One-Shot: The Language All Understand
Katniss first meets Pollux after the shooting of a Mockingjay propo, the one when Haymitch claims that her wooden performance is how all revolutions go to die.
She notices two of the cameramen standing together and doing something funny with their hands. At first, she thinks toxins from No-Man's Land, above District 13, are making nerve endings in their fingers twitch involuntarily.
Like how the toxins affected her in the clock arena.
Katniss squeezes her eyes shut and starts to recite what she knows is true:
My name is Katniss Everdeen.
I was in the Hunger Games.
I escaped.
The Capitol hates me.
Someone lightly taps her shoulder.
She opens her eyes.
It's one of the cameramen. His hands are now furiously cutting through the air, with motions that are too deliberate to be involuntary.
It's like he's conducting a symphony.
Katniss sees beauty and music in whatever he is trying to express.
The cameraman has massive hands. She marvels at how such large hands can be so precise.
The cameraman frowns and performs the flurry of motion with his hands again.
Katniss shakes her head dumbly. "I'm sorry. I don't understand."
He frowns and makes the same signs yet a third time. This time, though, he mouths his lips to form words. He has full, bow lips, slightly hidden under a moustache to match his beard.
Katniss may not know what she has heard is called Avox Sign Language… yet years of hunting with Gale has afforded her the ability to read lips:
Are You OK?
She ponders the question. And then appreciatively basks in it. Are You OK? No one has asked her that in eons, not since she arrived here in Thirteen and likely even before. If anyone says anything to her, it's about where to stand, how to deliver this line, how to act. The only person who might ask after her welfare is Prim, but her sister has been kept super busy in the triage ward. The Everdeen girls hardly have time to talk, these days, what with the war effort.
For a moment, Katniss considers just affirming that everything is fine. Putting on her mask.
Something about this man compels her to be honest, however, with him… and with herself.
"No."
She speaks it aloud, then frowns and tries to work out a way to communicate the same thing silently. Then she remembers: Avoxes are mute, not deaf.
The cameraman nods sympathetically, then moves his hands with earnest again, in a different pattern than the one before.
Katniss helplessly shakes her head again. "I don't know Avox Sign Language."
The cameraman gives up on his earlier signing and instead takes her hand.
His hands dwarf hers, as he inlays her palm over his. Katniss feels a tingle suddenly shoot up her forearm.
She sucks in a breath sharply.
With his free hand, the cameraman is spelling out letters into her open palm. Still sign language, only tactile:
P-O-L-L-U-X.
Katniss frowns prettily.
"Pollux? Is that your name?"
He grins gummily at her and nods, pleased.
Biting her lip, Katniss dares to take his hand in hers. Invert them, so his is on top, palm side up.
With her free hand, she traces out letters into his palm. The letters spell out her own name:
K-A-T-N-I-S-S.
Pollux lifts his head. Their eyes meet.
Katniss is struck by how blue his eyes are. Not as blue as Peeta's – only a shade or two darker. Whereas Peeta's eyes remind her of a summer sky, the eyes of this man – Pollux – remind her of a blue sky after a rainstorm.
Pollux smiles at her.
She weakly smiles back.
The other man – who resembles Pollux enough that they might be brothers, even twins – calls Pollux over with a whistle. Pollux waves to her and jogs back to his camera station.
Katniss waves goodbye to Pollux lamely, shyly, as her prep team drags her away to get out of make-up. As they leave, she sees Pollux signing the same message from earlier to his colleague/possible-brother.
It isn't until much later that Katniss will understand its meaning:
HER. BEAUTIFUL. THINK. (Do you think she's beautiful?)
The brother responds with one motion, corresponding with a single word:
YES.
Outside of her Mockingjay duties, Katniss has no other real commitments. For the time being.
She's able to negotiate with Coin certain privileges. One of them is passage to go aboveground, for now once a week, and hunt. For Katniss, it's a way to feel free and be alone with her thoughts.
Of course, Plutarch has to ruin this bright spot in her week by insisting a camera crew film her, the Mockingjay, doing ordinary, "recreational" things. The Gamemaker ex-pat thinks it will be a "morale booster."
Katniss doesn't agree.
The only reason she accepts the camera crew along on her hunts is that Pollux is assigned as the cameraman. Out in the radiated woods, thin as matchsticks, he tails close to her side, the big camcorder mounted over his shoulder.
It's an invasion of personal space. Katniss doesn't mind. She knows he's just doing his job.
Plus, he is more of a natural at being sure-footed than Peeta ever was. Not a twig snaps out of place. No game is startled.
It's another thing Katniss marvels about this Avox: how can such a large man be so light on his feet? Light with his hands? Daintily so.
He's quiet too. As a taciturn person herself, it's a quality Katniss much prefers and admires. The stillness between them is companionable – the way Gale's presence is, only better.
Pollux signs something to her. Katniss frowns, befuddled.
And frustrated.
She's never been very good at making friends, even when she could understand what they were saying.
But right now, underground and a puppet in Thirteen, she needs friends. Friends who aren't going through withdrawal (Haymitch), imprisoned by the enemy (Peeta), or just too busy to have time for her (Gale and her family).
"Can…. Can you teach me how to sign?"
She watches as his post-stormy blue eyes expand in surprise. And appreciation. He flurries something back.
Katniss takes it to mean: I'd be delighted.
They start with the fundamentals on the hovercraft ride out to District 8 – Katniss's first foray into the field.
Katniss concentrates harder than she even did during training for the arena, studying Pollux's movements the way Thirteen's commanders study battle strategy.
Every word has a symbol, and those symbols can be woven together like a tapestry to form patterns (sentences).
The process is initially slow going, with the language barrier. Katniss tries to keep track of the phrases she's learned by writing them down in a small log-diary. She even attempts to make rough sketches of the hand motions matching each word or phrase. The sketches aren't nearly as good as Peeta's.
Not for the first time, she wishes he was here.
She furrows her brow as she focuses in on Pollux conducting the air.
There's…. a…..
He opens his folded hands, cupping them in the way one might sip water from a stream, or read a prayer hymnal.
Book.
There's a book. In….. the… Pollux strikes a strong pose resembling a statue in City Circle. Capitol.
There's a book. In the Capitol. That holds all the translations. Locked in Archives. Only one copy.
Katniss frowns and tries to sign out a sentence in reply: Well, then…. how…. how did you….
She points to him, signifying you. Frowns, then resorts to speaking her question.
"Then how did you Avoxes learn to understand each other?"
Pollux is quiet for a moment. Signs something back – one, compact motion, which usually (though not always) indicates one word:
Perseverance.
District 8's hospital collapses in on itself when the Capitol bombs it.
Katniss delivers her message to Snow:
"If we burn, you burn with us!"
After the rebels have escaped, Pollux teaches Katniss how to translate her defiant message into Avox Sign Language.
Katniss is transfixed by the sign for burn: five fingers open, cycling up through the air in vertical circles. Like a cyclone.
Like dancing tongues of flame.
