4 weeks

He's got her pinned to the wrestling mat in his basement. One arm poised against her windpipe, the other holding her upper body firm to the floor. His good leg knelt across both of hers. She can't move an inch. He could crush her if he wanted to.

His blue eyes are unyielding beneath furrowed brows. "You can't let me get through your defense like that. Widen your stance. Bend at the knee. Stand your ground when I come to attack you."

She grits her teeth and nods, her head swimming while the room spins around her. She tries to shake it off but then he pulls her up by the hand and a shower of dotted lights flashes in front of her eyes. "Hey, are you okay?" Peeta's face softens considerably, his hands gripping her shoulders to steady her.

But she can't afford to let the episode consume her. They have training to do. "I'm fine. Must have hit my head a little too hard."

"Katniss." There's a warning in his voice. She brushes it aside impatiently.

"Show me again," she says.

8 weeks

Training sessions have dwindled because she's ill all the time, now. It frustrates Peeta to no end because he needs her to survive, and to survive she needs to train. But every time they try, she's forced to quit after an hour or so. The only food she can keep down are the cheese buns that he bakes fresh daily because her craving for them never seems to be satiated.

She's not interested in other activities, either. Things they'd come to enjoy quite a lot under the cover of darkness when sleep evades them both. In fact, she hasn't let him touch her for weeks now, and the resulting tension between them has led to more than one outburst of animosity. More often than not it stems from Katniss, but he's gotten hot-headed with her on more than one occasion. He's not proud of it.

It's all due to anxiety over the Quell, Peeta decides. She's made herself sick over it, and she's lashing out at him with misplaced anger. He doesn't blame her. He gets angry and nauseous every time he thinks about it too.

On several occasions, Peeta catches Prim and Mrs. Everdeen glancing between Katniss and him with sad, worried eyes, something unspoken passing between them. An unnatural hush settles over the Everdeen home. The three women seem to be in mourning for what is to come, and some days Peeta feels it's best to drop off his daily supply of baked goods and leave them alone. They don't have much time left to be together.

After all, the Quarter Quell is a mere four weeks away.

12 weeks

He doesn't put the pieces together until she vomits on the train after the reaping.

"Katniss... I think you might be pregnant." She doesn't react. Won't meet his eye. She's wearing an expression he can't place, but it gives him a sinking feeling in his gut. "Did you know already?" Again, she doesn't respond, but she's a terrible liar. Always has been. There might as well be a flashing sign on her forehead. She knows. Of course she does. "How long?" His voice breaks.

"I don't know," she whispers.

"Tell the truth. How long have you known this?" He demands, his voice shaking.

Still hunched over the toilet, Katniss murmurs her reply into the porcelain bowl. "A couple of weeks, I guess. I don't know how far along- Mom thinks a few months at least."

"Why didn't you tell me, Katniss? After everything that's happened, you're still keeping things from me. Why? Why are you doing this to me?" He's just barely choking back tears, she can tell. Her answer does nothing to help.

"Because it doesn't matter." She might as well have slapped him across the face. It would have hurt less.

"Doesn't matter?" He wants to scream. Pull his hair out. Smash the nearest breakable object. "It matters more than anything, Katniss!"

"I'm going to die in the arena, Peeta. You're the one getting out of there alive. This," she says, with a wild gesture to her stomach. "Whatever this is, it doesn't change anything! I didn't tell you because I didn't need to give you another reason to sacrifice yourself for me in there. It was better if you didn't know."

His head swims as his brain tries desperately to reconcile this information. She's made him out to be a fool, yet again. Stupid Peeta, who wears his emotions on his sleeve for the whole country to see; always so trusting and willing to believe the best of her. He could kick himself for making excuses for her illness, her moods of late, her growing penchant for baggy clothing. How had he missed the signs, so blatant before his eyes in retrospect?

He thinks of all those nights on the train, where the simple comfort of one another's arms had turned into so much more. The nights- and sometimes days and sleepy midafternoons- that followed once they were safely back to District 12. In his bed and hers. In his art studio. Once even on his kitchen table, still dusted in flour from the breads he'd baked that day.

