One-Shot: The Insurrection
Katniss Everdeen can't put her finger on exactly what, but she knows something big is going to go down in District 12 soon.
Gale has been much more cryptic and quiet in their hunts as of late, reflecting the storm clouds that have gathered and dumped across much of the district during the start of this humid summer. Katniss tries to chalk her best friend's silence as him just being tired – now that he's officially aged out of the Reaping as of last year, he spends his weekdays working down in the mines.
A frightening and exhilarating thought now strikes her: Gale, down in the mines…. making friends with other miners who are also breaking their backs….
Could it be that there are rumblings of an uprising far beneath the earth?
While her heart swells and yearns for the possibility, Katniss has also always been a very practical woman. Twelve is by far the smallest out of all the districts, both in terms of population and geographic area. While it might be easy to conquer as far as landmass goes, Katniss knows that for a rebellion to be successful here, pretty much all of District 12 has to be in on it. It has to be everyone or nothing – and everyone joining forces just won't happen. There is a bitter class divide between the Seam and the Merchants who live in Town. Which Katniss is sure suits the Peacekeepers' designs just fine.
The morning of the Reaping dawns hot and sultry, yet also quiet. Nothing seems out of the ordinary as Katniss and her little sister shuffle forward to stand in the main Square. It is a Quarter Quell this year, with a special twist for the Hunger Games, and thanks to nerves, Katniss has to wrack her brain to remember just what the twist is.
Effie Trinket steps forward to select the name of the girl tribute. Katniss exhales in relief when the chosen is neither her, nor Prim – some scrawny Seam girl she doesn't know is picked.
But then the most incredible thing happens. Delly Cartwright, daughter of the Merchant shoe cobbler, steps out of line and states:
"I volunteer as tribute."
Katniss's jaw drops. A volunteer? Here, in Twelve? It's never been done! And for a Townie to stick out their neck like this, no less!
As Delly begins her death march to the stage, there is rustling in the crowd. Katniss immediately thinks that it is Seamers wanting to cheer a rich elite brat going to her death, but refraining out of political correctness.
Just after Delly has mounted the stage and taken her place, chaos erupts.
It explodes with the force of a bomb and suddenly hundreds of people, Seam and Townie alike, are brandishing weapons from underneath their Reaping best. With rebel yells, they rush the Peacekeepers in one big wave, catching the officers flat-footed.
A riot ensues. In the confusion, Prim is jostled out of Katniss's sight and the sisters are separated. Someone slams into Katniss from behind, knocking her to the ground, and terror grips at her throat. It's a stampede, people running this way and that, and she is going to get trampled underfoot. Snow's Roses, she is going to die here, crushed under bodies and lost in the crossfire.
As she manages to push herself up onto her knees, someone grabs her arm and hauls her up the rest of the way. Her mysterious rescuer steers her out of the Square, keeping at her back. Katniss tries to turn her head to take in whoever has hold of her, but smoke is now billowing here in the Square and she can't identify him through the haze.
"Come on….. over here….. do as I say. Through the door – quickly! MOVE!" The alley they now duck into is familiar to Katniss, but she can't identify it definitively through the smoke. Her rescuer pushes open a large metal door on a back loading platform and steers her inside.
That's when Katniss realizes: she is in the Bakery.
With a savage cry, her fingers close around a butter knife and she spins in her captor's arms, slamming him up against the wall and holding the blade to his throat. When her gaze meets eyes as blue as a summer sky, her own grey orbs bulge.
"You?!" she croaks, gasping. "How…..?!"
Peeta Mellark gulps. "You were in trouble…."
She bristles in annoyance at his stating the obvious. "I knew that!" Ashamed, she softly lowers the knife along with her eyes, which now stare at his expansive chest. She is breathing hard for ever gulp of air, the bodice of her blue dress heaving like a bellows. "I….. I should….. I should say thank you…."
"You don't have to."
Yes, she does. This is the second time in years that Peeta Mellark has saved her life, the first being when they were children and he tossed her two loaves of bread and rescued her from starvation. Now he has rescued her from death again, and she has yet to repay him for either instance. The debt she owes him causes a flash of anger to course through Katniss and she roughly pushes Peeta up against the wall.
"You are to forget what is about to happen," she growls. Then, arm reaching about his neck, she pulls his face down to hers, as she presses her body flush into his, pushes her lips onto his, and kisses him.
The kiss almost immediately deepens, and Katniss feels the ferocity and anger behind her own lips ease as she softens. Her lips part unwittingly as a curious noise bubbles up from the back of her throat, and when Peeta's tongue swims into the split, she gasps as she realizes:
He's kissing her back…
Arms looping around his neck, Katniss tilts her head to the side and the kiss grows in passion. Her fingers tangle themselves dreamily into the man's golden locks that she's always secretly wondered about. Peeta's arms steal about her waist in a kind of daze, and when his large and calloused and strong hands dip lower to feel up the accentuated curve to her buttocks, Katniss allows it. She guides him to grip the inside of her thigh, and in one, fluid motion, he has raised her leg up to his hip, so that she curls it about his torso at the back of the knee.
Shoving his own thigh in between where hers have opened, Peeta boldly humps her. Growling, biting down on his kiss-swollen lips with her teeth, Katniss brazenly rocks her hips back, grinding down on his leg in a crude imitation of fucking.