She moves her hands, choppily, to echo the message back.
She hopes, with time, her muscle memory will improve until she is fluent.
A pod of mockingjays whistles out a melody along the stream where they are camped.
Katniss watches as Pollux taps his full, bow lips, then points to her.
SING. YOU.
….. You sing.
She smiles with bashful bemusement. "You want me to sing?"
Pollux nods.
She starts in on the old folk song her father taught her:
"Are you, are you, coming to the tree? Strung up a man, they say he murdered three. Strange things did happen here, no stranger would it be, if we met at midnight in the hanging tree…."
He can't sing along – he has no tongue with which to. But as she sings, Pollux signs along to the lyrics.
There are tears in his eyes.
Katniss commits every sign and its corresponding word to memory.
She also commits to memory the way Pollux looks at her when she sings.
Katniss is unceremoniously kicked out of her family's apartment.
At least, that's how she sees it. The government claims she's being "reassigned" to a one-person dwelling unit. For single men and women.
Her nightmares have been getting worse, causing her to awaken at all hours, screaming for Peeta. For Gale.
And even, more recently, for Pollux.
With the tight schedules and early shifts they're keeping in the triage ward, her mother and Prim can ill afford to lose any more sleep.
Pollux helps Katniss transfer her things – all fitted in a single box – to her new apartment after shooting a propo one day. He signs that:
It's not that far a walk from here to where I live with my brother.
"Really?" Katniss asks.
Then she freezes when she realizes:
She understood him!
Before she knows it, she's jumping up and down, her hands seeming to move of their own accord as she signs to Pollux her excitement.
They hug.
Then she invites him in to help decorate her new place.
He stops by quite frequently after that. Following a shoot or once they've returned belowground, after a hunt.
Katniss finds she likes having him around.
One day, Pollux finds the pearl that Peeta gave to her in the arena. He gives her a quizzical look.
Katniss blushes. She doesn't know why.
Peeta gave me that in the arena.
A memory surfaces, and with a smile, she adds on with more hand motions. She tells Pollux about the belief that pressurized coal can change into pearls.
It's an inside joke, one that only a true native of Twelve would understand.
Pollux laughs anyway.
She laughs with him.
Katniss hasn't thought of Twelve in a long time. It makes her wonder:
Where…. Where are you from? She's embarrassed with herself that she's never thought to ask.
The Capitol.
Katniss purses her lips curiously. Her mind flashes back to Darius, the Peacekeeper back home who sometimes flirted with her and was later changed into an Avox and forced to serve her, before the Quell. He hadn't been native Twelve-born, only stationed there as a cadet, but she can't imagine Darius was originally from the Capitol.
She starts to sign back 'Where are you from really?', but halts mid-way through, fearing the wording – er, signing – insensitive.
She tries again: Is that the truth?
The turn of phrase isn't that much better. But she asks to let him know he doesn't have to hide anything from her.
Pollux nods.
Yes.
Then, his hands flourish: I would never lie to you.
She believes him.
The weeks and months go by.
Katniss begins to learn more about her friend, the Avox cameraman.
Such as:
Yes, Castor is my twin brother.
I'm from the Capitol, but I wasn't born there. Neither he nor his brother remembers their home district, though they've tried to guess.
Katniss smiles and laughs at Pollux's guesses and she learns that each district has their own symbol in Avox Sign: one hand flat and the other at a right angle, with the fingers in the angled hand wiggling back and forth. The sign for tree – District 7. Or maybe District Five: two fists moving in clockwise circles, signifying energy. There are apparently a lot of redheaded people in District 5.
Yeah, Katniss agrees. The girl from Five in my first arena had red hair. Redheads aren't usually native to Twelve. She makes the sign for coal by spelling out its letters with her fingers: C-O-A-L.
A pause and then: Well…. unless you count Delly Cartwright.
Katniss ponders Pollux and his red locks, combed over and slicked back. She absently wonders if he puts a gel in it. It's a lighter ginger than that of Delly or Darius or Annie Cresta, the Victor from Four. Yet it's also not as bronze as Johanna Mason's cropped curls. Some of the strands are even thinning at the temples.
It makes her wonder….
How… how old are you?
Pollux's eyes bulge adorably. He signs back a response, which roughly means I'd prefer not to answer.
She giggles, and lets it be.
Katniss becomes distraught when the Capitol begins using Peeta to feed out war propaganda.
She is enraged at how nearly everyone in District 13 is now calling her ally a traitor.
One of the few who does not outside of Haymitch and her own family is Pollux. It's more than just him taking a neutral tack; he tells her privately that he does not think Peeta is a traitor to the cause. In fact, it is rather obvious that he is being controlled – Pollux can read the signs.
His willingness to stick up for Peeta impresses Katniss. Pollux's comfort is small though, once she begins to consider just how he knows that Peeta is being coerced. What kind of treatment did Pollux and the other Avoxes endure as slaves of the Capitol? Instinctively, Katniss senses that these are among the few things Pollux won't share with her. She knows better than to ask, as much as she might want to.
His reticence to talk about his time serving Snow's regime as a second-class citizen (at best) is not altogether different from how she rarely speaks of her experiences in the arena, as a tribute and then a Victor.
In the end, Katniss and Pollux are both vindicated when, during a Capitol fake news session, Peeta reveals an imminent bombing threat to Thirteen at great risk to himself.
It's a mad dash to the lower levels, and Katniss panics when she loses her grip on Prim's hand in the confusion. Pollux doubles back and retrieves her in the nick of time before the blast doors close. Katniss's little sister is shaken, but at least she has her damn cat, because of course she does.
There are bedrolls laid out in what floor space isn't taken up by bunks, mattresses mounted two to a rack. Katniss sits with Pollux as she watches her mother and Prim settle down to sleep on a nearby bottom bunk.
Before long, pleasured grunts and moans can be heard. In the inky gloom, with the noises sometimes obscured by the distant rolling thunder of bombs, Katniss watches as men mount their women and thrust with intensity.
The act of making love has always seemed in Katniss's mind something base and crude, more befit for animals than human. The energy surely expended from rutting in heat with a partner could surely be better exerted elsewhere, for survival, not taking pleasure.
Or…. receiving it.
Still, while watching the shadowed, undulating bodies and the groans and sighs torn from lips in between stolen kisses, it seems clear that sex is an effective tool against stress – a release, especially in these circumstances.
Despite her vow to never go to bed with a man, Katniss can't help but be curious. About what intercourse is like. She honestly wonders what all the fuss is about.
Blushing, she steals a glance at Pollux, next to her in companionable darkness on the bunk and watching, listening to the amorous sights and sounds of the night with what might be bemusement.
Katniss wonders if he is as inexperienced as she is in the matter of intimate relations.
A plan is finally being set into motion, to rescue her friends.
In order to pull an operation off, however, Katniss will need to film one big propo. Something to hold the Capitol's attention.
Perhaps so as not to embarrass her, Finnick also comes onboard to help. They film the propo aboveground, despite the location of their filming site being inundated by white roses.
