One-Shot: The Shoemaker & The Huntress
Before she collapses outside the Bakery and a certain boy throws her a loaf of bread, Katniss stumbles about in the rain attempting to sell off her sister's old baby clothes to anyone who might want them. So far, there have been no takers and plenty of doors slammed in her face.
In one last-ditch attempt, she approaches the Merchant cobblery. The cobbler and his wife are an older couple, the best that she can recall; the father is often requested to play his fiddle at Toastings, the district's traditional wedding ceremony. The couple has two children, a girl and a boy, both with fiery red hair. The daughter, Delly, is a somewhat close girl friend and classmate of Katniss in school. While known by reputation as a chatterbox and a gossip, Delly is also unfailingly kind. She will take Prim's baby clothes, surely, despite her own family having no need for them.
Delly answers the door and brings Katniss in out of the rain and cold. But when Katniss babbles out why she's come, Delly winces and mumbles out a pained apology about sorry, we don't sell clothes – only shoes.
Katniss hangs her head, just about defeated. She is just starting to turn away for the door, trudging. Delly watches, biting her lip, and seems just about to stop her and insist that her classmate stay in the warmth of the house for a spell when her father calls her to the back.
Katniss is nearly at the door when she feels a little body bump into hers, and she glances down: it is the cobbler's son, Davey. He has to be around her own sister's age – no more than 7.
Davey is now taking her hand and guiding Katniss over to the till. He pulls out an entire sesterce bill and a few coins.
"I may not have a little sibling who can wear those clothes, but we could repurpose the fabric for making shoes," he babbles in a rush. "It might keep better than leather!"
Even as she knows almost nothing about cobblering, Katniss highly doubts it, but if someone is willing to buy….
Davey presses the money into her hand, mumbling bashfully about how it isn't much. Katniss accepts it anyhow, and watches as Davey scuttles away the fabric into the cobbler's stores.
She has no idea how to thank this little boy. She's so hungry, she can barely speak. She hasn't the time anyway – Katniss can hear movement and voices coming from the back, so she stumbles back out into the rain, the shop's bell tinkling in her wake.
Staggering, she heads down the cobblestones for a small stretch and catches herself against the rim of some trash cans. Katniss paws through them desperately until she all at once sees stars and the Baker's wife is in her face, screaming at her and shooing her away.
Katniss finally collapses under a single tree on a grassy knoll just steps away from the bakery. She watches as the boy with blonde hair and eyes as blue as a summer sky comes pelting out into the downpour, heading towards the pig paddock. All at once, he is throwing the bread meant for the swine back over his shoulder, so that it lands in the mud of the cobblestoned street. Then the boy – Peeta, a classmate to whom she has not spoken – ducks back inside.
Katniss scoops up the bread. A loaf, even a stale one like this, would not have fetched a sesterce bill and two coins. No matter. She dashes back home with all of her treasures, suddenly reinvigorated by the twin kindnesses she has been shown. Debt churns in her gut like acid.
Of the bread, Katniss and her mother and sister make a feast. The sesterce and coins from the sale of the baby clothes, Katniss puts towards a bowl of soup in the Hob as supplement.
Even then, she still has a sliver of change left over, which she uses to purchase a grimy mockingjay pendant.
Four Years Later
Katniss Everdeen, now aged 16, strides into the Merchant cobblery in her blue Reaping dress and with her father's hunting jacket across her shoulders, her arms laden with furs. Her classmate, Delly Cartwright, glances up through her tresses of red hair to smile brightly at her.
"Good morning, Katniss! And Happy Hunger Games!"
Katniss scowls at the reminder that today is technically a holiday, Reaping Day, where the children of Twelve aged between 12 and 18 will be made to stand in the Square and wait to see if they have been selected for a fight to the death.
"And may the odds be eva in your favuh," Katniss intones, imitating their Capitol escort's lofty accent. This gets a giggle out of Delly.
"Have any furs today?"
Katniss dumps the lot from the skinned game she and her hunting partner, Gale, had been working on meticulously just this morning, out by her father's hunting cabin at the lake where her parents had once honeymooned.
Katniss and Gale have an arrangement with Mr. Cartwright: if they can provide fresh fur for him on the side, he in return, will provide them with new shoes and clothes faster than Prim, Posy, Rory and Vick can outgrow them.
As Katniss and Delly complete the trade, the beautiful Seam huntress glances to her left: little Davey Cartwright is standing in the corner, staring at the floor as though he wants it to swallow him. The lad, also a ginger, is the same age as Prim, and not much taller.
"What's with him?" Katniss mumbles.
Delly glances to her brother and cringes. "It's his first Reaping today…" she murmurs, her normally jovial eyes now flashing with worry. "I've been hoping he might get a Reaping Kiss, to make him feel better. And for luck, you know."
Katniss frowns. The Reaping Kiss is an old district superstition. Legend has it that if two people who are eligible to be Reaped share a kiss on or before Reaping morning, they are both guaranteed not to be picked. Katniss has sailed through four Reapings (and hopes to survive a fifth) just fine without one, though she has never seen any proof that the Reaping Kiss doesn't work.
Delly gathers the furs in her arms. "These will make for fine material. Thanks, Katniss!" She bites her lip. "And…. good luck today." She ducks behind a curtain leading to the back and out of sight.
Katniss spares Davey one more glance. The boy's eyes are still cast to the floor, his face a ghastly pallor similar to infected stool. He looks as though he is going to be sick any moment.
Tossing her single chestnut braid over her shoulder, Katniss marches out of the cobblery without a backwards glance.
A beat. Within a moment, she is suddenly back, making right for the petrified little boy.
"Ohhh…. Here!" And with that, Katniss takes Davey's face in her hands, tilts it up and furiously kisses him right on the mouth. Her lips disengage from his as sharply as they met. Katniss ignores Davey's thunderstruck look as she sweeps back out of the cobblery, almost fuming.
There. A Reaping Kiss for a handful of cash money; her debt is repaid. She has made an overdue trade fair, and given a little boy a bolt of courage – plus a story he'll no doubt tell to his friends in the school play-yard, should he survive the day.
Katniss is just glad she got the hell out of there before the tinkling of the bell summoned Delly up from the back.
A handful of hours later, standing in the Square, Katniss refuses to meet anyone's eyes, least of all Delly's standing further down the row of sixteen year old girls. The beautiful Seam huntress tries not to have her cheeks bloom pink, even as she internally berates herself.
Kissing a twelve-year-old, even just to give him the protection of the Reaping Kiss! She has corrupted a child! What a stupid, stupid, stupid thing for her to do! She wouldn't be shocked if the Cartwrights get wind of it and her and Gale's entire deal with the cobbler falls through.
Effie Trinket, District 12's personal escort, steps up to the podium. She begins by reading the names of past District 12 Victors (a paltry two) before moving on to drawing the names.
Katniss sends up a silent prayer for Prim. The name called isn't Prim's.
It's someone worse.
"Katniss Everdeen!"
In a daze, Katniss mounts the stair to the platform before the Justice Building. She doesn't acknowledge or register when Effie Trinket pulls the name of the boy who is to be her district partner.
"Davey Cartwright!"
Katniss's mouth falls open as the son of the shoe cobbler, the little boy whom she just kissed that very morning, is made to stand beside her. Made to shake his hand, look into his sky-blue eyes, Katniss now knows:
The Reaping Kiss doesn't work. It hasn't saved either of them from damnation.
Taken into custody inside the Justice Building, Katniss is made to wait until others come to her to say goodbye. Her mother and sister both appear, Prim's sobs reduced to sniffles. Gale hugs her and from the heartbreak in his eyes, Katniss wonders if he wants to do more. She isn't sure how she would react if he did. Instead, she makes him promise that he won't let her mother or sister starve.
The Baker arrives, bearing cookies. He is a mild-mannered man, even meek in some ways, though gentle under a face that is worn. He mumbles something about looking out for "the little girl" (meaning Prim) and departs.
Katniss's last visitor is the youngest son of the man who just came in to see her.
Seeing Peeta Mellark here shocks her, and not just because she wonders why he wouldn't have just come in with his dad: family units waiting in queue to see the tributes are always admitted together.
What rattles her even more is the fact that this is the first time he has sought her out, stared at her with the intention of (presumably) speaking with her face to face. As classmates in school, he has stared at her before. She's noticed, and stared back.
