One-Shot: Closing the Circuit

On the train to the Quarter Quell, Katniss only half-listens to the recap of the Victor Reapings.

She only really sits up and takes notice when the selection of the Careers is over and the coveage moves on to District 3.

There are only two people on the stage: one man and one woman. Katniss feels sympathy for this poor district that apparently has a worse crop of Victors to choose from than even Twelve did.

The gentleman has light cocoa skin, framed by a pair of large spectacles and capped with a goatee at his chin. He looks to be older than Katniss's mother and Haymitch – Katniss guesses perhaps 50s.

District 3's escort calls the man's name first. "Beetee Latier!"

Beetee doesn't seem surprised – after all, he's the only one they can send into the arena. He dutifully steps into his place, as his district partner and fellow Victor, Wiress, is called.

Next to her at the table, Peeta is flipping through his notes and making stars next to the names of those who were picked. "Beetee Latier: 55 years old, about to 56. Won the 35th Hunger Games – at that time the youngest ever, a record he held until Finnick Odair."

Katniss blinks and turns her head just long enough to regard her fiancé. "He fought in the arena just before his birthday?"

"He fought in the arena during his birthday," Peeta replies with a grim upturn to his lips; it isn't quite a smile. Yet from his voice alone, he sounds impressed. "The only tribute to successfully kill all six Career tributes. And he did it all at once!"

Katniss stares back at the image of the ashen-skinned man on the screen, in awe. Beetee Latier would have made a fine tribute for District 12, had he been old enough closer to 18 and had a chance to work down in the mines. But most District 12 kids are Reaped younger than 18 – the minimum age of consent to go work in the mines or marry.

Katniss sees Beetee and his district partner, Wiress, from a distance at the parade. She doesn't get a chance to talk to them.

She finally gets her chance next morning, on the first day of training. Peeta had suggested splitting up to work the room, see who they trust the least, and "work their way backwards from there."

Gazing at her lover from across the room to see that he's spear-throwing with Brutus and Chaff, Katniss decides that Peeta's a big boy and can handle himself. He's certainly savvy enough to know that the Careers won't make it past a first round of feeling out for trust. She herself has made friendly small talk with the twins from 1 and Enobaria of 2, quickly deciding she wouldn't want to team up with them.

There is movement over by the fire-starting station. Katniss approaches.

Beetee and Wiress are attempting to start a fire. Beetee is mumbling to himself: "Friction…. Creates heat. Heat…. Creates fire…."

Katniss betrays the barest hint of a smile. "You should…. Probably move your hands lower."

Beetee glances to her sharply, eyes as piercing as the flint that's not available to them at this station, and for some reason, Katniss blushes as a lewd connotation behind her words pops into her head. Awkwardly, she rubs her hands together, slicing them through the air up and down the length of her body to demonstrate.

Beetee tries what she suggests, and a flicker of flame flares to life.

"A little brute force…." Wiress's eyes gleam at the spark.

"…. Is always helpful…" Beetee turns to Katniss with a warm smile. "Thank you…"

He has kind eyes, Katniss decides. They remind her of Peeta's. His voice is gravely, but there is nevertheless something smooth like honey in its delivery.

"…. By the corner of the table…." Wiress is murmuring. Katniss and Beetee drop their gaze to turn and stare at the balcony where the Gamemakers are mingling.

"Ah, yes…." Beetee lifts his glasses off his face the slightest bit, peering under the rims. "The shimmering…."

"Shimmering?" Katniss glances between the pair.

"To separate us and them," Wiress mumbles.

A forcefield, Katniss realizes. "Probably my fault. I shot an arrow at them last year."

Neither one of them reacts with the shock and awe she has grown accustomed to whenever she's retold the story, and for some reason this bothers her. Then again, where Beetee and Wiress come from, shooting at the Gamemakers to kill is likely no more notable than a scrawny kid from Three electrocuting all six of the trained combatants simultaneously.

"How can you tell?"

Beetee and Wiress share a glance, then burst into laughter. Katniss cracks an awkward smile. "Is it that obvious or something?"

"They…. They may as well have a sign!" Wiress blasts.

"Look around you," Beetee rumbles. His timbre sounds like rockslides and currant jam. "Every so often, the lights around us, they flicker. Why?"

"Because the force field is taking up too much energy?" Katniss guesses. She was never the best science student when she was in school – the most practical course in the subject they had was a Mining Safety elective – so she's pleased at how Beetee's smile lets her know she got it right.

His deep brown eyes twinkle like the lights momentarily shorting out above their heads. "There's always a flaw in the system…."

