced with one that gets scared walking down a hallway, demons around every corner. He knows that he can't fix her, that only Peeta can because he's been with her through it all, but he doesn't want to see it.

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "You want me to stay tonight?" he asks.

I shake my head no. "You might lose your communicuff."

He laughs a little and comes to stand in front of me, setting his hands on either side of me and kissing my forehead. "Well, I don't see what's the big deal about that," he says. He grows serious again and stares at me, his gray eyes so similar to Katniss's they're hard to look at. "You sure? I'll stay until your mother comes back."

My mother won't come back tonight. She'll be holding vigil over Katniss with Haymitch, listening to the beeping machines and interrogating every doctor that comes to check on her. She'll come back once the sedative wears off.

Gale and I both know this so I shake my head. "You go. Hazelle probably needs a break from the kids."

"Vick and Posy are out by now," he says. "Rory's waiting for me."

"Don't keep Rory waiting then," I scold him. "He needs his rest and so do you."

He nods and pats my head. "I suppose you're right. We have a long day ahead of us keeping your sister out of closets."

He stands and walks toward the door.

When the door clicks shut, I go lay down so my head is on the pillow still wet from Katniss's hair. I put my face into it, trying to salvage anything I can, like some sort of connection with my sister. Suddenly I feel my own tears begin to form and I let them fall. As I turn on my side, attempting to be as small as I can be, I feel something hard. I reach my hand down and pull the pearl from the comforter, the silky surface smooth in my fingers.

To be completely honest, I wish my sister never met Peeta Mellark. I wish she had fallen in love with Gale. We wouldn't be in this situation if this were the case. But she did meet Peeta Mellark and, according to Gale, she's in love with him. Katniss, the girl who doesn't believe in love and marriage and children, fell in love.

I just want my Katniss back. At this point I would do anything to get even a semblance of her old self. The tears are coming fast now, big drops rushing down my cheeks.

I don't realize I've fallen asleep until I wake up alone. My mother's bed is still made meaning she's either still with Katniss or gone to a shift straight from my sister's bedside. She hasn't come back. I wonder how Katniss is doing today. My mother mentioned an evaluation. When I go get my schedule placed on my arm, I see that I have a meeting with Dr. Aurelius later in the afternoon. It makes me think of Katniss, as most everything does now, and I stop in her room on my way to the staff lounge.

She's still there when I get inside but Haymitch and my mother are nowhere to be seen. It's because she's awake, no doubt, staring at one of the blank white walls. I wonder what she sees – if she pretends she's looking out the window to the woods outside of Twelve.

I take a gamble and reach out to take her hand. She turns and stares at me with her dead gray eyes as if she can't place me, who I am, why I'm here. I feel tears well in my eyes.

"Prim," I tell her. She doesn't respond so I clarify. "It's me. Prim."

Katniss eyes me for a minute but doesn't withdraw her hand from mine. I take it as progress so I don't move. The next question topples out of my mouth before I can even think of the consequences of her possible answer.

"Do you know who I am?"

She blinks. Once. Twice. Three times. Then her eyes fall to her lap.

The tears I've tried to keep in my eyes fall down my cheeks like rain. My sister is so lost in herself that she doesn't know who I am. I'm gasping for air and it's making her uncomfortable because she's squirming in her bed. My nose starts running, mixing with my tears as both stream down my face. Katniss, my Katniss, my savior, is truly gone.

I stand from her bed, taking my hand out of hers and let out a choked sob. I need to get out. I can't be here anymore. Is this why Mother and Haymitch only stay with her when she's sleeping or screaming? Are they too lost to Katniss as well? I wonder if she would remember Gale. Then I shake my head. If she doesn't remember me, she won't remember anyone.

I wonder if she would recognize Peeta if he was sitting next to her and not just a figure in her head.

When I open the door I hear her. She says something but it catches in her throat, as if she's scared she's saying something wrong. I turn, aware that she's going to hurt me again, when I see that she's crying too.

"Sister," she says.

It's all I can do to keep from launching myself on her, wrapping my arms around her so tightly I take all her tubes with me. I can't, because she'll panic, so instead I sit down on the side of her bed and stroke her cheek.

"Sister," I repeat.

