Author's Note:

Hopefully the fact that this chapter is 26 pages in Word will in some small way make up for the fact that it has been an eternity since I updated! I really am planning to wrap this story up with only a few more chapters and the next one will be an interlude with Bow and Finn back in the 'present day' of the story.

I know I've said it before, but sincerely, thank you SOOO much for hanging in with this story for so long. I have gotten some really touching, heart-felt and just spectacular reviews that have pushed me to keep working on this story even when it seemed the muse had taken a near-permanent vacation so I really do thank you so much for keeping me going!

As always, reviews may or may not be read, re-read roughly 20 more times and then considered for posting on my refrigerator.

-Madam Beth

Chapter 55

All of your flaws and all of my flaws,

When they have been exhumed

We'll see that we need them to be who we are

Without them we'd be doomed

There's a hole in my soul

I can't fill it, I can't fill it

There's a hole in my soul

Can you fill it? Can you fill it?

"Flaws"- Bastille

"you don't need another human being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters in your soul but cracks to put their love into is the most calming thing in this world." Emery Allen

"Haymitch…" I growled into the receiver after picking the phone up on the fifth ring.

Pre-pregnancy I was more likely to grab it on the second or third, but that was before waddling became a part of my everyday life and by that point I was into the beginning of my 6th month.

There were still a little more than 3 full months to go.

I figured I should probably just start carrying a phone receiver around with me all day since the only two we had in the house were located in mine and Peeta's bedroom and in the study downstairs. Especially since all too often I was getting to the phone just in time to hear the dial tone as the person on the other end gave up.

The reason for my less-than-cordial greeting to my neighbor was partly due to that inability to move with the same easy dexterity I was used to, and partly because said neighbor was waking me up from the first full 2 hours of sleep I'd had since Peeta's episode had ended the night before.

It had been one of the rare occasions on which Peeta had wanted to talk about the sights, sounds and twisted memories he'd experienced during his episode and so I had sat up with him and listened. Just as I'd vowed many years before, I was determined to be there for him even if the burden of my increasingly cumbersome body made a convincing argument for why I should be in bed asleep instead.

We'd spent the night downstairs on the couch, lying at opposite ends with the pillows and comforter from our bed tucked behind and around us. Peeta had needed a change of scenery after staring at the walls of our bedroom during the days of the episode he'd just worked through, so dragging most of the bedding down to the living room where so much of our early relationship developed made the things Peeta shared with me just a little more bearable for us both.

We each had our knees bent beside the others', hands clasped just by the fingertips as he unloaded as much as his weary soul (and maybe mine as well) had been able to handle. It hadn't been pleasant but I had made a promise on the day we were married to be there for him in whatever way he needed and to the best of my ability. So he purged himself of every twisted, devastating, hijacked thought he'd had behind the door with the now chipped and faded red X hanging on the doorknob and I listened, offering what comfort I could.

Peeta had sketched some off and on over the course of the night, and I was touched by the intimacy and detail he'd put into one particular drawing of me curled up on my side on the couch with a smile on my face, hands resting tenderly against the sides of my belly as I dozed for a few minutes during a lull in conversation. The choice of subject, so different from the horrible things from his episode that he had shared with me, gave me hope that he really was completely out of the reach of this latest setback.

At some point in between my numerous bathroom breaks as the dawn drew nearer and nearer, Peeta decided he needed to go to the bakery for at least a few hours after not being there for three days. He was dressed and pulling on boots and his warm wool jacket at the door before I'd been able to return from the little bathroom under the steps with all of the reasons I'd thought of for why he should stay home instead.

"Alright, well…don't stay too long…" I mumbled and caught myself as I reached out to touch Peeta's cheek.

There was three days' worth of beard growth there and I knew from years of experience exactly how it would feel beneath my fingertips were I to give in to the overwhelming temptation I had to stroke it.

I didn't though, because it had remained an unspoken agreement between the two of us that in the hours (or days depending on the length of the episode) following his time behind the door with the red x, Peeta would be the one to initiate any physical contact.

To cover my gaffe, I let my hand fall to the lapel of his coat which I fussed with, pretending that I had just been trying to straighten it instead of reaching to touch my husband like I'd really been intending to do. I've never been a very physically affectionate woman but being touched by and touching Peeta had become as common a daily occurrence as brushing my teeth or fixing meals. I caught Peeta's strong jaw tightening slightly in response to my blunder and then, because I couldn't stand not to, I purposely left my hand to linger a moment as the body heat seeping from beneath the collar of his jacket warmed my clammy fingers.

Peeta smiled, catching my near mistake, and reached up to rest a hand on top of mine at his chest which he then pressed there so that I could feel the strong and steady beat of his heart beneath the layers of warm winter clothing.

"I won't…I'll try to be home a little after lunch." He assured me and gently lifted my hand to kiss my palm.

With a small but knowing smile, Peeta then guided my hand a little higher to help me cup his cheek and allowed me to feel that beard his trained husband's eye had known I was reaching out for before I'd stopped myself.

We stared into each other's eyes for a long moment in a ritual of reassurance nearly as old and familiar as the 'real or not real?' game. When we'd both seemed to have found what we were looking for, at least for the moment, Peeta guided my hand down his neck and chest, then over the buttons of his coat only to let go and gently reach out himself to touch my protruding belly.

I did finally chance placing my hand over top of his as he stroked my tight skin through the sweater I was wearing. Our eyes met shyly under the partial cover of lashes, reminding me of the stolen glances across the school yard of our childhood.

A sizeable roll inside my uterus drew my attention down to the swell of my belly, but a startled gasp from my husband drew it back to his face as I realized he'd felt our little girl move as well.

I smiled at the look of absolute wonder in Peeta's eyes and felt the sting of tears welling in mine as I watched Peeta's face suddenly reflecting the same expression of being completely overwhelmed as I was sure was plastered across my own face at that moment. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, leaning in to press his forehead to mine and taking a deep breath.

"Thanks, kid…I needed that." He whispered in the sweet sing-songy way he did when addressing our daughter who already held his heart in the palm of her hand before she'd even drawn a single breath of air. He left his head pressed to mine a few moments longer and gave my belly one last little stroke in response to another, lazier roll from its lively inhabitant.

Peeta chuckled and shook his head as my stomach visibly moved, amazed as always that there was an actual little human inside there who we'd soon get to meet.

"Be good while I'm at work and maybe let your Mama get a few hours sleep before I come home, huh?" he whispered and tilted his chin to kiss my lips quickly but warmly before pulling back.

I watched him head out the door and down the steps to the car and only took my eyes off the front window when I saw the taillights disappear around the bend that would take him on the short ride to town.

I wasn't happy with his decision to go into work after not sleeping the night before, but I was so exhausted myself that I just wanted to stretch out on my side with Peeta's pillow under the swell of my baby bump, and revel in the blissful experience of sleeping comfortably in my own bed…without interruption.

And blissful it had been…right up until the shrill ringing of the phone on my bedside table had rudely awakened me 2 hours into my morning nap. Any amount of patience I'd recovered in that time drained from my body as my eyes fell on the caller identification box and I saw just who was responsible for disturbing my sleep.

"…what do you…" I was looking forward to taking my frustrations with being woken up out on Haymitch when he cut me off with a surprisingly sober,

"Shut up and listen to me."

Because my most frequent interactions with sober Haymitch came on the heels of Peeta's episodes, I immediately assumed he'd relapsed at work from a lack of sleep and Calen had called Haymitch in a panic, obviously not wanting to upset the crazy, hormone seeping co-owner of the bakery he worked at.

