Peeta was worried. He was doing his best to hide it from Katniss, but he was all but sure something was wrong with Johanna. The cow had been restless for a couple of days and yesterday he had noticed the sudden swelling of her udders. This morning, there had been mucus about her tail and her springing had become more pronounced. He wished he could stay closer to the barn throughout the day but with all the work there was to do it just wasn't possible.
The animal was on his mind all day as he and Katniss continued the planting and they took turns checking on her. Every time he saw her she appeared to be more and more uncomfortable. By the end of the day the calf still wasn't coming. He grabbed a blanket and headed out to the barn.
"Where are you going?" Katniss asked.
"Johanna has to be getting close" Peeta answered. "I think I should stay with her tonight."
Katniss smiled. "We both should" she agreed picking up some more bedding.
They laid in the hay together, their legs entwined, her head resting beneath his chin.
"Did anyone agree with you?" Katniss asked. "When you decided not to join the army" she clarified. "Did anyone think you were making the right decision?"
Peeta shrugged. "Madge certainly didn't. She wouldn't even come to see me in the hospital. She sent a note through her cousin telling me how embarrassed she was and ending the engagement. My brothers were probably pretty disgusted given that they were both serving at the front. I don't know. I haven't spoken to either of them. As soon as I could ride a horse I took off."
Peeta's hand moved lazily over her shoulders and through her hair. She was glad that he could speak this way with her. That he could be relaxed. They had been talking more and more about the past now that there was less to fear from it.
"I am sure that there were plenty of Yankee sympathizers" Peeta said thoughtfully. "Lots of men never reported. I met quite a few of them when I traveled west and when I worked on the railroad."
Katniss propped herself up on her elbow. "What sorts of men were they?" she asked.
"All kinds" he answered. "Men who were too scared to go. Some who didn't believe in killing. Some I talked to just didn't think we had a chance to win. Others were poor farmers or laborers. Those men didn't take to fighting a war for slaves they didn't have any way."
Katniss ran her fingers over his chest. "I'm starting to think that I'm glad you weren't with the army."
Her words surprised him and he tilted his head to meet her gaze. "It's wouldn't have saved my family" she explained. "I love you Peeta and if you would have gone you might have been killed. I guess what I'm saying is that I loved the life I had before the war…but that was gone no matter what you decided. I've thought a lot about the things you have said and I am still thinking about them. For now I am just going to be content to have you and be happy about it."
He pulled her closer and they snuggled to keep warm the whole night through.
In the morning, Johanna's water sac was present. Peeta took a deep breath. That was a good sign. He washed his hands and winced a little as he reached in to feel the position of the calf. He felt awkward about it even if she was a cow.
"Have you done this before?" Katniss asked.
"Not on my own" he answered. "But I've helped. I know what needs to be done."
Katniss's heart began to beat faster. This would likely happen to her soon enough. Fully pregnant, her time coming with little to no skilled care available if something were to go wrong. It felt prophetic and she had the urge to vomit. She took a few steps out into the cool morning air and began to breathe deeply. She needed to hold it together, to help Peeta with the birthing. She just couldn't shake the awful feelings that began to rise within her.
Hours later Johanna seemed to be no further along. Peeta wiped his sleeve across his brow. He had been pulling for a long time but to no avail. Johanna was miserable and Katniss was getting more and more upset by the minute. He said another prayer. He needed to get this calf out soon.
"Kantiss" he said, louder than he meant to. "Katniss" he repeated in agitation. He turned to see her staring off into space. Time was getting short and she was checking out on him. An hour ago she was beside herself worrying about the birth, now she wasn't even listening.
"Katniss" he yelled. "Listen dammit I need your help here." That seemed to snap her out of it and she gave him her attention. "Go get one of the smaller sets of chains" he barked. He couldn't help it. He was exhausted, shoulder deep in mucus and blood and 90% sure he was fighting a losing battle.
She returned a short time later with the chain. Peeta used all of his might and within a few minutes had enough of the cow pulled out to wrap the chain around the legs. He ordered her to saddle Smokey and she obeyed but she didn't seem to understand the urgency. It was as if she were a woman in a trance. Perhaps it was her way of dealing with the stressful situation. He would have to worry about that later, when this more immediate crisis had passed.
When the horse was ready, Peeta hooked up the chain. He wouldn't wish this on his worst enemy but he was left with little choice. He guided the horse forward and Johanna let out several mournful sounds. The calf finally slipped free but as Peeta had suspected it didn't move at all. He rushed over and stuck his fingers up its nose in an effort to clear the mucus. He turned it over but the eyes remained closed and the chest didn't rise. The poor thing was already gone.