His stomach seems to have dropped to his feet. Anxiety and nausea quell within him in a sickening cocktail of desperate helplessness. His mind races with every leading kiss, every languid thrust, every slap of naked skin meeting naked skin in the heat of their coupling; the moans and groans of delicious bliss swallowed by wanton tongues.

He regrets it. All of it. Because it led them here.

"You'll die in that arena over my dead body," he growls, and then stalks out of the room. He means it, quite literally. The look of resignation on his face tells her so.

Cinna finds out soon after, when he fits Katniss for her wedding dress for the tribute interviews. He discovers the small but prominent bulge she's been carefully hiding from Peeta. He doesn't say a word, but his face darkens, and he looks to her with the question burning behind his eyes. She nods, unable to say the words aloud, or to keep the tears from streaming down her cheeks. Cinna sweeps her into his arms, dries her tears, and promises to make alterations to the dress. No one else will need to know.

But then Haymitch senses that something is wrong. Damn him and his commitment to partial sobriety, Katniss laments. Their mentor drags the truth from her and Peeta on the second night of training at the Tribute Center. He glares between the pair of them when Peeta spits the dreaded words: Katniss is pregnant. They're his tributes, his victors, his kids. Because that's what they are, though they've suffered enough for a lifetime. He loves them, though it terrifies him to admit it. He's long since broken the one unspoken rule of mentoring for the Hunger Games: never get attached to your tributes. But it's too late. In the rational part of his liquor- soaked brain, Haymitch is angry with himself for not anticipating this and doing something to prevent it. He's made conflicting promises to both his kids, for each fiercely believes the other should be the one to make it out of the Quarter Quell alive. What's interesting is they both make compelling arguments for each other's lives, but now there's a wrench in the plan that can't be undone. He's not sure he can save both of them this time, and now there's a third soul in his hands.

It's a wrench further complicated when Peeta tells all of Panem. And then Katniss is the one ready to scream and break things. Because now it will be that much more difficult to sacrifice herself for him. She can't stay angry with him though, not enough to exile him from her bed on their last night together.

In the dark, they find each other again. Clothes shed, bodies aligned, flesh on flesh. Grunts and moans and gentle sighs of pleasure. And anger. There's some of that, too.

Katniss has to admit to herself that she's missed this closeness with Peeta over the last couple of months. He's more attuned to her body than ever before, ravishing her with kisses everywhere his lips and teeth and tongue can reach. Punishing her with sharp thrusts and slow, teasing strokes. She screams his name when she comes; doesn't bother to keep quiet, now that the whole world knows their business. In the end, he spills himself inside of her. Because what does it matter now? The worst has already happened.

When they fall into an uneasy sleep, his hand finds the bump jutting out between her hipbones. He whispers that she'll be a great mother. She doesn't believe him.

Once they're in the arena, Katniss realizes that she couldn't have hidden her condition in the wetsuit anyway, with the way it outlines every contour of her body. More than once, she catches Peeta staring at her belly with a frenetic glint in his eye. He's borderline manic in the arena, hyperaware of every move Katniss makes and every move anyone takes towards her. Finnick quickly learns to keep his distance as they tramp through the unforgiving jungle together.

It is a side of Peeta that Katniss has never seen before. If she's honest with herself it scares her a little. But it's nothing compared to the scare she receives when he hits the force field. The sickening moment in time when he is lost to her forever. When Finnick brings him back to life, she throws her arms around Peeta in a vice grip, and makes him swear to never, ever do that to her again.

After that Peeta's intensity only increases, turning him into a madman of a tribute. Fiercely protective and unexpectedly vicious. Even Johanna shrinks back at the searing glares Peeta throws her way once she, Beetee, and Wiress join their tenuous alliance. He defends the woman carrying his child with a vengeance unmatched by any tribute in the history of the Games, wielding his machete against muttation monkeys and jabberjays with a feral snarl on his lips.

