comes down to find Peeta gone (gone to Haymitch's)

realises she's pregnant

Curled against Peeta's warm, muscular chest it is difficult to imagine that I could have been so confused just the day before. His heart beats mere centimetres away from where I lie my head and, as I listen to its rhythmical thudding, I can feel myself drifting to sleep, full of peace and love for the man whose hands wander over my skin in a habitual way that I recognise from the Games, when he used it to check if I was still whole. I feel utterly complete as I allow myself to drift off on his bare chest, the warmth of his skin beneath my cheek.

Peeta kisses me awake when it is time: when I kiss him back and climb out of bed, I can feel his eyes upon my bare skin, drifting across each part of my body not unlike the way his hands had done moments before. But when he follows me, wraps his arms around my waist and turns me for another kiss, I know that the way he looks at me now is a thousand miles away from the way he has ever looked at me before. Love entwines with lust in a way that takes my breath away. I wonder – does he see the same thing in my eyes, too? From the way he smiles, I think he must.

We tear ourselves apart and dress, head downstairs to sit on the only sofa that faces the television set. I do not like this seat and avoid it as often as I can, even in my own home – but tonight it cannot be avoided.

"Should we be nervous?" Peeta wonders out loud as he pulls me to him. "It's not every day your wedding clothes get broadcast to the nation." I smile, but my thoughts run along similar lines. I, however, think not of the nation but of Gale. There isn't time to reply before the news bulletin is over and Caesar is sat with Cinna in the studio I've come to know and hate so much. Peeta's suits take only a moment to see, and his mock outrage at the fact that they've edited all but three of them out and the way that the crowd is clamouring to see my dresses, instead, is comical and laughter soothes my frazzled nerves.

When the dresses are being shown, I consider putting my hands over Peeta's eyes – isn't it tradition that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress before the day? – but he looks so happy, so ecstatic to see the pictures that I can't bring myself to do it. And when he turns to me, smiles, and tells me I look beautiful, it is all I can do not to tear him away and kiss him. I restrain myself, settle for a single peck. He wouldn't let me, anyway. He's transfixed.

And then, when it's over, Peeta lets me kiss him. Lets me bend him back over the arm of the sofa, lets me sit straddling his legs and lean forwards to kiss him, heated, passionate –

"…but don't tune out just yet, ladies and gentleman, because it's time for us to hear from President Snow."

Peeta jumps when I tear myself away from him to stare, suddenly engrossed, at the television. A special announcement from President Snow just so happening to coincide with the announcement of my wedding dress? It doesn't feel right. Peeta strokes my arms, asks me what's wrong. I shush him. Not the time for questions.

The camera flashes to President Snow, smiling in a way that might be charming were it not for his puffy snake lips, his devil's black eyes. I cannot help but stare at them, fixated, as he drones on about the rebellion, the Games. It's old news, so I can drown it out. It's when he comes to the new bit that I sit up straight, exchange a puzzled look with Peeta. The reading of the card? Peeta's never heard of it either, so we sit and listen intently.

And then comes the part that I never would have expected, not in a thousand years.

The first emotion that registers is confusion. What does that mean? The existing pool of victors? It takes Peeta's groan, and for him to pull me close to him and whisper "I love you" into my hair for me to realise what it means.

I am going back into the arena.

The second thing that I am aware of is an overwhelming nausea.

My legs, thankfully, react before my stomach does, and before I can think I am upstairs, kneeling before the toilet bowl as my stomach rages a violent, acidic battle against its contents. I can't think straight. I can't see straight. I remember…

"You did an admirable job, Katniss, but it just wasn't enough. My advice to you now is just to… just to enjoy the time you have left with Peeta."

Of course. Of course he wouldn't be planning on letting me live happily ever after. Of course he wouldn't let us slide out of the public eye quietly, respectfully. He can't let that happen, because while I am alive and well, the threat is still so very real. But he can't just remove me.

He intends to kill me.