Katniss fell to his side and began to examine it for signs of life. When she got no immediate results she called to it to get up and move, her hands moved with increased speed trying to resuscitate the new life.
"Kat" Peeta said softly. "Kat…honey. It's no use. He's gone."
She turned her head and glared at him. "No Peeta, he just needs help. We need to help him."
Her voice was angry and her eyes held fire in them. Peeta moved to put a hand on her shoulder and she jerked back.
"Katniss" he repeated. "There's nothing we can do."
"Well we have to do something" she said, her voice rising. "It's Johanna's baby. We can't just let him die."
"Listen" he said in concern. "I know it's hard to accept but the calf didn't make it. I'm sure Johanna will be disappointed but we will have to try again."
"Try again?" she practically spit at him. She turned to Johanna and before he realized what she was about she hit the poor cow as hard as she could. The large beast barely glanced at her but alarm bells began going off in Peeta's mind. Something was off here. Something was really wrong with his wife.
"It's your fault" she accused Johanna. "You killed him! Why didn't you take better care of him? He's your baby for God's sake."
She threw herself on the calf as if to protect it but Peeta grabbed her from behind and lifted her into his arms.
"No!" she screamed. "He can't be dead. He can't be. Do something Peeta. Help him."
Peeta tried to still her arms but she fought him like a wild banshee. Her face was streaked with tears. She beat his chest with her fists and continued to scream but the volume of her voice combined with her close proximity caused her words to be lost on him. The desperation and horror reflected in her face frightened him. He did his best to hold her through her rising hysteria.
He called her name again and again but she was lost in a torrent of anguish. Peeta watched his wife, so strong and brave flail against him until her heart and lungs could no longer get enough oxygen to her brain. Her body went limp as she lost consciousness and he gathered her in his arms and carried her to their bed.
His heart was racing too and he had a million thoughts running through his mind but chief among them was that he shouldn't allow her to stay unconscious very long. He removed her hat and loosened the belt around her waist. He grabbed pillows from the head of the bed and propped her legs up.
"Katniss" he called to her. "Katniss" he said again, her panic starting to rub off on him.
When her head tossed to the side and he saw her silver eyes again he took a big sigh of relief. He needed to remain calm. Show strength so that she wouldn't be afraid. Whatever she had just confronted in her mind out there had been no small thing.
Katniss closed her eyes again and a kaleidoscope of suppressed memories assailed her. A hungry girl with a barely swollen belly. The sound of a weak baby cry among the moans of suffering men. The stench of death and cleaning solvents. The feel of a small heartbeat and then…nothing. Nuns in white habits making the sign of the cross.
She stumbled out of bed just in time to reach the wash basin. She bent her head and expelled the horrid feelings from her body. Peeta came over and held her hair until she had wretched the last of her stomach contents into the bowl. He brought a hand to her forehead. She seemed to be free of fever. Her eyes appeared tired and haunted.
He fetched a glass of water and had her take a few sips and rinse her mouth before removing her clothes and returning her to bed. She wasn't well. Not in body or in heart. He didn't trust her to be alone but he had to tend Johanna and take care of the body of the calf before Katniss saw it again. He sat and waited until she slept.
He returned to the barn and quickly fed the animals, paying extra attention to the needs of his exhausted milk cow. He hefted the body of the calf and carried it into the empty stall. He needed to keep it inside or it would attract predators. He would get up early tomorrow and bury it before Katniss came out.
As he worked, he thought through the day's events. How his wife had reacted and the things that must have been going on inside for her to have had such a strong and violent reaction. He examined what he knew of her past. He recounted his own time with her over the last several months. He remembered her joy the day he told her Johanna was pregnant. He measured her sorrow and desperation at the loss of the calf. She had felt ill during the birthing and just now she had been vomiting in the cabin.
When Katniss opened her eyes again she could see that it was dark outside. The wick of a single candle danced with a flickering flame. Peeta sat in a chair beside her. His eyes were filled with love and concern. She looked down to see that their fingers were intertwined. The birthing of the still born calf and her subsequent reactions came rushing back to her and her belly rolled with nausea once again.
Peeta picked up a bucket and offered it to her. She shook her head.
"There's nothing left" she said. Her voice was weak and Peeta sat her up and insisted that she drink a glass of water.
Her eyes held no tears but her expression was pleading. He removed his clothes and joined her. She turned on her side and he spooned her from behind. They were both naked but intercourse was far from his mind. Instinctually, he knew that this skin to skin contact was what she needed.
She breathed deeply and started to relax. A long silence passed but he could feel the rise and fall of her chest and he knew by the pace that she wasn't asleep.
"Kat" he said softly. "I love you and I'm going to take care of you. You…you're pregnant aren't you?"