Katniss claims those lips with hers when they finally get a moment alone. With their allies asleep some distance away and the waves splashing at their feet, Peeta makes his last, desperate plea for her life. But at the moment there is only one thing Katniss knows with absolute certainty: she cannot go back home and live without him. She'll be irreparably damaged. Swallowed whole by her grief. She knows firsthand that's no way to live- to raise a child. She tells him so. He doesn't believe her. So she kisses him until he does. Their tongues clash and their hands wander to forbidden places as the hunger builds, and if they were back home their clothes would be gone and he'd be inside her by now. But they're still in the Games- still at a crossroads- and it's become painfully clear that they will never come to an agreement.

The kiss ends when the lightening strikes and Finnick wakes. He takes over the watch for them as Katniss and Peeta lay down in the sand, wrapped as tightly around one another as it is possible to be.

The Games go on. Peeta doesn't leave Katniss's side for even a second. Until he does.

It happens in a blur of chaos. Peeta and Katniss are dragging the coil of wire to the water when they hear it. The scream piercing the thick, jungle air. The cannon blast. Then Brutus crashes through the undergrowth, the glint of a fresh kill in his eyes. Peeta shoves Katniss behind him with such force that she lands on her back. Hard. It knocks the wind out of her. Peeta doesn't notice, brandishing his knife and lunging at the monstrous tribute. The fight carries them into the dark depths of vegetation, beyond her scope of vision.

Katniss is gasping humid lungfuls of air, trying to catch her breath and groping at the quiver on her back for an arrow when Johanna appears; smashes the coil of wire over her head. Digs the tracker out of her arm. Then as suddenly as she appeared, Johanna is gone. Katniss pulls herself up, stumbles around, calls for Peeta. He's nearby; she is certain she can hear his uneven footsteps staggering through the jungle.

She thinks she's almost reached him when the arena disintegrates around them.

In the end, each of the star-crossed lovers gets what they want. They both survive the hellscape of an arena. But they lose each other.

14 weeks

The doctors in District 13 tell her she's lucky to have survived the arena with her pregnancy intact, though she's now confined to her bed in the hospital under strict orders for bed rest. The odds were in your favor, they joke. She hisses obscenities at them, but they wave the insults away with patient hands, citing her fragile mental state as an excuse for her behavior.

They put a machine on her belly and show her the picture on a screen. "That's your baby," a woman with kind eyes tells her. But Katniss can't reconcile the concept with the fuzzy images on the screen. She turns her head away so she doesn't have to see them.

16 weeks

Gale comes to see her. "I didn't think it was true," he confesses. "When- when he said it during the interview I thought it was another lie. But then- I saw the way he acted in the arena and I thought, no sane person does that to keep up an act." Gale's voice is wistful; he can't pull his eyes away from her abdomen. He glares at the physical evidence of her intimacy with another, as though her growing bump was the one who'd betrayed some long-forgotten promise to love him. She turns away from Gale, tuning out his self-pity. She's done hiding her feelings out of obligation for his ego.

Gale leaves and he doesn't come back.

After that, she hosts few visitors from her hospital bed. Mostly Prim, who has the good sense to sit quietly and leave Katniss in peace with the miserable thoughts swirling around her brain. Haymitch comes on occasion to bring news of the rebellion. At long last, he tells her of the rebels' strategy to rally the districts as one and their plan to overthrow the Snow administration.

Apparently, they had planned to make Katniss the centerpiece of their campaign. "The Mockingjay," Haymitch says with a sneer in his voice. "The leader here- woman named Coin- she's, ah, not too happy about your situation. Keeps saying we rescued the wrong victors."

This President Coin isn't wrong, Katniss thinks. There is no question in her mind that District 13 had used a substantial number of resources to extract Finnick, Beetee, and herself from the arena. They'd expected victors in return for their investment. Strong. Capable. Angry. Ready to join the fight against the evil Capitol. What they'd gotten instead was damaged goods.

