Archive of Our Own

It takes a long time for Peeta to convince her. Though in fairness, it takes him years to build up the courage to even ask. 

There’s rarely a night that Katniss doesn’t spend in Peeta’s arms. Had you told her seventeen year old self that in the future her greatest comfort would be physical touch, skin-to-skin contact with a man she trusts as much as she loves, she would’ve wrinkled her nose and wondered what the joke was supposed to be.

But here in the dark but warm bedroom they’ve shared for the last six years since moving into this new house, all Katniss wants is to touch him. She can hear him brushing his teeth in the bathroom, the sound of running water a luxury she still can hardly believe they have, and she bites her tongue before she lets herself call to hurry him. 

But Peeta smiles when he steps through the doorway, the soft light from the bathroom – not a candle, but a lightbulb – illuminating him in warm tones. She knows he knows. He always knows. It bothers her less these days than it used to, and she lets herself smile back at him, safe here in their home.

“I’ll just be another minute,” he reassures, settling onto his side of the bed to take off his leg. Katniss watches as she always does, following the movements of his thick fingers as they work at the various buttons. He unwraps the bandage that protects the sensitive skin of his stump, then shifts to settle next to her, leaning on their pillows.

She wastes no time in pushing herself over to him, pinching the soft material of his shirt and grunting, tugging at it until he laughs and pulls it the rest of the way off. “Better,” she mutters, folding a hand beneath her cheek and pressing herself to him. He laughs and she grins, and has anyone ever had anything more perfect than this? Katniss is sure it isn’t possible. 

He doesn’t speak for a long time. Long enough, in fact, that she’s sure he’s fallen asleep. She’s nearly asleep herself when she hears his voice.

“Katniss?”

“Hm?”

Here he hesitates, which makes her nervous. She leans up quickly, sleep suddenly a distant thought as her nerves rush to the forefront of her mind. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course!” He rushes to reassure her, his rough hands coming to knead her bare shoulders. “Everything is fine. I just wanted to ask you something.”

She settles a bit, but doesn’t lay back down. “Alright, what is it?”

He’s quiet again, looking deep into her eyes. She has no clue what he’s hoping to find, and he seems to realize that, huffing quietly and running a hand through his hair. 

“It’s nothing bad,” he insists. She can tell from his voice that he’s not even close to sleep, and she wonders if he’s been thinking about whatever this question is since they first laid down. It’s been at least an hour, and usually he’s quicker to get things concerning their relationship off his mind. 

I don’t want to go to bed angry, he’ll say after a fight, refusing to let her sulk off and lick her wounds privately. Just get it out. We can talk through this. 

Katniss isn’t too proud to admit that she’d have run from their relationship ten times over had Peeta not planted himself so firmly in her heart and refused to let either one of them leave.

“Then don’t be nervous,” she says, laying a hand over the scarred skin covering his heart. He’s making her nervous now, but she trusts him when he says his question is nothing bad. 

“I’m not,” he says, huffing at the look she gives him. “I’m not. Promise. It’s just… I don’t know what you’re going to say.”

“Well, you can’t know until you ask.”

He nods, like he knows this but had been hoping she wouldn’t point it out. “I know. I know.”

She doesn’t say anything else, letting him decide when to ask on his own time. It takes effort to keep her eyes from drooping, though, and she’s so close to dozing off that her head begins to loll. 

“Alright,” Peeta finally says, his chest rising and falling as he takes a deep breath. She slowly opens her eyes, trying to refocus. “Katniss, I want to have children. With you.”

She blinks at him, hardly able to see his face in the low light of their bedroom. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Children?

“We’re old enough now,” he rushes to say, and her brows furrow. That wouldn’t have been the concern she addressed first, but Peeta continues before she can say anything. “My mom and dad were younger than we are now when they had Bannock. And it’s… it’s been a long time, since the Games. I think I’m ready. Would you…?”

“I’m not,” she says, and though she hadn’t really considered this before, she knows it’s true. The idea of having a child, a tiny human fully reliant on her body for nine months, only to come into the world and need their constant attention and love… just the idea of it sounds overwhelming. 

“That’s okay,” Peeta says, but she can feel the tension in his hand and the way it flexes against her arm. “Do you… do you think you’ll ever be ready? It’s okay if the answer is no.”

She doesn’t answer right away, letting the question sit.

Years ago, Gale had asked her the same thing. Never, she’d said at the time, as confident in her answer as she was in her skills with a bow. You see our moms every Reaping, can you imagine going through that? 

But there’s no Reaping anymore. There are no Hunger Games, no crowded town halls and propaganda films blasting through the entire District, no paralyzing fear that your name is printed on one of those tiny damned pieces of paper. 

The world is different now. Katniss, herself, is different now. 

She wonders, then, if Peeta would stay with her were she to say no. Would he stay by her side even if she didn’t want to have children, didn’t want to create little mini versions of them, didn’t want to raise them up to be good, loving adults?

She knows that the answer is yes. Knows that she and Peeta are too intricately wound, too closely tied, to ever leave each other for long. She knows that he would wait for her no matter how long, would stay by her side and would love her even if she could never give him this.

Katniss knows she doesn’t want children, not yet. But when she imagines what they might look like, a little girl with his hair or a little boy with her eyes…

“I… I think so,” she decides, settling herself against Peeta’s chest once more. “Someday. But not now, Peeta, alright? I… I can’t. I’m not ready.”

“That’s okay,” Peeta says, and his relief is palpable. It makes her smile, the idea that he wants so desperately to have a family with her. Some days, it still seems so hard to believe. “We can wait as long as you need, Katniss. There’s no rush.”

She falls asleep with that idea floating in her head. There’s no rush for them, not anymore. They take this life at the pace they want to, no one to dictate what choices they make or when they make them. They’ll decide, together, when to do this too.

She learns she’s pregnant in the last dregs of summer, when the days are hot and sticky and the wind blows sugar gum balls from their trees to decorate the grass. 

The realization fills her with a feeling that she can’t quite put a name too, but it paralyzes her. She stares at the small home blood test sitting on her sink, and forgets to keep breathing. The small + for pregnant nearly brings her to her knees.

She’s going to have a baby, a little child with Peeta. A living thing that’s going to grow inside of her, that’s going to rely on her to take care of it. She realizes that the feeling gripping her is terror, and brings a shaking hand to cover her mouth. She feels nauseous suddenly, and wonders if morning sickness can set in this early into a pregnancy.

“Peeta?” She calls, voice quivering in a way that makes her feel weak. She hates it. She hardly ever feels weak these days, and she’s done far too much work to not feel angry at the return of the feeling. That frustration only makes her angrier. “Peeta!”

The sound of his feet is loud as he rushes through the house, and she’d smile at the sound of something crashing to the floor followed by a muffled curse if she weren’t so consumed with her own thoughts.

“Katniss?” Peeta pants, red-faced, as he appears in the doorway to their bathroom. His eyes are wide and they scan her body completely, looking for what might be wrong. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

She wordlessly lifts the small pregnancy test, unable to take her eyes from his expression. She curses the shaking of her hand, jerking her arm forward in a move begging him to take the test from her. 

He steps forward and takes the bit of plastic, looking down at it with furrowed brows. His fear is slowly replaced with confusion, then realization, and finally joy. A joy so effusive, so bright, that she can nearly feel the warmth his smile casts across her face.

“You’re pregnant?” He asks, and his voice is so delicate that it nearly breaks her. 

She nods, hand still covering her mouth as her eyes well with tears. She’s feeling so much that it’s nearly impossible to pick any individual emotion apart from the rest.

“Are you…” His brows crease, and her heart nearly breaks as his joy fades. “Are you okay with this?”

The dam breaks and the tears flow. Katniss blubbers uselessly as she plucks the test from his hand and drops it onto their counter, throwing herself at her husband, arms wrapping tight around his neck. She can’t speak through the sobs, fingers lacing through his hair.

