Peeta is helping out at the bakery the day I get a positive test. He's been working there a lot since we got back. The first thing I do is take another test, just to make sure, as if these Capitol tests might be faulty or unreliable. But that one is positive too.

Three more positive tests later the reality slowly sinks in that I'm pregnant, that I have a child growing inside of me, that in nine months I'm going to have a baby, that I'll be a mother, that in some way I already am a mother… I thought I was ready for this, I thought I knew what I was signing up for when we decided to have a baby, but now I find myself shocked at the reality of what we've done. I sink down to the floor in the bathroom, trying to hide myself in the corner between the wall and the shower. I pull my legs up against my chest and bury my head behind my knees, in the hopes that if I make myself small enough then maybe the world won't notice me here and I'll be left alone.

That's how Peeta finds me, what must be hours later when he returns from the bakery. I don't hear him come in, but I hear him softly repeating my name. "Katniss? Katniss, can you hear me? Katniss, look at me. I'm right here, Katniss. Katniss? Can you look at me, Katniss?"

Slowly I turn my head in his direction. I can see the deep worry in his eyes, and I feel guilty because I know I put it there. He does his best to plaster a smile on his face, though. "Lets get you into bed, okay?" I don't make any response, but Peeta goes ahead and lifts me off the ground and carries me back into the bedroom. It's not until now, when I'm finally moved from my position curled up on the floor, that I feel how stiff and sore my entire body is. When Peeta lays me down in bed, I groan out loud at how much it hurts to straighten out like that.

Peeta tucks me in and begins to back away, but I catch his hand and hold him there. I want to tell him to climb in with me, to hold me tightly and never let go, but all I manage to say is "Stay…" Lucky for me, as usual Peeta understands what I'm trying to say even though I haven't actually managed to say it. He slips under the covers and slides his arms around me. I roll toward him and lay my cheek against his chest, smelling the flour embedded in the fibers of his shirt. I focus on the rhythmic movement of his steady breathing and use it to help calm my own. "I'm…" I begin to say, but I falter after that.

"I know," Peeta says. "I saw the tests." Oh. What must he be thinking right now, coming home to find his wife almost catatonic and finding out about our baby from the positive tests littering the floor?

My whole chest seizes up at that thought. Our baby. Our baby. It's real now, not just an idea, not just a plan. Somewhere inside of me are the beginnings of a whole new person. I'm both elated and terrified by the idea. But when I think of the life now growing inside of me, now that I can see past the terror of the idea for a moment, I feel an overwhelming responsibility. I'm someone's mother. I think of my own mother, of how she lost herself in grief and turned in on herself after my father died, how I've always blamed her for abandoning us and how I've never really forgiven her for that. What did I do today, if not the exact same thing? I let my fear take over, and it paralyzed me. If I'm going to do this, if I'm going to have a child, if I'm going to be a mother, then I have to do better. I have to be better. And there's only one thing that makes me better.

"I need you," I choke out, my throat raw even though I haven't spoken all day. "I can't do this without you."

"I should have been here. I'm sorry." At first I think he's just talking about today, but then he continues speaking. "I let everything get to me. I let him get to me. I won't do it again."

"You can't bottle everything up. You can't pull away from me. You have to let me help you, just like you help me." I understand Peeta's tendency to handle everything on his own, I do the same thing myself, but I can't handle him pulling away from me right now.

"I need you," I repeat, because I don't know what else to say.

"You have me. Always," he promises, tightening his arms around me.

…..

Peeta doesn't go to the bakery for the next few days, and we spend the time reconnecting with each other. I keep noticing little things that had been missing from our interactions since we started trying for the baby in earnest, and then being angry at myself for not noticing that they were missing in the first place. When did he stop being distracted from his baking because he couldn't stop from glancing up at me? Probably the same time I stopped sitting up on the countertop next to him while he bakes.

It's not until the third day that we actually sit down and talk through everything. How we had let things get so bad, so quickly; how we had failed each other, both of us, and how we were going to make sure we never did that again. There's no lonelier feeling than missing someone who's still there, and two people with the mothers Peeta and I have shouldn't have needed a reminder of that before we fixed things between us. But we don't live in the world of should-have-been.