It is one of the only times Katniss can find it in herself to be grateful for her situation. She could never have been the Mockingjay. Not when she's so broken.

With some hesitance, Haymitch tells her of the interview Peeta gave in the Capitol. She demands to see it. When she does, her heart shatters. He's gaunt and thin and trembling. Saying words he doesn't believe for an audience that's growing to hate him more every day. Her hands paw at the screen, wanting nothing more than to pull him through it and into her arms. Protect him with her embrace, just as he did for her on as many nights as she allowed it. Just before Peeta's face fades off the screen, she feels the first tiny flutter of movement in her belly. The sensation is innocent and gentle as the tickle of a butterfly's wings, but it makes her nauseous anyway. She vomits, and Haymitch leaps back to avoid the spray of sick, swearing profusely.

That night, Peeta's gaunt face seeps into her thoughts, consumes her body and soul. She has a nightmare that she just can't shake. And Peeta is hundreds of miles away, unable to draw her out of it.

Finnick hears her screaming from his own hospital bed down the hall. Gives her his length of rope. They spend hours together after that. Making knots until their fingers are raw.

20 weeks

There's a plan to rescue Peeta and the others. Haymitch comes to tell Katniss, though he waits until after the rescue party has already left for the Capitol. She makes to jump from her bed, pace the room, but Haymitch stops her with a surprisingly strong hand. She wants to scream at him but the expression on his face is one of such misery and pain that she slumps against the pillows, defeated. He's just as scared as she is. Because he loves Peeta, too.

The wait is agonizing. Haymitch offers to have the doctors put her out until the thing is done. She vehemently refuses. She wants to be awake when... if... but she can't allow her brain to think beyond that.

At some point, Finnick comes to sit with her. "Either way, it will be over soon. Whether they come back alive or dead, at least we'll know," he says grimly. He's right, she realizes. The thought is strangely liberating.

When word reaches them that the rescue party is back, she demands to see Peeta immediately. At first the doctors won't allow it. Then Haymitch steps in and raises hell until they agree to let her go, with the condition that she stays in a wheelchair. But Katniss doesn't care. She sits dutifully in the chair as Haymitch wheels her down the hall, Finnick following close at their heels. Clutching his rope for dear life.

Katniss holds her hands tight to the bulge in her belly. Wonders what Peeta will think of it now; it's grown so much in the weeks that he's been away. She imagines he'll put his hand to her stomach so he can feel all the little kicks, too. She can already see the way his eyes will light up when he feels it for the first time. And after that he will surely kiss her, a delicious thought punctuated by the hollow ache between her legs.

They pass a bloodied Gale on a stretcher, but she doesn't have time to spare him more than a cursory glance when she spots Peeta. Surrounded by strangers. Thinner than ever, eyes and cheeks more hollowed and purple than they'd been when she saw him on screen. Just as she had screamed his name from her tree in the arena a lifetime ago, she calls his name now. Her heart leaps when he turns to her, and she's so overwhelmed to see him here and whole and perfect that she misses the manic expression in his bloodshot eyes. It's reminiscent of his ferocity in the Quarter Quell, and at once it is not. It is something entirely different, a fact that flashes through her mind too late as her brain struggles to process the boy lunging at her now with murder in his eyes.

Haymitch jumps in front of her before Peeta can wrap his hands around her throat.

22 weeks

When they tell her that Peeta- her Peeta- has been hijacked, she loses her last sliver of composure. He will never be the same again. He'll probably hate her for the rest of eternity. She never even told him she loved him. Though she suspects now- far too late- that she did.

That she does.

Her grief transcends all reason. Katniss falls into its black pit, allows it to devour her wholly and complete. For the first time in her life, she understands how her mother felt when her father was incinerated in the mines. Losing the person you love beyond any capability to have them back- it changes you. Saps you of any will to live, to survive.

The nights are the worst. She still has nightmares, but sprinkled among them are gauzy, wonderful dreams. Dreams that include herself and Peeta and very little clothing and much tangling of limbs. Gentle caresses and sweat-slicked skin. Probing tongues and whispered words.

