She sits on the floor, the jumble of yarn spread out in a mess around her. Greasy Sae apologizes again and again, but we wave it off as nothing. It is nothing. If anything, it's fun to watch her play. The yarn is her favorite household item to play with. The simple balls of fabric entertain her for hours while Greasy Sae works in the kitchen. Indeed, she oftentimes has to drag her granddaughter away, kicking and screaming and crying, at the end of the day.
Peeta loves to sit on the living room floor and play with her while I try in vain to learn something resembling a skill of cooking from Greasy Sae. You would think by now we'd all have given up hope that I'll be able to master anything but a simple meal, but for some strange reason both she and Peeta still cling to some desperate hope that one day it'll click and I will learn.
I join the pair of them every once in a while, after I set fire to a pan or burn whatever it is I attempt to cook. Greasy Sae inevitably ushers me out of the kitchen, mumbling under her breath the entire time. I take up a vacant spot on the floor and roll the balls of yarn with them, or join in on whatever other game they've concocted to play. Peeta is a master as scheming up new games.
The topic comes up frequently these days. It's never a direct conversation, more a thinly veiled comment here and an offhanded hint there. He never explicitly says he wants to start trying, but I'm not an idiot nor am I blind. He lights up when they play; it's even worse at the school. When he's surrounded by a gaggle of kids in the art room, covered in paints and glitter and feathers, I swear I'll never be able to drag him back home. I agonize over it because I know one day he won't be able to resist the question anymore, and I won't be able to give him what he wants.
For his sake, I try to change my mind, to open up to the kids in my music class. I try to picture myself pregnant, a mom. I've even tried to brooch the topic with my own mother a few times, though I never manage to go through with it in the end. But no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, it all comes full circle for me. Each little blond girl is Prim, reaped for the Hunger Games though her name is only in the drawing once. Each little blond boy is Peeta, with no one who loves him enough to give the ultimate sacrifice to volunteer for him, to save him. And all the brunette boys and girls are Gale and myself, with their names in their so many times they've lost count.
The world is changing, we boast, and for the better. The Hunger Games are over. We left tyranny and dictatorship in our past. Our government, our country, our people have changed. We are smarter, we are stronger, we have learned from our mistakes.
So we say. But I'm not dumb, and I'm only a little naive. I notice the way we no longer pay tribute to the Tributes when we celebrate the anniversary of the end of the war. As a collective society, we've swept under the rug the ugliness of our past, what we did to generations of children. I don't believe for a second we've learned our lesson, at least not entirely.
As if my thoughts stirred the idea, Peeta brings up the topic after dinner, once Greasy Sae and her granddaughter leave. We sit in the open front doorway, watching the afternoon rain pour down in sheets, enjoying the cool breeze that flints across our faces. Reaching across the frame, he takes my hand. "We'd have adorable kids," he muses. "A dark haired little boy who likes to poke at everything with a stick. A blond little girl with the voice of an angel and the attitude of a bear."
"Peeta." I try to wave the conversation off without credence. The weather's been warm all day, and I'm exhausted from my trek in the woods helping Gale's old mining buddies lug timber into town. The little wine we had with dinner was not enough to loosen me up enough to talk about this particular subject.
"It doesn't have to be now," he comments.
"It doesn't have to be ever," I mumble under my breath as I take a sip of water from my glass. The ice clangs against the barrier of glass, just loud enough to be audible over the sound of the summer storm. The condensation on the glass, which grows as the ice loses a battle against the heat, makes my hand slick and my mind irritable.
"You don't mean that."
"What if I do?" I challenge. "Spending an afternoon playing with a kid is a lot different than having one of our own. It's the biggest responsibility in the world." He misses his family. It shows less and less, probably because he's gotten better at hiding it, but I see it because I know where to look. He misses his siblings and his parents. He misses that companionship, those relationships. He wants to fill that void, and I understand. I would give anything to rid myself of the ache in my heart. I can never replace Prim, would never want to, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to love like that again. To have someone to fiercely protect, to love unconditionally, to shelter from the uglier realities of the world.
But not in this world. That's more potential for hurt than I can handle. Another loss like Prim would undo me completely, and I don't think even Peeta would be able to save me. I don't think Peeta would be able to save himself from that. He hardly ever backslides anymore, but a child opens up all sorts of new potentials. And I can't go back. I refuse. We've only just begun to enjoy this life we've rebuilt together, and I won't let anyone take him away from me, to undo all the work he's fought so hard to pull together.
"We don't have to decide today," he concedes. He always does, though this is the first time we verbally acknowledge we're having this particular conversation. As he reaches across the open doorway, his hand finds my warm leg. His fingers settle on my knee in an uneasy silence as we tuck the issue back under the rug, away with the rest of the painful thoughts and ideas neither of us wants to remember or talk about.