A/N: Sorry! I know I said I'd get a chapter up for Christmas, but I underestimated how busy I would be. So here it is.
Also, I forgot to mention in the last chapter, that the part about Katniss not looking directly at Cato but still seeing him like he's the sun is borrowed from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
And thank you so much for the positive reviews! They're very encouraging. Merry Christmas!
xxxxxxxxxxx
One week later she went into labor.
Cato was asleep when they banged on his door to tell him.
32 weeks. He panicked. "It's supposed to be 38!" he yelled.
"It's ok," a nurse reassured him when he reached the medical wing. "She'll be fine. It's not uncommon, and she won't be the first baby born at 32 weeks here. Not by a long shot."
He paced outside of the hallway, listening to them murmuring in her delivery room, wondering what they were saying. Every time someone exited or entered the room he wanted so badly to stop them and ask them what was going on and if everything was ok, but he didn't want to waylay them if they were doing something important. So he continued with his pacing.
Sit down everyone who passed by said to him. Relax. Stop worrying. Eat something.
No he said. No, no and no.
"She's been in there for like eight hours," he complained to Haymitch, who had come to join him.
"Actually it's only been four," Haymitch corrected him. "Relax. Sit down."
"I'm gonna punch the next person who tells me to relax."
"It's gonna be a while," said a guy in scrubs ten minutes later as he exited the room on some errand to get god knew what. "Relax. Have a seat."
Haymitch managed to hold Cato back until the man was out of sight down the hallway, but barely. "What if he's getting something she needs? You don't want to interfere do you?"
It calmed him down immediately.
xxxxxxxxxx
The contractions weren't so bad. They weren't fun, of course, but the epidural helped a lot.
It was the pushing, the endless pushing, that was the worst part. It didn't really hurt too much, but it was exhausting, and the immense amount of pressure was disconcerting.
Push they said over and over again. Push, push. A little harder if you can.
"I AM FUCKING PUSHING! IF I PUSH ANY HARDER I'M GONNA SHIT ALL MY ORGANS OUT!" she roared.
xxxxxxxxxx
"Well there's an interesting visual," Haymitch said when they heard Katniss yelling about shitting her organs out from inside the delivery room. "Don't worry son, if she's pushing then that's probably a good sign, right?"
"Do you know anything about pregnancy or labor?" Cato asked.
"No."
"Then shut up."
xxxxxxxxxx
Just over six hours after they declared her to be officially in labor, Katniss delivered her.
She was tiny-about three and a half pounds-but she was perfect and they said she was in good health considering her early arrival.
Still, they only let Katniss have one brief glance at her, and then they whisked her away.
And in that brief glance, Katniss forgot all about the pain and exhaustion of the last handful of hours and melted like butter.
"She's so beautiful," she whispered, tears of joy running down her cheeks.
"Yes she is," her mother agreed, and smoothed the sweat-soaked strands of hair off her forehead.
xxxxxxxxxx
Cato rushed forward when they held his daughter out to him, but then he saw how tiny she was-she could fit in one of his hands. And so he shrank back. "What if I drop her?" he asked, panicked.
"You won't," said the nurse. "Here. Sit down and put your arms like I have mine. Good."
And then they placed her in the crook of his arm, and as he took a good look at her for the first time, he realized just how much he hadn't known until now.
He had not known that elation and terror could twine themselves together and riot inside of him with such intensity that it was actually painful.
He had not known that it was possible to adore anything or anyone this much, or that "love at first sight" wasn't just a myth, or that a 3lb, 9oz baby girl could wrap a 6'2", 200lb man around her little finger in under a second.
He had not known that he was still capable of shedding tears.
But now he knew all of these things to be true.
And now he understood his place in the world, his purpose for living, his true identity.
He had been called a tribute and a victor and a monster and a revolutionary, but none of these labels mattered. None of them were important.
Father, he knew, was the most important title he would ever bear.
His purpose, they had told him since he was six, was to kill and to win.
But they were wrong. He knew that now. Because his purpose was to protect and to nurture.
xxxxxxxxxx
They saw each other for the first time since their daughter's birth later that day.
They both noted the other's physical appearance. Exhausted (with matching sets of dark circles beneath their eyes, and Cato's hair an absolute mess from all of his nervous tugging), but glowing.