But what rattles her most of all is that if he speaks to her, she will have to say something to him. And that fear doesn't come from not knowing what to say. She knows exactly what to say, what she should say – now, or she'll never get the chance. It's something she should have said for the last four years, but she didn't. She still can't. She doesn't have the nerve.
How can the utterance of five little words be so hard?
Thank you for the bread.
Katniss has never considered herself to be a verbose person, or even comfortable talking with anyone outside of a select few people, those being Gale and her sister. Some might call her downright anti-social, aloof if they're being charitable.
Add in a little shyness and shame, particularly in this context, in front of this boy, and she is little more than a deaf-mute.
Peeta clears his throat. "Good luck. I know that you'll come back." He glances down at the floor, then raises his eyes to her. Katniss is struck by his eyes. Eyes as blue as a summer sky…. "Please come back."
There is something in his expression, left unsaid in spoken word, and Katniss doesn't know how to decipher it. Except the look he gives her isn't at all unlike the one Gale gave her. A look that yearns to convey…. something between two people that a hug or a half-empty platitude cannot.
Katniss studies the Boy with the Bread judiciously, full lips pursed and with skepticism in her eyes, if not mistrust.
She may not have ever spoken more than two words to him before, but she knows deep in her soul that she trusts him.
Words fail her. Not even the words she should but can't say are able to pass her lips.
So she lets her lips convey what her words cannot instead.
Striding towards Peeta, she takes his face in her hands and firmly presses her lips to his in an earnest, chaste, but nonetheless very intentional kiss. After a moment or two, they break apart, Katniss ducking her head so that she doesn't notice how Peeta's homespun golden eyelashes are fluttering rapidly, blinking open.
Katniss hopes Peeta can understand what she meant to say with her kiss. Even if he doesn't, she can walk to her death knowing that she thanked him, in some form. That there is no more owed between them and she can perish with a clean conscience.
If also, inexplicably, a heavy heart.
Her burden has been lifted. So why does it feel like it hasn't?
On the train, their mentor, Haymitch, is absolutely no help. He's drunk before they are past the district gates, and this annoys Katniss into deliberately antagonizing him. This at least gets the old fop to engage enough to help her. As for poor little Davey Cartwright, he might as well not even be there. Haymitch clearly thinks, as Katniss does but she's classy enough to not say it, that the boy is past all hope.
For the sake of her best girl friend, Delly, Katniss is sad about this – all the more so when it becomes apparent that the lad has a little bit of a crush on her. He's fairly obvious about it. Katniss resolves to be kind to him, even if that mostly means acknowledging him when Haymitch won't. Even so, the reality remains: Davey is most likely going to die. Katniss knows it, and for all his slovenly behavior, Haymitch seems to as well, which is almost certainly why he is making such an effort now to advise her. A mentor can only hope to bring one tribute back alive, after all, and it is clear that Haymitch has chosen her.
But in order to make his choice worth both their whiles, he admonishes her that she has to "make people like you."
So that's what Katniss does – even as she knows it is more her clothes' doing than any of her own efforts. She shines during the parade, even earning a nickname: The Girl on Fire. The moniker only seems better earned when she proceeds to nab the highest score in Training of the entire field, even beating the conditioned, perfect soldiers known as the Careers.
She shines at the interviews with Caesar Flickerman, twirling about in her dress like a princess out of some fairy tale. Not that anyone would look at her and see a beautiful princess, anyway.
Katniss isn't surprised when Davey admits to having a crush on her during his interview. She has to concede he is brave, to divulge such a thing on national television. She doesn't acknowledge or address it with him when they return to the penthouse that night; she isn't sure how to. Besides, he's just a little kid – her sister's age. Any reciprocation of feelings, let alone a relationship, would be untoward. Just the same, she resolves to help him, if he manages to escape the Bloodbath come morning. And if he doesn't… well, it doesn't really matter anyway. He already got a kiss from her, didn't he?
The opening battle at the Cornucopia is chaos. In the confusion, Katniss manages to snag a backpack. Then she spots Cato, the big Career from District 2, start to go for Davey – one of the three twelve-year-olds who were conscripted this year.
Against her better judgment, Katniss calls to him:
"Davey! RUN!"
Davey runs at full pelt towards his district partner. Taking his hand, Katniss turns tail and the tributes from District 12 escape into the trees.
Once they've put enough distance between themselves and the others and have heard the cannons tolling the initial dead, Katniss teaches Davey how to set snares. The shoemaker's son tries flirting with her, and is horrible at it, but nevertheless Katniss is amused. The humor is gone when the boy from 10 – the one with a bum leg – tries to attack them, only to stumble into Katniss's snare. Katniss cuts him down with a knife that the girl from 2, Clove threw away into the mesh of the backpack she recovered. Their second snare proves just as fruitful: a rabbit, which Katniss and Davey eat after the boy from 10's body has been taken away by hovercraft. Then the pair scale a tree to rest for the night. With the temperature dropping, Katniss and Davey have no choice but to huddle together in their sleeping bag for body warmth; Davey seems delighted by this. Katniss just hopes he doesn't try anything funny.
How is she supposed to respond to this, now that the whole nation knows of Davey's feelings for her? Is she supposed to put on some kind of show that she likes him that? She doesn't think even the Capitol, with its loose morals, would go for that.
During the night, the Careers come hunting only paces away from Katniss and Davey's tree. They come upon the girl from District 8 and cut her down.
Davey opens his mouth to scream. Katniss doesn't think. Pushing him up against the trunk, she kisses him roughly to silence him. She doesn't break the kiss until she is sure the Careers have moved on.
Great. Now through no fault of her own, she's leading him on. Katniss has to fight off a wince seeing the elation in little Davey's eyes. Somewhere unseen above them, Haymitch must be fit to be tied.
The next morning, Katniss and Davey are forced to flee their tree when the Gamemakers send fireballs raining down on them. The danger drives the district partners to a stream, where Katniss rests a burn that signed her leg.
Just then, the Careers spot them.
Katniss and Davey stagger on ahead of Cato and his band, who are whooping and hollering at the thrill of the hunt. The District 12 tributes scale a tree yet again, only this time, they are trapped up it by the stronger, more bloodthirsty tributes. Like a couple of coons, Katniss and Davey are treed up there all day and into the night, once Cato discovers that he is too heavy to climb up after them. And the Careers can't shoot them down – the girl from 1, Glimmer, is useless with a bow.
Katniss can't think of a way out of this. For all of a moment, she considers offering Davey up to the Careers as a sacrifice, but almost immediately dismisses the thought out of hand, ashamed with herself. She could never betray a little boy and look his sister Delly in the face if she somehow returned home the Victor. Katniss couldn't look her own sister in the face – from what she understands, Prim and Davey are friends.
As morning approaches, it is actually a little girl from District 11 who solves their predicament.
Hidden in the trees near them, Rue points out to Katniss a nest of tracker jackers hovering just above where the Careers have made their camp at the base of this tree to wait the District 12 tributes out. Using her knife, Katniss and Davey take turns in shifts sawing at the branch holding the nest
Around dawn, they finally slice it free. The nest drops right down on the Careers. Awoken rudely, the group flees towards the lake near the Cornucopia. Only Glimmer fails to get away, getting stung to death by the mutated insects.
Katniss and Davey leap from the tree and Katniss dares to go for the bow clutched in Glimmer's rigor-mortis fingers. Before she can get it free, Cato comes wandering back and, with a bellow, charges.
Katniss desperately attempts to string the bow. Davey leaps into Cato's path, gallantly trying to buy Katniss some time. He is no match for Cato, who slices him in the leg. Katniss fires off a warning shot, then another, driving Cato back and making him run. The beautiful huntress frantically gets an arm under Davey and they hobble into the forest, but the tracker jackers are stinging them both now too, eliciting hallucinations.
Katniss and Davey only make it about a hundred yards before they both collapse, unconscious.
Katniss awakens an indeterminate amount of time later to find leaves pasted to her sting wounds and the healing burn on her leg. Davey is rousing himself next to her. Just beyond a small cooking fire, Katniss spies some dark curls peeking out from behind a tree.
"Rue?" she calls tentatively. "…. It's OK. We're not going to hurt you."
Rue is taken on as an ally without any fuss or objection on Davey's part. The diminutive District 11 girl reports back some crucial information: the Careers have regrouped at the lake, and gathered all the Cornucopia supplies into one big pile.
