Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 28
Katniss
I have known the gnawing ache of starvation. I have been bruised, burned, and beaten in arenas that were designed to destroy. I have danced on the line of death more times than I can count.
None of it compares to the pain of labor.
The small annoyances I had been feeling all week should have been my first clue, but with baby showers, propagandas, and rescue missions to worry about, I had failed to listen to the cries of warning my body had been trying to send me and instead focused on everything but myself.
As if it is executing payback on me for not heeding its warning, my body packs powerful punches to my gut—deep, wrenching, penetrable punches—and reminds me that this has always been at the top of my list of worries. It's just been the one that has been easiest to deny and avoid.
Until now, that is.
This baby's arrival is two weeks too soon, and my water breaking now has truly thrown a wrench in everyone's carefully laid plans for my pregnancy, especially my own.
Because this baby coming two weeks early means I've got two weeks less to prepare myself for it.
District Thirteen and its population that managed to remain calm, collected, and organized in the wake of a bomb threat is currently shambles as our distressed party plows down the bustling corridors leading to the hospital. Finnick steers the lopsided wheelchair in which I sit, alternating screams and obscenities to my audience and to my body, which radiates with a colossal pain that parallels to nothing I have experienced before. Haymitch and Plutarch flank either side of the wheelchair, shouting like sirens to the unsuspecting passersby who stand in our way.
"The Mockingjay is in labor! I repeat, the Mockingjay is in labor!" Plutarch bellows, half into his communicuff and half to the family of four who narrowly dodges Finnick's sloppy swerving.
Between waves of crippling hurt, I manage to roll my eyes over the fact that my child's delivery is comparable to that of a Level Five caliber bomb threat in the eyes of Plutarch Heavensbee.
"Get the hell out of our way!" Haymitch shrieks bluntly to several gaping nurses who are currently clogging the hospital entrance and are about to face the demise of Finnick's runaway wheelchair. They scatter in the nick of time, but not before receiving matching middle fingers thrown at them from Haymitch and the Mockingjay.
Prim and my mother are ready and waiting when our cavalry skids into the hospital wing. My doting sister immediately presses a cold washcloth to my burning forehead. The sensation is so alleviating that it almost causes me to reach out and kiss Prim. The stabbing abdominal pains tell me to think better of it.
"Thank you, gentlemen. We can take it from here," my mother assures the winded men who have just escorted me to what I am positive is going to be my deathbed.
Madge comes sprinting through the hospital doors seconds later.
"I got a call on my communicuff…is everything alright?" she asks breathlessly.
Haymitch guffaws obnoxiously and makes a showy display of my spewing curses at a nurse who had held her mortified gaze on me for just a moment too long.
"Yeah, everything's just peachy," he deadpans over the sounds of my shrieks.
What feels like the thousandth contraction hits me like the tidal wave at eleven o'clock in the Quell's arena. I find that I can no longer grit my teeth and quietly ride through my pain, no matter how trivial childbirth should seem to a two-time Victor of the Hunger Games. I scream out, instinctively gripping onto the closest person I can find, who happens to be Prim.
"How are you feeling, Katniss?" she asks, her tone so calming and sweet that it takes me far away from the excruciating pain that starts in my lower abdomen and stems into the very synapses of my brain. She barely flinches, despite the reddening skin on her arm beneath my constricting grasp, and keeps her wide blue eyes on me.
My answer comes in the form of an ear-splitting scream. For a moment, I imagine that my stomach is being sliced open by the Careers, Cato doing the honors while the rest of his pack cheers him on. Any ounce of pain brings me back to those horrid nightmares of the Games that plagued me with scars of every kind.
I am not in the arena, I remind myself with my eyes squeezed shut as I begin to list what I know to be the facts of the present. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. I was in the Hunger Games. I escaped. The Capitol hates me. I was in the Quarter Quell. The arena exploded. I am the Mockingjay. I am pregnant.
I am about to give birth to the child I made with Peeta Mellark. Peeta is in the Capitol. There is a rescue mission that is going to save him—
Before I can even decide if the last fact is real or if it is only fiction, another contraction takes over and steals me away from my thoughts.
"This hurts so badly," I whine, sounding more like a child than a woman who is about to give birth to one.
It's the understatement of the year.
Plutarch scurries off to inform Coin of the happenings just as another contraction wracks my body, but given the green pallor of his face, I presume his escape is more for his benefit than Coin's. As I writhe in pain, Haymitch and Finnick remain standing awkwardly, shoulder-to-shoulder in a shield-like formation before me. They are slack-jawed and frozen in fear, but it becomes apparent that they have no intentions of abandoning me any time soon. Finnick's fingers fumble over his rope, but he cannot seem to bring himself to form any knots with it. Haymitch rubs his hands over his flask, never once raising it to his lips.
I can tell that in their own odd ways, they are doing their best to be supportive, to dedicate themselves to making me comfortable before they assuage their own fears.
When it comes to coping with the Games and the Capitol, these two are professionals with a knack for understanding a Victor's mind. While we may all be Victors, only one of us will have the pleasure of experiencing childbirth. This is an endeavor I must trudge my way through alone, without their guidance and sagely advice that I usually rely so heavily upon. They therefore opt to simply stand in silent sympathy, willing their presence to be enough to bridge the gap between my suffering and their own.
