Author's Note:
Thank you so much to everyone who has hung in there with this story for OVER A YEAR! I can't believe I have been working on it for so long (actually, that's a lie; I can totally believe it, especially since updates have been hit or miss since the summer which I apologize for HUGELY). Rest assured, I am not abandoning this story even though my free time seems to have abandoned me lately!
A big, gigantic internet hug to my beta ct522 for getting this back to me so quickly and with perfect, concise notes. She has her own family, job and stories to focus on and yet she still manages to get edits back to me lickety split! You rock, chica!
Havin' my baby
What a lovely way of sayin'
How much you love me
Havin' my baby
What a lovely way of sayin'
What you're thinkin' of me
I can see it, face is glowin'
I can see in your eyes
I'm happy you know it
"(You're) Having My Baby" –Paul Anka
Chapter 42
(PEETA'S POV)
The yearly Harvest Festival (we had come to learn from a collection of long-banned Capitol history books that it was once called Thanksgiving) fell at the end of November which was the same month I had walked downstairs to find Katniss on the phone telling Gale about our impending parenthood.
It had been in the first week of November when Katniss told Gale she was pregnant and in the days following, we had been discussing when would be best to share the happy news with our friends and neighbors in District 12. Neither Katniss nor I had any doubt that they would be discreet and respect our choice to keep the news from the general public for another month or two, and we felt it only proper that the people who had supported our business and our return to something of a normal life back in 12 deserved to be the first to hear that we were going to have a baby.
The Harvest Festival seemed like the best time to do that as it would fall around the end of Katniss's first tri-mester. We were discussing this over sandwiches at the bakery one afternoon while Katniss's mother was visiting. She said she thought it was a great idea and that the residents of 12 would be thrilled. It also made sense, she had announced, since the end of November would put us almost to the usual amount of time couples waited before sharing news of a pregnancy because if something was going to go wrong, it usually occurred within those first 3 months.
I must have looked faint when Mrs. Everdeen said this because she immediately placed a steadying hand on my arm and gave me a reassuring smile. We were standing at the counter of the bakery where she was buying several apple pies, which were one of the many treats she insisted on paying for as if she were a regular customer and not our mother and mother-in-law. I could tell it bothered Katniss that she wouldn't take things from our bakery for free, and while I assumed Katniss saw it as an insult to us trying to provide a kindness to the one remaining relative we both had, I saw a woman trying desperately to repay a debt to a daughter who she felt had already kept her fed for nothing in return for far too long.
Each year Mrs. Everdeen took home several of her favorite apple pies that I made in the bakery when she visited in the fall. On this particular occasion during her first visit to 12 since Katniss had become pregnant, she'd been motivated not only by the pie, but also to share with us that she had put in for a transfer to the teaching hospital in 12 located only about a half hour from us.
She said that she was ready to retire from the day to day stress that came with being an emergency medical professional and would instead be working on research and development of new drugs and treatments. She was also quick to add that a large part of her reason for wanting to return to her home district was to be closer to her daughter and son-in-law and the grandchild soon to come along.
Katniss had done a pretty respectable job of seeming casually pleased by her mother wanting to be nearer to us for her remaining years of life, but with my eyes so well trained to pick up the tiniest change in Katniss's moods, I could tell that she was ecstatic to have her mother returning to District 12. I suspected by the secret little smile on Mrs. Everdeen's lips and the way she cut her eyes at me when Katniss wasn't looking, that she had detected the same poorly concealed happiness in her daughter that I had.
"I'm sure everything is fine with the baby, Peeta." She said in a soothing mother's tone that I was sad to admit I'd rarely experienced in the years spent with my own mother. She was patting my arm with the hand she'd placed there to comfort me and had the other placed on one of the pie boxes sitting on the counter in front of her.
"She comes from hearty stock on both sides of her family." She'd winked and I'd felt as if a thousand pound rock had been removed from my chest while we returned to our lunch and talk of a future that seemed so bright with the anticipated arrival of our child.
It was still so strange but wonderful in those first few months of the pregnancy to have Katniss's mother, Haymitch and the midwife addressing the two of us when talking about the baby. We weren't discussing our home or our bakery or even the cabin we'd built by the lake which to that point, had been our most impressive joint endeavor. We were discussing a new little life that would be part me and part Katniss. We were imagining a child who would embody so many of our best qualities and hopefully very few of our worst. It'd been even easier to imagine that child once the midwife had confirmed what Katniss already instinctively knew—that she was a girl.
Our daughter.
Living together, repairing the shattered memories of how much I loved Katniss, and then eventually marrying her had done so much to fade the scars being hijacked had put on my soul, but it wasn't until she was having my child—my daughter, that I truly understood and accepted the depth of her love for me.
While my memories of her from before the hijacking would always be a bit cloudy, watching her waistline expand with each passing month of that first pregnancy gave me a crystal clear picture of what the love between a woman and man bringing new life into the world should look like.
I thought that the closeness and familiarity we shared while making love to be the strongest representation of our bond, but thinking of this little soul who would have both my blood and Katniss's running through her veins blew the fleeting euphoria that came from even the best orgasm out of the water.
