Chapter 5: Two Women in Love

Weeks after Thom Borden's death, I suddenly begin getting sick. I feel my stomach grow rounder and my breasts balloon with a mother's milk. It is with great horror and sadness that I discover I am pregnant. Knocked up at the hands of Thom's rape. It is after much persuasion that Katniss convinces me to keep the child. Here is a chance for the two of us to be parents, for our baby to have two parents who truly love it. Its father will never be spoken of.

After Thom Borden is buried, Katniss steals a marriage license from the Justice Building. We both sign it, and in the dead of night, I don Katniss's mother's wedding dress over my round tummy. Katniss dons her blue Reaping dress. By the light of a fire and the full moon, Katniss Everdeen and I get married in the living room of her mansion. Sharing a Toasted bit of bread with each other, we seal our marriage with a romantic kiss.

All that night, my wife and I moan and groan and sweat as we make raw, untamed love in our new bed. The bed used by Thom and Katniss was burned.

Katniss's POV

I sit in the Meadow in my sundress as I watch my wife, Bella, play with our son among the tall grasses.

Bella lives with me now, in my mansion in Victor's Village. She is still officially my housekeeper, and also serves as a "nanny" for our little boy, Charlie. If people suspect that Bella is really my wife and the other mother of my child, they do not say. Though it pains me to do so, Bella and I have hidden our marriage well. I am well aware that we are playing a game, in a sense.. But as I well know, there are much worse games to play.

Neither my wife nor I have ever been punished for the death of my husband, Thom Borden. The exact circumstances have never been revealed to the public of District 12, either. All the same, that has not stopped rumors that I murdered him from spreading. Even the Seam children, skipping rope outside of school, have come with a rhyme, a theory for what I did. They might never know how close to the mark it is:

"Katniss Borden took an axe and gave her husband forty whacks. When she saw what she had done. she gave him 'nother forty-one."