"I—uh, what's she need?" Haymitch grumbles pathetically.
"What Haymitch means to ask, Mrs. Everdeen, is if there is anything we can do to help?" Finnick clarifies.
Hands plastered to the sides of my belly to keep from falling out of the wheelchair, a new level of pain hits me as I realize that Finnick is essentially asking my mother what the father of the child would be doing right now if he were here.
Mother instructs Finnick and Haymitch to grab pillows and ice chips and have them ready in the delivery room for me once I have arrived.
"What do you need me to do?" Madge asks, selflessly offering herself over to the growling beast in the chair beneath her. Wordlessly, I reach out and find the exfoliated skin of Madge's hand. She seems startled by my urgency at first, but her features soften and her tension dissipates when I groan in agony and clutch onto her harder.
"Come with us. She's going to need a hand to hold in there. Think you're up for that?" Mother asks, and Madge nods obediently while I watch my mother begin to situate herself. She has effortlessly managed to figure out what to do with all of my volunteer stand-ins, and I capture a first-hand glimpse at just how good my mother is at her job.
Never once breaking a sweat or losing her composure, my mother springs into action and barks orders at Finnick and Haymitch once again. She pulls Madge closer to me. My companion laces her delicate fingers tightly with the trembling fingers attached to my sweaty palm, and through her curtain of flaxen locks, I find solace in her small smile for a brief moment before becoming swallowed by the sea of worry again.
The thought of Peeta, now coupled with the never-ending stream of contractions, makes it nearly impossible to see straight.
Four Finnicks rush off in one direction, and four Haymitchs bolt off in the other. Three different versions of Madge whisper soothing words into my ear as dozens of Prims rush ahead of the wheelchair my mother carts me down the sterile hallway in.
I begin to fret when I cannot find Peeta among the multiples. The pain and the panic have made me delusional, causing me to believe he is going to pop out from behind a corner at any minute, like he has been here all along.
"Peeta…I need to wait for Peeta," I tell my mother choppily through strenuous breaths. I am whisked into the room I recognize as the delivery room, and the reality of my situation causes the dread to settle in. "I can't—I can't do this without him."
Prim eyes me sympathetically as she fixates over an IV tube. Madge never unclasps her hand from my own, instead giving it a light squeeze of reassurance. Haymitch and Finnick are in position with their weapons of choice: pillows and ice. Dozens of strangers, soldiers and doctors enlisted by Plutarch and Coin to ensure that I survive this delivery, I presume, stand at attention against the back wall.
As embarrassing as it is for me to be in such a desolate state in front of such a large crowd, I am too beside myself to care very much about appearances or reputations. Madge and Prim are silent angels at my side, alternating between rubbing soothing patterns into my back and pressing the washcloth to my blotchy skin.
I try to pretend that they're Peeta, but when it becomes evident that Madge and Prim are too familiar for my mind to contort, I venture a look around the room at the hordes of gray-uniformed soldiers and white-coat wearing doctors that have invaded the area for any flecks of Peeta Mellark. Not a single head of hair has enough of a sun-kissed luster, and there isn't an eye that dazzles like those pools of deep azure.
It's no use. Thinking of him doesn't bring me comfort in the way I thought it would. It only makes the pain worse.
He needs to be here.
I realize that I've been voicing nearly all of my complaints aloud when my mother comes around from behind the wheelchair and sighs, helplessly kneeling in front of her daughter on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"Honey, we can't wait…"
"No, you don't understand!" I cry as I am lifted against my will by a swarm of white coats into the hospital bed. My legs are wrestled with until they have stopped kicking and are secured in metal stirrups. "He's supposed to be back by morning, with Gale and the rescue mission!"
Suddenly understanding just how inopportune the timing of this labor is, my mother's jaw anchors and my sister gasps at the news. Madge looks like she is going to be sick. Even Haymitch and Finnick, who knew of the rescue mission, let the color drain from their faces as they think of what is concurrently going on in the Capitol while I am in labor.
"He's supposed to be here with me, with our child! The baby's not even supposed to be due for another two weeks! Can't we just hold off on having the baby until he gets back? I don't want to do this. Not without him. I can wait. I'll wait for him to have the baby," I plead, using every bargaining chip I can come up with.
As the world spins, the commotion swirling around me and swarming my senses, it feels as though no one hears a word I say.
"Doctor Everdeen, patient is going into shock," a voice that feels miles away frantically informs my mother as my hysterics possess me.
Beside me, Prim's breathing hitches. At some point during my outburst, I had been hooked up to a heart monitor. These beeps I am hearing—sharp, shrill, and growing closer together by the second— are tracking my fluctuating heart rate.
"Baby's heartbeat is spiking," another voice calls out, just as I hear the familiar swishing pulsations of my baby's heartbeat start to match up with mine.
I realize now that I am fighting with every ounce of energy I can muster up through my bouts of pain to fight off the inevitability of giving birth without Peeta. The doctors' persistant touches pin me down by my arms and shoulders. I thrash, swing my arms, and wriggle until there are too many of them holding me to break free. The stirrups that prevent my legs from closing are only making my plight ten times more difficult to properly execute.