Katniss chooses the pair from Three as allies. Effie, Haymitch and even Peeta all laugh at her, but she doesn't care.

She is impressed by how Beetee gives his answers in the interviews. Much of the jargon he uses, Katniss doesn't quite understand, but she appreciates how educated she is. After all, before she became a Victor and dropped out (de-enrollment from school for Victors is strongly encouraged), Katniss had aimed to graduate. Mother wanted both her daughters to grow up and be educated district ladies.

After Peeta drops the baby bombshell, Katniss glances down the row of her competitors as they spontaneously join hands.

Her eyes find Beetee's at the moment that her palm finds and closes over Chaff's stump.

It's 36 hours later, the second day of the Quell, and Katniss is grousing because she doesn't want to owe Johanna Mason anything, and yet she does, for getting both of the District 3 tributes out of the Bloodbath at the Cornucopia alive.

She is at the edge of the tide, washing the blood off of Wiress in the surf. Further down the beach, even through Wiress's frantic mumbling, she can overhear Peeta talking to Beetee as her lover cleans the older man's cuts.

"So, Wiress is your partner, then?"

Katniss catches Beetee giving Peeta a bemused look, perhaps reassessing that the lad isn't as intelligent as he has led the Capitol to believe. "…. Yes….."

"No, no," Peeta chuckles, flashing a sheepish smile. "I mean, is she your partner?" He stresses the last word meaningfully.

Grey orbs widening, Katniss glances between Beetee and the woman she is currently bathing. Before her and Peeta, the thought of two Victors falling in love, never mind having relations together, would have seemed foolish and absurd with the Capitol watching their every move. And yet…

"Oh!" Beetee blinks. "No, no, my boy. Wiress and I are just colleagues. I'm aromantic."

Peeta grins. "Really? I would say I'm a romantic at heart, too – certainly the more romantic one in my relationship." He catches Katniss's eye and gives her a cheeky wink; Katniss snorts but can't help the smile that graces her lips.

"No, no – not a romantic. Aromantic. Ay. It means I have very little, if any, sexual attraction, to others. Some people also use the term asexual."

"Oh," Peeta blinks. The District 12 tributes go back to washing their District 3 counterparts. "You said little sexual attraction to others. Little doesn't mean none. So…. if you ever did find yourself attracted to someone….. what would that look like for you, Beetee?"

Beetee seems genuinely intrigued by the question. "I suppose…. If I were attracted to anyone, it would be… for their intelligence." He taps his temple. "I lead with my head, not my heart."

… Katniss can understand that. Peeta leads with his heart. If anything, being the practical woman she is, she leads with her head, except when it has something to do with Prim. …. and, more and more, with Peeta.

Katniss is curious about the fancy words Beetee uses: aromantic and asexual. She doesn't really know what they mean, and almost wishes she could ask Haymitch to send her a dictionary or something as a sponsor gift.

She identifies with Beetee when he says he experiences little sexual attraction towards others. Katniss thinks this describes her. But that doesn't mean she feels no attraction. Shocking as it may seem, Katniss does have a type: well-built men. Intelligent men. But the two together, and he's the perfect man – though Katniss realizes that brains and brawn isn't necessarily required or it's a deal breaker for her.

Gale is street-smart in his intelligence. Peeta, growing up in Town as he did, was afforded all the opportunities to be a well-educated man. Beetee is on a whole other level – genius level. Katniss finds she can appreciate a man with a sharp and practical mind that mirrors hers.

I guess if she feels that kind of attraction, then she can't be entirely asexual. Katniss decides she is attracted to people who make her feel things. Feel emotion – something she has not always been the best at. She wonders if there is a word to describe that kind of sexuality.

She is interrupted in her musings when Wiress starts babbling 'Tick, tock' again. Glancing around the beach, her head almost of a periscopic swivel, Katniss breathes out the phrase.

"Tick, tock…. Tick, tock…."

And then she gets it.

"It's a clock…. Wiress, you're a genius! You're a genius!"

We are like schoolchildren, Katniss thinks as she listens to Beetee's plan, and she isn't sure whether to feel insulted or awed.

Comprehending the linchpin of the plan is easy enough for her to understand, despite being the daughter of a poor coal miner and with only ¾'s of a District 12 Upper School education. It's not that much different from the mechanics observed in making snares – every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If this happens, then this should happen.