Wretching, Katniss almost doesn't make it to the first take. But one look at Pollux, behind the blinking red light of his camcorder, calms her.
She manages to recite the story of Peeta tossing bread to her in the rain, keeping her eyes on Pollux – and therefore, directly into the camera – the entire time.
He grounds her, in much the same way that Cinna grounded her when she was nervous during the Games interviews.
From Pollux's smile, he seems to understand what the bread – what Peeta – means to her.
Peeta and the other Victors are extracted from the Capitol.
After she is attacked by her ally and sometimes-lover, Katniss is confined to the triage ward, where her mother and Prim wait on her. The stay is made bearable by Pollux coming to sit by her bedside, whenever he and Cressida and Castor are not out on a shoot.
Katniss can tell from the way Pollux's hands quiver as they chop the air how angry he is with Peeta. Even if he doesn't explicitly say – sign – so, in so many words. Nevertheless, she hears from her sister how Pollux has taken to also visiting Peeta where he is confined.
This impresses Katniss.
And also fills her with fear. She hopes Pollux would control himself enough not to hurt Peeta, even to defend her honor. She hopes Peeta can control himself enough not to hurt Pollux, even if provoked.
The last thing she needs at this point is for Gale to get involved. Just trying to square him and Peeta in her mind gave her a headache. Weighing Peeta and Pollux is proving to be far worse.
Katniss finally works up the nerve to ask her sister, in a veiled, roundabout way, how Peeta and Pollux are interacting.
Prim frowns. "They haven't come to blows, if that's what you mean." From then on, her sister takes to giving Katniss and Pollux funny looks whenever he comes to visit.
Knowing how the Avox is treating her district partner with compassion raises his esteem even further in Katniss's eyes. What is more, the white cone of gauze wrapped around her inflamed throat is forcing her to practice her sign. Losing her voice, even temporarily, allows her to understand Pollux more than she ever did.
Whole conversations are now flowing between them via their hands – and sometimes whole conversations with no signs (or words) at all.
Katniss realizes she's only felt such a deep connection like this with maybe two other people who aren't her sister.
She wonders what it means.
Finnick Odair proposes to Annie Cresta, sending the entire district ecosystem out of whack.
The idea of how to conduct a wedding (or if one should even be conducted at all) is a point of contentious, national debate. Katniss, only recently released from the ward and stir-crazy for some break in her monotonous six days a week in propo shoots, is firmly in favor of having a wedding. President Coin, frugal to the point of being stingy, is firmly against having anything to do with it. The grey lady washes her hands of the whole thing, which the rest of her people interpret as tacit permission that, if they and the Victors from 4 want a wedding, on their own heads be it. They can plan on their own time and whatever little money, and so they do.
Meanwhile, Peeta is still in solitary confinement in what Prim has dubbed 'the psych ward.' Haymitch won't let Katniss see him, so she angrily demands that he report back observations to her. Prim is also recruited. Both give complete, if also grave reports on his condition. Haymitch is downright sober (in more ways than one) when he expresses his doubts that Peeta will ever be the same again.
This leads Katniss to run to her room in tears and sob for hours.
A knock on her door nudges her, and she drags herself to answer it, assuming it's Prim.
When Pollux's face appears, she staggers against him, wailing.
He rubs circles along her back and maneuvers her to the bed, gentlemanly letting her lean on him. When Katniss is down to sniffles, she fights past the moisture in her eyes to see him sign:
I'm sorry.
She shakes her head. It's not your fault.
A long pause. Perhaps the man doesn't know what to…. sign to that.
If she wasn't looking right at him, Katniss swears she would have missed it.
Would…. Do….? Pollux abruptly stops, looking flustered.
Katniss blinks doefully at him. "What?" It's the first word she's spoken aloud to him in quite some time, long enough that she's almost forgotten what her own voice sounds like.
The frustration in his face to find the right signs is evident. "Pollux, what are you trying to say?"
He glances sharply at her, and she repeats the question in sign:
What are you trying to say?
…. Are you going to the wedding?
She nods slowly. "Yes…."
Pollux starts to muddle through another question, and Katniss realizes that these tremors in his hands are involuntary.
…. Would you…. like to…..
Her grey eyes expand. Yes…?
…. Would you like to go with me?
She stares at him, speechless and struck dumb. She shakes her head: that thought came out wrong. Even so, she is astonished. Is… is he….. asking her out….
"Like on a date?" She's so stunned, she speaks it aloud.
Pollux is nodding eagerly before she can even start repeating the question in sign. His hopeful expression is strangely cute.
Katniss appraises him for a moment. At last, she wetly grins.
Then shapes her fingers into two letters:
O.K.
The marriage of Finnick and Annie Odair is the party of the year in a drab place like Thirteen. Once Plutarch recognized the propo possibilities of the event, he actually helped make the event bigger, more festive.
The wedding customs in Four appear to be as rich with meaning as the ones in Twelve. The ceremony itself is referred to by Four ex-pats as a 'netting' – in which the bride and groom stand under a golden fishing net while giving their vows.
Attending on Pollux's arm, Katniss stands as witness to the nuptials alongside her mother and her sister, who is still giving her and her date curious looks. They're all standing near Gale, whom Katniss glimpses for the first time in months.
He doesn't look well. Stressed, in fact – last she heard, he had been assigned to Beetee in Weapons Development. Katniss's old hunting partner seems bemused by the ginger-haired gentleman standing next to her, like he's never seen Pollux before.
This oddly makes Katniss angry. Just because Avoxes are silent does not mean they are invisible! They're still people!
Finnick and Annie are wed, and kiss to cheers. As the crowd disperses to form the first dancing circle, Katniss clutches Pollux's arm.
Dance with me? she signs shyly.
He grins and takes her in his arms, though he's bashful about it. Katniss has to show him where to place his hand at her waist. The touch makes her breath oddly hitch.
Her own hands both at rest on his shoulder and intertwined with his, they begin a slow waltz.
Katniss's eyes are solemn as she holds his gaze the entire time.
She is jolted out of whatever spell they're under when someone wheels out an elaborate wedding cake.
One that she knows on sight could not have been concocted by anyone but Peeta. The icing alone leaves her shaken. Pollux seems to know intrinsically how to comfort her.
The reception breaks up soon after that. Katniss leaves without having even a bite of cake.
To make matters worse, Haymitch is clearly suffering through withdrawals again, and the sight of Peeta's cake seems to be for him too the trip wire that sets him off. He's raving worse than when he's drunk as Katniss beats a hasty retreat back to her apartment, unconsciously dragging Pollux by the hand.
The unconventional pair – the beaten Avox and the damaged Victor – stay up late that night talking, their hands gliding through the air with passion.
I'm almost embarrassed for Haymitch, Katniss admits. And scared for Peeta. I know my mentor cares about us, but it's his fault Peeta was left behind in the first place!
Pollux is quiet, a good listener. At any rate, he's clearly trying to weigh his words carefully.
