To everyone who stuck with me to the very end, whether you found this universe today or in August 2012 or sometime in between. I thank you for your support, your time, and your encouragement. I hope you enjoy!

Epilogue

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

5 Years Later

Autumn has been my favorite season since I was old enough to fully appreciate how Mother Nature grants us these small moments of brilliance before the long winter months kick in. I love watching the leaves change into colors so extraordinarily bright it seems unreal. Autumn was the season in which I met Katniss for the first time and in which we started our uneasy friendship and tumultuous journey toward becoming husband and wife. It was also in autumn when Katniss enjoyed the first of a decade's long remission, one that still continues in her body as she thrives and prospers, an inspirational story told amongst the hallways at Panem Children's Hospital to parents in need of a little light in the sea of darkness.

Autumn has always been good to us and it was on the first day of fall, a warm night where Katniss and I were sitting on our back deck watching our eighteen-month-old golden retriever chasing squirrels and birds in the yard, that we got the call.

I had thought that after we had both graduated from college that our lives would slow down. That wasn't really the case. It was just a different type of craziness that engaged us.

Katniss and I started planning our wedding the day she graduated from State. She wanted to start earlier, but I wanted her to focus on her last semester of school before we delved into it. We set the date for the following summer to ensure that Prim would be home from school and spent a little over a year making sure everything was as we wanted it. I wanted Katniss to feel like a princess. When I close my eyes I can still see her walking toward me down the aisle. She wore a white lace dress that sparkled in the light coming through the church windows and her smile was as radiant as the sun. I had never felt so unbelievably lucky and Hersh had to pass me a handkerchief, causing the guests to laugh.

We were married on the first Saturday of June and I graduated from Marshall the following August. I had taken a graduate assistantship in the Autism Training Center during my second semester that I would keep through my graduation. The stipend I received from it covered a large amount of my tuition and the position itself looked great on a resume. But I knew I just wanted to get out of school as quickly as I could so I could find a job closer to Charleston. We kept our apartment in Huntington while I finished up at Marshall, but I hated that Katniss had to drive an hour each way to work with Haymitch. It worked out in our favor though because Haymitch bought her a car after she got her license, not trusting anything we could afford ourselves.

I've always liked to believe that everything happens for a reason.

My first job came through Pollux's mother. I had come up empty in my job hunt in my last few months at school when I got an email from Portia. It was early August and she wanted to know if I had any offers. Pollux's mother had contacted her because she figured I had graduated or would in the coming months. If I hadn't committed to work anywhere else, she had an idea for me to check out. Pollux attended a non-profit organization in Charleston after school and during the summer that served teens and young adults with intellectual and emotional disabilities. Portia gave me the name and contact information of the program manager and when I called the woman she told me to come down for a tour. Pollux was actually there when I arrived and I think his reaction to me walking through the door may have been what sealed the deal for getting me the job. He ran right up to me, shy little Pollux, and gave me the biggest hug any of the workers had ever seen out of him.

Katniss and I finished out the lease on the place in Huntington and found a place to rent in Charleston. I continued to look for work in the surrounding school systems, but the work I was doing at the non-profit wasn't just for pleasure and definitely added to my resume. In May, I had an interview with a school district about a half hour outside of Charleston. A woman who had been teaching the district's special education program was retiring and they needed to fill the position for the upcoming school year. I was offered the job a few days after the interview and the program manager at the non-profit asked if I would like to stay on during the summers when I wasn't teaching to run the summer camp program, making it even sweeter.

Once we knew the district wanted me to come back for another year, Katniss and I started the house hunt. It was time for us to get out of our apartment and into a place of our own. We were rounding on our second anniversary when we hired an agent and ultimately bought a house where my school was located.

It's a small town on the Kanawha River. In some ways, it reminds me of Miner Falls when I was growing up. It's small enough that everyone knows each other, there are lots of families with kids, and there's a nice community atmosphere. But it's bigger than Miner Falls and it's more of a suburb of Charleston than an old mining town. I think that's what I liked so much about it; it seemed like a perfect mix between where Katniss and I had respectively grown up.

As a housewarming present we got ourselves a golden retriever puppy. Originally, we named her Ginger because of her slightly reddish coat and Haymitch called us out on being creative. Prim graduated from college a week after we got her and we went out with her one of the nights she was home, baby-gating the puppy into the kitchen because Katniss couldn't bear to leave her in the crate even though that was what the trainer told us to do. Well, long story short, the three of us came home to a kitchen floor covered in shredded trash from the bin, so much that we couldn't see the floor. Prim decided that Mayhem was a better name for her and it stuck. We've been calling her Hemy ever since.

It was around this time that a lot of our friends started getting married and having babies. I absolutely hated seeing the crushed look on Katniss's face when we found out someone else was expecting. Hemy proved that she was the perfect dog for us in this time. That dog can calm down in a split second if she needs to and there have been plenty of times that I have walked into living room to see Katniss laying on the couch with tears in her eyes and Hemy sitting on the floor in front of her, as if standing guard.

At this point, we had pretty much everything we had always talked about wanting. We had a three-bedroom house on a quiet street with a backyard that bordered the woods. We had the dog that, while hyper and crazy, was about the friendliest little thing we could have asked for. We each had jobs with steady income and a savings that we had collected over the years, knowing we'd need it.

On our second anniversary, when we were both twenty-six, we started looking into our options for starting a family.

The doctors said that Katniss could try to carry a child, either a donated embryo or an egg with my sperm, but we would have to travel out-of-state, and they really had no idea what the outcome would be. There were so many situations for failure that I didn't feel comfortable putting Katniss through that for a kid that wasn't genetically ours. Katniss put up more of a fight than I thought she would, but ultimately, after a few long talks with Dr. Heavensbee who, off the record and as a friend rather than a physician, didn't really like the idea of Katniss risking so much, we decided that her health was our priority and so we looked toward adoption.

After thinking long and hard and researching different agencies to find ones that had experience working with cancer survivors, we started doing paperwork and did a home study so we could get activated by a domestic adoption agency and birthmothers could find us. We were activated in September. During that time, I started coaching the girls varsity soccer team at the high school and Katniss became our number one fan in order to keep her mind off it. Our social worker told us the best thing to do was to keep it in the back of our minds and not focus on it too much. We took a phone call pretty early on with a birthmother but it didn't pan out and Katniss was devastated. She cried the entire weekend blaming herself but when the agency called us the following Monday asking if we wanted to be reactivated, we were ready. We wanted this and we didn't care how long it took.