Later that day she'll start screaming again. It'll be Finnick that triggers it this time. Her shouts will be a mixture of gibberish and agonized screams that he's not doing it well enough, to hurry before his heart's been stopped too long. Everyone will realize that she's panicking about Peeta at the force field and she'll have to be sedated. Dr. Aurelius will talk to Gale and me, explaining that the conversation she was having with Gale was probably a hallucination, possibly believing she was having it with Peeta himself. When I tell Dr. Aurelius about my visit, his eyes will light up, telling me it's good news. It will almost take the frown off of Gale's face that will find its way there when the doctor says she was pretending he was Peeta.

But for now I ignore my schedule and sit on Katniss's bed. We smile at each other for a few moments before she scoots over to allow me into the tiny bed with her, reminding me of our old bed in the Seam we shared every night.

Her nurse, who I can see from the board on the wall is still on from the night shift, opens the door and smiles at us. "Good morning, hun," she says to Katniss, checking the machines and then patting her hand. "Gave us quite the scare last night, didn't we?"

"What happened?" I find myself asking, my heart racing at the thought that something had possibly happened to her last night. Did she try to kill herself? Did they give her too much medicine and it caused a reaction?

The nurse, an older woman I'd guess to about twenty or so years older than my mother, looks from her patient to me. "Oh, she just woke up through the sedation. The dose was wrong," she says, stroking Katniss's hair almost maternally. Katniss, I'm surprised to see, leans into it. "It was alright though, wasn't it, sweetie?"

"He came," Katniss tells her in a quiet voice.

The nurse raises her eyebrows as if in pleasant surprise. "He did?" she asks, sitting down in a similar position to how I sat on the edge of her bed. Her voice is like Gale's was last night. If I closed my eyes, she could be talking to Posy. "Oh, that must have been exciting. What did you do?"

I'm so shocked I can only watch as Katniss grins and touches her pointer finger to her lips and taps them three times. She's actually happy, sitting here with a total stranger. It's odd to see my Katniss, the guarded girl that never smiled, conversing with the nurse so well when she can barely see Gale or me without breaking down. Maybe it's because she associates us with District Twelve and she knows this woman only as the lady who smiles sweetly at her and gives her medicine. That seems logical, but I wish it wasn't true.

"Oooh," the nurse smiles. "He kissed you! Katniss, he must really love you."

"We're going to eat bread," Katniss says, proud and confident.

It makes no sense. Her response has nothing to do with the declaration of love that the nurse set forth and it nearly makes me laugh. Maybe some of my old Katniss is still in there, even in her crazed mind not wanting to admit she loves anyone. The nurse finds this funny too because she fights a chuckle.

"Is it a date?" she asks.

Katniss shakes her head, her smile dropping, and points to a wall. "Fire," she says. "In the fire."

Her lucid moment is ending. She's slowly losing her coherency and before long I won't be surprised if she reverts back into herself, but this conversation was amazing to see. I hadn't seen Katniss speak aside from the conversation last night with the pearl. To watch her converse so freely and easily makes my heart soar with pride and even a little bit of hope.

The nurse sighs, clearly seeing what I'm seeing, and stands from the bed, going to one of the machines and adjusting something. She turns to me. "I'm going to give her a bit of sedatives now, let her get some rest before her evaluation. She didn't sleep too well last night. You're welcome to stay."

She may be the nicest woman I've met since coming to Thirteen, but I know I can't outright deny my orders all day. I'm already late as it is and I don't want to get in trouble. I slowly roll off the bed and smile down at Katniss, her eyes drooping from the sedation.

"Sister," she whispers before her eyes close.

Even though she's already asleep, I repeat it right back. With her eyes closed, I can see the shadow of her beauty – the beauty Peeta fell in love with, the beauty I was always jealous of. Her breathing evens out and I know that, despite the fact that she looks peaceful, she's broken. But this conversation leads me to believe something I haven't believed in a long time.

My sister's not irreparable. We just haven't been using the right tools.

For now I'll have to be strong. No more meek and mild Primrose Everdeen. I have to grow up like Katniss did so many years before so when she's better I can be there for her like she was for me. She may be beautiful broken Katniss now, but somewhere deep inside of her is still my Katniss. I saw it there just now. And I need to be ready for it's debut. She would do the same for me.

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it. Tell me what you think!