Outside, the insurrectionists are attempting to take the Justice Building. Guard towers in the Square have been overthrown. And inside the Bakery, as Katniss and Peeta embrace and kiss, fireworks now whizz and explode with a piercing shriek into the morning sky.
The rebellion is put down, and District 12 ordered under curfew. Under the cover of darkness, Katniss and Peeta slip out of the Bakery together. Wordlessly, while skirting Peacekeeper patrols, Katniss guides Peeta carefully under the fence and leads him with purpose into the woods.
She takes him to her father's hunting cabin, by the lake where her parents once honeymooned following their Toasting. On the dirt floor of the cabin, she pulls Peeta on top of her and boldly, silently, spreads her legs for him.
Shoving her blue Reaping skirts up over her hips, Peeta mounts her and mates with her.
They have sex.
For most of the night, Katniss and Peeta make love. As this man thrusts into her, kisses her langorously to swallow her pleasured moans, Katniss tries to tell herself that coupling with him in such a carnal act is nothing more than a release of tension. A physical thing, that expresses her relief at their being alive.
She knows it is a lie whenever Peeta's lips smother hers, making her head spin. With every kiss, he makes her want another.
At last, when she cums, her body shuddering as she is brought to blissful orgasm, Peeta tells the beautiful Seam huntress that he loves her.
….. She says it back.
"…. I love you too….."
At first light, Katniss leaves her lover's arms and kisses him goodbye, murmuring into his mouth a promise that she will be back. In the gray of dawn, she slips back into the district and finds her mother and sister at their homestead.
The three Everdeen women flee with only as much as they can carry and no more, slipping the fence and disappearing into the trees. Katniss doesn't know what happened to Gale or the Hawthornes – at one time, she and her hunting partner had kicked around the idea of taking their families into the woods and making a go of it. She feels guilty that she can't fulfill entirely that pact now.
Peeta and the Everdeens stay in the cabin for one more night, during which Katniss and Peeta quietly make love. She rides him frantically, even as she pleads between long kisses that they be quiet so as not to wake her mother and Prim. She finishes Peeta off by rearing forward and taking his cock deep into her mouth, performing oral sex on him quietly until he ejaculates into her throat.
The next day begins several of walking, trying to put as much distance between them and the borders of Twelve as possible. Katniss hunts to feed everyone.
Finally, a hovercraft touches down near the clearing where the group is staying.
The insignia on the side is not Capitol.
Katniss, her family and…. and her lover are taken to District 13. The three women are assigned a family unit together, but as a single man, Peeta is required to have a dwelling all his own. Katniss begs the registrar to let him stay with them, and when her request is refused, she hastily comes up with a lie stating she and Peeta have eloped.
"So you are married?" the registrar raises an eyebrow.
Katniss flushes, but nods. "Yes." She keeps a flat affect under her mother and sister's skeptical looks.
Sharing a bed with the man that night starts off as awkward, at least until Katniss rolls Peeta onto his back and swinging her thighs over his hips, boldly moves to straddle him. With twin groans, they rut between the sheets.
Afterwards, as they lie together in sweat-soaked afterglow, panting, Peeta rasps out, "Would you really marry me, if I asked you to?"
Katniss studies him solemnly. She once forswore to never get married or have kids, on account of the Hunger Games, but now….
Softly, she kisses Peeta and whispers against his mouth:
"Yes."
She accepts his proposal of marriage.
Katniss and Peeta marry in their District 13 apartment, with only her mother and sister as witnesses. Katniss wears her mother's white wedding dress, found at the bottom of the trunk Mrs. Everdeen made off with. It is customary in Merchant circles for a woman's bridal gown to be passed down from mother to daughter. Perhaps someday, Prim shall wear the garment.
There is no fireplace in here from which to perform the Toasting – only a heater bolted to the wall. Katniss and Peeta Toast their bread over this, reverently feeding each other a piece. The heater's glow reflecting in her grey eyes, her lips slightly parted, Katniss solemnly tilts her head and permits her…. her husband to kiss her. As husband and wife embrace and the wedding kiss deepens, Katniss absently tosses her simple bridal bouquet of dandelions and pine needles aside. Prim catches the dandelions; the pine needles scatter upon the floor.
Following their wedding, Katniss and Peeta move into a new apartment for married couples. The newlyweds don't leave their love nest for three days, making hot, raw, passionate love to begin their married life.
Months after the Toasting, there are reports that the war above between the Capitol and the districts is over.
Peeta and Katniss Mellark return to their homeland, along with her mother and sister, to find that most of Twelve has been razed to ash. The Town is gone, and Katniss comforts her husband as he mourns his family's Bakery. There is nothing left of her childhood homestead, or any of the Seam either. There is no sign of the Hawthornes.
The only buildings that were spared in what could only have been a firebombing are the Justice Building, the train station and the Victors' Village with its sprawling mansions. Husband and wife move into one together; Prim and Mrs. Everdeen take another.
Before long, Katniss feels her belly begin to round. She feels her breasts ballooning with a mother's milk.
When a pregnancy test confirms that she is indeed carrying Peeta's child, Katniss feels a terror as old as life itself. Peeta assures his wife they will be OK – they have each other.
Katniss and Peeta eventually have two children: a boy and a girl. Rocking their youngest from a picnic blanket as she watches her husband and their little girl play in the Meadow, Katnisss decides that there are much worse Games to play than that of risking your heart for love.