This is the first "Hunger Games" story I began to write. I though I had deleted it but I found it on my hard-drive the other day. I read through it and realized it's not quite as bad as I thought it was so why not post it? It's fluffier than the stuff I normally do, I don't feel like I had really found the characters yet when I wrote it and since I never planned on posting it there's stuff in here that I've re-used for other fics. All the same I hope someone will enjoy it =)
This first part is just a set-up so no flashbacks until Chapter 2.
I wake up in the middle of the night, panting, sweating, heart racing in my chest. It's another night plagued by nightmares but not the usual ones that cause me to wake up with a scream or a start, always waking him who sleeps next to me. Every so often I have nightmares of a different kind and these ones always leave me paralysed and unable to utter a sound. They are not about horrors trying to end my life or cause me physical pain. They are about feelings of guilt and of debts I can never repay. They are always about him. Peeta.
I take a few deep breaths to try and calm myself and look over at him as he snores lightly next to me. His sleep looks calm and undisrupted. My hand reaches out and gently moves a curl of his blond hair away from his brow. Images from my dream haunt me as I watch him sleep. Images that are more than just terrors that my mind cook up; they are memories. Memories of seeing him on the Capitol's broadcasts when I was in District 13. Memories of kisses in a cave and tender moments he thought were real and I thought were fake. Memories of me aiming my bow at him by the lake, ready to kill him without a moment's hesitation.
Memories that make my throat close up and my chest tighten in a mix of panic, guilt and fear. Of how I treated Peeta, from the moment his name was drawn at the reaping till the moment I let him know that I love him too. The memories make me feel ashamed of myself. He loved me all that time and right from the start he was willing to sacrifice his own life to save mine. In return I used him to survive our first Hunger Games, toyed with his emotions while I was torn between my feelings for Gale and feelings for Peeta which I couldn't decipher and I turned my back on him when he needed me in Thirteen even though I at that point knew I had feelings for him too. We were so fundamentally different in that aspect. His way of coping with the dire situations we had too often found ourselves in was to make the most of what time he had left and enjoy the company of those he loved as much as he could. Mine was to keep everyone at arm's length because the less you care about somebody the less it hurts to lose them. Deep down I knew I had feelings for Peeta when we went back into the arena but I refused to acknowledge it even to myself because I was too afraid to admit it in case I lost him. I think a part of me was afraid that if I did admit those feelings to myself I would jinx him and he would die.
I tell Peeta about a lot but I never tell him about these dreams and how they fill me with such grief and shame that I can hardly stand it. I don't tell him because I know he would never understand and he would try to explain to me why my feelings are wrong. It doesn't seem to bother him that I ignored him or turned my back on him a few times too many when times got rough. To him all that seems to matter is that I did fall in love with him in the end. What he doesn't see is that one of the major sources behind my anxiety is that I loved him long before the end yet still turned from him when the Capitol had hijacked him.
I take a deep breath to try and calm myself. My eyes find familiar sights in the bedroom and I'm comforted by their presence. The clock on the nightstand. The portrait Peeta painted of me for my twentieth birthday. The vase on the dresser which sometimes holds a primrose. The room is very familiar to me, every corner of it. I've been sleeping here for almost twelve years. When we first became a couple Peeta and I spent all our nights in my house but I eventually decided we should move to his instead. I'd rather start anew and not dwell in the rooms where too many memories haunt me. In my house I will never stop expecting to see my sister come down the stairs or stop imagining that I can hear her and our mother talking. The only thing I would miss from that house was the primrose bushes Peeta had planted for me and those could me moved to his house instead.
It took a while to convince him that I was serious. Really, though, it makes a lot more sense for us to live in this house. His kitchen was the one redesigned to fit a working baker and not just for a family to cook their meals in. Even while he slept in my house and in my bed he spent a lot of his daytime baking in his old house. His house carried no dark memories, at least not for me and if they did for him he didn't express them. My house on the other hand felt full of pain and suffering. Peeta objected to that and pointed out that we had shared a lot of wonderful times there together but in the end I never felt they could outweigh the ghosts that haunt me there. I wanted us to start fresh and build a happier future for ourselves and I felt that would be much more appropriate in Peeta's house. So he agreed and when we officially started to live together our address was that of his house, not mine.
