A/N - This chapter has been a bit of a beast to write. Sorry, it's a little choppy.

Chapter 5 – Month 2 (February)

Katniss

I can deal with discomfort. I can deal with pain. I can deal with exhaustion, and I can surely deal with a short fuse at any given moment.

I can handle all of those things. I've been operating under pain, distress, fatigue since the day I was born; the general sensations are not new. I can deal with them because I've been trained how to for the past thirty-five years.

But what I can't handle is knowing that this discomfort, this pain, this exhaustion, is all because of a little seed sprouting in my stomach, its incisive tendrils anchoring into every wall of mine so that it's a part of me, leeching my oxygen, my energy, my everything.

And people think there's something "adorable" and "uplifting" about pregnancy.

Worst of all, one of those people happens to be my husband, who I love with every broken shard of my heart but still can't seem to understand, as if he's some extraterrestrial being with alien feelings and behavior. Somehow, this baby is a miracle to him and it's not even distinguishable yet—how? How can you love a life you haven't met yet?

In turn, he handles me as if I'm some divine creature, or as if I'm as crisply fragile as a dead leaf. He's always felt the inherent need to watch out for me—as if I need protecting, of all people—but now that half of his genetics are swarming in my belly, it seems as if his guard has infinitely amplified. He needs to protect his miracle child and his wife all in one, and it's made him so damn clingy.

But I shouldn't complain. Too many fathers in the world I grew up in were his polar opposite. Absent, cavalier, or reckless. Peeta is none of these.

On one unusually frigid February morning, when the sun has not yet broken through its cage and the bedroom is smothered in hollow, glacial air, I shudder awake to the warm fragrance of asiago and dill wafting down the hall which can only mean one thing: Peeta is making cheese buns. Instead of soothing me like it has for over a decade, however, the scent instead stirs something in the pit of my stomach, and I find myself reeling, barely making it to the bathroom before acid burns my throat.

He must've heard me retching from all the way downstairs, because he's at my side in a heartbeat, his fingers warmly collecting the stray strands of hair plastered to my cheeks, pulling them from my face as he silently offers me his company.

When it's over, and I collapse against the side of the tub, I moan melodramatically, "I think I'm dying, Peeta."

He leans across me to pull the lever at the end of the bathtub, a steaming rivulet of water pouring from the tap. "Maybe a nice warm bath will revive you."

"I never thought I'd be saying this," I groan as he settles at my side again, my cheek falling against his shoulder, "but maybe cheese buns aren't the best idea in the mornings."

"They're magic, Katniss. I swear, they have healing properties."

"Then why am I here?" I motion sloppily at my tangled body, slack over the tile.

"Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much…"

If I had the energy, I'd smack him; instead, I shoot him a shallow, dark glare, and his humor dissipates. God, I must look like hell.

He sighs empathetically. "Alright. So, cheese buns are out." With that, he helps lift me to my feet, his fingers pulling gently at the hem of my t-shirt—well, technically, his t-shirt—until my torso is bare. I issue a necessary grunt as he undresses me for my bath; for now, I have to pretend I don't like being pampered.

But when I feel like I've just been trampled by a herd of elephants, being mollycoddled isn't exactly undesired.

He helps me into the tub, his hand refusing to leave mine even after I'm submerged from the waist-down in the rising pool. We've discovered that, even though they don't completely cure the symptoms of morning sickness, warm pre-dawn baths have their advantages. They calm the waves in my stomach, holding the most extreme bouts of nausea at bay; they work out the kinks and the knots in my back from restless nights; they calm me and set my day spinning in the right direction. We do this every morning. Peeta wakes at an obscene hour to fire up the oven downstairs and experiment with bread or cracker recipes, then either wakes me or joins me in the bathroom to draw me a bath.

He loves babying me in the morning since he can't get away with it during the day. If we weren't so concerned with it shooting up red flags, Peeta would gladly walk into the bakery an hour or two late every day. But we need to keep this a secret. We must act normal.

