author's note: As promised, here is the second part of Chapter 34! It ended up being a little longer than expected so it's probably for the best that it was split in two! Thank you so much for the wonderful, wonderful reviews. I read and respond to as many as possible and sometimes you get a little hint or two as to what's coming up when I do! So please keep letting me know how you feel about the direction the story is taking. It helps me a lot to know what you are and are not likinging in the story!

Enjoy! oh and there is some lemon-y content ahead ;)

Let me in the wall
You've built around
We can light a match
And burn it down
Let me hold your hand
And dance 'round and 'round the flames
In front of us
Dust to dust

"Dust to Dust" – The Civil Wars

Chapter 34 Part II

When I saw Katniss in the same position she'd been in when I first entered the bedroom, only looking somehow smaller and more vulnerable since I returned, my resolve wavered but just for a moment.

"I'm betting we'll probably find him in the morning passed out down there with the cat asleep on his face." I said after clearing my throat and moved to sit down on my side of the bed where I removed my prosthetic.

I could hear the smile in Katniss voice when she replied, "I'll take that bet."

I stayed where I was, sitting on the edge of the mattress with my back to her, but turned my head just enough that I could see the fuzzy outline of Katniss, She was still leaning back against the pillows with her knees pulled up under her chin.

I took a steadying breath and sat patiently, like a child with a net stalking a beautiful butterfly through a garden; waiting for just the right moment to pounce so that we could continue our discussion from earlier.

"It was the Prim nightmare." She admitted quietly after a time, turning her head to lay her cheek against her knees. Reliving Prim's death in her nightmares was the most frequent symptom of Katniss's post-traumatic stress and the one that always wounded her most deeply.

I nodded slowly but didn't say anything just yet. I knew, based on how frequently I held and calmed her after that particular nightmare, that it couldn't have been the only thing that led to her breakdown. I did however glance once more at my bedside drawer and thought about the potential solution to our problem it held.

"But while the parachutes were exploding and fire was raining down, Prim…turned into Zale." I sensed there was still even more so I stayed quiet and let her continue.

"….and then from Zale…he turned…" I could almost physically feel the shift in the bed as her whole body tensed in preparation for what she was about to say. "…into the little boy I always picture when I think of what our child might look like."

She rushed the rest of her sentence out and this confession is what finally caused me to turn on the bed. I crossed my good right leg under the thigh that was all that remained of my left as I faced Katniss.

"You…uh…you picture what our children would look like?" I asked and couldn't help the astonishment with which I uttered the question.

I barely let myself believe that having children ever even crossed Katniss's mind from time to time, so it was quite a shock to hear that she had done so often enough that there was an image in her head of what one of those children might look like.

I was even more surprised when she raised her head and glared at me, like she was deeply offended.

"Of course I do, Peeta. Just because I was…always a little scared or unsure didn't mean that I never felt the yearning to make a baby with the man I love." She snapped and I suddenly felt sheepish but tried to keep it off my face since I was trying to keep the upper hand in this discussion.

"Well…how the hell would I know that, Kat?" I hissed, trying to be mindful of Zale who was just down the stairs in the living room.

"How would I know that when we never, ever talk about it?" I demanded waving my hands in the air in exasperation and then it was Katniss's turn to look sheepish.

She shifted uncomfortably again and looked down at her fingers which were worrying a corner of our light blue top sheet. I could see in those slate gray eyes that her fight or flight instincts were battling each other for control. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself, knowing that doing so would be best for getting Katniss to continue finally opening up to me about what was holding her back from becoming a mother after all this time.

"I'm sorry about what I said when I woke up…I was just….confused and scared." She said and reached out to hold my hand on my knee where it was resting.

"I told you a long time ago that I wouldn't say never to children ever again and I broke that promise this afternoon," She mumbled biting her bottom lip and looking briefly into my eyes before she cast them back down to our joined hands. "I'm sorry."

I slowly nodded and turned our hands over against my leg so that I could tenderly run my thumb over the back of her hand.

"I know you are. I can see it in your face." I assured her and I felt Katniss relax slightly when she realized I believed what she was saying.

Following my hijacking, it wasn't unusual for me to question even the simplest of things that Katniss said. So for me to believe that she was truly sorry about such a large misstep in trust showed just how far I had come since those first sad and confusing years when we began trying to put ourselves and each other back together.

"It's just that I love you so much." She went on quietly with a little more strength in her voice since she realized I believed her. "In some ways more than I loved my own blood relatives and that's something I'm still kind of getting used to."