As was often the case when trying to sort out my feelings on a particular subject, I fell into an old habit of arranging my thoughts like a recipe. I dreamed of a baker somewhere in the place we all come from before we are born combining features, like ingredients in a large mixing bowl, from both Katniss and myself to create our baby. I imagined him taking Katniss's dark-chocolate hair and olive complextion and pairing them with my stockiness (I never tired of seeing chubby little children running around 12 when half-starved little skeletons had been the norm before the rebellion) and the mischievous smile I'd inherited from my own father.
To see her body physically changing to accommodate that love just amplified my already strong feelings for her ten fold and I sometimes became overwhelmed in the best of ways from the sight of it.
Katniss had taken on tributes in two Hunger Games arenas for and with me. She'd defied the Capitol by refusing to kill me in one arena and then again by keeping me alive at the possible expense of her own life in another.
She'd allowed herself to fall in love with me, giving the Capitol the perfect Achilles' heel with which to try and keep her out of the rebel fight when they began torturing me.
She'd defied them again when instead of turning her back on me once I was returned to her so changed from the boy she knew, she had bravely taken my hand and helped lead me out of each dark moment those 15 years since the war had thrown my way.
In a demonstration of love even more moving to me than those days she held me through flashbacks were the days she did what I would have found even more difficult than being there for her had our positions been reversed…keeping away from me when the red X on the door told her that even her warm embrace wouldn't slay the dragons of the episode I was caught up in. As much as Katniss envied my ability to see the best in everyone, I was equally impressed by the seemingly endless reserves of strength she carried within an otherwise fairly slight and diminutive human frame.
Just like I had given her the chance to go on living when I threw that loaf of bread to her in the rain, with this child she was carrying that was part her and part me, Katniss was giving my family, our family the chance to go on as well.
The smallest revolutionary part of me smiled thinking how the Capitol had tried so hard to leave the people of Panem trembling in fear of the cautionary tale the names Everdeen and Mellark would bring to mind, only to have that plan backfire on them as spectacularly as the escape of their jabberjay spies in the previous revolution and war. Just as the jabberjays had slipped into the wild and mated with female mockingbirds to create the mockingjay, Katniss and I had lived despite the Capitol's best efforts to have us destroy each other to bring our own little mockingjay into the world.
Instead (and I supposed this reason to be the only grounds under which Katniss would allow any attention to be drawn to our child) our names and by default, the names of our children, would be heard for years and years and years to come and stir up only good thoughts. Thoughts of hope, perseverance, resistance to oppression, and most of all, the bravery that is needed to see that when standing up for one's beliefs and sacrificing so much to those beliefs you can still have a happy ending to your story. Hard fought and precious to those who have it, but all any of us can hope for in our lives is to enjoy peace, happiness and comfort with those we love.
If there was one thing Katniss had learned from the Games, the rebellion and the long journey back to each other we'd been on for so many, many years it was that one person could make a world of difference. It was true of the rebellion she'd unwittingly sparked with a handful of berries and it was also true of the loving care we'd shown one another as we'd painstakingly put ourselves back together again after the war.
I was thinking through all of this as Katniss and her mother chatted by the end of the counter in the bakery, her mother engaging my wife in deeper conversation about her plans to return to 12.
On top of being born into a world without the Hunger Games, it seemed with Katniss's mother coming home after so many years of being kept away by the ghosts of her husband and youngest daughter, our child would arrive with every remaining relative she had left to welcome her. She would have both of her parents, a thrilled grandmother, and an adopted Paw-paw who was still trying his damnedest to hide how excited he was.
As if summoned by my thoughts of him, Haymitch entered the bakery with an extra jingle of the bells above the door and a wobble in his step that told me he was either losing the day's battle with his alcoholism, or still recovering from the battle lost the day before.
"Ah! Mrs. E…" He bellowed jovially and his voice echoed in the empty room as he made his way to the counter where she was standing. Haymitch wrapped an arm around her shoulders casually. "So good to see you!" he said smacking a kiss on her cheek with a big grin.
By the way Mrs. Everdeen's face soured as she turned it away from his, I decided it was today's battle with the bottle that Haymitch was still fighting through. "Haymitch…" she said politely and patted his chest in a sign of affection even as she used the gesture to gently step out of his reach.
I couldn't help snickering when I moved to join them at the end of the counter and heard Haymitch being reprimanded for breaking off a piece of crust on one of the fresh pies as he was rubbing the hand he'd had swatted for doing so.
"Honestly, Haymitch…you're no better than a child sometimes…" Mrs. Everdeen was saying as I snatched a piece of a cinnamon roll from Katniss's lunch plate, popped it in my mouth and wrapped my arms around her from behind.
I earned a swat to my shoulder from Katniss and both mother and daughter shared an exasperated look at my and Haymitch's lack of manners. "He's rarely better than a child, Mom and Peeta can be just as bad." Katniss said with a playful lilt to her voice that told me a follow up diss was on its way.
"It is good training for parenting I guess though…" She finished and Haymitch smirked at her and moved around the counter to get a better look at what pastries in the display were available for his taking that morning.