This whole thing is a bit of a splash of cold water for Peeta and me. We've never had to work at our relationship. Ever since we got home from the Games we've been coasting on the emotional high from falling in love for the first time, and from simply surviving and adjusting to our new life as Victors. Well, the Victory Tour and President Snow have effectively put an end to that. Peeta and I don't have the best examples of healthy relationships to work from, his mother is his mother and I've spent the last five years shying away from memories of my father because they were too painful. But now I feel like we've weathered the first storm. We may be fumbling amateurs but we found our way back together when we needed to.

That night, for the first time since we got home from the Tour, everything we do together is an expression of love.

…..

The next morning, while Peeta is rolling out the dough for cheese buns and I'm sitting up on the counter playing with his hair and stealing bits of cheese, my mind drifts again to that horrible moment on the way home from the Hunger Games, when I almost let Peeta walk away from me thinking I didn't love him. How intolerable would this situation have been if that had happened? Surely President Snow would have forced us to marry anyway even if we hadn't done it for ourselves, even if we didn't want it for ourselves. Would we still be having this baby, or would the public spectacle of a wedding have been enough to appease him? Maybe for now, but surely he would have demanded children from the Star-Crossed Lovers eventually.

If we weren't a united front, if we didn't share everything with each other, would we even have come up with a new plan after the Tour was a huge failure? Would Snow approach us separately and try to use us against each other? How would we cope with all of this if we were still strangers with nothing more in common than a single traumatic experience? What on Earth would that do to us, when even the bond we now share was strained by the weight of everything we're going through?

Intolerable. It would be completely and utterly intolerable. I don't even want to think about it, because what little I can imagine is too horrible to consider.

"Hey." I zone back in to the world around me at the sound of Peeta speaking. I find him eyeing me with concern as he cleans dough off his hands with a towel. "What are you thinking about?"

"Just… everything," I say. Peeta looks skeptical, he thinks I'm hiding something with my vague answer, but it's the truth. "That and how lucky I am to have you with me."

…..

The next week, I decide it's time to talk to my mother. Regardless of how I feel about her performance as a parent, I'm not going to go through my pregnancy without seeing a healer. I make Peeta go to the bakery and wait until after Prim has left for school to head over.

I bring the half-full box of pregnancy tests over with me. When my mother opens the door to let me in, I go straight into the kitchen and put the box on the table. "I figured you would get more use out of these than I can."

Mom seems bemused by my behavior. But then she comes over to the table, and examines the box's contents. I can see the blood drain from her face as she realizes what I've brought her, and why I have them. She looks up at me, her eyes filled with confusion and sorrow. "How long?"

I expected this, but it still strikes me like a physical blow when I hear in her voice just how disappointed she is in me. "Just over a week since I got a positive test," I tell her, struggling to maintain my composure under the weight of her gaze.

She shakes her head. "I thought you got shots."

"Apparently they can be reversed."

She pauses, as if unsure what to say, before her mouth sets in a hard line. "You're sixteen. Do you really think this is a good idea?"

I don't like the accusation in her tone, and it puts me on the defensive. "It was the best option we had available to us."

"Katniss…" she says, her voice softening as her shoulders slump slightly. I didn't mean to give this much away to her, but her next question shows she's figured out the true meaning of my words. "Was this your idea?"

"…Partly." It's the best answer I can give her. The word hangs heavily between us in the silence that follows. My mother looks profoundly sad, as if she feels guilty for the situation I'm in. But even I know this isn't her fault. Prim never took out any tesserae, her name was only in the bowl once. My mother's failures, however I feel about them, had nothing to do with Prim being reaped. And everything that's happened since has been a direct result of that event.

I pull myself together, and force my voice to remain steady. "So is there anything I should know?"

My mother blinks, and I can almost hear her shifting into healer mode. "For one, you need to eat better," she says bluntly. "I don't know what they're feeding you at all these dinners they show on television, but you look like you've actually lost weight on the Victory Tour. Let that husband of yours stuff you full of baked goods. The baby can't feed off of you if you starve yourself."

She's right, I've been too distracted to eat very much since we saw President Snow before the Tour. I've spent my life taking care of Prim, and Mom; taking care of myself was always last on my list of priorities. But now I have to think about my baby, my child. I've seen the scrawny, tiny infants delivered by malnourished Seam women, starving babies born of starving mothers, and whether either one of them survives the rigors of childbirth is often a crapshoot. Doing that to my child, when I live surrounded by abundance in the Victor's Village, would be an unthinkable crime.