Katniss paused a moment to roll her eyes at herself and I had to fight a grin of my own as I realized even she knew how silly that sounded after so many years.

"Which I know is ridiculous since we've been together for so long…" She was beginning to ramble so I smiled softy to let her know that I understood. How could I not? The sun had risen and set on this girl for me since the day I watched her climb bravely onto a chair and sing to an auditorium full of children on our first day of school.

"…but I know it's true. I know that what I feel for you is real because I've never felt anything like it before and sometimes it's so strong that it feels like my heart might explode out of my chest." She whispered and I felt goose bumps spread over my skin like that love she was speaking of was the warmest, coziest blanket I'd ever been wrapped in. She made me feel cherished like no one else had, not even my father.

I wondered briefly if there would ever be a time when I reached the bottom of the deep ocean that contained all the love I had for this woman because when she said things like this, I felt as if I hadn't even felt half the true depth of how much I could love her. Just watching her sleep gave me a feeling similar to one I felt often as a child in the last 3 seconds before the door to the school yard was opened and we were released out into the sunshine to play briefly following our lunch period. It made me want to throw my arms over my head and run screaming joyfully into the unknown. It made me feel free in a way I never could when I was locked behind a door with the red X on the knob, but it was the feeling I held onto desperately with white knuckles when I was.

"It's…it's like my heart is the lake and how I feel about you is the water inside it." She said and then shook her head and looked from side to side around our room as if searching for the right words to explain the metaphor. "…but not on one of those hot summer days when haven't had rain in weeks…it…it's like the lake in the spring when it rains so much that the water floods over the banks and into the forest." She said waving her hands in front of her as if searching for a more eloquent way to express her feelings to me.

Having always been good with words, I found it absolutely adorable and completely endearing to listen to my hunter, my wife, trying to fit these feelings into a format that was old and familiar to her so that she could better understand them herself. Listening to her compare her feelings for me to the one completely private and treasured place she had shared with the first beloved man in her life, her father, threatened to send my already immense love for her bubbling over the rim of my heart.

As this wave of feelings washed over me, I couldn't help reaching out to hook one arm under her legs and the other around her waist, lifting her onto my lap in the middle of the bed.

"That was nice to hear." I murmured against her left ear as she snuggled deep into my arms like she couldn't get close enough to me for her liking. I chuckled softly and reached up with one hand to brush her hair out of her eyes, stroking my fingers through the silky strands.

"So why the worry about a baby, huh?" I asked gently and lowered my chin so that I was able to look down into her eyes.

"We love each other, we have a great, quiet life here…minus the occasional drunken, profanity laden rant from Haymitch…" I teased and Katniss snorted a laugh against my chest. "We want for nothing, we eat 3 meals a day and we never have to worry about a child's name going into the reaping ball. Ever."

"So again, Katniss," I said pulling back to look down into her eyes as I used one finger to tilt her chin up. "What's still holding you back?"

"I don't know…" She sighed and sat up a little in my arms.

"I guess I just worry that with how much I already love you…that maybe I won't have enough room left in my heart for children…" She whispered as if it were some horrible secret that should never be uttered aloud.

I gripped her chin at its point between 3 fingers a little harder and shook my head.

"Damnit, Katniss!" I growled and glared into her suddenly wide, frightened eyes. "How do you still not see it that you…you have so much room in your heart for those children?"

"When are you going to realize that it's because you have one of the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever known that I know? You started taking care of your mother and sister at 11 years old; you volunteered for Prim in the reaping; you kept me alive in the Games. You felt the pain of every kid you saw die in the arena, even the ones you killed yourself." I said emphatically as I continued to hold her chin so that she couldn't look away from me.

I could tell that she was ashamed but also that she still didn't see in herself what I and so many others, shit, a whole country had seen, from that first brave act of love when she took her little sister's place at the reaping. How could she for a second believe that she wouldn't love our children just as fiercely and protectively?

"Because I've tried to understand, baby, I have." I said more softly. "I've thought long and hard trying to figure out what could still possibly have you so scared about having a child and there's only one thing that I can come up with. Only one thing that my brave girl has ever been afraid of," I whispered and held Katniss's gaze for a long time.

By the way she was staring steadily back at me, I had a feeling Katniss already knew what I was going to say. Instead of saying it, I continued to hold her close with one arm and with the other leaned over and reached into my bedside table.

I carefully pulled out a flat sheet of paper like the ones from our original memory book. Actually, it was one of the pages from our memory book.