For some reason, even thinking the word mechanics makes Katniss think of sex, as she recalls a memory of Madge Undersee chittering to her at their lunch table about the mechanics of sex – at least, as reported by some of the allegedly more 'experienced' girls in their grade. If this, then this. She glances to Peeta, her face flushing. Then she looks to Beetee.

Peering at the ashen-skinned man now, Katniss realizes there is a key to Beetee's genius, but it isn't something you can learn in the woods or on the street (like Gale) or hone in the classroom or on the interview stage (like Peeta). It isn't even something you can develop while a tribute in the arena.

Recalling watching the tape of the Second Quarter Quell, and a young Haymitch, Katniss decides that genius is just something that you're born with. You either have it, or you don't. And Beetee (along with Haymitch) certainly has it. The man from Three is genius enough, along with having some nerve, to turn the arena against itself – and the Capitol and transform a mechanism of death into a weapon, like Haymitch before him. Or, well, really, after him. 15-turning-16-year-old Beetee had to have been pretty brash, to electrocute all six Careers at once. Katniss wonders exactly how he did it. She knows she and Peeta would have watched the tape of Beetee's Games at some point, but she forgets how it went down. Before the end, before she and her allies have to betray each other, she resolves to ask him.

At the lightning tree, a divvying of assignments threatens a minor argument when Peeta fears being separated from Katniss and asks to guard the girls on their way down to the beach, rather than Beetee at the tree.

"It's his plan; we all agreed to it!" Johanna snarls, impatient. "Is there a problem?"

"Excellent question." And Beetee searches Katniss's eyes.

The intensity of his amber gaze makes Katniss drop her head with a flush. "…. No. There's no problem." She reassuringly kisses Peeta goodbye.

"I'll see you at midnight."

The next year, nearly, Katniss spends consumed with worries about Peeta, pining for her lost arena love.

When she isn't being badgered by the Thirteen high command to be their Mockingjay, filming Plutarch's stupid propos, or hiding in storage closets to hyper-ventilate, Katniss hunkers down in Weapons Development with Beetee and Gale.

She doesn't have anything to do, since she technically isn't assigned here, so she contents herself with watching the two men work. Despite being separated by close to 40 years of life experience, Katniss is astonished and pleased for her oldest friend that there is apparently very little daylight between Beetee and Gale in terms of intellect. Gale seems to understand exactly what Beetee is working up to even before he explains it.

"He has a very analytical mind," Beetee expresses to her one day, when Gale ducks out to report to a strategy meeting at the behest of Coin.

"He's still a country boy at heart," Katniss mumbles. Though she does agree, she's always found Gale has had a good head on his shoulders. His only flaw is that said head can run a little too hot. "He almost had to drop out of school, to help his mama and the three young'ins."

She isn't sure why her District 12 accent is bleeding through all of a sudden, and chancing a glance at Beetee, she blushes. The last thing she wants is for him to think her dumb just because of the way she talks – and she doesn't even talk that way all the time! Plenty of Townies looked down on Seamers due to their drawl (well, except for Peeta), and Katniss only falls into that speech pattern when she's with Gale. She's always suspected her natural lack of an accent has something to do with her Merchant blood – she's half-Townie herself, on her mother's side.

"I'm just as glad he didn't," Beetee smiles, turning back to his computer. "Brains and brawn is a rare combination…. He would have made an exceedingly dangerous tribute in the arena…."

For some reason, this assessment by Beetee bothers Katniss. Frowning, she shuffles closer to him to get a better look at the images on the monitor.

Blueprints, schematics, and as she peers closer, the images only just start to come together in her mind.

"What's this….?"

Beetee tabs away from the file unusually quickly, sending Katniss a sheepish grin. "Oh, just a pet project of mine. I have to find spare time for my own inventing when I can here, same as I did in the Capitol."

Katniss frowns deeply, but decides to let it and her curiosity about Beetee's 'pet project' go.

When it comes to the man himself, however, Katniss's curiosity is insatiable. He presents quite differently than most other men she's met, often coming across as awkward in social situations. As a socially awkward, some might even say emotionally constipated, person herself, Katniss identifies with this ineptitude of interaction. It should only be natural, then, to have two people who can't communicate well with others, gravitate towards each other. Katniss finds the conversation between her and Beetee flows easily. She wonders if he ever got this way with Wiress – likely, he often finished her sentences in the arena and in training – but Katniss doesn't ask. A person who socializes differently almost certainly grieves differently, and she doesn't want to push Beetee to an emotional place he doesn't want to go. He probably surmises the same about her regarding Peeta, for he never asks how she's holding up in grieving him – for she is grieving him, just in a different way. A limbo. Perhaps, where Beetee is concerned, he feels he doesn't have to ask.

