Three years passed.

I suppose things got better – my mentoring skills certainly did – but everything still felt the same. I could still feel the President breathing down my neck every step of the way. And I still hadn't brought home a victor.

I had gotten close that year, though. The girl had actually managed to make it out of the Cornucopia Bloodbath, a first since my Games, and she seemed to actually have a chance…that is, until she was tracked and killed by the Careers on the third day.

And so I returned home once the Games had ended, empty-handed, and trying to avoid the parents that surely hated me. Yondrie, on the other hand, seemed in unusually high spirits.

"Oh, Jay, you're home!" she said, practically dancing into my arms. "I missed you so much."

I was too tired to think much of it. "I missed you too," I said before kissing her.

She moved into the kitchen. "Are you hungry, love?"

I wasn't particularly and quite honestly just wanted to sleep and forget all about the past several weeks but I caught a glimpse of what she was cooking and it looked pretty complicated so I agreed. Before long I was talking about the Games once more.

"Those blasted Gamemakers! It's like they want us to fail. If that fog hadn't lifted right then, that girl might still be alive. It aggravates me to no end!"

"Uh huh," she said.

"Don't get me started on the sponsors either. None of them talk to me. None of them! They talk to Ivy from District 7 who hasn't been sober one day in her life but they don't talk to me. Because 12 is just too strange, I guess."

"How disappointing."

"And then there's these so-called "stylists" they now thrust upon us. Why, it was only a few years ago that you just needed a prep team when you went into the Games and now you need a stylist? The one they force me to work with for 12 is just unbelievable, some stuck up creature who believes she's better than me just because she was born in the Capitol. It's her fault our tributes are dying. She never tells me what her strategy or angle is, just because she doesn't like me, so we send out mixed messages. These kids die, Yondrie. They die because of a few fools in the Capitol who refuse to work with me. "

"That's lovely, Jay."

"Yondrie," I said, now completely out of patience, "did you even hear a word I said?"

"Of course I did. You were talking about the Capitol."

"Yondrie!" I said, now becoming angry. "I was talking about the atrocity of those Games! I was talking about how we watch our children die here in 12 because of the ignorance of the Capitol!"

She looked up from her plate, her eyes holding a strange depth. "You're right, I'm sorry. Those poor children, they never get a chance to live." And her face looked mournful, like she was about to cry.

I was getting genuinely concerned. "Yondrie, are you feeling alright?"

She waved her hand. "Of course, of course. But I'm sorry about ignoring you."

"I don't care about you ignoring me, I care about you. You seem a little…different."

"I am a little different," she said and she smiled once more. "Jay, I have something to tell you."

I leaned back, trying to look casual even though by this point I was terrified. "By all means, enlighten me."

"I'm pregnant," she whispered.

I almost fell off the chair at that. "You're…pregnant?" I repeated dumbly as if the concept was absolutely foreign to me.

She laughed. "While I was beginning to suspect that was the case before you left, it wasn't until I went to the doctor that it was confirmed." She clasped my hands. "We're going to have a child, isn't that exciting?"

I swallowed hard. I foolishly hadn't thought about this development, until now. Of course I had heard Yondrie express her want for children and even I myself had wanted children at one point. But everything was different now with President Snow watching my every move. Children, my children, were going to be just another bargaining chip for him; something to contort me however he wished.

And that was even without the problem of my being a victor. I had seen the victors from the earliest Games, married and having children and inevitably having one or two of these children reaped into the Games because it makes such a delicious story. How was I ever going to survive if this unborn one was to be reaped into the Games and I had to train them?

"Aren't you pleased, Jay?" Yondrie said, frowning as she saw my face.

And I knew, even though she wanted me to tell her everything, that now was not the moment to talk about such things. Instead I lifted her up and twirled her around the room.

"Am I pleased? As if I could be anything else!"

And she giggled and we kissed and I forgot all about the problems this child would bring.

But only for a little while.

In those weeks and months that followed I swore I never saw Yondrie happier. She was always smiling or laughing or singing no matter what I found her at. And by the way she so carefully walked and protected this unborn one in her arms, I knew she was going to make a wonderful mother.

I, on the other hand, seemed to be doing worse by the day. My mind couldn't stop worrying no matter what I did. I began to have more frequent nightmares, imagining a child with my eyes and Yondrie's hair who either blended into my previous established nightmares or started completely new ones where they pleaded with me to save them while I watched helplessly from the side. At least none of these nightmares had woken up Yondrie yet. It seemed I had finally learned how to keep from screaming during my dreams and while she knew I still had them, she probably thought they had subsided greatly.