It can't help that detox down here is brutal. A beat, then: Bet Haymitch is pissed there was no wine at the reception anyway.
This startles a laugh out of Katniss. There's no alcohol down here period, never mind for a party. A thought dawns on her, and a mischievous grin with it. Primmy says the only alcohol down here is found in the anti-septic wipes.
Pollux busts up.
Katniss has never seen him laugh before. She regrets she'll never be able to hear what his laugh sounds like.
The sight of it – of laughter – coming from an Avox, is jarring.
Pollux's mouth and jaw are making jerky movements, and the mirth is expressed through the scrunching up of his dimples, the muscles in his face. To anyone not used to him, the sight could be frightening.
But Katniss isn't afraid of him. She likes being with him.
When Pollux finally says goodnight, she almost asks him to stay.
The joy from the wedding dies down.
Peeta isn't getting better.
The propo shoots continue.
So do Katniss's nightmares.
One evening, a terror in which Peeta doesn't even recognize her before he launches to attack her has Katniss thrashing under her sheets and shrieking, loud enough for the whole base to hear.
She's never kept the door to her apartment locked – most Thirteen residents never do, which seems ironic for such a regimented district.
It's thus a relief when the door bursts open and the backlight illuminates the silhouette of a man, coming for her.
At first, Katniss is terrified she's still in the nightmare. Or worse, that she's now dreaming of Peeta and how he used to comfort her in her bed on the train, after the nightmares.
Except the glare is bouncing off of ginger curls, not blonde ones.
She blushes with shame at Pollux's panicked look.
It's just a nightmare, I'm sorry. Katniss is proficient enough that she's signing with even thinking about it.
It's OK. I get them too.
She remembers Peeta speaking aloud something of the same to her, during the Victory Tour.
Pollux gallantly turns to take his leave, leave her in peace.
Except she isn't, and won't be unless –
"Pollux?"
He turns.
…. Will you stay with me?
He signs back Yes without hesitation. Katniss flushes fuchsia as she throws back the coverlet to let him climb into bed with her.
She's never had anyone share a bed with her besides Peeta (and, when they were younger and poorer, Prim). Before, with Peeta, his presence was soothing.
Pollux's is too, but in a way that makes her heart flutter funny.
Katniss settles against Pollux's chest. A chest that's firm and strong.
His heartbeat is steady in her ear.
Just…. just hold me. No…. no need to go further. She tactilely presses the message into the planes of his chest.
She doesn't know why she signs this.
Before she drifts off, she thinks Pollux strokes a message back through the strands of her chestnut hair:
Whatever you want.
Katniss has her best sleep since even before her daddy was killed.
Pollux's sleepovers continue by unspoken – well, unsigned – agreement.
Katniss teases him if his brother knows where he's spending his nights. It masks her almost…. thrilling concern about how the optics look. Of letting a man into her bed every night.
She decides she's thinking in Propo, even as she spends much of her days signing in Avox.
She also decides that, after absorbing Pollux's stuttering answer that Castor doesn't know where he goes every night, she is definitely going to keep his late-night visits from Prim. Siblings only get meddlesome the more that they know.
Speaking of Prim, Katniss's sister continues to update her on Peeta's condition. The status report is stagnant – he is making no progress in retrieving his memories, which is apparently what the Capitol tampered with. Katniss once again asks to see him, ashamed to realize that she has almost forgotten about her ally. Prim hedges that this isn't a good idea. Katniss herself is apparently a trigger for him. Right now, the doctors are attempting to establish a baseline for Peeta's recall, so they're starting small. Some survivors from Twelve are being screened and admitted to sit and talk with him.
One of them, apparently, is Delly Cartwright. Her visits have been quite frequent.
Katniss doesn't know how to reconcile this in her heart.
Unfortunately, Haymitch appears to be making disturbingly little progress at getting sober, with the doctors attempting to establish his baseline as anything other than raving through the halls and accosting the orderlies for a sip, just one sip.
"I have to hand it to the man," Prim voices to Katniss and Pollux one day at mid-day meal. "He is cunningly intelligent, even in a mania. Mama and I are having to hide all the anti-septic wipes to make sure he doesn't start just licking them."
This gives Katniss a devious idea. They are going to play a trick on her mentor.
It actually starts out as a joke, the same inside joke that had Katniss and Pollux in stitches after the wedding. To mess with Haymitch (and also to help her frazzled sister out), Katniss convinces Prim to let her and Pollux abscond with most of the anti-septic wipes. They leave a functional batch hidden in the triage ward; the rest, they scuttle away in Katniss's apartment like they're hoarding illicit drugs.
The resulting mania in her mentor is anything but funny, yet Katniss and Pollux both laugh anyway.
There's enough here that you could get drunk just from licking the wipes, Pollux cracks.
He seems flabbergasted when Katniss actually takes him up on the suggestion, initially made in jest.
The inside joke now takes on the makings of a science experiment, one that they both embark on with faux deadly seriousness: is it possible for someone to actually get inebriated from…. licking…. anti-septic wipes laced with alcohol?
Katniss knows that Haymitch sometimes tried to sneak gulps from the liquid anti-septic her mother kept in her stores. How different can wipes be?
She and Pollux quickly run into a problem when he meekly reminds her how he has no tongue with which to lick. Bizarrely, Katniss feels her cheeks burn.
Frustrated, the pair play hooky from filming propos or attending meetings in Command and, over several days, meticulously wring out the alcohol from the anti-septic wipes into bottles they manage to scrounge.
Katniss still makes a show of licking a few of the wipes anyway, just to make Pollux laugh. She doesn't think it's entirely intentional, at least on her part, but the way she licks the wipes strangely takes on an almost sultry, seductive quality, as she meets her friend's eyes and tries to get him to crack up. The liquor tastes bitter on her tongue. She couldn't get drunk like this, even if she wanted to.
Drinking straight from the bottle proves more fruitful.
By now, both Pollux and Katniss have lost count of how many bottles they've painstakingly filled. Late one night, they just as easily lose count of how many bottles they've imbibed.
Both are plastered after only several.
Katniss and Pollux are punch-drunk laughing, and it may or may not be about what a joke they've pulled on Haymitch – she doesn't remember. Pollux is trying to sign something at her, but his hands are as slurred as words might be if he could speak any.
YOU. BEAUTIFUL. THINK. I. He's not making sense.
Lurching onto her knees, Katniss takes his trembling hands in his own, stilling them.
Electricity crackles from where their palms meet.
Somehow, her plastered eyes manage to focus on his and hold them. Those eyes as blue as after a rainstorm….
Palms touching, Katniss signs out a question, pressing it into his skin, using the tactile method he taught her.
You think I'm beautiful?
Pollux is suddenly gazing at her with such intensity, he might as well be stone-cold sober.
Since the day we met.
Katniss is stunned. Gooey warmth fills her as she takes in this sweet, sincere man. He's always been cute, even handsome.
More importantly, since she arrived in Thirteen, he's always been there. Neither Peeta nor Gale can say that.