The night that Gale and Boggs commence the rescue operation to extract the captured Victors, Katniss watches Beetee do battle with the Capitol's tech, hacking into their systems, practically raping their servers. He's all over them, and the experience of watching him work and exert with such intensity, even if the only exertion is in how his fingers fly over the keys, makes Katniss feel hot and bothered.

When the report comes over Comms that the Victors have been extracted and the team is heading back to base, Katniss leaps from her seat amidst everyone else's cheering and throws her arms around Beetee's neck.

"You're a genius," she whispers into his cheek.

She knows he must get that a lot, such that the word has practically lost all its meaning to him, so it surprises her when he turns to her with a smile, leaving their faces unusually close. "I'm going to remember you said that!"

He sounds genuinely pleased by her compliment, even thrilled, and that, plus their proximity, makes Katniss draw back, slightly flustered. Though she does bestow the older man from Three with a weak and grateful smile.

Katniss watches Finnick and Annie get married with a solemn expression on her face. She feels a pang go through her, a pining longing for Peeta.

At the reception, she takes Beetee for a spin in his chair. The Victor from Three seems bemused by the whole pomp and circumstance.

"We really haven't splintered off so much as districts…" he murmurs.

"What do you mean?" Katniss's mouth curls into a smile, amused.

"Well, by district wedding customs alone, we aren't that different…" And he's off, giving Katniss an anthropological lecture on the similarities between district wedding cultures. He claims that the trappings of the Odairs' wedding prove that Districts 4, 8 and 10 were once a more unified region. For example, District 4 has the bride and groom stand under a woven net. In District 8, neighbors donate and weave together patches into a quilt for the bride and groom to wrap themselves in as they give their vows, known as a 'Quilting.' And in District 10, the groom simply lassoes his bride the same way one might rope in a steer.

"How do people get married in District 3?" Katniss asks curiously.

"Oh, we call it Closing the Circuit."

"Huh?" Katniss twitters out a laugh.

"It's like this, Katniss: in the newlywed couple's marital home, someone deliberately sets off a break in the electrical system – usually one that leads to an identifiable source. Then the bride and groom will each stick a finger in a corresponding socket and share a kiss, thereby completing the circuit with their lips."

Katniss stares, horrified. "They'd…. they'd shock themselves!"

"Well, generally, yes, that's the idea. Getting shocked during one's wedding kiss generally signifies good luck in the marriage. If the circuit is successfully completed and the light turns on, it indicates even more good health and happiness."

Katniss shakes her head in bewilderment. "At least our Toastings in Twelve aren't dangerous."

"No. You just apparently burn bread over an open flame," Beetee deadpans with apparently genuine seriousness, and this startles a laugh out of her. "Why don't you all just use appliances, like a toaster?"

Katniss smiles. "Where I come from, hardly any Seamers can afford a toaster. Besides, Toasting the bread in the hearth signifies making a happy home."

Beetee nods thoughtfully. "We have such weird ideas about love…."

She hates him, she decides. Him and Gale both. What a pair the two of them must have made, creating weapons of war and mass destruction that they knew would likely see innocents amidst the dead! Oh, but her hunting partner and former friend, as well as her former ally and…. she isn't sure what, can just call it collateral damage. See her sister as collateral damage!

Katniss has to be impressed that, unlike Gale, at least Beetee attempts to explain himself.

"Those were only pet projects, Katniss! Thought exercises! Those were never meant to be used, let alone developed!" He attempts to prove his point by telling her the origin story of the Games themselves: apparently, Snow's father and another classmate came up with the model for the Games for a class project when they were in school. It had been a bit of drunken brainstorming, with no intention of being the final product, at least on the part of the classmate – some fellow named Highbottom – but then Snow's father had turned it in and passed off the work as his own. It was implemented after the first war, and well, you know the rest…

He was hacked, Beetee claims – and with hindsight, he has good reason to believe that it was Coin doing the hacking.

In her heart of hearts, Katniss believes him. Knowing what they know now, it seems like just the sort of thing Coin would do. But that doesn't change the fact that Beetee's ideas, whether they were meant to be implemented or not, had a hand in her sister's death! How could Beetee have been so careless as to leave those kinds of notes and sketches on his own personal server? How could he, with a hacker's mind, have been so arrogant as to assume that no one would ever hack him?

She hasn't forgiven Gale for his role in the development of these projects. So why should she forgive Beetee? Hurt, betrayed and heartbroken, Katniss returns home alone to District 12.