"Anything else?" I ask.

"I'll know more after I examine you," she says.

I've never liked being examined by my mother. I find it invasive, and embarrassing, and for years it served as a painful reminder that the only people she could rouse herself to care for were her patients, not her daughters. But living with a healer, I've seen too much of what can go wrong with a pregnancy. And I won't go to some stranger in town for this kind of care. I suppose, with how important this baby is to the president, I could probably make a phone call and go see an actual doctor in the Capitol. If I wanted all of my exams to be shown on television.

"I'd say you're about a month along, at most," she says once she's done. "A November baby."

"Just like Prim." For one brief moment the thought brings a smile to my face, but then I realize that I'm going to have to tell Prim about the baby. After seeing my mother's disappointment in me, I'm not sure I can bear Prim's reaction. And I can't even offer her an explanation, because there's no way I'm letting her know about everything going on with the President.

"Have you had any morning sickness yet?" my mother asks. Was that prompted by my change in expression, or is that just the next part of the exam?

I shake my head. "Well, you should expect that in another couple of weeks," she says.

"Is it bad?" I've always hated puking, whenever I caught a stomach bug. It seems like an awful waste of food.

"It depends," she says. "With you I could hardly keep anything down for months. With Prim it wasn't nearly that bad." I roll my eyes. Of course Prim was gentler than I was, even when we were just clumps of cells.

She continues with her questions, doling out advice along the way.

"How are you and Peeta handling this?" she asks at one point.

I think I actually jerk back in surprise at the question. How would she know? But looking at her, it seems like she doesn't. And I'm not bringing it up with her. "Fine," I say quickly. She looks skeptical. "Well, I did kind of panic when I got the positive test."

She actually laughs lightly at this. "Every mother has moments like that. I think it's a terror as old as life itself. The first time I felt you kicking I burst into tears. Massive, wracking sobs. Scared your father silly, he thought something was seriously wrong."

"How long does it usually last?" I ask. While I haven't spent hours curled up on the floor of the bathroom since that one time, the feeling of fear - fear that I'll somehow fail my child, fear that I won't be able to protect them, fear that I'll disappoint them - that fear hasn't ever really gone away.

"Well…" my mother begins. "In a way it lasted until you were born. Actually holding you in my arms brought a kind of joy I had never imagined, and it calmed me down a lot. But to a certain extent that feeling doesn't ever go away. You always worry about your child. Their safety is never far from your mind."

My first inclination is to dismiss this idea, because I don't think I can handle being this worried all the time. Anyway, she doesn't know what she's talking about, because nothing in her life in District 12 would prepare her to understand the situation I'm now facing with the Capitol and President Snow. It sure as hell hasn't prepared me.

The only person I'm used to worrying about all the time is Prim, and I'm worried about her having something to eat, not about her being used as a pawn by the Capitol and eventually being killed in the Hunger Games because of who her parents are. But then, maybe my mother is right. Maybe you just worry about different things with different people. And it's not like I'm not worried about the Capitol using Prim as a tool to punish me with.

"Mom, I need to talk to you about something. Something serious."

"What we've been talking about isn't serious?" she asks, but her small smile quickly falls when she sees the look on my face.

I remain silent for several moments, unsure how to explain everything. How much should I tell her? How much can I tell her? "It's about Prim," I finally say. "You need to know certain things, in case…" I have to stop and swallow the lump in my throat. "In case I'm not here. You need to know how to protect her."

My mother looks very worried now. "Katniss, what are you saying?"

"Prim can't ever go out to the woods," I blurt out. "Not ever. And she can't ever take any tesserae."

My mother just looks confused. "You know Prim has never been a hunter like you and your father. And why would she take out tesserae when we live in the Victor's Village?"

"Yes but if something happens," I say, putting as much emphasis into the words as I can without just saying in case Peeta and I are brought to the Capitol and hung up by our toenails until we starve to death. In my effort to keep my emotions under control, my voice sounds firm and harsh. "If I'm not here, if you don't live in the Victor's Village anymore, if the stipend and the parcels go away. Prim can't go out to the woods, not even to look for herbs or medicines, not even to gather flowers. She can never set foot outside the fence. And if it comes down to it she'd be better off slitting her own throat than taking a single tesserae ration."

