Chapter Text
It took three attempts before Johanna answered the phone.
"What the fuck happened?" she demanded. On the other end of the line, she could barely hear breathing. "Katniss. Seriously. Is this an annual thing now? Something happens and a silent Mellark lands on my doorstep?"
Katniss swallowed heavily. "Peeta didn't tell you what happened?"
"He's just baking me bread and walking in the woods. A girl can only eat so many carbs and have so much company." Johanna looked across the room to where Peeta stood at her kitchen counter, kneading the same mound of dough over and over. She lowered her voice and ducked into the next room. "Look. If I thought he was here for a visit, that'd be one thing. And if he needed somewhere to run...well, he knows I'll be that for him. But he's never needed anything but you, as annoying as that is, and he hasn't so much as muttered your name in his sleep."
"I just wanted to make sure he was okay," Katniss managed before hanging up the phone. Johanna stared at the receiver for a long moment before slamming it down. Wasn't this why they all had therapy?
five weeks earlier
After a hungry childhood, two Arenas, and a war, it was something of a miracle that Katniss's body still worked at all. So when she realized that her monthly cycle was late, she wasn't surprised--it had happened before. They were careful. Each of them received a quarterly injection from the town doctor, and while there had been isolated incidences of double failure, she believed that the two injections plus the uncertain operation of her physiology was all the security they needed.
She knew how much Peeta wanted children; it was impossible not to see the longing in his eyes whenever any were in arms' reach. He was more than willing to shoulder the duty of baby-holding while mothers perused the bakery cases on the odd mornings he worked. He knew just as well how she felt about the whole subject, but after a horrible argument last year that had actually driven him to go and spend a week with Johanna in Seven, they had agreed that at the very least, that they were not ready now. They were only twenty-three--twenty-two, then--and with the peace and their wealth and the readier availability of good food and medical care, they were as assured as any could be of living long lives. In one of their rare joint therapy calls, Dr. Aurelius told them that before the Dark Days, and even further back than that, people often postponed having children.
"Why?" Peeta had asked.
"To enjoy the earlier days of their marriages; to travel, perhaps; to grow up a little more first. And remember, the population was much higher then; we weren't quite so concerned about the lot of us dying off."
Well, they weren't married (yet, they'd both thought, though only Katniss was surprised by the thought, and even then, only for a moment); travel was more possible than it had been before, but still probably not a reason. The last thing Dr. Aurelius said, however, seemed relevant. They were young. Paylor had only been President for four years. The rebellion was still recent enough that the young government still found the occasional Capitol-obsessed dissenter who needed to be dealt with. While Katniss and Peeta had both felt positively ancient for the first three years, that year they'd begun to feel a little more like their old selves. They were still healing, and so was their home.
So they agreed to table the discussion indefinitely. Peeta promised to stop appearing as if he might run off with the closest toddler under his arm, and Katniss agreed to stop running off to the woods any time a baby--any baby--came up in conversation.
And so passed a year.
They spent...a lot of time in bed. Once they'd gotten started having sex--about six months after Peeta returned to District 12--they really hadn't stopped. It was fun. It was comfort. It helped them sleep. It was something to do in the middle of the night to take their minds off the nightmares; something to do in the winter to keep warm. Katniss never tired of the way Peeta could make her feel, or the way his eyes looked when she was naked, or the sounds he made when she touched him. Their bedroom was somewhere where she could give herself over to him completely, something she had never been able to do before, with anyone. Peeta, for his part--being both male and hopelessly, completely obsessed with everything about Katniss (especially the naked parts)-- would be content if they never got out of bed. For him, every time held something new, and he was constantly seeking new ways to evoke the throaty moans that escaped her mouth when his fingers or mouth or cock found just the right spot.
Neither of them paid any attention to her cycle, because they were protected.
Her sudden, chronic fatigue was her first clue that something had gone wrong.
The vomiting was the second.
And the positive result from the blood test she took at the medical center while Peeta decorated cakes at the bakery was the third.
She made herself walk out of the examination room at a normal pace. She kept that pace up as she zigzagged through the town streets, avoiding not only the bakery but everyone she so much as caught a glimpse of. But as soon as she neared the trees, out of sight of the buildings at last, her feet began to move of their own accord. She ran and ran until she thought her lungs would burst, until she tripped over a branch and went sprawling onto her hands and knees.