Peeta grunts in his sleep and rolls over on his back. I curl up close to him, resting my head on his chest and draping an arm around him, staring out into space as I listen to the steady beating of his heart. I think again of our first Hunger Games and how I ran from the mutts with no goal other than reaching the Cornucopia, not even thinking about my injured companion until he cried out to me. I think again of how my immediate reaction to the rule change being revoked was to prepare to put an arrow through him. It's not just guilt that plagues me when I think back at those moments. It's a much more selfish feeling than that. It's the thought of what would have happened and where I would be if I alone had survived the 74th Hunger Games. If I had never come to love Peeta and experience everything that comes with that. Frankly I don't think I would have even survived to the end of the war if Peeta hadn't made it out. He saved my life plenty of times, both physically and emotionally.
It's a debt I can never repay. It's true that I saved him as well but in my eyes that is easily cancelled out by all the pain and horrors he was put through thanks to me. The torture at the hands of President Snow, for instance. Adding to my debt is every moment where he thought only of me and I did the same – thought of Katniss. I hate being in debt to anyone and Peeta is no exception to that rule just because he is my life companion.
It's during nights like these that the thought creeps to me and it is during this night that I make my decision once and for all. I know of only one thing I could do, one thing I could give Peeta that would begin to erase my debt to him. I can give him the child he has wanted so badly for so long. The thought has run through my mind almost every night that I've woken up with these kind of nightmares but I've never been brave enough to conquer my fears and take the leap for him. It's not that I haven't wanted to have children; I just haven't been able to get past the fears that have been with me since my own childhood and the horrors that could befall a child back then. The horrors that befell my sister, me, Peeta.
Tonight I reach the point where my fear is less strong than my desire to give to him the one thing he longs for but can't have. The one thing that would bring him enough happiness to make up for at least some of the happiness he gave to me before I could give anything back to him in return.
I decide not to say anything to him. After spending nearly fifteen years fearing the idea of pregnancy while often and eagerly engaging in the activity designed for just that purpose I suddenly find myself worried that I might not even be able to get pregnant. I've been on birth control pills for almost a decade and a half and who knows how long that stays in the body? Or if I ever was fertile to begin with? I don't want to tell Peeta that I changed my mind about having children only to then not be able to give him one. It's better he doesn't know and that it becomes a surprise.
Keeping something that significant a secret from him doesn't make me as uncomfortable as one might think. In fact I find myself even more aroused and invested in our bedroom activities than before, an achievement in and of itself, just thinking about how I might soon have something to tell him that's going to make him euphoric.
It doesn't happen at once. In fact it takes almost seven months from the night I decided to stop taking my pills. It's true that those months did include a two month period where Peeta took part in building a library and spend the better parts of his days moving timber and carrying bags of bricks, coming home so physically exhausted that we were only intimate on a few nights. Still I had begun to grow concerned until the morning I wake up with such an overwhelming nausea that I wonder if I will make it to the bathroom in time. Luckily Peeta has already been up for about half an hour to finish a large shipment of cookies that were meant to be sent to former District 9 with the 10 o'clock train. There are things I could hide from him but miserably clutching the toilet as I empty what little is in my stomach is not on the list.
A week and a half later when I have gotten the most telling sign that I'm expecting a child the previous worries about being barren wash away only to be immediately replaced by the return of terrors of old. I do not want to have children. I could not bear the thought of raising them and loving them only to have them taken from me or subjected to horrors that would plague them for the rest of their lives the way Peeta's and mine plagued ours. This was a mistake. The Hunger Games may be over for good and peace may be upon Panem but that makes little different in my mind. I have lived for too long with the fear of having to watch those I love subjected to torment and death. There is a reason I firmly decided never to have children.
Then I think of Peeta and try to calm myself as I grab a hold of the bathroom counter, holding on so tight it makes my fingers whiten. Peeta is not afraid. Peeta believes it can be okay. This is what he wants. He would make such a fantastic parent. People like him should get to carry their DNA over to a new generation. Anything else would be a waste of good genes. Centuries from now there should be people who can proudly say they are direct descendants of Peeta Mellark. I can do this. I can do this for Peeta and for myself. Looking at myself in the mirror I take a trembling breath and release my grip on the counter. I can be a mother.