They grinned at each other like idiots.
But they did not touch.
"So names," she finally said. "Did you have any in mind?"
"No. Not really. I don't think I"m very good at names. Did you have any?"
"Well what do you think of Violet?"
He was surprised. It was not a name he would have thought Katniss would have chosen. It must have shown on his face, because "What?" she asked him. "What's wrong with Violet?"
"Nothing. I like it. I just didn't expect you to pick such a girly name."
There was that face. The one where she scrunched her eyebrows together to signal her annoyance. "I am a girl you know. In spite of what everyone thinks, I'm actually pretty feminine in some ways."
"That's not what I meant. I wasn't trying to say...I…am just gonna shut up now. Let's go with Violet."
xxxxxxxxxx
They would have to keep her in the medical unit, they said, for about a month and a half. Until she weighed at least five pounds and could breastfeed.
They fell into a new routine.
Katniss usually spent late morning through early evening with her, holding her and washing her and pumping so much that she told her mother she felt like a cow.
She reveled in motherhood. It came naturally to her, and this, she knew, was what she had been born to do.
Before the games, she had said that she didn't want children. And at the time, she'd been telling the truth. Sort of. She had dreamed of having babies of her own for as long as she could remember. The longing was deep-seated and unshakeable.
But the harsh realities of life in 12 had gotten in the way, and she meant it when she said she wouldn't bring a child into this world.
But then she'd accidentally gotten pregnant, and she had found that the option of aborting the baby was, in fact, not an option for her. And she was safe below ground in 13, and the revolution was almost over, the Capitol and 2 both solidly in the hands of the resistance, and Snow in hiding somewhere, and so she did not regret the birth of her daughter, and she would not have given her up for the world.
As for Cato, he woke at 6 every morning so he could have an hour with Violet before he went to breakfast. He spent his day teaching hand-to-hand combat as usual, and then he wolfed down his dinner and raced through his shower and returned to see his daughter for a few hours before he went to bed.
Katniss was usually there for the first half hour or so of his visit, and that was pretty much the only time they saw each other. They would stand on either side of her incubator as she slept inside of it and talk her over: how much she'd slept, how she'd eaten, if she'd been cranky or calm, the faces she made, what the doctor had said that day about her progress. And then, not wanting to infringe on his time with his daughter after she'd had so many hours with her, Katniss would leave the two of them alone together.
He would pick her up immediately and settle down in the armchair to hold her.
He marveled at her tiny fingers and her soft olive skin and the dark, downy hair on her head.
He smiled when she peered up at him with blue eyes like his, blinking slowly and studying his face intently. He wondered what she thought of him.
He delighted in every yawn and sneeze, and the way she furrowed her brow and huffed-just like Katniss-right before she erupted into annoyed or angry or hungry cries.
He would leave regretfully, his last words to her always "Sweet dreams baby girl, I'll see you in the morning."
And every night as he closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep his soul whispered Violet.
xxxxxxxxxx
The first time he heard Katniss sing to his daughter the world stopped turning on its axis and the force of it almost threw him backwards.
He had heard her sing once before, when he watched the footage of the little girl from 11 dying. But her voice had been shaky then and hardly more than a whisper.
Now it was clear and high and sweet and delicate and if it had been a color it would have been silver and if it had been a feeling it would have been like the first drink of cold water on a hot day.
And he understood exactly what Peeta Mellark had been talking about when he'd told that story about the braids and the Valley Song.
xxxxxxxxxx
The first time she saw Cato holding Violet, she was taken aback.
He held her out in front of him, one hand cupping her head, and he was gazing down at her tenderly and cooing. Something about her being his precious baby girl and about how she needed to eat as much as possible so she could grow big and strong and they could let her out of the medical wing and she could go home with her momma.
This was not the same Cato who had wrapped his hands around her throat on top of the Cornucopia less than two years ago.
And yet this was the same Cato who had wrapped his hands around her throat on top of the Cornucopia less than two years ago.
Her breath stilled itself in her lungs and her blood stilled itself in her veins and her heart stilled itself in her chest.
But between her legs, something stirred.
And for the first time, she felt desire for the father of her child.