Katniss
I get the rope from my bag. It's the longest we have. I start to unravel it while Peeta figures out a way to anchor it.
"I think ice screws are out of the question," he tells me.
I nod. I figured as much. In our general vicinity, at the top of the cliff, there's only snow and ice.
"Give me a cam, honey," he asks. I reach to the back of my harness and hand him the first cam I feel. He searches for a crack and after a moment finds a suitable one. Inserting the cam, he frowns, or at least I think he does. "I need a smaller one," he hands it back to me. I look at it to see what size it is and turn my head so I can see the rest of the cams hanging off my harness. I find the next size down and give it to him. He carefully inserts it into the rock and it engages. He attaches a carabiner to it and tugs, making sure it's secure.
We unite from the short rope and Peeta puts it in his pack. Peeta grabs the end of the rope I unfurled and threads it through the carabiner attached to the ice screw.
"Is that p-cord still in the top of your pack?" He asks me.
"Yeah," I turn so he can access it.
He unzips the top of my pack and roots around for a second before finding the cord. He quickly cuts off a few feet and hands me it, holding a similar length in his hand.
"Tie a Prussik," he instructs. Genius. A Prussik is a hitch that, when attached to the rope, allows you to pull yourself back up. It's painstaking work, but it's a good back up plan for right now.
I know he's going to insist I go first. It's just who he is. I can't really argue with him about it, and right now, that's a pretty stupid idea anyways. He's stronger, so it'll be easier for him to lower me down. Once I'm down onto a ledge we spotted, I can untie from the rope, tie into my Air Traffic Controller, and belay while he repels. It makes the most sense.
"Tie in, Kat." I knew it. He's holding out the end of the rope to me. I take it and tie another figure eight follow through. He double checks it. "Ready?" He asks.
"I'm ready, baby," I assure him. I reach up and tug down his balaclava, doing the same quickly with mine. I lean up and kiss him. "I love you." I don't need to tell him I trust him. He knows.
"I love you too," he smiles.
He takes the other end of the rope and threads it through his ATC. When he gets all the slack behind him, he puts tension on the rope so I can feel it. I back up towards the edge of the cliff. As I near the precipice, I look him in the eyes. Or, rather, the goggles. I simply nod.
As he begins to lower me down the side of the cliff, I use my feet to walk down the wall. Looking down, I can see the ledge we saw about seventy feet below me.
"You good?" I hear Peeta yell from the top.
"Yup!" I yell back. "Keep going!"
After a few more feet, the cliff cuts sharply inward and I'm left dangling in mid-air. The only thing keeping me alive right now is my husband on the other end of the rope. Yet I'm not worried. Not about that.
I reach behind me, feeling for my chalk bag. Once my hand is powdered up, I use it to grab the next hand hold, careful to keep three points of contact on the rock.
We're about an hour from home. This is a fairly well known are for rock climbing, so Peeta, Finnick, Annie and I decided to come practice and relax. Peeta is on belay, and Cam is sitting on Annie's lap, staring up at me.
"Tension!" I call out to my husband. He tightens the rope and I feel the slack taken out. I need to put in another cam. Unlike most of the climbers here, I'm lead climbing. That means that as I go up, I'm manually putting in the protection against me falling. Everyone else is using top-down protection, which means the rope is already anchored at the top of the rock and belayed from the bottom. We wanted the extra challenge.
I use my fingers to search out an appropriate crack. Once I've decided where, I snag a cam off my harness. It's a bit of a reach to where I want to set it. I'm about to put it into the slight crack when my left foot slips just a tiny bit. That causes a chain reaction, and before I can process what's happening, I'm falling. I let go of the cam and it tumbles through the air. After a second, I feel the rope catch, and I swing hard towards the rock face.
"Oof!" I yell when I hit it.
"Mama!"
Cam's voice pierces the air. I glance down and see her. She's stood up out of Annie's lap and is trying to run towards the base of the face. Finnick, thankfully, reacts and scoops her up.
"I'm okay!" I reassure them, but mostly Cam. She's not convinced.
"Mama!" She cries out again, tears rolling down her face. I look to Peeta and he's worriedly glancing between his wife and his daughter. He's cinching down tight on the rope, making sure I don't move another inch.
"Baby," I call out, realizing I'm speaking to both Peeta and Cam. "Mommy's okay. I promise. Peeta?"
He doesn't need further explanation. He knows from the tone of my voice.
"Right, coming down," he nods. He slowly begins releasing tension on the rope and giving me slack. I quickly rappel down and am on the ground in seconds.
Finnick waits until I've untied from the rope to let Cam loose. Once she's free of her uncle's grasp, she runs towards me at full speed. I crouch down and catch her deftly, standing up with her in my arms.
"Off belay," I whisper over her shoulder at Peeta, who's joined us in our embrace.
