Chapter 35: Beetee Latier

I watch from behind the desk in my office as Belle Everdeen hangs up the holophone. She looks pale and haggard, and immensely broken. Turning to me, there are tears in her deep, blue eyes and she smiles at me wetly.

"She's never going to forgive me, is she?"

"For what?" I ask, wheeling forward in my wheelchair and taking her hand gently.

"For abandoning her. I've done it twice now. I did it when the girls were little, and I'm doing it again now." I open my mouth to protest, but Belle just shakes her head pursing her mouth in a thin, white line. "I know that you want to defend me: don't. There's nothing to deny or defend."

We stay there in silence for a moment, holding hands and propped up by the other's company. On a mounted TV behind us, CGN is playing on mute, running continuous coverage of the surviving Victors' vote to hold a 76th Hunger Games after all. Even the fault lines in the tally – who voted how – were somehow revealed. I've never had much patience for Plutarch Heavensbee, but even without letting personal grievances cloud my judgment, I just know he leaked the vote intentionally. Peeta was right: even the dissenters like us are going to look bad, because the proponents carried the day.

I run my thumb over Belle's knuckles, and I feel her palm shake in my grasp: she is weeping quietly, her body heaving with the sobs. I wish there was something I could say or do to help.

In the months we have worked together at Victor's Mercy, I've come to learn that Belle Everdeen has experienced more trauma than even some Victors feel. She lost her family, disowned by them after her choice to marry below her station. She lost her husband. She just lost a daughter. And she may be well on her way to losing the other one, for a third time, though in this case, it isn't to an arena.

That's a shame because I can see a lot of Katniss in her: Belle is practical, no-nonsense, and when she enters the ward or the operating theater, she commands respect. Trafficking in Healer's brews, medicines with natural properties, usually doesn't give you classical doctor's training by Capitol standards, but Belle still came close to medicinal mastery even with this. She's needed hardly any on-the-job learning. Also like her eldest daughter, Belle is reserved in most social situations. The two women even dress similarly: conservative, traditional, rustic in a way that is very District 12.

"She's more like me than I want to admit, you know." Glancing up to her, Belle smiles weakly, ruefully. "The minute there's trouble or strife, we withdraw and rely on ourselves. I've been running and hiding for seven years; why did I think I could change…?"

"You were grieving. You still are. An emotion like that manifests differently in different people. And how we respond isn't always in our control."

Belle smiles at me softly. "You're sweet…" Sighing, she drops my hand… and it bumps into a stack of files on a nearby table, causing them to fall and spill open onto the floor.

"Oh, hell!" Belle swears, the hem of her frock fanning out around her as she kneels to scoop up the papers, and I didn't think I could feel more useless than I am now, confined to my wheelchair. I check the cybernetic braces fused to my calves. The operations conducted in District 13 allowed me to walk again, but only for set intervals – up to several minutes at a time, at the most. I never use my robotic assistance unless absolutely necessary, as the cybernetics need time to relay nerve signals into my muscles.

Belle has paused in her gathering of the file folders and is crying again. Now at my level, I reach for her hand again.

"I'm such a horrible mother!" she sobs.

"No, you're not!" I counter fiercely. "You're an intelligent, beautiful woman, and you feel more than any other person I know."

Belle shakes her head. "You didn't know me after I lost Glen, Beetee. I would sit and stare at the wall for hours and just let Katniss scream at me. I was numb. I didn't want to feel. I… I couldn't. Katniss has every right to blame me for my choices."

I take a long breath. "If that were true, then Katniss isn't very good at distributing blame evenly, or knowing where it's due." I pause, wincing, hating myself. "I killed your daughter. I killed Prim."

Belle lifts her head to gawk at me. "You're wrong!" she denies vehemently. "How can you even say that?! You didn't drop the bombs on her!"

"But I designed them," I counter gravely. "Gale and I came up with those prototypes together, but we agreed they should never be used unless as a last resort, in case the tide of the war was against us. But then, Coin tricked Gale into showing her the blueprints, and her technicians mass produced them for battle without our consent."

"Ssssh…. Don't. None of that is your fault…"

"It is! It is! If those bombs hadn't ended up on the Capitol streets…"

Belle's mouth is suddenly wet, warm and pliant against my own, as she braces the whole weight of her body against my chair, takes my face in her hands, and kisses me deeply.

Perhaps she pressed her lips to mine to distract me. Shut me up, and expects me to push her away. So it comes as a surprise to us both, and I feel her breath hitch as she gasps into my mouth, when my arms encircle her by her waist and pull her into my lap. I find I'm kissing her back with fervor, though it is Belle's smooth mouth that is the most insistent and unyielding.

The scattered papers and file folders still lie strewn at our feet, forgotten, as Katniss's mother and I deepen the kiss, proceeding to make out with each other for nearly ten minutes. I let my tongue trace along the seam of Belle's pink lips, and she petals them open to me, like a flower bursting into full bloom, and our tongues are soon dancing together in her willing mouth. I hear, feel her moan, and it sends a shudder through me. "Mmmmmhmmmmmm…"

When we finally break apart, Belle still astride my lap and with her knuckles white and fisting the back of my wheelchair, we stare at each other, gasping for breath. My colleague finally rises off of me daintily, like a cultured district lady, and smoothes down her frock.