"What's wrong…is it Peeta? Did he relapse? I can…" I was rambling like an idiot, but to be fair, I was never the one known to have a way with words or who remained calm in an emergency and pregnancy had only enhanced all of my neurosis.

Peeta and ButtercupTwo usually caught the brunt of it, but Haymitch was unlucky enough to find himself on the business end of one or two of my tirades over those first 6 months so he'd learned to tread lightly.

What scared me about his tone in this particular instance was that he wasn't treading lightly at all. He'd just told a pregnant woman to shut up without the slightest hint of fear for the consequences that might follow.

"No, he's fine…" He answered quickly and then hesitated just long enough that I knew whatever he was calling for was still bad enough that he had to choose his words carefully while relating it to me.

"Haymitch…" I warned and he sighed on the other end. I could almost picture him raking a hand through his long, unruly hair and scratching his beard in the way he did whenever something was troubling him. As was always the case with the two of us, he couldn't bullshit me for long and he knew it.

"Sad news from town, sweetheart…you better come over here…" he murmured and his tone was so tender and un-Haymitch-like that my heart immediately shot into my throat.

"I'll…I'll be right over." I managed to squeak out before beginning the herculean task of getting myself dressed (in a hurry) for the short trip next door.

The walk to town was longer than normal because of the condition I was in, but necessary for Haymitch to fill me in on as much as he knew and for me to try and control my emotions before we reached the bakery. We walked with arms linked, as much for the emotional support as to keep us both from slipping in the snow and falling even if neither of us would admit it aloud.

As we rounded the corner of the Justice Building and into the business district of the town where Mellark's Bakery stood proudly in the center, we found that everyone in town had decided to congregate in just that spot that morning. They were all likely sharing in the shock and disbelief they felt at the loss of a well-known and loved member of the community.

As we made our way down the sidewalk with less than a hundred feet to the door of the bakery, a few of the men and women huddled together in small groups turned and caught sight of us making our way quietly down the street. I watched as surprise momentarily replaced the sorrow in their eyes before they bowed their heads and stepped aside to let us pass.

I held my chin up as best I could, avoiding eye contact even as manners hardwired after so long living under a roof with Peeta's always courteous influence compelled me to nod politely at each condolence mumbled as I entered the bakery.

The tinkling of the bells over the door brought the eyes of a half dozen or so more patrons who were buzzing about in the bakery swinging toward us. Their voices lowered immediately as they continued whispering through tight, frowning lips about the sad news that had spread through like wildfire that morning.

I could have almost convinced myself that perhaps it wasn't true, until I saw my husband.

Peeta was leaning back against the display case in front of the counter, his arms folded across his aproned chest as he politely accepted a warm pat on the shoulder and the quiet sympathies of the grocer who owned the store across the square from us.

As his eyes followed the retreating form of the older gentleman towards the entrance, he noticed Haymitch and I and standing just inside the doorway. After a brief moment of shock and a slightly longer moment of obvious annoyance and concern for our having walked to town in the cold, his shoulders sagged along with his face.

The moment our eyes locked I knew it was true.

I hustled toward him without any concern for who I might have bumped into along the way, needing more than anything else to be in the arms of one of two other people outside of Sae's immediate family who felt this loss as deeply as I did.

"Peeta…" I croaked and felt my lower lip quiver as he opened his arms to me. I rushed forward, my stress level decreasing, if only minutely, once I was enveloped in the comforting arms of the only one who could ease some of the pain of the deep emotional wound that had been inflicted on my soul.

I had been able to hold myself together when Haymitch first told me back at his house and during the walk to town, but as usual, seeing Peeta and knowing just by looking into his eyes how devastated he was, disarmed me completely.

"Sae…" I gasped in a choked sob and he held me tighter, nodding so that I could feel the stubble on his chin that I'd lovingly stroked when he left for work that morning rubbing against the part in my hair.

For a moment, I let myself go back to the security of those few minutes before he had walked out the door to work and used the memory of that image to try and bring my breathing back to something resembling normal.

Coming back to myself, I focused on the sound of his beating heart under my ear, the smell of the different nuts, fruits and spices he'd used in the baked goods he made that morning. I drank the warmth radiating from his body that was partly his natural body heat, and partly what I always assumed was the heat his body absorbed from constantly standing in front of well-heated ovens into my own clammy skin and reveled in the feel of him so close and solid and real... always real.

Amidst my crying and Peeta's soothing assurances, I briefly registered the sound of Haymitch's voice as he asked with as much politeness as he was capable of, for everyone to afford us the privacy we so obviously needed to grieve the loss of our dear friend.

Chancing a peek towards the door I noticed he was also making the executive decision that the bakery would be closed for the rest of the day by flipping the open sign on the door over and locking the deadbolt behind the withdrawing crowd.

"Shh…I'm here…it's okay…" Peeta whispered soothingly and I wrapped my arms around him as best I could with my sizable belly between us. He rubbed my back a few times while I tried to hold in the violent tremors I could feel coming on as the full weight of Sae's sudden passing landed squarely on my shoulders.

I pulled back slightly to look up into his face and found the same barely restrained anguish reflected back at me in the unshed tears I'd noticed brimming in his eyes when I first entered the bakery with Haymitch.

I took a moment to consider the way he couldn't hold my gaze for more than a few seconds before his eyes bounced from one side of the room to the other, and sensed he needed as much support as I did. Perhaps a bit more since Peeta's particular form of PTSD left him with greater difficulty managing emotional extremes than mine.

I let him guide me over to sit at one of the small café tables closer to the back of the shop and reached across it to take one of his hands when he sat down on the other side. I gave it the kind of squeeze that said I recognized his pain and despite my own, I was there for him too.

Peeta flipped his hand over underneath mine and gave it a reassuring squeeze in return. He offered me a small, appreciative smile before fixing his eyes on our joined hands. Whether for a lack of the strength to look anywhere else, or to focus his energy on the tangible proof of our support for each other, I couldn't quite determine through the tangle of thoughts running through my head.

I was so caught up in focusing on trying to control my emotions that I didn't realize Haymitch had sat down with us until I felt the roughness of a weathered hand land tentatively on top of mine and Peeta's in the middle of the table.

I raised my eyes and was about to make an attempt at saying something to soothe Haymitch as well, but the lost look in his eyes stopped me.

Having forsaken the help of therapy of the kind Peeta and I received weekly from Dr. Aurelius, the only solace Haymitch would be able to find from his grief was in the dependable, emotion-dulling oblivion of his white liquor. Instead, I placed my free hand on top of the one he had resting on mine and Peeta's and rubbed my thumb over knuckles swollen with the beginning stages of arthritis.

Faced with the sudden awareness of Haymitch's own advancing years, I sighed deeply, cursing myself for forgetting, even for a moment, that none of us live forever. Not even tough-as-nails 87-year-old women who outlived almost anyone born during those first, darkest years after the Hunger Games had been established, and had survived to see them end as well.

Sae. My friend and frequent trading partner in the Hob.

She was the first person to view me as a case worth saving when I was sent back to District 12 following the war. She was also the only person who never looked at any of the three of us Hunger Games victors from 12 as anything but the people we were before our names went into the reaping ball. She may have known Haymitch and me the longest because of our regular trips to the Hob, but just like the rest of the country, she couldn't help warming instantly to Peeta.

She stopped in every day for months to feed me but never tried to force me back to life, only provided the food to keep my body going and allowed my heart and soul the time to find their own way back.

She was one of the few people who knew me well enough to understand that it was the only way I'd allow myself to be taken care of. It wasn't until that moment, my hands piled in sorrow with Peeta and Haymitch's, that I truly realized the depth of my love for this woman who had been more of a constant in my life after my father died than even my own mother.