“Katniss?” Peeta asks again, easily wrapping his arms around her, squeezing her tight to him. “Talk to me. How do you feel?”

She chokes on a sob. She thinks of Peeta with a child, with their child, and cannot stop the next wave of tears. 

He will be a fantastic father, she knows that as surely as she knows that Haymitch is drinking at this exact moment. She feels gutted at the image of Peeta in her mind, an infant cradled in his strong arms, those pretty blue eyes looking at her over a child. Over their child.

She realizes that the feeling, the one nearly consuming her whole, is anticipation. She can hardly wait to see the man in her arms as a father, feels absurdly lucky that she’ll get to be the one to give him that gift. To do this for the both of them.

“I love you,” she eventually manages to say, tears finally calming. “And I cannot wait to meet our child.”

Peeta melts into her from relief, and a moment later her feet leave the ground. She laughs as he swings her around, taking just a few quick steps to drop her onto their bed.

“We’re gonna have a baby!” Peeta exclaims, laughing, before he lets himself fall onto Katniss, smothering her own laughter with his weight.

“Did I ever tell you,” Haymitch starts one day, staring out at his latest batch of geese after fall has finally begun to turn the leaves orange, “about the tenth victor?”

Katniss stiffens on the log beside him. They don’t often talk about the Games, though their lives are still largely defined by them, much as she hates to acknowledge it. They especially don’t talk about other victors, and they most certainly don’t talk about the dead victors, the victors who were gone long before either of them held the same title.

But Haymitch is sober today. It’ll be another few days before the train arrives again and he disappears to his cabin, but for now he’s drained his bottles. 

“No,” she finally answers, turning away from him. 

“I never learned her name,” he says, voice distant. “Saw her on video once. I’m sure Paylor’s got the tapes of her Games buried somewhere, but I’m not gonna go digging them up.”

Katniss doesn’t respond, unsure of what she should say. Paylor told them once that she’d “recovered” tapes of their Games, had called all the victors together to ask for their permission to use them for “educational purposes”. History that goes unremembered is doomed to be repeated, she’d said, and it was too soon after Coin for Katniss to tell her no. 

She still hasn’t watched anyone else’s Games. Tried her own, once, when she woke up from a nightmare and couldn’t remember how real the tracker jacker hallucinations had been, though she couldn’t get more than a few minutes in before she’d rushed to the bathroom to lose her dinner. It hasn’t even occurred to her to try watching anyone else’s Games.

“She looked Seam, maybe a bit darker,” Haymitch continues, not waiting for Katniss to speak. “Had this real pretty dress on, all fluffed up and colorful. Swear it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the old Capitol, even after she’d won her Games. She couldn’t have been any older than you were when you and the boy won, but she had this face like… like she’d been around a long while and wasn’t planning on going anywhere soon.

“I didn’t recognize her. But that dress…” He blows a heavy breath through his nose, and Katniss glances at him from the corner of her eye. He’s hunched a bit, hair falling over his face, but his voice is clear. “I knew that dress. My girl, my…” His voice cracks, and he falls silent.

Katniss wants to push. She knows if she were better, if she were more like Peeta, she would rub his back, tell him he didn’t have to keep talking if he didn’t want to. She’d distract him with her own stories, promise him they’d gotten far from the Games and their horrors, that they were safe now.

But she’s not better, and she’s certainly not Peeta, and she knows what an old grief looks like, how people like them carry it. So instead she says, “What about her?”

Haymitch takes another breath, and Katniss recognizes that he’s steadying himself.

“My Lenore Dove…” He cuts himself off, a harsh sob caught in his throat. He lifts his face to the sky, eyes open wide and staring at endless blue. She can see the tears wetting his lash line, though none fall. “She wore scraps of that dress. Tied them in her hair, around her wrist, laid them over her skirts; she’d wear them any way she could. I knew that dress.” 

Katniss hesitates, shifting uncomfortably again. One of the geese is digging a weed from the ground, and she focuses on it instead of Haymitch. Seeing him so vulnerable makes her uncomfortable. “Did… is she…?”

“She is.” A note of steel enters Haymitch’s voice. “It was a long time ago – Snow, because who else?” He laughs but it’s a terrible, grating sound. 

They sit in silence for a few moments, because what is there to say after that, really? Snow is long dead and gone, and Katniss knows there’s no point in letting him haunt them. She’s never gained much from cursing the dead. She rubs a hand comfortingly over the small curve of her stomach, a soothing motion she’s only adopted since learning of her pregnancy. 

“She was related to your father,” Haymitch says next, and that makes Katniss jerk.

She doesn’t talk about her father. Hasn’t, really, since he died. After Mom finally started to recover, it became clear that any mention of him would send her spiralling once more. It had become the easiest, the safest thing to do, ignoring him. And then it became habit. A landmine everyone in the Everdeen household knew of, one they could step around easily enough.

“Burdock and I were friends as kids,” Haymitch goes on, seemingly content to ignore the way Katniss has inched forward on the log, readying herself to leave a conversation she hadn’t prepared to have. That sentence brings her to a pause though, and she faces him with a frown.

“You knew my dad?”

“Oh, yeah,” Haymitch nods, still not looking at her. “We were real close. Spent most of our time as kids running around the Seam. Peacekeepers used to pay the kids to do them favors – run notes here and there since back then there was no service in Twelve, go and fetch them lunch, things like that. Burdock and I, we’d make a competition of it. See who could make the most in a day.”

Katniss feels frozen to her seat, hardly able to breathe. It’s been over a decade since someone has said this much about Burdock Everdeen. She wonders, distantly, if the child in her stomach can tell they’re hearing about their grandfather.

“Back then, he was always trying to impress your mom. Didn’t matter how much the rest of us told him he’d never have a chance, he’d scrape together as much coin as he could in a day, then go buy a pretty ribbon from the Hob.” Haymitch laughs, and Katniss tries to ignore the stinging at the backs of her eyes. “We tried to tell him that no girl needed a ribbon for every day of the month, but he’d just shake his head.

“Before he went to the Hob, though, Burdock would follow me out to go meet Lenore Dove. She used to love this meadow, would sit out here for hours and sing her songs for the trees and the birds. We’d have to sneak around the cabin, ‘cause her uncles never liked us boys spending too much time out there without someone keeping an eye on us.”

He’s talking about the meadow they’re in now, Katniss realizes. The one she and Gale used to race through, the one her father would let her loose to play hide and seek in, the one Haymitch spends all his days watching over when he’s not locked up inside. 

She’s seen Haymitch’s Games, knows what he looked like when he was a teenager, but it seems impossible to imagine him here at that age. Him here, with his girl. Him here, with her father.

“I’d go running over to Lenore Dove, and Burdock, he’d get down on his knees and start crawling around in the dirt. His ma used to tear him a new one over that, always said she’d gotten tired of sewing up the holes on his knees. But Burdock said he’d find the best flowers when he was closer to them, and he never wanted to get Asterid anything but the best.”

Haymitch laughs again, a true, belly-deep laugh. It shocks Katniss into looking at him again, and scares off a few of the geese who had crept closer. Haymitch tosses a few kernels of sweetcorn to them as an apology. 

Katniss, though, she feels like she can hardly breathe. She doesn’t say a word for fear of distracting Haymitch and making him change the subject. She feels as though she needs the rest of his story more than she needs her next breath.

“A real romantic, your father was. He knew your mom was too good for him, and he never once forgot to treat her like it. After my Games, it wasn’t until…” He trails off, voice roughening. “It wasn’t…” 

Katniss has no idea what to do when she sees the first few tears start dripping down Haymitch’s face. She just sits there uselessly, watching him with wide eyes. “Haymitch…”

He sniffs once, then straightens. He doesn’t bother wiping his face.

“Burdock was cousins with Lenore Dove,” he goes on, words quick and almost rushed. “And Lenore Dove, she was Covey.”

