Author's Note: Another little "Hunger Games" ficlet to feed my growing obsession with the series. I always wondered why Katniss changed her mind about having children when she seemed so adamant in the book. For some reason, I thought she'd feel guiltier about bringing kids into the world after witnessing the worst of humanity firsthand. Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of the Hungers Games nor any of the characters affiliated with the series.

Vigil

I don't sleep nights. It's no surprise, Peeta says. He can't remember a night that I don't wake, choking on my own screams and the blood of those I've killed in the arena. I hate it when he hears me. I'm embarrassed when he sees me shaking and sweating in bed beside him, even though we've been married for two years.

Because there's no sweetness to my fear now, not like the evenings we spent together before the Quarter Quell, when I first let him hold me and I first got to like it. When I savored the confident weight of his arms and could count all the creases in his simple hands and savor the subtle, soft touch of his fingertips on my collarbone. But it's not the same, when he reaches across the swath of tangled sheets to me, the light hair on his arms like spun silver in the moonlight. It's not the same when I press into him and he tries to soothe me back into sleep with his own, wordless lullaby.

"It's the memories," I say, fumbling with my poor excuse. "It's the echo inside me."

And he tells me I ask too much of myself, when I try to forget. He says we're supposed to remember.

But Peeta's always been braver than me. He can smile away the ache in his heart. He can find happiness in a sliver of sunshine and in my half-hitched grin. He can carry the burden, both mine and his, on his arrow-straight shoulders like his lifting a sack of flour. I wish I didn't have so much to give him, the dark and the bad, the few good moments that have made our marriage almost worth it. And I wish now, that I wasn't about to give him more, give him the one gift that will always remind us of the Games, because we were young once too.

I stop trying to sleep through the nights when the air cools and the sensuous summer twilights fade into the tepid cool of autumn. I sit in our kitchen with mugs of cold tea, crouching in the small alcove against the back wall that I've made a window seat out of. The cushions are old. Small, square pillows my mother made for Prim and me when we were kids. They're one of the relics I took for the old house, if only to preserve the smell and the touch of my childhood home, already a faint imprint in a quiet, private corner of my mind. And I pass the dark, bitter hours of midnight with my head against the windowpane, reminding myself that there are a lot of things I promised I'd never do, which means that I'm a hypocrite and even worse a liar. A liar…

We planted a garden in the backyard. I can see it from our kitchen window, sitting on those moldy pillows and watching the tender signs of life poke their way through the ash-tainted soil. We have flowers and fruit vines. Herbs and vegetables that grow slowly, each green leaf and flower petal unfurling with a sort of primal elegance that makes my stomach curdle. I tell myself how much I hate this new beginning, this birth. Because there's new life inside me now. Everyday, every second, I can feel it growing.

There are a lot of things I swore I'd never do. This just happens to be one of them.

Peeta has begun to think of names. He doesn't say them out loud, but whispers them to himself when he's making dinner or in his studio painting. I don't like the way the words sound on his lips, too much like a song, too much like little Rue singing to her mockingjays. Little Rue who would have one day grown up to be just plain Rue, just another woman with a man of her own and maybe a couple of kids.

For some reason, I feel like I've taken that from her, as though I traded her life for the one inside me. When I sit still during those nights and feel the faint flutter of the baby moving in my womb, I think of how Rue's heartbeat felt against mine when I held her that last moment. Life and death, birth and decay seem impossibly intertwined. I don't have the mind of a poet, but I can grasp at the metaphors and the empty joy they give me. Others have died so that I might live. And I'll die now a little just to give life to this nameless entity inside me. This child. Its pain and sacrifice all wrapped up into one, making me wonder how my mother did it for all those years. And why, yes, why I've decided to do it now, when I said I never, ever would.

I can't understand myself and thinking that Peeta does, that he's already figured out our game of a life almost makes me angry. Angry that I have so much to give him. And angry that I've gone back on my word and done something so utterly selfish. Because creating new life, molding a new soul, is selfish. And it's during those lonely watches of the barren night that I fall to the fear, a liquid delusion flooding my veins like poison or the alcohol Haymitch uses to craft his own escape.

Haymitch knows. He knows, like I know, that the only way to win in the end is to cheat, to cheat yourself, to deny and sacrifice even when you're meant to indulge. This baby is an indulgence, not a gift. But there's no way I can tell Peeta that, not when he's already started to think of names. Lucy if it's a girl. Aaron for a boy. Somehow, he thinks it's going to be a boy.

I wonder if there will ever come a time when I love this child.

November brings a cold end to autumn and my stomach swells. I waddle when I walk, sway like the old maple trees that are now bending to a Northerly wind. Some days I visit Haymitch. He's sober enough to make polite enquires. I don't tell him that Peeta wants him as godfather. For some reason, he thinks our old mentor will appreciate the gesture. I think Haymitch will be embarrassed, and then maybe offended. But if only Peeta knew that it's impossible for either of us to be patronizing. If only he realized that we've both be scrubbed raw of any guile and left with genuine emotion, the kind of awareness that stings the heart. Which is why I'm not sure I'll ever love this child. Which is why I don't sleep, anymore.

On the last night in November I sit in my window seat and look across the yard to Haymitch's house. His lights aren't on, but I know he's awake and I'm almost annoyed that he shares my vigil. There's no being alone these days, I tell myself, absently stroking the smooth curve of my protruding belly. I'll never, ever be alone again.

And the thought shocks me, my skin prickling and trembling as if a trackerjacker were dancing along my bare arm. The kitchen suddenly becomes small and crowded and the window pane is close enough so that I see my breath fogging the glass in clouds of grey vapor.

I run. I run outside into the garden that Peeta planted to hide the ruts of scarred earth that were leftover from the bombings. But I'm all clumsy now, not the swift bird, not the mockingjay who can dart easily from tree branch to tree branch and become a part of the forest like seamless camouflage painted by a hand that used to decorate cakes. There's a frost on the ground and leftover roots from the potato patch. My feet are bare and it doesn't take long for my toes to snare in a branch or a rock, I'm not quite sure which it is, but it hurts all the same. I don't think quick enough to protect the baby when I fall. My hand goes out to block my face, but somehow, I twist at the last moment and land on my side.

The impact shakes me and I'm sure the thud must have been overhead and maybe Peeter will come rushing out to me, or worse, Haymitch. I don't realize, as I'm laying there by the last of snow peas, dusted white with ice, that I'm crying. The tears follow the curve of my face, slide around my nose and down into the little well of flesh above my lip. I'm crying because I'm thinking of how Rue would be almost grown-up by now and maybe married. Or Prim, she always wanted to be a mother. But here I am, not worthy enough for any of this and with I child that I can't love, a child that I can't love because I'm frightened.

Lying under the sharp, glinting stars, I remember the times when I used to sing Prim to sleep, though somehow we both knew that the songs were more for my comfort than for hers. The words come slowly, muddled, the rhyme misshapen on my clay-cold tongue.

Here's it's safe, here it's warm…

My hand on my stomach, fingers splayed.

Here the daisies guard you from every harm…

It must be a girl. Peeta's wrong this time, for once. I'm having a daughter.

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true…

Rue would want me to love her. And Prim, I'm sure, yes, I'm sure she would insist upon it. And I lay there, between the rows of our garden, with the last of the mums and the trees rising high, trying to catch the stars. My hand on my stomach, my hand, touching, touching her…

Here is the place…where I love you.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave me a review. I'd absolutely love to hear from you. ^_^ Take care and be well!