If only.

I tried not to show it. I let her be excited and pick out all of the things we were going to need for the baby, spending practically half my earnings on it. I let her knit enough clothes for three babies of any gender. I had even begrudgingly let my parents visit to fawn over her in place of her dead ones, though I avoided eye contact with my father which negated any sort of conversation he may have wanted to have with me while he was there.

And then the days slowed near the end of winter, like a drop of water about to fall.

The doctor said the baby would come any day by that point. He was probably right, I had never seen Yondrie so wobbly on her feet nor had she complained so often about her back before, and she was not a complainer in the first place.

But I knew it was coming that morning when she suddenly reached out from the sofa she was sitting on and squeezed my hand with impossible strength.

"Yondrie…"

Of course she tried to refute it. "I'm fine, Jay. Really it's just a little…" She let out a yelp of pain.

I jumped to my feet. "We're getting you in bed right now and I'm getting the doctor. I know when a baby's coming."

Apparently being in pain only made her snarkier. "My victor. What would I do without you?"

Waiting was unbearable.

Every time Yondrie let out a yell I wanted to go up there, do whatever had to be done to let this end as soon as possible. But Georgia only shook her head at me.

"It simply isn't done, Jay, dear," she said. "Back in the Capitol, the only man allowed in when a woman is giving birth is the doctor himself."

I rolled my eyes. This was absurd. If I had never been in those damned Games to begin with I'd be the one delivering Yondrie's baby right now, like my father had with me and with every other wizened child they had that never could survive such roughness as the Seam. It's a miracle even I did.

But of course, the other reason I had to be down here instead of up there was because of the cameras. Georgia and the rest of the prep team had been here for almost a month now, awaiting when Yondrie would give birth – though thankfully housed in a different home in the Victors' Village than ours. Apparently things got very boring in the Capitol once the Victor's Tour was over and the next Games hadn't begun.

"Simply everyone wants to know about District 12's first and only victor now becoming a father," Georgia said in glee. "It's so exciting!"

I sighed. Was there nothing left in my life that was my own anymore?

And then I suddenly heard Yondrie give a final cry before I heard another, smaller voice join hers.

A child.

My child!

I jumped to my feet and everyone else quickly did the same.

"Please," I begged them. "You can film whatever you want afterwards but please, please, let me see my child first alone."

I could see the reluctance on their faces and for a moment I thought for sure that they wouldn't agree. But then Georgia smiled.

"Oh, get on with you," she said. "Your family's waiting."

I thanked her and tumbled up the stairs so fast that I almost fell twice.

"Whoa, slow down there," the doctor said, smiling. "They're not going anywhere."

"Yondrie," I said as I caught a glimpse of her. "Are you alright? I'm so sorry I wasn't here, I-"

And I stopped because that's when I saw the child she held, still crying from birth.

"It's a girl," Yondrie said, somehow still looking bright and smiling after hours of labor. "Would you like to hold her?"

I wanted to say that I couldn't, couldn't hold something so fragile and perfect after all the evil I had done in this world but then she was in my arms and I didn't ever want to stop holding her. She looked so much like Yondrie with her little peaked nose and wide mouth but her tufts of dark hair looked exactly like mine.

I frowned at that.

And as soon as my arms reached around her she stopped crying, opening her eyes and looking at me and I couldn't stop thinking how beautiful she was. I knew then that even if President Snow used her against me, if she was somehow reaped into the Games, that I wouldn't trade now or any of the future months and years I was going to have with her. She was mine and Yondrie's and no one was going to snatch her from our hands.

After just a few minutes of rocking her in my arms, her eyes fell heavy and she slept. I leaned in and kissed Yondrie's forehead.

"So," I whispered, "what were you thinking of naming her?"

"If it's alright with you," she said slowly, "I'd like to name her after my favorite flower, a dahlia."

I frowned, but only at the memory of District 3, at what I had been unable to salvage.

"You going to be alright with that, Jay?"

"Yes," I said, smiling. "Dahlia. I think that's the perfect name for her. Little Dahlia," I whispered down to her sleeping face, "better get ready because there's a whole country waiting to meet you."