Peeta
I slowly feed out the rope. I can't see Katniss, but the tension on the line reassures me that she's still there. I'm trying not to think about the fact that her life is in my hands. Not only is she my climbing partner, but she's also my wife and the mother of my daughter. I don't need to see her to know that's she dangling mid-air, all of her weight on the rope.
"Keep going baby!"
From the tone of her voice I know everything is okay. I smile briefly when I remember that, just a few hours ago, she said the same three words to me in our tent. Only that situation was much, much different. It involved no ropes and a lot less clothing.
Suddenly I feel slack in the rope. I wait for her to confirm that she's made it to the ledge.
"I"m down!" She yells up. "Your turn!"
Now we both need to switch our roles. Katniss will untie herself from the rope and attach it to her ATC. I will do the opposite, releasing the rope from my ATC and tying in.
"Ready!" She calls up.
"Ready!" I confirm back.
She takes out the slack in the line and I feel the tension. I have complete, absolute faith in my wife. I back up towards the edge of the cliff and begin to walk down, butt first, facing the rock. Once I get a little comfortable, I push away slightly using my feet and Katniss simultaneously feeds some rope through her belay device.
"One more jump and then the rock angles away!" She informs me.
Working together seamlessly, I'm almost to the ledge in no time. She has to lower me down the last twenty feet. When I'm standing next to her, I can't help but grin.
"Off belay," I tell her before we do anything else.
"Belay off," she dutifully replies.
"Come here often?" I joke as I untie the rope from my harness.
"First time," she shrugs. "You wouldn't know of a good place to get a steak around here, would you?"
"Kat," I groan. "Unfair." She knows how hungry I am.
"Sorry baby," she says, not sounding sorry whatsoever. "Just giving you incentive to get us back to the world."
"You're my world," I tell her seriously. "You and our daughter."
"Oh, Peeta."
She reaches over and kisses me soundly.
"The sun's going to be down soon," I remark when she finally lets me breathe. "We need to find a spot to spend the night."
She nods as we go to work. While I carefully pull one end of the rope so we can retrieve it, she gets the short rope back out of her bag and ties into it before grabbing me by the front of the harness.
"You're not going anywhere now, mister," she declares as she tugs up on the knot she just tied to my harness.
"Honey we've been together for literally the past week straight," I point out with a grin.
"I know," she looks up at me, "but even having you at the top of that cliff was too far."
I feel utterly compelled to kiss her again, so I do.
The next part of our trek is still difficult. I wanted to try and make the tree line by tonight, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. We're forced to traverse the next big steep snow slope, working our way tirelessly in a zig zag pattern down. I'm not willing to risk either of us getting injured by going any quicker. I lead most of the time, as the fresh snow pack is harder for Katniss to kick steps in.
Eventually we reach a small, flat area that is somewhat protected from the wind. We're still really close to the summit – my watch reads the elevation at 14,678 feet.
"Good enough for me," Katniss says as she kneels down and takes her backpack off. "I'll set up the tent. You get some water boiling."
"I can do the tent," I protest.
She doesn't turn to me, but I know the look on her face.
"No."
From three years of marriage, I know there's no use in even attempting to argue with my wife. Besides, we have more pressing issues, and Katniss is as capable as anyone. I grab the stove out of my pack and the pot out of hers. She begins assembling the poles, and reaches into my bag to get the body of the tent.
"Peeta, what's this?"
She's right beside me as I kneel in front of the stove so I turn my head to look at her. She's holding a small laminated photograph she just took out of my backpack. I know exactly what it is. It's a photo I took about a month ago. I had gone onto the deck of our house in search of my family. I found Katniss in a chaise lounge, stretched out. She was wearing sweatpants and an old white tee shirt stained with paint from when we painted Cam's room. Cam, wearing an almost matching outfit, was sprawled on Katniss' chest and stomach, her face resting gently on her mother's shoulders. Both of them were fast asleep, so I took the opportunity to snap a picture.
"What? That's nothing," I deflect, a little embarrassed.
"Peeta," she warns.
"I know it's stupid," I begin. "I know it's stupid because you're right here with me, but I wanted something to remind me what's waiting for me back home. I wanted to be able to look at my girls."
I guess I've rendered her mute, because she doesn't say anything. She just stares at the photo, tracing the outline of our daughter's face with her gloved finger.
"I'm pregnant."
She says it so quietly it's almost lost to the wind.
"Wha – what?"
"I'm pregnant." Now she looks at me, tears springing up in her grey eyes. "You're going to be a daddy. Again."
A/N: Uh oh! How's Peeta going to react to his wife being pregnant in this situation?
Thanks as always for the reviews! They keep the keyboard clacking.
I wanted to write that flashback not only to show the mother-daughter bond, but also to show that climbers fall. A lot. I can't count the number of times I've fallen. It's all part of the adventure, and helps you build resilience. There's one dude that never falls though – Alex Honnold. YouTube him. He climbs the biggest rock faces in the world (El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite, i.e.) with NO rope and NO protection. He's, well, insane.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please review or PM!