"Shall we close up?" She tries to make it sound casual, but there is a strain to her voice, and she avoids my eyes.

I nod. "I'll drive you home." I wait for her to beg off, but she doesn't, merely nodding.

Belle pushes my wheelchair out of Victor's Mercy, and we climb into my hovercar for the automated ride into downtown.

Belle is subletting an apartment from Effie Trinket, on the edge of what, by Capitol standards, is known as the slums. The seedier neighborhoods. My hovercar turns into the condo complex, parking right in front of Belle's place, looking down at us from its second floor orientation.

I can feel Belle staring at me, but I don't turn my head. Maybe soon, I'll be ready to discuss the kiss we shared, that charged moment back in my office, but not now. I can feel her cerulean eyes searching me, concerned. We've become good friends and work colleagues, sharing connections, not all of which have to do with Katniss.

"I know you don't want to… mentor," she speaks at last.

"I'll be all right," I deflect stoically.

"Yeah. I know. Still… I'm scared for you. You voted No, didn't you?"

I nod, finally bringing myself to look at her. She is studying me curiously, with clear respect. Wordlessly, she unbuckles her seatbelt and moves across the console, swinging her legs to straddle me and looping her arms about my neck. Expression solemn, dipping her head, she kisses me passionately, and I don't fight it. My arms wind about her to pull her closer.

I hear a rustle as Belle shrugs her shoulders, dislodging her white lab coat so that it pools with a sigh at our feet. Our breathing is becoming heavy, labored; we're panting between long engrossing kisses, and I can see the windows are beginning to fog up.

I feel Belle's soft, silky hand slip underneath the elastic of my waistband. Groping, she finds me, and cups the length of it in her fist, causing me to choke into her intoxicating mouth.

"What… what are you doing?"

"Ssssh…." And she shyly begins to grind along my leg, humping as she strokes me in perfect time. "I'm trying to prove you wrong…" She mouths along the edge of my jawline. "I'm trying to show you you're not to blame for what happened…"

"Belle…." I croak, my resistance holding but in danger of toppling. "Please…." And it would be oh so easy, to push her skirts up around her hips and pound her into the steering wheel. I imagine the car horn sounding regularly, which would mask the moans and grunts we would be making and not give away to the whole street what we are doing. And besides, I wouldn't need the use of my legs to fuck her raw - just my hips.

"Hmmm?" Belle is murmuring. "Please what?" She rocks against me again.

"Please. Not…. not here."

She pauses, lifting her head to study me, her eyes glowing in the light of the streetlamps. Shifting off of me, she returns to her seat, composing herself.

"Would you like to come in, then?" Her voice is but a whisper.

It still takes all the willpower I have to decline. "Maybe some other time."

I can tell she is disappointed, but she still exits the car with dignity, head held high. Rounding to my side, I hear her say through the panes, "Goodnight…" I watch as she turns and climbs the stairs up to her apartment, waiting until she has let herself in before ordering the hovercar to set a course for home.

I'm several blocks away, still thinking back over the intimacy Belle and I shared, when I finally get a hold of myself enough to ask, "What am I doing?" I jam a button on the dash. "Computer, invert destination."

"Inverting now, Mr. Latier…" the automated voice intones, and I let the vehicle do the work of guiding me. When I arrive, the cybernetic braces and liquid courage fuel me to leap out of the car and ascend the iron stairs until I'm at the door. I knock briskly. It is but moments before Belle answers it.

She barely has time to register any amount of surprise on her face before I am yanking her into my arms and kissing her hard, bending her back in the exuberance of it as she yields and drapes her arms about my neck. My palms greedily grip the fleshy globes of her ass, and she responds by gallingly raising her leg to my waist, hooking her heel around my torso. One of us – I don't know who – maneuvers the door closed with a foot.

We make it only to the hardwood floor of the kitchen before my legs give out and our passion sets in, and it is there that we spend hours upon hours making love.

I learn quickly that Belle Everdeen is not a gentle lover. For a conservative district lady, she can be quite uninhibited when having sex. I shag her into the tiles until I collapse, sweaty and spent, cumming deep inside her, but then she is throwing me off and slamming me back so she can assertively move to straddle me. I can only gaze up in awe as, with her blouse unbuttoned and parted like curtains to reveal buxom, voluptuous breasts with hardened nipples, Belle furiously rides me, bucking and jerking.

"Urrrr….. Hurrrr! Mmmm! Hmmm!" Her moans and grunts echo through the kitchen until, throwing back her head with a cry, she writhes through her release all around me.

Collapsing on top of me, gasping for breath, she manages to wheeze, "I love you…" and curls into me, falling asleep on my chest while I'm still buried deep inside her.