"That sounds tempting," Katniss smiles.
Huddled in the sleeping bag that night, Katniss very deliberately places Rue between herself and Davey. The sixteen year old is half-hoping that Davey might fall for a girl his own age instead. The next day, the trio works out a signal to communicate with each other that the mockingjays will pass on. Then they split up – Rue going one way to light signal fires that will draw the Careers away from their camp, and Katniss and Davey to destroy the Careers' supplies.
It isn't long before the Careers are tempted by the blazes in the distance. They leave the boy from District 3 to stand guard. After watching the shifty girl from District 5 perform a kind of pattern dance to get to some of the supplies and make off with her catch, Katniss realizes the entire pile has been mined.
She strings an arrow from her quiver. Davey nods to her encouragingly.
Feeling bolstered by his admiration and confidence in her, Katniss shoots at a bag of apples, sending the fruit rolling and activating the landmines remotely. The entire horde is blown sky-high. The blast even kills the boy from 3, though not without other consequences: Katniss suddenly has a ringing in her right ear, unable to hear anything. Davey has to shout into her left how he's heard what sounds like Rue calling for help.
The pair follows the sound to where they come upon their little ally caught in a net. As Katniss and Davey work to free her, Marvel, the boy from 1, attacks them.
Feeling as maternally protective over these two little kids as she is over Prim, Katniss volleys an arrow straight into Marvel's gut, but not before he has returned fire and speared Rue through the stomach. Cradling her, Katniss and Davey both cry while Katniss sings Rue to sleep – an eternal sleep. The mockingjays echo her song.
Katniss is moved to bury her brave little ally in flowers; Davey is only too eager to help. Sending her off with the traditional three-fingered salute, the District 12 tributes disappear into the trees.
A world away, District 11 begins to burn….
The infection caused by Cato's sword wound to Davey's leg is getting worse. He is struggling to walk now. Thinking fast, Katniss helps her little friend to a cave and tries to stave off the damage with some rudimentary Healing tricks her mother and Prim have taught her. Haymitch is being remarkably stingy with his parachutes.
Davey seems inclined to give up, quite certain he is going to die. Overcome with fear, and praying that Delly will forgive her, Katniss plies Davey with kisses, encouraging him to stay alive for her. She is annoyed when the playing up of this act seems to encourage parachutes of soup, but no medicine, from Haymitch.
The Gamemakers call a Feast, one in which they will provide something the surviving tributes need desperately. There are fewer than eight of them left now. Maybe six, including Katniss and Davey. She isn't sure. If Katniss wasn't set on going to the Feast in the hopes that there will be medicine waiting for Davey, she is resolved further when Claudius Templesmith announces that there can be dual Victors if the last two tributes alive originate from the same district.
Katniss drugs Davey with sugarberries, and leaves for the Feast.
She manages to snag the backpack labeled '12', but on her way back out, she's attacked by Clove. Pinning her in the grass, a knife to her throat, Clove boasts about how they killed Rue, and how now they're going to kill Katniss too, thus damning Davey – "Cato knows where he cut him!"
Unfortunately for Clove, her big mouth gets her in trouble. Thresh, the large black boy from District 11 and Rue's district partner, overhears all of this and angrily bashes Clove's head in. The cannon sounds, then he turns his sights on Katniss, demanding to know what Clove meant. Katniss babbles out a recounting of how Marvel speared Rue and how she and Davey killed him in revenge. "And I sang her to sleep."
Impressed, Thresh lets Katniss escape with the medicine. Then he flees with both the backpack meant for him as well as for Cato. Katniss flees back to her and Davey's cave, injecting her district partner with the medicine before collapsing in exhaustion.
By the next morning, almost all the swelling in Davey's leg is gone. Katniss judges that he is well enough to join her as she goes hunting. Quickly deciding that Davey does not possess a hunter's surefootedness, she tells him to go forage.
Her heart goes into her mouth when, a short time later, she hears a cannon sound.
Running frantically through the woods, Katniss nearly has a heart attack when Davey, very much alive, suddenly crashes into her, holding a clump of berries. Katniss takes one look at them and slaps them out of his hand.
"That's nightlock, Davey! You'd be dead in a minute! You scared me to death! – Damn you…" She hugs him.
It only takes a little bit of investigating to discover for whom the cannon tolled: Foxface, the girl from Five, must have stolen some of the nightlock berries from Davey on the sly and then ingested them.
As evening begins to set in, a loud yell suddenluy pierces the arena, followed by yet another cannon. Katniss and Davey watch as Foxface and Thresh's faces appear in the sky.
"What's happening?" Davey asks.
"It's the finale, honey," Katniss says sadly.
Large mutt dogs chase Katniss and Davey towards the Cornucopia. They have to scale the horn to get out of the creatures' reach, Katniss helping Davey up despite his weakened leg.
Once at the top, Cato suddenly appears out of the night like a ghost and attacks them.
Davey reprises his role acting as a little pest, getting in the way of Cato as he attempts to take out Katniss, his greatest remaining threat to the Victors' Crown. Katniss finally notches an arrow, only to falter when she sees how Cato has Davey in a headlock. The boy from Two's forearm is about as wide as Davey himself is.
"Go on. Shoot. Then we both go down and you win!" Cato goads her.
But Katniss isn't about to leave behind a little boy whom she has grown to care for. And Davey isn't about to die now, not when he has come farther in the Hunger Games than any kid his age in history. He wily taps a finger onto Cato's hand, signaling to Katniss what she has to do.
She does it. She fires an arrow into Cato's hand.
The shot does its work, forcing Cato to let go of Davey with a howl. Sharing a look, the District 12 tributes bull-rush him and shove Cato off the horn to the waiting mutts below. His death throes are hideous, and last all night. Katniss and Davey hold each other on top of the horn and wait for the final cannon to sound, as well as the trumpets to announce their Victory.
Morning arrives and Cato's death still has not been confirmed. Peering over the lip of the horn, Katniss picks out the bloodied mess of their fallen enemy. Davey grimly hands Katniss her last arrow. She strings it and performs a mercy killing.
The cannon fires.
Sliding down the horn, Katniss and Davey retreat to the lake, but there are no trumpets. Claudius Templesmith comes on instead:
"The previous rule change has been…. revoked. Only one Victor may be crowned. Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor."
Calmly, Davey turns to a shattered Katniss and tells her to go ahead. Stricken, she can't bring herself to, even after Davey tells her the Capitol has to have their Victor.
That's when Katniss gets an idea: they don't have to have a Victor.
She pours some nightlock berries into her hand, then her partner's, pleading with Davey to trust her. He gets her meaning instantly. Katniss even pecks him on the cheek goodbye.
Just before they can commit double suicide, however, Templesmith comes on, sounding desperate:
"STOP! ….. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the winners of the 74th Annual Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen and Davey Cartwright. I give you… the tributes from District 12!"
Katniss and Davey hug.
After surviving the Hunger Games, after bringing home alongside her the youngest Victor in history, Katniss figures her boy troubles would be over.
She couldn't be more wrong.
On the morning she and Davey are to leave for their Victory Tour, as she is parting ways at the fence following a hunt, her hunting partner, Gale Hawthorne, suddenly takes her face in his hands and kisses her.
Katniss is completely unprepared. She would have thought, after all these years of knowing him, she would have had cause to wonder about Gale's lips. Or how his hands, which can set even the most complicated of snares, can so easily entrap her now.
When they break apart, she is dumbstruck; Gale only murmurs out how he had to do it, at least once, as an explanation, and leaves Katniss to dazedly sit down on a rock and contemplate how she felt about the kiss, whether she liked it or resented it.
Later, when she is trading some squirrel in the back alley of the Bakery, Peeta tells her that since the crackdown from their new Head Peacekeeper, bread production has slowed.
"But I might have something else that would constitute a fair trade," he smiles shyly.
Katniss lifts an eyebrow. "And what would that be?"
In answer, Peeta suddenly turns Katniss into the wall by the bakery's back loading dock, so that the bricks kiss into her skin.
As his lips now deeply kiss hers.
Gale, at least, had the element of surprise. Peeta attempting the same trick, Katniss could have anticipated and reacted, pushed him away, if she wanted to.
And yet she doesn't.