And then the first day of autumn came around and when we were least expecting it, a few days more than a year since we'd been activated, we got the call.

Unlike our first mother, who had been a woman about our age with three children already, this girl was a teenager, almost sixteen. I remember hearing her voice for the first time as if it were yesterday. She sounded terrified as we talked back and forth. She was almost eight months pregnant and she and her boyfriend knew they didn't have the means to keep the baby. We told her our hobbies, what we did for work, and then the call was over.

"It's not going to work out," Katniss said after it ended.

But it did.

We went into this arrangement with all sorts of assumptions about the mother and most of them turned out to be wrong. She and her boyfriend had been together since they were fourteen and they had been careful, using condoms and stuff like that, but sometimes these things happen. Their families are both loving and we spoke to each of their mothers. The boy had a single mom with four siblings. The girl had married parents and a younger brother, but they just couldn't handle another child.

The baby is due in late October and we haven't told anyone that we've been matched because we're afraid to jinx it. My boss knows that we could get a call any time and Haymitch, I think, has an idea. He's sent Katniss home from work early three days this past week because she's been jittery.

Come on, autumn. Don't fail me now.

My girls love when I bring the dog to practice. It's actually a love-hate relationship, because if I bring Hemy with me, it means we're having a running practice, and no one really likes those. I try my best to make it fun because I remember how much I always dreaded these types of practices when I played in high school.

I open the door and the dog leaps out of my truck, sprinting at top speed toward the group of girls tying up their sneakers instead of their cleats. The girls begin to squeal and Hemy starts to whine in excitement while the fifteen girls all fight to get closest to her.

"Hey, Coach!"

Tess is my captain and she's the only one who pays me any attention. Hem currently has all the girls eating out of her paws. She has rolled over onto her back with her tongue hanging out while the girls all fight to reach her belly. I roll my eyes. Dogs are so much smarter than anyone gives them credit for being.

I call Tess over before I tear the girls away from Hemy. Our assistant coach, Atala, is away for the week. Her sister is getting married in Hawaii, one of those destination wedding things. I don't know when Katniss and I will get the call about the baby, but the due date is a few days away so I need to have things in place. Luckily, our regular season is over and we're in a week of practice before the post-season, so we don't have any games, only a scrimmage in the next town over.

"I'm putting you in charge if I have to leave while Atala's out," I tell her.

My girls have seen the process it's been for Katniss and I to start a family. We have sort of taken it upon ourselves to educate people in our town about adoption, putting away some of the myths and showing that it's a bunch of ups and downs.

She nods her head. "How's Miss Katniss?"

The girls all love Katniss. We have a preseason barbeque at our house to start the season and Katniss comes to many of our games. They also know what we've been going through this last year and, although they don't know the extent of the emotional pull it's had on my wife, they know it hasn't been easy on her.

"She's doing okay," I tell her. "A little anxious now, but still hopeful."

"Well, hopefully, you hear something soon," Tess says.

I nod my head.

The rest of our practice runs smoothly. We do some sprints and then agility stations, where they have a water break station that turns into them playing with the dog. Hemy is exhausted by the time I get her back in the truck and the only reason she doesn't pass out next to me is that she loves riding in cars so much. She sits up straight and stares at the people as we ride through town.

Katniss is home when I pull up the drive. I let Hem out and she follows me to the door, getting all excited again when she sees Katniss sitting at the kitchen table with her phone next to her. Usually Katniss doesn't get home until I've been here for an hour or so, but Haymitch must not like her restlessness and sent her home early again.

She pats Hem's head and turns to me. "I hate waiting."

I laugh. "I don't think anyone really enjoys waiting." But I know what she means. We started this process sixteen months ago and after all the paperwork and the waiting and then false starts and finally getting matched, we thought this part would be the easiest wait of all. "But don't stress about it. Staring at your phone isn't going to make the call come any sooner."

Katniss puts her face in her hands. "I know."

"Good." I kiss the top of her head. "I'm going to start dinner and then we're going to do nothing but relax tonight."

She lifts her head and gives me a look. How can we possibly relax? The real answer is that we won't. We're going to be anxious until that call comes in and we have the baby safe in our arms.

The due date passes and we still don't get a call. In a way though no news is good news. It means they haven't changed their minds.

After the scrimmage that Friday, I get home before Katniss. It's the first time in a while that Haymitch hasn't sent her home early. I grab the mail out of the box and open the front door. Hemy greets me with one of my sandals in her mouth and then rolls over so I can rub her belly. I toss the mail on the table and give her some attention for a few minutes before going to the fridge to pull some things out for dinner, putting the steak into a marinade to sit while I take the dog for a walk.

By the time I come back, I had completely forgotten about the mail.

It's mostly bills or junk, but there is one that makes me shiver. It's a purple envelope with fancy calligraphy, which I knew was coming but effectively blocked in my mind.

I tear it open before I lose the nerve.

Together with their families

DELLY ANNE CARTWRIGHT and SHALE THOMAS MEADE III

Invite you to join them as they exchange vows.

Saturday, the fifth of December

Two Thousand Twenty

At half past four o'clock in the afternoon

First Baptist Church

Miner Falls, West Virginia

Dinner, dancing, and merriment to follow

There's a note, written on Delly's personal stationary, stuck in the envelope with it.

Peeta – I completely understand if this is too much for you. I'd love for you to come, but don't feel bad declining. Just don't take that as a way out of seeing me, mister. It's been forever! We have so much to catch up on. Love you! Delly

I run a hand over my face and put the invitation back in the fancy envelope that it came in. Ever since Delly sent out the Save the Date a few months ago, I've been dreading the day that I came home and found this in the mail. I'd been so busy thinking about the baby that I had completely forgotten that this was coming. I flip it over and run my fingers over the calligraphy. How can I say no to Delly?

But, at the same time, how can I go to that wedding? The entire town will be there and my father is no doubt making the cake. If I go to that wedding it's going to ruin the day for Delly and Thom. People will be more focused on me than them and the last thing I want to do is ruin the day that Delly has been dreaming about since we were kids.