A blip of thought takes her back to something from her English class in school – a play they once read.
For saints have hands that pilgrim's hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmer's kiss.
She doesn't realize she's signed out the entire verse until her hands have stopped moving. And Katniss is astonished when Pollux signs back the answering couplet:
Have saints not lips, and holy palmers too?
Aye, pilgrim, saints that they must use in prayer.
Pollux is up on his knees, facing her. Katniss can feel the heat from his skin. She's close enough that his beard can nuzzle her.
He's still signing the lines from the play by the one they call Shakespeare into her hands.
O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do.
Katniss's grey eyes expand in awe.
It has to be the liquor talking, for she boldly skips to the end and takes over Romeo's line:
Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged!
Feeling brave thanks to the drink, she takes Pollux's skull in her hands, yanks his face forward, and kisses him deeply on the mouth.
They break apart sensuously after anywhere from a few moments to several sunlit days. Katniss's eyelids are heavy with something she's only beginning to name, her lashes fluttering.
Pollux seems dazed with wonder, gazing at her. Katniss ducks her head, scared and unsure.
Pollux dips his finger under a chin.
He's a hair's-breadth away.
His hands have taken on a slight tremor, still gripped in hers. For herself, Katniss is trembling across her whole body.
Cupping her face, he signs a question into the skin along her cheek.
Can…. Can I…. kiss you?
The English student in her – and the side of her that spent time around Effie Trinket - should be annoyed at his breach of grammar. Instead, she's amused by it, even as she indistinctively corrects him.
May I kiss you, please?
Pollux silently asks again, his palm caressing her face as he signs:
May I kiss you, pl -?
Katniss doesn't let him finish.
"Yes."
Their palms are still touching.
And now, so are their lips.
Katniss gasps in breathless amazement.
Fireworks.
Katniss doesn't know what language she and this man are now speaking. Only that she somehow knows it intuitively, doesn't need Pollux to teach it to her to become fluent.
As the kiss deepens, she experimentally, curiously, probes his lips with her own.
And then with her tongue.
Pollux jerks back a little, startled and perhaps even a bit ashamed. He shouldn't be. Her grey eyes even more clouded, now with want, Katniss hisses lustily:
"Open your mouth….. Open your mouth, open it! Open – Open…. Mmmmmm…"
Pollux parts his lips for hers, granting her tongue entrance. Katniss probes it curiously, eagerly.
She can feel what is missing there, and finds she isn't at all repulsed by it. She likes kissing Pollux. He tastes….. exciting. Certainly, she's never kissed either Peeta or Gale the way she's kissing this Avox now. Not with…. with tongue.
Pollux moans into her mouth and Katniss hums in reply as she petals her lips open against his, like a flower bursting into full bloom.
They're necking languorously now, and she has to come up for air. Katniss's breasts are heaving under her district-issued, gunmetal-gray standard uniform.
Wordlessly, she holds out her hand to him. She can see the Adam's apple in Pollux's neck bobble as he gulps.
He takes her hand.
With purpose, she backs up, leading him towards the bed.
They are barely at the edge of the mattress before Pollux takes her in his arms and his lips are fiercely on hers.
"Huhhhh… Uhhhhhhh… Hmmm… Mmmmm….. Uggghhhh…"
Pollux's hands are performing a whole new form of signing, as they palm along any bare patch of skin. He undresses her, and she him, both solemnly and sultrily in equal measure.
It's a new language they're speaking, one almost in tongues. At least, Katniss's tongue is the one swimming inside his mouth as she kisses him, and Pollux kisses her back in a way that makes her head spin.
Pollux's hands are shaking as he struggles to unclasp the buttons at her grey blouse, his arms encircling her as he dips burning kisses into Katniss's collarbone and the soft curve of her neck. She sags into him with a sigh.
"P-Pollux…."
Even though he can't see her lips move to read them, she knows he can clearly hear the guttural sounds now forming his name. The shallow breaths that his every touch, every smoldering kiss, is tearing from her. By now, she is panting, and she grinds, rocks her curved buttocks into his erection feverishly. It only arouses them both even more.
His massive hands now grip and pull at the fabric of her grey top, peeling off her shoulders and she shrugs out of the garment.
They let it pool with a rustle at their feet.
Katniss hears her…. her lover make a kind of strangled choking sound once he realizes she isn't wearing a bra. Ladies in Thirteen aren't allowed even that kind of accessory unless it's expressly requested.
Pollux's hand brushes the swell of her bare breast, then retracts back. His fingers sign no words, but the message is clear as day:
Is this all right?
In answer, Katniss seizes his hand and has it firmly cup her breast. Spinning about in his embrace, she boldly presses herself against him, pushing her hips deliberately up.
Yes!
Their lips crash together in a crushing kiss, and when Pollux shyly dares to grip her buttocks through her pants, Katniss responds by hitching her thigh about his torso.
She wants this. She wants him. She tells him as much, after she's divested him of his shirt, by signing her consent into the massive planes of his chest.
I want this. I want you.
Pollux's answering kiss makes her knees go weak until they give out, and Katniss swoons back onto the bed until he is on top of her, straddling her.
She lets her hands roam, memorizing every inch of him, feeling up the muscles in his biceps – toned from long days lugging a camcorder over his shoulder.
Katniss only has a vague idea of what is about to happen. They were taught this in Family Planning classes at school.
She hears the clink of a belt buckle being removed.
He exposes himself to her. Katniss's eyes pop. He may have been castrated in tongue, but she is very impressed to discover that he hasn't been so castrated in…. cock… She's never seen a man's penis before.
She's never touched a man's penis before, either. She's fascinated, almost with childlike wonder, as she tentatively strums her palm up his length and over the tip.
Pollux lets out a strangled hiss through the clenched under bite of his teeth.
Gazing into Pollux's eyes, Katniss lies back and silently spreads her legs for him.
She chokes out a strangled sound when he pushes into her, a sound of pain that soon turns into a sigh of pleasure.
They make love.
Katniss wakes up the next morning in her bed, naked and sweaty and with a burly man in her arms.
It's hunting day, but neither of them bothers to report to the lifts. They don't even leave her apartment.
They have sex again.
The bedsprings creak beneath their jerking bodies, and Katniss shamelessly groans out a plea, imploring Pollux to be quiet as he beds her. He makes a choked-off noise that might be a growl as he thrusts his cock in between her round arse cheeks, and they play The Beast With Two Backs. His size leaves her breathless, gasping. She can feel every upstroke as he pumps his cock into her anus, and then, rolling her lovingly flat on her back, her pussy as he pounds her into the mattress.
Katniss cums against him with a cry of happiness.
Pollux doesn't follow her over the edge in orgasm, though – he only ejaculated once inside her, last night. He continues to fuck her, to get himself off, but his talented upstrokes only succeed in helping her reach completion yet again.
"Ahhhhh….. AHHHHHHHH!... AHHHHHHHH!" Katniss's voice lilts as she orgasms yet again. Dazed, his attentions make her literally sing, as she draws Pollux close, her nails gripping and digging dreamily into the skin along his firm shoulders.