Sae was Seam through and through. Everyone in our tiny, forgotten corner of District 12 had experienced tragedy in their lives and Greasy Sae was no different. She had lost her own husband at a young age to disease of the lungs he'd surely developed over long hours spent beneath the ground coal mining. She'd grieved his loss briefly then picked herself up and became a black market trader in the Hob to keep her own small children fed. Along with Peeta's burnt bread and the dandelion that reminded me of what food I could acquire from the land, hearing the story of Greasy Sae's will to survive and keep her children fed after her husband's death gave me the courage to believe that I could take over as head of my own family when my father died.

As Peeta released me to grab tissues and a drink of water to help calm me, I let my own sadness for the loss of such a strong and feisty, but absolutely caring person, crash upon me in a new wave of tears. Tears arriving with the realization that I was grieving the loss of a woman who had been so instrumental in shaping me into the one I had become myself.

She wasn't particularly friendly to many people in the Hob but she had certainly taken a shine to me and Gale. I wondered if perhaps she saw some of herself in me and that was why she was always so keen to make her trades with me and used every scrap of meat and bone from the animals I traded to her. I wondered if maybe, just as when she fed me each day upon my return to 12, her easy willingness to trade with me came from the same place in her heart that compelled her to quietly nurture me back to life. A place where the longing to see a place like the Seam continue to turn out strong, brave females that could make changes to the seeming hopelessness of our slave-like existence.

She was also one of the first people to see that Peeta and I were growing back together and then to give us the space we needed to allow that love to blossom into something more. One of only two witnesses to our wedding and toasting who had looked about ready to burst with maternal pride as Peeta and I fed each other the slices of bread that would cement our union in the eyes of any elder resident of District 12. One of the few people who I was looking forward to sharing the birth of my first child with.

And she was gone. 87 years on this Earth as a resident of the worst section of the poorest district in Panem and she was gone. I truly wasn't sure if my tears were being shed over the sadness at losing someone I cared so much for or joy for a long, hard life ending peacefully in a warm bed of natural causes.

I took a moment to picture her face the last time I had seen her a few days before in the bakery during a break in the snow. She was picking up her weekly supply of breakfast tea biscuits. They were bland but delicious toasted with a little butter smeared onto them. They were also one of the few things Sae's rapidly decreasing number of teeth and increasing stomach sensitivity could tolerate. She was being typically argumentative about our standing rule to never allow Sae to pay for any standing orders she had with the bakery. Knowing how proud she still was even in her advanced years, we let her pay for the occasional family birthday cake or treat to put out for visitors to her home, but we Peeta and I both steadfastly refused to let her pay for any of her weekly bakery needs including bread, and of course, the tea biscuits she had resting in the wicker basket she had hanging in the elbow of an arm almost as slender as the basket's handle.

The last 15 or so years since the war had been kinder on her appearance, but then she'd already looked well beyond her true age when I first met her in the Hob with Gale many years before.

And that was when I suddenly remembered there was still one more person who would mourn Sae's passing as deeply as the three of us sitting in the bakery.

"Gale!" I cried out with a gasp so sudden and loud that I had to apologize to Peeta who nearly dropped the glasses of water he was carrying at my outburst.

"Oh! I'm sorry Peet…" I sniffled and reached out to take the glass of water from him with shaky hands. "I just mean…I've gotta call Gale. He'll want to know about—" I was cut off as Peeta sat back down with a nod and a tight smile.

"—He does know already actually." He said with a shrug and glanced between Haymitch and myself before looking down at his own glass of water on the table as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.

Haymitch and I shared a brief look of confusion before Peeta continued.

"I called him right after I got off the phone with Haymitch earlier." He said and shrugged like it was no big deal for him to be calling the only other man in the world whose lips had once touched mine in something more than friendship.

"He'd like to know when the funeral is so he can come in for it." He explained and I had a brief flash of the last and only time Gale had been back to 12 after the war of finding Sae cooking breakfast in my kitchen and telling me that Gale had already eaten and gone off to the woods.

It had been the morning after Peeta had come out of his worst episode since we'd been back in 12. A multi-day episode sparked by his having seen Gale and I hugging at the bottom of the stairs on the morning after Peeta and I had made love for the first time.

It was certainly like Peeta to be so considerate as to call Gale whom he knew had a close relationship with Sae, but it didn't stop Haymitch and I from each casting him a startled glance at his casual mention of having done so.

"He appreciated being notified." Peeta explained with a nervous clearing of his throat at our response. Try as Peeta might to play it off as nothing, Haymitch and I both knew that it was most certainly a big deal that he had thought to reach out to Gale.

It was a big deal because he'd made that call of his own will, without any obvious second thought or concern for whether doing so might trigger an episode like the one he'd just worked his way through barely 24 hours before.

During the second or two that Peeta lowered his gaze to his hands wrapped around the water in front of him, a swift but significant look passed between Haymitch and myself. A look of unspoken appreciation for the best parts of the boy we'd both known before the Games and his hijacking that had not only survived, but by some miracle, thrived within the man who sat between us.

There aren't many things Peeta and Gale have in common, but however vast their differences of opinion on the path taken to arrive at the peace our country now enjoys, the one unwavering similarity they have always shared is their respect for me.

In a moment of youthful self-centeredness, I had once seriously considered shunning the affections of either of them for the hurt feelings I experienced after listening to a conversation they had on the eve of our march towards President Snow's mansion.

While hiding in the basement of a former Hunger Games stylist who was a rebel sympathizer, I had overhead Gale and Peeta talking about which of them I might choose when the war was over (if we'd all managed to survive it that is).

Thinking that I was asleep, they quietly discussed how it would be my place to choose which one of them I wanted to be with when the time came. Gale had declared with conviction (and Peeta had not refuted it) that I would choose whichever of the two of them I could not survive without.

At the time, I had mistakenly assumed Gale had meant romantic feelings wouldn't be a part of the equation at all and that I would opportunistically choose the boy who I felt would best provide adequate food, water and shelter for the remainder of our lives. In my seventeen-year-old mind, Gale's seemingly cold remark and Peeta's acceptance of it had burned me worse than the fire bomb that had scorched my leg in my first Games.

It wasn't until later when Gale had come to visit 12 for the first time since Peeta and I had been back and living together there that I realized he had known on that night in Tigris's cellar what he meant by survival, and it hadn't been the kind of survival defined by all of my basic needs to be met.

I'd seen it in his eyes as I stood protectively in front of the steps that led to my upstairs where Peeta was prepping the shower for us on that morning I'd opened the door and been surprised to see Gale on my front porch. I'd watched his Seam gray gaze travel over me, taking in the robe hastily pulled on to cover my nakedness. Those familiar eyes had landed finally on the blush spreading over my cheeks caused partly by Peeta's unshaven face rubbing over and over against mine during our love making, and partly by the embarrassment that came from realizing Gale would know exactly what had caused it.

I watched as he took in my tousled hair, my bright eyes and the instinctive way I was guarding the steps that led to Peeta and I could tell that he knew I'd found my sanctuary. My survival. I could see in that moment of dawning realization that Gale knew it'd had very little to do with food, water and shelter, and a great deal more to do with what had blossomed in my heart with the return of the blue-eyed boy up the stairs.

The discussion that followed left me feeling slightly ashamed for having assumed the worst of the two people in the world who had come to know me the best. Especially when in a moment of unguarded transparency, I smiled in the general direction of that blue-eyed boy which prompted Gale to admit that there'd been a time when he'd have given anything to have me smile at him that way.

It hadn't been so much the declaration of his feelings for me, but the defeat in his voice as he said them that had struck me with an almost tangible sadness for the loss of what we may have been to each other had circumstances been different.

