Madge tells me she knows because her mother was pregnant a few years back, but lost the baby. The aches, the fatigue, the constant hunger (which didn't seem new to me), the weight gain and swelling of my breasts, the lack of a period – all of it comes together now. I am a fool for not even considering it. All I can think is how? How did this happen? Of course I know how it happened, but it still seems like such a far away concept. It seems so impossible, considering the odds. Underfed bodies, unintentional timing, thousands of small miracles in succession of one another. Somehow, this is happening. Somehow, I have a child inside of me.
Madge is excited. I am terrified.
My mother will know soon, if she doesn't already. I wouldn't be surprised if she has taken the hints over the past several weeks and has just been waiting for me to figure it out on my own. Once she knows, Prim will know. My Capitol doctor will find out. Cinna will have to make adjustments to my dresses. Peeta will have to come up with something like he always does. Gale will have to know – won't he?
Long after Madge leaves I am still awake in my bed, sitting in the dark and staring at my stomach. It is early April. Gale has been sleeping with me since a couple months before the tour in January. I have no idea when this happened, but I cannot be too far along. When my mother was pregnant with Prim, it was obvious from the second month on. Now that we have more food, it may be a little easier to hide my development.
I'm thinking like a crazy person. There is no way I can carry a baby to term, much less care for an entirely dependent human for the next couple of decades. My hands start trembling when I place them on my stomach. It bulges just barely and could be passed off as a large meal. This is how I began my life, small and warm and helpless. This tiny being depends on me as I did on my mother and father. They were no victors but had brought up two daughters, so how hard could it be for someone blessed with Capitol riches to successfully raise a child?
I think of Rue and her family, all of her wide-eyed little siblings in District Eleven. If I had been ten seconds faster, I could have saved her. My skin turns to gooseflesh. Ten seconds, and Rue could be back home safe with her family. If that's all it took for me to lose one child, how am I supposed to watch over one for eighteen years?
My status as a victor does not mean immunity for my children. If this baby grows up, he will have to go through the immense dread of Reaping Day for seven years. I don't doubt that Snow would rig it so he could watch me suffer. That man has lived a long life while watching hundreds of children die at his command. He would toast to my child's death. The thought makes me physically ill and I sprawl out on the bed, my hair hanging over the edge of the mattress.
Gale has to know. He's as much a parent to this baby as I am. His love for family dominates everything. If I terminate the pregnancy – an abhorrent option but I realize I may have no other choice – he will most likely never speak to me again. If I conspire to pass off this baby to the world as Peeta's, Gale will not like it one bit. If I have the baby and stay with Gale, we will be in even worse danger than before. This little being inside of me is going to cause much more trouble than talk in the mines and three-finger salutes. Whispers began with the berries, riots began with the speech in Eleven – what would a baby do? A baby would be the catalyst for a full-out war.
Gale cannot know. He would take things into his own hands with disastrous consequences. Peeta and I would be exposed as liars and Snow would have a dozen peacekeepers at the throats of my loved ones in a matter of minutes. The talk in the mines would turn to riots, to revolution, to war, and there would be infinitely more blood spilled. My mother, Prim, Vick, Rory, Posy, Hazelle, Madge, Greasy Sae, Effie, Cinna, Haymitch, my prep team, Peeta, Gale. Everyone I have ever cared for and who has cared for me is already at risk. There can be no rebellion. I will have no future unless it is the one Snow has determined for me. When he runs out of ways to break me, I will be expendable.
I feel like a little girl plucking petals from wildflowers. I tell him. I tell him not. I tell him. I tell him not. I tell him…I tell him not.
I torture myself with this thinking until finally sleep overtakes me.
The only thing in my dreams is the tiny girl. She stands behind a wall and bangs on it with her fists, braids flying. I can't see her face and I can't help her. All I can do is watch her scream.
Gale is the one who rouses me from sleep. I had not even noticed him enter my bed, just assumed that he had come. I have no idea how long he has been beside me but his presence is always reassuring. Except today, I am still nervous around him. Today I have a secret, and I don't keep secrets from Gale.
"Catnip," he says, his voice half a whisper. He looks down at me and touches my shoulder. The calluses on his hands feel strangely comforting. I am suddenly paranoid. Does he know? Has he figured it out? All these half-nights spent together and our sacred Sundays might have given him enough clues. He would not wait this long to confirm it; he would have asked me upfront.