Dahlia lived up to her name. She was as bright and colorful as the flower she was born to be. Even as a baby and a toddler she had a stubborn will and mind of her own, refusing every direction we gave her. And unlike Yondrie and I, she seemed to thrive on the attention given to her by the Capitol, always waving and smiling to the cameras and answering every question with ease. The Capitol adored her equally; they loved cute things almost as much as they loved blood.

For whatever reason, out of all the people in her life, she took a shine to me. She was always extending her chubby little hands whenever I came into view or speaking my name in her singsong voice when I returned to the house or toddling after me when I had to leave her.

I never knew how to deal with Dahlia. On the one hand, I couldn't have her following me everywhere, especially during the Reapings and afterwards. That was hard to do, when I kissed her forehead and she would say, "Daddy, where are you going?" and "Why can't I come?" and "When are you coming back?" I didn't dare tell her about the Games and what they meant and how I was involved, although I knew that she would inevitably learn about it at school. I wanted to keep her innocence as long as possible.

But on the other hand, she was a stubborn child and usually got her way. So if it was something not related to the Games I usually had her come along with me, holding her hand all the way and carrying her when she fell sleepy. And though it's awful to say, it probably helped my reputation in around the district too. People were less frightened of me what with a small child that always smiled and waved at them tagging close behind me.

The Everdeens certainly thought so. They were distantly related to Yondrie and had pretty much taken over the Hob since she had left. They had been one of the few people to actually speak to me after returning from the Games.

"That child is winning the entire town over for you," Leigh had said to me during Dahlia's first time at the Hob.

I smiled at Dahlia who sat on the counter staring at us studiously. "Yes. She's my little miracle."

Leigh smiled too but there was pain in it. Her and her husband, Jaff, had been married for seven years now and still didn't have any children. It was in debate if they ever would.

Dahlia didn't say anything during our entire conversation but she continued to watch me carefully and about halfway home she said, "Daddy, you're important, aren't you?"

I didn't know what exactly she had heard and decided to play it safe. "What makes you say that, Dahls?"

"Because…" she said, thinking for a moment, "you have to go away sometimes and no one else ever does that. And…and you stand in front of everybody, every year."

I winced. Even if Dahlia didn't understand, she still did have to be there for the Reaping, like everyone else.

"And," she continued, "what that woman said, about the town." She twisted her fingers in her skirt. "That they don't really like you. Because you're important. Because they're jealous. Right?"

I sighed. How was I supposed to answer this? "Dahlia," I began, "what I do is very complicated. Yes, you could say that I am important. But a lot of people around here don't like what I do and they like even less how I got it and they're not jealous, they're just upset. Do you understand?"

She shook her head.

"Of course you don't. Look, you don't need to worry about the town and other people and whether I'm important, okay? It doesn't really matter."

"Okay, Daddy," and she smiled and held my hand. Like she trusted me. Like I could be trusted.

Not everyone who liked Dahlia I welcomed with open arms, though. During the next Reaping, as the stage was being set up and the children were being filed in, I lost sight of Dahlia and for one horrible moment I panicked in the thought she might be trampled or lost. But then I found her, talking to someone who had taken her fancy, someone with a flash of green eyes.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her behind me. "Don't you talk to her!" I hissed to my father, my first words to him in almost six years.

His eyes fell. He had grown old when I hadn't been looking, his hair now streaking silver and extra lines patterning his face. "Jay," he began, his voice growing old too.

"No," I said. "You don't talk to her and you don't talk to me, now get out of my sight!"

He did as I said. I turned to Dahlia.

"Don't talk to that man ever again, do you hear me? Never, ever again!"

I could see that she was about to protest, as she was wont to do, but I shook my head and said in a voice that she wouldn't dare cross, a voice I had used in the arena, "No!"

She didn't fight but she gave me a strange look as if trying to figure out why I was behaving like this.

She didn't ever talk to him again.

A few months later, Yondrie started to become quiet.

"I'm pregnant," she told me, happiness washing over her and I had accepted that this was the way things were going to be.

"I couldn't be happier," I said.

And it was the truth.

District 4 won that year, a first in quite a few years. And so as the Victor's Tour rolled around and the victor, and Mags, came to our district, I invited them over for dinner.

The girl was a quiet one, not in a silent killer sort of way but more in a genuinely shy sort of way. Like me, she seemed to hide from attention as possible. Mags was ever friendly though.

"Is this your daughter?" she asked me. Dahlia stared at her unblinkingly.

