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Just a little note, The Harvest and Igniting the Heart are the first two installments in this story. Thank you so much for reading!
The floor was always cold. I couldn't complain though, the frequent beatings I had taken to my face had been nursed by the cool compress the steel provided. The worst part of being in the Capitol as their prisoner was the not the punch to the jaw or the knee in the stomach. It was hearing others being tortured for the information I knew none of us had.
Maybe Johanna did know something more. They keep telling me that we have orchestrated a rebellion within the games, that we knew we would always keep the symbol alive so faith in the mockingjay would fuel flames of the people. They rescued Katniss and Finnick…and whoever was lucky enough to be within a ten-mile radius of her. So I should be happy, but a small part of me is not.
Do I not rank high enough to be saved? I have gone along with all of Haymitch's request to a point in which I could be a robot, I have operated under the clause that I was too love drunk to sober up enough to have self preservation. Katniss seemed to want me alive but I am more certain that I will find my end right in this cell.
This isn't me. Two days behind bars and electric fence have hardened my compassion into ice. I have to breathe through it because I know they will be coming to question me again, any moment they will tie me up like a hog and drag me across the ground. If she is safe, I should find a way to take my life before they beat me to it.
"Let's go Mellark." A guard says, he doesn't make any movement to shove me around, but he just places the handcuffs on tight and lets me walk by myself. This prison is set up where it is hard to ever get a clear layout. I can never remember the routes we take to get to any particular destination, but I know this is totally unfamiliar to me. The hallways get darker but the guard still trudges on. I wonder if I am set up to be tortured now because hitting me until my blood paints the floor isn't working well for them.
"Listen you." The guard hisses, shoving me into the corner.
"I haven't done anything, I know nothing." Is my immediate response.
"I know you don't, these idiots can't see it. Katniss is fine, but you are in for something…that I am not entirely sure about. They are tailoring a serum that is meant to fix you, so they can use you. Snow is in a different part of this building waiting for me to deposit you in his office. Placate him and don't lose hope. They don't want to kill you but I am sure what ever it is that they have planned, will be worse. What is your greatest weakness? Think about that." He mutters so low I have to almost push my ear against his mouth to hear him. My greatest weakness has and always will be the very person Snow despises the most.
"Why are you trying to help? Don't you work for him?" I ask.
"No, not after what I've seen him do." He responds, and then he begins leading me to the lion's den.
I close the book and tuck it underneath the mattress. Katniss is moving and for some odd reason I am terrified of her finding the journal. Maybe I don't want her to know the truth about how I felt. I don't want unnecessary pain to be felt because everything has long passed. I guess the most glaring truths I want hidden are the ones where I doubt her for ever caring about me.
"Kat, you okay?" I whisper. I picked up this bad habit of shortening her name. The first time she thought I was talking about a stray cat outside. I laughed for a good two hours at her mistake.
"Moving, the baby thinks I am a giant pool." Katniss grumbles.
I reach over and place my hands on her swollen stomach. I can feel her, spreading her life with in the walls of my wife's abdomen. To me it is no better sensation.
"Settle down sweet pea, momma's trying to sleep." I whisper to her belly.
"You are so convinced it is a girl. Why?" she asks.
"I don't know….it's just something my heart is telling me. It could be a boy, but I am almost certain it is a girl." I say.
"I want a boy because I feel like the boy will be like you. We don't need anyone else in this neighborhood that resembles me or Haymitch." She responds.
"I love you…and only in the moments where I'm a little off my rocker, do I love Haymitch." I tell her.
"Yeah, can't fix your bad judgment on loving us, can we?" she muses.
"Nope, I'm afraid it has always been too late for me. Are you nervous?"
"No, not yet." She mumbles.
We never finish the conversation because she drifts off. It has been taking me a while to pluck up courage to write in this journal. For weeks I looked at the first sentence and thought that maybe I was making a mistake in dragging up the pain that plagued my mind. I feel like my story hasn't been told, however, that everyone has an opinion about me that probably isn't 100% true. So I swallow the anxiety every now and then, and manage a few more sentences in my intro to my torture. Haymitch would probably be the only one to read anything sandwiched between these pages because he's the person who wouldn't judge me; maybe he is the only one who get's my entire personality right most of the time.