There is a part of me that wants to go to the wedding because I know I'll run into my family. I would do anything in the world to see the expression on my mother's face when she saw how successful I've been since I left home. I mean, Katniss and I are far from rich, but we have a much more stable life than the one I grew up with. Even in my head it sounds extraordinarily childish, but it would be nice to show my mother up. The boy who was always so worthless must have done something right. But I can't justify ruining Delly's big day to stick my tongue out at my parents. I'd like to say I'm a bigger man than that.

A car door slams outside and I hear a jingle of a collar go to greet my wife.

Katniss drops her things at the door and looks up at me while she pets the dog. "How'd the scrimmage go?" she asks.

"We won," I tell her, looking back down at the envelope. She catches on immediately.

"What's that?" she asks. The worry in her voice makes me feel terrible because she must be thinking that it's some sort of bad news concerning the adoption.

I lift up the purple envelope so she can see. "Delly and Thom's wedding invitation."

She lets out a breath and then walks toward me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. "Do you want to go?"

"I don't want to make a scene."

Katniss pulls away. She understands where I'm coming from with this. I haven't talked to anyone from Miner Falls, barring Hersh and Delly, in close to seven years. Of course, no one has made the effort to contact me either. Although I feel terrible about not going, considering Thom and Delly came to our wedding, I know my presence will derail the entire thing. I really don't want it to turn into the Mellark family showdown.

"You know, you shouldn't let them dictate what you do," Katniss says. "I understand where you're coming from, but don't not go because of them. They're not worth it."

Katniss has been extremely vocal in her dislike of my family in the past few years. She can't understand how my parents could just turn me to the wolves and not look back. I've found that when you can't have children of your own, you become hyperaware of the family dynamics of those around you, or at least that's been my experience.

She picks up her bag and walks out of the kitchen, going upstairs to change and calm down. Hemy leaps up off the ground and charges after her. I let out a breath through my teeth. The RSVP by date isn't for a few weeks. Maybe I'll call Hersh and see what his take is on it. I magnet the invite onto the fridge and follow her upstairs.

Of the three bedrooms in our house, each one has a specific purpose. One is ours. The smallest one doubles as a guest room and office, mainly used by Prim when she visits, by one of the Hawthorne kids when they dog sit, or by Katniss during the busy part of tax season. The other one always has the door shut.

Today it's open.

Katniss is standing in the middle of the nursery, her arms crossed over her chest as she scowls. When we reactivated, we started to decorate the room so that it'd be ready whenever we needed it. It has a neutral color palate and some toys we couldn't help buying, a few story books too. But we always leave the door shut.

I wrap my arms around Katniss and press my face into her hair. "I'm sorry that I upset you."

"It's not you," she says. "I'm just stressed and I don't understand your parents at all."

"Well that makes two of us."

She turns in my embrace and wraps her arms around my back, pressing her face into my chest. "I just want this to work, Peeta," she says. "Just tell me that it's going to work."

I kiss the top of her head. "It is, Katniss. Any minute now. They'll call us."

"What if they change their minds?"

I let go of her and put my hand under her chin so she'll look up at me. "Then it's not our baby and we try again."

I don't blame Katniss for not wanting to answer the door for trick-or-treaters. Every passing minute that we don't get called puts us both on edge. While the doorbell rings and the kids of our neighborhood come to our house with nothing but glee in their eyes, Katniss stays upstairs, curled up with Hemy in our bed. I try my best to be scared by every ghoul or witch that stops by.

Katniss and I are in bed when the phone rings.

We have had everything planned for weeks, from who is going to take Hemy to what's going to happen when we get to the hospital. We have had our bag packed with all the appropriate paperwork in the trunk of Katniss's SUV and the car seat installed since the middle of October. Katniss calls Haymitch from the car to tell him we're dropping Hemy off and texts Posy to tell her that she can pick her up there in the morning.

Haymitch is standing outside on the curb when we pull up, rubbing his eyes and dressed in his pajamas. He grabs the leash and tells us good luck and then we're off to make the three-hour trek to Morgantown, where our birthmother lives.

We arrive at the hospital around two thirty and are greeted at registration by a social worker assigned to our case. She says that the baby hasn't been born yet, but they have a room ready for us in the maternity ward where we could catch a few more hours of sleep and someone would stop by to give us some updates.

We can't really sleep. We're brimming with emotions, both excited and terrified of what the next few hours will bring us. Once the baby is born, the birthmother has seventy-two hours before she can legally terminate her parental rights and because she's a minor she'll need to have a guardian ad litem come in to consult with her and ensure that she's doing so under her own free will. Within these next three days, anything can happen and it's only after she's signed the irrevocable relinquishment paperwork that we can even consider this baby as ours.

Luckily the hospital has dealt with adoptions before. The nurses that come to check on us, as well as the social worker and specialists from the agency, are so kind. Katniss and I had gone to a few meetings with other adoptive parents and have heard different experiences. Some have been wonderful while others have been downright terrifying, where people have tried to sway the mother against her decision or have treated the adoptive parents like criminals.

But our hospital has given us a private room, just like any other new parents on their birthing floor, to use while we wait and while we spend time with the baby. Katniss and I both have matching hospital bracelets that allow us to roam the maternity ward and, when the baby comes, allow us into the nursery.

It's a little after eight in the morning when a nurse and our social worker come to grab us and I try desperately to remember every detail the nurse says. The time of birth was 7:26. The baby weighed seven pounds, four ounces, and measured nineteen inches long. The Apgar scores were great. But I'm not confident that anything I heard was right because my heart is beating so quickly and so loudly it's masking everything else.

It must be a slow morning in the maternity ward here because there's only one baby when we walk into the nursery. The nurse leans down and picks up the infant, swaddled in a white blanket with a blue and pink stripped hat.

"Here she is," she says.

"It's a girl," Katniss breathes.

We hadn't known the gender. We had discussed that with the birthmother and she wanted it to be a surprise. Katniss and I agreed. It was her choice and we were all right with her plan. We didn't care anyway.

Before I can even process what's happening, Katniss is sitting in a rocking chair and the nurse has handed over the tiny bundle. I'm suddenly looking at my wife holding a baby that might be ours in seventy-two hours and my throat clogs. Katniss looks up at me, her smile stretching from ear to ear.

"Are you crying?" she asks, but her voice is soft and I know she's battling the same emotions I am. "Come here. Come look at her."