However, the realm of "normal" is difficult to adhere to when my entire day, every day, is thrown for a loop. My mornings are turned upside down; the nausea usually doesn't abate until afternoon, and by then the possible hours for hunting are truncated. If my stomach wasn't so hypersensitive to smells, I'm sure I'd accompany Peeta in the bakery, but instead, most of my afternoons are spent sitting up in a branch or against a tree trunk in a shallow corner of the woods. It's not like I have many other options.

In these quiet hours, I dutifully avoid thinking about the baby. Peeta is definitely the optimistic idealist in our marriage; I'm the realist. I've never been one to muse over the abstract. I anchor myself in the present, in what I'm feeling now rather than what I may be feeling in the future, and so while Peeta can look forward to everything this child will become, my mind is pinned to the materiality of the process. All I can think about is how this baby is hurting me. How it's making me sick. How it's draining me of my energy.

It's such a selfish reality. But it's a reality I can't alter, only avoid devotedly.

So, instead of thinking about the baby, I concern myself with more customary thoughts to keep me relaxed. I often think about people I haven't seen in years—my mother, Gale, even Finnick and especially Prim—and the sensations of the world around me. While I'm out here, eluding all subjects relating to my pregnancy calms me. I may be exhausted and feel a little queasy, but I'm still here, in my woods, where the universe is so subdued, so permitting that I can hear myself think.

And then I return to my world beyond the woods, to my boy—my man—with the bread; we prepare dinner together and then eat at the table. If I'm not too tired, sometimes we'll take a walk afterwards. Otherwise, we'll curl up by the fire. He'll paint, I'll read or write, or pretend to read or write as I carefully watch the strokes of his hand as they dance over the canvas.

And then some nights, we don't do anything, and above all, these evenings are my favorites. Sometimes we'll shower off together, and he'll shampoo my hair—which is growing far too long, but he begs me not to cut it—and then after, he'll tuck me into one of his old t-shirts that smells faintly of cinnamon and honey and nutmeg and everything Peeta is. We'll snake under the covers where he'll tell me about his day, and I'll listen. He never runs out of things to say, and I never tire of hearing the way his voice curls so musically around each word he speaks.

It's only when we're safe under the night's sheer blanket and snuggled in the dips of our bed that he talks of his baby. He's always hesitant when he begins, always so afraid that he'll scare me. He does scare me, of course, but I need him to continue. It's the only time of day in which I face my condition head-on. Until the twilight hours, we don't acknowledge the pregnancy beyond its symptoms, because that's what's most comfortable for me.

But it's not what's best. We both know this. So, with his fingers woven into mine, he tells all.

I wonder if he or she will look more like you or me.

It'll probably crawl into the woods the moment it pops out, you know. You spend so much time out there that it may confuse the forest for your womb.

I pray every day that this kid loves carbs and will know how to wield a piping bag.

I hope he or she can sing like you.

With each word, the child becomes a little less like a foreign parasite and a little more like an actual baby. Unfortunately, I'm still hopelessly terrified of children, but his gentle inquiries chip away at the ambiguity so that this reality is digestible, piece by piece.

But the romance of the idea seems to dissipate by morning as I'm hunched over the toilet bowl, shoving a different type of cracker or bread roll between my chapped lips to extinguish the nausea. My mind refocuses on the now, not the future. It's my modified version of survival mode, calibrated to placate the mental strain of pregnancy rather than starvation or thirst.

Of course, only so many of my emotions can be dulled—hormones have their way of slugging me onto an emotional merry-go-round until I'm woozy and ferociously irritated. I've always been more short-tempered than Peeta, but the chemical messengers swimming through my systems seem to spike my volatility. In most cases, Peeta just chuckles as if my emotional instability is more adorable than frightening, but rarely does he proceed without apology. He knows me well enough to understand that groveling or expressing some sort of regret will make the situation better. His pride is stable enough that he doesn't need to constantly defend it.

(That's one of the reasons that I could never have done anything like this with Gale. Gale would rather be caught in a pink tutu than, God forbid, make an actual apology.)