I nodded my head. "Dahlia, say hello to Mags. She's a friend."

"Hello," Dahlia said carefully, thinking. "Are you important like my dad is?"

I sighed. "Dahlia…"

But Mags just laughed. "Your father is of incalculable important to the Capitol. As for me, well, let's just say I made your father who he is today."

"Well," I said in jest, "I think you ask far too many questions, Dahlia!" I reached to tickle her and she squealed in delight.

"You didn't mention there was another one on the way," she said as she caught sight of Yondrie.

"I want it to be a boy," Dahlia cut in.

"Oh, really," I said, amused. For some reason I had thought she would want another sister to keep her company. "And why is that?"

"Because girls are boring."

"Now Dahlia," I said, even more amused. "I happen to recall that you are in fact a girl as is, in fact, everyone here except for me and you don't hear me complaining."

"Well everyone here is alright but other girls are boring. I know. All they want to do is play dolls and talk. Boys are way more interesting."

I couldn't stop laughing for a good ten minutes and whenever I saw Dahlia's young what-I'm-perfectly-serious-face, I was sent over the edge again.

After dinner, when Yondrie and the girl victor were clearing the dishes, Mags beckoned me to my study. And of course, Dahlia followed.

"Jay," Mags said, "I need to talk to you about something serious."

"Sure," I said. "Just one second. Dahlia, I told you once. Mags and I are going to talk. Alone."

"But I promise I won't say anything," she said. "I just want to listen. Please, please, please?"

"Dahlia, no!"

But she refused to budge and I was forced to deposit her outside and lock the door. I didn't give in, not when she pounded her little fists nor when she cried. Finally, she gave up and I heard her feet pattering away.

"That child is going to be the death of me," I said. "She's too smart for her own good."

"She's a lot like you, you know," Mags commented.

"No," I said, feeling my anger strike at the comment. "Don't you say that. Don't you ever say that ever again. She is nothing, nothing like me. And I am going to ensure that she never does become like me."

Mags gave me a side glance. "There's nothing wrong with being you. In fact, this is wonderful news. Before, she had absolutely no chance of survival."

I turned away from her, my mind shuddering at the memory, at similar words Mags had spoken to me once upon a time.

"He's going to take her one day," she whispered, barely audible. "They always take the firstborns."

"I know," I said, the first time ever admitting it out loud. "And there's nothing I can do."

"This is what I wanted to talk to you about," she said and I turned back to face her. "We've suffered enough. It's time for us to do something."

I already knew where this was going. "Mags…"

"We need to rebel."

I threw my hands up in the air. "Oh, well, now you've really lost it."

"We could do it, Jay."

"No, we could not."

"But Jay…"

"No."

"We'd need a symbol, someone to be our mouthpiece."

"Mags, NO."

"It has to be you."

"Damn you," I said. "I'm not doing it. Ever. Nothing you can say can make me change my mind."

"Why, Jay?" she said, raising her voice louder than I had ever heard before. "Do you want to stay under the tyranny of the Capitol? Do want the Games to go on? Do you want your child to be reaped?"

"Shh!" I hissed before lowering my voice. "Don't you say that out loud again. I don't want Dahlia hearing."

"Jay…" she said, trying a different tact. "What's going on? Why are you acting so afraid?"

"Well, for one, the kind of rebellion I want for our world is not the one they'd get with me as the figurehead."

"Oh, and why is that?"

"You saw what they did to me in 3. It would be like that but worse. When people see me, all they think of is unspeakable violence. Their jaws would be dripping blood in anticipation of it, with me in ecstasy. Dahlia would grow up in a world filled with violence and death. And the other child, the unborn one, it would associate me with nothing but that. It would be a madhouse, worse than the Capitol ever was."

"It's just like the arena, Jay. You think I enjoyed what I had to do in my Games? No, but I did it anyways to survive."

"Yeah, well, that's where you and I differ," I said, "because I enjoyed every single fucking second of it."

"You have a soul about it. You have a conscience. And if worse comes to worst, you can always lie. Say that the Capitol forced you to take on that persona, it wasn't of your own doing."

"Oh, so now I'm lying," I yelled. "Well, what does that remind me of?"

"Jay, you're throwing this way out of proportion."

"I'm throwing nothing out of proportion! You're the one who wants to force me back into the Games, to twist me into something I'm not for the hundredth time!"