Written, copied, bound and sold with a promise from the government that all proceeds from the sales would go to the families of those who died fighting on both sides of the rebellion, our memory book had been an enormous hit in Panem. It sold so many copies that at one time it was estimated that every home in the country had at least 2 copies on their bookshelves, if not more.

Before it was published though, Katniss and I had a pretty loud go around about whether to include Prim in the book. We had added all of the friends, family, fellow soldiers and past victors and tributes from the Games that we could think of in the book, but Katniss had steadfastly refused to add Prim's pages.

It was as if memorializing her in that book meant to Katniss that she finally had to accept the full sorrow and blame that she assigned herself with for having lost the person whose life she had essentially traded her own for when she took her place in the Hunger Games. To her, it seemed to mean that the spark that ignited with that handful of berries had lit the fire that killed the person she had loved most in the world.

I supposed that in Katniss's mind, if she couldn't protect Prim, even doing everything she assumed was right to ensure her safety, then how could she possibly keep safe the new and helpless life of a child?

I placed the overturned page in Katniss's lap and she took a deep breath before she flipped it over. On the other side was a sketch of Prim with her face pressed up against the bakery window like I had seen her time and time again when Katniss would indulgently stop to let her admire the cakes, most of which I had iced myself. She looked so happy despite a life without her father and with a broken-hearted mother and I felt a suddenly desperate need for Katniss to know why.

"Do you see that smile?" I asked as Katniss ran her fingers over Prim's braids in the picture as if they were real. She nodded slowly, like she was in some sort of trance and I saw just one tear race down the left side of her face before I went on.

"That smile is there because of you, Katniss." I whispered and nodded toward the picture in her lap. "Let's face it; you lived in pretty deplorable conditions in the Seam, you were half-starved most of the time, had a dead father that she probably barely even could remember and a mother who, for a time, could barely care for herself much less you and Prim. But in spite of all of that, you worked tirelessly to keep the three of you fed, bought a half-dead little goat as a birthday present because you loved Prim so much, despite what you might say about this master plan you had for selling the goat's milk and cheese, and you were fully prepared without a moment's hesitation to die in her place."

Katniss reached up to quietly wipe the tears from her eyes and I pulled her closer in my arms.

"You may have loved Prim more than anything, Kat, but I don't think you even realize how much Prim loved you." I said and reached out to lift the picture from her lap, shaking it once gently to make my point.

"That smile she had on her face whenever you let her stop to look in the window of the bakery, that's the smile of someone who is being taken care of. That's the smile of someone who knows they are loved unconditionally." I insisted and Katniss turned her head to look up at me with teary eyes.

"How could you ever think that you wouldn't make a good parent when you could put that smile on Prim's face during the hardest time of your lives up to that point?" I whispered and Katniss's tears spilled over once again.

"That's what parents do Katniss. They do the best they can and so that their children will have a better life than they did. With what we did in the Games, what you did for the rebellion, we've already ensured that our kids will have a better life than we did." I said feeling my throat tighten with the strong emotions I always felt when marveling the strength of my wife and how lucky I was that she was mine.

"We gave them hope." I said and tearfully smiled at her. "And you know how dangerous President Snow thought that was."

Pausing, I looked toward the window where I could hear parents calling laughing children in from outside to get to bed. Then I turned my gaze to our bedroom door where the buzz of voices from the television sounded from the room where the child of another pair of Hunger Games's victors was snuggled up, well fed and happy on our couch. I huffed out a laugh and tilted Katniss's chin up so that I could kiss her softly.

"How right he turned out to be." I whispered against her lips and Katniss's arms came slowly up around my neck as she began to kiss me back.

"You really think we can do this?" She asked quietly when we finally pulled apart. I nodded as she set the picture of Prim aside so gently you would think it was made of glass and then moved to straddle my thighs. She wiped the tears from her eyes and stared so intensely into mine I felt like she was seeing straight into my soul.

"Of course I do, Katniss." I said with a lopsided smile and gestured with my chin at a large painting that was hanging on the wall above our bed along with about a dozen other smaller canvases. It was of the two of us walking through the meadow that I had done the year before, with the surrounding smaller paintings of us doing some of our other favorite activities together: sitting on the porch swing, swimming in the lake, gardening, and of course, baking.

"Do you know that when I look at these paintings of us…" I said and she looked above my head over the bed at the collection I was talking about. "Even when I'm hanging them up around the house, they never feel like they're finished to me."