Other than the morning sickness, the exhaustion, and the fatigue, the remaining symptoms don't span far beyond aching muscles and swelling breasts. However, both of those come with their perks: more obligatory back massages from my husband as well as some amusement on his behalf.

One evening, he's kneading over the grooves of my spine with those large, gentle baker hands—another trait of Peeta's that makes this process actually bearable, proving that there's literally no one else on this entire planet who I could possibly put up with and let father my child—when suddenly, his lips are gently sweeping over the curve of my neck.

"Peeta?" I cough, startled by the contact. In the past month his behavior toward me has become so much more chaste; I'm rarely in the mood to allow anything else. (An unfortunate setback, but I have a feeling the pregnancy hormones will swing in his favor soon enough.)

His hands don't deviate from my spine, but his lips pepper their way up to my ear where he gently takes the earlobe between his teeth. "Have I told you you're beautiful yet today?"

"Yes." It's already past dinner time, so I estimate that he has about five times today, if he's on his game. He always tells me at least twice in the morning, once when he comes home, and then usually a few times in the kitchen when we're prepping for dinner and I have some flour streaked in my hair.

He tells me I have that "pregnancy glow." I tell him he's blind and stupid and that he'd think I was glowing even if I weighed three hundred pounds and was drenched in animal blood.

"You know," his voice is lower, more evocative, filled with gravel; it triggers heat to pool in my belly. "Your breasts have probably doubled in size over the past month."

"They also feel like they've been pounded with a meat tenderizer."

His lips ghost at the nape of my neck. I shiver. "Interesting depiction."

"And I can't fit into any of my bras anymore," I tell him plainly, my eyes remaining pinned straight ahead.

"Who needs bras anyway? They're no fun."

"For you."

"We could always go to the market, you know." His teeth nip playfully at my shoulder, and strangely, I don't want to push him away. The heat that I've grown so familiar with over the past fifteen years, but has evaded me these past few weeks, suddenly ignites in my belly. "We have the money to buy new ones."

My jaw clenches. "Peeta—"

At my protest, a forlorn sigh drains from between his lips, his warm breath cascading over my shoulder. "I know, I know. It'd raise questions. I shouldn't have asked."

"It's not that I'm afraid to tell people," I lie. "It's just that Mae said for the first thirteen weeks—"

"You don't have to explain yourself to me." His voice is velvet, satin, pure warmth as is ribbons around my neck and shoulders. "I get it. You're still struggling to stomach this entire concept yourself—you don't need to be bombarded by anyone else. The last thing you need is some overzealous young women flocking around you, or even any rumors to be spreading in the first place."

Suddenly, his thick arms are cording around me, drawing me against him so that the expanse of my back is curved against his chest.

"I wouldn't dream of doing anything to hurt or upset you, Katniss. Please know that. I will protect you to the grave, whether it be against feral animals or gossip-driven civilians or morning sickness or fear. We're together in this, okay?"

I curl up against him, reveling in his heat as my cheek presses to the sharp edge of his jawline. "Okay."

His head turns slightly to press a kiss to my cheekbone, and his arms shift to accommodate me more fully. A gentle silence brackets us together, and for a moment, I let my eyes flutter closed as I focus on nothing beyond the way his chest arches against my back comfortably as he breathes in and out.

And then his voice slices through the silence, sending a sharp jolt through my arms and legs.

"Well, since we're not going to the market, does this mean you'll take my advice and forget the bras from here on out?"

It takes some commitment to writhe in his grasp, but I manage to turn just enough to deliver playful smack to his shoulder.

One particular day in the heart of February, I wake even before Peeta does with an atypically violent wave of nausea. A few tortuous minutes elapse before he finds me in the bathroom; he's groggy and swaying from exhaustion, but at least he's here.

"This kid is quite the little devil, isn't it?"

I swipe the back of my hand over my chapped lips. "You can say that again," I cough.

He stands to fetch me a glass of water.