I tuck my arms around her again and settle in for the night. Nine months of her constant struggle has made us both wary. I remember after Christmas morning when I was cleaning the wrapping paper off of the floor, the look in her eyes. I had ordered her a rocking chair, hauled a crib into the baby's room, and began filling the space with the necessities. She just stood there like a ghost, hallowed out of all the things that make us human. Then a tear started to fall from her grey eyes and she cupped her hands over her pink lips.
"Peeta, I don't think I can do this." She wimpered.
"It'll be fine, love. Just wait and see, you'll be perfect." I replied, coming to her side and kissing her forehead.
"But look, look at what has already happened. You've been preparing and getting things together while I've been trying to pretend a baby is not coming. When I come in this room, I feel overwhelmed. I'm not like you…I can't handle this." She stammered.
"Katniss, you have the wrong idea if you don't think I'm scared. A baby, in our life, is a challenge. I can't forget the arena. There isn't a day where I don't stand in the doorway of the bakery I rebuilt and think about how my family was killed in the rage of the Captiol, all on my doing. We're not perfect and we both are not saints but we deserve to have a family. Bad things have happened to us, but it doesn't make incapable of loving and nurturing a child. We're not bad people Katniss." I said. She hummed a little to herself, Rue's mockingjay call, and left me in the room to finish my work.
The moments like that were abundant even in her manic happy spells that would follow; I could see the doubt she had. The baby would be here any moment and I felt as if I had been running a marathon that might come to completion. We wake with the sun and I prepare breakfast while Katniss waddles around the living room. She reaches the door when the knock sounds through the halls and a grumbling old man greets me with an empty flask and a sober smirk.
"Well, the alcohol is gone for the week." Haymitch grumbles, leaning against the counter.
"And, you came over here to see if I had any wine left from the holidays?" I guess.
"Possibly. Or I'm hungry and I haven't had any bread delivered yet." He says.
"I told Mila to bring two loaves to you and some cheese danishes. Mhmm. Well, sit down in the dining room and have breakfast with us. I don't have any wine left by the way." I respond, ladling the eggs onto a serving platter.
"Of course you don't." He mutters as he finds his way to the table.
We all sit around the food, placing little bits of the spread onto our plates. Haymitch eyes both of us and the surrounding cabinet, on the look out for any drink that doesn't remind him of fruit juice. The only sound is the scraping of forks for a while, but soon enough Haymitch trumps up enough energy to speak.
"So what are you naming it?" Haymitch asks, pointing to Katniss's stomach.
"Grouch. We wanted a name that captured the person we trust the most, You Haymitch." Katniss muses, sarcasm thick in her voice.
"Thanks, sweetheart." He snaps back.
"We don't have a name yet. Well, if it's a boy Katniss wants to name him Rye and if it is a girl, I like the name Willow." I explain, ignoring their jokes.
"I was actually fond of the name grouch." Haymitch says with a laugh.
Katniss is silent for a few moments, her eyebrows furrowing at the corners. I reach my hand out to her but she doesn't take it. I've seen her shut off before and each time it hurts me. It is not because I think she is doing it intentionally, but because I wish she never had to experience anything more than joy. She clears her throat and lays her napkin in her lap.
"Get Greasy Sae." She says to me.
"Why? What's wrong?" I quickly reply.
"Peeta, do what I tell you. Please." She whispers.
I pop up from my seat and say no more, walking out of the door without my coat into the victor's village. Greasy Sae doesn't come over as often, unless we truly need her or if I'm working late at the bakery. It's never hard to find her and her granddaughter, however. They are usually tucked away in my old home, enjoying the quiet morning. She's resumed working in the town and now has her own kitchen, a favor I felt I owed her after she took care of Katniss. I knock and the door opens quickly. Her granddaughter looks me once over and calls for her grandmother.
"Katniss needs you." I say.
"She doesn't need me, boy. She needs the midwife I know in town. Here, I'll send the youngin' to go fetch her. Let's get over there and make her comfortable."
Her statement hits me so fast that at first I disregard it and then it starts to sink in. Her quiet and worried expression had nothing to do with our past, but everything to do with our future. I don't know how I make it over to my house but when I open the door I hear Haymitch yelling from the living room.
