(Pan Mellark)
In these two short months, Ingrid Everdeen already felt like more of a mother to me than my birth mother ever had. "Momma," I said. "Our little family's going to get bigger."
In walks Peeta, with his hand around Katniss' waist. "So you got Raven or Robin knocked up?"
"Not exactly," I admitted.
"Both of them?" Mom guessed. Correctly.
"Yes."
"Women who live together tend to be fertile around the same time," she explained in a teacher's tone. "Or not fertile, and you gotta watch out for that too!" Pumpernickel may have joked.
"Congratulations on the sort-of-twins with the twins," Peeta offered. "But one singing angel is enough for me," he said while turning back to Katniss.
Mom cast an obscene gesture at the back of a Peacekeeper standing on the street outside our window. "Ever since certain people cut off the woods, I've been running low on birth control herbs, and those Castle girls were some of my best customers. Well, at the rate they were going, they were bound to end up with kids eventually, and now those kids will have an awesome dad."
"Thank you. They will," I answered.
"Go and make love to them again," Peeta suggested. "Since they're already pregnant, they can't get pregnant again," he pointed out.
"It seems you are very familiar with that concept," I observed, pointing to the arms wrapped around Katniss.
"I learned it the hard way, alright," Katniss joked. We deserved some happiness amidst the chaos and insanity, I thought, and they'd found it in each other's hearts and other body parts. I didn't want to think about my father like that, but it was working that way for him too.
With Pumpernickel soon to be buried, I needed another painkiller, and nothing quite compared to those beautiful, lusty young women. When I walked into their house, their father Russel glared at me a bit. He probably realized the same logic Peeta did, and I told him "Unfortunately, I can't marry both your lovely daughters or choose between them". Their mother Ruth was excited about grandchildren, and happy to see the young man responsible for them. Their brothers Razorbill and Roadrunner, both older and not twins, were nowhere to be seen. They weren't as close as their sisters, so they might or might not be out together.
Raven greeted me first by their bedroom door, and said "Back for more, you stud?" She was the older one by a few minutes, slightly shorter, and also had some nice freckles. She would have been a bit chubbier too if the District Twelve diet had allowed it. I could see that in her frame, which I enjoyed studying rather closely.
I felt myself getting a bit chubbier in a way, and answered "More of you two pretty girls? Of course." They began to compete at pulling my clothes off, a game everybody wins. When Robin slid out of her dress, I pushed her panties to the side and intended to fuck her while were both standing in the middle of the room, but she had an even better idea. She nudged me in the direction of the bed, and I made a point of dramatically falling down on the mattress. She pushed her own panties back to the side to start riding me. While Raven just lifted her skirt and lowered her crotch into my face. My tongue knew what to do as well as my cock, even though I hadn't fucked both of them at the same time before. Last time, I took turns climbing on top of each of them while the other touched herself and loudly talked about how good my muscles looked glistening with sweat.
I got to look at Raven's pretty little ass and short blonde hair while she faced her sister. Despite being born together, they were no more related than any other siblings, same as me and Pump. Even sharing a womb didn't usually make people this close, although I bet Pump would have liked to join in this delicious little pile of flesh.
Soon enough, I gave Robin's muffin a cream topping. Or in this position, was it greasing the baking pan? I had tasted Raven and she now tasted me, baking my loaf in her other oven while Robin blotted away some of the grease from the first batch. When Raven got my crust hard once more, I fucked both of them again.
As I sat naked next to my just-as-unclothed girlfriends, I asked "Have you beautiful ladies thought of any baby names?"
"Just something not starting with 'R'," Raven answered and Robin laughed.
"'Pumpernickel' and 'Delly' don't," I said, downcast. "I was thinking of 'Rue' if there was another girl, but that's apparently out of the question."
"I'm glad Pan knows his alphabet," Robin joked. "I'm guessing you were thinking of 'Thresh' for a second boy."
"I was," I said, pleased with her incisiveness. "Tributes fallen on the arena battlefields. Thread's goons couldn't blame us for sympathizing with traitors."
Delly died eighteen days ago, but they were only burying her now, to go along with Pumpernickel. The Capitol held off the funerals until both a district's tributes were dead. Supposedly, the remaining one might become a Victor who'd want to attend the funeral, but really, I think those cheap lazy bastards only wanted to run one train.
There were a whole bunch of Peacekeepers around. To make sure the funeral didn't become a protest against the cause of death. Yet that hadn't happened in all the years I remembered, and we wouldn't dare do it now either, as much as we may want to. Part of this was being very careful with choice of words during the eulogies.
"Pumpernickel fought valiantly, nobly and honorably, I'll try to remember that about my little brother, not that he died," I said. Many older twins teased the younger one for a few minutes' difference, I saw that with Raven and Robin sometimes. Ironically, Pumpernickel had been a bit taller than me, although I wasn't as short as Peeta or our father. Pumpernickel hadn't acted as much like Peeta or our father, but we still hated to see him gone, of course.
"Delly was the kind of positive-hearted girl this world needs more of, not less of, yet the odds weren't in her favor," her aunt Angela said. The two were buried next to each other at one end of the field, in simple pine boxes and with similarly plain wooden markers stuck into the fresh dirt. We almost always had two to lay to rest. I walked across the field to see one year with one and another year with three, yet I lacked for details. Most of the markers had become unintelligible over the decades – the ink had faded and the cuts in the wood which had once held that color were getting worn. A Lily had won before being put here, that seemed like a better potential name for my potential second daughter than most of the other fallen.
I saw someone I knew in Delly's part of the crowd. Delly's cousin Bridget was resting her face on Roadrunner Castle's shoulder, tears added to the sweat that we all seemed drenched with in this summer weather. I overheard them speaking. "Bridge, your cousin was such a sweet girl, all of us in town knew her in some way and we all liked her," Roadrunner said.
She answered with "I know you've spent a lot of time at the Cartwrights pretending to look for shoes but really looking for me. Thank you burning bright amongst these cold cinders".