"You know, Mae told me that there are pregnant women who don't even have morning sickness at all," I croak, sounding more like a drunken frog than a human being.

He lowers himself to me, slipping me the cool glass. I take it greedily in my trembling hands. "Maybe you'll be one of those lucky women the next time around." He winks.

I can feel my eyes growing so wide that I wonder if they'll actually pop straight from my head as my glare pointedly finds him.

"We are never doing this again, Peeta Mellark. You had permission to impregnate me once, once, and if you ever ask again I will fling myself from the roof. Understand?"

He rolls his eyes in what I consider to be concurrence, but doesn't say anything else.

A while later, when the worst of the nausea has sunk, he takes me downstairs with him, propping me up on the counter by the sink as he rifles through the fridge.

"So, anything with dairy is out."

"Right."

"And no chocolate?"

"No chocolate."

"Peanut butter, too?"

"Yeah."

"And the rye bread was also a bust." He runs his fingers through his disheveled curls. "Damn. Our kid is a picky eater." He shuffles to the pantry, disappearing behind the shelves for a moment before emerging with a tin canister and a small carton in his hands.

I frown.

"How about we try out my infamous nut and raisin bread?"

My stomach flips and I heave into the sink.

Despite my initial physical reaction to the suggestion, when he comes thumping down the stairs sporting a blue plaid button-up and his typical work khakis, I'm finishing up the last piece of toast, reveling in the odd feeling circling in the pit of my stomach. For the first time in weeks, I'm eating something that isn't eager to make a sudden and unwelcome reappearance.

His brows lift in surprise. "Do we have a winner?"

"I think I might need another hour to make sure, but…" Huh. Who would've thought the bread that'd saved me and my family when I was only eleven is the first thing my stomach doesn't tetchily reject?

He saunters up behind my chair, wrapping his arms around my shoulders before pressing a chaste kiss to my cheek. "I'm going to head to work. You should try to get some sleep if you're feeling better—you look absolutely exhausted."

I can practically feel the dark circles carving the skin beneath my lower lids.

"If you do take a little nap, and afterwards you're feeling up to it, I'd love to see your beautiful face around the bakery this afternoon. Apparently, Little Ollie has an ear infection and has been screaming his head off the past few nights, so poor Rory has been about as lively as a metal pan. We could surely use an extra hand."

"I'd be about as lively as a rock, Peeta." I sigh. "I can't even go into that building anymore. My sense of smell is completely inverted, and I look like I've been buried six feet under for a month."

"And you're still as radiant as ever." His voice is thick, sappy like molasses, and I want to gag and giggle all at once. He kisses my cheek once more before disappearing into the front hall. The sound of the door unsealing ricochets about the walls, a cold gust of February air billowing through the house. "Love you," he shoots out. I echo the promise back to him, and just like that, he's gone.

I take his advice to heart and sling my fatigued body up the stairs, sloppily falling into bed like a sack of bones, but my back is sore and my head is aching from pressure. After quite some time of restless tossing and turning, I decide that the gods must be dead set on keeping me awake, so I crawl out of bed and slip into a pair of Peeta's sweatpants and a wool sweater.

The house is cold and creaky as I pace through the halls, occupying myself with empty busywork; I'm too drained to venture through the woods but too skittish to rest. I dust off surfaces, sweep the front hall, fluff pillows. I snack as I go along—Mae said I'll need to put on anywhere from 30-40 pounds this pregnancy since I'm underweight as is—and around noon I sit down at the table for a cup of peppermint tea to quell the nausea.

My skin feels dry and grimy, my bones aching from being cooped up in the house all day. Even though I don't have the energy to stay out, I decide I need some fresh air, so I slip on my snow boots and re-braid my tangled hair, slipping outside for a few minutes. But it's not enough, and my lungs feel tight, and my head is spinning, so I trudge out beyond the porch. The snow crackles under my boots and the breeze bites at my skin until I'm shivering, but once the air starts swirling in my chest I need more, always more, so I journey out to the woods.

