Hi Everyone! Many thanks to those of you who have stuck with me throughout this story. I literally thought it was going to be one chapter and now here I am on number 17. Hope you enjoy this one!

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games or any of it's characters. These belong to Suzanne Collins.

Thom and Peeta did a great job of gathering most of the townspeople into the bomb shelter. There wasn't a whole lot of convincing needed since apparently while we were making plans the District 12 Army began making armed rounds. They slipped them in through the far end of our village, little by little, late in the evening. I don't know if the guards here are too cocky or too stupid but either way they ended patrols early. They must have thought that now that Peeta and I are parents and have been seemingly abandoned by the Capital that we'd all follow them like sheep. Not a chance.

I'm sitting outside of the vault, my back up against the wall, while Haymitch helps get everyone settled in their instructed areas. The space filled up quickly, far more quickly than I thought it would but I can't deny how quickly this district has grown. I hold Alexander's sleeping body in my hands and watch his breath rise and fall. I run my finger tip around his chubby cheek and take in the smell of his magnificence. It's late when Peeta finally makes it over to us. He sits next to me and reaches for Alex but I squeeze him tighter and tell him firmly, "no."

He laughs and it's the brightest moment of the day.

I know the exact night that I got pregnant. Peeta and I had been trying for about a year and we were both frustrated. Me more vocally than him, which was ironic considering he was the one that had essentially initiated this whole getting pregnant idea...ironic though not surprising. After all, he is the one who's always been best about putting on a brave face. It was a quiet Saturday night in town and he had been at the bakery all day. I was happy to have the house to myself because there was some seriously neglected cleaning to get done.

You'd think that since most of the rooms in our house are unoccupied it wouldn't be that big of a job. Wrong. Dust settles on everything, in every room, in every crevice. And I don't know what it is about artists in general or if it's just Peeta but oil paint is a real nightmare to clean. It's in the sinks, the carpet; I even find it on the walls. I mean really, how hard is it to clean your brushes before you thrown them about the house? And of course if they aren't cleaned right away they get ruined.

After I cleaned the house top to bottom I took a long bath which I do every night. Only this time when I got out Peeta still wasn't home yet. I resolved myself to get dressed and go see what the holdup was. When I arrived at the bakery he was working at the front counter. I watched him through the glass display case. His hair was a little longer than usual and kept falling into his eyes. He tried, unsuccessfully, to shake it out of his way. His fingers worked slowly and meticulously as he frosted a two tier birthday cake for Greasy Sae's granddaughter. There was going to be a big party the next day for her and the whole town was going to come.

I don't know how long I'd been watching him before he finally saw me. His eyes peered up at me through the shag of his curls and a small smile danced on his lips. I don't know if he smiled because he was pleased to see me. Or maybe because he knew I'd come find him. Either way, the joy emanating from him at the sight of me is still an emotion I long to understand. His eyes flitted back down to the work at hand and he left me to my voyeuristic intrigue. Finally, I pushed through the glass door, the bell above it jingling indicating a new customer has arrived.

"Mrs. Mellark," he said not taking his eyes off his creation.

I came to tell him to come home already. I missed him all day. I was ready to lie down and hold him close to me. I came to tell him that in his absence the vast emptiness of our home is nearly unbearable. But I lost my voice. It's like when you see something so beautiful that you're rendered speechless. You want to yell and laugh and cry all at the same time. You want to share the simplistic beauty with everyone you love but you can't. Because you know that to try to vocalize that beauty would be to destroy it. Some things are better left unsaid. Some things are unworthy of mere words.

This feeling is not an uncommon one, though rare. I see him every day, sometimes he's the only one I see all day. But still, for some reason, there are times when I see him across a room and I can't believe how lucky I am. I watch him squeeze the pale pink icing from its bag. He applies it in perfectly shaped roses around the bottom tier rim with such precision it literally creates a feeling of jealousy in me. I want his fingers to knead my body that way. I want to feel his hands move slowly and meticulously over me.

I'm lucky because he's just applying the last rose before the cake is finished when the overwhelming feeling of want and need take over my mind. He sets the bag of frosting down and I finally cross the bakery to him.

"Good timing. I was just - ," he starts but my lips end his sentence prematurely. I feel his lips stretched into a smile under mine but it doesn't deter the task at hand. He gives in and kisses me back. He lips form to mine and they taste of sweet icing and raw batter. I slip my tongue into his mouth for a fraction of a second and he laughs, pulling away and checking the front window for any spectators.