He says the word like it should mean something. Like Katniss’ eyes should light up, like she should nod and know exactly what he’s saying and the conversation could just end there. 

She doesn’t know, though. She’s never heard that word before.

“Alright,” she says, attempting to be placating. It’s a new thing for her, and she winces when she only sounds hesitant instead. “So… my dad was Covey?”

Haymitch nods and drops his head low again. He sags like his very skull is heavy, like he doesn’t have the strength to sit up straight. Katniss wonders if maybe he found something to drink, and she somehow just didn’t smell it on his breath. He looks an awful lot like he’s about to keel over the way he does on his bad days. 

“The Covey…” He takes a breath, straightens, then blows it out and collapses again. “The Covey, they were… damn, this is harder than I thought it would be.”

“What are you trying to say, Haymitch?” She pushes, turning towards him. Her knees angle towards his, and his legs drop open just enough for his own knee to brush hers.

“The Covey, they were good folk,” he eventually settles on, waiting long enough that Katniss wasn’t sure he’d even bother continuing. “They’d been through a lot, more than most the people in Twelve. A couple of them were already gone by the time I’d met Lenore Dove. I saw their graveyard once – there was a Maude Ivory and a Lucy Gray already buried there. Maude Ivory, she was Lenore Dove’s mother, but no one ever said much about whoever Lucy Gray was.

“Maude Ivory, she died when Lenore Dove was just a baby. The rest of the Covey – her uncles, Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine – they raised her on their own. Taught her all the Covey songs, gave her the tenth victor’s dress, from what I can guess. She never did tell me who it belonged to, though.

“There was another one of them, too, a woman in town named Barb Azure – that was Burdock’s mom, your grandma. Lenore Dove said she’d moved closer to the Seam for her son, guess she thought they’d draw less suspicion from the Peacekeepers if they didn’t live out in the woods,” Haymitch rambles on, hardly pausing for a breath and certainly not realizing that he’s rocking Katniss’ world. She never knew her grandma’s name before. 

“All those songs Burdock used to sing with you, the ones you and Prim–” Katniss flinches at the mention of her sister, the wound still raw even more than a decade later, but Haymitch goes on, “–would follow him around singing to? Those were Covey songs. The ones you sang when you were older too. The one you gave little Rue, the one you did for those propos. I recognized them the second you opened your mouth. The Covey, they have a way with words that stops you in your tracks. When you get one of them talking from the heart, they’ll knock you over with just their words. You got that from them.”

“No I didn’t,” she rejects on instinct, feeling overloaded by all the information Haymitch is offering and losing what little filter she has because of it. “People don’t listen to what I say, not unless I’m their only option.”

Haymitch shoots her a look, the one he always gives her when he thinks she’s bullshitting him. She’s not this time, though. Katniss has had a habit of sticking her foot in her mouth since she first learned to speak. 

“Sure, sweetheart,” Haymitch drawls, shaking his head. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you’re Covey, alright? That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

She sits with that for a few long, quiet moments. Haymitch says it like it’s supposed to be something that matters to her, like this is supposed to change things, but she’s not sure it does. If Haymitch is telling the truth, and she can’t think of why he’d be lying, then Katniss is the only member of the Covey left. And if she only just learned about them, is she even really Covey? How much does a connection to your family matter if they all died before you were born? The name of her grandma, her father’s mother, means far more to her than the word Covey does.

“Alright,” she finally settles on, turning back to look at the geese. They must be tired today, most of them settling into soft nests of weeds and sleeping the afternoon away. “I’m Covey.”

She almost expects the breath Haymitch blows out to flatten the grass, that’s how heavy it is. She can see the tension leak from him without even turning to look, his legs kicking out further, bare toes pressing into the soft dirt.

They sit, silently, for several long minutes together. The small of her back has started to hurt, but she’s content to ignore it for now. There’s a pleasant breeze that keeps the cloudless sky from letting the sun burn them, the grass and the flowers swaying prettily. Katniss has watched Peeta paint this exact scene so many times that she could probably do it herself, but she’s sure she’ll never get tired of the view.

Katniss considers this new revelation a bit. She turns the word Covey over in her mind, then the names. Lenore Dove. Maude Ivory. Tam Amber. Clerk Carmine. Lucy Gray. Barb Azure. Burdock. 

“My father’s name was different,” she says, the words slipping from her as she has the realization. “The rest of them had two.”

Haymitch hums, and she turns to watch him nod. “A poem and a color,” he says. “That’s the pattern. I still remember Lenore Dove’s song, the one she was named for. It was… it was a real sad one. I always thought her ma set her up. No one’s named after a song like her’s and gets to live a happy life.” 

A poem and a color. Katniss doesn’t know many poems, but gray, ivory, amber… she can see the pattern now, is somewhat embarrassed she didn’t get at least that bit on her own. She’s never heard of carmine or azure, though, and quietly promises to herself that she’ll ask Peeta if he knows them when she gets home. 

“Will you sing it for me?” Katniss asks, already sure he’ll say no. She’s never heard Haymitch sing, or even mention singing for that matter, but she can’t help her curiosity.

He doesn’t answer immediately, and she figures that’s an answer in and of itself. 

But then, quietly, he begins to sing. 

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

His voice is rough, nowhere near what she’d call pretty. He sounds nothing like her father had, his own voice still clear as day in Katniss’ mind. But Haymitch sings with emotion, his voice cracking on the name Lenore both times he sings it. She can tell that every word comes from his gut, painstakingly pulled through his vocal cords and set to a slow tempo.

The mockingjays begin to echo his tune, and she turns to watch them flutter from branch to branch as Haymitch continues his song.

“And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

‘’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

This it is and nothing more.’”

He sounds heartsick, she realizes. And why shouldn’t he be? Hadn’t he said Lenore Dove, his girl Lenore Dove, had been killed? By Snow, the old bastard, no less? 

It took years for Annie to be able to hear Finnick’s name, and even now Johanna says she has days where she can hardly get out of bed for how badly she misses him. Katniss is sure that had Peeta died in the Capitol all those years ago, she’d never be able to talk about him again, let alone sing a song dedicated to him. 

She wonders, again, why Haymitch has told her any of this. Why now? But she listens to him sing, letting the song wash over her.

“Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

‘Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you’—here I opened wide the door;—

Darkness there and nothing more.”

She can tell that Haymitch’s throat is blocked by tears, now. His voice is thick – it sounds like it pains him to enunciate enough to get the words across clearly. Katniss feels as though she’s intruding on something private as he sings, like he’s forgotten she’s there entirely. He’s performing, but it’s no longer for her. 

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, ‘Lenore?’

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, ‘Lenore!’—

Merely this and nothing more.”

She doesn’t speak after Haymitch finishes his song. She waits for him.

A few of the geese had perked up at the music while he sang, the most alert of them waddling closer. Once the song ends, only one of them remains interested enough to stay nearby. She’s an all white bird, rare among Haymitch’s flock. She tucks herself just a few feet away from the log where they sit, her feathers fluffing up then settling down along her wings. She watches them, though Katniss can’t imagine what for. They’re both all out of sweetcorn.

Haymitch watches the bird right back, not saying a word. Katniss wonders what he’s thinking, but she doesn’t ask. The silence they sit in feels loaded with something she can’t name, and she has no interest in being the first to break it. 

“Lenore Dove would’ve liked you,” he says finally, and Katniss turns to look at him. He looks tired, and she knows that he won’t stay out here much longer. “And not just because you’re Burdock’s girl. She would’ve been right by your side through the Revolution, could’ve helped you carry that torch.”

Katniss has never met Lenore Dove, cannot even begin to imagine what the woman would’ve been like had she gotten to live, but Haymitch’s words make her feel bereft. She thinks of the aunt she could’ve had, someone from Dad’s side of the family. Maybe she would’ve sang after he died, maybe she would’ve taught Katniss all the songs he didn’t get to.

She squeezes her eyes tightly shut, breathing deeply and willing the tears away. She’s never felt what it’s like to grieve someone you never knew. 