Coming back to myself from the memory of that day at the sound of Haymitch clearing his throat and asking if we'd be alright if he left, I realized we'd been sitting silently in the bakery for quite some time.

Both mine and Peeta's water sat untouched on the table and it was obvious that Haymitch's hands were itching for something a bit stronger than anything we had to offer in our small apartment upstairs or behind the counter with the cakes and cookies.

I opened my mouth to tell him it was okay to leave only to find my voice choked in my throat once the fog of learning Gale was coming to 12 lifted with the sharp recollection of why he would be traveling here in the first place.

Peeta, always so attuned to the ebb and flow of the roiling storm cloud of emotions that I am, recognized my dilemma and swooped in to cover for me.

"Yeah, we'll be okay, thanks." Peeta said softly and calmly, more in control of his emotions than he had any business being after all he'd been through that week. "We'll call if we need anything." He assured our ever watchful, if not usually half-sober mentor. Peeta then reached out to catch Haymitch's sleeve as the older man stood abruptly from his seat, little imaginary bottles of white liquor that were quickly becoming his chief concern now that he knew the two of us were more or less alright already floating around his head.

Even as bogged down by my own despair as I was, I could see that Haymitch needed to get home to the comfort of his own emotional crutch in the same way I needed Peeta to take me upstairs where we could hold each other and mourn Sae's loss.

"Take it easy, Haymitch." Peeta said quietly as he walked him to the door and it almost sounded like a plea. I watched as Haymitch turned in the open doorway (once he'd pushed the heavy door outward with no small amount of effort) and clapped an open hand on Peeta's shoulder with a tight smile.

"Sure, sure…" he grunted and then seemed to remember that I was in the room too…well, at least physically I was present, mentally and emotionally was a whole separate issue. "Hey, Sweetheart…" Haymitch said with what I perceived to be as much focus as he could handle, which was just enough to get my attention.

When my eyes met his, I didn't need to hear the words he wanted to say next because I had heard the words that followed that gaze at least twice before that I was certain of. His eyes dropped ever so briefly to my middle where my pregnant belly prevented me from pulling my chair in any further and when it flickered back up to hold mine, I heard the words in my head just as clearly as if he'd spoken them aloud.

'Stay alive.'

I watched Haymitch's retreating back and didn't realize my hand was resting on my protruding belly until a little kick from inside echoed the sentiment of Haymitch's parting words.

The stakes in the Games I had been about to enter the last two times he'd said those words to me were extraordinarily high and he'd wanted them to help me focus amidst the ocean of pressures I was obviously drowning in.

With the help of the determined little lady in my womb kicking out the same message her 'Paw-paw' had just given me in Morse code against the callouses on my palm, he'd just reminded me of how much higher the stakes were this time.

I looked up as Peeta's voice sounded suddenly beside me, realizing I hadn't even noticed he'd locked the door again and drawn the blinds on all the windows. I smiled ironically, thinking of how his early closing of the bakery for the day so closely mirrored the way we both fully intended to shut ourselves away from the world in our apartment upstairs for at least the same amount of time.

"Huh?" I asked having completely missed what he'd said.

Peeta's eyes, still glossy with emotion narrowed into triangles of deep blue as he forced a smile and nodded toward the hand I had still resting over our daughter, safe and warm in my womb.

"I asked if you ladies were ready to head upstairs." He said raising his eyebrows and trying for a tender, spirited smile, only falling short because I knew him well enough to see through the façade.

"Well, sure…" I said in my own best 'no really, I'm fine' imitation and giving Peeta a tight-lipped smile as I placed my hand in his. I smiled for real when he twisted my rings around my finger lovingly, seeing the gesture as his contribution to reminding me of what I had worth fighting through the sadness for, along with Haymitch's unspoken command and our child's firm kick.

" I know there's a naked painting of your wife up there on the wall that you haven't seen in a while and I'll bet you're eager to make sure nothing's happened to it since you last stayed here…" I joked lightly after Peeta had helped me up from my chair and was guiding me toward the stairs.

When we reached the foot of the steps I placed my free hand on the sturdy railing. The support I needed to build the momentum my rounded and unbalanced body needed for the straight climb up a staircase was getting downright embarrassing and I wasn't even full term yet. I was just about to take the first step when resistance from the hand Peeta was holding tugged me back to my place on the first floor.

I turned to him with a quizzical look and Peeta took a small step closer to me, his eyes downcast, and his mouth opening and closing as the tears he'd so manfully been holding back raced down his cheeks with the security of knowing we were alone in the bakery. I could just see them in the dimness of the afternoon light that was seeping around the corner of the wall at the back of the bakery where the stairs to our private apartment were tucked away from the view of the general public. He'd cried in front of Haymitch before, but in that moment, knowing that he'd held it in until it was just the two of us alone told me more about how much he'd recovered from his hijacking than any claim he could have made to prove so verbally. I wondered if maybe the additional refuge provided by the shadows there in the back of the room had prompted him to let down his final defenses against the sadness he was so obviously struggling to keep at bay.

With the initiation of physical contact already having been made by Peeta, I didn't think twice about reaching up to hold his face in my hands and tilting his head back so that he was forced to make eye contact with me. Seeing no hint of danger in those blue depths I smiled sadly through the blur of my own fresh onslaught of tears and reached up to brush back the blonde curls framing his eyes with one hand.

"Sae is dead…" Peeta whispered so softly that I could just hear the mixture of heartbreaking realization and child-like hope that I would tell him that it was all just some terrible mistake and she'd be back in the bakery tomorrow, scolding us for not letting her pay for those tea biscuits she loved so much.

"Real or not real?" he finished quickly, his voice breaking on the last real in tandem with the breaking of my heart. I cleared my throat to cover the way my lip was quivering with emotion while using my thumbs to brush away the tear tracks beneath his eyes.

"Oh, baby…" I said in such uncharacteristically mothering voice that it actually startled me for a moment and Peeta's face crumbled into sorrow as he let the waves of sadness he'd been fighting off all morning crash over him.

I reached up on my tip-toes with some effort to plant a soft but loving kiss on his lips, realizing with a little shock that the expanding of my waistline wasn't the only blossoming evidence of my impending motherhood as I switched quickly into caregiver mode. I tasted the salt of his tears there and brushed my nose against his lightly, the briny wetness on my face mixing with his a symbol of solidarity in our shared grief.

"Real." I whispered back and slid the hand holding the side of Peeta's head down to wrap around the back of his neck as my other hand reached unconsciously for his free one hanging at his side and brought it up to place on my belly.

I smiled sadly when our daughter rolled against our joint hands, reminding us both that despite the loss of loved ones we would continue to face more and more as the years passed, life still went on.

"Come on." I said flipping the hands we were holding together on my belly over and squeezing his tightly to let him know I was up to taking my turn at being the strong one.

"I'd like to check on that painting myself…" I said wiping my eyes with my free hand and then taking hold of the railing to regain the momentum I'd need to propel myself up the steps.

"Oh yeah?" Peeta asked sniffling as he reached up to wipe away a few stray tears from his eyes. He started up the steps ahead of me, towing me carefully behind him as we headed for the comfort and solitude of our little apartment above the bakery.

"Yeah, it'll be the first time I've had a clear view of my lady parts in a few months." I said with a groan and blew a fly-away piece of hair out of my face irately. "I almost forget what it looks like down there." I said frowning a little and then smiled proudly when Peeta couldn't help but laugh at my attempt to brighten the mood, even if we both knew it was only for the moment.

"Hey, Katniss?" Peeta asked when we reached the top of the steps and he'd finally gotten his breath back after such an unexpected burst of laughter.