"When did you get in?" I murmur, blinking the sleep from my eyes. The little girl has stopped screaming at last. I fell asleep in my clothes from yesterday and suddenly I am very aware of the wires of my bra digging into my ribs. This is only going to get worse over the next several months. Gale watches me as I sit up and I must be a sight for sore eyes because he chuckles.
"You're beautiful in the morning, you know that? Well, all the time…but especially like this." He leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to my lips. My heartbeat accelerates and I kiss him back, eyes closed and skin growing warmer. In all my worrying about the baby, I seem to have forgotten about Gale himself. I know that I love him. I just don't know if he's figured that out yet for himself.
"I love you. Do you love me?" he had asked when I wanted him to run away with me. I had answered him in the worst way possible. I owe him a real answer.
"Yes," I whisper. Gale pauses and holds my face in both hands, which makes me look up at him. He's confused. I just kiss his lips again and he questions me no further.
It's easy to forget the purpose of sex when you're so wrapped up in your lover. No wonder I virtually forgot about the possibility of pregnancy all those times. He has limited time before he goes back to the mines and I want him with me. None of those girls who whispered about him at school ever came half this far. One night he reassured me that no, none of those rumors were true. Once upon a time he might have entertained the idea, but he is mine. And I am his.
I feel small when I'm with him like this. He's well over six feet tall whereas I am a few inches shy of six. He has hair and scars where I have soft skin perfected by the Capitol. Most notably he has the scars on his back where dozens of lashes ripped apart his skin months before. His cries and groans haunt me as much as the cracking of the whip does. Every time I think of that day I want to scream. I am the girl behind the glass, crying for help, wanting to change everything, but I cannot. He will forever live with the reminder of his flogging, and so will I.
I remind myself to be happy while I have this time with him. I am not in the Capitol, not being filmed, not on tour, not with my team. He is not in the mines or tending to his family. We have such little time to ourselves and it is precious. I can't afford to be distracted right now. I lie down under him and curl my arms up under his arms so I can hold his shoulders.
After a low moan he breathes my name. He doesn't have a shirt on so it is easy for him to undress. I take care of my own clothes and glance at my stomach while he kisses my neck. There is the smallest bulge around my navel and it is definitely not just a big meal sitting in my stomach. Can he feel it as he presses against me? Can he feel his baby? I am still baffled by the idea of Gale and I having a child. I suppose now I've come to terms with it, since I'm thinking like this. Well, at least I'm entertaining the idea of having a family with Gale. If we had run away, where would we be now?
I part my legs for him, soft breaths escaping my lips as he moves ever closer. Nothing else in the world matters right now. It's such a cliché thing to say, but it's true. We could be a family, Gale and I. A part of me wants to run off, have this baby, and live happily ever after. Impossible on many levels, but a nice thought nonetheless.
I think too much.
"Don't go," I whisper. His eyes meet mine and I pull him down by the scruff of his neck, kissing him deeply. Without hesitation he is inside me. Our breaths are ragged but in time; whenever he moans, I whimper. The mattress utters the occasional groan but otherwise we are quiet. It is still too early for my mother and sister to be awake. The house is large enough that we don't have to worry about that anyway. He fills me and I feel utterly complete. Whenever I want a kiss his lips are there, his hands caress the most sensitive parts of my body, and I feel celestial.
I don't keep track of time. All I know is that when we finish – and we both do, our lovemaking is hardly ever rushed – he gives me a tender kiss and rises to clean up. I am left alone in my bed, with the smell of sex in the air and a strange quivering in my belly. I listen to him wash up in the adjacent bathroom and when he comes out he is in his work uniform.
"Katniss," he says with a smile and kneels beside me. He takes my hands in his and kisses them. I feel his warm lips and his handsome stubble against my skin. "I love you."
Now is my chance to reply. Now I can make up for my dumbfounded response months ago. I know, I had said. You know how I feel about you. I can feel my lips forming the words I want to say. Three little words that had the power to make or break a person, a relationship, or a country – no wonder I am so hesitant. Love means too much to me for me to just throw it around. With Prim, it's easy. I have never questioned how I feel about her. With Peeta, I feel love for him in a different way. We have experienced a lot together in less than a year, but the romance aspect is an invention. Gale, on the other hand, is complicated. But so are most things nowadays.