"Don't make me do this! Please…I can't, I don't want to have this baby now!" I beg until my throat runs dry. Tears leak from my eyes in unstoppable torrents, even after my screaming has ceased.
Everything about me hurts. My ankles have ballooned to twice their size, my hips radiate with soreness, and my head is a pressurized compartment waiting to burst.
What hurts the most, however, is my heart. And it's not the labor's doing, this dull, numbing pain in my chest.
The sea of fussy doctors is quickly parted, and my mother's face appears before me. Her blue eyes, once so far away, are ever present in this moment with me as our gazes lock. Her nimble fingers work tirelessly to wipe the stream of moisture away from under my eyes. Her hands, the hands I once pushed away out of refusal to let her back in after she emotionally abandoned Prim and I, are now the hands I cling to for support.
"Mom, please, please…I have to wait for Peeta. I can't give birth on my own…" I whimper, fingernails creating small indents where they have latched onto her wrists. "I can't be a mother. I thought I could do this, I kept kidding myself into thinking I could do this, but I can't do it. I can't…I can't…I can't…"
You can't, you can't, you can't, a voice inside of me chants, tormenting me even further and trapping me inside of my dark, twisted thoughts. I shake my head violently, in hopes that I can physically remove the doubt that has raided my brain, but I can't…
You can't, you can't, you can't. You can't prevent your child's name from entering a Reaping Bowl. You can't protect this baby. You can't be a mother.
"Doctor Everdeen, baby's vitals are dropping. She either needs to calm down on her own or we'll have to sedate her…"
Mother whisks strands of sweaty hair that have fallen from my braid away from my forehead and runs her fingers through my hair, like she used to do to get me to fall asleep when I was young. She takes my face in her hands and steadies me, staring intently into my fearful soul until my breathing has once again slowed and the beeping beside me is evenly-paced.
"Calm down, Katniss. That's it, calm down. There's my girl," she whispers pacifyingly.
I take the moment of stolen bliss between my contractions to study my mother's face.
Although she is still as beautiful as the stories of her past mention her to be, my mother has undoubtedly aged along with the tragedies life has brought her. I make out familiar worry lines that crease her forehead from countless afternoons of staring out of the window, down the dirt road where I am certain she believed our father would magically appear. The faintest outline of what is the beginning of crow's feet have formed in the far corners of her eyes, and around her mouth run downward traces of lines from each time her once-brilliant smile has been weighed down with heartache.
These fault lines along her face have gone dormant in this moment, and everything about Mother's features work against the face that has been sculpted in sorrow. Her usual blank frown is upturned into a soft, sweet smile that comforts me with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for a time in which those smiles could wash away any fears of goblins under the bed or the sting of a scraped knee.
"My beautiful, strong, brave girl, it always hurts me to see you in pain and not be able to do anything about it, because goodness knows you've endured enough pain to suffice for the whole District these past few years. I wish the timing could have worked out better and that the father of this baby would be by your side. But you and I and everyone else know that if Peeta could be here, he would be, and if he were here, he would want you to be strong for him. As much as I wish I could freeze time for you so he can get here, we have to look at the facts. Your water broke, your contractions are only minutes apart, and you're already five centimeters dilated. This baby wants out now. If it's anything like its mother, I'm afraid that what we want doesn't stand a chance against what that baby in there wants."
"I'm so scared," I whisper, trying my best to remain stoic in front of my massive audience, despite the betraying rivers that flow down my cheeks and the words that contradict my faltering efforts.
My mother leans in and kisses the top of my head. It is a strange, foreign, feeling, the ghost of a past memory that would normally cause me to turn away from her. I welcome her kindness and disregard my grudges against her now, because in this trivial moment, she has become my silver parachute.
Mother flashes me a genuine smile, something I haven't seen her crack in ages. "I know you're scared, but I know that you can do this. Look at how far you've already come on your own. I know it's going to hurt, but it's nothing my Katniss can't handle. You can do this. Everyone here believes in you, no one more than the woman who went through this very same process to bring you into this world."
Before I can express my thanks—or any more worry…there's no telling what will come out of my mouth in these heated moments, really—another contraction washes over me and I fly forward, sobbing wildly into my mother's bosom from the searing agony of it all.
Upon my movement, several militant soldiers and hovering doctors advance readily toward my bed. I glower in their direction over my mother's now-soaked shoulder. This room is much too crowded, and the overbearing—not to mention unnecessary—presence of these men and women in uniform hardly helps to lighten the mood.
I am suddenly enraged. To them, it must seem like they are granting me a luxury. Yes, protecting the Mockingjay with a wall of strangers from the dangerous threat of childbirth seems like a highly productive plan. To me, the luxury would be privacy. I don't want any special accommodations or privileges that every other woman who has given birth in this room has not been granted, and I certainly don't want this useless audience watching me, scrutinizing my every move, any more than another pregnant woman would.
"Mom," I growl, hard-set determination taking the place of my former intimidation, "I want them gone. All of them. I want anyone I don't know or trust out of here."
Haymitch, looking like a lost puppy on the other side of my bed, with two lumpy pillows pressed nervously to his sides, catches wind of my demand and quickly reverts back to his fiery old self. He turns to face the conglomerate of soldiers and doctors before my mother can even untangle herself from my sobbing form and begins whacking everyone with the pillows.