I turned so that we were facing each other just in front of the apartment door which Peeta had painted my favorite shade of green in playful thanks for my allowing him to hang the nude painting he'd done of me on our trip to the Capitol for the first anniversary of the revolution. I conceded because it was a place where only Peeta and I ever ventured or even had the keys to. Our cabin by the lake was special but we'd taken friends and family there over the years, but the apartment over the bakery was ours alone. No one had ever been inside it, partly because of my permitting Peeta to hang the painting of me there, and partly because we both not-so-guiltily valued the privacy it afforded us. Privacy that was so lacking in our early lives as Hunger Games tributes and privacy still invaded for the occasional day of remembrance or anniversary of the revolution when we allowed the citizens of Panem their yearly update on the star-crossed lovers of District 12 per an agreement made years ago. Our psychologist, Dr. Aurelius, saw the little hideaway as both practical for its convenience as a place to stay when there was a lot of work to do at the bakery, and therapeutic for its allowing us an escape when our post-traumatic stress required time away from the world to decompress.

"Yes, Peeta?" I replied, raising my brows innocently over eyes still red-rimmed from my recent crying jag as I looked up into his face. He'd just unlocked the door and was now standing close enough to me that my baby bump was nestled between us, our middles touching at one small patch of flesh which radiated warmth even through my sweater and the white t-shirt Peeta always wore for work.

"I love you." He said in a tone that was both sincere and tinged with the surprise that often laced such declarations following the episodes that so twisted his perceptions of me and our history together.

I was just as proud of the strength of mind Peeta possessed in order to work through those distorted thoughts at that moment as I was each and every time he emerged from the dark, scary and lonely world he had to navigate through in order to escape the maze of deceptions and half-truths that are the staples of his episodes.

"Real or not real?" I asked fighting the onslaught of emotions that were pulling my playfully raised eyebrows together, pinching them in a more serious display of awe and appreciation for the depth of this man's love for me all over again.

"Real." Peeta whispered seriously and leaned in quickly to kiss me long and hard, igniting a spark inside me that had been cooled for several months with the arrival of heartburn, back pain and an almost fifty-fifty split of my time being spent either eating or using the bathroom. His teeth closed around my bottom lip in a quick little nip, tugging lightly as an involuntary groan of pleasure bubbled out of him and caused a quickening of my pulse that drew the attention of the dozing child in my womb.

I smiled and stroked my belly lightly, hoping to lull the child back to sleep so that I could relish the awakening of feelings that had been seen and felt almost as long ago as the physical parts of my body that were striving for attention because of them.

"Real." I echoed back in a husky whisper, my voice choked with emotions that were a far cry from the ones I had been experiencing only a few minutes before and then reached up with both hands to hold the sides of Peeta's head and dragged his lips back down to mine.

I began to kiss him, my tongue rubbing against his, our teeth clashing with little clicks and pops as we lost ourselves in the comfort of the kind of passionate embrace that usually led to making love after several months of my being too tired or uncomfortable to attempt it.

I could feel the hesitation to take things further reflected in the stiffness of Peeta's body as I slid my hands up to grip his rigid forearms. When I moved them a little higher so that they were just beneath the sleeves of his t-shirt I smiled against his jaw during a brief lull in our kisses and whispered, "It's okay…".

I was panting embarrassingly by this point and had to hold in a chuckle when I pulled back to find Peeta looking down into my eyes like a starved man having a 16 oz. steak dangled in front of him. I reached back with one hand to turn the knob on the door and pushed it open about half way.

I had heard that grief sometimes triggered a sexual response in the people experiencing it, prompting them to seek comfort from one another in the quickest and most efficient way possible. That urge to mend each other's wounds paired with the fact that we hadn't been together in this way in nearly three months seemed to quash any additional concerns Peeta had about whether this was the right time to end that particular dry spell.

"You're sure?" he asked even as he was guiding me backwards into the main room and shutting the door behind him with one hand as the other began to knead my backside in the same way I'd watched him knead dough just below us in the bakery for the better part of two decades.

"Absolutely." I whispered, nodding eagerly as my hands landed on his slender but strong hips and I swiftly tugged his t-shirt free of his jeans and yanked it over his head.

This seemed to be all the encouragement Peeta needed for the next thing I knew, my own shirt was being pulled over my head and tossed aside on the floor where I had just thrown his.

Feeling suddenly a little shy since Peeta hadn't had a good look at my unclothed body since before my belly had really grown, I tried to step forward into his arms and get things moving along.

"No wait…let me look at you." Peeta whispered, keeping me at arm's length with his hands on my shoulders.

I squirmed slightly under the scrutiny even as I watched with curiosity Peeta's eyes taking in the changes to my body. His intense blue gaze traced every inch of my body from the waist of my maternity pants riding low beneath the place our daughter was, to my breasts resting large and heavy in a bra 2 cups larger than what I wore before becoming pregnant. I smiled, able to see his pupils dilating even in the dim light entering the windows on such an overcast winter day, and it widened when I noticed the way his cheeks pinked slightly as he dragged his eyes away from my chest with some difficulty.

Peeta smiled shyly himself when his eyes finally met mine and he could see the humor in them at having caught his response to the two parts of my body that pregnancy had inflated the most aside from my abdomen.

Our expressions grew serious again though, Peeta's with concentration and mine with wonder as he reached up and traced the curve of my jaw and chin from one side to the other, his shrewd artist's eye following the lines and angles made softer and more rounded with the extra cushioning needed to nurture the baby.

If his story about watching me walk home from school every day was true (and I had no reason to think otherwise) then Peeta had laid eyes on me nearly every single day of our lives since we were 5-years-old. And yet, the way he was looking at me in that moment above the bakery, our hearts broken over the loss of a woman who had helped us find our way back to each other after the war, was like he was seeing me for the very first time.

It had been over thirty years since that first time he'd really noticed me in music class when we were small children. Peeta still exhibited the blonde hair and blue eyes that identified him as a District 12 Town resident and I still had the dark, dark hair and gray eyes that could only mean I'd come from the Seam, but in so many ways we'd both changed a great deal with time and with age.

'and with circumstance.' I thought sadly as I watched his eyes move openly over the burn scars I most certainly hadn't had when Peeta first noticed me as a child.

Always a little self-conscious of the scars, I let my own eyes fall upon the ones that crisscrossed Peeta's torso as well before reaching out to trace my fingers over the pink scars in the same way he was stroking the new curves of my face and upper body.

Peeta was so focused on looking me over that he didn't realize I was looking at and touching him too until my fingertips brushed over a particularly ticklish spot near his armpit. He startled slightly, the action pulling him out of the trance he'd been in while exploring the changes in my pregnant body and drawing his eyes back to mine which were still fixed on the scars on his chest that I was touching.

Peeta followed my gaze and reached up to touch them too, his fingers landing a few inches from mine on his chest.

"You know," He said softly, not looking up from the long, puckered pink stripe of skin he was running his finger along. "We could have gotten rid of these once they healed up." He remarked casually.

"Still could actually, but neither of us has ever even considered it or talked about doing so." Peeta said and his eyes flickered over to my chest and neck, skipped over my arm where an especially angry mark stretched from inner elbow to my shoulder, and stopped with his brilliant blues boring into my slate grays.

Peeta, always the wordsmith of our relationship, had a certain way of talking, a sort of rhythm to his words when he was crafting a sentence into a lesson of profound importance. I'd known him well beyond long enough that I picked up on that tone immediately in the words he was speaking to me as we stood there half-dressed in front of one another.

I squirmed a little, as much from the embarrassment of what suddenly seemed like an overly ambitious attempt to drown our emotional worries in physical pleasures, as from the realization that Peeta was choosing just then to make a point.