I leaned forward to kiss her cheek then her neck, then between her collar bones feather light.

"Every other type of painting I've done feels complete when I put my brush down at the end, but not these…" I said and shook my head as she dropped her gaze back to mine. "They don't feel finished because my children aren't in them. Our children aren't in them. My father, he told me once that you shouldn't have kids until you can't stand not to. And that's how I know that I'm ready to be a father."

I turned my head to the side and looked up at those paintings again and then back to my wife.

"Katniss…" I said feeling tears burning behind my eyes again. "I can't stand not to anymore."

This time, Katniss reached up to brush the tears from my face. She took a deep, steadying breath and rested her forehead to mine.

"Okay." She said so softly that I probably wouldn't have heard her if I wasn't intently listening for even the slightest change in her breathing to tell me how she felt about what I had just admitted to her.

I pulled back abruptly and gently grabbed both sides of her face so that I could look into her eyes. The look on my face must have been one she'd never seen before because laughter immediately bubbled out of Katniss and what I took for happy tears fell from her eyes.

"Did…did you just say 'okay'?" I asked carefully, trying to contain my excitement because I not only needed to hear it, but needed to see her lips move as she uttered the word as well.

Katniss laughed again and bit her bottom lip as she nodded.

"I said 'okay'." She assured me and that feeling of standing at the door to the school yard wound up inside me all the way from my toes.

I opened and closed my mouth a few times but for once, I was speechless. Unable to find any words to fully articulate how happy she made me, I flipped Katniss to her back, smiling sweetly when she screeched and I lowered myself on top of her and kissed all over her face and neck making her laugh and squirm.

When Katniss's hands fell to my chest and she pushed me back gently to look up into my face, I looked back down at her with what I hoped was an appropriate level of adoration and respect. She was, after all, the one who would have to go through all of the physical changes and pain that I knew would come with carrying and giving birth to my child.

"What, you're not going to spin me around the room?" She teased and I shook my head.

I settled my forearms along either side of her head and stroked my thumbs over her temples.

"Nah, I already took my leg off…" I grinned and leaned in to kiss first one then the other eye softly.

"That probably wouldn't go well." I murmured as my lips slid to hers and we kissed deeply.

"I love you so much, Kat." I whispered breathlessly between kisses and then caught her bottom lip between my teeth lightly and then slid my tongue out to soothe the bite.

"I love you too, Peet." She gasped and raised her hips to mine. "So much."

She grunted and I reached down with one hand and slid it up one of her thighs under the light nightgown she was wearing.

"Mmm…." I said making a noise of surprise when my hand reached and caressed her bare hip. "…agreeing to have kids and you aren't wearing underwear? This is the best night ever."

I sighed happily and Katniss laughed and reached down to run her thumbs just under the elastic band of my shorts right above my ass.

"I know," She said and then gasped when I trailed my kisses down her neck and chest to between the valley of her breasts I had admired when I first left the bathroom.

"How awesome am I?" She joked and I pulled back from kissing my way across her heated skin to smile shyly at her.

"The awesome-est." I grinned and Katniss laughed freely and slid her hands around to my front.

She reached a hand into my shorts to stroke up and down my shaft enthusiastically and I groaned and arched my back into her touch, pressing her body deeper into the mattress as I did so and throwing back my head.

She used her other hand to stroke from just below my navel up to my chest and ran it back and forth across the tight muscles there. I pushed the front of her nightgown swiftly up to just below her breasts and was settling my hips between her open legs when I stopped suddenly and waited until Katniss's own eyes fluttered open and her hand beneath my shorts stilled.

"What? What's wrong?" She whispered releasing me and I worked to control my breathing before I answered.

I could barely remember my name at that moment so I was finding it even more difficult to remember when the last time Katniss got her birth control shot was.

"Are…is this…are we trying now?" I asked trying not to sound panicky since I was the one who pushed the topic in the first place that evening.

It was Katniss's turn to smile shyly and she shook her head.

"I just got my shot last week so I guess we'll have 3 months to practice before…before we start trying for a baby." She said and I was sure I heard a hint of excitement in her voice as she said it.

A slow, mischievous smile crept to my lips and I dropped my hips to press my straining erection into the warmth and wetness I could already feel between her legs.

"Practice huh?" I grinned and bent down to kiss her as I ground my hips into hers, eliciting all manner of wonderfully needy sounds from my wife.

"I like practice…" I growled against her lips.

