Chapter Text
After the pain and the blood, the screaming and the pushing, it's done. I can no longer pretend that the kicks inside me are a dream, that my protruding belly will be gone one day when I wake up.
I look at the baby and I know what this means. How I am held forever in Snow's power. This isn't like Buttercup, she's not a kitten I can drown. This is my child. Me. It would be ten thousand times worse than if I had killed Rue.
It's my heart, forever outside my body. And I have no power to stop President Snow from using her however he wants. She'll grow. She'll be beautiful. He knew exactly how to break me.
Not one person figured out exactly what happened in the office that day, and at first I thought that would save me. I was wrong. They figured out enough obvious facts to create a situation where they didn't know to pity me or hate me, so they ended up just leaving me alone. My mother and Prim figured out that I was pregnant, and neither one of them asked me how it had happened. They simply took care of my health, fed me, made me walk in the winter air, bundled me up at night and pulled me out of bed in the morning. I let them. I knew what would happen if I lost the baby, but it wasn't enough motivation for me to take care of myself.
I wanted to die. I wanted them all to die. If we were all dead and in the ground, at least he couldn't hurt us anymore.
But I didn't die. My body wants to survive even more than my mind does. Maybe that's why I was so good in the Games.
Gale finding out is the worst part.
We're in the forest. I keep us on track for our rock perch. I want to sit, I'm so tired, and we'll be distracted enough by the beauty of the land that maybe he'll forget about hunting anything big. I hope he won't notice that I can barely stand, let alone shoot with accuracy, or haul any game back. He keeps pressing me to stop, pointing out deer tracks and trails of turkey feathers, and finally he gets sick of my dodging.
“What is wrong with you, Katniss? You haven't shot a thing. Those turkeys were so slow we could have taken down all three of them!”
And then I throw up, which just makes me angry. I thought the sickness was going away. Perfect timing.
Gale's face turns to stone. He stares at me until I stop retching, I can feel his eyes on me. After a couple of minutes I stand back up, slowly, I'm still dizzy. I spit to clean out my mouth, to buy time. His face is disgusted when he opens his mouth to speak.
“Katniss, I've only seen one other person sick like this. My mother. With each one of the kids.”
I don't say anything. I just look at the ground, breath coming in a fog from my face, my toes starting to go numb.
“Did Peeta get you pregnant?” His voice breaks on the last word, but he acts like he doesn't hear it.
And then I laugh, because it's all so absurd and I almost wish it had been Peeta, not the snake that seeks to ruin me with the one thing I could never stop myself from loving. I laugh and I hear birds fly panicked from their dried mud nests. I hear deer hooves clatter from within firing distance and I can't stop because it's all just so awful. I want to die. But I can't.
“Kill me, Gale.” I'm still laughing through the words. I sound so hollow. I pull his bow toward my body, reposition his arrow. Point it at my heart. In this moment, I don't care that it will mean his death, the starvation of his family. I want it to be over.
“Kill me. Kill this thing inside me. Please. He won't let me die.”
He just stares at me, his mouth cold, his eyes moving backward, deep inside.
“So you are pregnant.”
“It's not what you think.” I laugh again. Even that sounds ridiculous. What else could it be? I'm having a child, something I swore to never do. And it's not his child. It's not the path I know he wanted for us, someday, in those dreams where we flee and live off the wild land together.
“There's not much to think about. It's a kid.”
For a moment, it's agonizing. I want to tell him. In that moment, I don't have any feeling for Peeta at all, I love Gale alone. I move to kiss him because I want his kiss, a kiss from somebody gentle, but our lips barely brush and he moves away, disgusted.
“What, one grope wasn't enough for you? You have to have us both?” He sheathes his arrow, tosses his bow over his back. He's done. We're not hunting anymore today. Maybe never again.
The words hurt. “I told you, Gale. It's not like that.” My hands fall to my sides, one on the empty game bag. Will it always be empty now? Is this the last time we'll walk the forest together?
“You know how it is? I know. It's you, and your guilt, and you got it all in bed together and now you're up the river, and I don't want to be a part of it. You can have him. You worked hard enough for it in the games.” He begins walking in the direction of home. I can't keep up.