"Yeah…" I said quietly and tilted my head slightly with a shrug, not completely sure I wanted or was ready to listen to the moral of whatever story he was weaving at the moment.

"So…" Peeta said, his voice going up a little at the end and a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he tilted his head the same way I'd done with mine, asking me with a look to humor him.

"Have you ever thought about why that is?" he asked and placed his hands on my hips, tugging me closer so that he could reach the small of my back with my belly pressed right up against his, skin to skin.

The baby was still for the moment but Peeta still looked down between us with a smile and brought one of his hands around to rub my skin stretched tight there.

I sighed and shrugged, sliding my own hands up his arms to his shoulders where I stroked the worst of the scars he'd just asked me about. Sensing (correctly) that I wasn't exactly in the mood to play pupil to his teacher persona, Peeta traced a finger playfully around my navel which hadn't yet popped outward like my mother told me it might as my pregnancy advanced.

"Well I think it might be because…" He continued that rhythmic tone even as he tiptoed his pointer and middle finger up an imaginary line from my navel to between my breasts where he toyed with the front clasp of my bra. "…there are some pains…"He stopped to sigh himself there and his hand at my chest leapt up to tilt my chin, gently forcing me to look into his eyes again. "…that we're not meant to forget." He finished and the tears that had disappeared with the surge of hormones we'd experienced outside the apartment door returned with a vengeance.

They filled my eyes so that I could hardly make out Peeta's sad smile as he moved his hand to hold my cheek which I turned my lips into and kissed the palm of lovingly. As usual, he'd made an excellent point. Not an easy one for either of us to accept, but a meaningful one.

"We'll never forget Greasy Sae, Kat." He whispered and bent over to rest his forehead to mine, his voice cracking at her name like it had earlier. "She meant too much to your life before the Games and she meant too much to mine after them." He said and I could feel him shaking his head slowly.

"She kept you alive until I came back to District 12, and then she gave us the space to grow back together and live again once I did." He continued in his own private eulogy of the small, but strong old woman who had been one of very few constants in that life we built together after the war.

"She's gone…" he said pulling back slightly to look down into my eyes again. "and yeah, it hurts…" He said and I reached up to squeeze his wrist when his voice broke yet again. "It really fucking hurts." He said and this time Peeta brought my hand to his lips and kissed the palm.

"But just like we kept these scars," he said touching his neck and jaw briefly. "to remind us that we fought hard for what we have now," Peeta said and dropped his eyes briefly to my belly still pressed to his. "We're going to keep that pain we feel when we think of Sae too because it's going to remind us of all the good that's come of her being a part of our lives." He said and I nodded slowly, sniffing back tears.

"I mean, would you trade one moment we spent with Sae over the years for even an ounce of that pain to be gone?" he asked softly and I shook my head immediately, my bottom lip quivering too hard for me to even attempt a verbal response.

As usual, Peeta was right. Losing Sae was awful, but it was only awful because we had so many great memories with her and had loved her so well.

"Me either." He said smiling down at me sadly before continuing. "So we'll go to the funeral and we'll listen to stories about her, share some of our own…" Peeta whispered and wrapped me in his arms when I began to cry harder as a rush of my own sweet memories of Sae played through my mind like a movie.

Trading with me in the Hob, scolding Darius for teasing me while I sat comfortably on the counter of her stall eating soup on New Year's, showing up to feed me every day when I'd come back to 12 a shell of the girl she'd known but never for a second giving up on me, making Peeta dance with her in the kitchen after dinner on the nights she stopped by to visit with us.

"What?" Peeta asked when he noticed me smiling through my tears and petted my hair back from my face to get a better look at me.

I wrapped my arms casually around his waist and let the smile take over my face as I looked out the windows at the sunlight spreading over the town below through a break in the late morning clouds. The motion of lifting my cheeks to smile made me aware of the tightness in my face from layers of tears drying there since Haymitch had given me the bad news earlier in the morning.

"I was just thinking about that first time Sae made you dance with her in the kitchen after dinner a few years ago." I said with a chuckle and Peeta rolled his eyes, obviously remembering that cool summer evening and by his response, the comment she'd made when Peeta had refused at first by citing her age and general physical health.

"Ohhhh…" Peeta said with a good-natured look towards the ceiling as if he had just remembered the incident and what Sae had said. "…you mean the night I told Sae she was too old and frail to keep up with me and she kindly reminded me that I had one fully functional leg to her two and that made us about even disability-wise?" He asked and smirked as a sudden chuckle burst out of me.

"Hey," I said when I'd finally recovered my voice after laughing with my head against the dip between Peeta's collarbones for several seconds. "If I remember correctly, she gave you a run for your money to that old fiddle song…" I teased and reached up to kiss Peeta as an apology for teasing him.

He kissed me back and the spark that had been lit outside the door a few minutes before was reignited, just like that. "Mmmm…she sure as shit did." Peeta mumbled against my lips through a laugh as our hands began to wander up and down each other's sides. My heartrate sped up in response to a low moan that vibrated over to my lips from Peeta's and I felt him suddenly thick and hard against my hip as his own surged forward in answer to my little gasp of excitement.

Along with the sudden awakening of other parts of my body thanks to those kisses and soft touches, the baby decided to make her presence known. I hadn't considered that she could likely feel what I was feeling, but it quickly became apparent that she could as Peeta gasped and stepped away from me when she kicked him hard where our bare stomachs touched.

"Woah!" He exclaimed, eyes widening in reaction to the powerful movement from inside my womb. I laughed again and rubbed the spot where she'd kicked.

"Already staking her claim on me and she's not even born yet." I joked and Peeta frowned, reaching out to poke a finger into my navel as if it were a portal directly connected to the little one inside.

"Hey, kid…I had her first." He teased and bit his lip as he looked down into my eyes, the mood taking a turn for the serious again, but not because of Sae this time. "You uh…you still wanna…" he murmured shyly and glanced briefly at the bed to our left. I had to smile at the nervous lilt to his voice, so much like the shy boy I'd slowly fallen in love with all those years ago.

Yes, he most certainly had had me first.

"Mmhmm…" I chirped back with what I vaguely remembered as something resembling a sexy smile and reached between my full breasts with one hands, flicking the front clasp open as Peeta's eyes returned to mine. I tried not to chuckle as he swallowed nervously and reached out to gently test their new weight, his intense concentration on them reminding me of how I'd known by his fondling of them during our first semi-physical encounter in Haymitch's shower that he'd never touched a girl's chest before.

Unlike my still moderately underdeveloped young adult breasts had been at the time of the shower, my 6-month-pregnant ones were so big and sensitive that I hissed and dropped my head back, closing my eyes against the bolts of pleasure coursing through my body at his touch. I was just a surprised as Peeta to find that the pleasure in my chest seemed to be attached directly to those areas I mentioned not having seen in some time below the low-riding waist of my maternity jeans.

"Woah!" I gasped in nearly the same tone he'd used a minute ago and my eyes flew open at the strange new intense feeling.

Peeta raised his eyebrows and nodded fervently in agreement. "I know, right?" He said with a little laugh and looked nervously down at my belly and its active inhabitant.

I could see the concern in his eyes and was glad that I had thought to ask the midwife about whether it was still safe to have sex with the baby so far developed at this stage of my pregnancy and beyond. She had assured me that it was perfectly acceptable for me to have sex up until I gave birth as long as I was comfortable with it, and that Peeta finishing inside me would actually even help to soften my cervix in preparation for labor as we got closer to delivery.

"You're sure it's okay for uh…for…her if we do this?" He asked, ears pinking in embarrassment. I gave him an abridged version of the conversation with the midwife as I unbuttoned his jeans and then started to guide him over to the bed while beginning to unbutton my own.

