A/N: An expanded epilogue that covers the five, ten, fifteen years between Katniss admitting that it was real that she loved Peeta through the end of the Mockingjay epilogue. Cannon compliant, makes sense as is or after reading my multi-chapter fic Grow Together. This is a one-shot, so there will be no additional chapters, but I have written plenty of other fics for the Hunger Games and Divergent universes that you can check out if you like my writing. Thanks for reading, and don't forget to leave a review! (And, of course, I do not own the Hunger Games. I just get to play with it a bit )
XOXO,
Libby
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After confessing our love, Peeta and I grew closer than ever. We were finally able to own our feelings and express them without the scrutiny of the Capital and the paparazzi. We found new things to love about each other, and new things that made us crazy.
We found meaning in the every day. I eventually expanded my hunting from walking the snare line to actually shooting things again. The first time I aimed my bow and put an arrow through a squirrel's eye, I was so excited that I grabbed the little rodent by its tail and ran full-speed out of the woods and to the construction site where Peeta and Thom were rebuilding the bakery. I waved the squirrel in front of me, the arrow still protruding from its eye socket, looking for all the world like the lunatic I allegedly am. Peeta beamed with pride and Thom laughed so hard tears ran down his cheeks, but we invited him to dinner that night and feasted on squirrel stew and cheese buns and laughed about the sight I made running through town screaming for Peeta while waving a dead squirrel.
Peeta made a life baking. After a few months of "dating" he officially moved in to my house with me and we turned his house into a temporary bakery. We rearranged the ugly Capitol furniture in our two homes, keeping the most comfortable pieces at my house and putting the rest to work in the bakery or storing it in the empty rooms at Peeta's. Thom and his work crew spent the summer diligently rebuilding the bakery, complete with upstairs living quarters. Peeta hired a manager, Harold, who lived at the temporary bakery in the Village and helped him juggle the bakery and construction projects. When the new bakery opened, Harold moved into the new building with his bride and the two of them ran the bakery with Peeta helping as needed.
We also found meaning in our memories. Inspired by my family's plant book and Peeta's family's bakery book, I came up with the idea of creating a book of people we lost as a way of remembering them. Peeta drew people when we couldn't get pictures, though there weren't many of those. Effie proved very helpful in getting pictures from the Capital archives. Our book and her frequent visits to the archives inspired President Paylor to build a museum. She actually visited us in Twelve so we wouldn't have to travel to the Capitol, and we talked about the museum idea. I showed her our memory book and she and Peeta discussed monument designs.
Even Haymitch got involved in the memory book and Paylor's museum project. It was his idea for the Capital to send Cressida and Pollux to Twelve with a historian who interviewed all three of us about our experiences in the games and the rebellion. We were promised that the footage would be used only for historical purposes and would never be on television without our permission, so we agreed. When the museum was built, I donated the mockingjay pin as well as the spile and parachute that I had kept from the Quarter Quell. They were so excited to have those artifacts to display.
I didn't give them the pearl. It had found a new home by then, set in a platinum band and flanked by two small diamonds, on the third finger of my left hand. Peeta sneaked it out of the safe about a year after we started dating. He had to go to the Capital for some doctor appointments, so he took the pearl to District One on his way there and ordered the setting, then picked it up on his way home a few days later. The day he got home on the train, he picked up a loaf of fruit and nut bread at the bakery. When he arrived at our house, he rang the doorbell, and when I opened it he was down on one knee with a loaf of bread and a beautiful ring.
I said yes, of course, and we had a private toasting at home, just the two of us, just like Peeta had told everyone years before. Of course neither our imaginary toasting before the Quell nor the private toasting in our home were legally binding. The first was imaginary and we were underage then anyway. The second was real to us, but lacked witnesses and paperwork. So a week after our toasting we went to the new Justice Building and filled out the paperwork to "make it legal." The entire country assumed that we had been married for years, but were just now doing the paperwork because we were old enough. Our nearest friends and family, the ones who knew our whole story, came for dinner to celebrate our marriage. They brought food and gifts and we ate and danced until late into the night. I didn't wear a fancy Capitol wedding dress, just one of the sundresses left from the collection Cinna put together for the Victory Tour. It had been my favorite dress during the tour, deep peacock green, sleeveless, knee-length with a V-neckline. Peeta wore a pair of grey slacks with a matching vest, and a white button-down shirt with rolled sleeves. He was so handsome. It was truly the happiest day of my life.