"Have at them, Haymitch…most of what is in there is leftover from the morning rush so take what you want. I'll bag up the rest and send it home with Katniss in a little so you have stuff to snack on for the rest of the week." I said and ignored the frown Katniss was shooting my way at hearing that she was going to be sent home.
Unlike Mrs. Everdeen, Haymitch never felt obligated to pay for what he took from our bakery. Although we never discussed it openly, Katniss and I had a sort of unspoken agreement on the subject. Considering Haymitch had helped us survive two stints in the Games and been there through every appearance of the red X on the door since we'd been back in District 12 , he was entitled to the occasional doughnut or warm roll when he managed to pull himself together enough to get out of his house or yard and make it into town.
Hoping to distract everyone from my and Haymitch's boarish ways (as well as the argument I was sure was on its way since mentioning Katniss going home soon), I called over the glass case to him that we'd been discussing sharing the news of the baby at the Harvest Festival in a few weeks.
In typical Haymitch fashion, he hemmed and hawed, asking us if we really wanted all that attention back on us just yet. He may have been a part of the rebellion that led to the new government, but Haymitch still had to work to suppress the feelings he had about the general population. Even after all those years, he still felt the need to protect us from the prying eyes of a public who had mostly moved on from what their lives had been before the war.
That was the thing about being a Hunger Games Victor though, and what kept Haymitch from fully accepting all the good that had come since the rebellion. While everyone else had been affected more or less indirectly by the harshness of the Capitol, the three of us along with Annie, Johanna, Beetee and Enobaria had been put on display and made to celebrate our possible death sentences with the masses. It was a horrifying and in many ways, humiliating experience that was bad enough to have faced on its own. Then to top it off, we were forced to appear grateful for the Capitol's generosity when we survived and were sent home to a big house, and a bounty of food and riches, but with broken hearts and minds.
Everyone else in the country had been able to move on with their lives, but with the ever present effects of what Dr. Auerlius called our post-traumatic stress disorder, we that had been held most tightly in the firm grip of the Capitol would probably never fully recover from the horrors that were brought down upon us.
Katniss's nightmares, my episodes, and Haymitch's ever present bottle of liquor were our constant reminders of that fact. Johanna had her fear of water, Annie her fragile mind, and though they hid their scars well, I was certain Beetee and Enobaria battled their own demons in private.
I was surprised when amidst all of that weighing of pros and cons from Haymitch about whether it was a good time to let the cat out of the bag about the baby, Katniss moved out of my arms and around the counter to where Haymitch was. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder as he was leaning over feigning extreme interest in the pastries leftover from the morning rush.
Mrs. Everdeen and I shared a quick but tender smile as Haymitch stood and straightened himself out as best he could and turned towards Katniss. She raised the hand on his shoulder to cup a rough cheek peppered with gray and white whiskers he managed to keep just tidy enough to pass for presentable. Haymitch raised his perpetually tired seam-gray eyes to my wife's that were shockingly similar. A look passed between them that could only be understood by two people who had grown up in the same despicable conditions in the Seam and who shared an innate distrust of everything and everyone outside of it.
"We'll be okay, Haymitch…" Katniss said and touched her baby bump lightly with her other hand. "Promise." She whispered and winked at him with a little smile.
I was astounded by how quickly this statement put Haymitch at ease. His usual M.O. would have been to put up a good fuss and argue his side whether anyone was listening to him or not. Instead, he just gave Katniss a little nod after a quick glance at her middle and the innocent new life he'd added to the list of people he tried to stay sober enough to care about.
"Alright then," he said turning back to the display of goodies with a grunt. "Better make sure Effie, Johanna and Annie are coming in for the Harvest this year then unless you plan to tell them separately." He pointed out, knowing that our closest friends should be among the first to share in the happy news.
"We were planning to make sure they come in for the announcement but we want to tell them in private at home before the Festival." I said cleaning up the plates from lunch and wiping down the counter…just as Haymitch plopped onto a stool with a piece of crumb cake and proceeded to dirty it up again.
He nodded his approval and grunted around a mouthful of cake which I took to be as close to a 'good thinking' as he planned to reward us with.
"I'm going to give them each a call tonight when we get home from work to make sure though." Katniss said as she turned the closed for lunch sign to open on the front door. It sounded like she was following orders from a commanding officer, which I'm sure Haymitch appreciated and I gave Mrs. Everdeen another quick glance and found her biting her lip to keep from laughing. Over the years the two of us had developed a sort of shorthand similar to the one Katniss had with Haymitch and from time to time (without either of them around to hear) we talked about how often Katniss and Haymitch looked to each other for approval when making decisions.
In a lot of ways I looked to Mrs. Everdeen for the approval I'd failed to receive from my own mother, which only supported all evidence that we had created from the burnt and broken pieces of our former lives, our own little rag-tag family.
It was easy enough to convince our friends to visit for the celebration. They usually came anyway since the area of the town square in front of the bakery continued to be the host site of the Harvest Festival ever since that first year when we celebrated both the opening of the bakery and the first Harvest following the war. It seemed only fitting that we'd be celebrating yet another new beginning with our neighbors in 12 at the Festival just as we did that first year when the Mellark Bakery had been reborn.