"And…and I won't hurt her?" He asked with such obvious concern that I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

"No, Peeta." I promised and pushed him down onto the mattress with his pants and underwear around his knees once we'd reached the bed. "But I might hurt you if you don't start having sex with me in the next 5 seconds." I threatened and Peeta dropped his head back with a full on belly laugh, obviously finding it ironic that I was questioning his readiness even as I stood looking down at the one part of his body that clearly proved otherwise.

"I believe it was only a few days ago that you told me you could be ready 'at a moment's notice.'." I quoted and Peeta pushed himself up on his elbows and smirked proudly at the body part straining eagerly towards me and then raised his eyebrows.

"And?" he asked with a challenge in his voice and looked between me and his throbbing erection with eyes heavy-lidded from a potent combination of love, and the desire to escape the emotions I was feeling about Sae's passing if only for a little while as Peeta and I lost ourselves in one another. The connection and comfort we felt while making love was better than any medicine or therapy session Dr. Aurelius could provide because it was something that was ours alone. Something we hadn't ever had with anyone else. It was something that came after Peeta's hijacking and therefore wasn't tainted by the shiny quality that came with the memories of me that had been altered by his torturers in the Capitol.

I kicked my own pants and underwear away leaving me standing naked before him, scars, belly, and all. I was still sad about Sae and I knew Peeta was too, but if there was any comfort to be gained from another person on this day that had dawned with Sae taking her last breath, I knew she'd be happiest to know that those she loved and left behind had been able to find it. As she'd certainly encouraged mine and Peeta's growing back together, blessed our marriage by standing witness to it, and having been just absolutely over the moon with happiness when we'd told her we were expecting a baby, I felt secure in the knowledge that she'd have approved of us to ending the day of her death by celebrating life.

"And…it certainly looks like you weren't exaggerating…" I said grinning as I moved to stand between his legs spread wide and welcoming where they hung over the edge of the bed. I tugged the rest of his clothes off of his feet, letting them fall to the floor with a soft thud and a jingle of the keys clipped to a belt loop on his jeans.

Peeta smiled up at me, laying back with his arms folded behind his head as I looked between my belly and his sharply angled member trying to decide how best to approach the situation.

"…Now if we can just figure out how to go about this that'd be great." I mumbled and Peeta popped back up onto his elbows with a smile almost as proud as the one he'd cast at his well-prepared manhood only moments before.

"Well, I seem to remember a pretty terrific position that we both enjoyed in the back of a tin can-shaped camper on our way to the Capitol for the first anniversary of the revolution." He said softly and took himself in hand, stroking his length and closing his eyes with a groan of pleasure.

I wondered if he was remembering as I was the feel of a bottle of wine coursing through our veins and the slight shuddering of the little camper as the icy wind howled outside. I closed my eyes and moaned myself at the memory of my back to his chest and the slick feeling of sweat between us as we writhed against each other in a cocoon of warm blankets on that tiny bed.

I was so caught up in the memory of that night and Peeta's quiet confession that it was a private fantasy of his, born of the late night bragging competitions between his older, sexually active brothers in the room they'd all shared above his family bakery when he was a boy, that I didn't realize I was fondling my own breasts and had one hand clamped between my legs as I tried to massage away the aching need that was beginning to grow there until Peeta's arms came up around me. We hadn't had sex in that particular way since before I got pregnant and remembering the first time we'd done so was having some intense effects on me.

My eyes flew open and the hand between my legs froze until it was covered by Peeta's. "Don't stop on my account, Katniss." He whispered directly into my ear. The sensation caused by his warm breath stirring the loose strands of hair there made me clamp my shoulder to my ear and something between a giggle and another pleasure-filled moan escaped my lips.

I spread my legs apart far enough for our joint hands to fit between them and I giggled for real when Peeta gasped at how ready I already was.

"On second thought…" He grunted and rested his free hand on my swollen belly, no longer seeming to care whether its tenant was aware of what we were doing or not as he used it to guide us backwards gently until his legs hit the end of the mattress. "…I've already passed the five seconds you gave me and I'd really much rather make love to you than get my ass kicked." He whispered stroking my belly for a moment longer before turning me around to face him, holding one of my hands tightly in his and giving it a little squeeze of reassurance.

It hadn't been so bad standing naked before him a minute ago but now that we were about to get down to business as it was after months without it, it suddenly felt like our first time together all over again. I'd made love to Peeta for years, but never had I been with him in a six-month-pregnant body. I cast a glance towards the painting of my bare-assed nineteen-year-old self stretched seductively across a window seat in the Capitol and considered sourly for a moment that maybe staying in the apartment for the rest of the day maybe wasn't the brightest idea. I dropped my eyes to the floor beside our feet as I felt my cheeks heating considerably and heard the sort of soft chuff of laughter from my husband he used when trying to subtly remind me that my face was an open book.

As had become a nervous habit of mine, my free hand went immediately for the pearl hanging around my throat where I toyed anxiously with it while trying to avoid Peeta's eyes.

"Hey…" He said bringing his free hand up to cup my cheek so that my eyes floated back to hold his with a shy and uneasy look. "I'm not looking at that Katniss," He said nodding his head in the direction of the painting but not actually looking towards it.

"I'm looking at this one…" he said bringing both hands to rest on my shoulders where he then began to slowly stroke his calloused but gentle baker's hands over each inch of my skin he could reach. He touched my upper arms, my elbows, the sensitive strip of super soft flesh between the bend in my elbows and my wrists where I could almost see the beating of my heart in the little network of blue veins there.

His fingertips frolicked merrily along the lush curves of my hips and waist, around to my back and then returned quickly to the front after he'd reached my shoulder blades to ghost them over breasts we'd just discovered were super sensitive to touch. Peeta smiled proudly when I hissed through my teeth and then turned me around once more so that I was leaning with my back to his front. He had only to rest his forearms against the sides of my belly in order to easily stroke and massage my breasts, making my cry of pleasure so intense that it was almost painful as I slowly began to come apart in his arms.

While I was temporarily oblivious of all sensations outside of his teasing touches racing back and forth across my chest, Peeta took the opportunity to lean in and speak into my other ear this time.

"…and I have never wanted to make love to you as badly as I do right now…" he confessed in a single, strangled breath.

My hips bucked of their own accord back into the persistent poking of his erection and I reached back to hold onto his hips in order to steady myself.

I've since learned from my therapist, Dr. Aurelius that it's a strange and fickle thing, death is. So often arriving on the wings of tears, sadness and a deep feeling of loss that sometimes never completely heals, and then departing with a need for comfort that drives us into the arms of the ones we love. We make love after someone dies to reaffirm with kisses, with touches and with the electricity of joining our bodies together, that we are not the ones who died.

The irony was not lost on me that the very act born of these comfort-seeking impulses following the death of a loved one could, and frequently did, lead to new life being brought into the world. And while I hadn't yet decided on a first name for our daughter, I silently decided right then as Peeta and I were once again brought together by the influence of that, quiet, sagacious old trader from the Hob, that her middle name would be Sae.

"Your 5 seconds is well past expired Mr. Mellark." I teased and took one more step backwards, tripping Peeta up enough where I had him pinned to the edge of the mattress that the motion forced him to sit down with a little protest from the springs beneath him.

Peeta's grip on my hips tightened as he fell and he tugged me along with him onto the bed where I landed in his lap with a light, sweaty slapping of skin on skin.

"Then I guess we should probably cut out the foreplay portion of this and get right down to business huh?" he asked bringing one hand back between my legs where he discovered I was most certainly in favor of forgoing any further attempts at foreplay.