Katniss slid one foot up the calf of my right leg and looped her other leg around my waist. She reached down between us and pushed the front of my shorts down, freeing my erection and we both gasped as my heated skin met her warmth and slid through it a few times collecting the wetness there.

"It'll be just like training for the Quarter Quell but without jumping jacks." I teased.

Katniss groaned at my bad joke and pinched my hip gently to remind me how much she disliked it when I made light of all we'd been through. I told her once when she scolded me for it that if we didn't laugh, we'd cry and I preferred laughing.

"Well, maybe some jumping jacks…" I mumbled against her throat and Katniss groaned again.

"Peeta Mellark, you shut up and make love to me before I have time to think about the fact that there's an eleven-year-old boy in this house that could hear us." She moaned and raised her hips to mine again, forcing the head of my penis just inside and making us both grunt.

"Yes, ma'am." I smiled and pulled back from her just enough to push my shorts down and off and then say up against Katniss's pillows at the headboard and gestured for her to climb onto me.

She took my hands, knitting her fingers of each hand with mine. I tried to keep my eyes open so that I could watch my shaft disappear into her beneath the hem of the nightgown she was still wearing. When she flexed her inner muscles purposely between each inch she accepted into her body I couldn't help my head falling back against the pillows and biting my bottom lip to keep from crying out.

"Shit, Katniss…" I grunted and released her hands in favor of tightly gripping her hips once I was completely inside of her.

I raised my head to look at her and her eyes were shining with wanton desire as she placed her hands on my shoulders and slowly began to raise and lower her hips, only speeding up slightly every 10 thrusts or so and driving me completely wild with need.

"Shhh…" she whispered and squeezed my shoulders hard, probably trying to stop herself from making too much noise.

"Then go faster, I'm dying here…" I grunted with a chuckle as I tried to raise my hips off of the bed in time with the rocking back and forth on me she had begun a few thrusts before.

"Yes, sir." She whispered and moved her arms around my neck and slid closer to me so that we were almost belly to belly and I couldn't help moving one hand from her hip across her abdomen where our child would soon hopefully be growing.

Thinking of this only seemed to fuel my need and I grabbed her hips hard in each hand, forcing her forward even more as she continued to straddle my hips with her knees on the mattress beside them. It changed the angle of my penetration enough that I was not only driving straight up into her g-spot, but with each time I pulled back and readied to thrust, the top of my shaft rubbed straight over her clit making her hips buck involuntarily into mine harder and harder.

"Peeta!" She cried out into the pillow beside my head and I could feel the sweat from my hairline trickling down into my sideburns and then off into her hair which was beginning to stick to my face. When her hands threaded through the hair on the back of my head, gripping handfuls of the wet, shaggy strands, I was a goner.

I pressed my mouth to her shoulder and groaned loudly as I thrust twice more up into her and felt my control slip away.

Katniss sensed my impending orgasm and pressed her hips down into mine just as hard. I emptied myself into her and felt her inner muscles clamping rhythmically around me with her own release.

Ten minutes later, we were still laying how we'd finished, with Katniss straddling my lap still in her nightgown and me with my arms laying useless at my sides as she breathed softly against my neck where here head was turned into me. I was just starting to get uncomfortable, still inside of her while almost completely soft, and was about to ask her to move over so we could snuggle into the bed together when we heard quick footsteps rushing up the stairs to the second floor where we were.

I froze and felt Katniss stiffen too as we listened to the bathroom door open and slam closed quickly followed by the rather obvious sound of Zale vomiting up everything he'd eaten that day based on the sound of it.

Katniss pulled back from where her head was resting on my shoulder and I couldn't help the silent laughter that shook its way out of me in response to the absolutely disgusted look on her face.

"Well…that was nice while it lasted." I said sarcastically when I had pulled myself together and Katniss climbed off of me gingerly.

"Yeah…I'm not so good with puke…" she said trying to straighten out her hair and smoothing the creases in her nightgown from where it had been bunched beneath her breasts during sex.

"I've got him." I said reaching for my shorts where they lay in the middle of the bed and pulling them back on.

"Reminds me of the time I took care of Haymitch on the train to the Capitol." I said with a small smile and Katniss chuckled as she discreetly pulled a wet cloth from the little box of them she kept on her night table and started to clean herself with her legs over her side of the bed and her back to me.

"At least Zale's puke won't smell like booze. A least, it better not." She mumbled and I chuckled back as I put on my prosthetic and pulled a t-shirt over my head as I stood from the bed.