"Ahhhhhh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee! ….. Ahhhhhh, I know at last the secret of it all! …" She's grateful to him for how well he has pleasured her, even if she feels that she hasn't adequately done the same for him in return. The Seam woman in Katniss takes over, determined to pay back what he is owed.
Pollux's lips feast on her lower ones, eating out her pussy as Katniss's svelte legs scrabble for purchase on the blankets. He can't use tongue to probe her folds, so she has to help him reach her climax by touching herself. Showing him what she likes. He seems dejected that he can't pleasure her completely in the way she deserves.
Katniss assuages him (and returns the favor) by using her tongue to draw him deep into her mouth. Her lips massage his balls, and she hungrily licks the upper reaches of his shaft.
Performing oral sex on his cock, she thought she was becoming an expert in new ways of communicating, but this language is an entirely new kind.
And when Pollux kisses her, these kisses are ones that now make her want another. Like the kisses with Peeta in the cave, on the beach, multiplied by infinity.
She thought she was an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.
When Pollux finally spills his seed into her throat, coating it, Katniss greedily gulps down all she can.
She's hung-over, she smells like sex, like someone's fucked her and she enjoyed it, and a bold part of herself realizes she doesn't give a damn.
The Capitol bombs Thirteen again, but this time it is the desperate act of an enemy watching the tide of combat begin to turn against them. What's more, Thirteen is ready for the threat this time.
The change in preparedness doesn't diminish the fear in Thirteen's citizens, however, as they head down to the bomb shelters.
Without prior discussion, Katniss and Pollux commandeer a top bunk together. In the throng of people, never mind the inky blackness, Katniss sees no sign of Peeta or Gale.
The couple listens to the sounds of the night, of copulating. Katniss now eagerly pulls Pollux on top of her and wordlessly spreads her legs for him.
She's surprised and secretly thrilled when he flips them both, so that she is on all fours. Her pulse begins to race.
Pushing the elastic of her grey trousers down over her slim hips, Katniss bares the curved flesh of her buttocks to him in invitation.
Pollux mounts Katniss, his mate, eagerly.
She tenses, feeling Pollux's large and throbbing cock lining up with her entrance. When he thrusts into her anus, in between her cheeks, he takes her from behind fiercely, enough that Katniss nearly melts into the bed.
"Mmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmm…. Ooooooooooooh… Oh – Ohhhhhhhhhh…" Shamelessly and frantically, she humps her ass into Pollux's jerking hips, her butt cheeks making deliciously slapping, squelching sounds as she traps his cock with each thrust.
She squeaks when Pollux reaches around and claps a palm over her mouth to silence her cries. With the other, he weaves his fingers into the chestnut strands of her braid and yanks back, not too painfully but enough to force her head up, and Katniss lets out a happy scream.
"MMMMM! MMMMM-HMMMM!"
The bedsprings creak and groan with their shifting weight as the lovers frantically shag; Katniss just hopes the occupants on the bunk below listening to her and Pollux have sex are not her mother and sister. Oh….. Oh, Snow's Roses, if Mother or Prim heard….!
"Ermmmmm…" Katniss moans, her lashes fluttering as her eyelids swoon shut, her eyes rolling up into the back of her head. Pollux finishes with her, ejaculates inside of her arse, with a manly grunt. Quivering, the beautiful woman whom he has mounted and so viciously taken follows him over the edge by dreamily touching herself until she comes with a breathless sigh, dampness trickling down her splayed thighs.
Katniss collapses out of her plank position and Pollux pins her beneath him when he sags on top of her. Squirming until she has turned about in his arms, Katniss loops her arms about his neck and kisses him deeply, languorously in gratitude.
As far as making love is concerned, Katniss has to concede she finally understands what all the fuss is about.
One by one, the districts fall to the rebels.
Katniss and Pollux tentatively begin to sketch out a possible future together.
He wants to bring her home to meet his brother Castor. She isn't sure whether her mother would allow an Avox to court her. She's pretty sure Prim (who may start to be wondering something is going on) will accept them.
Katniss is taken aback when Pollux muses if a Capitol under Coin would allow Avoxes rights.
Such as the right to marry.
Katniss thinks they are nowhere near such a solemn step. She's always eschewed the thought of Toasting the bread with anyone after what happened to her parents. Still, the thought that Pollux might…. love her enough to…. propose to her…
She's touched.
Her stomach is a jumbled mess.
Katniss is deployed to Two to finish taking the district. The Nut falls.
There are soundproof, private rooms on one level in Thirteen called the conjugals – 'the jugs,' is the lingo for those in the know. It's where couples can go to…. do stuff, and be discreet. When Katniss returns from the front, she finds Pollux has ordered a jug for them to celebrate. A night alone.
She blushes when she finds her old neighbor Greasy Sae is the receptionist overseeing such…. copulations. The wizened old woman appears to see right through them, and gets right to the heart of the matter.
"Don't you see? Only when the fighting stops can you be together."
Katniss and Pollux look at each other shyly.
Let's go talk to your sister, Pollux signs.
With joy, Katniss throws her arms around him.
They kiss.
Pollux guides her by both hands into the silent, sealed 'jug.'
They have sex – as loudly and intensely as they want. Greasy Sae doesn't utter a word when Katniss later leaves, her brown hair mussy and her lips red and kiss-swollen.
The war effort intensifies.
So do Katniss and Pollux's relationship.
He comes into her room every night now, some times to hold her as they sleep, more times to fuck her as she sultrily whimpers beneath him, begging him in sign language and spoken word to go harder, faster…. Faster….
District 13 reaches the gates of the Capitol. Katniss is called up for the final invasion.
Clearing her head to prepare for battle, Katniss begins to examine for the first time what she has been doing. She's forgotten about Peeta, hasn't thought of him in weeks. Dwelling on him now, her stomach and conscience churn as she feels weirdly…. unfaithful somehow.
Pollux is named the cameraman for her Star Squad. In the dark of the hovercraft, he and Katniss hold hands, though they sign no words.
The guilt that Katniss has been feeling surrounding Peeta only compounds when they arrive at camp to find him waiting for them, armed and in battle regalia.
He's been sent to the front.
Katniss wonders if this means he's well. Her heart constricts when she can't immediately assume that he is, just going by his presence here.
Peeta has grown thin since she last saw him, though he is still remarkably strong. Gone is the warmth in his features when he looks at her, and though his stare is not one of distrust, it is still unsure. She sees him notice how she's holding Pollux's hand, and pulls her fingers away too late, her face burning with shame.
Later, after everything goes sideways and they're holed up Tigress's shop, the farewell hug she gives him is saturated with apology.
Out of Peeta's sight, and when Gale's back is turned, Katniss kisses Pollux goodbye.
The war ends. Katniss is acquitted of the murder of President Coin.
When Haymitch comes to collect her, for the journey home to Twelve, she is thrilled to see that Pollux is not only alive, but coming with them, to live as a refugee.