"Alright, party's over! Everyone out! No need to stick around for the peep show, Mockingjay's orders," my Mentor bellows, much to my embarrassment. He and Finnick usher all but one midwife, whom my mother insists on keeping to assist her, out of the room successfully before I wave the both of them off as well.
"Are you sure, Katniss?" Finnick asks, doing a horrible job at masking the relief in his voice. His eyes bounce from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere of my body while he continues to subconsciously spoon me ice chips. He's settled into such an edgy pattern that he barely notices that I have stopped taking his ice chips and they keep falling to the ground as he feeds them to the air. "I—I, um, I mean, we don't have to go. We can stay…if you want."
I quickly shake my head.
"No, go. You've both been a great help so far, and I appreciate it, but I'm not so sure any of us want you sticking around for act two," I tell them, alluding to what is yet to come. If they can barely handle me now, I would hate to witness them enduring the actual process of me giving birth. Two of the strongest men I have ever met melt to puddles at my words. They exchange a humorous look of gratitude between themselves and then to me before they scurry to the doorway.
"We'll be in the waiting area. If any of you need us at all, you know where to find us." Finnick addresses everyone in the room. With the urgency and seriousness of his tone, Finnick speaks as if the delivery ward has transformed into an arena, and a careful strategy is being confirmed once more before the allies part ways.
Haymitch's head pops in just moments later, and the caustic smirk he wears as he strides back up to my bedside is tantalizing me as a reminder that he always gets the final word.
"Any last advice?" I ask, my strained voice and quivering frame causing the joke to fall flat.
Regardless, Haymitch catches on to the reference. He smiles, winks, and tips his untouched flask in my direction.
"Stay alive," he replies in traditional fashion before another contraction causes me to lurch forward and cry out and he bolts from the room with a speed that would be comical if I wasn't in so much damn pain.
This contraction is stronger than any of the previous ones, seizing me and causing me to crush both Madge's delicate hand and the railing beside the bed. I do just as Mother instructs, two quick breaths in through the nose, and a long exhalation out of the mouth, until the thirty dreadful seconds have passed. Sagging against the mattress, I whimper softly and send a pointed glare toward my stomach.
"You wanted out, so come out," I hiss, reprimanding my child prematurely. "Is tormenting me really the way to get my attention?"
Despite the fact that it is her daughter whom she is about to examine, my mother chuckles softly at my expense from her perch on a stool between my legs. "Let's take a look and see how things are progressing, okay?" she offers before disappearing beneath the sheet that covers my midsection.
Much to my vexation, Mother reappears to tell me that I've still got five centimeters left to be dilated before I can even begin to start pushing.
Falling back into the misshapen fortress of Haymitch's pillows, I groan.
It's going to be a long night.
Six hours' worth of breathing techniques, position shifts, and parades around the corridor have passed, and all that the efforts have granted me are three more measly centimeters.
"You're doing so well, Katniss," Prim cheers me on as she keeps up to her namesake of Little Duck and follows me incessantly around the room, washcloth readily at hand for when my waddling stops and I have to grip onto the side of the bed during a contraction.
Madge has been excused to deliver updates to the men in the waiting room and to the President as well as ice her crushed hand. My mother is tending to several other patients who need her attention more than I do, and the midwife is taking her long-awaited bathroom break.
Which leaves Prim to care for the walking balloon. It is a job that my sister is taking very seriously. Prim has barely left my side since being given the role of watchdog, and as much as I want to tell her to lighten up on the pitying looks and undying attention, I find myself selfishly relying on her vigilance to keep myself calm.
Long ago and very early on into my pregnancy, I promised myself that when the time came, I would handle childbirth like I have handled everything else in my life: persevering without complaint. No, I would never be like the women I had seen in the delivery room during my check-ups: screaming, crying, and bemoaning over the condition they got themselves into like ignorant fools.
Turns out I was the ignorant fool for thinking that I would be the golden exception to every other woman who has given birth before me, that I would be able to handle the strife of labor better than anyone else simply because I have been through what I deemed as worse by participating in the Hunger Games.
Now, I realize, that I am, by no means, immune to labor and all of its woes. While I may be the Mockingjay, it doesn't mean I've got some bionic anatomy that sets me apart from the norm when it comes to something that has caused more deaths than the Hunger Games.
At the present moment, I am not the Mockingjay. I feel like I am a Tribute again, trying to navigate the easiest, most harmless route to the finish line possible.
If there's anything I have learned from being a Tribute, it's that the route to victory is never without obstacles or without hurt.
So, I scream. I cry. I bemoan every chance I can get.
My sister doesn't seem to mind it.
"This is awful, Prim," I wail, tugging at the fraying ends of my hospital gown. "Why isn't this baby just coming out? I'm already such an awful parent…I can't even give birth."
Prim, always the natural empathizer, is immediately at my side at the detection of my distress and the return of my 'can't's . Her healing fingers trace relaxing patterns up and down my arms before she encloses me in a hug from behind, her soft hair tickling the sensitive skin between my shoulder blades.