I don't go deep beyond the tree line, not daring to test my endurance or energy; instead, I curl up at the base of a tree and lean my head back, listening to the beautiful resonance of silence and the way my mind drains clear, my muscles uncoiling. Tucking my knees into my chest, I foolishly allow the exhaustion to seep past my seams; only once I've let myself relax and unwind do I suddenly realize how drowsy I am.

A slight squirt of panic trickles down my spine as I realize that I shouldn't have come out here, that I should've just laid myself down for a nap back home, but it's too late. My body is growing numb from exhaustion, and my voice of reason has fled.

And now, finally, the rest I'd been craving for hours this morning comes to visit, and I fall asleep against the roots of the oak.

"Sweetheart—oh, Jesus. Are you okay?"

A warm, leathery hand gently shakes me awake. The darkness behind my lids is instantly replaced with the gloom beyond them once my eyes flutter open, and my heart jolts between my ribs.

"What t-time is it?" How long have I been out here?

"It's almost eight o'clock. Damnit, you're an ice cube." Haymitch's hands are cupping my face, palming my forehead. His touch is fire. "Are you hurt?"

"N-no," I stutter out, but my entire body is wracked with shivers. My sweatpants are damp from the snow, my skin plastered in a coat of ice. "I just—I f-fell asleep. I d-didn't want—didn't mean t-to, Haymitch."

He grunts, his arms coiling around me as he helps lift me to my feet. The faint stench of alcohol bleeds from his clothes, the scent warm and embracing. I sway on my feet a little, but he holds me up.

"You can't do this, girl," he scolds, his voice rocky and low. This whole scenario is uncomfortably familiar, but my brain is disoriented, spinning and blackened with confusion. I blink, fighting for memory, but nothing surfaces.

My teeth chatter.

"Let's get you home," he grunts as he helps steady me on my feet, but I can't feel anything below my shins. My hands have numbed, too.

Home. The word reverberates off the walls of my skull, over and over again. As if my blood wasn't already frozen solid in my veins, a chill slices through my core like a jagged icicle, piercing my flesh as it drags down my body.

"P-Peeta?"

I can hardly muster more than a single-word question, but nevertheless, Haymitch knows exactly what I'm asking.

"You scared the boy half to death… right into an episode, Katniss. Worse than he's had in years."

"Oh g—Haymitch, is… is he—he okay?"

My feet aren't moving. Why aren't they moving?

He seems to understand that my extremities are too numb to carry myself through the woods, so he hoists me up into his arms. "Well, his pregnant wife didn't come home tonight, so I think it's safe to say he's about to go into cardiac arrest."

Heat skewers my core. "He told you?" I hiss.

"Of course he told me," he snaps back as we emerge from the tree line. "He was having a panic attack, Katniss. He had no idea where you were, since you always come home before sundown… Sweetheart, after all that boy has been though, he has every right to be paranoid as hell. You can't keep running off on him like that."

"I… I didn't—m-mean—" My tongue feels swollen in my mouth, my shivering spiking. Spots swirl behind my lids and the exhaustion from earlier today seems only augmented at the moment... what the hell is wrong with me?

I'm hardly more animated than a limp rag doll by the time we return to the house. Haymitch juggles me for a moment to pull the door open, and the moment we're in the front hall, my droopy eyes flicker to the living room to see Peeta coiled up on the couch, elbows propped on his knees, his palms carving into his cheeks. The sound of the door slamming behind us jolts him to life, however, and the instant he sees me he's on his feet, huskily removing me from Haymitch's grasp.

"Katniss, oh—oh god, you're freezing!" He holds me so tightly against his chest I wonder if I'll crumble into ash with the force. "You're alive. Thank heavens, you're alive."

"I'm s-sorry—"

He silences me with a kiss, his lips an open flame against my glacial mouth. We're both trembling, me from the cold and him from the tension I can feel straining through his muscles, and I feel a tear bead from the corner of his eye and wet my already sticky face. "You can't do that to me again, Katniss," he chokes, his voice quavering as he presses his forehead to mine. "You could've died! You could've killed—"

He doesn't need to finish. We're both thinking it. I've endangered the baby, too; how could I have been so reckless?