Only the train station and the Victors' Village are left standing. Not even the Justice Building was spared, which is more than could be said about Thirteen after the Dark Days.

There is no telling when, if ever, Peeta will be back, so after finding the razed earth where his family's Bakery once stood, Katniss decides to rebuild it herself and re-open, waiting for his return. She figures construction would have been the hardest part, even with returning refugees helping to assist resulting in many hands making light work.

But, no. The hardest part is the actual baking. Still, Katniss resolves to teach herself. If she could teach herself to be a huntress, she can teach herself to be a Baker. She kneads the dough, loads the ovens. Every day, she traipses out to Lucy Gray Baird train station, keeping her eyes peeled for ashy blonde hair and eyes as blue as a summer sky amidst the returning displaced.

It startles her that the first person she recognizes coming off the trains one morning isn't a strong and able-bodied young man, but an older man in a wheelchair.

"Hello, Katniss," Beetee greets her solemnly.

Katniss regards her old ally and friend coolly. Without a word, she turns and flounces off the train platform. She cocks her Capitol-repaired ear and isn't sure whether to feel annoyed or relieved when she hears the squeak of his wheels following her.

Her first thought should have been to send him on to the Victors' Village. There are still a few mansions left unclaimed by refugees, and besides, Haymitch is there still, tending his geese. But Katniss is afraid that Beetee couldn't get his chair up the hill on which the Village is set, certainly not under his own power.

He's here, apparently, to act as an electrician consultant for the wiring of Twelve's new Justice Building, which is deep into construction just off the Square – Katniss can hear the banging and the whir of the power tools from the Bakery.

As evening sets in, she fixes him a cup of tea.

Beetee asks her if she's heard from Peeta; she tells him No. The huntress and the genius sip from their saucers, the conversation stilted and not as flowing as it once was, down in Weapons Development in Thirteen.

It is only because there aren't any other practical options available that Katniss allows Beetee to stay here, letting him take the day bed. Thankfully, it's on the ground floor, tucked away in a small room that, in another lifetime, had corresponded to the back study where Peeta's mother had once done the books (Katniss had found blueprints for an extension of the old Bakery in Peeta's vacated mansion in the Village, clearly demarcating the new renovations from the existing structure and what went where. She had used it to build the whole thing and realize Peeta's dream).

Katniss still has to lift Beetee out of his chair and into the bed. Releasing his dead weight, she flops over him so that she's partially straddling him.

Turning beet red, the pair of Victors freeze, their gazes locking. Katniss watches Beetee's Adams apple bobble through a gulp.

"…. I never meant to have my inventions kill Prim, Katniss…" He pleads. She can tell he means every word. "I never had any intention of having them see the light of day because the risk of killing innocents was too great. If I had known that Prim would be one of those innocents, how my creations would hurt you…. I never would have even drawn up those schematics in the first place!"

He reaches for her hand. When their fingers touch, he shocks her, and Katniss draws back, sucking in a breath.

Katniss and Beetee stare into each other's eyes. She feels another tingle – a shock, really – as she senses Beetee's free hand curling about her waist. Beetee draws his face close.

Just before their lips can meet, she gets a hold of herself with a gasp and twists away, shaken. By the realization that he was about to kiss her. By the realization that, on some level, in spite of everything and how he betrayed her, she wanted him to.

"…. I have to go…." She all but runs from the room.

"Beetee? Are we going to talk about what happened last night?"

Glancing to her companion from where he is setting out utensils along the bistro tables, Katniss is annoyed when Beetee avoids answering her. "You don't want to talk? Fine. I'll just…."

Suddenly, there is a booming clap of thunder outside and the light fixture illuminating much of the front eating space winks out. "Oh, hell!" Katniss grouses. A switch in the fuse box must have blown. But she's scared to traverse down into the basement to try and repair it – not when it's so dark. "…. I'll get some candles."

Katniss lights a few, and sets them out on the bistro table where Beetee is sitting quietly, his head bowed.

Staring at him, recalling the way she touched him in bed last night and came onto him, Katniss is frustrated by him. Maddened that he can't bring himself to express the feelings that she knows he has for her. They're there, if only he will let them out.

In that moment, she decides to do something quite mad. Something like deliberately stick her finger into an electrical wall socket.

She doesn't feel an electric shock, which tells her this wall socket is part of the circuit that was broken.