And then she started screaming.
It took her three hours in the woods to calm down enough to even walk home, and even then, she wasn't sure what she would say to Peeta. He would want the baby. Of course he would want the baby. His face would light up like fireworks, and when she thought about that, she felt the panic start to rise up again.
So instead she went home, crawled into bed, and pretended to be sick.
As Peeta spent the next three days doting on her, the guilt began to pile up. He had the right to know. He'd been so patient with her through the years, especially about this. Any decision that would be made, he deserved to be a part of. In the moments when he wiped her brow; held her hair while she threw up; carried her up whatever kind of toast he'd made to tempt her uncertain stomach--during those moments, she knew that this was something they needed to do together.
But then he'd leave the room, or the house entirely, and all of that certainty and guilt would vanish.
It was her body. Her choice. She'd never lied to him; he'd always known how she felt about children. It's not like her unhappiness should come to a surprise to him. They both got the shots, and they'd agreed on them together. She stopped going to the woods, and spent most of her day drifting around their house, arguing with herself. Tell him. Don't tell him. He deserved to know. He'd be better off never knowing.
In the end, it didn't matter. Nearly three weeks after her positive test, she found blood on her underwear--much more blood than seemed normal. The blood loss, panic, and lack of recent sleep and meals made her head spin, and though she tried to make it to the bed, the world went dark before she reached it.
Minutes after she collapsed on the bedroom floor, Peeta found her--in what evoked a horrible flashback of a similar situation, in the cave years before--lying unconscious in a pool of blood.
When she awoke, hours later, she was lying on her back in a bed in the district's small hospital. She turned her head, groggily, and her eyes met Peeta's gaze. It was concerned. Hurt. Angry. Confused. No one could express more emotions with a look than Peeta.
He knew.
"Hey," she croaked. She moved to roll toward him, and winced at the pain that stabbed dully in her abdomen.
"Don't move," he said, reaching out a hand to still her. "The doctor said the pain would pass soon, but that you needed to rest."
"Peeta..."
He lifted his other hand slightly. "Not now, Katniss. Just...not now, okay?" his voice faded out at the end. "Try to go back to sleep. I can take you home in the morning."
"Is the..."
"You lost it," he managed, choking a little. "About eleven weeks in, the doctor thinks."
She needed to make him understand, needed to explain, but a nurse slipped in at that point and injected something into her IV. After the nurse left, she clutched at his hand. "Don't leave," she said, and she winced at the pleading in her own voice. He shook his head.
"You know I won't," he said, and the concern in his voice was undercut with a tone of reproach. All she could do was let her regret show nakedly on her face as the drugs pulled her back under.
~
Always, everywhere, she was still the Mockingjay, so the hospital had someone drive them home in a car, shielding them from prying eyes. Peeta lifted her from the backseat gently and carried her up to their bed, laying her down carefully and pulling a blanket over her legs. When she reached a hand out to him, however, he backed away.
"I thought your days of keeping things from me were long over," he said quietly, staring out the window. "I thought we had finally reached a place of no secrets." He ran a hand through his hair, then scrubbed it over his face. Long moments passed during which she just stared at him mutely, cursing the words that never seemed to come to her, before he said in an almost inaudible voice: "I had mostly gotten used to the idea that it wasn't going to happen." He inhaled, and it was shaky. "I love you, and I know you don't want children. I have tried to accept that. I've gotten the injections, and I've stopped bringing it up, because I never wanted another time like those weeks last year."
Katniss swallowed hard, opening her mouth to say something--anything--when he finally turned and looked directly at her. "You know how I feel about this, and you kept it from me for weeks, and the only part I got to share was the terror of finding you unconscious and bleeding. I got to share the miscarriage, Katniss. And if I know you--and I am pretty sure after all this time that I do--then that will be my only experience as a father."
He turned and walked slowly, heavily to the open bedroom door, and paused in the doorway, not facing her. "It's not my only experience with you lying to me, though, and I think that's the most painful part of all."
The sound of their bedroom door quietly clicking shut and the subsequent sound of his feet descending the stairs was worse than anything he'd said to her. She would have given anything to have him come back and yell at her, say the hurtful things she deserved, but in the long minutes after, he didn't return. She fell asleep waiting, hands curved around her abdomen, waiting for the tears to fall.
She was still waiting when she woke up the next morning, but Peeta didn't come back.