"Katniss!" She looks horrified, as she probably should be, but in my mind I can't help but scoff. She's horrified and she doesn't even know the whole story. She doesn't even know the danger I've put everybody in, what Peeta and I have had to risk to try to save them.

And I can't let any of those efforts go to waste because of my mother's horror, so I cut off her reply before she can gather herself to continue. "Never! Not one step outside the fence, not one single ounce of tesserae grain. No matter what happens to me, no matter what happens to Peeta, you have to protect Prim. You may be the only one left to do it. Promise me you'll protect her!"

I know I probably sound unhinged, and my mother looks afraid of me right now, but if I try to reign myself in the terror will be overwhelming and I'll probably have another panicked breakdown, so I let myself fly off the handle.

"Katniss, you need to calm down, this kind of stress isn't good for the baby…"

I bark out a laugh at that. Stress? She's going to teach me how to handle stress? This woman who suffered one tragedy and shut herself down for years? This woman who watched her children starving and did nothing? She's going to try to tell me how to handle stress? "Promise me," I repeat. "Tell me you understand how to keep her safe. Tell me you understand how important this is."

"I understand, Katniss," she says, in what I assume is meant to be a soothing voice. "But won't you tell me what this is really all about?"

"I can't," I choke out. I told Gale and Hazelle some of this, but I'm honestly not sure how much more my mother can handle. And this Capitol-built house in the Victor's Village is hardly the place to discuss it.

I stand quickly, because if I stay here any longer I'm going to do something stupid like cry in front of my mother. I hesitate for just a moment trying to say goodbye to her, but when nothing comes out of my mouth I turn and flee.

"I want you back here next week for another checkup," she calls after me as I race through the entryway on my way out of the house. I don't take the time to acknowledge her, flying out the door and sprinting down the street back to my house. It's not until I've burst through the door and slammed it shut behind me that I let my tears escape. I fall back against the door, sucking in deep breaths and trying to calm myself down.

And then suddenly Peeta is in front of me, looking concerned and tentatively reaching toward me. He should be at the bakery for many more hours, but somehow instead he's here holding my hand and wiping tears off of my cheeks, and I don't take time to question it I just push myself off the door and throw myself into his arms.

And that's where I finally let myself break down.

…..

"I was worried about you," Peeta says later. Much later, after I've cried myself out and after Peeta has shed his shirt that I've soaked in tears and snot, when we're laying together on the couch he must have carried me to while I was inconsolate. Peeta is explaining that he only pretended to go along with my insistence that he go to the bakery for the day once he realized he wouldn't be able to argue me out of it. Instead he only walked around the other end of the Victor's Village for about half an hour before returning home. "After how rattled you were when you got that positive test, I just wanted to be here when you got home."

"I should have brought you with me," I say. "I tried to explain to her how to keep Prim safe from President Snow. In case, you know, in case…"

"In case we're not here to protect her anymore," Peeta says.

I nod against his chest. It shouldn't surprise me that he's had the same dark thoughts I have. "I was trying to tell her, but I couldn't tell her why, so I just sounded crazy, giving her these random limitations on what Prim can do and insisting on them like they were life and death. You would have been able to talk to her without sounding like a crazy person."

"I'll go next time," he says. "I'll go every time."

I feel a brief flash of guilt. I know Peeta would have come with me today if I had let him. "It's just… embarrassing," I slowly admit. "It's already weird that my mother is examining me, it'd be even weirder with someone there to watch."

"Why is it embarrassing?" he asks. I can't see his face right now, with my eyes closed and my ear pressed against his bare chest, but I can practically hear his smile. "It's not like I'll see anything I haven't seen before."

"Shut up," I say, but there's a smile on my face. "Thinking about that with my mother in the room will make things far less weird, I'm sure."

"Maybe you just need a distraction so you don't notice how weird and embarrassing things are," Peeta says. "I could tell a funny story. Maybe do a little dance."

"Okay, fine, you can come next time," I say around my laugh. "But that had better be an impressive dance."