"Don't say that, Katniss, because not a word of it is true. You're doing a great job so far, and your child knows that you're a wonderful mother," she mutters into the thin material covering my bare back. I can't help but scoff at her choice to equate me and the words 'wonderful mother' in the same sentence. She comes around to my front and places her benevolent hands against the swell of my stomach.
"In fact, I think Little Bean is just so content with the cozy home you've given him or her for nine months that Little Bean simply doesn't want to leave."
I'm about to inform Prim that even her most positive of spins cannot take away from the fact that this long haul of a labor has nothing to do with Little Bean being cozy when another excruciating contraction interrupts me.
Struggling to stay standing, I force all of my weight against the bed and hope for the lumpy mattress to absorb my pain. I let out a low groan between choppy breaths. The contractions have grown in length and intensity, and this waiting game, with its set of rules I cannot seem to figure out, has turned me into one big wobbling, whining ball of nerves and frustration. I am a wrecking ball, destroying everything and anyone that crosses my path.
Prim, standing a safe distance away from where I grip onto the bed, eyes me attentively. Between working diligently on making sure I don't barrel through any walls or deliver any blows to unsuspecting doctors by riding on my heels and distracting me from going into shock again by talking incessantly, the girl has been driven past what I know to be her usual medical duties. She is just about to reach her limit before she falls over the edge and is in much too far above her head to claw her way back out. Her training ended the moment I was wheeled into her care, and much of the responsibility for my child's birth has somehow landed on her.
"Hey, Katniss," she starts after taking note of the tension draining from my body with the end of the contraction. Her eyes are sunken with ignored exhaustion, and her tiny shoulders slump with the weary weight of the world, but never once does she lessen her devotion toward me for her own sake. "That sounded like a big one…how do you feel?"
"Like Buttercup is about to claw his way out of my ass," I fire back through gritted teeth, a little too vehemently than I had intended to direct at my loving, innocent, thirteen-year-old sister.
She's not the one who got me into this mess, and she's certainly not to blame for my pain. But Prim doesn't look the least bit offended. Rather, her small nose violently crinkles at the image and the association of her beloved pet and my behind before she shakes her head and smiles weakly.
"That doesn't give me much to work with. How about you give me a number from one to five for how much it hurts, one being the least and five being the worst. Okay?"
I want to tell her that it feels like an eleven out of five, but both of us could do without the dramatics. Considering the amount of times I have been injured, and adding my recovery processes for each injury into the equation, contractions should rank low on my list of ailments. I bite back the 'five' that burns at the tip of my tongue and settle for a much more reasonable response.
"Two," I tell her. It's a flat-out lie. Everything about me, from my pinched-up face, drenched with sweat and sneaky tears, to my knocking knees, indicates to Prim that I am deceiving her, or at least trying to.
The doctor-in-training smirks shyly, her tongue sticking out in the pocket of her cheek, as if she's about to let me in on a secret. She's not the doe-eyed little girl who blindly believed every word that came out of my mouth anymore, and we both know it. My sister has more wisdom and maturity in her pinky finger than I've got in my entire contraction-ridden body.
"It's just me in here, you know…you don't have to be so strong and brave all the time. You're allowed to be in pain. Most women give Mother a five right off the bat. Are you sure it's just a two?"
Mulling it over again after a long, stabbing contraction stalls my answer, I chomp down hard on my lower lip and give her a slightly more honest four.
Just as Prim is situating me among the mound of pillows after she insists on changing my position to help lower the number on the pain threshold, Finnick enters. I suppose he figured that it was safe enough to be in my presence after seven hours without any casualties.
"How are we doing, Mama Bear?" Finnick inquires, the teasing tone in his voice almost nauseating. He takes in the sight of me in all of my mid-labor glory and, as if he miraculously has inherited female genitalia since I have last seen him and now understands my current predicament on a qualified level, he offers his unprecedented opinion with a low whistle.
"Wow, you look…you look like hell…I mean, in a lot of pain, are we?"
I shoot him a menacing scowl and point directly at where his stylist once chose to only cover him up with a fishnet.
"Want me to jab your trident there so we can compare?"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down there, Girl on Fire. I bear gifts," the suave Victor quickly replies through a hasty chuckle, hands holding two cups in surrender, as if he fears that I may act on my threat. He places a cup that billows with steam in my sister's hands and another by my bedside table.
"Is this coffee?" Prim beams at Finnick as if he has just handed her all of the money in his bank account. Finnick flashes her that swoon-worthy trademark smile of his, and even my baby sister cannot help but blush under the heat of Finnick's well-worn stares.
"I may have pulled a few strings with Coin to keep the hardest working doctor in Thirteen caffeinated," he informs her. Prim flashes him a toothy grin before she nearly drowns in the drink.
On a strict diet of ice chips and water, I hardly think twice about the contents of my own drink as I draw it to my dry lips. The shock of a strangely sweet sensation washing over my taste buds, however, almost sends the water all over my lap.
"Finnick Odair, did you put sugar in my water?"
Finnick waggles his eyebrows impishly. "Don't act like I've ever made my sweet tooth a secret, Everdeen."
His words bring me back to our very first encounter, his scantily-clad form dangling a sugar cube in my face as he prodded me for secrets while I focused on resisting all of his temptations. I never would have guessed that I would eventually ally with the man I considered to be my biggest competition at the time, and that our alliance would only strengthen once out of enemy lines.