“So, I’m the last of the Covey,” she finally forces out, turning to look at him head on. “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

“You’re the last of them,” he says, nodding, and despite the tears still drying on his cheeks, his lips lifts in a smirk. “Well, you and that baby you’re growing, sweetheart.” 

The words make her mouth drop open in surprise, and she punches him firmly in the bicep when their meaning processes.

“How did you know?” She asks, smirking when he rubs his arm and mimes pain. 

“Effie’s the one who figured it out,” he says, smiling fully. “She told me last night. Apparently she could tell from your hair.”

Katniss runs a hand through her dark locks, eyebrows furrowed. She has no idea what the correlation between her hair and her pregnancy could possibly be, but she should’ve known Effie would tell the minute her body started changing.

“Don’t tell Peeta you know,” she says imploringly. “He’s got a whole thing planned out to announce it. Just pretend you’re surprised, alright?”

Haymitch laughs but agrees, and they spend another hour or so in companionable silence. Haymitch doesn’t bring up the Covey again, and Katniss doesn’t ask anymore questions. Eventually, as the sun begins to set, she helps him keep his balance as they walk up the hill to his cabin.

He stops her with a hand on her elbow before she can leave, turning her to face him.

Haymitch looks old for his age. Katniss knows this, has known that he carries his years in wrinkles and pock marks across his skin, but in the orange light of the sunset, he looks venerable. His eyes are soft as he lifts a hand to stroke her cheek. 

“Congratulations, sweetheart,” he says, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the rustling of the trees. “Truly. You’re going to be an amazing mother.”

She hides her face in his chest when the tears come this time, letting him wrap her in a warm hug. His hands tremble just slightly against her back, and her breaths hitch as she tries to keep from sobbing. 

When Peeta pulls him into their house for Sunday dinner less than a month later, Haymitch does such a terrible job at faking surprise that Katniss can’t help but laugh in his face.

It’s only when they’re decorating the nursery that Katniss tells Peeta about the Covey.

She’s humming a song as she paints one of the walls, arms flecked with pale yellow paint. Peeta is on the other side of the room, painstakingly working on a fancy trim for the bottom half of the walls. They’ve been working in a comfortable silence for a bit, long enough that Katniss fills it on her own.

“What song is that?” Peeta eventually asks, once he’s looped around enough of the room to only be kneeling a few feet away. 

“It’s called Bury Me Beneath The Willow,” she tells him, whistling the chorus for him. “My dad used to sing it sometimes, when I was a kid.”

“Sounds sad,” he muses, pulling his pencil from where it’s tucked behind his ear to draw himself a guideline. “But pretty.”

“A lot of dad’s songs were like that,” Katniss agrees, pulling the paint roller down to take a breather. It doesn’t take much to make her feel winded now that she’s pregnant, even though she’s only in her second trimester. She’s trying to get as much done as she can before getting out of bed is enough to make her tired, and Peeta had been more than willing to join her in completely redecorating one of their spare rooms for the baby.

“You want to sit down?” Peeta asks, shooting a glance at the rocking chair Johanna had sent in response to their announcement. It’s a beautiful thing, hand-carved and clearly expertly crafted. She thinks for a moment about protesting, but then the little baby she’s carrying decides to start turning themselves around and Katniss quickly sinks into the chair.

She watches Peeta turn back to his work, now humming her father’s song himself.

“You know,” Katniss starts, rubbing her stomach as she slowly rocks herself. “Haymitch told me that my dad was related to a girl he used to know, before his Games.”

Peeta shoots a glance at her, eyebrows cocked interestedly. “Really? Haymitch talked to you about his Games?”

She nods, humming. “Apparently these people were called the Covey. Haymitch said all my dad’s songs were technically theirs. Said he recognized them all as being Covey the minute he heard them.”

“Covey?” Peeta repeats, frowning to himself when Katniss nods. “Never heard of them.”

“I hadn’t either. But I guess I’m the only one that’s left. Me and the baby, at least.”

Peeta smiles the same soft smile he always wears when she mentions their child, and she can’t help but reflect it back to him. She’s still terrified of becoming a mother, isn’t sure she’ll ever not be afraid of motherhood, but there’s also an excitement she feels whenever she imagines finally meeting their child.

“That’s interesting,” Peeta says, laughing when she gives him a look. “What? It is!”

Katniss considers, nodding absently. “I guess. I don’t know how I feel about it, honestly.”

Peeta shifts to the side, giving her his full attention. “Well, what do you think you should feel?”

Katniss huffs. “I’m not sure. Haymitch said he thought the tenth victor, the one from Twelve, was Covey.”

Peeta’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. So you’re related to her?”

She nods, brows furrowed a bit. “I guess. It’s weird to think about.”

Peeta stands and comes to kneel at her side, wincing as his knee cracks and sending her a smile. Their ages are starting to show in subtle ways as they grow older together, but it’s hard to be upset when they’d both once been so sure they wouldn’t live to see twenty, let alone thirty. 

He rocks her slowly with one hand, the other coming to rest on her stomach beside hers. “What else did Haymitch tell you about them? The Covey?”

And so, Katniss tells him. She sings him a few songs, too, when he asks to hear them. Some of them she hasn’t sung since her father died. She realizes that she’s the only one left who knows them, that a girl who was once just like her probably sang them too, and the idea weighs heavy on her chest.

She lets Peeta rock her for as long as he’s willing, rubbing her stomach all the while, and lets all her thoughts and knowledge about the Covey fly from her tongue. The more she says, the more she wants to know. 

These people, her people, are gone now. Katniss cannot change that. But she can remember them, she can sing their songs and say their names. And as her husband looks up at her, absorbing her every word, Katniss does just that.

Katniss can’t get the Covey out of her mind. 

She repeats their names to herself at night, when she’s laying beside Peeta with his skin pressed to hers, the burn scars covering their bodies a comforting familiarity now. 

Tam Amber. Clerk Carmine. Lucy Gray. Maude Ivory. Lenore Dove. Barb Azure. Burdock. Katniss. Primrose. 

She wonders if Burdock had named Prim after the Covey and chosen, for whatever reason, not to tell them. Katniss doesn’t know any poems about someone named Prim, but Rose would fit right in alongside Dove and Amber . She follows that train of thought and wonders, then, why Katniss herself had only been given just one name.

Did her father have any other cousins? Haymitch hadn’t mentioned any, but he’d waited more than ten years to tell her about this relation in the first place. Besides, there’s a chance he hadn’t known Burdock’s whole family tree. Are there other Covey that he didn’t know, ones who have been forgotten to time? Do they lay in the graveyard he mentioned, did the bombs reach their headstones and wash away their names?

She cannot stop thinking of them. 

She follows Haymitch to his meadow several days in a row, her conversation with Peeta in the nursery sparking a desperate need to know more in her. She sits beside him and hounds him all day, begging for more information.

He’s reticent at first, any mention of Lenore Dove bringing tears to his eyes. Katniss feels bad making the old man cry so much, but every new piece of information he gives her makes it that much easier to imagine Lenore Dove as human, as a person who was once as alive as Katniss is now.

She was a rebel, like you. Got herself arrested twice before I even met her. She’d have burned the Capitol down herself if she’d ever got close enough.

Prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. She had this rich hair, the kind that seemed like it was glowing when the sun hit her just right. Had little waves and curls in it too, just like yours.

Her ma, Maude Ivory, she died in childbirth. Once, Clerk Carmine came into town for some of the white liquor my boss and I used to make. Don’t know what he was drinking for, but it must’ve been pretty awful. I found him on my way home later, half passed out on the ground. Got him back home, of course, but it turned out he was a chatty drunk. You’re not good enough for her, he said. Yes, sir, I told him right back, because he was right, wasn’t he? She was far too good for me, but she loved me anyway. 