And unlike with Gale, she kisses Peeta back.
Later that day, boarding the train with Effie and Davey and Haymitch, Katniss's mind is spinning. She doesn't have to weigh whether she liked or resented the kiss with the Baker's son.
She liked it. Definitely liked it.
Even so, her heart is in agony. It's bad enough to be caught in a love triangle, with two boys she cares for deeply, albeit in different ways, even as she knows she can't articulate how loving Peeta and loving Gale is different, at least not yet. To top it all off, there is a yet a third boy who has feelings for her – the little boy she managed to smuggle out of the arena alive with her.
The boy who is clearly having the same nightmares she's having. In spite of now having to screen potential suitors, Katniss invites Davey into her bed, so they can hold each other while they sleep. Nothing else comes of sharing a bed on the train, and Katniss resolves to keep it that way.
Besides, having Davey lying next to her is soothing, in its way. In the same way that sharing a bed with Prim had been soothing, when they were poorer and starving. Davey is like a little brother to her, she decides.
Katniss's heart knows that this is a weak lie. Surviving what they went through together, Davey means more to her such that a sibling love doesn't do what she feels for him justice. He has come to mean as much to her as her actual sibling has, and possible more. Davey – only the second person in Katniss's life she is certain she loves.
The Victory Tour is predictably a disaster. Davey's unprecedented youth and miraculous survival has seemed to remind parents that it is their children – literal children – who are sent in year after year to die. As for Katniss herself, she appears to have become a symbol of bravery…. But not in the way the Capitol would have it.
She has become a symbol of bravery against the Capitol.
By the time the District 12 Victors have arrived home, everyone is exhausted, but there is no time for a break: the 75th Hunger Games, or 3rd Quarter Quell, is going to announce its special twist soon.
When the Reading of the Card comes down, it lands in the Village on Victors' Hill with the force of a bomb: On the 75th anniversary, as a reminder that even the strongest cannot overcome the power of the Capitol… the male and female tributes are to be Reaped from the existing pools of Victors in each district.
Katniss runs into the woods in a panic, sobbing and keening. Only when her thoughts fly to Davey does she make her way back to the Village and Haymitch's place.
She gets drunk with her mentor.
The alcohol loosening her tongue, Katniss tells Haymitch to do whatever it takes to keep Davey alive… even if that means sacrificing himself by volunteering for the little boy at the Reaping. Haymitch promises he will.
The next morning, a remarkably determined Davey Cartwright announces that he has poured all of Haymitch's liquor down the drain, that they are going to train from now until the Quell like Careers… and that he has even taken the liberty of hiring a personal trainer for them.
Katniss's heart stutters in her chest when their trainer is revealed to be none other than Peeta Mellark, childhood friend of Davey's big sister.
It amuses her at how Davey comes to regret his decision, as he watches his district partner and his sister's dear friend interact with each other. Peeta teaches the Victors wrestling moves… and when he pins Katniss underneath him, their faces unusually close, she becomes very flustered.
Other friends join in the regimen. Prim and Katniss's mother teach herbal remedy classes. Gale lectures whole seminars of snares and hunting. Even Effie assists by sending the Victors tapes of all the past Hunger Games to watch and study.
Before sunrise on the morning of the Reaping, Katniss steals away from the Village and meets Peeta in the back alley behind the Bakery.
Words fail her, so she takes him in her arms and they share a long kiss goodbye.
Later, Katniss will be very glad she does, for after she is predictably Reaped, then Haymitch with her, only for Davey to courageously volunteer in the drunk's place, the Victors of District 12 are taken to the train, two of them tributes once again, without the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones.
Katniss and Davey make a big splash at the parade, with fiery costumes that make them look like vengeful gods, even though they are a mere 17 and 13, respectively.
As training begins, Haymitch tells them in no uncertain terms that they need allies if they want to survive and get close to the final rounds, much less give one of them a chance of winning. They are to spend training sizing up the other Victor-tributes. Davey surmises they should determine who they trust least and work their way backwards from there.
Katniss ends up accidentally giving a shooting exhibition of sorts that endears her to half the field, including the Careers. She decides that if she has to team up with anyone besides Davey, she wants the aging pair from District 3, Wiress and Beetee, and the old lady for volunteered from Four, Mags.
For their private sessions with the Gamemakers, Katniss hangs a dummy of Seneca Crane, the executed Head Gamemaker from the previous year. Only later does she learn from Davey that, since he's never had much of a talent aside from making shoes and acting cute, he decided to spend his fifteen minutes lambasting the Gamemakers in an impassioned speech for killing his friend and ally, Rue.
For these indignities, Katniss and Davey both receive unprecedented perfect training scores of 12. Haymitch angrily tells them both to go to bed.
The interviews aren't much better.
Katniss is dressed in a provocative and revealing white dress, no doubt meant to humiliate her and make her look sexually tempting. When she twirls, much of the offensive garment burns away into an outfit that resembles a mockingjay. Davey follows right on her heels by claiming that Katniss has had an affair in District 12 with an unnamed man and that she is pregnant with her lover's child. He adds to the pathos by bemoaning how Katniss's lover isn't him and that his crush is doomed to be unrequited.
The interviews end in chaos, but with the Victors on stage united and holding hands.
Haymitch warns his kids that this will not last as they hug goodbye that night, and he advises them to remember who the real enemy is.
Katniss and Davey and the other Victors are launched the next morning into an arena set in a miniature sea, with the Cornucopia on a rocky island. Katniss is thankful she was taught how to swim by her parents when she was a little girl, and she makes the beach easily. Finnick Odair traps her in a brief stare-down before showing her a bangle that was once worn by Haymitch, convincing Katniss to make him an ally. Finnick proves his worth by rescuing Davey (who doesn't know how to swim) from his pedestal. Then, together with Mags, the District 12 and District 4 tributes run away from the Cornucopia.
Katniss's mission to keep Davey alive nearly goes off the rails when the little boy walks right into a forcefield and his heart stops, leaving the beautiful huntress in hysterics. Finnick uses an unfamiliar technique to revive him, and Katniss actually, tearfully kisses Davey for the first time in over a year, since their last arena. When Finnick chalks up her unusual reaction to hormones, from the baby of her mystery lover, Katniss goes along with it, babbling about how she wants her child to know its "Uncle Davey."
The dangers continue.
There is almost no water, leaving the tributes severely dehydrated. In the middle of the night, poisonous fog chases the quartet, eventually claiming Mags, who sacrifices herself so Finnick can carry Davey out of danger. The now-trio barely manages to nurse their wounds before wild monkeys attack. One of them nearly gets Davey, before the woman from District 6 leaps in the way and takes the bite herself.
As the sun rises on the second day in the arena, Katniss, Davey and Finnick are joined by another trio: the tributes from 3 and Johanna Mason of 7. The sextet reclaim the Corncuopia and Katniss deciphers from Wiress's babblings that the arena is actually a clock, with a danger timed to go off every hour. Davey draws a help diagram in the sand for them to keep track of which danger when.
Suddenly, the Careers of Districts 1 and 2 attack, taking out Wiress; Katniss and her alliance respond in kind by eliminating Gloss and Cashmere. The skirmish would have probably ended in Brutus and Enobaria following their murdered allies into that good night but suddenly the Cornucopia island is made to spin, disorienting the final eight survivors in the arena.
Katniss and Finnick are briefly lured away by jabberjays copying sounds of their loved ones being tortured. Finnick is screaming for some woman named Annie. Katniss hears the cries of her mother, Prim, Peeta, Gale, Delly. Davey…. She doesn't realize the hour danger has elapsed until Davey takes her hands down from her ears.
Regrouping, Beetee makes a plan to electrocute the water and the damp beaches, frying the Careers in the process. To do it, they are going to rig the lightning tree that goes off every noon and midnight.
Evening falls, and the five allies ready their plan. Huddled alone together, Davey shows Katniss his district token: it's a locket, and when it opens, Katniss is shocked to find pictures of Prim, her mother, Gale and Peeta inside.
"Your family needs you, Katniss," Davey tells her.
With that, Katniss realizes: this brave little boy, the bravest she's ever known, is telling her it is OK for her to let him die, if it means she gets to go home alive, and be happy with whichever man she chooses. "What about you?" she asks.
Davey just grins sadly. "Nobody needs me."