We had invited Johanna, Jaxson, Annie, Zale and Effie just about every year since the annual Harvest Festival of the new Panem, so I was hopeful that they wouldn't find anything suspicious in being invited again this year. Zale had just visited at the beginning of the summer but I was sure he would love to come back again.
I watched Katniss bend down to pull an empty tray from the bottom of the display case, her changing body already causing her to have to move a little more slowly and to adjust her center of balance to accommodate the little person expanding her waist. I smiled, watching her quietly while Haymitch and Mrs. Everdeen exchanged pleasant conversation over crumb cake and thought of what Zale had said before he got on the train at the end of his visit in the summer. He had wondered aloud whether we might have a baby for him to play with during his next stay and then slipped through the train door out of sight.
I assumed he'd be pleased as punch when he visited again in a few weeks to find that his new playmate was on her way.
"What are you grinning at you goof?" Katniss asked as she headed back over to stand with me behind the counter on the other side of the display case from where her mom and Haymitch were still talking. I was prepping a small piping bag to add icing to the pumpkin cookies I'd left baking during lunch and made sure to fiddle with the nozzle I was placing on it extra long to make her wait.
When she leaned back against the counter and folded her arms with an impatient clearing of her throat, I shook my head and chuckled lightly before squeezing a little frosting out onto the tip of my pointer finger to get the bag started and held it up to her lips. One of my favorite things about pregnant Katniss was that there was rarely a moment in the day when she'd refuse food.
"I don't know…" I murmured bashfully as Katniss easily plucked the little dab of frosting off my finger with the tip of her tongue and raised her eyebrows, waiting for me to share the rest of my thought. "…I guess just because…a lot of things." I said with a short laugh and strode quickly into the back room where the cookies should have been just about finished cooling.
I sensed Katniss enter the room a few steps behind me and gave her a reassuring smile when I raised my eyes after icing the first cookie to find a concerned look on her face. The last thing I wanted to do was cause Katniss any kind of stress. Knowing our history in the Games and then hearing what long-term emotional issues we both still suffered from, the midwife had suggested we try to keep things as calm and stress-free as possible for the duration of the pregnancy.
"It's just starting to feel so…real all of a sudden…" I said and playfully poked her barely there belly with the tip of the finger I'd fed Katniss the frosting on and she nodded in understanding. "You're starting to show a little, your mom is moving back to 12, we're talking about sharing the news with…well, everyone…" We both laughed lightly at that but underneath the humor was the fear of the unknown.
From what Dr. Aurelius had said in our weekly phone sessions, a certain degree of fear was completely normal for two people facing first time parenthood. For two people who had been through serious emotional trauma in their pasts, it was understandable for that fear to be stronger and more persistent in sowing seeds of uncertainty. On top of the problems all new parents were worried about, we had the ever present concern about flashbacks and nightmares and red letters hanging on doors for days at a time.
How would we explain that to a child? How could our daughter ever, in her ignorance of the world her parents were born into, understand why we would sometimes smother her with overprotectiveness? Why there would be days when Daddy was home but unable to hold her or when Mommy would be present in body but maybe not so present in mind.
Even thought the things I was saying to Katniss alluded to happy days ahead, I could easily see in her eyes the same unspoken reservations that seemed to be tumbling through my head side-by-side with each joyful thought about our child since we learned she was on her way.
There was no need for either of us to mention them aloud because they were already so much a part of our lives.
"It is a little…overwhelming; I'll give you that…" She said and then smiled and snatched that first cookie I'd just frosted from the cooling rack. "I could certainly do without the 25 hours a day shoveling food into my mouth, that's for sure." Katniss groaned. I went back to frosting as the conversation continued (partly because it needed to be done and partly because when I started to feel that twitch in my muscles that signaled I was heading down a path that might lead to an episode, the soothing repetitiveness of what had been my first job in the bakery always calmed me down).
"25 hours a day?" I asked distractedly as I drizzled a pumkin shape onto the top of the next cookie using the frosting.
"Yeah," She said and even though I wasn't looking at Katniss, I knew she was biting her bottom lip. I had just looked up for an explanation when her face was suddenly right in front of mine and my heart clenched at the adorably bashful look on her face. "I may have had a dream the other night where another hour got added to the day just so that I had 60 more minutes of excuses to eat…" she said laughing softly and I shook my head and held up another cookie for her to take a bite of.
Katniss called our friends that night and thankfully, they were all planning to come to 12 at the end of the month just like always. If I'd noticed her excitement level rise when her mom said she was moving back to 12, I saw it nearly triple when she realized the time to share the news of the baby with our closest friends was just around the corner…along with a healthy dose of anxiety about the maternity wear and baby items she was certin Effie would overwhelm us with once she found out.
For years Johanna and Annie had been trying to talk Katniss into having children. They could both see from the way I was with Zale that I was obviously not the one causing the procreation hold-up, but as victors themselves, they understood why Katniss was so hesitant to add the stress of one more person to take care of when part of the time we were still working on taking care of ourselves.
Annie knew first hand how emotionally and physically draining the day to day care of a child was and Johanna had long ago deemed herself unfit to be responsible for any living thing more needy than a house plant. They both knew motherhood was pretty terrifying an idea, but they both also knew Katniss. Johanna once pointed out to Katniss that she and I had faced greater challenges in life than raising a child and that if Annie could do it on her own, then surely the two of us together could as well.