She had these green eyes – mostly brown, but with little spots as bright as the grass. I can still see them now, when I close my eyes. I swear, I’ll never forget them. Most beatiful eyes I’ve ever seen. 

When I saw her grave, I swear I nearly died. I wanted to stay right there and drink myself to death, let the bugs and the buzzards have whatever they could stomach of my body. But I promised her something – don’t look at me like that, I’m not gonna tell you. All that matters is I made Lenore Dove a promise, and I hadn’t fulfilled it back then.

Have you now? Katniss asked, and Haymitch just nodded. She wanted to prod, to find out what his promise was, but he looked about an inch away from shattering in front of her, so she let him carry on into less painful memories.

The train comes back through Twelve on the fourth day of her meet-ups with Haymitch, most of its materials offloaded before Katniss can even get to his cabin – the further into her pregnancy she gets, the later she sleeps. 

When she shoves past his front door, he’s already drunk. She learns quickly that he’s a lot more open about Lenore Dove when he’s had half a bottle, though his pain is far more raw. She thinks she’d feel worse about prying if she wasn’t so desperate.

I don’t know why he did it. I did everythin’ he said, I played his game. He took her from me anyway – why’d he do that, huh? I sat in his cage, I did what he said. I did what he said. It didn’t matter. It was too late. I never should’ve listened to them– I should’ve– fuck, I shoulda just run off like the Chance boy, saved them all a whole lot of grief. Fuck, why didn’t I… I coulda… shit…

Clerk Carmine – oh boy did he hate me stayin’ around his niece. Once, a couple years after… after, we ran into each other at the Hob. He asked what the hell I was buyin’ out all the liquor for, and I just–I just looked at him. She woulda died anyway, he said, and then he had the gall to look all pissed off when I didn’t say much back. All I could think was, what the hell? How could he say that about his own niece? But he went on before I could say anythin’. She was too loud. Too big. Too angry, he said. The Peacekeepers, they never woulda let her grow up. She was already too dangerous as a girl. And then he just left. Didn’t see him again ‘til we all ended up in Thirteen, but I never got those words out of my head. I still don’t know what the hell he was tryin’ to tell me.

Why the hell are you askin’ anyway? It don’t matter anymore. They’re all gone, you’re all that’s left. Bet you hardly even remember their songs, huh? Bet you can’t even sing The Old Therebefore, can you? Nah, of course not. Burdock kept you girls away from the Covey for a reason, but it died with him. Guess we’ll never know why he left me to tell you all this shit, huh sweetheart?

She’s not sure what he’s talking about half the time, but any attempts at asking him to explain anything go unheard. He’s angry, and though maybe she should’ve expected that, it still takes her off guard. That first day in the meadow, he’d been so sad that it all but bled from him. 

There’s plenty of that sadness still; they spend hours upon hours together with Katniss watching Haymitch sob, listing off names she’s never heard and describing their deaths in broken words she can hardly understand. 

But the anger, it comes in waves so strong that it takes him over. Haymitch will be mid-sentence when he suddenly stands, swinging his chair against the wall and shouting loud enough to drown out the sound of it breaking. He turns it towards her, sometimes, but she screams right back at him. She’s never backed down from him, and she certainly doesn’t plan to start now.

That’s how Peeta finds them another few days later – Haymitch, face red and damp with tears, vodka dripping down his chin, and Katniss, belly swollen with child and her face firmly set in determination, shoulders rolled back and letting all of Haymitch’s words slide right off of her.

“Out,” Peeta insists, guiding her softly but frantically out of the cabin. “Hay, I’ll call Effie, alright? Try to put the bottle down before she gets here.”

“Good riddance!” Haymitch slurs back, and Katniss knows it’s intentional when the door slams shut behind them. 

“What are you doing?” Peeta hisses, and although she knows he’s angry, he dutifully takes her hand as they walk towards their home. 

“He wasn’t going to hurt me.”

“I know,” Peeta says, hand flexing in her grip. “He’s Haymitch, of course he wasn’t going to hurt you. But I hate when you two fight like that – it can’t be good, for either of you.”

“I’m a big girl, Peeta,” Katniss says, only half joking. “I can handle myself.”

Peeta huffs, and she knows he’s annoyed with her. “I know,” he repeats. “But I’m allowed to worry when my pregnant wife gets in a screaming match with her favoirte drunk.

“Our favorite drunk,” she corrects.

Peeta huffs a laugh, frustration fading a bit. “Yeah, he is ours.”

The rest of the walk to their home is quiet, the only sound the birds high in the trees singing for them. Katniss is sure Peeta wants to know more about what upset Haymitch so much, why Katniss was provoking him, but she didn’t want to offer any of that up herself. This, for some reason she can’t put her finger on, feels personal. 

Peeta doesn’t speak again until they’re walking up the steps to their porch. He pulls her over the hanging bench, and she tugs him down next to her, guiding them into a soft rocking motion with her foot.

“Alright,” she says after a few moments of silence. “Go ahead. Ask.”

Peeta doesn’t pretend he’d been thinking of anything else. “Why are you going over there? I know you two have a… different relationship, but I swear, the last few days there’s been nothing but shouting and crashing.”

She shoots him a look. “You’ve been listening in on our conversations?”

He gives as good as he gets, Peeta, and sends right back a look of his own. “Effie opens Haymitch’s windows whenever she stops by. Says he needs the fresh air. It always seems to take him a few days to remember to close them.”

Oh. Hm. Now Katniss is left wondering just how much the rest of Twelve heard of what she knows to be Haymitch’s most personal secrets.

“I just wanted to ask him questions about my family,” Katniss explains, her tone dismissive. “You know how he gets when he’s drunk.”

Peeta’s brows furrow, and that expression is enough for the guilt she’s been suppressing to start building in her chest. “And you know talking about that stuff makes him upset. You’re provoking him.”

“I am not.”

“You are,” Peeta insists. “I just want to know why. You can tell me.”

Katniss turns away from him, instead looking out across Twelve. Their home is on the outskirts of the district, far enough that nobody comes to bother them but still close enough to feel like home. She can see down the hill they live on top of, watching as a mother walks down the path with two little girls skipping at her side. 

“I wanted to know more about them,” she finally says, voice quiet like she’s worried someone will overhear. “The Covey.”

Peeta’s thumb rubs over her rough knuckles, and the tension in her chest loosens enough for her to take a deep breath. “Did he tell you what you wanted to hear?”

Katniss scoffs. “Does he ever?”

Peeta doesn’t respond, and they sit in silence for another few, long moments. 

“I just…” Katniss takes a deep breath, frustrated she can’t put her feelings into words he could understand. “I just need to know. He keeps saying these things about the Covey and not explaining anything, and then I just have more questions… one of them won the Games, Peeta. She was a Victor and I don’t even know her name.”

“Okay,” he says, nodding slowly as she speaks. “Then why don’t you talk to Paylor and get her to show you the tapes from that year?”

Katniss opens her mouth to deny him but… it’s really not a bad idea. It hadn’t even occurred to her to go to the Capitol. She rarely thinks of it, hasn’t really since she and Peeta turned down seats in the government of the new Panem. But there’s a train that runs throughout the Districts, allowing travel from one to the next for anyone. 

Two days later, Peeta sees her off with a long kiss, making her promise to call him at least once a day.

Sixteen years after the Revolution and the Capitol still looks nearly the same as the first day Katniss saw it. Tall, imposing, and powerful. 

She’s not the same person she was seventeen years ago, when she first came here. Then, she was young. She was naive, and she was lost, and she was terrified. 

Now, she still feels a bit lost. But the naivety, the terror, they’ve faded with age. She does not look at the city and feel crushed, and she certainly no longer fears it. Now instead of looking at the Capitol and seeing a gauntlet threatening her survival, she sees the remnants of an empire overthrown. 

That doesn’t make the architecture any less beautiful.