We were young when we married, barely nineteen, but we had already experienced a lifetime worth of love, loss, and stress. I was convinced that I never wanted children, but Peeta held out hope that I would change my mind. For five years he never brought it up. We were very young and had a lot of healing to do. By our fifth anniversary the investigation into the assassination of President Coin was complete, and the whole country knew of the atrocities she committed. I was pardoned for killing her, my record wiped clean and my travel ban lifted. Peeta and I celebrated by spending our anniversary in District Four. We enjoyed the beach and visiting with Annie and her son, Finn, who was six years old. Finn loved Peeta and spent the whole weekend climbing on him, wrestling, splashing in the ocean, and doing "trick" jumps into the pool with Peeta. I'm not sure which one of them was sadder when we left. On the way home in the train, Peeta brought up children for the first time. I was short with him and shut down the conversation quickly. Peeta didn't push, but he started dropping hints now and then.
District Twelve continued to grow and prosper. The new medicine factory opened and with it came another influx of people. Some were returning District Twelve citizens, like Hazelle Hawthorn and her kids. Others were new transfers from other districts. The freedom to choose which district you lived in and what job you wanted was a new privilege that people enjoyed in Panem.
Just before our tenth anniversary, Peeta and I faced a new loss. We were asleep one night, the bedroom windows open as always, when I woke up suddenly. There was a smell of wood smoke in the air and sirens blaring in the distance. I looked out the window and could see an orange glow coming from town. I knew that in a District this small the fire had to affect someone we knew, but we had no idea how big our loss would be. When the phone rang early that morning we were informed that Greasy Sae and her granddaughter, Savannah, had died in a house fire. Sae was old by then, and limited in her ability to get around. Savannah was a teenager, but her mental capacity had never developed beyond that of a toddler. It was unclear how the fire started, probably a stray spark from the fireplace or a candle that got knocked over, but the small house burned quickly and neither of them escaped.
After Sae and Savannah died, I fell back into my old patterns of grief. Peeta came home from the bakery the afternoon after the fire and found me in the closet, staring into space. I was devastated that after surviving the firebombing of the district, Greasy Sae and Savannah were destined to die in a fire. It seemed too ironic, too cruel. When everyone I knew was either dead, hospitalized, or had abandoned me, Greasy Sae was the one who had taken care of me. She was a better mother to me in my time of need than my own mother was, and her loss hit me hard. Peeta gave me a few days to wallow in my grief, sitting near me drawing or reading while I stared into space. He brought me water, and food I didn't eat. After three days he opened the safe and brought me the memory book, some pens, and a beautiful portrait of Sae and Savannah that he had been working on while I was catatonic. The dam burst and we cried together for hours. I poured my heart into two pages of the book, leaving room for Peeta's beautiful drawing. The next morning we got dressed nicely and went to the meadow to see Sae and Savannah laid to rest.
The Meadow never became a proper cemetery. District Twelve already had a cemetery. The only people buried in the Meadow were the victims of the firebombing, but I pulled some strings and the District officials agreed that the two women could be buried in the Meadow with Sae's son and his wife, Savannah's parents. Sae was of the old District Twelve, and I knew she would have wanted it that way.
As our grief faded, Peeta began dropping bigger and blunter hints about starting a family. We were 29 years old, with no biological family other than my mother, and that relationship was strained at best. Our little family was shrinking. Without Sae and Savannah our holidays were down to just Haymitch, Peeta, and I, plus Effie if we could get her to come out to Twelve. Annie had remarried a nice guy from District Four, and Johanna was still as wild and unreliable as ever. She traveled a lot and sometimes showed up unannounced. We wouldn't hear from her for nearly a year, then one day a postcard would appear in the mail talking about her latest wild adventure.
We had many friends, of course, but very few that we thought of as family. Hazelle and Posy were regular visitors for dinner. Hazelle continued to clean Haymitch's house and take in laundry and mending. Posy was a beautiful girl who had all the boys' attention in spite of her protective older brothers. Vick and Rory were both married, and Rory had a son of his own. Both boys stayed in District Twelve, so they got to see a lot of their mom and sister.
Gale never returned to District Twelve for more than a weekend visit. He made a career in the military and rose through the ranks quickly after the rebellion. It suited him, and he was good at his job. He dated many girls, according to his mom, but had trouble settling down. I wasn't surprised. The war rocked us all, and if Peeta hadn't been with me through everything, I don't know that I could have found someone who really understood me and why I still struggled with nightmares and dark thoughts.