I step forward and lean in over Katniss's shoulder. The baby has chubby cheeks and her mouth opens so she can yawn. Her eyes blink open before shutting, content where she is. I've never seen anything more beautiful in my life.

"Hi, little girl," I say, reaching a finger out to gently stroke her soft pudgy cheek.

We stay there, in that position, for God only knows how long. Time does not matter. Eventually Katniss asks if I'd like to hold her. She's so little in my hands that I'm afraid I'll break her or do something wrong, but she doesn't make a peep, only opening her eyes to see why she's moving before closing them again.

I am completely and utterly in love and if we don't take this baby home with us I am going to be absolutely devastated.

We go back to our room while they bring the baby back in to see the birthmother. There are a lot of things I feel while Katniss and I sit alone in the room we were given. I feel nervous because I don't know how anyone can be strong enough to let that perfect little girl go. I feel jealous because I just want to cuddle with her more. I'm anxious not knowing what's going on in the other room.

Later that day, after I've convinced myself that Katniss and I are going home empty handed, the social worker comes back in to tell us that the birthmother would like to see us.

It was part of our plan. The birthmother would have some time with the baby, then we would, and then at some point she wanted to meet us face-to-face. I'm shaking while we walk down the not-long-enough hallway, afraid that when we meet her she's not going to deem us good enough and tell us that she's changed her mind. When we walk in the room, there's no one else there besides the birthparents, the baby, and a legal professional. Her parents aren't there and neither is his mother.

The birthmother smiles. "Hi, I'm Cricket."

She's a tiny thing, probably no bigger than Katniss, and her boyfriend is tall and skinny with some acne on his chin. When she introduces herself as Cricket, it makes it seem that much more real. We'd been calling her by her given name, Christine, since the first telephone call. The rest of us make our introductions in attempts of trying to clear some of the awkwardness of the situation. What do you say to someone who's going to give you their child?

Cricket turns to the baby, who is in a plastic hospital bassinet, before looking back at us. "Have you seen her?"

Katniss nods. "She's beautiful."

"I was just wondering if I could tell you why we," she gestures to herself and her boyfriend, "chose your profile. That way maybe you can tell her one day?"

"Of course," I say.

Cricket's boyfriend, Chord as he introduced himself, finally looks up from his shoes. "It's not because we don't love her."

"No, of course not." I can almost hear the trepidation in Katniss's voice.

"We're not ready," Cricket continues, sounding as if she's trying to convince herself more than us. "And we knew that there was someone out there that could care for her in a way that we can't. When we found you guys we knew that you were her parents."

Katniss takes my hand and squeezes.

"My little brother has Down syndrome," Cricket continues. "So, when we saw your profile and that you work so closely with kids that have special needs...I felt comfortable knowing she'd grow up understanding that there's nothing wrong with them, they're just different."

She looks to my wife. "You both are so involved with the children's hospital and you struck us as very grateful people and we wanted her to grow up around that kind of open and welcoming environment."

Chord nods his head in agreement.

It's in that moment that I realize just how terrified everyone here has been. These two teenagers are going to willingly give two strangers their child and forever have a hole in their heart so that they can fill the hole in ours. I'm so unbelievably humbled by them because I wonder, if the tables had been turned and it was Katniss in that bed and me sitting beside her looking at these two desperate people, if I would be able to do the same thing. I'm not sure I would.

The slowest seventy-two hours in the history of the world pass and by mid-afternoon on November fourth, Cricket and Chord have relinquished their parental rights in the presence of a notary public and the original birth certificate is sealed. A new one is created, the baby's medical records are released to us, and Katniss and I are allowed to load our little girl into the car and drive home.

Of course, we're not even on the interstate before Katniss's phone starts ringing.

We had been keeping Haymitch updated throughout our stay at the hospital, but decided it would be best to wait until everything was finalized before telling Prim. With her all the way up in Boston, we didn't feel comfortable getting her excited only to have it not work out. In exchange for her not knowing, she's the first to see our daughter. As soon as we got her all buckled up, Katniss snapped a picture of her sleeping in the car seat and sent it along with the message, Meet Lucy.

Katniss puts her on speaker.

"Oh my God!" Prim squeals. "When did this happen?"

"We signed the papers this morning."

"She's precious!"

Prim starts rattling off question after question. How big is she? Does she have any hair? When was she born? What was it like? We answer them with just as much excitement as Prim has asking them. She stays on the phone for the better part of the first hour of our trip before she tells us she has to go baby shopping so she can mail it off before her shift starts.

The rest of our trip is fairly quiet. Lucy sleeps through most of it and Katniss sings quietly to her when she does wake. I take a few peeks into the backseat as we drive. There have been a few moments that I can specifically remember being in when I wished that time would stop and I could just live in them. Once, years ago, when I took Katniss to the roof of PCH for her birthday. Once when the doors of the chapel opened and I saw Katniss in her wedding dress for the first time.

And now. I could definitely live in this moment forever.

Haymitch may try to convince everyone that he's a cranky old man who has no place in his heart for children, but anyone with eyes can see through that. When I have to go back to work, meaning that Katniss is home all day with the baby, Haymitch comes by unannounced and they struggle together. None of us have ever dealt with newborns before, and Haymitch's experience with Prim is the most we've got between us. Haymitch and Maysilee used to take Prim, who was about seventeen months old at the time, so Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen could both be at the hospital with Katniss when she was first diagnosed.

Luckily, we've got Hazelle to give us some hints. Like, for instance, why Lucy screams every time we swaddle her isn't because we do it wrong, but because she doesn't like having her arms constrained.

"Gale and Rory were the same way," Hazelle says softly, rocking Lucy back and forth. It's like she has the magic touch because Lucy quiets as soon as she unwraps the blanket from around her and her tiny arms start flailing. "Vick and Posy, on the other hand, they loved it. You'll figure her out. Just gotta listen. She'll tell you what she likes and what she doesn't."

In her first few weeks of life, Lucy has no shortage of visitors and admirers. I have a hard time with it, to be honest, because I struggle between not wanting to let her go for a second and wanting to show her off to every person who will listen to me yap about her. There are a few people who, once you hand her to them, just don't let her go. Haymitch and Posy are the two biggest offenders. I'll come home from school and Haymitch's truck will be parked out front. He'll be walking around the house with her, talking to her as he would an adult about things he's going to teach her that he "couldn't ever get your mother to do" like chess. Posy's the exact opposite. She sits down with Lucy and has a specific baby voice she uses. Katniss brings the baby by one of my practices so the girls can see and they all coo over her. People in town have taken to bringing us dinner or clothes their newborns wore once or twice before they outgrew it.