Katniss glanced over her shoulder and when she saw me lean over the bed with both hands flat on the mattress, she turned sideways and reached up to kiss me once softly on the lips.

"Thanks, that was wonderful." She whispered and we heard another horrible retching sound just as my lips touched hers for another kiss.

We both grimaced and laughed softly and I pecked her quickly on the lips to thank her as well before I hurried out the door and across the hall to the bathroom.

I looked behind me to make sure my bedroom door was closed before I knocked on the bathroom door and quietly asked Zale if he was alright.

"Uh….yeah…I think so…" he stammered and flushed the toilet. The tank had barely begun to fill again when I heard more retching and decided I'd given the kid enough space.

I pushed the door open gently and felt a pang in my heart when I saw Zale kneeling in front of the toilet, one hand on his stomach over the t-shirt he was wearing and the other on the edge of the toilet bowl to keep him upright.

"What's the matter, bud? You got a little bit of a stomach bug?" I asked grabbing a washcloth from the cabinet over the sink and sticking it under the faucet with cool water running.

I tried to think back over the course of the day trying to decide if I had noticed him looking pale or sweaty at any point in the day but he'd seemed fine. How he ate at dinner proved that much.

"Umm…well, not exactly." He mumbled and I could see tears in the corners of his eyes. I wasn't sure if they were from the force of getting sick or from the pain in his stomach.

After I'd wrung out the washcloth so that it was only damp, I went to sit on the edge of the bathtub next to where Zale was leaning and folded it gently over the back of his neck.

"Not exactly?" I asked as he flushed again and sat back on his heels with both hands on the edge of the toilet bowl and looked down at the floor. "Think that's it?" I asked and Zale nodded and dropped tiredly to his backside on the bathroom rug.

I guided him over to sit with his back against my legs and he dropped his head back onto my knees with a groan. "I think I ate too much junk." He admitted as I opened the wet cloth and gently wiped his face to clean him up, waiting for him to elaborate on the 'too much junk'.

Zale's eyes fell shut and he continued to hold his stomach. "I may have had a snack or…10 after you went to bed." He said quietly and suddenly, a pair of sea green eyes were looking upside down at me. Even at that angle I could tell he was embarassed.

I managed not to laugh at him but couldn't keep the smile off my face at what I deemed to be the well-earned natural consequences of stuffing his face late at night.

"What the hell did you eat?" I asked glancing into the toilet briefly and Zale held his stomach again and moaned.

"A bunch of those big chocolate chip cookies in the jar on the kitchen counter." He whispered as I continued to gently wipe his face with the cloth.

I raised my eyebrows and gave a low whistle. "You mean the chocolate chocolate chips?" I asked and Zale started to nod before he dove to his knees again and emptied what little must have been remaining in his stomach into the toilet bowl.

I felt for the kid. I really did. There had been a time or two when I was very young that I had stuffed myself with sweets from the bakery without my parents' permission (which I wouldn't have received anyway because the 'good stuff' was strictly forbidden and reserved only for sale to bakery customers) and done my share of hugging the toilet. Luckily, the few times it happened my father was the one who came to check on me and promised he wouldn't tell my mother.

I rubbed Zale's back lightly to let him know I was there just like my father had done to me when I was sick. Sometimes, like that moment with Zale, the pain of losing my family was almost suffocating and I had to stomp all of the pain down to be dealt with later.

I looked up at the door as it opened slowly and Katniss stuck her head in around the door. She had pulled on a light summer robe over her nightgown and looked extremely concerned about Zale.

"Need any help?" She asked resting her head against the edge of the door gently and smiling sadly at Zale. By this point, Zale was so exhausted from being sick that he was barely able to crawl to me before he fell forward into my arms and curled up in a ball holding his stomach.

I knew how I felt when I was sick to my stomach so I really felt for the poor guy. All I wanted when I didn't feel well was for someone to hold me and take care of me. To tell me I was going to be alright and make me believe it.

I wasn't used to taking care of anyone when they were sick except for Katniss and she was always pretty self-sufficient, even when laid up with a bad cold or stomach flu. There was something about caring for Zale while he was sick that made me feel good. Not good about him being sick, but that together, Katniss and I would be able to provide him with enough comfort and care that he felt safe to let us do so.

I looked up at Katniss and mouthed 'cookies' as I rubbed Zale's back and he continued to moan and groan from the pain in his stomach. Katniss rolled her eyes because she knew Zale couldn't see her face and walked slowly over to put down the lid on the toilet and flushed it again before she sat down on top of it.