I still think though that it was Annie telling her that she could think of no greater tribute to those lost in the war than to have the children of two pairs of Hunger Games victors grow up never fearing that their names would end up on a slip of paper in a reaping ball that finally got through to her. It was the water which, along with the warmth and sunlight I'd always tried to bring to that dream of one day having children with Katniss, was able to coax the seed of desire to have a baby with me she'd long ago revealed to grow.
The busiest times in the bakery were always our calmest at home. The work gave us less time to dwell on the wounds in our heads and hearts that would always cause us pain and it also reminded us that the service we provided to our neighbors was a meaningful one. We were responsible for warm morning breakfast memories on cold winter days, cookies in school lunchpails that children waited all morning in school to bite into, and cakes that grew in size with the amount of birthday candles and loved ones to share it with that they needed to accommodate through the passing years.
We spent the remaining weeks up to the Harvest Festival planning out what would be served and how the massive cake I always baked for the occasion would be decorated that year. By the time the large tents were erected in the town square and decorations started being hung and placed all around, Katniss was no longer able to wear her usual clothing. I think a very, very small part of her wished she had told Effie already so that she would maybe had a few pairs of those loose-fitting maternity clothes already.
Luckily, it was already a chilly Fall so between bulky sweaters and the aprons she wore while working at the bakery, no one took any notice of the little bit of weight Katniss had gained since the end of the summer.
By the time our guests arrived for the Festival on the night before the main event, I knew we had planned the sharing of our good news just right because there would be very little chance that at least one of our friends or our neighbors wouldn't notice the change in Katniss. As radiant and glowing as she was to me because she was carrying my child, the ladies of 12 were an observant bunch and I suspected women's intuition would have outed us sooner rather than later.
I picked Annie, Zale, Jaxson, Johanna and of course—Effie up at the train station by myself the evening before the Harvest Festival and I could have guessed what the first words out of Zale's mouth were going to be.
His sturdy brown boots had barely hit the train platform before his eyes narrowed and he tried to look around me on either side.
"Where's Katniss?" He asked with a frown and Johanna, Annie and Effie laughed at his open, innocent affection for my wife.
"Easy there fella…" Jaxson said putting Zale in a headlock and giving him what my older brothers referred to as 'a nuggie'. "Peeta might turn a hose on you if you keep having those googly eyes for his lady…" he teased and Zale pushed his way out of Jaxson's grip and all of the adults shared a chuckle at his expense when his cheeks turned bright red in embarrassment.
"Oh don't tease the poor boy, Jaxson.." Effie chirped and patted Zale's head as the train attendants began unloading everyone's bags. "He's obviously just as enamoured with Katniss as anyone, it's not his fault." She said soothingly as if talking to a puppy which only made Zale's cheeks redden deeper.
"She's back home getting her best guy's room ready for him." I told Zale with a wink before taking Annie's and Effie's bags from them with a kiss on the cheek from each, and then shooting Johanna a warning look when she hugged me and squeezed my ass.
The smirk on her face as Jaxson shouldered their duffle bag and rolled his eyes told me scolding her wouldn't be worth the breath I'd waste to do so.
"Johanna…always a pleasure," I mumbled as we all headed for the car and piled in. I was comforted by the familiar raucus of everyone talking at once in the car as we caught up on district gossip and they all tried to get me to tell them what the cake was going to look like for this year's Festival.
I was glad to have the distraction of the next night's celebration to fill the short drive back to the house and none of them—even Annie who Katniss had told when we were first starting to try for a baby, asked anything more personal than what baked goods we were planning for the party and if the decorations were all up inside the tents.
I tried to keep the smile off of my face as we pulled up in front of the house and everyone grabbed their bags and headed up the steps. They were already talking about the wonderful smells coming from inside as Katniss was cooking an early welcome dinner for them all.
I opened the door and ushered them all in ahead of me, knowing that when they entered they'd find Katniss in a form-fitting long-sleeved tee and jeans she had no choice but to wear hanging below the bump that had forced its way out in front of her over just the past few weeks. We both wanted to see all of their faces when it hopefully dawned on them that we had invited them to visit to share more than just the Harvest Festival with us.
She was standing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen and in all of the commotion of everyone getting inside the foyer and living room, no one seemed to notice her condition as they set down their bags and rushed over to say hello to her.
Annie was the first one to make it to Katniss and I smiled to myself, knowing of anyone there, Annie would be quickest to notice the change. I wasn't disappointed when she wrapped Katniss in a strong hug only to pull back with a yelp of surprise. She looked down at the solid little mound that she'd felt between herself and Katniss, covering her mouth in surprise.
"Oh! Oh my! You're….you're pregnant!" She squealed and Effie, who was just to her left, gasped and began to hop up and down excitedly as she pulled Katniss into her arms and squeezed her. She was babbling something about gifts and clothes and sheep-skin blankets, at which I rolled my eyes at Katniss about over Effie's shoulder when I was jostled by the unexpected assault of Johanna grabbing the sides of my head and planting a big kiss on my lips.
