One-Shot: My Sister's Wedding
Katniss agrees to it in order to give her sister a chance at a better life.
Just the same, a part of her scoffs at the idea that Merchants can afford to marry for love, so of course they could afford to buy it, as well. But that's how many engagements are arranged in Town - for the purpose of forging business alliances between families.
Prim's healing practice could prove valuable to the Bakery, given that many of the herbs she uses for remedies can also be found in breads. She will earn and learn much, as both a healer and a Baker's wife.
Plus, Prim is 18 - the District 12 age of consent. So, despite the fact that it's breaking her heart (for multiple reasons), Katniss agrees to the arranged marriage.
The Toasting is held the winter after Prim is released from her final Reaping. If people are curious about the four-year age difference between the bride and groom, no one comments on it. Katniss helps her sister into the bridal dress that was passed down from their late mother - it is actually a Merchant custom, for a woman's wedding dress to be handed down from mother to daughter. Mrs. Everdeen absconded with the garment when she ran away from her privileged upbringing to marry their father. Now, Prim is returning it as she returns to the fairer folk.
Following the legal ceremony in the Justice Building, and the Toasting at the Bakery, the reception is held in the Pavilion, Town's open-air market and their equivalent to the Hob. Katniss had originally wanted for the reception to take place in the Hob, to give it some Seam flavor, but her sister's new mother-in-law, the Witch, had refused. Inviting Seam guests to the nuptials and reception had been the best compromise.
As Mr. Cartwright, the shoemaker, plays the reel on his fiddle and Prim and Peeta dance at their wedding, Katniss watches from the edge of the dance floor. She tells herself that she should be happy for her sister. Grateful that Mrs. Mellark wouldn't look past the youngest Everdeen's looks that resemble Merchant (Prim favors their mother's side of the family) in orchestrating an arranged marriage to her youngest son.
The festivities have all fallen on Yuletide Eve, an unofficial holiday on the District 12 calendar, and the only night when Peacekeepers bring out pyrotechnics from the Barracks and allow them to be shot off (under supervision, of course).
Fireworks whizz and pierce the nighttime sky, exploding above the cobblestoned streets and shacks beyond.
Katniss gets drunk.
Next to her, she notices the son of the shoemaker, Davey Cartwright - he's the little brother of a classmate and close girlfriend in school, Delly, and Prim's age - watching the happy couple. Katniss notes how he's looking at her sister.
"... You love her, don't you?" Of course, who wouldn't love Prim? Seam and Town boys would have been rounding the block for a chance with her.
The clock strikes midnight. As is custom, many people share a kiss to celebrate. Katniss impulsively kisses Davey Cartwright.
She leads him away from the party, back towards his family's shoe shop.
They only make the alley behind it before she's sprawled in the gravel with her blue skirts pushed up over her hips, and they mate.
Delly Mellark (neé Cartwright) can appreciate life's simple pleasures, as she takes the long way back from her childhood friend's Toasting reception to join her husband, Rye, in bed. As she passes through the dark alleyways behind her family's shoe shop, the flashes of color from fireworks overhead suddenly illuminate the shadow of what looks like two people having sex. Delly can hear grunts of passion from around the corner.
She shouldn't look. She mustn't - nobody enjoys a gossip, especially in this district with its small-town feel, where everybody knows everybody else's business. Yet Delly's curiosity is too great.
She peeks around the corner.
Her old schoolmate, Katniss Everdeen, is on her hands and knees in the dirt, the bodice of her blue frock partially wrenched free so that the swell of her one breast is exposed. The nipple has pebbled in the chilly air and a strong, calloused hand is cupping it. Her coital partner has mounted her and is thrusting into her globed arse cheeks, the couple playing The Beast with Two Backs.
There is another flash of light from the fireworks whizzing and exploding with a piercing EEEE! into the nighttime sky and by it, Delly recognizes who the statuesque Seam huntress has taken as a lover this night - Delly's own little brother!
The coupling doesn't make sense, as Delly always suspected her baby brother liked the other Everdeen sister.
Katniss's skirts shift, the hem bunching under Davey's touch, revealing her womanhood, which he now diddles. Katniss moans and furiously cants into his touch. Davey's thrusts into her buttocks become faster.
Delly backs away, deciding to leave the shagging pair be. It will be her brother's first time, after all, and at least he is losing his virginity to a woman who possesses no nonsense (and, Delly figures, perhaps some experience).
She doesn't hear how, when they are both brought to orgasm within moments of each other, Katniss and Davey both cry out a different person's name when they cum:
"PEETA!"
"Prim..."
Katniss feels the Cartwright lad empty himself inside of her and then pull out. She gets up off her knees and turns, lightheaded from the beastly lovemaking, and falls back on her now sore bum.
She's had sex before, but not like this. Several years ago, she rode her hunting partner Gale Hawthorne, gave him a lap dance, in the Meadow, following her own final Reaping. It... it wasn't all that great. Davey fucking her was somewhat better - not what (or who) she's fantasized, but still. He's clearly virgin, and their coming together was more mechanical in its physicality. Katniss has seen animals mate in the woods this way. To her mind, sex has always seemed like such a waste of energy, the stamina required for it better exerted somewhere else.
Pulling her panties back up over her ass, smoothing down her dress, Katniss crawls over to where Davey is panting and straddles his lip. She kisses him sweetly, then hisses into his mouth:
"If we get hitched, you can't ever tell me what to do!..."
When she draws away at his stunned look, she plays thoughtfully with the buttons on his shirt collar. Marriage has always seemed like such a pointless invention, to her mind, but... "We'd live longer with two of us." She eyes him pointedly.
"Guess you just proved that" Davey rasps. "... Allies?..."