She always wakes unsatisfied.

In a way, the dreams plague her worse than the nightmares. They make her ache for something she will not ever have again.

24 weeks

The baby moves often, now. After a while, Katniss can distinguish the different movements as she lies in the hospital bed, staring at the same four walls, day in and day out. Hiccups and kicks and rolls. Her crushing depression has given way to an unfeeling numbness that settles like a leaden weight over her entire body, save for the gymnasium in her abdomen. She's glad for the flurry of movements, though. They remind her that she'd not quite as alone as she feels.

Peeta is making progress, or so they tell her. He's finally stopped screaming that Katniss an evil mutt with an evil mutt baby inside of her. He was allowed to eat his own pudding one day. He has begun sleeping without his restraints.

Despite her mind's inability to cope, her stomach seems to grow larger by the day. Doctors come to examine her with even greater frequency than before. They take her blood, probe her stomach with cold fingers, and graph the baby's heart tones on a monitor. They're worried she could deliver early thanks to the trauma in the arena and the stress she's been under since. They encourage her to talk about her feelings, start thinking of names for the baby, prepare her mind for motherhood. Katniss scoffs. She's not interested in any of that. Not without him.

Because only one of the star-crossed lovers was destined to live long enough to become a parent. And it wasn't supposed to be her.

One day the lady with the machine comes back to take another internal snapshot of her growing belly. Katniss turns away from the screen again. "Would you like to know the gender?" the woman asks. Her voice is gentle, as though she's speaking to a cornered animal. The thought has never occurred to Katniss before. People in District 12 have no way of finding out the gender of a baby before it is born, though it sounds exactly like the kind of superfluous thing that is commonplace in the Capitol. She figures, why not? What does it matter anyway?

But when the lady smiles and congratulates her on her baby girl, she weeps.

28 weeks

They're concerned about her. She can see them in the hallway outside her room, a whispered huddle of white coats and clipboards. Talking about her.

They bring in a head doctor for a therapy session. She doesn't want to talk to him. The only person she wants to talk to no longer exists in the scope of her world.

Her spirits lift a little when Haymitch insists on dragging her out of her hospital bed again, still confined to her wheelchair of course. This time it is to attend Finnick and Annie's wedding. Katniss is happy for them, truly. But she can't contain her jealousy as Finnick twirls his new bride on the dance floor. For their certainty. For their love. For their good fortune in having one another, maybe not entirely whole, but safe and happy. For the moment, at least.

Her heart leaps when they bring out the wedding cake, all frosting flowers and sugar waves, dotted with a sea of tiny ocean creatures. The miraculous confection could have only been done by Peeta's hand.

"We need to talk," says Haymitch. He wheels her to a private room off the hall. "He wants to see you." Her pulse quickens. If she were back in her hospital bed, her heart monitor would be alarming like crazy. "The doctors don't think it's a good idea."

"I don't care," she says. "Please, Haymitch. Let me see him."

"I thought you'd say that." He takes her back in the direction of the hospital but veers off down a hallway she's never seen before.

Peeta is there. Restrained to a bed in a room with a one-way glass mirror. He seems eerily calm; the antithesis of the raging mutt he was the last time they'd seen each other.

Katniss is allowed to walk the few steps into his room to a chair at his bedside, just out of his reach. It takes her longer than usual because her feet are swollen and throbbing with every step she takes. Peeta eyes her suspiciously as she lowers herself into the chair. Glares at her belly, and the traitorous thing that lives within. She stares back at him, suddenly lost for words in the face of the boy who has occupied every single one of her thoughts since arriving in this place. As always, he is the one to speak first.

"You're getting big, aren't you?" His voice slices the air with cruel intent.

"You've looked better," she snaps back.

"And you're not even remotely nice to say that to me after all I've been through. I guess I shouldn't have expected much else."

Katniss shrugs, wrapping her arms around herself. "We've all been through a lot. And I was never known for being the nice one. That was always you."