"Get over here boy, I am not catching this kid!" He screams at me as I enter the room.
"Okay, okay. The midwife is coming." I say three times. I feel like I need to calm down, that everything is happening to fast for me and everything is out of control. Greasy Sae starts propping her up on pillows and pulls out blankets from our linen closet. She works fast and soon she has her all set up to give birth on the floor. There are a lot of things I want to say to my wife. The only thing I do is kneel down and kiss her forehead as she breathes out slowly.
Once the midwife appears, everything increases in intensity. I keep saying nonsense, just any word I can use to comfort her but the pain is quick and endless. I figure if we could survive death and all the wounds we have endured, this would be easy, but it is more difficult than I could have imagined. I start humming, first a tune I think my mom might have employed on her random act of kindness, but then I remember where its origin lies. Prim used to hum it every time I taught her how to bake or when I gave her fresh bread in the morning. Katniss rests her head against my chest and smiles.
"Prim got that song from me." She whispers.
"I'm sorry if I made you sad…It's the first thing that came to mind." I respond.
"No it's fine. Hum it again." She tells me.
As she pushes, I keep her sister's song spurring her forward. The little girl who only wanted to help people, who was the finest healer I could have ever imagined, had always believed in the love between Katniss and I. It is only fitting that our first child would be brought into the world with the shared love we had for Primrose hanging in the air.
The first cry melted me. Every doubt I've had about myself became extinguished in the love for the tiny body in Katniss's arms. Maybe it is silly to be here, love struck, and glowing. We are both crying, Katniss and I, as we look upon the tiny pink face swaddled in a sea foam green sheet.
"Look at her…She's got your nose and hair." I say, stoking her cheek.
"And you're eyes. I'm glad she has your eyes." Katniss murmurs.
I look around at our friends. Haymitch is sitting on the couch, his hands shielding his face but I can see where his cheeks are wet. It seems right that he'd be here when the new life we created came into the world. He repeatedly gave Katniss a shot at survival, he protected and cared for us as much as we learned to care for him. I let Katniss have her for a while, rocking her back and forth as the two women continue to help clean her up. I've offered my assistance but they make me sit on the couch and finally deliver my daughter into my arms. She blinks up at me, her soft little fingers curling into a fist. It's like seeing the reflection of the woman I've given everything for. I would also give everything for my daughter.
"Look, there is grumpy uncle Haymitch." I say, turning her so she can see my mentor. He gives a weak smile then wipes a lost tear from his chin.
"You know, I once told Katniss that she could live a thousand life times and not deserve you." He says quietly.
"Why?"
"Because, she never saw the things you willingly tossed for her. You were better than the two of us, but I was wrong. She did deserve you." He finishes.
"Thank you, Haymitch."
"No problem. I better go, I've seen enough for the day."
He leaves the house as I turn to the stairs, the baby snoozing against my sweater. When I get to my room, Katniss is lying on the bed in her pajamas, propped up against the headboard, reading the book we made together. Her pen is out and she is being careful as her hand moves across the page. I don't know where everyone has gone off to, especially since I haven't been able to properly deliver my thank yous. Our house is empty except for the three of us, but I have a feeling greasy sae will be lurking around until we get used to the routine of a new baby.
"What are you writing?" I ask, looking over at the pages.
"I'm adding Willow in…Because all the things we love have gone in here." Katniss answers.
"Willow Mellark. Who knew she was going to come today."
We swap and Katniss smiles, lighting her eyes with something I haven't seen before. In that moment I knew I wouldn't regret asking for this baby. We both needed her, we both needed the reassurance that we wouldn't be haunted by the shadows of our former lives together. I see Willow and I know that the journal I'm keeping for myself is the right thing to do, that I must continue it and be thorough. Some day she will go to school and it will be in the text books, the games, and I am sure our names will be mentioned. She'll come home and she'll want to know more about her parents, about the life they never alluded to having. How can I explain to her the tragedies we over came if I suppress them, if they still leave a bad taste in my mouth? I can't, so I must fully heal so in time, my child doesn't see fear or distress in my eyes, but that all she sees is the pride of getting past the haunts and struggles that blemished my teens, and the outcome of a better world for her to live in.