"Well, in that case, I'd better start practicing," he says. He starts to move me off of him so he can slip out from under me, but I stop him.

"No, stay here a while longer," I say, pushing his arms back down and moving my head back to its place just over his heart.

"Okay, I'll stay here with you for a while longer," he says. I smile against him. Sometimes I'm just so glad to have him with me. I can't imagine what my life would be without him.

We stay like that for a long time, not talking anymore, just sharing each other's presence. Long enough that I can tell from the shifting sunlight shining through the window that it's past noon. But I still have no inclination to move anywhere, and Peeta makes no move to do so either.

"Mom says the baby is due in November," I say eventually. It's not exactly a mystery when we conceived, but I might as well share with him the one piece of concrete information my mother gave me this morning.

"That's good," Peeta says. "November's a good time for a birthday. Nice cool weather. All the brightly colored leaves. Maybe some snow to play in." Not to mention it's several months separated from both the Hunger Games and the Victory Tour, though neither of us voices that thought.

Instead, I ask, "Any chance there would be hot chocolate waiting for us after we're done playing in this snow?"

"I'm sure something could be arranged, for my two favorite girls," he says.

"You really think it'll be a girl?" I ask. The question has been on my mind lately. I know some women think there are ways to tell, I've overheard Greasy Sae predicting the sex of pregnant women's babies at the Hob, but when I asked my mother today she said that there was no way to truly know, not unless the Capitol has some sort of magical machine that can do it.

"I really have no idea, but I won't call our baby it, so I have to pick one or the other," Peeta says. "And whenever I think about our child, I always picture a little girl. I want her to be just like you."

"What, moody and incapable of expressing herself? No, I want a little boy who's kind, and good, just like you."

"Well, that'll be unique, a Mellark boy being wanted." He says it like it's a joke, but I know the years of hurt and bitterness that goes into statements like that, however rare it is for Peeta to actually give them voice. I lift my head and prop my chin on my hands so I can look up at his face.

"You know we're both going to love the crap out of this kid no matter what it winds up being, right? Any child of Peeta Mellark is going to be absolutely smothered in love and affection."

That gets a genuine smile onto his face. "Any child of Katniss Everdeen is going to be loved more fiercely than anyone else in Panem."

"What about a child of Katniss Mellark?" I ask.

"Even more so."

I lay my head back down, a smile on my lips. A few hours ago I barely made it in the front door, on the verge of another breakdown like the one I had when I found out I was pregnant. And now here I am, happy and content, laying in my husband's arms, my mind filled with images of Peeta and his son building a snowman together and then coming inside for birthday cake and hot chocolate.

"I love you," I say out loud, because I don't know how else to express what I'm feeling.

Peeta lets out a deep sigh of contentment. "I love you, Katniss."

We stay there until dinner.

…..

A lot of people seemed to be nervous after the end of the last chapter. Sorry! It literally never occurred to me that people would even see it like that. The pregnancy reveal was just too perfect a place to end the chapter. Every time I saw a review like that, I just wanted to pull everyone aside and tell them, this isn't that kind of story. There are tons of fics that have Everlark relationship angst, but like I said in the author's note on chapter 1, this isn't one of them. Hopefully the ending of this chapter is a bit more reassuring.

I'm guessing care for pregnant women in District 12 is pretty primitive. Considering they barely have electricity and most of the medicines are herbs and things Katniss picks in the woods, they're not going to have blood tests and ultrasound machines. I'm not sure you could even do an exam of a pregnant woman this early on without an ultrasound, but hey, artistic license.

Also, before anyone calls me out on it, I know I got Prim's birthday completely wrong. I hadn't remembered it being mentioned in the books, but it was said to be in late May in a section I just reread the other day. Oops. I thought about editing that bit out of this chapter, but I already mentioned Prim's birthday being in the fall in Chapter 10, so I guess I'll just stick with my mistake for the rest of this story. I'm consistent, if not accurate.

BTW, before I wrote it, these were my notes for the scene between Katniss and her mother about Prim: "Stay in school, kids. Don't do tesserae." Made myself laugh.

Next chapter: Secrets are revealed! Spoiler: The secret is the toastbaby. And someone who finds out will react very, very badly.

Preview quote from Chapter 16:

"You deserve so much better."