"Well then go ahead and be selfish," she replied back with equal strength. "You just make this all about you and leave your family and the rest of Panem to suffer!"

"Don't you play that card! I'm saving my family by doing nothing. It's the only way I can."

"Why, Jay? What is it that you makes so afraid of rebellion?!"

And then I broke. "Because Snow's going to hurt them if I rebel!"

Silence.

Then, "Why didn't you tell me he threatened you, Jay?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I was terrified of what he'd do if he knew I was telling people. I wasn't sure you'd believe me. I didn't even know if I believed myself. But I know I wouldn't ever let Yondrie be in the hands of that man, not even to free us from this world. I would kill her myself before that happened."

"It's a smaller evil to erase a larger one," Mags said quietly. "It's the Hanging Tree."

There was nothing I could say to that. I knew she was right. Maybe if we did strike now, our world could change, could finally be free. Wasn't I a rebel like my blood? Isn't this what I had dreamed of since my father had told me that story?

"I appreciate your strength, Mags," I said finally, "but my answer is no. And that is not ever going to change."

She didn't ask again. She left with her victor and no one said anything about rebellion ever again.

Except for one.

"I heard what you said," Yondrie confided in me once Dahlia was trundled off to bed and a candle lit between us was all we needed to light the whole house.

I couldn't deny it. "And how much was that?"

"Enough."

We were both silent and I thought she might say something, complain about how I had been keeping secrets from her once more. But she said instead, "I wondered why you were upset about having children. I saw it in your eyes even though you never spoke it. I think I understand now."

I squeezed her hand. "I regret nothing. Dahlia is the best thing that ever happened to me besides you. My family will always come before any other obligation or duty."

And she just nodded her head and said, "Me too," before we kissed in the darkness.

Yondrie's due date coincided with the 31st Hunger Games which at least meant that there would be too much going on for any cameras to come this way. But it also meant my leaving when Yondrie could go into labor at any moment.

"Promise me you'll take things easy," I said. "And if anything happens that's out of the ordinary, you'll tell the doctor immediately."

"Jay, stop worrying. I'm going to be fine. You'll be back before anything drastic happens."

But I didn't stop worrying. And after the usual failure and disappointment of the Games, I came home to find Dahlia jump into my arms with fear on her face.

"Something's very wrong with Mommy," was all she would say.

I found Yondrie lying in bed, moaning in pain and too delirious to even recognize me.

I ran for the doctor as fast as I could.

"It's not good, Jay," he said. "I don't think I can save both your wife and the child."

"You save Yondrie," I said fiercely. "I don't care what you have to do, you save her!"

"No, no, no!" she said, sitting up. "This child has to live, it's going to do great things!"

"Yondrie," I said, trying to get her to lie down, "you have to stop moving before you injure yourself."

But she wouldn't stop no matter what I did.

"Save the child," she begged me. "Save it instead!"

I only looked at the doctor.

"You save Yondrie. No one else."

I was glad when he finally took the bowl of blood away, stripping the room of any signs that the child had ever existed. Yondrie lay exhausted, hair sticking to her forehead. I went to comfort her.

"No," she snarled, jerking from my grasp. "Don't you touch me. Not tonight, Jay. Not tonight."

I was hurt but I could hardly blame her. I left her alone as she wanted.

I checked in on Dahlia to see if she was alright after all that had happened. Asleep, she looked like an angel instead of the rambunctious troublemaker she usually was. At the door creaking, she popped her eyes opened and peered out at me into the dark.

"The baby?" she said hopefully.

I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Dahlia. But the baby…the baby's gone."

"Why?"

I sighed. "It just wasn't meant to be, I suppose."

She blinked at me. "Did it not want to be a part of our family?"

I sat on the bed, pulling her into my lap. "No, Dahls, of course not. It just…it's hard to explain."

"Is Mommy going to be alright?"

"Yes, eventually. But right now she has to rest a lot and that means we'll be doing the work around the house. Alright?"

Any other time she would have protested but this was not just any other time. She nodded her head.

"Okay," I said, pulling her off my lap and tucking her into the covers. "It's time for you to go to sleep now. Everything will be better in the morning." I kissed her forehead and went to the door.

"Daddy," she said as my hand reached the knob, "was it a boy?"

I turned around. She couldn't know everything, never would. But she deserved to have at least this.

"Yes, Dahlia," I said as I closed the door. "It was a boy."