Haymitch grabs some blankets as Peeta gently lays me out over the sofa cushions, beginning to peel my sopping clothing from my body. When Haymitch drops a pile of comforters at my feet, Peeta begs him to call Mae; he disappears for a moment, leaving me and my husband alone.

I'm silent as Peeta strips me down, partially because my mind is too tangled to string together even a short clause, and partially because the shame bursting in every corner of my body renders me speechless. His eyes are red-rimmed, his hair disheveled with wayward golden tendrils curling in every possible direction. His pupils are slightly dilated—a telltale sign of an abating episode—and his entire body is juddering as he wraps me in first one blanket, then two, packaging me up like an arctic burrito.

He doesn't say anything to me as he moves. I can see endless threads of words swimming behind the dark blues in his eyes, but he doesn't afford me with a single glimpse of what's running through his head, and it kills me.

Haymitch returns after a few moments.

"Mae's on her way over. Says the girl probably has hypothermia and that we should fill some bottles with hot water, wrap them in a cloth or something, and use them to warm her torso area. Don't do the feet or the fingers first, or she may go into shock."

The look Peeta gives me shatters me twice over. His chest is heaving, his jaw screwed tight, and there's a degree of fear lodged in his eyes that's a thousand years old.

"Did she… did she say anything about…" He doesn't want to say it, possibly even more than I don't want to hear it.

Haymitch shakes his head. "No word on the baby, but she could probably examine her when she gets here."

Peeta's nod is curt, and he crouches at my side, his hand sweeping my damp hair from my face. My eyelids ache to close, but I'm afraid of what could happen if I allow them to. I need to stay here, above consciousness. I can't leave Peeta again.

"I'll go get some water bottles," Haymitch huffs, flickering from the room a second time.

When he's gone, Peeta rises and scoots onto the edge of the sofa by my waist, his palm cupping around my cheek so gently, as if I'm made of glass.

"Are you okay?" he murmurs.

I'm clueless as to how I should answer that. Yes, I'm alive. No, I can hardly breathe and my feet and hands could be amputated for all I know. Yes, I'm more comfortable now that I'm not soaking wet. No, I nearly gave my husband a heart attack and possibly injured our child.

I decide it's best to avoid the question. "Peeta, I—I made y-you have an… an episode," I slur, my muscles coiling like wire, my throat constricting. "You h-haven't had one—one in m-months—"

The warmth from his hand is replaced by violent cold as he draws it away from my cheek, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. He doesn't say anything.

His silence only claws at me deeper, scraping violently at my flesh. Despite the layer of ice cloaking every inch of my skin, heat bubbles in my core, paired with a furious swell of guilt. "I didn't m-mean to do it," I whisper, my voice strained as it's tugged from the back of my throat. "I just… I couldn't b-breathe in here, and I—I needed s-some air, and I w-wasn't trying to go—to fall asleep, it just happened. P-Peeta, I… I'm so sorry. I didn't—never meant t-to hurt you. Please d-don't be angry..."

His entire body stills, muscles growing rigid as stone, and I watch as he slowly lowers his palms from his face to turn and look at me.

"Katniss, you—you think I'm angry with you?"

Granted, anger is one of the most foreign emotions to Peeta, as I've only seen him genuinely furious a handful of times in our entire marriage. But whatever's fizzling from his skin now seems pretty close.

When I don't answer, he runs his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I'm not—Katniss, I'm not mad at you. I'm beyond thankful you're alright, but I was scared out of my mind just a few minutes ago and so my emotions are on overdrive…" He sighs and then leans over, pressing a chaste kiss to my forehead, his thumb delicately brushing my cheek. "There are very few things you could do to aggravate me, alright? Accidentally passing out in the woods and getting hypothermia hardly qualifies."

The smile I gift him with is apologetic and weak, but it still prompts him to kiss my nose, and just for a moment I tell myself that maybe things will be alright.