In my mind, I am back at the party in his mansion. I can feel his phantom hands in my hair as they were in that bathroom: soft, rose white hands gently braiding, pushing it aside so that the axe can fall clean upon my neck.

I am vaguely aware of a feeling of hurt that Peeta has not come to me, but I allow him this moment of selfishness. To call him selfish feels cruel, inaccurate. After all, was I not thinking purely of myself when I agreed to marry him? When I pretended to be in love with him in the arena? When I didn't tell him what Snow had said?

It comes to me that if I had, we could have been away by now, living in the woods somewhere with not a care in the world apart from where our next meal might come from.

So… one of us will die.

As I try to stand up, I am wracked with another wave of nausea that drives me back to my knees. For a time there's no room to think of anything but the pain in my throat and the tears that burn my eyes. But when it eventually stops, all I can think of is Peeta. How would I feel, coming home without him? The pain that comes when I imagine this is no longer derived from the shame of coming back having killed him that I anticipated during the first Games. This time it comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere I don't quite understand. To live without him would be agony. Unliveable.

Peeta, I think to myself, cannot be allowed to die.

My head – and stomach – now much clearer, I pad downstairs and find myself alone. Confusion clouds my oddly calm mind as I contemplate where Peeta could have gone. To his parents? Surely not: he hardly ever speaks of them, and when he does it's with a bitter look in his eye that tells me not to ask more. I frown. Where would Peeta go, knowing that there's a chance he and I may be forced to go back into the arena together again? He, I am sure of it, will have gone through a similar thought process: despair at the thought of coming home alone; acknowledgement of the fact that if that is not to happen, you cannot come home at all. The realisation of exactly whose help you need to enlist in order to ensure the other's safety.

As this strikes me, I am suddenly at the door, my body having reacted before my mind really had a chance. I know where Peeta has gone.

Peeta has gone to Haymitch.

I mean to tear out of the house and into the neighbouring one, to put an immediate stop to Peeta's desperate little meeting with our undoubtedly drunken neighbour, but by the time I have reached the bottom step another wave of nausea strikes me. There is nothing left in my stomach but still I have to stop, panting, with my hands on my knees.

"Katniss?"

Were I well, I might spin around, demand to know who it is that has caught me off guard, but I am not well. I respond with a dull groan and spit into the snow.

"Let's get you inside."

I know, instantly, whose hands wrap around my waist, and guilt floods me because I didn't recognise my own mother's voice. I hear her murmur, telling a second person – presumably Prim – to get me some water. I am positioned on the sofa. Soft hands stroke my face, push the hair out of my eyes. I respond to her ministrations with a weak smile. "Thank you."

She does not respond. A glass is pressed into my hand and I lift it to my lips with shaking hands, rewarded for my efforts with cool water that soothes my acid-worn throat almost instantly. "Thank you," I whisper again. Prim rubs my back. The silence in the room is so oppressive that I feel hard pressed not to leave – since this would be cruel to both of them, who must be suffering as much as I, I speak instead with a falsely cheery tone that I am certain they can see through immediately. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I keep throwing up."

Prim's voice takes on the same fake jovial tone that I sought to emulate but is tinged with concern. "Something you ate?"

I shake my head. How bizarre it feels to be talking about food when my death warrant has been read out on the evening news. "No, it can't be. I've barely been eating for days. Even the smell of Peeta's cheese buns…" I make a face in a pathetic attempt to make Prim laugh. My only return is a small smile. My mother is frowning at me. I recognise the look from the many times she has dealt with a patient, sitting on our kitchen table back at home. This is the look that comes immediately prior to the inevitable diagnosis and prescription of bed rest, more water, a few pills.

"Katniss… have you been going to the toilet more frequently?"

I share a look with Prim and this time she does giggle: the question is so out of place, so random. "Um… I suppose so…"

"And have you had your period?"

The giggling stops short as we realise exactly what our mother is hinting at. I count in my head, number the days. I do this one, two, three times, refusing to accept the inevitable truth.

Oh, no.

I am pregnant.