He heard her breath catch. "Yes" she answered. "I…I think so. It didn't even hit me until today. There has just been so much work to do and then Gale came and we argued and I was so confused and I haven't been paying attention like I should. I've been working so hard, not sleeping enough. Peeta, I am a horrible mother. How could I have been so blind? How could I not know?"
Peeta hushed her self-criticism and stroked her belly. Despite the terrible pain of seeing Katniss suffer today he felt an enormous sense of joy. He was going to be a father. Katniss was pregnant and they were going to have a family.
"When were your last courses?" he asked.
"Over two months ago" she admitted. "I thought I might just be late because of the stress and I am not always regular. Maybe I didn't want to face it because things have been so uncertain between us the last few weeks."
"I'm not uncertain" Peeta said with confidence. "I will do anything for your Kat. Anything for you and our baby. Just tell me what you both need and I will give it. I will get it. If you want to go back to Georgia I will take you. We can stay here, we can live in town. I don't care what happens as long as you and the baby are safe and happy."
She turned and kissed him. "Oh, Peeta" she sighed. "I don't want to leave the farm." She brought his hand to her middle. "This is where our baby should be born. But I will be so much less helpful to you. I hate to saddle you with all of the hardest work."
He laughed a little at this. "You grow a new person and I'll chop the wood. I would take that deal any day."
"This is serious Peeta" she insisted.
He took her hand again. "I managed for three years on my own" he reminded her. "And for a while you can handle the lighter chores. You will still be lots of help to me. Besides, I didn't send for a wife so that you could plant the crops. I want this. I want to have a family with you."
She relaxed in his arms and he was tempted to leave the conversation as it stood. He hated to bring up painful things, especially during such a happy time. But he knew that it needed to be addressed and he feared how her spirit would handle any further suppression.
"Katniss" he said softly, giving her skin a comforting caress. "This isn't the first time is it? I mean, you've been pregnant before, when you were younger. You had a baby?"
She stiffened in his embrace. Her eyes clamped shut and her breathing sped up. He continued to rub her back. He gave her a few minutes. He didn't want to push her.
When her eyes opened again she let out a strangled sob. "Yes" she managed. "Yes, I did and I was a bad mother then too and I…I lost it."
He held her so that she faced him and forced her chin up so that he could look into her eyes. "Listen to me" he insisted and she struggled in his embrace. "Kat, listen. I don't know what happened to your baby but I know that you weren't a bad mother. You are always completely selfless and you love very deeply. I'm sure you did the best that you could."
Her lower lip trembled and tears continued to fall. "Peeta" she squeaked. "I…I didn't lie to you. I didn't try to keep it from you. It hurt so badly that I try never to think about it. Every time that I do it is so overwhelming that I think I convinced myself that it never happened. That it was some horrible dream. But how could I have? What kind of a woman forgets her own baby?"
He pulled her against his chest and kissed her temple. "One who is doing the only thing she can to survive" he told her.
She continued to shed the tears that she had been holding at bay for years and he rocked her in his arms.
"I'm not angry Katniss. Not at all. This isn't like the things we have failed to be honest about before. I saw what happened out there today. I know that this is different. For a long time this has been bigger than you hasn't it? Bigger than what you were able to handle and accept?"
She nodded.
"It's alright love" he soothed. "I'm here now. You aren't alone. I know you will always miss your baby but maybe I can help? We can talk about it when you are ready. You can share some of the pain, let me feel it too. I think we will need to spend some time grieving for the baby lost before we can welcome the one that is coming the way that we should."
"We?" she questioned.
"Yes Katniss, we" he repeated. "We are a family and if the baby had lived it would be mine too."
This struck her as an extremely strange notion, but not an unwelcome one. She imagined the infant she had once held as a toddler, sitting on Peeta's knee. Yes, he was going to be a wonderful father.
"I think I need to talk about it" Katniss decided. "After what happened earlier, it seems there are some things that I need to remember. To get them out in the open so that I don't have all of this trapped inside."
She had to stop several times and take time to cry and wipe her nose, but Peeta listened to every word and for the first time she started to feel like her baby was a real person and not just a gaping hole that existed somewhere in her soul.
"I started to get sick shortly after our house burned" she recalled. "A family from one of the plantations near ours had taken me in. At first they thought I was just heartsick but after a couple of weeks the woman of the house confronted me. She asked me if I was pregnant and I told her that I didn't know. I explained what had happened but she said that a woman couldn't conceive when she was forced. They were already strapped for food and provisions and it was an easy excuse to cast me out."
Peeta snorted in derision at the woman's behavior. "That's crazy" he muttered.