Katniss supposes this is technically true: Delly, his sister, will one day soon marry a man of station, and inherit the shoe shop from their parents. Davey's parents will no doubt mourn, but they'll get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on.
There is just one person who will be broken beyond all repair if Davey dies: her.
"I do. I need you."
Davey starts to protest, and even though she knows it's wrong and she's leading him on, Katniss kisses him to distract him, and also to shut him up. Davey looks as though he can die happy having received one last kiss from his crush.
The alliance puts their plan into action. Katniss and Johanna are instructed to unspool the wire Beetee got from the Cornucopia.
Neither one of the girls realize Brutus and Enobaria are following them. Just as they feel the wire being cut, Johanna suddenly bludgeons Katniss in the head before getting on top of her and slicing her arm. "Stay down!" Johanna hisses.
Weak and disoriented, a staggering Katniss tries to feel her way back to the lightning tree. She calls for Davey. She can hear Davey calling for her. Finnick is somewhere calling for both her and Johanna. In between, two more cannons fire, signaling two more deaths and Katniss starts to panic that one of them was for Davey (only much later will she learn that Brutus tried to attack her little district partner, but Chaff, the man from Eleven, got in the way and managed to defeat the middle-aged Career but not before being mortally wounded himself).
Katniss reaches the lightning tree as storm clouds gather. She sees Beetee, bloodied and lying unconscious on the ground, the wire wrapped around a stick. Finnick arrives and when she turns to attack him, thinking her ally has betrayed her, he implores her: "Katniss! Remember who the real enemy is!"
She does.
Stringing the wire into an arrow and notching the arrow along her bow, Katniss takes aim and fires into the forcefield…. Just as the lightning strikes the tree.
Fire rains down, and Katniss falls unconscious.
She later wakes up in a hovercraft, a wounded Beetee by her side. Arming herself, she finds Haymitch, Finnick and the Head Gamemaker of this year's Games having an intense conversation. Haymitch pries the syringe Katniss had intended to use away from her and she listens, bewildered, as Plutarch Heavensbee proceeds to tell her that she has become the symbol of a national rebellion, that half the Victors were in on a plan to protect her and Davey and break them out of the arena, and that their hovercraft is flying to District 13 right now.
"Where's Davey?" Katniss asks. It's the only question that matters to her. Haymitch won't look at her. "Haymitch? Where is he?"
"In the Capitol…. They got him, and Johanna."
Flying into a rage, Katniss scratches Haymitch, screaming at him how he broke his promise to her and how he's a liar. "You promised you would save Davey over me! You're a liar!... You're a liar…."
Someone injects her with morphling, and the drugs pull her under. Katniss wakes up in District 13.
Gale is the first person she sees at her bedside.
"Prim?"
"She's alive… so's your mother and about 800 others; I got them out in time."
"Got out?"
"When the Games ended, hovercraft came in…. and they started dropping firebombs…." Gale whispers, pained.
"They're not in Twelve?"
Now Gale looks truly broken. "Katniss, there is no District 12. Not anymore."
Davey captured and almost certainly being mistreated. Her home destroyed. Katniss has to sleep everything off with the help of morphling just to process it. She actually tries to protest her own discharge when it comes round, but Haymitch tells her that she'll be staying with her family in a small apartment. He appears much more sober now, and around her, more subdued. Though he does tell her, "There are some people I think you'll want to see…"
And so there are. In the bustling hangar bay, Katniss tearfully reunites with her mother and sister. Delly has also survived and Katniss wraps the shoemaker's daughter in a hug, breaking down and babbling out remorse about how she couldn't save Davey. Delly actually has to be the one to comfort her.
"We're going to get him back, Katniss."
But the person Katniss is the most shocked and elated to see is the handsome young man who, before and during the Games, has crept into her heart. Upon seeing Peeta, she runs into his arms. Clenching his military-issued tunic in her fists, Katniss pulls his face down to hers, pushes her lips fiercely against his and kisses him. Roughly.
When they finally break apart sensuously, Peeta just chuckles. "Good morning to you to, sweetheart…."
Katniss just kisses him again, mostly to shut him up. "I thought I'd never see you again!" she whispers into her lips, her voice strangely hoarse. Something else threatens to bubble up from the back of her throat to be swallowed by Peeta's mouth on hers, but it doesn't quite come out.
It will, though. Eventually.
Now that she has been deemed well enough to be discharged, Katniss is put to work as the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion. Her days are mostly spent shooting propos that she is certain nobody likes, and later being sent out into the field of battle; Katniss passes her nights lying awake and worrying sick about Davey.
The only bits of solace she has are when she gets to go topside to hunt with Gale once a week. From the way he interacts with her, Katniss can tell something irrevocable has shifted between them, though they don't speak of it, no matter how much sadness it is clearly causing her best friend.
When she isn't doing any of the above, Katniss is spending whatever free time remains with Peeta.
The Baker's youngest son has been put to work in the district kitchens, and Katniss will often pause in the mess line to talk with him. She is pained to learn that Peeta and Delly are some of the few Merchants to have gotten out of the Square when the bombings broke out; neither of his parents nor his brothers made it.
Whenever Peeta isn't working, he uses every one of his free moments to be with her. Once, he finds Katniss curled up and hiding in a supply closet, in tears, and he simply holds her until she explains that the Capitol has just shown footage of Davey being interviewed. Her little district partner appears weak and is clearly being abused.
The emotion and the coziness of their enclosed space comes over them both; overcome with lust, Katniss and Peeta end up making out for several minutes in that supply closet. In between feverish kisses, Katniss shocks herself when she proposes marriage:
"Will you marry me?" At Peeta's stunned yet ecstatic look, Katniss ducks her head and blushes shyly. "That is, if you'll have me…."
Peeta lifts her chin with his finger. "Yes."
They embrace and kiss.
The engaged couple convinces Plutarch that holding a wedding – really, a Toasting, as is District 12 custom – would be good to boost morale for the war effort. Katniss and Peeta let Plutarch film their nuptials and make an entire propo out of it.
For the occasion, Katniss is adorned in her mother's white wedding dress, the one Everdeen family heirloom. A woman's wedding dress is mostly seen as a right of passage in Merchant circles; Katniss's mother had absconded with hers when she ran off to marry Katniss's father. Perhaps someday, Prim shall wear the garment.
There are no hearths in District 13 apartments over which to toast and share the traditional bread, but there is a radiator, which does the job almost as nicely. Katniss is quiet, solemn and introspective as she gives her vows and when Dalton, a former ex-pat from District 10, pronounces them man and wife, it is she who closes the distance and lovingly kisses her husband. Delly rushes up to embrace the newest Mrs. Mellark, proclaiming she and Katniss sisters-in-law (Delly had apparently eloped with Peeta's brother, Rye, before the Reaping for the Quell, so Davey could at least be there to see his big sister get married).
Delly's father strikes up a reel on his fiddle, and Katniss and Peeta dance at their wedding. Later, Peeta presents his bride with his wedding present to her: a cake he baked himself.
Katniss draws both hands to her mouth in astonishment. "OH! Snow's Roses, it's a vision! But… but how did you…? - You didn't! You shouldn't have!" Her gray eyes are sparkling with emotional delight.
Peeta's arms encircle her. "Do you like it, Sweetheart?" In answer, Katniss throws her arms around his neck and kisses him soundly.
"Ohhh…. Darling, I love it! I love you!"
Peeta and Katniss Mellark finally retire to their new married couples' apartment, Peeta carrying Katniss across the threshold as their guests sing the traditional District 12 wedding song.
That night, in their bed, Katniss solemnly swings her thighs over Peeta's hips as she moves to straddle him. She lets him undress her. On their wedding night, they make love, and she loses her virginity to the man she's married.
Only later will the newlyweds learn that their entire marriage ceremony was aired live as a propo…. and that it was used to distract the Capitol while a team, led by Gale, went in and extracted the captured Victors.
Heart in her mouth, Katniss runs to the medical ward to see what has become of poor little Davey. Seeing him looking alive, if a little worse for wear, Katniss means to run into his arms and hold him and never let anyone hurt him again.
Davey greets her by attempting to strangle her.
Back in the hospital, this time with a cast around her throat and with her husband seated at her side, Katniss learns that Davey has been hijacked. Turned into a weapon designed to kill her. Knowing that the boy who had a crush on her has been turned against her, made to forget that he cares for her, and that Katniss cares for him…. Katniss decides it was much less painful being strangled.