Despite myself, I down the rest of the sickeningly sweet water to show my gratitude for his gesture.
I hear the sound of a man clearing his throat, and when I look up, I spot the look of urgency Finnick sends me from where he stands at the foot of the bed. The beverages have been a cover up for a much greater reason to be back here. I raise my eyebrows and tilt my head in his direction, and he nods swiftly.
I know immediately that he has news concerning the rescue mission to relay to me.
Intuitive little Prim is lost in a world of coffee-related bliss and remains oblivious to the silent game Finnick and I are currently playing right in front of her. Readjusting myself in the wide expanse of the bed to be closer to her, I reach out and ruffle the sweat-slicked hair on her head.
"I'm out of water and could really use some more. Would you mind getting it for me, Little Duck?"
Prim looks wary about leaving me, and her eyes flit nervously between Finnick and I before she finally huffs and gives in, but not before she reconfigures the pillows behind me for the umpteenth time.
"You sure you'll be alright if I'm gone?" she asks. For a brief moment, light catches in her eyes, and I see a flash of the frightened child who begged me to win the Hunger Games for her. I suppose that child and her fear will never truly abandon Primrose Everdeen. I pull my sister against my chest and kiss the top of her head.
"I'll be fine, Little Duck. You deserve a break. You've been working non-stop. Finnick will take care of me. It's only a few minutes, and then you can go back to following me around," I tell her with a sweet smile. She leaves, but not before peering over her shoulder several times.
Finnick shuts and locks the door behind her.
"You don't have to be worried, you know. About having a kid, I mean," he informs me as he bravely ventures to sit beside me on the bed. "You raised a pretty amazing girl already with that sister of yours."
There's no hiding the unladylike snort that rattles me as I move to make more room for Finnick. "Thanks, but I can guarantee you that Prim did most of the growing up work on her own."
Finnick shakes his head. "No way. That girl looks at you like you're her mother and at your actual mother like she's just her ticket to owning a stethoscope."
Deflecting the conversation from the topic of motherhood, I switch to a lighter note. "How is Haymitch doing?"
"He's a mess, naturally. Nervous and shaking and lashing out at random pregnant women as if they're responsible for your pregnancy. I'm pretty sure he hasn't sat down since we ventured off to the waiting area…and I wouldn't be surprised if he starts developing sympathy pains for you out there," Finnick details with an airy chuckle.
The thought of it all is too much to handle before laughter takes over. Haymitch versus the pregnant women. Now there's a fight I would actually enjoy watching.
"But, he's surprisingly sober," Finnick adds, his laughter reaching the depths of his belly when he catches sight of my stunned expression. "He mentioned something about wanting to make a better first impression on your kid than he did on you."
My heart swells to twice its size at the implications of Finnick's words. So much like his female Victor, Haymitch Abernathy is afraid to admit just how capable he is of caring. He'll never admit it out loud, but the fact that he's not performing any drunken somersaults off of any balconies tells me just how much he is willing to give for my child.
Another contraction overrides the thought, and despite his initial squeamish reaction to watching me writhe in discomfort, Finnick's durable hand has found my own in the time I have shut my eyes and clenched my jaw, letting me cut off the circulation his calloused fingers patiently without so much as a cringe.
When the pain has yielded, I eye Finnick with weak thanks before asking him what the sudden urgency is all about.
"Beetee came by to check up on you, and he informed Haymitch and I about the rescue mission," Finnick practically whispers, the timbre of his voice so low that even the most acute technology will not be able to pick it up.
He goes on to explain, in as much detail as he can remember in the short time we have, a broken up outline of what Gale, Boggs, and the other volunteers are accomplishing while I sit here like a lump—a rather large, contracting lump—on a log and do absolutely nothing to help save Peeta. It involves knockout gas, the ventilation system, a bombing, and of course, our recent propos that have been edited and perfected in the time since my water broke.
I barely understand a word of it. Finnick tells me that he felt the same way, and that Beetee told him that the less we follow is less that the Capitol will follow as well.
"He says they should be touching down in a few hours," Finnick finalizes gravelly. "In a few hours, we'll either have gained or lost everything. It's…it's more than we could have hoped for."
Mere clockwork separates me from Peeta Mellark, separates Peeta from his child.
I run a hand over my giant bump. "In a few hours, I'm going to be a mother."
And I truly don't know which endpoint I am more terrified to have come to fruition.
A contraction rips through my body and my breath hitches in surprise. Even though I should be used to the pain at this point, the growing intensity still manages to catch me off guard. My mother demands that I barrel down into my bottom and push from her station between the stirrups.
Madge and Prim have hoisted my knees up to my chest, both taking turns telling me how brave I am and how close I am to getting to meet my child.
This is it, I realize. And it's all so frightening.
My body is following my mother's instructions long before my mind can catch up, bearing my weight into my lower backside and succumbing to the pain and pressure of what feels like being stabbed with every knife in the District kitchen for ten agonizing seconds. I let go of the breath I have been holding in, panting profusely as the women around me work like a well-oiled machine to prep me for the next contraction. Prim douses me with cold water and Madge lets me soak her shoulder with sweat and tears while my mother and the midwife tell me to repeat the process.