The National Library is a tall, long building, with windows that seem like they stretch endlessly into the sky. It’s all round corners and curves, not a sharp edge at any point on the building.  What bits of the building aren’t made of glass are covered in bright paint, a beautiful mural that seems to mostly just be splashes of paint. It makes the building stick out against the rest of the sharp, grey-scale skyline.

Katniss is struggling up the steps of the newly constructed library – her center of gravity has completely changed and she’s still not used to it, even months into the pregnancy – when a young woman rushes over to her, offering an arm.

“Please, let me help you,” the woman says, grinning and not appearing to notice Katniss’ wince at her chipper tone. 

The girl – and that’s what she really is, now that Katniss can see her more closely, she can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old – has lightly bronzed skin and honey blonde hair tied into a ponytail that she rests over her shoulder. She’s wearing what Katniss assumes is a school uniform: a light blue blazer with a white undershirt and a matching knee-length blue skirt, a black tie hanging loosened around her neck.

“I’ve been saying we need a ramp, or at least rails here for ever , but no one ever listens to an intern, no matter how good their ideas are,” she shoots Katniss a grin like she’s sharing an inside joke. “Is this your first time here?”

“Yes,” Katniss says simply, gritting her teeth at each step. Pregnancy has made her weak, she should not be struggling to walk up a flight of stairs, no matter how steep. 

“My name is Adalia Cardew,” she says. Then, like she’s sharing a secret, she whispers, “I think you know my great-uncle.”

Katniss doesn’t speak, but she raises a brow at the girl, waiting for her to continue.

“Plutarch Heavensbee?” Adalia says, voice lifting at the end. “You are Katniss Everdeen, aren’t you?”

Katniss nods slowly, coming to a stop once they’re at the top of the staircase. “I knew Plutarch a long time ago. Are you…” She wracks her memory, reaching for the name Cardew. “Fulvia’s daughter?”

Adalia perks up, like she’d been worried Katniss might have forgotten her family. “Her niece, actually! She’ll be glad to hear you remember her!”

Privately, Katniss is sure that isn’t true. Out loud, she says, “I didn’t know Fulvia had any siblings.”

“My dad is her brother,” Adalia explains. “I was a baby in District Thirteen, and they… they didn’t get along back then. I doubt Aunt Fulvia mentioned my dad, even to her friends. No offense.”

“None taken. And I’m sorry to hear that.”

Adalia waves her off, stepping forward and holding open the tall glass door to the library. “It all worked out! Now I work with great-uncle Plutarch here at the library, which means I can help you find whatever you’re looking for!”

Presumptuous, but Katniss doesn’t correct her.

“Plutarch owns the library?” She asks, rubbing her back as she walks through the doorway. It’s not too hot outside this late into the year, but the blast of cold air is a welcome luxury nonetheless. “I thought he was still working for Paylor.”

“Oh, he is,” Adalia agrees, nodding along. “It’s technically the family library – did you know the Heavensbee’s used to own the only library in all of Panem?”

“No.”

“It’s true!” Adalia bounces on her toes, stepping forward so she can gesture to a tall map hanging from the ceiling between two tall oval windows. “A whole section of the library is dedicated just to their books. Of course most of the collection here are new printings, but they keep the originals – well, the Heavensbee originals – well-preserved. Do you want to see them?”

“No,” Katniss says quickly, suspecting that she’s only a few wrong words away from locking herself into a personal guided tour with Adalia. “That’s not what I’m here for.”

“Oh,” Adalia says. To her credit, she covers her disappointment quickly, apparently quite eager to help Katniss. “What are you looking for then?”

She hesitates for just a moment, peering more closely at the map. “Paylor told me she sent the old tapes of the Games here, for safekeeping. I’d like to see them.”

Adalia looks shocked for a moment, reeling back a bit. Katniss has grown used to that reaction from the children born during or after the Revolution. Many of them can’t quite imagine the Games to be something real, seeing them as more of a scary story told by their parents, something too terrible to possibly be true. Adalia may have lived in District Thirteen as a baby, but she’s far too young to remember the fear of the Reapings or the Games.

“Of course,” she says, quickly recovering from her shock. “Yeah, those should be down in the vault. There’s an elevator down, so you don’t have to worry about any more stairs. Did Paylor give you the code to the safe?”

Katniss tells her yes, and Adalia leads the way to the elevator. She stays a few steps ahead of Katniss, though she can tell the girl is making a point to walk slower and keep pace. She chats animatedly while they walk, gesturing around to the various shelves surrounding them and explaining their sorting system. She doesn’t seem to mind much that Katniss doesn’t respond, and that earns her a few points in Katniss’ mind.

The vault is, as it turns out, quite aptly named. Plutarch must’ve been feeling dramatic when he designed the building, because the large spoked vault handle is absolutely over the top.

“Well, this is where I leave you,” Adalia says, keening her head like she’s trying to see as far into the room as possible. “You sure you won’t need any help in there?”

“I’m sure,” Katniss says, smiling at the girl’s eagerness. “Thank you for the help, Adalia. If I see Plutarch anytime soon, I’ll make sure to mention you.”

Adalia lights up at that, beaming. “Really? Oh, that would be fantastic! You know, he said interning here would be good for my career, but really I think he just wanted me to work for free. And I mean, you’re the Mockingjay .” She flushes and Katniss bites back a sigh. She supposess she’s lucky to have made it so long without any mention of her old title. “Your recommendation could be huge for me.”

“I’ll tell him,” Katniss promises, stepping further into the fault and beginning to close the door behind her. “Thanks for your help, Adalia.”

“Oh, of course, Miss Everdeen! Or, sorry, Mrs. Mellark? Please just let me know if you need anything else, I’d be more than happy to help!”

Katniss lets the door slam closed and can’t help but sigh. Sweet as the girl is, it’s been quite a while since Katniss has spent any length of time with someone so upbeat. Even Effie has largely mellowed out these days.

She turns to the vault, her steps echoing on the tile as she moves closer to her goal.

The three walls around her are split into seventy-five sections, each one a small square that looks to be about a foot on each side. There are number plates labelling them, a long string of text beneath that, and keypads for codes to be entered. 

In the center of the wall across from the vault door, there’s a large computer with a plush chair pushed beneath the desk. 

It’s a massive room, large enough to make Katniss feel vulnerable as she moves towards the wall to her left. Each step echoes loudly against the tile, bouncing off the walls and making her wince. She feels raw and exposed in this room. It’s so different from what she’s once again become used to in Twelve. It’s so… Capitol. 

Putting her discomfort aside, Katniss steps to the section of the wall carved out for the tenth Games. At the top of the long list of text, reads a name. 

Victor: Lucy Gray Baird

Beneath that, twenty-three other names. She gives them a cursory glance, but doesn’t read them all. Instead she stares at the victor’s name. At her relative’s name. Lucy Gray. She doesn’t know why, but she’d assumed the victor would be someone else, someone Haymitch hadn’t named. 

The code Paylor gives her works, and the little box opens up to reveal twenty-five separate, small sticks, each of them labelled. They’re each placed directly behind the names on the outside of the wall, so she doesn’t bother looking past the two below Lucy Gray.

Lucy Gray – Pre-Games Interview

Lucy Gray – Post-Games Interview

And above those, of course, the most important one.

Tenth Hunger Games

She takes all three, holding them in one hand and moving toward the computer.

There’s only a few simple controls. Buttons to pause and skip forward and backward, a volume button, and a place for the little hard drive to be inserted. 

She thumbs at them, looking at how small they seem in her palm. So much pain, so much violence, held in her hand. Katniss’ breath shudders as she thinks of it, eyes squeezed shut. 

She thinks, for a moment, about leaving. Tucking the hard drives back in their box and never having to look at Lucy Gray’s face.

And then she hears Haymitch’s voice in her mind. You’re the last of them. Well, you and that baby you’re growing, sweetheart.

She doesn’t want the baby in her stomach to grow up with no idea of who their family was. She wants the baby to know their grandparents, their great-grandparents, as far back as they can go. She didn’t know that was something she wanted to know until she learned what she had been missing. 