“It was an act, Gale! How else could we both survive?”
He turns, fast, violent, and I almost stumble on the downhill slope as I try to stop moving. “I didn't care if he survived, and something that was only an act wouldn't have gotten this baby in your belly. I may not have seen the Capital, but I know how kids come around, Katniss.” He pauses, his jaw clenching. He swallows hard, I'm watching and I can see his throat hitch. “I know what you did with him to get this way.”
And then it comes out before I can stop myself. “It's not Peeta's baby.” Immediately, I bite my tongue very hard. I didn't plan to answer any questions about this part.
“What?” Clearly, he thinks my claim is ludicrous.
“Just that. It's not Peeta's baby.” I'm scrambling, I really don't know what to tell him, Snow never said anything about repercussions for telling the truth, but his silence on the matter seems to demand my own. Was that how he planned to use me? Manipulate my horror to keep it a secret?
Now Gale looks like he might puke. I decide to be completely honest, he hates the Capitol as much as me, and he learned to keep a lid on his true thoughts a long time ago.
“It was President Snow. He did this to me.”
Gale still says nothing, but the color leaves his face. His lips purse into a thin line.
“I had no choice.”
He sits down hard, an arrow hits a rock through the sheath and I can hear the tip break away from the shaft. He doesn't show any sign of caring. I sit down beside him, and he doesn't move away.
“He came to see me in the autumn, after the games. He threatened my mother, Prim, and you. Your family. I did what he asked, I did it to keep all of you safe.”
“So that's why you didn't go on the victory tour. I thought he just didn't want the districts to see you again. Like maybe he thought they'd forget you.”
But they won't forget. I can't think of anything else to say, so we just sit. The nausea has passed and I'm grateful to be resting, even if my bottom and legs are damp from the melted morning frost. The sun has risen to a gold disc just over the trees and the rays cut through the mist like spotlights. The turkeys rustle their way back to us, they're bold this season. Or just stupid.
My hand reaches out and he lets me twine my fingers between his. “I'm sorry.”
His grip tightens and I can tell his shoulders are relaxing, slumping. “No, Catnip. Don't apologize. I've been through hell, I'm in hell every day in the mines. But I still can't imagine what the arena was like. I've tried. I wanted to understand so I could help you when you came back, like we always help each other. But I can't. I'm sorry.” He stands up, keeps hold of my hand, pulls me up, steadies me, one hand around my waist. I know he can feel the difference in my body even under the leather coat that Cinna sent me, cut in just a way that hides my growing stomach from public eyes.
He moves his hand to the middle of my abdomen. “How far along?” For a second, he looks like he cares about it.
I think back. The day in the office was before the first real snow. “Five months, I think.” I haven't been eating more than the bare minimum that Prim forces me to consume each day, my weight hasn't changed much. But Gale knows my body, he's watched it for hours as we work in the woods. He can see the change.
His arms drop, the walls come down again. “Too bad. Unless you get really sick, it's big enough that it probably won't die.” That stings, and it surprises me. I hadn't developed any feelings about the baby so far, but Gale clearly regretted its likelihood of survival.
He turns, letting go of me, moving away once more, then speaks over his shoulder. “I'll see if Hazelle will help your mother and Prim when the baby comes. She's been through it enough times.” And then he just keeps walking down the hill, slowly enough that I know he expects me to follow him, but doesn't say anything more.
I look up the hill and behind, at our rock, wondering when I'll be back here next. Maybe never again. The baby will be here by summer and I don't know what Snow plans to do when it's born. I blink hard and fast to stop the tears. I turn and walk away, down the slope, cautious steps in the brown dirt. The smell of the wet woods in the cold morning is so stark and it hurts to inhale, but I breathe as deeply as I can. I want to remember it like this, the taste of the morning, frost on bark and the knife of freezing air in my lungs. I watch Gale's dark head move down and away from me, and my heart thumps an extra beat or two, like it sometimes does around him.
In that moment, I feel it. A flutter down low in my belly. Once. Twice. Three nudges in time with my heartbeat.
It probably won't die, he'd said. And against everything, I briefly hope he's right.