I push and push and push until it feels more like routine than obligation. The pain never once lets up, and I scream, curse, and cry.
To hell with being embarrassed by weakness. I want all of Panem to know how much this hurts.
The pain threshold has blown its top now. The scale teeters so far off balance that I cannot come up with a coherent number when Prim asks me to rank it again once I break down sobbing after the third push.
And yet, the slight inferno left burning inside of me, deep down in the pit of my stomach where this baby has grown, keeps me from giving up. I toss whatever energy I can scrounge into each thrust until my body has become stiff and taut, like a bow waiting for the sweet liberation of release.
"You're doing great, Katniss. I can see a head," my mother tells me after the ninth or tenth push.
"You hear that? Your baby has a head!" Prim cheers. "Keep going!"
"One more big push, and this is all over," the midwife guestimates.
The fragile seams that have just been barely holding me together start to snap at the thought of this child physically entering this world. Little Bean is no longer a mere idea or a face in my myriad of nightmares. I don't have much time before the next contraction, before more of this child is squeezed from my body. What if something goes wrong? Or what if the baby is born ill? What if I haven't been providing Little Bean with the safe haven my sister had proposed earlier and this premature birth is the result of a major complication?
What if one of us doesn't survive?
"Katniss, you can do this."
Madge's gruff voice suddenly intercedes my thoughts, as if she had been waiting for me to start listing 'what if's all along.
"I can't—"
"Yes, you can. You can do this. You have to do this. Do it for him. For Peeta."
Madge's words, coupled with the grand finale of excruciating contractions, cut me off.
Peeta's image fills my mind. I see him in his Quell uniform, bathed in moonlight and sitting on the shoreline. His lopsided smile and flushed cheeks cause that curious heat inside of me to stir. We have just finished kissing. I have just told him I needed him. I have discovered that losing him will damage me beyond repair.
He told me I was going to be a wonderful mother, and now, without even knowing it himself, he has given me the chance today to prove his theory right or wrong by granting me a child.
Our child.
Peeta stands, looking as brave as he did when I last saw him at the Lightening Tree, holds out his hand to me, and smiles yet again.
"You can do this, Katniss," he tells me. "You can bring me the child you were striving to bring me out of the arena for. To that safe place where our child can grow. Fight for it."
So, even though my body throbs with soreness and everything else inside of me wants me to stop trying, I push. I fight. I do it for Peeta and for that child of his I had conjured up in the Quell to make my cause of death a noble, worthy one.
I suck in a breath, sink deep into the mattress, and let out a roaring scream as pain cuts through me like an arrow ripping through the air.
I feel something slip from my body just moments later and immediately fall back against the mattress, finally granted with the feeling of succor.
The room is utterly silent, and for a horrific moment, I fear that something has gone wrong. My fear evaporates when a gurgling squall permeates the otherwise still air, signaling that there is new life among us.
"It's a girl," my mother announces through her tears. "Congratulations, Katniss. You have a daughter."
Mother raises the goo-covered, screaming newborn to my eye level. She's bloody, blotchy, and red from screeching at the top of her lungs, but even so, I find her breathtaking.
And she is mine.
I find that I begin to laugh through a new batch of unannounced tears, overcome entirely with my emotions as they begin running the gamut. The sheer force of it all nearly knocks me out.
I am exhausted, and I hurt all over, but after nearly twelve hours of waiting for this delivery, the finish line has been crossed. And not much else seems to matter in my disbelieving haze. Together, Little Bean and I defied any of the odds that may have been stacked against us, and we did it together. Both the child and I have survived.
I am still uncertain of what the future holds for the rescue mission that rages on as my child takes her first gulping breaths, and my doubts concerning the juggling act of Mockingjay have yet to quell themselves while her curled fists punch at the air. But despite being trained in uncertainty my whole life, I have never been more certain this single, overwhelming fact as I watch the writhing infant in my mother's hands begin to sprout with life:
I am already madly, unrelentingly, and head over heels in love with my daughter.
Mother cuts my baby's umbilical cord and Little Bean disappears for a moment, to be cleaned up and checked over by the midwife while my own body is inspected and tended to. Madge delivers a congratulatory kiss to my temple and Prim sobs silently as she observes every happening in the room with sheer awe.
Finally, after what feels like ages, the bundle of blankets containing my daughter is placed against my chest. My body catches me off guard once again as my arms instinctively mold against her tiny frame, as if my primal nature knows that I have been meant to hold something like her all my life.
"Ten fingers, ten toes all accounted for," my mother explains. "She's healthy."
"She's perfect," I breathe as I take in her scent. She smells of the traditional newborn powdery aroma that signifies just how pure and clean she is compared to the messy world around her, and it makes me grin involuntarily.
Perhaps new beginnings would be a more appropriate description of her odor.
Mother tells me that she wants to give us a moment alone to become acquainted. Prim looks like she'll have to be dragged by the toenails before she is to leave Little Bean, but a reassuring hand on the shoulder from Madge, whose eyes have also glassed over with unshed tears of her own, escorts her out of the room with my mother and the midwife.