I wouldn't tell him this, but I was still pretty tired from my nap being interrupted a few hours before by Haymitch. As much as I truly wanted to make love with him, the promise of the instantly sleepy feelings that would follow my orgasm was running a close second to wanting to reconnect physically with my husband after so much time.

So in answer to his question I simply reached behind me to grip him, stroking up and down once, increasing the pressure at both base and tip, and then smiling at his moan. With a quick glance back to see he had dropped down to leaning on his elbows with his head thrown back in pleasure, I stood with just enough room to align our hips and held his tip to my entrance before sitting slowly and sheathing him inch by inch inside of me.

"Fuck, Kat!" Peeta cried out and I felt the mattress shudder slightly as he dropped completely to his back and his hands shot out to grip my hips hard, holding me in place so that we both could revel in the feel of being together this way again.

I gasped myself at the feeling, in some ways the same as it had always been but in another, somewhat strange and more potent than it had have been before. It was a feeling of fullness I had never experienced before, and my eyes squeezed shut and my mouth fell open in a silent 'oh' of surprise at such a powerful sensation.

I moaned at the dual feeling of my daughter on one side of my womb occasionally rolling over or stretching out an arm here or a leg there, and my husband on the other side, beginning a pattern of slow but deep thrusts up into me, the head of his penis intermittently brushing my cervix.

"Oh my—Oh, Peet…that feels unbelievable…" I groaned and began to massage my breasts again, switching back and forth with one hand as the other stroked rhythmically over my belly trying to calm its active resident.

"Uh!" Peeta cried out in what I could only assume was as close to an agreement as he could manage before he sat up and his hands that had been keeping a vice-like grip on my hips moved. I assumed one was heading for my belly to help calm the baby, but I was surprised to see it continue quickly past my bump and reach under to begin tapping and rubbing my swollen clitoris.

The shock of the action paired with how exceptionally sensitive every nerve ending in my body seemed to be, sent me suddenly screaming into my orgasm as my feet curled against the floor which I was using to keep my balance. I cried out, loudly, and bounced mindlessly on Peeta's cock as my walls pulsed and shuddered around it.

Possibly sensing that I was losing my equilibrium in the midst of such a powerful release and obviously hurtling towards his own, Peeta wrapped one arm low on my torso just beneath my baby bump and the other just below my breasts on top of it.

"You are so beautiful Katniss." He grunted, punctuating each word with a spine tingling thrust that reverberated through my whole body, warming the tips of my toes, my fingers, the top of my head and causing a coiling deep inside of me that promised another violent climax was imminent.

"Oh…oh no!" I cried, shaking my head in defiance of the energy I knew it would take to carry me through another such release. I didn't know if I had it in me to keep myself upright, even with Peeta's help but his arms wrapped more tightly around me and he placed his mouth beside my ear once more.

I could hear him huffing and puffing through his nose like a rutting bull and somehow, that image of unbridled, animal sexuality was what pushed me over the edge again. I felt the warmth of Peeta's release as he stilled and held me close, both of us shuddering through the last lingering waves of our coupling.

The sound he made when he'd emptied himself completely into me was so similar to what I imagined the bull of my previous vision would make under similar circumstances that I couldn't help a soft, sleepy bubble of laughter from escaping my lips as Peeta shakily turned us over where I had collapsed on top of him with my back to his front so that we were spooning.

"Are you laughing at me, Everdeen?" he asked with an amused sigh, using my maiden name as he often did as a playful threat to our marital status whenever he felt I was teasing him.

I could barely shake my head no, but was hopeful that he had felt the side to side motion against his neck and chest where the back of my head was resting as we cuddled in the afterglow. The sun was shining brightly outside by this time, filling the apartment with the kind of blinding light that came when it reflected off of snow.

I was reminded, and I wondered if Peeta was too, of that first anniversary trip to the Capitol when we had found a glass garden room in the residence we were staying in and used the hot tub in it to practice the very same sex act we'd just rediscovered in our bakery apartment.

"Not at you so much as us." I said turning my head so that I could see the outline of his cheek and ear in my peripheral vision, holding in another little chuckle when I could see his slightly shaggy hair was curling all around the frame of his face as the sweat dried.

Sensing he needed some elaboration, I turned my head a little more so that I could see one of his eyes looking into mine, patiently waiting for explanation over the steady tick of the tiny wall clock hanging on the wall beside our bed and the equally spaced sound of our panting breaths as we recovered from the most strenuous physical activity either of us had seen in months outside of the day to day labors of working in a bakery.

"I was thinking of how we must have just looked like one of those wild animal specials they show on the television sometimes." I grinned and rolled myself over with some effort so that we were facing each other and Peeta grinned as well and started stroking my stomach again.

The mothering instinct in me that seemed to be growing stronger daily made me reach out to stroke the fingers of one hand affectionately through that tangle of blonde curls drying on top of his head and I smiled when Peeta lifted his chin slightly, instinctually moving into the reassuring placidity of my familiar touch. The action was so natural that I didn't think he even realized it and I felt a quick, but not exactly painful contraction in my uterus in response to how far we'd come since the fake romance of our first Games.

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs of sentimentality and smiled when Peeta rolled his eyes and shook his head at the image of mating animals that was probably floating through his head.

"That must have been how we looked to Effie when she walked in on us in the tub that time in the Capitol when we were giving sex from behind our sophomore try…" I said finding it impossible not to giggle at the image of Effie's face when she'd burst through the door thinking someone was burglarizing the home we were all staying together in based on the sounds she heard coming from the room.

"Ah, to be young again…" Peeta quipped and then made a small noise of surprise when what felt like the point of an elbow thumped my abdomen right against his flattened palm. "…though I guess there are some major perks to my 30's I'm really beginning to appreciate…" he whispered as if to keep from disturbing his little girl any more than we already had.

I leaned in to kiss Peeta softly and before I could lose my nerve to bring her name up again after a quick but happy rediscovery of each other's bodies, I blurted out, "I want her middle name to be Sae."

Peeta's lips, which were still brushing mine lightly, stilled for a moment during which I held my breath. I released it when I felt, more than saw, his lips curve up into a smile.

"I…I know we haven't really talked about names yet, but I didn't think you'd mind and it just seems like the right thing to do now that she'll never meet her and I…" knowing it was sometimes the only way to shut me up when I began rambling that way, Peeta tipped his chin forward and captured my lips again in a deep and loving kiss.

"I think it's perfect." He whispered back and glanced down between us as a lazy roll inside of me signaled that our daughter was trying to settle herself for a nap.

"You're sure?" I asked in a whisper that matched the tone he'd just used to answer me.

"I am. Absolutely." Peeta said with a slightly sappy, slightly sad smile and glanced across the room for a moment, caught up in his own thoughts. As quickly as whatever thought he was dwelling on came, it was gone and he grinned widely and those soft blue eyes swung back to mine.

"Now, would you kindly shut up so that my daughter can sleep?" He teased and I pinched his side in answer, chuckling softly when he squealed in response like he used to do whenever I tickled him in the early years of our relationship.

It wasn't the most comfortable position for me to sleep in at the time, but when Peeta smiled happily and reached to pull the covers up over our little family, I decided there were other kinds of comfort that were needed right now besides the one that gave me the best sleep. I could sneak out of our bed at home tonight when the initial shock and despair of Sae's passing had eased with the comfort we were seeking in each other's arms.

I fell asleep with my head on Peeta's chest and the reassuring image of my husband squaring off in the middle of our kitchen with a woman sixty-some-odd years his senior while I laughed over the sound of the fiddle music they began romping around the room to on a warm summer night. The last thought I had before I drifted off was that I hoped to one day watch him dance around the kitchen with our little girl in the very same way.

To be continued….