It’s those thoughts that lead her to plugging the first hard drive into the computer. 

The girl who appears on screen has brown skin, like Haymitch had described. Her hair is done in perfect, loose ringlets. Her cheeks are an unnatural shade of red, her lips the same, and her eyelashes are dark and thick. It’s clear that she’d already met with whoever her team of designers were, her look far too clean to be from Twelve. 

Her dress is, as Haymitch had said, a rainbow of colors. The ruffles give the skirt volume, making it seem like something straight out of a picture book as the woman – as Lucy Gray moves forward on the screen. 

“Good evening,” she says, and Katniss feels like she might choke. Her voice is so familiar, so close it feels like Katniss has heard this voice her entire life. Lucy Gray feels like somebody she has always known. “I’m Lucy Gray Baird, of the Covey Bairds. I started writing this song back in District Twelve, before I knew what the ending would be. It’s my words set to an old tune. Where I’m from, we call it a ballad. That’s a song that tells a story. And I guess this is mine. ‘The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird.’ I hope you like it.” 

The song is beautiful. Katniss is surprised by this, though she’s not sure why. Her father’s songs were always beautiful, and if he got them from this Lucy Gray, then of course hers would be beautiful soon. 

Katniss feels entranced as the girl before her sings. The song is lillting, the chords she’s playing creating a simple but sad tune. She sings of her time with a lover, a betrayal, a death. A whole life, in just a few minutes.

Here is this girl, one of several that she’s found herself haunted by for the past weeks of her life, a girl she is somehow related to. She is standing in the center of the screen, and she is alive. Katniss cannot imagine her any other way than right like that – bright, performing, and beautiful.

Katniss’ cheeks are wet by the end of the tune, her view blurry. She tells herself that that’s why it takes her so long to recognize the figure standing just behind Lucy Gray. 

The scream that rips from her throat is animalistic, and it is painful. Were she not already sitting, she’d fall to the ground from her cries. 

He’s decades younger in the video than she had ever seen him, but Katniss will never forget what President Snow looked like. The sight of him makes her sick.

It takes Katniss hours to work through the footage. 

The Games are the hardest part to watch, predictably. It’s hard to imagine the Games being more barbaric than what she had experienced, but the video proves that that’s exactly what they had once been. Hardly more than a concrete circle with a few skylights, the tenth Games take place in an arena that doesn’t look much more advanced than the Hob had. 

She watches Lucy Gray sprinkle poison in water. She watches Wovey drink and closes her eyes, thinking of little Rue and the guilt she’s sure Lucy Gray never got over. 

She listens to her sing, covers her mouth to stop the gasp when she recognizes the song. She’d never known the title, and she’s only ever heard it twice in her life. First, at a funeral with her father, when she was hardly eight years old. Again, when she was eleven, with Prim’s sweet, high-pitched voice floating above the service to honor the miners lost in a cave-in. 

Had you asked Katniss what she wanted before she traveled to the Capitol, what she hoped to learn about herself and the Covey and her child, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. She wouldn’t have been able to verbalize the maelstrom of emotions inside of her, the fear and nerves. 

Leaving the library, the sky dark and the air cold, she could not tell you what she’s gotten from the experience. She could tell you that Lucy Gray was a brave, smart girl, that she had a show-stopping voice and a beautiful face that she was clever enough to weaponize. She could tell you that Lucy Gray was strong, and that Katniss saw so, so much of herself in the girl.

What she could tell you is that for the first time in weeks, months, she feels something other than uncertainty when she imagines her child. She thinks of a toddler with Peeta’s hair and Lucy Gray’s voice, or maybe Katniss’ eyes and what she thinks she recognizes as Covey hair. She imagines teaching them songs, the songs her own father passed down to her, and she wants. 

When she sees Peeta again the next day, she collapses into his arms. He carries her down the long, winding path to their cabin, and doesn't complain once despite how heavy she knows she must be. 

They lay together in their bed for what feels like days, and she feels grounded in a way she nearly forgot was possible. 

She lets Peeta hold her as she tucks these new pieces of herself in their proper places. She sits with him and she thinks, and she remembers, and she is a more complete Katniss when they finally leave the bed once more.

Her labor is long and arduous, nearly a full twenty-four hours, but Peeta hardly leaves her side the entire time. He feeds her ice chips and wipes her forehead, lets her squeeze his hand until his bones nearly grind together and doesn’t say a word when she swears at him until she’s blue in the face. 

When the doctors and nurses have finally let them be, Katniss exhausted and her body weak, Peeta climbs into the bed beside her and helps her hold their daughter. The lights are dim, the only sound their breaths and the soft beeping of the machine monitoring her heart rate. 

“Have you decided on a name?” Peeta asks, and Katniss remembers, suddenly, that the universe does not begin and end with the bundle in her arms. That there is a whole world out there, that this world, the one Katniss and Peeta and so many others fought for, will not be as cruel to her daughter as it was to her. 

She thinks, then, of Peeta. Of his calloused hands and strong arms, of the softness of his cheeks and the quiet, uneven sounds of his footsteps. She thinks of a young, beaten boy giving her a kindness she’d so long been refused, of a scared boy bleeding out in a cave, of a small and smooth treasure being passed from his hand to hers, of a young man in a suit saying I do. She closes her eyes and silently wonders how her younger self could’ve ever questioned a love this deep.

Peeta had told her months ago that he didn’t have any thoughts for a name. She had told him she felt the same, and they had laughed. We’ll just have to figure it out when we meet them, Peeta had said, and Katniss found it easy to agree. She figured he’d end up picking the name, it seemed like something he’d be better at.

But she knows now what her daughter’s name is. In a way, she thinks she might have always known it.

“Willow Pearl,” Katniss finally says, after a long moment of silence. The name comes naturally to her, flowing from her like she’d said it a hundred times before.

“Willow,” Peeta repeats, his voice reverent, quietly adoring.

“Willow Pearl,” Katniss corrects, tearing her eyes from her daughter to look up at her husband. “It’s Covey.”

Peeta’s eyebrows crease, then smooth. “Covey. Like Lenore Dove and the victor.” 

“Like Lucy Gray. And Maude Ivory, and Barb Azure.” Katniss nods, sure in this even if she hadn’t given it any thought before. None of the names she’d briefly considered before even come to mind, all completely meaningless now. She feels as though her daughter’s name is stamped onto her very bones, like it’s something that’s not even really up to her to decide. It just simply is.

“Willow Pearl Mellark,” Katniss says. It feels right on her tongue, and she looks back down to the pink little face she’s just named. 

Willow Pearl’s arms escape her swaddle, reaching high in the air as her little fists clench and unclench. She coos softly, voice high and so, so precious. Katniss is sure that no one has ever felt the way she has felt in this moment, that no one has ever felt so taken by another living thing. She cannot imagine how she's meant to function with her heart so near to bursting.

“Willow Pearl,” Peeta repeats. His breaths shudder from his chest, arms tightening around Katniss for a moment before they loosen and he reaches forward to run a finger down the bridge of their daughter’s nose. “Real or not real?”

She almost laughs. She would, if she weren’t so certain it would hurt her still-exhausted body. 

“Real,” she whispers back, smiling up at him. She knows he’s not really asking, that this is just his favorite way of saying I love you now, and she plays into it gladly. They’re long past the days of those words causing grief and terror. Now, they’re simply a comfort. A reminder that what they’ve got now cannot be taken away as easily as their thoughts once had been.

The three of them luxuriate in the quiet for a while longer. Katniss finally lets her eyes close for more than just a few seconds, though she wraps her pointer finger around Willow Pearl’s little hand first, unwilling to feel any distance from her daughter yet. Peeta holds them comfortably in his arms, the steady rise and fall of his chest all but lulling her to sleep.