Her happiness quickly flares into anger when Haymitch makes it sound as though Pollux will be in Twelve to serve her. She's astonished, proud and pleased when Pollux clearly states:
I am not there to serve her. I am there to be with her.
Katniss smiles at him gratefully.
She ignores a flummoxed Haymitch glancing between them, not getting the Avox's meaning.
One person who will not be coming with them is Peeta. He is staying behind in the Capitol, to recover under the care of Dr. Aurelius, a noted psychiatrist. Delly Cartwright is looking after 'the Boy' (Haymitch's words) at the moment.
Katniss wrestles with the guilt, even as she silently praises Delly's devotion.
Katniss's mother is also not returning, wracked with the grief over losing her youngest daughter. Gale is staying away for much the same reason; he and Katniss part on cold terms, whatever they once had broken, likely beyond repair.
Katniss moves back into her home in the Victors' Village. No discussion is necessary when Pollux moves in with her. After all, by the height of the war he had practically moved into her apartment in Thirteen.
Months pass. District Twelve rebuilds, and gets an influx of new refugees.
Katniss and Pollux grow back together. The loss of their siblings – he, Castor, she, Prim – allows them to connect at an even more intimate level in their grief. They understand viscerally their partner's pain.
Most nights, either one or both of them will awaken, crying out for their dead sibling. Then hands find each other for comfort, followed by lips, and the soothing ends with Katniss and Pollux making love around choked sobs of grief and gratitude.
Both Avox and Victor are damaged, but they heal the cracks in each other.
One morning, Katniss takes Pollux out to the Meadow to watch the sunrise with her.
Just when the splashes of orange make her think of Peeta, far away in the Capitol, Pollux kisses her.
She returns it.
They make love in the Meadow's tall grasses.
Later still, Katniss takes Pollux out to the lake and shows him her father's hunting cabin.
They are intimate here too, making love feverishly on the dirt floor of the cabin before working off the sweat by skinny-dipping in the lake's cold waters.
Winter comes.
District 12 puts on the Harvest Festival again. Katniss puts on her best dress – her blue dress, handed down from her mother – and Pollux takes her for a dance out on the floor of the rebuilt Hob.
Afterwards, he takes her in a steamier way in their bed back at the Village.
Face in between her breasts, kissing her pebbled nipples, his hands shake from the exertion of their passion as he still manages to sign out:
Will you marry me?
Shocked, she rolls over without answering beyond a murmured 'Good night.'
Spring arrives. The dandelions are in bloom, budding up in the Meadow.
Almost as if on cue, Katniss receives a letter from Peeta.
He's still in therapy with Dr. Aurelius. He writes that he intends to stay in the Capitol for the foreseeable future. There's a lot he needs to work out: the deaths of his brothers and parents, his and Katniss's history in the Games. Delly Cartwright is accompanying him to almost every one of his therapy sessions, and is even offering him a place to stay in the apartment she's subletting.
Reading his words, Katniss suspects from the letter's tone that this is a missive of apology from Peeta. And also goodbye.
After some debate, Katniss shows the letter to Pollux, and tries to explain in halting sign everything that happened between her and the Boy with the Bread. Her lover takes her hands in his own, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles and tells her he understands.
Katniss rides him furiously that night, hard enough that come the next morning, she can barely walk.
Before they drift off to sleep, Pollux asks her again for her hand in marriage.
She mumbles out a No, but it's weak.
The seasons change, another year blurring by.
Katniss hunts. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, then raises geese until he can get his next fix when the train comes due. Having only ever been a servant down in the sewers of the Capitol and later a cameraman, Pollux goes through a soft existential crisis as he tries to figure out what else he is good at. What can give him purpose.
Watching him struggle, Katniss's heart goes out to him.
Make love to me. You're good at that. That's purpose enough.
She means it in a teasing, flirtatious wave, but she's amazed when Pollux proceeds to seduce her in the shower, banging her divinely and then some.
With such a healthy sex life, Katniss has become more and more aware of her body…. and the possibility of a baby. She orders birth control implants from the Capitol, and also manages to fashion condoms from the innards of the game she kills. She becomes so proficient that she eventually sells these condoms in the Hob, saving up quite a nest egg for herself and her partner.
At home, she makes Pollux wear the homemade condoms, though. Dutifully, he accedes to her wishes.
Spring comes around again – their second since returning home.
Widowed Annie Odair sends Katniss and Pollux a photograph of her new baby, Finn, now almost a year old and teething.
That night, Katniss awakens from a night terror in which brown-haired, blue-after-a-rainstorm-eyed babies are torn from her arms at the Reaping.
Pollux holds her and dances along her skin assurances that they'll be OK – they have each other.
Another letter from Peeta arrives. He's much better now, and is starting his own Bakery in the Capitol, and with Delly already signed on to help with the kneading. They're apparently still living together.
Katniss feels a flurry of hope for him.
That summer, she and Pollux cuddle together in the Meadow, listening to the mockingjays. Katniss sings to them and to her lover. Pollux kisses her with wonder and then makes love to her again amidst the tall grasses.
When they finish having sex, Pollux pulls Katniss into straddling his lap.
He clasps two hands together.
Marry me?
Katniss looks at him, studies him.
After much thought, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him.
She says –
"Yes."
They marry in the Meadow, and Katniss can think of no better place to wed Pollux than one where she has spent so much time with him. A place so like the stream on the outskirts of District 8 where she first began to discover her love for him.
Pollux sadly tells his bride-to-be that he has never known his surname. Katniss kisses him and asks him to take her name instead…. as her husband. His happy tears make her heart exult.
She and Pollux both first sign a marriage license in the presence of the District Justice of the Peace, and also Haymitch as witness. He gives Katniss away.
The traditional Toasting is held out in the Meadow. Katniss wears a rented white dress. With flowers woven into her chestnut braid, she solemnly gives her vows.
Pollux pulls her close, and grey eyes full of more assuredness than she has ever felt in her life, Katniss tilts her head and solemnly permits her…. her husband to kiss her.
Gale makes an appearance at their wedding reception and gives the newlyweds his blessing. Katniss takes it in cordially.
Her mother and Annie – both in and fresh off the train from District 4 – lead the congregation in the singing of the traditional wedding song, as Pollux sweeps a laughing Katniss off her feet and carries his bride into their house.
That night, man and wife hold a second, private Toasting just for themselves, which they then consummate on their living room floor.
A few weeks later, Peeta sends Katniss his regrets, repeating his many happy returns from when Katniss had written and invited him before the wedding. He has news of his own: he and Delly are engaged, with a Toasting set for this winter and the future Mrs. Mellark expecting a baby.
Katniss offers her congratulations by way of a telephone call. She's happy for Peeta, and she tells him so. What's more, she means it.
A little part of her heart mends itself at last.
Fall settles over the district.
Katniss decides it is high time she taught her husband (she still gets a rush thinking of him as that) how to hunt.
Before, in the charred woods beyond Thirteen, Pollux only ever watched her, filmed her. But he's never tried his hand at a bow.