Haymitch soon returns, two plastic canisters of water in one hand and a small wad of dishrags in the other. He hands them to Peeta, who wraps the bottles in the cloths before snaking his hands underneath the spool of blankets to press them to my stomach and chest. So much for any degree of modesty.

The heat from the vessels lances my skin and I jolt upon contact.

"Too hot?" Peeta raises an eyebrow.

I swallow and shake my head, shifting my arms from my sides to take the bottles from him, slowly moving them across my skin. An involuntary hiss swells in the back of my throat as I revel in the newfound warmth, however localized.

Haymitch hovers several feet away from us, lifting an arm to scratch the back of his head. "Well, now that we know the ice princess isn't dead and she's got about twenty pounds of blankets on her, I think my work here is done."

I'm not sure who is more startled—me or Haymitch (probably Haymitch)—when Peeta suddenly rises, pulling our old mentor into a tight hug.

"Thanks for bringing her home," he mutters quietly, and Haymitch awkwardly pats him on the back, observably a little unsure of how to deal with actual physical contact. After all, people simply don't touch Haymitch Abernathy unless it's to slap him out of drunken inertia.

"Yeah, my pleasure. You should probably stop hugging me, or I won't do it again next time."

That gets Peeta to break away pretty easily.

With a nod to my husband and a satirical salute in my direction, our old mentor staggers out the front door just as a tiny woman wearing nothing over her bleach white lab coat passes him.

"I came as soon as I could," Mae pants as she crosses to me, crouching down at my side as Peeta lingers behind her. He nervously folds his arms across his broad chest, his eyebrows knit in anxious concern, and it wrings my stomach like a dishcloth. "How are you feeling, Katniss?"

"Like I j-just got mowed over by a g-glacier."

She sighs, first taking my pulse, then fumbling in a pouch she has tied around her waist for a thermometer. "Having problems breathing? Feeling a little disoriented?"

I nod as she begins to unwrap me from the tangle of blankets.

"Well, I'm going to need to take your core temperature, which unfortunately requires a thermometer that doesn't go in your mouth—"

My cheeks prickle, a violent shiver wracking through my core. Even though I've been married for fifteen years, lying completely naked on a couch in front of my husband and a doctor still sends me into a small bout of panic.

Just as she's unwinding the last sheet from my body, Peeta's eyes lock with mine. He must see the anxiety lodged there—he can read me better than I can myself sometimes—and he coughs, shuffling backwards. "Can I get you something, Mae? Coffee? Tea?"

"I'm alright, but could you get her something warm to drink? Make sure it has no caffeine."

His eyes meet mine. "Chamomile sound okay?" He offers me a shy smile, looking more like the bashful eleven-year-old boy who tossed me the bread than the thirty-five-year-old man about to brew me some tea.

I nod as I roll onto my stomach, burying my face in the cushions before I can gauge his reaction. The stagnant air of the house feels like hoarfrost on my skin, and I try to focus on steady breathing and minimizing the shivering instead of Mae taking my temperature.

"I'll spare you the discomfort of asking me and just tell you that the baby is probably fine, Katniss," she says suddenly, evenly. "Hyperthermia is a much greater concern during pregnancy than hypothermia, unless your body temperature drops significantly."

The feeling that blossoms in my chest is just as surprising as it is unfamiliar. Relief?

"But there are some possible complications, so I don't want to mislead you into thinking you're completely out of the woods. Most of these won't be noticeable until either much later in the pregnancy or even after the birth, so we'll just have to be patient."

I empty a sigh into the sofa cushion. "I feel s-so stupid."

"People make mistakes all the time. What matters is that you're alive. And—" She removes the thermometer—"it looks like your core temperature is at ninety-four point six. Hypothermia is anything below ninety-five, so you're just under."

She instructs me to sit so that she can re-swathe me in the blankets rumpled up at my feet. "What am I s-supposed to do now?"