She nods, appreciating the word he uses and his understanding of this potential union. The terms she's delivered. Theirs will be a loveless marriage. A marriage of convenience and survival. Arranged, in its own way.
"And I won't have children," Katniss vows.
Davey shrugs, and actually seems relieved to hear this.
"Go on then, boy... Ask me. Ask me to marry you. Propose."
Katniss rises up off of him. Davey gets down on one knee and pops the question.
He doesn't have a ring, but that's all right; Katniss doesn't want or need one. She says Yes. Accepts.
Davey Cartwright and Katniss Everdeen are wed the following spring. They Toast the bread in his family's shoe stop.
Clad in her mother's white bridal dress, Katniss tries not to look at Peeta, her brother-in-law, as Davey feeds her a piece of bread. Taking her in his arms, Katniss tilts her head, and, lips slightly parted and her stormy grey eyes sad in the firelight, permits her new husband to kiss her.
His lips taste as ashy as the bread they've just consumed to consecrate, consummate their marriage.
He doesn't feel like home.
One morning, several months after the wedding, Katniss arrives at the back loading dock of her sister's home with some fresh game.
She chastises herself for how her heart still stutters to a stop in a way it absolutely should - not - when Peeta answers the door.
It's always hardest for her when she has to make the transaction with him and not his dad. Peeta mentions to her that Prim is out on an errand when Katniss asks after her sister.
Katniss prepares to leave when suddenly, Peeta catches her arm. Their eyes meet.
And then he's kissing her, and heaven help her, Katniss is kissing him back, even as she tries to whimper out how they can't, they mustn't... Peeta hoists her legup over his hip and with his hand on her ass, Katniss gives in.
Peeta lifts her in his arms and carries her further down the alley, around the corner to where a husk of a vehicle - his family's old delivery truck, since impounded by the Capitol government - sits abandoned on its axles.
The in-laws climb into the back and shut the door behind them.
Before long, the porthole windows have steamed over, until a feminine and silky hand dreamily slaps onto the glass, the fingers curling and then falling away, leaving behind a dewey print.
The truck rocks on its cinderblock foundation.
As Katniss Cartwright wraps her toned thighs around her sister's husband, she tries in vain to tell herself that she's betraying Prim; she doesn't want to hurt Prim...
Peeta slides into her warmth and with asigh, Katniss spreads her legs for him.
They make love.
Katniss and Peeta carry on their affair in secret. Through a revolution. Through an exodus to District 13. Through a war.
Their respectives spouses are both sent to the front: Prim as a Healer, Davey as a soldier. As a baker, Peeta is kept off the front lines to cook food that will help with the war effort.
Katniss is devastated by the news she receives later that both her sister and her husband are dead.
Following the Capitol's fall, Katniss and Peeta return home to District 12 together.
The siblings-in-law stare down sadly at the ruins of the Bakery. Only the back loading dock, with a ramp now leading to nowhere, and the impounded delivery truck where they consummated their forbidden relationship, remain.
"... Prim was sleeping with Davey, you know."
Katniss turns to gape at her lover in shock. "What?"
Peeta nods. "I caught them once, kissing in the shoe store. I think you were out on a hunt. Prim made me promise not to tell, so I didn't." He chuckles. "Of course, how could I deny my half-sister anything?"
Katniss stares. Peeta nods.
"Yeah. My dad apparently had an affair with your mom and they had Prim together. My mother never knew, and I think she deluded herself into believing that Prim got her fair looks just from your mother. I was given the DNA report back after my physical during the armistice."
Katniss feels her stomach roil. "Did you two ever...?"
Peeta shakes his head. "Prim and I never... we both knew it was arranged, and we didn't want to disrespect you."
Katniss nods thoughtfully. "Does... this doesn't mean... we're related, are we?" She points between herself and him. "You and me."
Peeta steps into her. "No. Completely and totally unrelated. And seeing as we're now both widowed..."
Katniss laughs, shaking her head. "Peeta Mellark..."
He cuts her off with a kiss, and lets that be his proposal. Throwing her arms around him and returning the kiss, Katniss happily accepts.
The bells are pealing in the tower of the rebuilt Justice Building - usually a sign that someone has just gotten hitched.
The double doors are thrown open and Peeta and Katniss Mellark (formerly Cartwright, neé Everdeen) run down the steps to a chorus of well-wishers.
Peeta takes his new bride and lifts her onto the back of a rented cart, which he pulls to their new home in the renovated Bakery.
The bride is sequestered upstairs and changed into her blue Reaping frock. Before a roaring hearth, the newlyweds hold their Toasting, reverently feeding each other a piece.
As Peeta and Katniss embrace and share their wedding kiss, it quickly deepens and Katniss tosses aside her bridal bouquet of primroses, dandelions and pine needles. Delly Mellark, her sister-in-law once again, catches the flowers; the pine needles scatter upon the floor.
It is a bittersweet wedding, with most of their respective families dead and gone, and yet as she and Peeta dance at their nuptials, Katniss has never felt so happy. When her husband presents her with his wedding gift to her - their Toasting cake he baked himself - Katniss kisses him rather indecently on the mouth.
The Mellarks honeymoon at Katniss's father's hunting cabin by the lake, beyond the Meadow. After the wedding, it takes a couple of years for her to agree, but Peeta wants them so badly. They eventually have two children: a boy and a girl. The boy they name Davey; the girl they name Prim.
As Katniss sits on a picnic blanket and nurses her son, watching her husband play with their daughter, she thinks about the hardship and sacrifice it took to get here. ... It was worth it, she decides. Though she has to conclude that, where affairs of the heart are concerned, there are much worse Games to play.