I grin down at the perfect being cradled in my arms, and the pride I never dreamed I would be capable of having washes over me. Knowing that I helped to make this gorgeous little girl reduces me to a weeping pile of nothing. A shock of dark hair tops her round head in curly tufts, and matching eye lashes, long and ornate, brush along her chubby cheeks while she sleeps. Her rosy lips are puckered in a sleepy pout.
What causes my heart to race most is her size. She's seven pounds and nine ounces according to the midwife, but as I take in the curve of her belly and the fullness of her face, I know that she is well-nourished. For nine months, I had been able to keep her fed, and my body, although overworked and under protected, still managed to give her enough to not come into this world knowing insatiable hunger.
And she never will know that feeling, for I will never let her starve for anything. Food, knowledge, love…I'll pluck the moon from the nighttime sky if it means giving my daughter what she needs and keeps her far away from the world I was forced to grow up in.
Even if it means dragging the country through war to ensure that her name never ends up in a Reaping Bowl.
I reach out and run my shaking finger along her the creamy skin of her pal, pink cheek, careful as to not to harm this delicate-looking creature.
How could I have spent nine months being so afraid of something so small, so benign? I think of how I must look to her, massive and unkempt and spraying her with a shower of tears, and am surprised that she's not still wailing her face off at the sight of the crazy woman holding her.
My heart skips a beat for the thousandth time in five minutes as she nuzzles against me and yawns, her tiny mouth forming a small 'o'.
In this stolen moment alone, her oblivious blue orbs staring into my misty gray eyes, she manages to ease the blow of every inhibition I have had surrounding being a mother. From the moment I knew she existed to the moment I felt her stirring within me to the moment now in which I have her nestled in the crook of my arms, she has terrified me, confused me, surprised me, and somehow forced me to fall in love with her through it all.
Already, my girl is extraordinary.
She startles me when she opens her eyes and begins slowly blinking at me. Beneath the veneer of the typical newborn smoky cobalt, dazzling flecks of sapphire gaze up at me. I would know those eyes anywhere. The eyes that light up at the sight of a beautiful sunset, the eyes that nearly go crossed when they're fixated on a painting or a cake's icing, the eyes that never once left mine while making our child. These are Peeta's eyes.
Her eyes—Peeta's eyes—never leave my face. Her forehead crinkles slightly and the little furry eyebrows on her face knit together while her lips twist to allow her to let out a whimper. It's as if she absorbs my thoughts as her own, as if she senses that her father is missing.
It breaks my heart to not have Peeta here by my side. If I'm this emotional, his reaction to the birth of our daughter would have undoubtedly been amplified to an inhuman degree. In a way, I feel as though I am jipping him. He was always the one who wanted to be a father while I wanted nothing to do with children, with future Capitol targets. How unfair it seems for me to get to be the one to see our daughter take her first breaths, for me to be the first face she sees, while he may miss the mark by only a few hours.
The child in my arms squirms, as if to remind me that a part of him is still in this room with me right now.
"Hey there, little one," I whisper and pull her closer to me, my voice immediately cracking and tears instantly springing into my eyes. With my vision blurred, I swear I see my child's irises flicker with the recognition of my voice.
"I'm your…"
I stop short. There are a million ways I could introduce myself to her. With so many titles tacked to my name, it's hard to decipher which parts of me go where anymore. To District Twelve, I am a Seam brat. To the nation of Panem, I am a Tribute, a Victor, a Star-Crossed Lover, and the Girl on Fire. To the rebels, I'm the Mockingjay. To the Capitol, I am the enemy.
All of my life, I have been defined by my titles, juggling and interchanging and acquiescing until I barely believed my name was even Katniss anymore.
Up until this moment, I was too scared to give myself this particular title, for fear that I would have the final bits of my former self taken away from me with the dedication to a new role. As I gaze down at the sleepy little girl in my arms, however, I realize that this title belongs entirely to her. One harmless Little Bean relies on me to fill this job description. No one else but her.
And as daunting as that is, I know I can handle it. I can be everything this title entails and more for my daughter.
"I'm your mother," I tell my beautiful baby, making sure my voice is loud and strong enough for her to hear.
She lazily blinks at me once more, and then, as if she is satisfied with my greeting, she drifts off to sleep in my arms. Beaming down at this stunning creation, I surprise myself once again in this tumultuous evening when I realize that I am sliding much more seamlessly into this title than any of my previous names.
Because being this child's mother is the most important, powerful thing I can be. It's more than just a title. It's a promise.
A/N: And there you have it! A baby girl! I decided that I wanted to stick with District Thirteen this time around and go to the Capitol next chapter. Sorry that the update took a little longer than I had hoped, but my week was crazy and it took me forever to get this to come out the way I wanted it to (lots of Youtube clips from TV shows and movies and google searching hahaha). I'm still not entirely satisfied, because birth scenes are such a difficult thing for me to do let alone do well, but nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, because it was a monster to write!
Thanks again for all of the support through your faves/follows and reviews! Review and let me know your reactions or if you're excited to FINALLY get to this rescue mission next chapter or even if you just want to say hi! I'll read them all :) I'll do my best to get the next chapter to you ASAP! With summer winding down I really want to be able to keep my updates snappy for your sake and mine!
Thanks and till next time!
-ILoVeWicked