He laughs. A cold, demeaning sound that is entirely out of place coming from his mouth. "Yes, I suppose that's true. You used that fact to exploit me; I can see that now. You know, the one thing I can't figure out is how you tricked me into it."

"Into what?"

"Loving you," he says.

Her answer is honest. "I have no idea."

The charge in the air between them is palpable as Peeta scowls at her. She can tell that he is sizing her up, a million questions burning behind the blue depths of his eyes. She should have expected the next thing he says, but the words still send a shockwave up her spine when he grits them through his teeth. It's almost as though he can't stop himself from saying it.

"All those times that we… that we were together. You didn't love me." It's a statement, not a question.

"You know there are people watching us now?" She shifts uncomfortably in her chair. Glances at the mirror that seems to fill up half the room. There is no less than a team of doctors behind it, she knows that for certain.

He seems wholly unconcerned about this. "I know. That's not an answer."

His eyes are hard and narrowed, but behind them is the smallest hint of softness. A trace of the boy he used to be. It had cost her everything to finally admit that she couldn't live without him on the beach in the arena. And it costs her last bit of composure now to tell him the truth. "I- I think I did. Love you, I mean." Her voice trembles on the verge of tears. She can't take it anymore. She's hyperaware of the people watching, listening behind the mirror. This is none of their business. With some difficulty, she hoists herself out of the chair and turns away from Peeta, both hands placed protectively over her stomach as she waddles out of the room.

"Katniss."

She turns at the door; vaguely surprised at the effect those strangled syllables still have on her. Waits for him to deliver the final blow. The one that will crush her for good. It doesn't come. What he says instead sends a thrill through her body.

"Will you tell me? When it's born?"

The baby leaps in her stomach. Katniss gulps down the rapidly- forming lump in her throat. She nods back at him, catching one last look at his face-twisted into an expression somewhere between puzzlement and sorrow- before letting the door close behind her.

That night when she gets back to her hospital room, she starts to sing. And once she starts, she doesn't stop. Lilting lullabies, gentle songs about birds and springtime, songs about nothing at all. Every song she can remember her father ever singing to her, she sings to her unborn child now, as she massages her swollen belly with tender hands.

The singing seems to pull her out of the black pit she's been stuck in for weeks now. She tastes her food again. Brushes her hair. Shares a laugh with Prim. Tries not to think of Peeta.

30 weeks

"Something happened today. With the boy."

"What is it, Haymitch?" Katniss says, bracing herself for the worst.

"They showed him footage of you singing. To the…" he gestures awkwardly at her stomach.

"And?" Her hands fly automatically to her belly.

"And he said he recognized some of the songs. Said he heard your Pa singing them a long time ago. Then he got very quiet for a few hours. Next time he spoke was to ask what was for dinner." Haymitch shrugs. "But he was able to talk about you without losing his damn mind. It's something, sweetheart."

It is a small something, the most minuscule amount of something. It means nothing, probably.

She allows it to infiltrate her mind anyway before locking it safely away in the same part of her brain that is occupied by everything that is Peeta.

32 weeks

The contraction seizes her midsection in a ripple of blinding pain that takes her breath away. It is a pain that only worsens with each contraction that follows.

The doctors throw terms amongst themselves that make no sense to her. Preterm labor and possible abruption and ruptured membranes float through her consciousness. Really, though, wasn't she always a ticking time bomb? It shouldn't be a shock to anyone that this is happening now, when no part of her- mind, body, or soul- is ready for this. But then agony roils through her gut again and the decision is made. They have to deliver the baby.

She screams for Peeta as they rush her to the operating room. Prim's face appears at her bedside, creased with concern above the collar of her medical scrubs. They won't allow him in; he's unpredictable, too much of a risk. But her sister remains at her side when they shove the needle in her spine, strap her flat to a hard table, and slice her open.

She can feel tugging and pulling and pressure and tears streaming down her face. Not for the discomfort, but for the one person who should be there but isn't.