I lean in again but he stops me, his brow furrowing in confusion at my public advances. He allows me to wrap my arms around his neck and places soft kisses just under his ear. "Take me home," I whisper.

I don't have to ask twice. He puts the cake away for the party, sloppily dumps his used bowls, spoons, measuring cups and whatever else is covered in cake and icing into the sink and walks me outside. He doesn't try to make small talk on the way back. Instead his holds my hand and pulls me through the town quickly.

When we make it to the front door he pulls out his keys to unlock it. I can hardly stand it anymore. I stand in front of him and kiss every surface of his skin that I can get to. His cheeks, his neck, his collar bone, his fingertips. He drops the keys once and I take this chance to kiss his lips. He leans up against me, pushing me into the door and wraps his arms tightly around me no longer able to contain the need he feels for me. We kiss for a long time, hungrily, while our fingers find each other's bodies. My hand slides up the front of his shirt, his up the back of mine. Soft but urgent moans escape my lips until it becomes too much. We have to take this inside. I wiggle away and find the keys on the doormat. I turn from him and towards the door and immediately his lips are on the back of my neck, his hand up the front of my shirt, his tongue sliding along my skin.

When the door finally breaks open we stumble into the house. He already has my shirt above my head before the door is shut. My fingers find his belt buckle and I quickly start to undress him as well. I don't know how we make it up to our bedroom but we do. My body is beyond ready for him but he hesitates. Once I'm fully unclothed, under our sheets, frantically trying to pull him on top of me he holds back. His eyes find mine and he smiles, amused. Or maybe captivated. My chest is rising and falling rapidly as I try to catch my breath. Slowly I regain control, but just as I do, his lips find the hollow of my neck. His fingers dig into my hips and I lose it all over again. I try to reach and caress his body but after a few minutes of him exploring my body I give up the fight. He clearly has his own agenda in mind.

I wrap my legs around his hips the first chance I get but he still makes me wait. His eyes have lost that captivated look and in its place, unadulterated determination. Finally, he slides easily into my eager body and it's both an immense feeling of relief and a colossal rejuvenation of what my body craves. I don't try to be quiet. I say his name, I tell him I love him and when I can't find the words I simply moan into the night.

It's not that this time was very different from other times. It's that the feeling was different. It's like some biological pheromone in me was activated and I knew, more than ever before, that the love that I had for this man could only be expressed in this way. It could only be alive as his body caroused in and out of mine. It could only be expressed by the way our lips refused to let each other's go. It could only be conveyed in the rhythm of our bodies sliding up and down, forward and back, in and out, in and out, in and out over and over again.

And when I finally got to that point of ecstasy, where every nerve ending in my body came alive, where the rising desperation from within starts in the very tip of my toes through my legs into my abdomen, up my spine until my brain gives up complete control to physical sensations, I knew that this was it. This is how babies are made. When our love cannot be physically contained in a word and it fills every cell in my body and every cell in his body where we feel more alive than ever before, this is how babies are made.

"Katniss," Peeta interrupts my thoughts. I had almost forgotten he was sitting next to me. "You're not planning anything stupid are you?"

"Me?" I ask innocently. "Never."

He doesn't laugh now, but only gives me a stern disapproving look.

We hear the commotion across the bomb shelter but can't tell what it's about. Clearly something has happened at the far end door, the door that leads to the last victor house on the tract. I gently hand Alexander to Haymitch and follow Peeta as we move towards the crowd that's gathering. There are shocked reactions but no one seems scared so I slow down as I think I can make out the figure that has just entered the room.

"You're here!" the crowd shouts.

"You came back."

"We knew you'd come back," the voices say in different variations.

Then I know for certain. The crowd parts, Peeta and I break through and there he is. Gale. Peeta continues his path, not stopping at seeing him. I see his arm pull back, his fist already formed, and before I can stop him his right hand connects to the left side of Gale's jaw. The crowd around us yells for Peeta to stop but he has already said his part. He steadies his stance and waits for Gale to fight back, yell, anything.

Gale slowly rises to his feet, rubbing his jaw. He is thoughtful for a moment before shaking his head as if dismissing an idea. The crowd and I wait in anxiety for someone to speak. Finally, it's Gale. He looks at Peeta, straight in the eye, and says all that he can, all the retribution that Peeta deserves. "Fair enough."