I sit up and wrap my arms around his waist, my cheek resting against his chest. "I love you, too." My cheeks flush and he smiles. I have never seen him smile quite like this, especially before going to work. I can't help but return the smile, and he kisses me again before leaving.
Without Gale by my side I grow more nervous. Something has to be done about this baby. None of the viable options are very pleasant, and none of the pleasant options are very viable. I emerge from my room for the first time in almost twenty-four hours. No cameras today, thank God. My sister is in the living room with Buttercup and my mother is mixing herbs for medicine in the kitchen. I sit beside Prim on the loveseat and Buttercup grumbles at me, but decides to tolerate me.
"Good morning, Katniss." Prim's voice is so soft and almost musical, just hearing her speak brings a smile to my face. "Did you sleep well?"
Without mentioning the nightmares, I shrug. "Pretty average, I guess." The color in her cheeks tells me that she knows Gale was here. "What about you?"
"I had some weird dreams."
"Oh, it must be contagious, then." I look across the hall at my mother, who comes toward us.
"Prim, will you go see if Hazelle has any thyme she'll trade with me?" She wipes her hands on her apron and Prim gets up. Buttercup grunts as he lands on the floor and he watches his beloved owner until she leaves the house. I am rarely alone with my mother, so this is odd. She takes Prim's seat and puts a hand on mine. Her skin is weathered, dry and cool, different from mine and different from Gale's.
"Sweetheart, I wanted to ask you something," she says after a moment. She is rubbing the back of my hand with her thumb and I can tell she is worried about something. If she has caught on, I'll be relieved. That makes one less person I'll have to blurt it out to. "You and Gale, have you been…"
"Yes," I murmur before she embarrasses us both. Have we been sleeping together? Yes. Have we been careful? Not really. But when are we ever careful? We are both forces of nature.
"Okay." She nods like she is carefully considering what to say next. "Have you ever considered that you might be…you might be pregnant?" The final words are a whisper, like someone is watching us. Maybe they are. If Snow somehow snuck cameras inside of my house, I am doomed. I couldn't even reply when he showed me the stolen kiss by the Hob; how am I supposed to defend Gale if Snow finds out what we do behind closed doors?
It dawns on me that my mother is trying to help. I have been so busy providing for our family that I have forgotten that she is primarily here to take care of me. I move closer to her and rest my head on her chest. She wraps her arms around me and sighs.
"What if I am?" I ask in a quiet voice. I can't remember the last time my mother held me like this. It must have been before my father died. "What do I do?"
She tilts my chin up and I look into her eyes. She has been pregnant twice. She was me once – scared, nervous and clueless. Maybe I was unexpected, too. The thought of having a child who grows to cause as much trouble as I have is disconcerting, and this baby has two troublemakers for parents.
"I'll take care of you. I won't say a word unless you tell me it's okay," she says in a low voice. "You tell me what the plan is, and I'll do whatever I can, Katniss." She kisses my forehead and I close my eyes, smelling herbs and spices on her. I'm starting to feel this might be easier than I thought, and that's dangerous.
Now two people know. Madge and my mother are trustworthy and will take my secret to the grave, if need be. I don't want to consider that possibility, but it is comforting to know that I have two people helping me. I tell my sister later that night, when she has gone up to bed and Buttercup is curled up on her chest, purring happily.
"Really?" she asks when I finish explaining my situation. She continues to stroke the cat's thick yellow fur. We sit there quietly for a while, the only sound being Buttercup's gravelly purrs. "Well…what are you going to do?" Her eyes are wide, concerned, but she doesn't look so tiny anymore. Less than a year has passed since she panicked in the line for the Reaping but she looks much more mature. She proved that when she helped take care of Gale.
"I'm not sure," I reply quietly. "I can't get rid of it. That wouldn't solve anything." It really wouldn't. I would spend the rest of my life regretting it and besides, murdering a child would only make me more like Snow. I was aiming to be as far from that as possible.
Prim touches my hand and I take a deep breath, which seems to relax me a bit. "You'll figure it out, Katniss. You always do."