"I'm sorry…" Zale whimpered and I knew he must have been completely embarassed for having thrown up in front of us and a little bit for stuffing himself full of cookies like he had.

"Hey, it's okay…"Katniss whispered and reached out to stroke the back of his head that was resting against my shoulder. "Let's just get you to bed so you can rest." She said nodding for me to pick him up and I slowly lifted Zale from the floor with very little protest from him.

He turned his face into my chest so that he didn't have to look at either of us for the walk to his bedroom and I stepped carefully around Katniss as I headed out the bathroom door and down the hall to his room. Katniss stayed behind for a moment and I smiled appreciatively when she appeared in the bedroom doorway with a small basin to place by his bed in case he needed to be sick again and a fresh washcloth to place on his head.

"I'm really sorry." Zale said again and tried to sit up in the bed. I gently pushed him back onto the pillows and he settled in with a deep sigh and closed his eyes.

Katniss sat down on one side of the bed and I sat gently on the other to keep an eye on him for a few more minutes, mostly to make sure he wasn't going to throw up all over one of our guest rooms.

I watched as Katniss handed him a cup of water from the bedside table and told him to sip it slowly as she wiped his face with the new washcloth. Zale put the cup aside but leaned in to Katniss's touch, stretching his neck out so that she could run the cool cloth behind his ears and around to the back of his neck to try and settle him down for the night.

"So cookies, huh?" She asked with a little smile and Zale opened his eyes to give Katniss a look that said equal parts 'don't start' and 'this is the most mortifying moment of my life'.

"Oh, take it easy," Katniss soothed and stroked her fingers through Zale's hair on top of his head, making him slump over with his head on her shoulder. "I won't tease you…much." She smirked and Zale groaned softly into her neck.

It stood to reason that feeling as bad as he did, Zale would look to Katniss for motherly care since he'd only grown up with a mother. As I watched him seek her comfort, that warm sensation I'd felt when Katniss first said okay to children spread from the middle of my body out to the tips of my fingers and toes. By the look Katniss gave me back, she must have known what I was thinking.

She didn't hesitate to nuzzle the soft waves of coppery hair on top of his head with her nose as she pulled him close into her side and rubbed his back with her other hand. Zale slid down so that he was lying with his head in Katniss's lap and closed his eyes with a heavy sigh.

"Shhh…rest." She whispered and continued to stroke her fingers through his hair. She lightly scratched his scalp as Zale curled his legs up to his stomach under the covers and wrapped his arms around Katniss's waist tightly.

I sat still on the other side of the bed and watched them quietly, smiling softly at Katniss and then smiling wider when she pouted out her bottom lip and cast her eyes down at the boy cuddled up in her lap in an 'isn't he so sweet?' way. I nodded back to her and looked dow at Zale who was staring straight ahead at the windows from where he lay on Katniss's lap.

Slowly, as she continued to methodically rub his back and scratch his head, Zale began to drift off to sleep.

I watched Katniss watching Zale and was surprised to see the same look pass over her face as I'm sure had passed over mine that afternoon when Zale told me I would make a good father. It was in that moment that I knew Katniss may not have been as ready to be a mother as I was to be a father, but she was certainly more ready than she seemed to think.

"Could you sing to me?" Zale said suddenly, startling both Katniss and I after he hadn't said a word in almost 5 minutes.

It didn't surprise me at all to hear Zale ask Katniss to sing him to sleep. She had done so often over the many visits we'd had with with he and Annie over the years and Zale fell immediately under the same spell her singing cast on anyone else who heard it. We used to joke when he was a wild toddler that the sound calmed the savage beast within him and Annie was always very appreciative of Katniss's singing skills when it was time to put Zale to bed.

In fact, Zale was the only person for whom Katniss had ever recorded her voice. When what Annie refered to as 'the terrible two's' hit, it was apparently an exhausting nightly process to get him into bed and then even moreso to get him to spend the whole night there once he was down.

She remembered that Zale had often fallen asleep to Katniss singing to him and called one night begging Katniss to sing to him over the phone to calm him down. It worked like a charm of course, and so Katniss had agreed to record a few songs for her and sent them off to District 4 immediately.

As I pulled myself out of the memory of that day and back into the bedroom where Zale was still curled up in Katniss's lap, it was obvious her talents were still not wasted on him. Zale was fast asleep as Katniss sang the last few lines of a quiet lullaby.