Hemy still kind of wary of her at first. I don't know if she knows what to think of this little thing that has a smell she's not used to and makes funny noises. Katniss and I researched ways on how to introduce the dog to a baby before we got the call that Lucy was being born. We let her sniff the burp cloth before we brought the baby in the house and then I leashed her and took her into the living room, where Katniss was sitting with Lucy on the couch. We let her sniff Lucy's feet and we've been trying to make sure she gets attention when the baby's awake so she doesn't feel ignored. She's becoming more intrigued. She goes running up the stairs when she hears Lucy crying and sits next to the crib waiting for us to come see what's going on.

It's right before Thanksgiving that I have to RSVP to Delly and after a few conversations with Hersh I decide to go. My plan of attack is to get there as close to the start of the ceremony as I can, swing by the reception, and leave before I cause too much of a scene. Of course, Delly's not too concerned with me starting a riot. She calls me after she gets the RSVP details and demands to know why I only wrote 'one' and not 'three' on the 'number of guests attending' line. I tell her she can stop by whenever she wants to see Lucy, but there's no way I'm bringing a month old baby to a wedding.

But, before the wedding, we have Lucy's first big holiday.

Thanksgiving is a big deal for our family. It was the last holiday the Hawthornes had with Gale and it's always right around Katniss's check-up appointments. This year, it's on the twenty-sixth, her official date of remission, and we're able to celebrate her being ten years cancer free because she goes in for her appointment prior to the holiday, rather than after. So, instead of worrying like we did through college, we can focus on the things that are really important.

And one of those things is the blonde that shows up on our doorstep Wednesday and the tall dark boy she drags with her.

"Look who I found at Yeager!" Prim says when I answer the door, tugging Rory in behind her. "What a lucky coincidence that we're the only two that haven't seen – Lucy! Oh, Katniss, let me see!"

Rory shakes his head and leans down to pet Hemy as Prim skips through the kitchen to her sister. "It's more like she harassed me over the phone to figure out my travel plans and then made sure hers jived with it because she needed to make sure she had a way here," he says. He rolls his eyes and it does sound like something Prim would do. "How's fatherhood?"

I shrug, but feel myself smiling. "It's hard work, but it's worth it. How's school?"

Rory is in his first year at the University of Maryland, getting his master's in public health. He was convinced going into college that he wanted to be an oncologist, so he could help people like his brother and Katniss, but after shadowing Dr. Heavensbee and really thinking about himself as a person, he decided to change his path. I had a feeling it might happen, considering Rory's very similar to myself. Once someone wedges into his heart, they're stuck there, and I think he would have had a terrible time watching some of his patients die. But, Dr. Heavensbee is an amazing man, who took it upon himself to mentor Rory as he tried to navigate through possible careers and actually suggested he look into the field of public health, considering the Miner Falls Cancer Cluster is still one of most well known public health atrocities to hit the region.

He smiles. "Fantastic." He's about to say more, but Prim interrupts, coming over and practically shoving Lucy under his nose.

"Isn't she adorable?" Prim says. She turns her head to make some funny faces at my daughter, who hiccups and causes Prim squeal. "I want one."

Again, Rory rolls his eyes. "That would require you having some sort of man in your life, which you don't have."

Prim sticks out her tongue and I give her a look. "You're only twenty-three," I insist. "You have plenty of time."

"It's best if you have kids when you're younger. It's healthier not to wait until you're ancient, and the way I'm going I'll be sixty by the time I even get a steady boyfriend," Prim says. She looks back at Rory. "If I'm not married by the time I'm thirty, I'm marrying you, Hawthorne. So warn any women you meet of this arrangement."

Katniss snorts. "This sounds like the beginning of a really bad rom-com."

Rory holds his hands out for Prim to pass him Lucy. "Give her here. I want to see too."

Prim hugs Lucy to her for a few more seconds before passing her off. I tug on the braid Prim has her hair in. "So, how's Boston?"

She smiles and tells me about work. She's an RN at Massachusetts General Hospital and she loves it. She's in her element. There is also no end to the fun things she seems to do when she's not working, which keeps her up there just as much as her job does. She's renting an apartment with one of her college roommates and a few of her other roommates are still in the area, so they do all sorts of weekend adventures. I've seen pictures of her kayaking on the Charles River, feeding the ducks in Boston Common, becoming the city's newest Red Sox fan, and doing some sort of polar plunge into the ocean in January that made me shiver just looking at it.

It'll be nice having both of them back for a few days.

They stay for a few hours, before they get back into the rental Rory got from the airport and head back to Charleston. It's not as if we won't see them in the morning. Thanksgiving is just as crazy as it always is with our group, but it's a good crazy. Just as Haymitch's house is full of delicious smells and more than enough food, it's also full of love. And even as it quiets down there is no lack of warmth. I lay on the couch with Lucy on my chest. Katniss, Prim, and Posy sit in front of us while Vick and Rory each take a chair as we join in the living room to watch The Grinch. I rub her back as she sleeps through Posy's giggles and the bellowing laughter coming from the kitchen where Hazelle, Storm, Sae, and Haymitch are cleaning and reminiscing. Lucy will never have to worry about people not loving her and that's something I'll always be thankful for.

Main Street looks like a ghost town as I drive through and it's not just because everyone's at Delly and Thom's wedding. Some of the businesses that were thriving when I was a kid have boarded up windows and the store names printed on the glass are chipping off. The town has seen better days and although I haven't connected Miner Falls to home in years, this is the place that I grew up thinking I'd never leave, and it's hard to see it in such disrepair.

All the life in the little town is centered in the parking lot of First Baptist, with people dressed in their best sitting on car hoods and talking before heading inside for the ceremony. The lot's full and many people, I notice, are walking if they don't live too far out of town. I drive up a little ways and park on the side of the road, adjusting my tie to stall, before opening my door and stepping out.

I'm surprised to see someone walking toward me. Are we really going to get into this already? The sun's a little too bright for me to make out which blond this body belongs to, but the closer he gets, the easier it is for me to see, and less tense I become.