Gale and I made our peace with one another, though we never fully recovered the close friendship of our hunting days. It was Peeta who helped me to understand that Gale's bomb being used against Prim and innocent children was no more his fault than the firebombing of Twelve was mine. We were both used by corrupt leaders who had no qualms about destroying innocent lives to maintain power. We were both fighting for what we believed while, in our ignorance, we were used to destroy people we loved. When I finally understood that, I was able to forgive Gale. And myself.
After ten years of marriage, Peeta quit dropping hints and started saying more bluntly that he wanted to have a family with me. I laid out all my reasons for not wanting kids and he deftly refuted my every objection. I agreed to think about it.
We were stable, as was the nation. Paylor served two four-year terms as president of Panem. During her time in office, she laid a foundation for democracy and economic prosperity. No longer would the Capitol and a couple of districts live in luxury while the rest of us starved as slaves. She founded a system of government where people got to vote for men and women who would represent them in the Council of Districts. The Council made laws and managed the nation's security and economic interests in a way that kept things fair and free.
At the end of Paylor's second term, the political reporters on television talked a lot about who would replace her. Peeta's name came up frequently, and I was terrified that they would call on him to serve. Peeta assured me that he had no interest in living in the Capital and would refuse if nominated. He didn't feel that living through the Hunger Games was enough to qualify him for leadership, and he worried that people would vote for someone like him just because he was "famous" when they should really be looking for someone who was well suited to the job. I knew that he was well-qualified and that although we were young, he would have been a great leader. I just didn't want the attention or to move to the Capitol.
In the end it didn't matter. Peeta didn't get nominated. Paylor was replaced by a man from District Three named Cyrus Vision. President Vision ran on the platform of building on President Paylor's success by strengthening our infrastructure and technological capabilities. The election between him and his opponent, a man from District Five, was civil, and the entire nation breathed a sigh of relief when the transition was peaceful.
Just after Peeta and I celebrated our twelfth anniversary, I got a phone call from a very panicked Gale. His girlfriend was pregnant and he was terrified of being a dad. As I tried to calm him down, I found myself using the same logic that Peeta had been using to convince me to have kids. I reminded him that the government was stable, that the Games were not coming back, that we were free now and had enough to eat every day. I told him that he had done a great job helping his mom raise his brothers and sister. As his fear turned to excitement I started to wonder what was holding me back. Peeta was right; the world was different now. Gale's family would be fine. And so would mine.
I kept my thoughts to myself for a while, but I started to imagine what it would be like to have a little boy with Peeta's blue eyes and my dark hair, or a blonde little girl with silver-grey eyes. I would teach them to hunt, swim, and recognize edible plants in the woods. Peeta would teach them to wrestle, bake, and paint. We would have someone to take over the bakery someday and inherit the plant, recipe, and memory books.
The memory of Prim and how I wasn't able to keep her safe put an end to those thoughts for a while. But when Christmas came and it was just Peeta, Haymitch, and I exchanging simple gifts and trying to eat a whole turkey, I started thinking about children again. That year's holiday cards brought pictures of teenage Finn and his two half siblings, and a picture of Gale's new baby boy. I sighed over the chubby cheeks and toothless grins, but I just couldn't put away the fear.
That spring Peeta got sick with a cold and it wouldn't go away. I tried every remedy I could remember from my mother's work as a healer and everything in the plant book that looked even half way promising, but he just couldn't stop coughing. After more than a month of tight, dry coughing we gave in and scheduled an appointment with the local medical clinic. They looked at Peeta's lungs and insisted that he go to a hospital. The Capitol hospital sent a hovercraft, and we were whisked away for medical tests and anxious waiting.
In the Capitol, days stretched into weeks. X-rays revealed that Peeta had pneumonia, but he didn't respond to the usual treatments. Complex blood tests finally revealed that when Peeta was hijacked, the Capitol doctors had planted in him a chemical time bomb that would eat at his immune system and ensure that he had a short life. If they had finished that treatment, Peeta would have died within a year of the hijacking, living just long enough to kill me but not long enough to be rehabilitated. Instead, the rebels came for him before the treatment was complete and he was spared until his body had to fight off a major illness like pneumonia. Only then did we learn how limited his immune system was.
Peeta spent more than a month hospitalized in the Capitol, undergoing intense antibiotic treatments in a germ-free environment. After that we were moved to an apartment where he continued to recover with daily home healthcare visits for another month. When the home healthcare visits tapered off, we still weren't cleared to travel for some time. After nearly four months in the Capitol, we were finally released to go home.
