Well, here we are again, another May 8 already. Happy birthday to the Girl on Fire! This year, since the 8th falls on Mother's Day, I decided to focus on Mrs. Everdeen, and how giving birth to Katniss made her a mother.
"I think," he said late one night, as they lay together in their bed, "that I'd like to have children one day." He looked over at her, hopeful, searching her eyes for the agreement, possibly even excitement, that she knew he wanted to see there.
Instead, she felt something twist inside her stomach. She knew he wanted children. She knew this all along-she was aware when she agreed to leave her home in town and move with him to the Seam as his wife. She wasn't sure how she thought it would turn out, but up until now, she had been able to keep him content with it being just the two of them, while she kept herself safely childless using her knowledge of which plants would provide the best birth control methods.
When she didn't answer, she saw his face drop a little. But he kept that optimistic glint in his eye that made her love him so much. "Don't you agree?" he asked.
"You- you know how I feel," she said softly. She had seen what had happened to the Donner family when her friend Maysilee had died in the Quarter Quell only a few short years prior. Her twin sister had never quite been the same. Winning didn't seem to be much better, either, if Haymitch Abernathy was any indication. Bad luck seemed to have followed him around ever since he returned. First, his mother and brother both died from the flu, or so they said. There had been talk going around town that it had been something else that had killed them, though, something more sinister. This rumor seemed to gain legitimacy when Haymitch's girlfriend had shown up dead shortly after. Barely anyone saw Haymitch anymore these days. He lived up in Victor's Village, with only Wolfmark Selkirk, the other District 12 victor, for company.
"I do know, Lily," he told her. "But we can't let the Games keep us from living our lives. Then they win."
"Shh!" she warned, glancing around nervously. Even there, in what should be the privacy of their own home, one could never be too sure they weren't being recorded. Things were a little more lax out here in the Seam than they had been for the Merchants when she lived in town, but the paranoia from growing up in that environment had never quite gone away. The whipping posts were only a few short few away from the entrance to the apothecary. Her husband had never seen what happened when the Capitol suspected citizens of treason in the up close way that she had.
Even in the dark, she could see the disappointment clouding in her husband's grey eyes. "It's true," he told her. "They don't get to silence us in our own homes."
This was exactly like him. He wasn't outright rebellious; no, he was smarter than that, and more practical. He knew the Peacekeepers would come for him if he wasn't careful. But there had always been something subtly rebellious about him, from the way he snuck into the woods to go hunting, right down to the very way he had courted her, a member of the Merchant class, when he himself was Seam. And it had worked. She had fallen head over heels for him, and she would never regret her decision to marry him for one minute. He was the best thing to have ever happened to her, regardless of what she had to give up in order to be with him. But it scared her half to death, the things he said and did sometimes.
She was silent for a moment. "I just… need more time," she told him at last.
It was another six months before she finally agreed to try. It was soon apparent how well the birth control measures had done their job. She had conceived shortly after giving them up.
In some ways, Lily Everdeen was grateful that it had been August when she conceived her child. With the baby due in May, she would miss the brunt of the summer. This was her first child, but enough time in the shops had made her aware of how hard it was to be in the later stages of pregnancy in the summer months. But the Games had ended only a few short weeks ago, and they were still fresh in her mind. Neither of 12's tributes had made it. They rarely ever did. Haymitch had been the district's first victor in ages; before him, there had only been Wolfmark, and he had won ages ago. Being reaped for the Games in District 12 was nothing short of a death sentence. They haunted her now, this year's tributes. It had been a girl from town, whose blonde hair reminded her so much of Maysilee's… or worse, her own. The male tribute had been from the Seam, and she had tried not to draw comparisons between him and her own husband.
There was nothing she could do when images of them both shook her awake in the dead of night. Either of them could be her own child one day, plucked from her life and shipped off to die for the Capitol's entertainment. Now that she was actually pregnant, and this child was real, she cried at least once a day over this fear.
Things got a little easier as she got further along, at least for a little while. Her stomach swelled, and for a time in the Fall she even allowed herself to feel happiness over the impending birth, and she and her husband prepared for the arrival. They were having a Spring baby, but it was never too early to prepare. Not when you live in the Seam, at least. Things could only be bought little at a time, they had so little money to buy with.
Winter was especially harsh that year. It was all they could do to stay alive, and keep the baby alive as well. Her husband would come home often late at night, having taken time after his shifts in the mines to try to catch something in the woods. If he could, he might attempt to trade it, usually having the most success with the baker, whose wife was also pregnant. He supposed the baker felt a little more sympathetic than most because of this. Lily didn't have the heart to tell him the truth.
It was around this time that their baby began moving. She froze with panic the first time she felt it, until she realized there was nothing wrong with the baby. Those were its feet, and it was kicking.
"She's going to be a lively one," he told her as he watched the bumps moving around on her stomach one day. "We're going to have our hands full with this one."
"You think she's a girl?" she asked, looking at him curiously.
"She has to be," he grinned at her. "With all that spirit."
Lily melted at the look on his face. "I hope she looks like you, even if she is a girl."
He snorted. "I want her to look like you," he said. "Two beautiful blondes running around this place."
"She would certainly stand out," she agreed, though she wasn't entirely convinced that was a good thing.
"She'll be Seam, if that's what you're worried about," he told her. "You can be sure of that. It gets in deeper than even the coal dust."
It was early May when she finally went into labor. With no one left from her old days in town, she had only the help of a few old housewives from the Seam to help her bring the baby into the world. He ran home from the mines as soon as he got word, and paced anxiously, jumping every time he heard his wife scream in pain.
May 8. That was her birthday. Their little girl-and she was a girl, he had been right about that-arrived with clear, strong cries that could probably move the entire nation of Panem, her parents were convinced.
"She's good and strong, that one," one of the Seam wives told them. "With that set of lungs, you can tell. She'll survive anything."
"I hope so," her husband said, as the other wife placed the baby, wrapped in what ragged bunches of blankets they had handy, into Lily Everdeen's arms. As she looked into her daughter's grey eyes, the same eyes she had inherited from her father, her heart melted. She couldn't stop staring.
"I love you," she murmured to the bundle. Had she ever loved anything as much as her little girl? She wasn't sure she had. In this moment, she didn't know how she had ever turned down the opportunity to be a mother.
"What should we call her?" he asked, leaning over them. She could hear the smile in his voice.
"I don't know," Lily almost sang her answer. "I'd like to keep the flower names that are my family's tradition."
There was silence while they mulled it over. "What about… Katniss?" he offered.
"Katniss," she tried it out. "Katniss Everdeen. Are you a Katniss?"
The baby gurgled in response.
"Katniss," Lily repeated. "I like it. It fits her."
"I think so too," he said. "Our little Katniss Everdeen."
Lily smiled, and held her Katniss close. She was a mother now. Nothing in the world would ever make her as happy as this moment right here with her little girl.
She was sure of it.