"I thought I was gonna be dateless!" Hersh shouts as he climbs the hill toward me. "You tryin' to be fashionably late?"

I shrug and scratch the back of my neck. "Something like that," I say as he approaches.

He throws his arms around me and I take a good look at him. I haven't seen him in a few years. He's some fancy businessman now, living in Oregon and wearing fancy tailored suits every day. When he does come back, he's only in for a few days here or there, stays with his parents, and then flies back out. We talk on the phone and through email, but I haven't physically seen him since he moved from Denver to Portland.

"How long you here?" I ask as we walk toward the church.

He shrugs. "Just for the weekend, but I want to see this baby of yours before I go," he says.

I laugh. "Well, you come on over before you take off tomorrow. Maybe it'll convince you to settle down. I'm sure your momma would love that."

Hersh throws his head back and lets out a laugh so loud it echoes. "She would die of happiness if I told her I eloped and had a kid on the way. She keeps hinting." He shakes his head. "But I like where I am right now. I'll leave the babies to you and Del."

First Baptist is the biggest of the churches in Miner Falls, but there are still people standing to avoid overcrowding the pews. Luckily, the Miner Falls tradition is a short ceremony and a long reception. To be honest, most people don't even consider the marriage official until the toasting anyway, so despite how cramped it is in here, there are probably guests that will just show up at Delly and Thom's later tonight and feel like they haven't missed a thing.

Hersh and I stake out a spot in the back and try to be inconspicuous. It fails miserably though because I can see people look at me and turn to whoever they're with and start talking. Maybe they're surprised I'm here, or maybe they wish I wasn't. I'm not sure what the town thinks of me now. It all depends on what my mother said and what the story has been woven into over the years.

Delly and Thom seal their union with a kiss in the quickest ceremony I've ever seen. I think it took longer for her to get down the aisle than for them to complete their vows. She looks absolutely stunning as she walks back down the aisle and hops in Thom's truck to lead the brigade over to her home. I take Hersh with me and we zigzag through town and drive a little deeper into the woods to the house Thom and his father built for them.

I'm not planning on sticking around for too long. I need to see Delly but after that I've seen everyone I want to talk to and I feel like I can head out. I've already made plans with Hersh for him to stop by tomorrow before he heads over to Yeager to catch his flight and when I see Delly I'll tell her that she's welcome any time too. Then I'm out of here before someone calls me out on being here and makes some drunken scene that ruins Delly's day.

I keep an eye out for my father and mother but there are so many people crowded in the house it's hard to see even a few people away. Delly and Thom are both well liked and Delly's a teacher at the elementary school, so everyone is here and it makes for one crowded house. Hersh and I find a place to stand in the dining room where we can breathe a little, but our peace doesn't last long before I feel arms wrap around my waist.

"Didn't think you were gonna show," Delly says when I turn around.

"You look beautiful, Del," I tell her as I lean down and kiss her cheek.

She smiles. "Thank you. I'm so glad you're here though. As much as I was trying to prepare myself, it just wouldn't have been the same without you."

Hersh grunts. "Gee, thanks, Delly. I'm glad you think so highly of my presence. I flew in special for you."

I laugh as Delly punches his shoulder. "Oh for cryin' out loud, Hersh Donner," she scolds. "Fine, I'm glad both my boys are here."

He smirks and Delly halfheartedly rolls her eyes. They share a hug as well before Delly gets pulled in another direction toward the other guests. A few people stop by us to say hi like Mr. Walker, Mr. Undersee, and Delly's brother Deacon. They're all polite and ask about how we've been and share a few stories before excusing themselves. I'm surprised by how friendly they are, but in the back of my mind I know they're just asking me because I'm with Hersh and it'd be rude to just talk to him. No one here wants to talk to me and I start looking at my watch to count the minutes before I can sneak out.

Hersh turns to me. "I'm gonna go grab a beer. Want one?" I shake my head. "Suit yourself. I'll be right back."

I look at my watch. They're probably cut the cake soon and then they'll do their toasting a few hours after that. If I leave by eight, then I'll probably be able to see the toasting and still be home before nine thirty. That way Katniss has a chance to relax while I give Lucy her bath and her last bottle before we try to get her to sleep. I feel Hersh come back. I'm looking away from my watch, opening my mouth to ask if he thinks they'll do the toasting around eight like I think they will, when I make eye contact with my father across the room.

There are moments where we know that our actions are going to change the rest of our lives. This is one of these moments. I could look away. I could march right over to him and demand answers to all the questions I've ever had. Why did you stop talking to me? Why wasn't I good enough for you? Why did you never make an effort when I did, when I called, when I needed you?

I turn to Hersh, pat his shoulder, and put a smirk on my face. "I'm gonna grab a beer."

Hersh gives me a look. "Make up your damn mind."

I head out onto the back deck where they have set up about a dozen coolers and wait. I'm leaving this confrontation up to him. If he wants to talk, he can come to me. I'm done being the one to make the effort and I'm not having this in the house where everyone will watch and focus on us instead of the bride and groom.

Just when I think he's not coming, the door opens and my father walks out.

He's aged since I've last seen him. His hair has streaks of white and he's put on a little weight. But, all in all, he still looks like my father. The same man that kissed my scrapes and held me when I was scared. But he's not that same man, because that man never would have let me go without so much as a goodbye.

"You look good," he says. He's never been one for words, that's always been me, so I know that he's looking for me to start. But I'm not. Maybe I'm being childish, but it's his turn. "I'm glad you came. Delly's probably thrilled. She wasn't sure you would I don't think."

I nod. "Yeah, that's what she said when I saw her."

The air around us turns stale and my father looks torn as he opens his mouth like a fish, opening and shutting it as if he wants to say something and thinks better of it every time. I realize that I'm making this unnecessarily difficult. I could just start a quick conversation for him, one full of polite pleasantries and then we could go on our merry ways, but I don't. There is a sick part of me that enjoys seeing him struggling and, as much as I hate myself for it, I do nothing to stop it from continuing.

He lets his eyes roam me, as if looking for something. I'm glad that it's December and a bit nippy so most of the guests are keeping to the house, at least for now. They'll come eventually and stumble upon us unless Hersh has taken a position guarding the door, which I don't think he has.

"How long have you been married?"

I tear my eyes away from the door and find my father eyeing my hand, his gaze intent on the ring of gold encircling my finger.