There's an almighty tug and someone announces the birth of her daughter. A weighty, hushed silence fills the room.

Too silent. It seems to stretch for an eternity.

Then the baby cries. A shrill, pathetic, little cry. But it's there.

She's a survivor.

12 hours

She is small. So, so incredibly small. Three pounds, nine ounces, they tell her. Not even four pounds of miniature human flesh, made to look even tinier by all the tubes and wires taped to her fragile body. Katniss sneaks her hand through the porthole of the incubator, touches her daughter's velvet skin, thin and delicate as tissue paper.

She's never known a love to equal this one. Or a sadness.

2 days

They let Katniss hold her. Finally. The days since the birth have felt more like weeks. She's been on edge the entire time, unable to sleep for the bursts of anxiety and adrenaline and worry rushing through her. It's an unpleasant feeling that is abated the second they place the infant against her bare skin. The weight of her daughter barely even registers, as feather light as she is, and at once the weight of the entire world settles on her shoulders. The tiny being breathes in rapid succession against Katniss's breasts, the prongs of a nasal cannula jammed up her nose to support her under- developed lungs. She is utterly, completely helpless, even more so than Prim at their most hungry and desperate. In this moment, Katniss knows she would volunteer for a hundred Hunger Games to keep this little girl safe.

Her fingers find her daughter's feather- soft hair, a dark patch of color that covers the overlapping sutures of her tiny skull. There's a downy smattering of fine hairs across the baby's shoulders and back, too. Katniss strokes it with the tips of her fingers, humming a lullaby as she does. The baby's breathing slows a bit; her heartbeat evens out to a gentle staccato. For the first time in months, Katniss feels at peace.

She holds the infant to her skin as long as they allow it.

6 days

Peeta is allowed to meet his daughter.

Katniss's heartbeat pounds in her ears when he enters her hospital room followed by two men holding guns. This was the decided- upon arrangement but it is still unsettling to see.

Peeta seems jumpy, but his hands are unbound and his face surprisingly free of the looming darkness that had displaced the rest of his personality ever since his arrival to District 13.

"Hi, Katniss." His voice is quiet. Shy even. Like he's five years old and saying hello to her for the very first time.

"Hello, Peeta." She's cautious, not quite willing to trust him yet, but the modicum of hope she'd allowed herself to feel seems to multiply in this instance.

"Is this…" he cocks his head toward the isolette at Katniss's bedside.

She nods, though she has to stop herself from lunging protectively in front of it when Peeta's feet carry him forward. He places a hand on the plexiglass that houses the infant. It's so long before he speaks that Katniss starts to worry he's about to descend into an episode. But then- "She's not a mutt," he breathes, almost as if he doesn't believe his own words. For the first time since the Quell his eyes are the clear blue of the boy for whom Katniss aches. He gazes down at his baby girl, unable to tear himself away. "What's her name?"

"She doesn't have one yet," Katniss confesses. "I couldn't name her without- without you. Didn't seem right."

The look he gives her is so reminiscent of her Peeta that her heart swoops into her belly.

"We'll have to work on that won't we?" he says.

1 month

"She's got your eyes, don't you think?"

"I don't know, they say a baby's eyes can change color after they're born," Peeta says, doubt clouding his voice.

Katniss shakes her head, with a firm, "No. Her eyes are blue and that's the way they're going to stay. I can tell."

Peeta chuckles, sounding for a moment like his old self again. "Well, she wouldn't dare change them now if that's what you say."

She's been remarkable therapy, their daughter. Still so tiny, even a month later, the baby gazes up at them from the cocoon of Peeta's arms. Her progress has been wonderful, the doctors tell them. She's breathing all on her own and she's down to just a single tube in her nose for feedings. She tires at Katniss's breast easily, but the doctors promise that soon she'll be able to finish her meals on her own. It won't be long now, perhaps another week or so, and she'll be officially released from the hospital.