"Way to go doughboy, I knew you'd get her to crack on the baby-making eventually!" She said patting my cheeks as I tried to wipe my mouth with the back of one hand. "I mean seriously, who could resist popping out a kid or two with someone who looks like this?" She said pinching my cheeks with a cackle before making her way over to congratulate Katniss as well.
"Sorry about that whacko, Peeta." Jaxson said with a laugh as he slapped me on the back lightly. "She's just trying to show she's happy for you," he said shaking his head and we shared a quick embrace. "We both are. Congratulations, man." He whispered and I gave him an appreciative smile when we pulled back.
"Thanks, Jax. And don't worry about it." I said and glanced over at my glowing wife who was smiling shyly as her girlfriends fired off a million questions at once and pressed their hands against her belly. "Even your woman's creepy sexual displays of affection can't put a damper on my mood these days." I assured him and looked down at Zale who was standing beside Jaxson and I with his arms crossed and a goofy smile on his face.
"Can I help you sir?" I asked over the din of all the ladies talking excitedly a few feet away.
"I guess you figured out the complicated part, huh?" Zale asked referencing our sex talk at the bakery during his last visit, after which he'd asked me why Katniss and I didn't have any kids yet if that was the main goal of this whole sex thing I'd explained to him. At the time I had told him that the answer to his question was a complicated one. It wasn't until just after Zale's visit that Katniss finally agreed to children.
"Sure did," I said and Zale rushed forward to wrap his arms around my waist in a strong hug. "And I'll tell you a little secret…" I whispered and lowered my chin to talk right into his ear. "Having you stay with us might actually have helped out with that 'complicated part' a little bit." I said and Zale's head snapped up to look at me both shocked and very pleased with himself.
"For real?" he asked and I chuckled and messed his shaggy hair, thinking for a moment how proud his father would be of the young man Zale was growing into.
"For real." I said with a wink and Zale turned and made his way through the crowd of women to stand in front of Katniss, looking suspiciously at the evidence of her pregnancy that he could now plainly see.
He looked at it for a long time while small smiles were shared amoung the adults over top of his head. When Zale finally lifted his face to look into Katniss's that wasn't much higher than his own anymore, he smiled widely. I could tell from the look on her face that Katniss too was thinking about the boy's father.
"Is it a girl or a boy?" Zale asked candidly and Katniss raised her eyebrows at me, asking a silent question of whether I was okay with her sharing that information or not. Since I could see that she was obviously okay with it, I decided to share that news myself.
"It's a girl." I grinned and everyone clapped and 'ooed' and 'awed'. Effie was already going catatonic with excitement and I could see little dresses and shoes and hair bows…oh, the hair bows…dancing in her eyes.
"Cool." Was all Zale had to say about the announcement and then he hugged Katniss tightly before pulling back a little and focusing his attention on the bump. "Hi little girl. I'm your friend Zale, and I'm gonna teach you lots of cool stuff just like your mom and dad taught me." He said and Katniss smiled and stroked a hand down the back of his head.
"They'll take really good care of you…," he said and then whispered quietly enough that we knew his words were meant only for the baby, but loud enough that we all heard them too. "…and when they need it, I'll teach you how to take care of them too." He said and I heard lumps swallowed in the throats of all the adults standing around as well as a few tears being sniffed back.
I was instantly immeasurably relieved as I realized Zale was part of the answer to my question of how Katniss and I would explain things like flashbacks and nightmares and episodes to our child. He was the only other kid in the whole country who would know what it was like to deal with having parents who lived through the Hunger Games.
If a compassionate, caring child like Zale could come from such circumstances, it gave me a lot of hope for the type of little person my and Katniss's own child would grow up to be.
Katniss took Zale's face between her hands and kissed his forehead tenderly. She then passed him off to his mother who was wiping away her own tears before wrapping her son in a proud hug.
We all stood there gathering ourselves after Zale's sweet moment, when the heavy emotions it caused were broken by a sharp meow for attention coming from the steps. Every head in the room snapped towards the sound and Zale was the first to speak.
"Wow! He got big!" He exclaimed and rushed up the steps to scoop ButtercupTwo from his perch partway up the stairs.
"Well, who's this little scamp?" Johanna asked moving to pet the kitten as Zale reached the bottom of the steps holding his new favorite District 12 playmate in his arms.
"ButtercupTwo…" Zale started to say and then looked over at Katniss and me questioningly. "Oh! Or did you come up with a different name yet?" he asked and I waved a hand in their direction as Jaxson and Annie moved to pet the cat as well.
"Nah, ButtercupTwo is still his name…we've been kind of…" I looped an arm around Katniss and touched her belly lovingly with the other. "…busy the last few months to be worrying about cat names." I chuckled and everyone joined in as we moved to the living room to sit and field all the questions we knew had to be coming.
They wanted to know how far along Katniss was, when was the due date, who had we told so far (they were touched that aside from our psychologist in the Capitol, the midwife who confirmed it and Mrs. Everdeen and Haymitch, they were the first to know).
When Johanna heard me mention that Katniss had called Gale to let him know as well, I noticed she gave Katniss a strange look that said, we're gonna talk about THAT later, but I wasn't concerned. I knew Johanna was just looking out for me since we shared the strange, sad bond of having been tortured almost side by side during our time in the Capitol's grasp.