The pain grows all the worse when Katniss is forbidden from seeing Davey for the time being, at least until the Thirteen high command can figure out how to reverse what is wrong with him.
Katniss's anguish only heightens when Peeta is given enlistment papers to go to the front.
In the hangar bay, Katniss passionately kisses her husband goodbye. "I love you!" she hisses into his lips as they slant and caress hers. She gifts him her mockingjay pin, as a district token of sorts, to carry into battle with him. They exchanged simple wedding rings at their Toasting, of course, but Peeta clearly places as much value in his wife's pin as he does the band testifying to their union.
Peeta kisses Katniss goodbye and boards the hovercraft. Once it is out of sight, Katniss buries her face in her palm and weeps.
Katniss is sent back into the front herself once Thirteen's invasion of the Capitol begins.
She is unnerved when Davey Cartwright is assigned to be a member of what is being called the Star Squad. When his hijacking results in the accidental death of one of their comrades, Katniss decides to lead the survivors on a daring and unauthorized mission through the city to kill President Snow. They go underground, mutts chasing her and her allies through the sewers. Along the way, they tragically lose Finnick.
Davey, trying to fight his hijacking, yells for Katniss to leave him behind, that he's a mutt. Katniss snaps him out of it by kissing him roughly, even though she is a married woman. "Stay with me…." she implores.
"Always," Davey murmurs back.
Returning to the surface, Katniss's group finds shelter with a sympathetic Hunger Games stylist. Katniss and Gale continue on to kill the President. Katniss hugs Davey goodbye.
It is chaos at the gates of the presidential mansion. At one point, Katniss sees medics rushing in to assist the wounded. She spots a flash of curly blond hair and locks eyes with her sister.
"PRIM!"
Suddenly, the world explodes and burns.
Later in the hospital, Katniss comes up out of her unconscious stupor to find Haymitch watching over her. He emotionally informs her that Prim was killed in the firebombing at the mansion. Then he passes Katniss her mockingjay pin, and by this, she knows: Peeta, her beloved husband of only a few months, is also dead. Killed in action.
The war ends. President Coin calls a council of the surviving Victors to vote on having a final, symbolic Hunger Games featuring Capitol children. Katniss votes yes for the sake of her sister and her husband.
As the Mockingjay, Katniss is assigned to fire the final shot of the war, killing President Snow.
As she strings her bow, Haymitch's words from the night before the Quell come back to her: remember who the real enemy is.
Katniss fires two shots in rapid succession: the first one kill Snow, and the second one, readied in a rapid reload while everyone is still applauding, finds its mark in President Coin. Katniss is placed under house arrest.
For weeks, she sits in a room, singing to herself and mourning her sister. Her husband. Davey. She is uncertain how much time has passed when Haymitch finally comes to collect her.
"Your trial's over," he tells her. Apparently, she was cleared of all charges against murdering President Alma Coin by reason of insanity. "Come on. We're going home."
Katniss returns home to District 12 a widow and adrift. Her entire homeland looks like a ghost town. The train station, from where she was once sent to the Capitol as tribute, has been bombed, the tracks ripped up. The Merchant town, where she once traded bread for kisses with a Baker's son in a back alley, is destroyed and razed - nothing but blackened ashes. From the landscape, one would be hard pressed to tell that there ever was a Seam. Only the Victors' Village, set high on its hill, and the Justice Building remain.
Haymitch returns with her. They are the first two people to attempt to resettle what was once the coal-mining district. Soon, others follow, including a contingent of refugees who attempt to become the new Merchants and rebuild what was once Town. Katniss goes beyond the Meadow to catch game – not that her thoughts give her much of an opportunity to catch much. But what she does catch, she sells to the new arrivals, out amidst the shanty tent towns that have cropped up along the main road to the Square as construction begins. During one day of trading, Katniss bumps into Delly Cartwright, who informs the statuesque huntress that she intends to rebuild her parents' shoe shop. Katniss wants to ask after a certain relative of the shoemaker's daughter, but the words get caught in her throat, and Delly doesn't offer anything up.
Katniss lives alone in her mansion, with only Buttercup the cat for company, and with Haymitch keeping watch from just across the street. She is plagued with nightmares, but nobody comes to soothe her nightmares, not the way she once did for a terrified little boy, or the way her young husband did for her when they were newly married and living in District 13.
Then, one bright summer morning, Katniss is coming through the gates of Victors' Village, on return from a hunt, when she spots someone kneeling and rummaging around in the dirt at her front stoop. She draws near, mouth falling open a little as she is hardly daring to believe it, and whispers:
"Davey…?"
Her former district partner rises and turns to face her. Katniss has a palm drawn to her mouth in awe.
"Yeah… it's me…."
He is so changed (and not in the same way he was after he was hijacked) that Katniss actually gets a skeptical look on her face, bemused. Davey Cartwright has grown taller since the last time she saw him – he is now about even with her in height, at 14. By the time he is fully grown, he will probably out-draw her. His red curls have grown longer, so that they now tumble down nearly to his shoulders. Katniss now reaches out a trembling hand and runs her fingers judiciously through these curls, sizing him up. She hesitates and looks into his eyes – eyes not as cobalt as those of her lost husband Peeta, but nonetheless still as blue as a summer sky…
"It is you!" she cries, the astonished smile still attempting to fight its way onto her face. "You came home…."
"Yeah…." Davey looks askance, down into the soil plot. "I, uh…. I picked these…. out by the woods…." A beat. "It's primrose…."
Katniss's expression collapses in pain and she melts into Davey's arms, the sob catching in her throat.
"I'm so sorry, Katniss…." Davey rumbles, rubbing her back.
Blinking back tears, Katniss allows herself that smile before burying it into Davey's strong shoulder.
Davey moves in with Katniss by unspoken agreement. She tells him about how his sister is doing, and encourages him to pay a visit. He brings news from their loved ones who managed to survive the war, summarized in a letter from Annie Cresta Odair:
"You'll be happy to hear that Katniss's mother is deploying new medical units in District 4. Gale has been promoted to a captaincy in District 7 - and, if rumors are to be believed, the title of First Gentleman of the State at the side of Governor Johanna Mason… …. and I am enjoying every moment with my son. He reminds me every day of his father. We have suffered so much to get here, but we owe it to our children to make the best of these lives. I hope you, Davey, are finding some peace… Annie."
Then Davey shows Katniss a picture of Annie with her little boy.
She glances up just in time to have Davey step close to her and awkwardly attempt to kiss her. She twists away.
"What…. what are you doing?"
Davey looks befuddled. "Well, Annie said we owe it to future generations to make the best of these lives…."
Katniss takes a step back, glancing Davey up and down, bemused. "So, you think by 'making the best,' she meant trying to seduce me?"
Davey ducks his head, embarrassed but also bashful. "Well…. would you want to?"
"Be seduced?" Katniss lifts an eyebrow. At Davey's shy nod, Katniss sighs. "Darling boy, I'm flattered, but…."
"But what? Why is it so bad?"
"Because you're too young to know what you want, and I'm old enough to know better!" What she doesn't say is all the other reasons this could never work: a four-year age difference, which is not nothing, at least not to her.
"OK. So you don't want to fall in love with someone again now. But perhaps, maybe…. someday?" Davey winces hopefully. "When I'm older?"
Katniss can't help it: amused, she bursts into laughter. "When you're ready," she corrects him.
"When will I be ready?" Davey asks her, sounding like an overly eager little boy, as she sashays away.
Katniss turns back at the foot of the stair thoughtfully. "I'll let you know."
Katniss and Davey take to sharing a bed together, to keep the nightmares at bay. The arrangement worked for them on the train during the Victory Tour and before the Quell, so why mess with a proven system? Every night, Davey takes to playing a version of the game that she created for him when he was hijacked. He'll ask Katniss: "You love me…. Real or Not Real?"
Katniss remembers a tale her father used to read to her as a child, about a beast who would ask a beautiful maiden every night if she would marry him. The maiden only accepted when the beast was near death, thus breaking a curse…. But Katniss also understands that the maiden only accepted the beast's hand when she was ready.
Four years pass. Katniss hunts. Davey continues to grow until he edges Katniss in height, and he learns how to stalk game at Katniss's knee. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out and then always waits for the next train shipment to come due.