Besides, he's still trying to sift through what he's good at. Her Pollux is determined to provide for them, make a livelihood as well as building a life with her. Katniss finds it sweet.
Much like how he taught her how to sign so long ago, Katniss teaches Pollux how to hunt. The lessons don't go nearly as well. But, running his fingers over some splintered bark where his arrow errantly hit a tree, Pollux's blue eyes light up as he gets an idea.
Before Katniss knows it, her husband is kissing her exuberantly on the mouth and racing for their home in the Village. Both bemused and amused, she follows him to their garage, where she finds him tinkering with woodworking.
With his massive yet gentle hands that can touch her with such care as they have sex in bed, Pollux is soon fashioning chairs and oaken tables out of the wood shipped in from the lumberyards of Seven. Sometimes, he rises from their bed early and traipses off for the woods beyond the fence, axe in hand.
His creations blossom into a successful business, run out of a spare shop front left over from the war – one of the few near Town that survived the fire bombings mostly intact.
One evening, when her husband presents her with a new bow he whittled and carved himself, Katniss kisses him soundly.
"I love you!" she whispers into his lips, even as her hands sign the words where they rest against his chest.
The months blur together.
Pollux's woodworking business is booming, as is Katniss's side hustle selling homemade condoms in the Hob.
The Everdeens celebrate their first anniversary as a married couple. Peeta sends them a cake, along with a Polaroid of his and Delly's new baby. Katniss is thrilled that her old friend has found happiness too.
She has never been so happy either.
That night in bed, Pollux asks haltingly if she would ever want a baby with him. Katniss demurs. Though the nightmares are lessening, they're still fresh.
They decide to revisit the issue once the snows melt.
Once she reads the article, buried in the B section of the Capitol newspaper they get by mail, Katniss is unable to put it out of her head.
She muddles over it, and the advanced technology it claims, as she perches on the love-seat, in the reading nook of their sunroom, clad in her blue dress and staring out the window.
When her husband returns from work, she shows him the article. Katniss hovers over their kitchen island as Pollux judiciously reads it.
She bites her lip, wringing her hands.
Would you want to do it? Grow a…. new tongue?
He takes a long time before answering.
I honestly never thought it was possible. That he didn't – that neither of them did – now seems silly in retrospect. The Capitol's expertise is still second to none in most disciplines, especially regenerative technology, even after the war. Beetee Latier is one of the top scientists in the field.
Katniss drifts into the man she loves and strokes his face. With her free hand, she signs:
I don't care if you have a tongue or not. If you can speak or not. You don't need a tongue to kiss me. And you don't need a tongue to tell me that you love me. I love you however you are. She pauses, and then addendums: However you want to be.
She leaves this open-ended, making it clear she'll still have him, whatever he decides. They took each other in every way, when they married.
Pollux keeps long hours for a time after that. Katniss waits up for him.
When he does come home to her, he's quiet – more than he's ever been in the years she has known him.
At last, one morning, up in their room as Katniss is doing laundry, he comes to her and tells her he wants to go through with the procedure.
Pollux has to travel to the Capitol to undergo the operation. Katniss, his wife, devotedly goes with him.
They bunk with Peeta and Delly Mellark, in a spare guest room in the loft of their new bakery. The baby, Peeta's son, is starting to walk and talk. His name is Bran.
Katniss finds herself oddly enchanted by him, in a way she hasn't been with children since when….. Prim was a baby.
Katniss goes with her husband to the hospital the morning of the procedure. She hugs him and kisses him goodbye.
Promise me that, no matter what happens, we'll still be able to do this? she flurries with her hands. Sign? Together?
His kiss is all the Of Course she needs.
The regenerative procedure is tedious, guaranteed to last several days. Peeta and Delly insist Katniss can stay with them as long as she needs.
Katniss visits the hospital every day, asking to see her husband. The doctors are sympathetic in turning her away, saying that Pollux needs to be heavily sedated for much of the procedure. The process of growing back the tongue tissue is laborious, but early signs are hopeful.
It's a better prognosis then she ever got while asking after Peeta, and yet Katniss still experiences near-PTSD in her annoyance.
She finally receives word that the procedure has ended, and Pollux is making a recovery. What isn't made clear is how successful the operation ultimately was. Katniss's concern only spikes when she receives a letter from her Pollux, asking her to return home 'ahead of' him.
It feels more like he is saying 'without' him.
Katniss reluctantly boards the train bound for Twelve.
She weeps the whole way home.
More than a week after her return, a bereft Katniss receives a knock at her door.
When she answers it, she shrinks back, drawing both hands to her mouth in a gasp. Her lips part slightly into an expression dazed and brimming with hope.
As she watches, thunderstruck, her husband, the man she loves, opens his mouth.
And then he speaks.
"Katniss…. it's me!" He takes her hand with a beaming smile.
Katniss shivers when the low, dulcet timbre first reaches her ears. Her husband's voice is as melodious as the rest of him – a deep baritone, rumbling and sexy.
Her lips pursed into an expression that's coyly skeptical, she reaches out a shaking hand and drums her fingers through his red curls, appraising him. Turning her head, she peers deeply into his eyes….
Eyes as blue as a sky after a rainstorm….
Elation breaks like the dawn across Katniss's face.
"It is you!" she cries with joy, touching his cheek.
Pollux beams at her smolderingly and brushes her chestnut bangs out of her face. Slowly, he dips forward. Katniss cranes up towards him.
Their lips meet.
The kiss is as magical as their first, the first night they were alone together in her Thirteen apartment. Fireworks all over again, and Katniss feels her toes curl. She leaps into Pollux's arms and deepens the kiss with tongue.
She gasps when she feels his tongue touch and then twine about hers, locked in a playful grapple that is part battle, part dance.
"Let's make a baby."
She hums it hoarsely. Overjoyed, Pollux carries her off and up the stairs where they celebrate with a round of volcanic sex in their bed.
They play in the Meadow. The little girl with ginger hair and grey eyes, and the little boy with chestnut hair and eyes of post-rainstorm blue.
Katniss nurses her and Pollux's infant son at her breast, watching her husband and children frolic among the dandelions.
The baby ooofs indignantly, coming up out of an unpleasant dream, and she bounces him.
"Oh, sssssh….. Ssssssh…. Ssssssh… Did you have a nightmare? I have nightmares too. Someday, I'll explain it to you. Why they came…. Why they won't ever go away…. But I'll tell you how I survive it. I make a list in my head, of all the good things I've seen someone do. Every little thing I can remember. It's like a game. I do it over and over. Gets a little tedious after all these years, but…. there are much worse Games to play."
Over the Meadow grasses, Katniss's eyes meet those of her husband. After more than fifteen years of marriage, they still have the ability of spouses who have whole, intimate conversations with no words.
She smiles radiantly at him, waving before letting her hand sweep the air in a more intricate pattern:
You still think I'm beautiful?
He answers back silently, though he may as well have shouted it for the district to hear:
Always.