I manage to calm myself enough just in time for Peeta to walk in and kiss me on the cheek. My eyes are still fixated on myself in the mirror but in the corner of my eye I can see him unbuttoning his shirt to take a shower. It is evening and he has been working in the hot bakery all day long. I don't mind him coming to bed sweaty, in fact I often make him sweaty between those sheets, yet I can't seem to encourage him to not take these showers every afternoon. He feels better after them and I know I shouldn't object. It's just that I like it when he smells and tastes of baking and the showers tend to wash all that off him.
"You didn't happen to see if there were any strawberries when you were in the woods today?" asks Peeta, bringing me out of my thoughts.
"No" I reply, leaning forward to splash my face with water. "No strawberries. Not yet."
"Pity" he replies, sitting down on the side of the tub to remove the prosthetic on his left leg. "Today I had such a craving for making the first strawberry cake of the year."
Hearing him talk about cravings unsettles me a little. I fill my mouth with cold water and let it splash around in my mouth for a moment, hoping it will calm some of the queasiness I feel almost around the clock now. Though I take my bow and quiver and head out to the woods every day I do almost no hunting. The woods are my refuge, where I go to hide my upset stomach from the man who doesn't yet know the reason why I'm feeling so sick. I had decided to wait until I was sure to tell him of my condition. Now that I'm almost positive I should tell him. I turn around to face him, grabbing a fresh hold of the cool counter behind me. He has finally gotten his prosthetic off and puts it to the side, looking up at me with a smile.
"You know what I wish we could find?" he asks.
"What?"
"Wild raspberries." He folds his pants neatly before standing up on his one leg. "When my father could get his hands on them, which was not often, he would make a custard out of them and use it in both cakes and cookies. Raspberry was my favourite but it's very rare in these parts."
I say nothing as he not-so-gracefully makes his way from the tub to the shower. It makes me nervous that he showers without the prosthetic because I worry he might need it for balance. More than fifteen years with only one natural foot have made him quite used to it though and he seems to have no trouble at all keeping balanced as he pulls the shower curtain between us to keep water from splashing everywhere. I lamely open my mouth to speak but then I hear him whistle as the shower comes on and I realize the moment is gone. And really, what had I had in mind? Telling him his biggest remaining dream was about to come true while we're in the bathroom? That's depressingly unromantic even for me.
I walk over and pick up his discarded clothes, neatly folded but in dire need of washing. I prefer any motion that allows me to lean forward. It seems to help the nausea a little bit. I take his clothes and put them in the hamper, walking out to the bedroom to get him new underwear and a pair of pyjama pants. He only sleeps with the top half of a pyjamas even during the coldest nights of winter. I prefer having direct skin to skin contact with his chest and his arms as I drift off in the night.
Once I have everything set up for him in the bathroom I go back to the bedroom and lay down on our bed, curling up in a foetal position. I hope he'll stay in the shower for a long time. Hiding my nausea from him gets exceedingly difficult each day and from the looks of it this baby has no intention of letting me off the hook with the sick stomach anytime soon.
When he does come out and come to bed I should tell him. I could curl up in his embrace and give him the news he's been wanting to hear for so many years. But when the moment actually comes fifteen minutes later and he's with me on the bed I can't bring myself to say anything. I realize I'm still worried about my ability to carry a baby for nine full months. It's a strange feeling to have that fear at the same time as I fear motherhood. I know enough from my mother to know that the first three months are the most risky and that the majority of miscarriages happen during that timeframe. I should wait. I should try and keep this a secret from Peeta until I reach the point where I can feel somewhat safe that the baby will at least survive its initial nine months inside of me.
The decision made I turn away from Peeta and pull my legs up toward my chest, wondering if I'll be able to hide the nausea from him for three more days, let alone three months. I feel him shift beside me and align his body to mine, his arm wrapping around me and his face nuzzling by my neck. I should probably start thinking about a plan B. There must be something I can tell Peeta that would explain my nausea without making him think that I'm pregnant. Something that wouldn't make him worry too much about me.
He moves his left thigh, letting it rest on mine. The feeling is still so strange after all these years. His left leg stopping right below the knee, not being complete. Tonight the feeling brings back memories of those hours in the arena when I feared I would lose him, that his wound would make him bleed to death before the mutts finished Cato off. Of the moment when my traitorous mind was thankful that he had that wound because it increased my chances of surviving him. It reminds me of why I allowed myself to get in this state in the first place and assures me that I can endure a couple of weeks or months of nausea. For him I can do just about anything.