Finally, one night, after Katniss has come to Davey's bed by candlelight and climbs in beside him, and he asks her, "You love me: …. Real or Not Real?", she replies:
"…. Real."
Perhaps, falling asleep, he didn't hear her, or didn't catch the difference, as he spoons her like he has taken to doing every night after she has answered Not Real. So now, Davey is surprised when Katniss bravely takes his hand at her waist and moves it up to boldly cup the swell of her breast through her nightdress. Turning in his arms, eyes growing heavy and lidded and solemn, Katniss reaches up and kisses her now 18-year-old district partner
Because he is ready. They both are.
The kiss deepens until Katniss boldly rolls Davey over onto his back and swings one creamy thigh over his hips as she moves to straddle him. Softly, she helps him undress her of her nightgown so that she drops the garment with a soft rustle upon the floor. Feeling his arms encircle her and grip her shoulder blades, she squirms atop him and kisses him again.
Katniss and Davey make love.
And as Davey beds her, Katniss is sure her cries, the cries of her being fucked, can be heard from here to the Seam.
"Huhhh…. Uhhhhh… UGHHHH! HRRRRRRR! ERMMMM! OHHHHHHHH!"
Katniss and Davey don't speak at first, about that night where they made love for the first time. Even though both were at the district age of consent and didn't do anything wrong, Katniss is hesitant about risking her heart again after Peeta. Even with the strong feelings she has always had for her former district partner, she doesn't seem to quite know what the next step is, where they stand, even after they have been intimate.
The years continue to pass. Davey continues to make shoes and help Delly revitalize the cobblery. Haymitch drinks until the liquor runs out, then raises geese in his back pen. He is a regular sight down at the restored Lucy Gray Baird train station now, waiting for the next shipment of goslings or booze to come due.
Katniss hunts. She now often brings Davey along with her, when he isn't working. She aims to teach him. Much like in the arena, the lessons on shooting the bow and arrow don't go well. She even teaches him how to swim, in the lake where she and Prim once learned.
Katniss can feel Davey's eyes on her when she strips down to her undergarments to enter the cool water. She tries not to pay it any mind, though the blush that reaches down to her chest betrays her.
She can't help but stare at the broad and rippling chest muscles Davey sports as he disrobes and follows her into the low tide. He is definitely not a little boy anymore. No – he is a man….
Propping up the small of his back as he learns how to float, holding him in the water, Katniss can feel how she is being tempted. When Davey is finally overcome with lust enough to grab her and kiss her, she can't say she is too surprised. She was almost waiting for it.
Though she is shocked by how bold Davey is with his hands. When he feels up her bum underneath the lapping wake, she attempts to firmly move his hand back up to her waist, only for Davey to squeeze her derriere again and firmly hike her thigh up to his waist.
He carries Katniss out of the water, and she folds her limbs about him. They sink into the mud and weed roots just on the edge of the shoreline.
On her hands and knees, Katniss trembles as Davey divests her of the last of her clothing.
He mounts her.
He mates with her. He takes her with one thrust, his cock slipping into the space between her womanly glutes.
Grunting, moaning, rutting against each other, Katniss and Davey have sex.
"Uhhhhh…." Katniss groans, her eyes rolling into the back of her head as Davey thrusts into her. They hump like two wild beasts. Lifting her head, Katniss locks eyes with a deer who now stands frozen, watching the humans copulate.
Up until a few years ago, Katniss had been rather ambivalent when it comes to sex. She had thought it a waste of energy better exerted somewhere else. Though on her hunts, she has come upon other animals mating in the woods in this way. Mating the way she and Davey are now.
Davey is now cradling her own breast in his fist, cupping the swell of it, pinching the hardened bud of a nipple. He grunts and jerks into Katniss faster, causing his lover's cries to rise in both volume and pitch.
"Huhhhh…. Uhhhh… MMMMMM! HMMMMMMMM!" Katniss is silenced by Davey's free hand (the one not fondling her boob) clapping over her mouth. "Mmmmhmmmmm….." Her eyelids droop closed, her lashes fluttering and she submits, yields, rocking her buttocks back into Davey's hit, suddenly devoid of all modesty and not caring if a random deer, or the President, or the entirety of District 12 is watching her and the shoemaker's son fuck.
Her fingernails suddenly clench in the dirt. Her toes curl.
With a satisfied squeal, Katniss cums. Her liquid juices stream down the insides of her thighs to mix with the mud, as Davey ejaculates his seed with a whimper into Katniss's shapely ass.
It is night in Victors' Village, and Katniss is lying awake in what has gradually become her and Davey's bed, listening to the fierce howl of a summer rainstorm thundering away outside. Davey had told her he would be down working at the shoe shop late, but Katniss feels the uncontrollable urge to be near him.
Adrenaline fueling her, she rises and changes out of her nightgown and into the blue Reaping dress she once wore to the Square. She plunges out into the deluge and runs down the hill of Victors' Village into Town.
The lights of the cobblery are still on. She knocks on the door insistently.
When Davey answers, the pair of former tributes stare at one another for a moment. Then, with a strangled gasp, Katniss sweeps into Davey's arms, embraces him and kisses him.
A clap of thunder and a flash of lightning are all that illuminate the kiss as it deepens.
When Katniss and Davey break apart, she is gulping for air, her breasts heaving under her blue bodice like a bellows. Wordlessly, she takes Davey's hand and leads him with solemn purpose into the shoe store.
Katniss guides him to the back. A flap of animal skin hanging over the doorway to the workshop rustles closed behind them.
Katniss and Davey make love in the back of the shoe shop.
By candlelight, Katniss pulls Davey's mouth down hungrily to hers as he spoons her from behind. She wonders if he's touched any other woman like this before. Slowly, she guides his one palm to cup the swell of her breast underneath her blue Reaping dress. Her eyes rolling back into her head, she lets out a pleasured moan as Davey's lips briefly leave hers to blaze a burning trail down to the hollow of her throat.
Katniss shrugs her father's hunting jacket off of her shoulders, so that the leather pools with a rustle down at their feet. Davey's fingers are trembling as they undo the drawstring that now allows the bodice, the top half of her blue Reaping dress to fall away, revealing firm, pert breasts, round as mangoes.
Katniss brings Davey's palm up to cup her again, and her squeezes her breast while fondling the nipple. The other tit, he eventually takes between his teeth, and Katniss lets out a cry of astonishment.
Katniss is now bent over a worktable, her boobs with pebbled nipples pressing into the varnished wood. She feels Davey bunching up her blue skirts, shoving them up over her hips, and she bares her ass to him.
Davey mounts her.
He mates with her.
They have sex.
Katniss and Davey play the Beast with Two Backs ardently, the shoe cobbler humping her ass while Katniss grinds back, drawing his cock further into her anus. Davey fucks her madly, and after one particularly vicious slam, Katniss lets out a curse.
"Fuck!"
Her breathing becomes heavy, staccato, labored. His fingers fist her hair, tug at her braid, to keep himself steady as he thrusts madly inside her, and rutting against him in heat, the noises Katniss makes grow steadily louder. Eventually, Davey claps his other palm over her mouth to silence her.
"Ugggh…. Huhhhhh… Uhhhhhh….. Ohhhhh….. Ahhhhhhhh….. ERMMMMM! MMMMMMM! HMMMMMM!"
Katniss tries to tell herself that fucking the cobbler's son is just a release. A physical thing. A way to repay a long-ago debt, for the coin in exchange for old baby clothes that helped save her and her family's life. For being there for her, in the arena. She also knows this rationalization for sleeping with the lad is just a lie.
Davey's thrusts are weakening, coming in little spurts. Eyes rolling into the back of her head, Katniss feels her toes curl.
Her body suddenly goes taut.
She cums for him. At the same moment that Davey finishes inside of her.
He tells her he loves her.
She says that she loves him back.
Delly Mellark (neé Cartwright) is able to find the tender blessings in life under tyranny.
She is cutting through the back alleyway behind the shoe shop, to check on her brother, when she thinks she hears moaning coming from the back of her family's storefront.
There is an odd silhouette of what looks like two people being cast on the curtain over this window.
Delly can recognize from the shape the two shadows make what is probably going on. The Capitol knows she and her husband and Peeta's brother, Rye, used to go at it often enough, before the war. Before the firebombs.