Peeta used our time in the Capitol to have his prosthetic leg replaced and to go through some additional tests and treatments with Dr. Aurelius. By the time he was cleared to go home, he was in better condition than ever, and I was worn down from months of stress and nursing my husband. Coming that close to losing Peeta confirmed my old belief that we should not have children. But Peeta had the opposite reaction. His near-death experience made him more certain than ever that we shouldn't waste any more time. We had more than a few ugly arguments about it, and actually spent a few nights in separate beds.
We slowly worked our way to a truce, but some of the spark was gone from our relationship. Peeta was depressed about the idea of never having kids, and I was irritated with him for pressuring me. We argued often, about stupid things like taking out the trash, because neither of us could bring up what we really differed about.
Just before Christmas, fourteen and a half years into our marriage, Peeta lit a fire in the fireplace one night and turned on some soft music. He poured us each a glass of wine and made a beautiful speech about how much he loved me and how sorry he was that he pushed me when he had agreed years ago that if I didn't want kids he wouldn't push me. I cried and apologized to him as well. He gave me a beautiful bracelet and swore that we were going to start living the life we have instead of wasting it arguing with each other. That night I fell in love with Peeta all over again.
A week later, Gale and his girlfriend, Marta, came to visit with their two-year-old son, Mason. When they arrived, little Mason was shy and stuck to his mother's lap, but after a while, he started to get antsy and wanted to get down and play. Peeta tried to befriend him, but Mason was wary. He reminded me of Gale with his head full of dark hair and his careful, distrustful manner. I could tell it was frustrating for Peeta, who was always so popular with kids.
After dinner, when we were sitting around having coffee and dessert in the living room, Mason wandered up to me and held up his hands. Surprised, I picked the boy up and put him on my lap. "Kat!" he said, pointing at me. Tears instantly sprang to my eyes as I remembered the way Savannah had called me that when she was young and she came over with Greasy Sae to feed me. I nodded, and the little boy yelled it again and then proceeded to make meowing noises like a cat.
Mason spent the rest of the evening perched on my lap. I bounced my knees for him and he squealed with laughter. We made more cat noises before moving on to other animals. He played with my braid, and eventually fell asleep in my arms. When they went back to Hazelle's for the night I was reluctant to give him back. Children didn't normally take to me, and I could only assume that Mason found my personality familiar. After all, he was Gale's son, and Gale and I had more in common than dark hair and Seam-grey eyes.
Watching me with Mason nearly broke Peeta's resolve not to push me to have kids, but he made good on his side of the bargain, and never brought it up. But the experience stuck with me. It was beautiful the way the boy looked like his parents. Gale had really stepped up and matured since Mason's birth, and it gave me hope that I might grow into a good mom if we had kids. That spring when I had my annual physical, I talked to my doctor about my age, my chances of having healthy babies, and discontinuing my birth control.
In May, we celebrated our fifteenth anniversary with a quiet dinner at home. We agreed not to get each other gifts but instead planned a trip for later that summer. But I had a surprise for Peeta, so I broke the agreement. I put my last disk of birth control pills in a box and wrapped it up, even adding a big bow. After dinner I presented it to Peeta. He scowled at me for breaking our agreement, and opened the box. He was confused by the pills in the box until I told him that I met with my doctor and talked to her about trying for a baby. Peeta was struck speechless then quizzed me for the rest of the night about whether I was sure I wanted to do this. I assured him that I had been thinking about it for fifteen years and was finally sure.
It took three months to get pregnant, and although many couples wait much longer, they were the longest months of my life. Once I decided to get pregnant I didn't want to wait any more.
Now they play in the Meadow. The dancing girl with the dark hair and blue eyes. The boy with blond curls and gray eyes, struggling to keep up with her on his chubby toddler legs. It took five, ten, fifteen years for me to agree. But Peeta wanted them so badly. When I first felt her stirring inside of me, I was consumed with a terror that felt as old as life itself. Only the joy of holding her in my arms could tame it. Carrying him was a little easier, but not much.
The questions are just beginning. The arenas have been completely destroyed, the memorials built, there are no more Hunger Games. But they teach about them at school, and the girl knows we played a role in them. The boy will know in a few years. How can I tell them about that world without frightening them to death? My children, who take the words of the song for granted:
Deep in the meadow, under the willow
A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes
And when again they open, the sun will rise.
Here it's safe, here it's warm
Here the daisies guard you from every harm
Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true
Here is the place where I love you.
My children, who don't know they play on a graveyard.
Peeta says it will be okay. We have each other. And the book. We can make them understand in a way that will make them braver. But one day I'll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won't ever really go away.
I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.
But there are much worse games to play.