"Put on some nice, snug pajamas and drink lots of warm fluids; don't go jumping into any hot baths for a bit, but stay buried under blankets. I'm sure you have a thermometer somewhere—make sure Peeta takes your temperature fairly regularly just to ensure you're getting it back up to where it needs to be. In regards to the baby… unless you experience abdominal pain, cramping, or any spotting-related symptoms, you should have nothing to stress over. Just take it easy, alright?"

My response is delivered through a quick nod, my fingers curling around the fabric of the comforters as I clutch them tighter to me. The guilt that had been swarming me for the past fifteen minutes has finally begun to quell.

"Thank you, Mae." My voice rings with sincerity.

She smiles warmly at me, resting a hand on my shoulder as she stands. "And make sure you take care of Peeta, too. I'm sure this night hasn't been easy on him."

You don't even know the half of it. "Yeah. It's—it's been rough."

"Stop by in the morning if things haven't improved. Otherwise, I'll see you in two weeks for your three-month checkup, alright?"

I give her another slight grin, and with that, she disappears with an affable half-wave.

Upon hearing the sound of the front door slamming, Peeta emerges from the kitchen, a steaming mug clamped in one quivering hand. "She left already?"

"Didn't have m-much reason to stay. My, uh, my t-temperature's a little low, but I'm okay."

He slips the mug onto the end table beside the arm of the sofa, crawling onto the cushions beside me, his arms snaking around my blanket-swathed figure.

"And… and the baby?"

His gaze is brimming with hesitant anxiety, his jaw tight in anticipation. The love he has for this child is so impossibly frightening in its magnitude, but somehow, it's comforting all the same. It reminds me of exactly why I'm doing this. For him. Always for him.

I manage to extricate an arm from the tight binds of the sheets, lifting my palm to bow around his rigid jaw.

"She can't know for sure, but she thinks… she says it should be alright, Peeta."

The look of relief that launders Peeta's features is so resolute it's practically contagious, and his eyes begins to water as he eliminates the distance between us, his thick arms bringing me into his hold. He squeezes me like a piping bag, and even through the blankets I can feel him trembling. He doesn't say a word, but he doesn't need to.

It isn't until we're lying in bed several hours later that he really says anything, the softness of his voice sharp in the quiet.

"I thought I was going to lose you, Katniss," he whispers, his arms flexing around me. His skin feels like fire on mine—but then again, doesn't it always?—as we're tucked beneath the covers, my back flush against his chest.

I lower my fingers to twine with his, moving his palms to rest on my still relatively flat belly. "You have no idea how sorry I am." I've never been fluent in apologies, but after tonight, it seems only requisite.

"I'm sorry, too. I shouldn't be so paranoid, I just…" His forehead presses against the crest of my shoulder, his grasp tightening even more. "I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if something were to happen to you. You're my entire life, Katniss." His thumb brushes over my belly. "Both of you are."

I swallow hard, willing myself not to cry. Damn these stupid baby hormones.

We lie still for several moments as I revel in his heat, his pliability, the strength of his arms, the slightly unsteady rise and fall of his chest. And then, ever so gently, I feel his lips pressing to the juncture of my shoulder and neck.

His voice is as soft as a dove's call.

"Will you sing for me?"

Normally, I'd reject the request; attributable to my natural self-consciousness, my lullabies are rare. But, after all that's happened, I know I can't deny him this simple comfort. Hours later, and he's still trying to unwind.

So I do. I sing him the melody I used to sing for Prim when she was ill, the melody I sang for Rue in the pasture. The melody I sang to him on our wedding night. The descant is so simple, so soothing, and upon the first few notes I can physically feel him beginning to uncoil, his breath evening out as it washes over my skin.

After several minutes the notes begins to slur, swirling with the sound of the breeze beyond the window and the cadence of Peeta's breathing; my consciousness begins to fade. As we both begin our longwinded descent into sleep, I can't curb a sudden, new thought as it flutters to the front of my mind.

I wonder if I'll sing the baby to sleep one day, too.

You can find me on Tumblr at avoirlalumiere.