"See? You're a natural." I whispered as Katniss carefully lifted Zale's head from her lap and guided it to the pillows. Zale yawned and curled up on his side, his arms going protectively around his middle indicating that he likely still wasn't feeling very well.

"Thanks." Katniss said shyly and lifted the small basin up for me to see and then set it on the bedside table in case Zale needed it later in the night. I nodded silently and set the cool washcloth on the back of his neck, planning to leave it there since it was only damp by that point.

I brushed back his hair myself and leaned down to kiss the top of his head like I knew he wouldn't allow if he was conscious. It was just so hard not to look upon him as that baby we first met in the Capitol on the first anniversary of the rebel victory. I wondered fleetingly if I would feel the same way about my own children one day, always picturing them as tiny, helpless infants no matter how old they got.

When I looked up, Katniss was already across the room at the door watching me with the same look I'd seen on her face the first night Zale was with us and I had tucked him in to bed. As I walked across the room to her, I wondered if maybe Katniss had been thinking about us having children for more of that week than just the morning when she woke up with the nightmare.

"Poor kid." I whispered as Katniss stepped into my arms and we both watched Zale sleep for another minute (just to be sure). She shook her head with a soft laugh and laid her head on my chest.

"Bet he won't do that again. How many cookies did he eat?" She asked as we stepped into the hallway and I pulled the door shut softly.

"Probably most of the jar." I guessed as we went back to our room. "And if you think he won't do that again then clearly you know nothing of what goes on inside an 11-year-old boy's brain." I smirked as Katniss pulled off her robe and climbed back into bed. I sat down on the edge of my side and removed my leg for the second time that night.

"Something tells me I should be happy that I don't know whats' going on in his head." Katniss teased as I felt her moving around on the bed and assumed she was settling in for the night.

I was surprised then when her arms were suddenly crossed over my chest, preventing me from lifting my arms. I turned my head to look questioningly into her face as she laid her head on my shoulder with a sigh.

"You okay?" I asked and sighed myself when she kissed the spot behind my ear and then the curve of my neck lightly.

"Mhm." She purred with another sigh that I realized was extremely contented.

It was so nice to hear happy sounds from my wife after such a rough day and I hoped that part of that happiness came from the talk we'd had about deciding to start trying for a baby. Okay, a little part of me hoped it had to do with the hot sex, but a bigger part hoped that she'd finally found some peace with the life-long battle she'd fought with herself never to be a mother.

"Sleep?" I asked raising one hand to hold onto one of her forearms that was crossed over my chest and smacked a kiss at the bend in her elbow playfully.

Katniss hesitated just enough that I suspected sleep wasn't exactly what she had in mind.

"Really? Again?" I asked on reflex and my libido whacked me over the head with a mallet for looking a gift horse in the mouth after over 2 weeks without sex.

"Mmmm…maybe we could get some sleep and then sometime before morning," She lowered her voice and kissed her way across the back of my neck to the other side of my shoulders. "I'll wake you up in a very nice way…" She whisperd and I moaned softly and felt a quick twitch inside my shorts.

"Yeah, that'll work." I responded quickly and Katniss chuckled as she lay back on her side and pulled the light top sheet over herself.

I pulled off my t-shirt and slid under the top sheet as well, pulling it just up to my hips and turning my head so that I was face to face with Katniss who was laying on her side.

"Katniss…I…" I stuttered slightly, unsure of just how to put into words how happy she'd made me. How much she'd quieted the ever present demons in my mind by finally telling me that she had thought of having children with me. That she'd even pictured what one of them might look like. I replayed the moment over and over in my mind when she'd said yes only hours before.

It was as if that part of me that would always be damaged by my hijacking got a little bit smaller, a little bit weaker, with every new step Katniss and I took toward the rest of our life together.

"I know." She said with a slow nod and scooted over into my arms even though it was warm. "I know." She said again and rested her head on my shoulder and placed one hand on my stomach. I stared at the ceiling with tears of joy swimming in my vision and placed one hand over top of the one Katniss had resting on my stomach.

"You're happy that we're going to start a family soon. Real or not real?" She whispered against my shoulder and I could feel the slight smile on her face.

"Real." I answered without hesitation but then shifted my legs under the sheet nervously.

"You're happy that we're going to start a family soon. Real or not real?" I asked bending my neck to brush my lips over the top of her head.

There was only the briefest of hesitation where I imagined she was searching her heart for the answer, perhaps made easier to find because we were so accustomed to asking questions in the form of the 'real or not real?' game.

I held her closer when after that soul-searching moment she told me 'real.'