If Katniss had any insight into Eik’s thoughts, she might realize that the two of them are far more alike than they might realize. They shared similar thoughts, even if they varied only slightly. They both wanted to just live, to be free. Katniss had been born to fight, it had not been her choosing. What would she have chosen if she had been allowed to choose? Would she have chosen a soldier, knowing her size and build would suite her well in battle? Would she choose politics because of how well she can move the masses when she is willing to? Would she have chosen healing, to heal both the physical and mental wounds of others? She cannot even determine what she would have chosen herself. All she has known is war and loss. Before she could walk she had been taught to fight. Before she could talk she had been taught her place. But now she stands here wondering all the things that she really doesn’t have time to think about. She was a soldier and a soldier she would always be.
His question pries her away from her thoughts and for a moment, she is thankful. She is thankful for the distractions because she knows it is these distractions that keep her thoughts from following paths that they really should not be traveling. The stillness of the night has been a pitfall for Katniss, something she is slowly learning to deal with. She is learning to fill her thoughts with not what once was or what could be, but with what the future holds. She has so much to live for. She has Kibou and the Night Court. She has Finnick too.
The eagle, as if hearing the thoughts of his bonded, screeches not far from her. She sees him in the distance and she cannot help but feel a sense of peace. If she did not have Finnick, she would have surely allowed herself to fall over that edge. But Finnick grounded her. He was her better half, the sane half, the half that kept her in check. How she had lived without Finnick was a mystery.
Eik continues, telling her that his daughters would hate him because in his attempt to protect them, he had told them how dangerous and horrible boys were only for them to find someone that was none of that. There is a sense of calmness that washes over Katniss as she looks over to him. “There is still time for him to prove you right…he is young and fatherless, so many things can still happen.” Kibou was a good boy for now, but he was still so young. He did not have a father to teach him to be a man and there was only so much that Katniss can teach him. The boy needs a father more than anything…but someone has taken that from him. She can feel the way anger washes over her, the need to kill the one who killed her Metaphor.
But at his question, her face softened. “They will come to respect you…to know that you only mean the best for them.” She had not been given the opportunity to have an openly loving father. Her parents had decided to have a child because neither wanted to support the war effort - so they created a warrior. They were void of love for one another but they made sure that Katniss had been raised decently. Katniss wished she had a father to warn her about the tricks of men. Perhaps then she would not have succumbed to the lust-driven sweet nothings shared to her that ultimate made her conceive her twins. Perhaps if she had a father like Eik, she would have waited for Metpahor. She would have waited for someone that loved her so completely and would never have hurt her. But all of that was in the past.
She sighed for a moment as she looked back out over the mountain side, looking out into the valley before. She was silent in reflection. “They are lucky to have you…I was not that lucky.” Her voice cuts through the silence as she looks towards him. “Don’t ever stop trying to protect them. They will thank you for it one day. Perhaps not today…but one day.” She cannot say for sure when his daughters will look at him with love and thankfulness that he protected them from a bad choice down the line. It would surely come, it always did. “I can only hope I will be enough for Kibou.” Kibou deserved the love of his father. He deserved someone to teach him and guide him to be a good and loving man. He deserved so much more than Katniss could give him but Katniss was all he had. She would simply have to do.
@Eik