By the time dinner was finished cooking, the smell of a meal he didn't have to put any effort into making had tempted Haymitch out of his hangover from the previous night's bottle of liquor. I heard him slinking in through the back door just as we were all settling in at the dining room table together to eat and smiled to myself thinking of how annoyed by the large gathering of friends he was going to pretend to be.
As had been the tradition over the years, I sat at one end of the table and the place at the other end was left empty with the expectation that Haymitch would be joining us. He never said anything, but I knew he appreciated the respect demonstrated in a gesture meant to highlight his importance in our lives.
When he passed from kitchen door into the dining room, Haymitch tried to draw as little attention to himself as possible while heading for his seat at the table. I cast Katniss a sly smile to which she just shook her head and rolled her eyes with that 'some things will never change' look. Neither of us said anything to him because we knew he preferred things that way sometimes and as a general rule, Haymitch was more of the 'if I want to talk to you, I'll be the first to speak' kind of guy.
So of course, it tickled Katniss and I both pink when first Effie and then the whole rest of the table consisting of our out-of-town visitors offered him a boisterous, yet warm, welcome. He seemed at first to have his prickly, porcupine quills raised and ready to fire in their direction, but I noticed his demeanor slowly soften from that of the grouchy old goat when he realized everyone was congratulating him on the news of the baby as well.
It was one thing to have our own unspoken agreement about the family unit we 3 had become over the years, but to have others just outside of that circle drawing attention to the fact left Haymitch squirming from the discomfort of experiencing strong emotions without a bottle handy to dull some of the sharper edges such feelings evoked.
I might have laughed at his obvious inability to handle the positive attention if it weren't for the tightness choking it on its way up my throat when I realized he was…proud. It was a reluctant sort of pride, but nonetheless it was there on his face, plain as day for all to see. I couldn't help looking over to Katniss again and wasn't disappointed when I found her already looking my way with the shine of unshed tears in her eyes.
I reached for her hand under the table without a word and she took it easily, holding it on top of her knee and stroking her thumb over my knuckles lovingly.
Haymitch shrugged off their well-wishes, a half-smile/half-cringe fluttering across his face as each one of them either hugged him or gave him a hearty slap on the back.
"Right…well," Haymitch huffed and moved to start filling his plate. "If she's anything like her mother I'm going to have to up my standing liquor order in the next several months." He said with a proud smile, but this time the pride was in his own wit.
Everyone laughed because they knew despite his protests, he was just as happy about Katniss and I becoming parents as they were.
Sharing the news with Haymitch, Katniss's mother and the others had been so special that we hadn't actually anticipated just how much it was going to affect our friends and neighbors in 12.
Over the years, they had always been so careful not to pry into our private lives and to make us feel comfortable as a part of the community instead of singling us out as 'the star-crossed lovers of District 12'. We knew they'd be happy for us, but I hadn't realized until the next night of the Festival just how much of an influence Katniss and I still had on the people of our country.
We had come up with (what I thought was cute, but Haymitch had mocked as overdoing it a bit) an idea to share the news with the presentation of the desserts at the end of the evening. The fresh baked cookies, cakes and frosted rolls were always the highlight of the evening and we always worked around some fall related theme so we knew no one would be suspicious of the trays being brought out covered with cloth napkins and placed on the tiered dessert table in the tent closest to our bakery.
I remembered an old saying about baby girls I had heard my father use once while playfully lamenting his lack of any female children in our home. He'd said he could have used some 'sugar and spice and everything nice' one afternoon when my middle brother and I came home from school after a particularly exhausting wrestling practice smelling like anything but 'sugar and spice'. When I asked him what that meant he told me there was an old saying that went 'sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of'.
I had rolled my eyes and pulled my ratty, sweat-soaked t-shirt off and thrown it at him where he stood fixing a rung on the stairs up to our apartment above the bakery and asked what then boys were made of.
He caught the shirt with a cringe and laughed as he threw in back in my face while I tried to dart past him for the bathroom and said, 'onion grass.' with a little wink.
For some reason, that was one of the memories that survived my torture in the Capital and I couldn't help thinking my departed father had some hand in that when it came time to decide how we were going to reveal the pregnancy to District 12.
I shared the idea with Katniss and we went to work trying our every type of delicacy we knew that had sugar or spice in its name. We finally settled on frosted ginger spice cookies, large sugar cookies, pumpkin spice cake, five spice cookies, maple sugar bars, and the large chocolate cake was frosted all over with tiny pink bows. Katniss worried that our neighbors might be upset that it wasn't fall-themed this year but I told her I suspected they might not mind considering the reason for the change.
I painted a fancy little note in caligraphy on a canvas that I placed on a small display easel just in front of the dessert table as Katniss went around removing the cloths and covers on all of our sugary and spicy desserts. The note read,
Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice-
That goes especially for daughters of bakers
As they crowded around the table waiting to dig into the piles and piles of goodies, I saw on the faces of those who I'd spent close to 2 decades looking at over a cash register or display case or a counter where I was writing out a message they wanted frosted onto a loved-ones birthday cake, a reawakening of sorts.