"Ahem." Katniss clears her throat, causing Beetee to glance up. His eyes zero in on her finger sticking into the wall socket, and they widen. Katniss merely lifts an eyebrow and lets her grey orbs flit over to the wall socket situated within reach of Beetee's wheelchair.

After a long moment, Beetee reaches out and sticks his finger in the socket. There is no jerk to indicate that he has been shocked.

The pair of wall sockets are spaced just close enough together that Katniss can reach him. Depositing herself in Beetee's lap, she straddles him, so that the skirts of her frock fan out.

The pair of Victors gaze into each other's eyes. With his free hand, Beetee reaches up and caresses her face, but it is Katniss who closes the gap. Or, really closes the circuit.

The moment their lips touch, an electric shock passes through their kiss, making the hairs on Katniss's forearm and the back of her neck stand up. The literal spark causes her and Beetee to involuntarily deepen the kiss.

As they embrace, the light fixture above the bistro area turns on.

Katniss doesn't mean for the kiss to escalate into anything more carnal. It just sort of happens.

She doesn't know what she's doing, and is only marginally heartened that Beetee doesn't either. But she understands enough about the mechanics of sex to take the lead. With trembling fingers, she undoes the zipper at Beetee's pants, freeing his erection.

She enthrones, impales herself on him, letting him slide into warmth. Katniss throws back her head with a gasp, giving Beetee's lips access to the creamy curve of her neck.

With twin moans, and Katniss bouncing up and down in his lap, they mate. Neither one minds how they both achieve orgasm far too quickly.

Though their Closing of the Circuit technically means they are married, Katniss still wants to be wed in the eyes of her homeland and her people.

She and Beetee set a date for their wedding without much discussion. They cannot be married in the eyes of the district law just yet – that would normally require standing before the District Justice of the Peace and signing a marriage license in the Justice Building, but the Justice Building is still under construction and Twelve still needs to hold elections to elect a District Justice of the Peace.

The couple doesn't mind. Besides, Katniss tells Beetee, it isn't the signing of a piece of paper that makes two people man and wife.

In Twelve, it's the Toasting that matters.

So, one night, Katniss and Beetee quietly invite over Haymitch and some neighbors from the Village to act as witnesses. Their friends set the fire blazing in the hearth, and Katniss descends the stair in her blue Reaping dress. Ordinarily, she would have worn her mother's wedding dress – the Everdeen family heirloom that Mrs. Everdeen absconded with when she ran away from home to marry Katniss's father – but the garment burned in the firebombings along with the rest of the Seam.

Katniss and Beetee Toast a bit of bread and share it. Then, flames flickering in her grey orbs, Katniss solemnly tilts her head, her lips parted, and permits her husband to kiss her. Mr. Cartwright, Delly's father, plays his fiddle and Beetee and Katniss dance at their own wedding this time. The old shoe cobbler also informs the bride that Peeta is still in the Capitol… and living with his daughter. Katniss feels happy for her old flame, and hopes that maybe he and Delly will one day have a Toasting of their own.

That night, Katniss and Beetee slip quietly into the day bedroom and spend their wedding night making love. This time, Beetee is the one to mount her. Much like their first time, there is awkwardness and giggles, but the newlyweds quickly find that Beetee doesn't need the use of his legs to fuck her – just his hips. They get better at having sex when they honeymoon to the lake and hunting cabin beyond the fence, where Katniss's parents once went after their Toasting.

Katniss and Beetee discuss having children. Both are quite content to find that they are in agreement that they don't need to procreate, form a new generation, to be happy. Katniss has never had any desire to be a mother anyhow – to her, babies were only ever something to love only to inevitably become something to lose to the arena.

The Latiers spend their time baking bread. Beetee is the first to attest that he will never be the baker his wife has become, or that Peeta was. Just off the old alleyway running along the back loading dock is the husky remains of what Katniss thinks was a delivery truck, the bed of which her husband now makes his workshop to tinker and make new creations. Sometimes, Katniss will sneak in there with him and put the truck bed to more…. physical activities. The truck will rock on its axles, the windows steaming and fogging, during their passionate lovemaking.

In time, Katniss forgives her husband for the role he played in the murder of her sister. You can't forgive someone much more than by marrying them, she decides.

The couple falls more deeply in love with each passing year. The age difference doesn't bother them. One cold nights, they'll stay up in the front of the bakery shop, playing word games and brain teasers with each other. They eventually make a book of all the friends and loved ones they've lost, making lists of all the good things that memorialized person did.

This, in itself, is like a game. They do it over and over. It gets a little tedious as the years go by, but, Katniss figures…. There are much worse Games to play.