“She’s perfect,” Peeta says softly, some minutes or hours later, and Katniss can’t help but cry, happy tears thickening her throat and slipping down her cheeks. Willow Pearl gurgles discontentedly as she’s rustled, and Peeta rushes to shush her, a few of his own tears dripping onto her tiny face.

“She is,” Katniss agrees, leaning up into her husband’s warmth to press a kiss to his lips. “And she’s ours.”

Haymitch drinks less after Willow Pearl is born, though he’d tell you it isn’t true. 

“Effie’s taking more of the alcohol,” he swears one morning, easily reading Katniss’ arched look as he quietly closes their front door behind him. “I need something to keep me occupied, don’t I? Now, where’s the little ducky, huh?” 

Katniss is half convinced Haymitch would take Willow Pearl for himself if she didn’t keep a close eye on him, and she’s even more sure that Effie would help him. Between the two of them, Katniss and Peeta adjust to being parents more quickly than they’d expected. 

When Willow Pearl is old enough that Katniss’ instincts don’t scream if she’s not within arms reach, Haymitch takes her for walks around the meadow. Sometimes Katniss will watch from the crest of the hill, and on his better days she can hear him singing quietly to her daughter.

Want to see grandpa? Peeta says to Willow Pearl one afternoon, voice heavily affected to keep her attention with his baby babble. I bet grandpa wants to see you!

Katniss thinks, briefly, of correcting him. Grandpa is probably easier for a baby to say than Haymitch , but she also can’t quite imagine how the older man would react to his new title. 

In the end, she doesn’t correct Peeta. 

When Willow Pearl is just over a year old, she babbles “gan-pa!” happily when Haymitch walks through their front door, and Katniss is close enough to see the tears he can’t quite wipe away. He takes her face in one hand, plants a loud kiss on her forehead, and says, “It’s papaw, honey."

Willow Pearl isn’t quite two when her father takes her dancing. They spin through the town square, Willow Pearl sitting on Peeta’s arm with her tiny toddler legs wrapped tight around his chest. Her laughter is loud enough that Katniss can hear it across the plaza and over the live music. Peeta spins her round and round and Willow Pearl screams with joy

Months later, Haymitch kneels in front of her, the grass nearly swallowing him whole, and holds out his cupped hands for Willow Pearl to peer into. There, in his palm, is a mockingjay with a broken wing. Willow Pearl follows dutifully behind Haymitch, her tiny attention span caught by the delicate work he does to help the bird. Later, Katniss tears him a new one for letting Willow Pearl think she could keep the little bird as a pet.

Katniss holds her baby close to her chest, presses her cheek to Willow Pearl’s hair and counts her breaths. Her daughter is warm and soft, a weight in her arms that she can hardly believe she once carried in her stomach. 

She thinks I almost didn’t have this. He wanted to keep this from me. And she sings Covey songs anytime she catches a tune in her mind, Willow Pearl babbling along in her toddler-speak and slamming her fists or kicking her feet along to Katniss’ claps.

Still, Katniss waits two years before agreeing to another. She makes the decision as she watches Willow Rose toddle alongside her father, Peeta crouching low so he can hold her hand in a way that’s most comfortable for her.

It’s another year before she learns she’s pregnant. The relief nearly takes her out at the knees. She’d worried, privately, that they were only meant to have one, that the reason she couldn’t seem to conceive was Fate intervening, despite just how desperately both she and Peeta wanted another baby. 

At the time she was sure she could love another child, sure that she wanted Willow Pearl to have a baby sibling like her mother had, sure that she didn’t want to raise an only child. But another, crueler part of her quietly thought that she could never love anybody, anything, as much as she loves her daughter. Surely there was no more room left in her heart?

Peeta comforts her when she whispers these fears to him late at night, some six months pregnant and so worried she can hardly breathe. He strokes her stomach with one hand, her face with the other, and looks at her with those beautiful blue eyes, expression creased in compassion.

He is perfect, and Katniss loves him. 

She loves their son even more. For all her worries that there was no room left in her heart, the little wailing boy settled in her arms shoves his way in and simply makes room for himself. It is inconceivable that she could ever doubt her love for the infant pressed against her, as wrong as the sky being green or the grass being blue. 

“Are you ready to hear his name?” Peeta asks quietly, using one of his fingers to count all ten of their son’s. Peeta had asked if he could choose this baby’s name when they learned the sex, explaining that he wanted to pass on his own family’s naming pattern. 

Bread puns? She’d asked, brow arched, but he’d simply smiled nervously and nodded. She agreed easily, privately glad to see him timid around her. After nearly twenty years together it was rare that she got to see him anything but comfortable and content.

Besides, she hadn’t even begun to think of names at that point and was more than glad to let him take over. She asked that he make it a Covey name, but hadn’t cared much beyond that. She figured it couldn’t be too hard to find a poem to match the first name he chose. 

“Tell me,” she says, careful to keep her voice quiet so she doesn’t disturb the newly sleeping baby. 

“Rye Rose,” Peeta says softly. Katniss can’t help but jerk in his arms, though he holds her securely enough to keep her from jostling the baby too much. The heart rate monitor begins to beep more rapidly, only making her feel even more overwhelmed. 

He turns to her, and there’s a love in his eyes that Katniss had once been so sure must’ve been a lie. It is solid and steady, Peeta’s love, and she is thankful for every day that he gives it to her. 

“Peeta–” She starts, voice choked.

“Not for him,” he reassures, voice steady. “Never for him, Katniss, you know that.”

“Then–?” 

Again, he doesn’t let her finish.

“For Prim,” he says, quietly, and she’s not strong enough to keep her eyes locked onto his when he looks at her that way. “For Primrose. So they can remember her, even if they never got to meet her.”

Katniss bites her lip so roughly she worries for a moment that it will split, but it’s the only thing that keeps her from screaming. 

“Peeta.”

“I know,” he says, pressing a kiss to her temple. “I know, I know. But this is right Katniss. This is his name.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, lip still pinched between her teeth, but she nods. She knows he’s telling the truth. 

“Roses do not belong to him,” Peeta whispers, quiet enough that she can hardly hear him. There’s a thread of steel in his voice that she rarely hears. “He can’t have them, they’re not his. Don’t let him keep them all for himself.”

She can’t stop nodding, her heart beat slowly beginning to come back down to a more reasonable pace.

Peeta’s own breaths are purposefully measured, puffing against her cheek. She follows him easily, limbs loosening one at a time.

“The alliteration was just a bonus,” Peeta whispers a moment later, the curve of his smile pressed to her cheek.

When Katniss realizes what he said, she shoves an elbow back with a snort.

Katniss watches Peeta in the meadow with Willow Pearl, her head of dark curls blowing in the wind. Katniss had offered to braid it for her, but Willow Pearl could hardly sit still for long enough once she knew they were having a picnic. 

Rye Rose is warm in her arms, his little breaths puffing against her collarbone. He’s an angry baby, crying what seems like twice as much as Willow Rose did, but that just makes his parents love him more. The tufts of hair on his head are light, and Katniss hopes they don’t darken when he gets older. 

She hums for him, a song called Wool that’s always been the quickest to calm him. Willow Pearl picks up on Katniss’ songs, often goes dancing through the District singing them with her father or Haymitch chasing behind her, but she never calmed during a song like Rye Rose does. Privately, Katniss suspects he’s the one that’ll grow up to be a singer. 

She watches as Peeta takes a small daisy Willow Pearl is offering him, the flower tiny in his large fingers. He tucks it behind his ear and Willow Pearl collapses into peals of laughter that float up the hill to where Katniss sits beside a napping Haymitch. 

As Rye Rose’s arm reaches high into the air, she presses her finger to his palm and lets him hold her. He’s got quite a bit of strength for an infant only a few months old. 

Her son is beautiful, just as beautiful as her daughter is. Katniss still, even years into motherhood, can hardly believe how lucky she is. 

Looking at her husband playing with her daughter in a meadow, her son held to her chest, Katniss finds it hard to imagine a victory greater than this.