It was in that moment that I came face to face once more with just how hopeless our District had been before the rebellion sparked by our refusal to take each others lives in the Games. Even though we had been returned to these people, grown back together and rebuilt my family's bakery, it wasn't until they realized that two of the people most damaged by the rule of the Capital had enough hope for a future beyond their last breaths to entrust their child to its care, that the last burners of hope had been lit inside the chambers of their own hearts.
There were cheers of joy and hollers of congratulations. Most noticeable though were the gasps of surprise coming from the elders of the community. Those who remembered best what Katniss and I had been through and who had been pleased enough just to see us able to share our lives with each other. What they had never dared to hope for was that they'd see us share it with a child of our own and yet suddenly, there we were announcing that we'd be expecting a little girl in late spring.
The celebration continued on longer than usual that night with the music and dancing continuing well past the midnight hour. Somewhere around 1 a.m. I sat down in a chair around the dance floor beside Katniss with my second piece of cake. She glanced sideways at me, pulling her attention away from Johanna and Zale dancing their feet off to some lively piano music and reached over to poke a finger into my side.
"Trying to catch up to me?" She said touching her burgeoning belly with one hand and giving the little bit of pudge I'd gained myself in the last few months another poke.
I laughed and swatted her hand away with a good-natured pout and balanced the plate on one knee that I had crossed over the other so that I could wrap an arm around her shoulders.
"Hey!" I groaned and rested my cheek against the crown of her head when she leaned comfortably into my side. "See if I bake you any more of those goodies you've been pouring down your throat for months…" I whispered and then dropped the remainder of my cake with a satisfying 'squash' when Katniss's hands came up to tickle me and I wrestled her over onto my lap and scooped the plate off of the ground, angling it like I was planning to smoosh it into her face.
"Hey, hey!" Haymitch called from his place leaning against a piano Jaxson was banging away at. We were all excited to learn that Jaxson was secretly a very talented musician and had been asking him on and off all night to play things on the piano that had been wheeled down from the town saloon.
Johanna had managed to get enough alcohol into him that he finally acquiesced to our requests around 11 and had been going strong ever since.
By this point, it was only our little gaggle of immediate friends and family remaining, including Katniss's mother who was staying the night at our home as well.
"Hey, what?" I called across the dance floor back at Haymitch. "She's calling me fat!" I chuckled, still holding the squashed remains of the cake over Katniss's head threateningly as she laughed and struggled to get out of my grip.
Annie, Johanna, Jaxson and Zale laughed as well and Katniss's mother scolded her for teasing me.
"Wow, sweetheart!" Haymitch guffawed and slapped the top of the piano with his hand not holding a tumbler of booze. "I was going to defend you but now….isn't that sort of like the pot calling the kettle fat?" he asked with a big grin and everyone stifled snorts of laughter.
Katniss grabbed the cake plate out of my hand and with the kind of precise aim that can only have come from years of hunting, winged it about 10 feet across the dance floor where it glanced off of Haymitch's shoulder and left a big smear of cake.
"Oh ho, ho!" He said setting down his alcohol and grabbing a half-eaten slice of cake off of the top of the piano in his bare hands.
"Hey old man! That's my cake!" Jaxson bellowed even as he continued pounding away at the piano keys and Haymitch gave me the kind of smile that a man shares with another man he's hoping will be an accomplice in his next premeditated crime.
"No, no, no!" Katniss squealed when she felt me tighten my arms around her waist to keep her from escaping Haymitch's frosted assault but she was too late. Haymitch spread the whole handful of chocolate frosting and bits of cake all over her face and into her hair before her little knight in shining armor, Zale, could bring his own handful of cake down on top of Haymitch's head.
"Hey! What'd I do to you!?" Haymitch said putting Zale in a headlock playfully and wiping what little frosting remained on his fingers across the boy's face.
"You're picking on his gal is what you did, old man!" Johanna cackled and I saw her grabbing for her own frosted ammunition and rushing over to join us.
I let go of Katniss and we both hopped to our feet in time for Johanna to reach us and Katniss teamed up with her to grab ahold of me for my own trial by cake. I groaned at the feel of the slippery frosting being spread onto the back of my neck and behind my ears as I tried to pull away from their grasp as the sound of laughs and screeches reached my ears and told me our group was involved in a full-fledged food fight.
Pushing chocolate frosted blonde bangs out of my eyes, I found I was right and that only Katniss's mother had avoided being dragged into the battle. She was standing off to the side, her arms crossed and shaking her head but smiling all the same at the rare moment of uninhibited joy in the lives of a group of people who had spent much of their pasts in mental, physical and emotional pain.
As we chased each other around the tent laughing and screeching I noticed lights in a few of the houses around the town square popping on to see what all the racket was about. I couldn't say I blamed them since not only were we making a mess, we were also making a hell of a lot of noise. To the eternal credit of our neighbors, not one of them stuck their head out to complain or to tell us to keep it down.
I couldn't be sure through the blurr of confectioner sugar, butter, cocoa and milk that made up the frosting I'd used on the cake, but I thought I might have even seen some smiles on those faces peeking around curtains on that chilly fall night.