She shouldn't look. Snow only knows there are worse things to perpetuate in this district than petty gossip. But gossip is like Delly's daily bread.
Delly lifts the corner back. She peers in.
Through the windowpanes, she is astonished to see Katniss Everdeen flat on her back and with her legs spread as Delly's baby brother, a childhood friend of Katniss's sister Prim, grinds on top of her. They're…. Oh Snow's Roses, they're….
Delly isn't sure whether to feel horrified or pleased as she watches her best girl friend and her little brother having passionate sex. Davey finally finishes inside Katniss and drops his head into the valley of her glistening breasts, her bare skin shimmering in the candlelight.
Katniss immediately nudges Davey off of her and steers him back onto a stool, pushing him onto it. Hiking up her blue skirts, she swings a creamy leg over his hips as she moves to straddle him. Taking the man's face in her hands, she kisses him soundly on the mouth as she begins to ride him earnestly, rolling her hips into his cock. Davey seizes Katniss's bum in both fists and groans, jerking up into her wetness. He is growling words at her in his passion - Delly can discern uttered oaths like 'vixen.' 'Temptress.' 'Wench.' Katniss moans in perfect time with him.
"Uhhhhhh… Errrrrrr… Huhhhhh…. Uhhhhhhh… Oooooooo….."
Grinning, Delly lets the curtain fall and hurries on back to the party, anxious to tell Greasy Sae the news. She is happy and proud of Davey for finally plucking up the courage; she's always known he's had a crush on his statuesque fellow Victor.
The gossip in Delly dares to hope that there might even be another Toasting in the offing before long. She is confident that Katniss will soon be her sister-in-law by marriage, once again.
Katniss and Davey finally break the kiss, though they remain in each other's embrace. Her lips red and kiss-swollen, Katniss's eyes are solemn as she drums her fingers contemplatively along his jawline. These she replaces with her mouth, burning open-mouthed kisses up to his earlobe, into which she now hisses:
"If we get married, have a Toasting, you can't ever tell me what to do!"
Davey leans back, amazed and what did she just say? Did she just…. propose….?
"And I won't have children. Babies are something to love only to become something to lose to the Reaping or war." She eyes him pointedly. "I think you know that."
He nods dumbly.
"We could split time between living at… our place in the Village and here at the shop. I can hunt whenever I want. And I'll be nothing but civil to your parents; your father is a good man." Katniss runs her fingers through his auburn locks.
"Go ahead, then," she smiles, crooning. "Ask me."
"Ask what?"
She rolls her eyes, grinning. "Ask me to marry you. Propose."
He has to shift her off of his lap to get down on one knee. "Katniss Magenta Everdeen, will you marry me?"
Katniss smirks at his knowledge of her middle, Covey name. The use of her maiden name – Everdeen. "Yes, I will."
Davey tugs her back into his lap, and they embrace, kiss and make love again.
Davey awakens naked in the back of the shoe shop the morning after he and Katniss make love to find his lover gone. Only the scent of her and the furs she must have covered his naked body with before leaving remain.
Without those signs that she came here, that she really had been with him, he would wonder if last night had been some sort of fever dream. This kind of second-guessing over what is Real and Not Real leaves Davey damn near panicking. In some ways, he is still that frightened, insecure little boy who for years has harbored a crush on a woman four years his senior.
Should he go and see her? Search for her and ask her if she meant what she said, about marrying him? If she'll have him.
The pull is too strong. Closing up shop at mid-morning, he hikes back to the Village, and then past it to the district fence.
He spots Katniss in her blue dress, seated amongst the wildflowers of the Meadow. He had hoped he would find her here, even if it had been just a guess on his part.
Wordlessly, he sits down beside her. Neither of them speaks until the sun is dipping in a blazing fireball towards the horizon. Ironically, it is Katniss, who breaks the silence.
"Green."
Davey turns and studies her. "What?"
"My favorite color. It's green." She turns and gazes at him.
Davey licks his lips. It suits the woman.
"What's yours?"
He flushes, his eyes taking an appraisal of her dress. "Blue."
Bashful, he turns his face away. Starts to shift as if to rise to his feet, but then Katniss is cupping his cheek in her palm, turning his face back to hers so she can kiss him softly, then passionately, and the Seam huntress and the shoemaker fall back into the Meadow grasses.
Concealed by the stalks and the weeds, Davey shoves her blue skirts up over her hips. Katniss opens her lips for him at the same moment that she opens her legs. She clamps her thighs tight around him.
They have sexual intercourse.
She takes him into the woods, back to the lake and the secret cabin that her ancestors built long ago and where her own parents once honeymooned. On the dirt floor of this isolated shack, then later skinnydipping in the cool waters of the lake, Katniss and Davey have sex again.
Katniss teaches him where to touch her, what she likes. Once he has fully mastered how to pleasure her, she returns the favor by dropping to her knees and drawing him deep into her throat. She performs oral sex on him quietly, methodically, tucking his balls past her bottom lip and lolling out her tongue to lick the upper reaches of his hardened shaft.
After he has cum in her mouth with a shout, Davey scissors open Katniss's long legs and brings her to orgasm with his own tongue, gnawing on her slick slit and nursing at the peaked and hardened nibbles at her breast.
When they've finished, sweaty and naked and spent and he asks her if she still wants to have a Toasting, Katniss simply responds by kissing him.
Spring arrives.
One clear, blue morning, the church bells are ringing, tolling in the tower above the Justice Building. From the way they peal, it sounds as though someone's just gotten hitched.
Out of the oaken double doors, followed by a small group of well-wishers come Davey Cartwright and his new bride.
Katniss Cartwright (formerly Mellark, neé Everdeen) is laughing and beaming radiantly, still quite unable to believe it herself that she is here. She shivers as her…. her husband pauses at the base of the stairs to pull her close and kiss her deeply.
Her lips curl against his into a tentative, hopeful smile as she returns his kiss. Errantly, she tosses aside her bouquet of katniss roots and pine needles so that Posy Hawthorne catches it. Gale's little sister catches the katniss roots, anyway; the pine needles scatter upon the ground.
Nestled between the embracing newlyweds is Katniss's swollen belly, which Davey now caresses.
The baby hadn't been planned. But when Katniss had learned that she was great with child, she had gone to Davey and told him she was pregnant. Carrying his baby. She had been frightened for them and especially for him when Davey told her he hoped she would keep it.
Yet Katniss also knows that Davey loves her, and he needs an heir for the cobbler shop. So, when Davey asks her to consider keeping their baby, she says Yes. She agrees to carry their child to term, despite feeling a terror as old as life itself.
Davey now gallantly lifts his wife onto the back of a rented cart and pulls it for home. The new Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright hold their Toasting in the shoe shop, before their meager hearth. Posy Hawthorne and Leevey, the bridesmaids, sequester Katniss upstairs to change her for the solemn tradition.
They divest Katniss of her wedding dress – her mother's wedding dress – carefully. The garment is an old family heirloom, one that in Merchant circles is carefully handed down as a rite of passage from mother to daughter. Katniss's mother had absconded with the piece when she had eloped with Katniss's daddy, then spirited it away to District 13, where Katniss wore it when she was a bride to Peeta.
Changing into her blue Reaping dress, Katniss descends the stair and greets her husband before the hearth. They Toast a bit of bread and share it.
Finally, her lips slightly parted and with the firelight dancing in her solemn, grey eyes, knowing that she is getting married for the second and final time, Katniss Cartwright tilts her head and permits her husband to kiss her.
The wedding kiss deepens and Katniss feels herself being lifted off her feet as the gathered witnesses cheer. When they break the kiss at last, Katniss goes over to embrace Delly, her sister-in-law once more. Mr. Cartwright, Katniss's father-in-law, strikes up a reel on a fiddle and Davey and Katniss dance at their wedding. It's sweeping and nice and even romantic, but Katniss doesn't feel truly married until she and her husband honeymoon at her father's hunting cabin by the lake, they way her mother and father before her did.
Some six months later, Katniss gives birth to a little boy. There are tufts of little blonde hair on the top of his head.
She names the lad Peeta David – to remind her of the love she lost and also the love that she has found. As for her husband, he assures her that they'll be OK – they have each other.
As Katniss and Davey Cartwright play with their children in the Meadow, their youngest nursing at his mother's breast, both husband and wife know there are much worse Games to play.