"I know that what she did was cruel" Katniss agreed. "But you don't know how hard the times were. Keeping me and my child was literally bread out of her babies' mouths.
"I didn't mean that" Peeta corrected. "I meant the part about not getting pregnant when a man forces you."
Katniss considered this. "I don't know" she cautioned. "Lots of people say that it is true. I have even overhear some preachers and physicians confirm it."
"So you think that man didn't rape you because you became with child?" he questioned.
"No…I mean he did, but if what they say is true then I must have been in the wrong as well. It is a terrible sin to accept a man's attentions in that way."
"You didn't accept a damn thing" Peeta answered sternly. "Kat, no one understands the mystery of conception but God. What would the preacher or the physician know of what a woman goes through during a forcible rape? Besides, you know of all of the mixed race children on the plantations and what some of our men did. My own father did such things. You knew Cecelia and other freed women. You lived with them. Would all of those women have gone willingly into the slave master's arms?"
Katniss shook her head. Of that she was certain.
"Once I was a pregnant teenage girl carrying a Yankee bastard I had limited job opportunities. No one would have me. I would have married a laborer but there was a shortage of healthy men. Those who could still earn a living could have their pick and you saw what I looked like when I arrived here. I tried really hard to find something that wasn't so physically taxing, but in the end I had to settle for working in the fields. It was the only job available."
Her hand flew to her belly as she recalled that time of her life and grimaced with the pain of remembrance.
"I shared a cabin with an older couple who had lost their farm in the war. They mostly left me to myself, but they didn't go out of their way to help me either. It was a very difficult time. It was the first season after the fighting ended and it seemed like the land had been completely stripped of its bounty. People were still trying to find lost relatives, the refugees were starting to return…but often there was nothing to come home too."
"I still missed my parents and Prim terribly. I cried almost every night. I didn't sleep much and food was scarce. I didn't even start to show until it was almost time for the baby to arrive. Sometimes I would go days without remembering that it even existed."
She looked guilty and Peeta wanted to back in time and come to her rescue. To keep her from experiencing the pain of so much loss and the emotional complications of being the unfortunate survivor.
"The cramping started one night and the woman I lived with took me to the hospital. The nuns weren't thrilled to have me because they were still trying to care for so many sick and wounded. It wasn't chaotic like the days when the big battles were still taking place, but so many people couldn't make it on their own and no one ever came to claim them. But when she explained to them that I had no one they welcomed me to stay. Their eyes were sad when they examined me. I think they knew my baby didn't have a strong chance."
She sniffled a bit, unsure she was ready to discuss what followed.
"My labor progressed slowly. I don't remember it in detail. Just hours of agony and wishing I would die. I wanted to see it though. I so wanted to hold and love my baby. He…he was born alive. They warned me that he was small and struggling, but they propped me up and I got to hold him for a few hours before he died."
"He" Peeta said. "Katniss, you had a son."
"Yes" she agreed. "I had a son." It felt foreign, yet healing to admit it.
"I couldn't forgive myself after that. I just couldn't accept that I hadn't been able to take care of him. He was the only person in the world who needed me. The only person left that I loved and I failed him. I wallowed in it for months. When they released me from the hospital I didn't return to my job. I didn't collect my wages. I just curled up by a tree and waited to die. Then one night a cold rain fell and I thought of how Prim hated the rain. It frightened her. I remembered the sound of my father singing. I pictured my mother sitting at the piano for Sunday service. I knew then that I couldn't give up. I was the one who kept their memory alive."
"I forced myself to walk the long miles to the next plantation looking to hire. I just kept myself moving, coming and going from the fields every day. I pushed all thoughts of my baby out of my mind. I had to. That was the only way I knew how to keep myself alive."
"You were very brave" Peeta told her. "You were strong and courageous then and you still are now."
His hands smoothed over her middle.
"This time will be different" he promised her. "No one can replace the one that you lost. But you aren't alone anymore Kat. You won't have to work in the fields. You can rest whenever you feel poorly. I will take you to the doctor in town when there are concerns and we will have someone come to help with the birth."
He looked thoughtful. "I also need to consult with my bank man and correspond with the title office. We need to get your name put on the farm along with mine and add you to my account. You should inherit them in the event that something should happen to me anyway but I don't want anything to be tied up in court and I certainly don't trust my mother. I want you to know with absolute certainty that you have the means to carry and raise our child well."
He glanced at her and his face lifted in a smile "I will feed you as much as a horse."
She managed a small laugh and brought her mouth to the crook of his neck. She was exhausted and still very frightened but she was also happy. She had a partner this time and she was no longer indigent. This child would have a chance, a very good chance of having a wonderful life. It would certainly be loved and cherished.