It is later that same day that Katniss meets President Alma Coin for the first time since inhabiting District 13. Peeta sits beside her, his hand twitching every so often in hers. Something about the woman and her cold, gray eyes unsettles them. The President drones on at length about the rebellion and how the Capitol will soon fall. All they need is one last push. She's given Katniss reprieve in light of her situation, but now that the baby has been born and Peeta is largely back in control of his mental faculties, she like them to film a propaganda piece. Something thanking 13 for its kindness and generosity in reuniting them as a family.

Katniss and Peeta glance at each other. It doesn't sit right with either of them. The woman's words ring false, and Katniss can see through the diplomatic smile to her true intentions. A propo in support of District 13 is a propo in support of the President herself. And Katniss is done being a piece in this game. Peeta supports the decision whole-heartedly.

"You might reconsider," the President says, the vaguest hint of a threat in her frosty voice.

1.5 months

They should have reconsidered.

On the same day that her daughter is discharged from the hospital unit, Katniss sees it happen on television. (Because of course the rebels don't do anything unless it is properly filmed and blasted to the screens of the masses.) The presidential mansion. The pen of Capitol children outside its gates, arms stretched toward the sky. Toward the parachutes that detonate in their innocent hands. A flash of familiar blond braids as the medics rush in to treat the wounded.

A second explosion.

The rebels claim it was Snow's trap. That his bloodlust for killing children was evident until the very end. But Katniss knows better.

They ask Katniss to perform as Snow's executioner. This time, she agrees. For Prim.

Chaos descends on the square when her arrow finds Coin's heart. Snow laughs himself bloody as the mass of people swarms in on him.

Katniss is dragged away from the scene to an unknown room where she screams for Peeta, her daughter, her sister. No one hears her.

2 months

Her throat is still raw when Haymitch comes to collect her, looking wearier and more woebegone than ever before.

"Come on, sweetheart. We're going home."

They've dismissed her as another crazy victor, driven mad by the games the Capitol played with her for so long. Katniss doesn't care, and she doesn't contest the label, either. All that matters now are the things she never knew she always wanted.

When Haymitch takes her to the train station, Peeta is waiting for her, clutching their baby girl tight to his chest. Katniss throws her arms out to embrace her family.

1 year

The misery of losing her sister is still there. It will be a part of her forever, Katniss has learned. Peeta has his demons too. But they have each other, always. When they are together, things don't seem as bad. There are still moments when Peeta slips away from her into one of his episodes, or the occasional morning when Katniss can't force herself out of bed. They find their way back to each other without fail every time. There's sunshine and fresh air and happiness in their home that makes it easier to combat the darkness of their past. And of course, their biggest blessing of all.

She is the anchor that tethers them both to sanity, their rapidly- growing baby girl. The musical patter of her toddling feet and her non-stop babble fills the house with joy. Much of her baby-speak is jibberish still, but there are a few distinguishable words mixed in with increasing frequency. Enough that Katniss is convinced the girl will have Peeta's silver tongue when she learns how to string complete sentences together.

It's a tongue Peeta puts to good use in his limited alone time with Katniss. Teasing her, tasting her, loving her as though every time is the first. Tracing the thin line of the transverse scar low on her abdomen, a painful reminder of everything good in their lives. His face is between her legs- that tongue of his mapping every square inch of her and making her sing with ecstasy- when he murmurs it into her flesh. More to himself than to her.

Between the breathless moans of her climax, she catches his words anyway. He wants to make another baby.

Her pleasure ebbing away in fading undulations, Katniss chuckles and pulls Peeta's face up to hers. She kisses him, long and deep and full, drawing that sweet tongue into the heat of her mouth, reveling in the hunger for him that will never be fully satisfied. Smiles at him when they break apart.

Little does he know, she's four weeks ahead of him.

A/N: This is something I wrote a while ago and never published for some reason or another. Probably because Katniss being pregnant for the events of the Quell and District 13 is a trope that I (and many others) have written before, but at the end of the day it's a trope that I love. And of course, I've had more time on my hands than usual due to current events. I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy and thank you for reading!