"Three and a half years."

He nods. "Do I know her?"

A cold wind gust makes me shiver. It seems like such common knowledge. Of course I married Katniss, who else? But for all my father knows Katniss could have relapsed and he's trying not to pry too much into wounds if they're there. Delly told me that she still talks to my father, how could she not, but she didn't tell him anything about me. It's now that I know that she's kept her promise.

"It's Katniss, Dad," I say, my throat catching the final word and making it come out higher pitched than the rest. "It wouldn't be anyone else."

He actually smiles and nods his head. "Good," he murmurs.

Again we fall into silence, surrounded by the noise of the reception which, judging by the hoots and hollers, sounds like Delly and Thom have cut into the cake. He walks across the deck in order to sit down and I walk toward him, leaning against the railing. A few guys come out onto the deck, grab drinks from the cooler, and walk back in without really noticing us.

My father sighs. "I'm sorry that I missed your..." His voice dies out. "That I missed a lot."

I glare at him. "It's your own fault."

"I know," he says. "I thought what I was doing was the right thing–"

"Don't," I hiss, cutting him off. "Don't put this back on me. This is not my fault."

"It's not. It's mine," he continues. He puts his head in his hands. "Like I said, I thought I was doing the right thing."

I don't understand. How could he possibly think that he reacted in a proper way?

"You think that cutting me off completely was right?" I'm livid. I'm seeing stars. "Are you out of your mind? In what universe is it okay to just dump your kid?"

"I realize now that I went about it the wrong way," he states in an almost defensive tone. He looks up at me. "But, hear me out, I did it for your own good." I open my mouth and he starts up again before I can interrupt. "You have the biggest heart of anyone I've ever met and you deserved so much more than what you got. I hated that I brought you into this toxic situation between your mother and me, all three of you. But you, Peeta, you had all these dreams and ambition that I never had. I just wanted to make sure you got out before you got stuck here. I thought if you had nothing tying you here..."

My head feels like it's going to explode. I grasp the deck railing. All I can do is shake my head and close my eyes.

"Like I said, I know now that the way I did it was–"

"No," I interrupt, keeping my eyes closed and still grasping the railing. "No, I...it's been seven years! You couldn't pick up a goddamn phone in seven years? I thought you hated me. I thought I did something wrong! Why couldn't you have just told me?"

"I didn't know how to," he mutters. "I didn't know how to let you go and then the opportunity came and I...I took it."

I reach up into my hair and yank hard trying to figure out if this is real or not. The unpleasant tug I feel brings me down to reality. I open my eyes and turn to my father, wincing as the setting sun shines in my eyes. Up until Leaven cut himself off from the family, I had never thought anything bad of my father. All of my negative energy had been directed toward my mother. But both have clear flaws and it was only after I had escaped from the toxicity of my home environment that my father's pedestal began to crumble.

My father had always been a strong and stable presence in my life. Now, as he sits, he looks old and tattered.

"Where's Mother?" I ask.

It wasn't what he was expecting because he frowns. "She's in Virginia. Lux is due any day and she's there to babysit."

I nod my head, but don't inquire more about Rye's happy little family. I don't want to know about Rye, nor do I need to. I didn't need to know any of this. I knew coming to this wedding was a terrible idea. But now he has his apologies out of his system. It must be cathartic for him to sit here and tell me that he was wrong. But he can't undo the damage he's done with empty words.

And I want him to see it.

"I know that you're saying you did it for me, but I think you did it for yourself," I say. I swallow the lump forming in my throat when I think back to those dark months after Roanoke. "You didn't want to see me hurting, but it wasn't my mother that hurt me the most. It was you."

My eyes water and I breathe out through my mouth. "I needed you. I needed to know that you still loved me. It fucked me up so much, Dad. I almost messed up my relationship with Katniss because I didn't trust anyone to care about me. Is that really what you wanted?"

My father doesn't say anything and I can see that he's overwhelmed by the information that I've given him. While he sits and absorbs it, I turn away and walk back into the house, finding Hersh to tell him I'm leaving and then seeking out Delly and Thom to congratulate them. I get into my truck and drive home. My mind keeps replaying that last moment on the deck with my father. He looked so thoroughly shocked by the fact that his abandonment had hurt me in such drastic ways that I wonder if he had put me on a pedestal just as I had him. He saw that Leaven could cut himself off and thought he could do the same to me without consequence. But he should have known that I'm not my brother.

When I open the door to the house, I can hear Hemy's collar jingle as she trots out of the living room toward me. I rub my hands along the side of her face in the way she likes before going off to find Katniss. She's sitting on the floor with Lucy on her blanket doing some tummy time.

"How was it?" Katniss asks.

I lean down and pick Lucy up, pressing my lips to her forehead. "Delly was beautiful and Hersh is going to stop by tomorrow to meet Lucy before he flies back," I say. I nudge Lucy's cheek with my nose and she flails her arms as she gurgles. "Do you know that I love you, Lu? Do you? Because I do."

Katniss lets out a breath. "Did something happen?" she asks.

"I talked to my dad."

"How was that?"

I take a deep breath and think for a minute, looking down at Lucy. I run my fingertips over the fine dusting of light brown hair that's beginning to grow on her head. She may only be thirty-five days old, but I can't imagine looking at her when she's nineteen and feeling any differently than I do today. I can't imagine how my father could hear my voice, pleading for him to call me back, and ignore it, even if he thought it was in my best interest.

"It's over," I tell her. "He got what he needed to say out and so did I."

Katniss doesn't look impressed and I know she's going to ask for all the details later, but I turn away and play with Lucy's feet. "Come on, Lu, time for a bath. We don't want our pretty girl all stinky for our guest tomorrow."

Lucy squeals and Katniss starts to pick up the blanket and toys from the floor as I carry our daughter toward the bath.

Haymitch offers to ring in the New Year with Lucy so Katniss and I can enjoy the night to ourselves. It's the first time we've been away from her since bringing her home from Morgantown and Katniss doesn't really want to give her to him. Haymitch guilts her into it by saying he'd be ringing it in alone and ultimately she relents. We could both use a good night's sleep.

Of course, when Haymitch tells us to enjoy ourselves, he probably expects us to head to the bars with some of our friends and he's probably trying to block out the idea of us going at it like rabbits. We don't do either though. We have something more important to do.

Katniss starts the fire and we both sit down in front of the fire pit in our backyard. My old sketchbook from Roanoke is on my left, Katniss to my right. She has her mother's old journals in her lap.

In front of us, glittering in the light from the fire, is Katniss's scrapbook.

Over the years, her scrapbook has become ours and we've added into it as we saw fit. It still has all the old pages she had from before, the memorial pages for Madge and Gale, the pages for each of her parents, the page where she stuffed my letters, and the pictures I'd drawn for her before we had gotten together. We've added pictures of our graduations, our trips to visit Prim in Boston, our wedding, and we've written plenty in it. We have a page about why we chose to adopt and our challenges in doing so. It's a book about us, our family, our life, that we plan to show Lucy when she begins to ask questions.

Because, one day, she will. She'll wonder why Mommy has to go to the doctor every few years and why it makes Daddy pace the floor with worry – why doesn't Daddy worry when Lucy goes to the doctor? She'll wonder why some days Daddy isn't fun and lays in bed and isn't able to play with her. She'll ask Katniss why she doesn't call Grandpa what she calls her daddy – should she call her daddy Haymitch too? She'll ask why Mommy doesn't have a mommy and why Daddy doesn't have a mommy or a daddy. And then she'll ask where they went.

Katniss rips out one of the pages of her mother's journal and slides it into one of the sleeves of the scrapbook. She flips to another bookmarked page and rips it out, adding it in with the other. Then she takes the journal, shuts it, closes her eyes, and tosses it in the fire, only opening her eyes to see the flames engulf it and watch as it crumbles. She does the same thing with a few more of her mother's journal entries – the entries that are the happiest, the saddest, and the hardest to read – and then it's my turn.

I've bookmarked which images I want to keep and do the same as Katniss did. I picked the ones that were the happiest, the saddest, and the hardest to look at. I pull out the image of the church congregation chasing me with torches and pitchforks. I rip out a sheet with my father as the devil and one where he has a devil and an angel on his shoulder. I pull out one of Rye laughing, Leaven's expression as he left the table at the restaurant we last saw him at, and one of my mother shouting at me, but also one of her sitting on Rye's bed telling the three of us a bedtime story. And then, just as Katniss did, I toss my sketchbook into the fire and watch it burn.

The jumbled stories of our lives fill the remaining empty sleeves and we add our own reference notes here or there. We stick in letters to Lucy in the final sleeve to be read when she's ready and then close the book. Katniss stays outside near the fire and I head into the house. I put the scrapbook on the kitchen table on my way to get a snack for us to eat as we watch the fire burn itself out. We sit, eating the cheese and crackers until there's only a lick of a flame left, and Katniss takes the rest of the sleeve and chucks it into the fire. It explodes a little from the added crackers and then dies just a few minutes after midnight. She turns to me with a wicked grin and grabs my hands, pulling me up. She pulls me into the house, taking off my winter coat, sliding out of hers, quietly gliding us by a sleeping Hemy in the living room, and then smirks when she reaches the stairs.

"Let's ring in this new year, Mr. Mellark."

I let go of her hands and lift her up in one swift motion, pressing a kiss to her exposed collarbone as she wraps her legs around my waist. "Oh, I plan to, Mrs. Mellark," I tell her as we climb the stairs. "I plan to ring it in a few times."

Katniss squeezes her legs tighter around my waist and I smile into the skin of her neck, pressing soft kisses wherever I can reach as I bring her into our room and kick the door shut. There will be no furry four-legged visitors to our bed tonight.

Chapter Notes

I'm basing the description of the non-profit that Peeta works at after he graduates off the place I volunteered at in high school and where I met the boy that inspired Pollux.

I have a golden retriever, which is why I chose the breed for Katniss and Peeta. Many of Hemy's mannerism are based off my golden.

I'm not all that familiar with adoption, so I'm sorry if some of it isn't right. I looked on adoption websites, adoption forums, and read through some government websites to try and figure out what it would look like. According to the Department of Health and Human Services and child welfare websites I found online, I found the state statues for West Virginia and used those to generate the timeline on their adoption of Lucy. It's state law there to have a waiting period of 72 hours before the birth mother can legally terminate her rights and if she's under 18 she has to have a guardian ad litem appointed to represent her best interests. Once a birth mother's rights have been terminated, it's irrevocable unless it can be determined that she did so under duress. In the case that the birth father is also still in the picture, he may be asked by the courts to wave his rights as well. So that's the information I found and used as my research. I took bits and pieces of different testimonial/forum posts about adoption experiences to piece together the actual adoption scene.

Lucy means "light" and in Dylan Thomas' villanelle which I used to name the prequel to this story (Do Not Go Gentle), the last stanza of which is seen above, he uses light as a metaphor for life. Peeta also uses light as a metaphor in Part V while he's researching to find a loop hole to Katniss's infertility.

Now, onto what I worry about the most, the execution of Mr. Mellark's storyline. I hope the confrontation between Peeta and his father came across as I wanted it to and wasn't too much of a shock. Considering this is Peeta's point of view, we couldn't really see a lot of it. I don't think Mr. Mellark is as cruel and selfish as Peeta decides he is, but I think he isn't a good reactor. I tried to show that in the other parts, specifically toward the end of Part II (when Mr. Mellark does nothing to diffuse the issue between Leaven and Mrs. Mellark, and then when he sends Peeta to Roanoke in the middle of the night when he could've sent Peeta to Hersh, Delly, or Katniss's until morning so he could drive to Rye's without being sleep deprived). He really thought it was in Peeta's best interest to leave town and not look back, so his intentions were in the right place, but his actions left much to be desired. I hope you guys don't hate his story arc.

A/N

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to come on this journey with me. I enjoyed writing in this universe and I'm so glad there are people who are still enjoying it with me a year after I published Do Not Go Gentle. I know I've been really bad about responding to your reviews, but know that I really appreciate hearing your opinions and reactions. I can't put into words how much your support means to me. It'll definitely be hard to let this universe go. If there's any interest, I wouldn't be opposed to drabbles or oneshots from this universe. If anyone has anything they'd like to see, let me know.

But again, thank you to those who encouraged me to write this after I said I wouldn't. I really loved it and I hope you did too. Feel free to check me out on tumblr (I'm really boring, but sometimes I post about upcoming projects); I use the same username as here.

I'll see you all around the fandom!