Happy Thanksgiving to the American readers and Happy Thursday to everyone else! I'm especially Thankful on this holiday that so many of you have hung in with this story despite the sporradic updates. I assure you, this story has not been abandoned and I've gotten a bit of a renewed sense of purpose to finish it since seeing Mockingjay Part 2. The next chapter will be the final lead-up to Bow's birth so we're getting very close to the end!

thank you again, and have a wonderful holiday!

Madam Beth

Chapter 46

For all the places I have been,

I'm no place without you

"Cecilia and the Satellite"- Andrew McMahon

Four days after the news of Sae's death had rocked our close-knit community in District 12, a funeral was held and her ashes were spread over the area just outside of town where the Hob had once stood.

The build up to the event included a news crew arriving from the Capitol two days before to do what Plutarch referred to as a "human interest piece" on the passing of 'the kindly old caretaker who helped the star-crossed lovers of District 12 find their way back to one another'.

They'd barely made it to the check-in counter of the one and only hotel in town before I was on the phone to Plutarch, giving him a pregnancy-hormones-filled earful of reasons why he should call his camera crew back to the Capitol before I was forced to do something drastic. Like sit on them. For good measure I told him he could feel free to cancel any and all plans to broadcast even the pinkie toe of mine and Peeta's child if they weren't on the very next train out of 12.

Luckily for Plutarch, his unwitting camera crew, and Peeta (who had the misfortune of being within earshot as I reamed the former Head Gamemaker out over the phone), I spotted the small collection of newscasters slinking back to the train station by sundown that very night.

I was at one of the large front display windows of the bakery wiping down the glass when I saw them sticking out like a sore thumb weighed down by their cameras and lighting equipment and with that air of overstated arrogance that some of the Capitol-raised citizens still embody. Just to make myself feel better, I scrubbed unnecessarily hard while removing the cleaning liquid over the place in the glass where I was watching their retreat as if physically erasing them from my quiet little corner of District 12.

As expected, Gale arrived on the train the evening before the funeral and when Peeta and I met him on the platform at the train station, I was pleased to see that he hadn't come alone. I was finally able to meet his Callie in person and to put a face to the voice who had answered more than a few of my phone calls to Gale over the last year or so.

She was tall, blonde, and friendly which gave me an overwhelming (and somewhat surprising) sense of relief to see that Gale had found someone so different than myself. She had blue eyes to boot and I made a mental note to rib him later for us both having found ourselves with significant others who were 'Townies'.

'Traitorous Seam brats, the both of us' I would have joked.

I was secretly applauding myself for having come up with such a great ice-breaker to help move us past the sadness we would both undoubtedly be feeling after the funeral services, when I forgot the joke altogether upon clasping Callie's hand in greeting.

"Oh!"

I was startled by the feel the cool metal and rough-edged claw setting of an engagement ring on Callie's finger and the matching smiles on her and Gale's faces proved what I had already suspected to be true.

"You're engaged?!" I blurted out idiotically as a smile spread across my face as well, widening when the ones Gale and Callie wore grew wider still. They both cast their eyes shyly down at the ground between us and the tell-tale flush of embarrassed excitement shone from them like the sun.

"Certainly looks that way, doesn't it?" Gale said as he glanced back up at me with the happiest smile I think I've ever seen him wear.

Peeta, who in my outburst I had momentarily forgotten was standing right beside me, reached out to shake Gale's hand in congratulations while I remembered my manners (as I usually did when prompted by Peeta's easy propriety) and reached out to wrap Callie in a quick hug of both welcome and congratulations of my own.

When we switched places I heard Peeta's warm introduction and well-wishes to Callie as I came face to face with Gale who was occupied with taking in the sight of me in a condition he'd clearly not mentally prepared himself enough for. His eyes fell first on my heavy, round midsection (an area he'd probably never expected to see so big on the slight little girl he hunted with in his youth) and then climbed slowly up to my face which had also changed quite a bit since our days in the woods together.

I raised my brows when his gray eyes met my own and we just looked at each other for a long few moments, both adjusting to the physical changes since our last time seeing one another in person. It had been almost five years before on the tenth anniversary of the Revolution when we'd all fulfilled our end of the Victor's Bargain and returned to the Capitol for the remembrance ceremony that year.

As a high ranking military official, Gale was part of the mix of government, civilian, and military representatives at the yearly Memorial Day observance and we usually saw him there on the years Peeta and I chose to attend.

As part of our Victor's agreement, we had agreed to attend every year, but the most recently elected president was pretty understanding and allowed us to pick and choose which years we felt comfortable showing up for.

We appreciated this leniency and only ever felt a little guilty for it considering this president knew better than most the struggle of being a Hunger Games Victor and returning to the Capitol. His own sister happened to be Commander Lyme, the former Hunger Games Victor and rebel leader who I worked with in District 2 when we were trying to take the mountain fortress known as the Nut. She had died before seeing the Rebellion succeed and her younger brother had run his election campaign on a platform of bringing honor to her memory and the memory of all those who gave their lives in the war.

Peeta and I hadn't been married for too long at that point and we saw Gale briefly as we were hustled from one event to another based on the meticulous schedule-keeping of Effie Trinket and her trusty clipboard. Haymitch hadn't been up to the visit that year, but my mother had made the trip with us for support.

I suspected her presence had been part of the reason for Gale's keeping a distance and I'll admit that at the time, with the ink still fresh on my marriage license, I was happy to avoid the awkwardness that was sure to come if we'd encountered each other at the time. My mother had never quite been able to make the same peace I had with Gale's possible involvement in Prim's death and I noticed she and Gale pointedly avoided each other at rebellion-related events over the years.

Looking at him once again after five years of only catching the occasional glimpse of him on the news, it took a moment for me to adjust to the dusting of gray and white in hair he still kept military short and in the neatly trimmed goatee and mustache he'd just begun wearing that last time I saw him in person. At the time, I'd seen him from afar across a roomful of guests celebrating the fall of the Capitol and hadn't been close enough to observe any signs of aging then.

He must have caught the little smile on my face as my eyes swept curiously over the signs of his aging because Gale smirked and folded his arms over his chest defensively.

"You don't remember him, but my dad went gray pretty early too." He grunted and I raised my hands palms out in front of me, fighting the grin trying its best to spread across my face.

"Hey, you don't need to defend yourself. It looks…nice…" I said and narrowed my eyes, tilting my head at an angle to scrutinize him further. "…distinguished." I said with a decisive nod and then smiled for real. "Like a happily married man should look." I said returning to the subject at hand and speaking loud enough to draw Peeta and Callie's attention back to us.

Gale nodded with me and cast his eyes over to Callie who moved into his side. Gale's arm went around her shoulders easily and he gave her a comforting little squeeze. The motion caused Callie to take a deep breath and I watched her shoulders relax with the expulsion of a slow, but obvious sigh of relief. It was almost as if Gale had given her some silent sign that everything was alright and that she'd passed whatever inspection Callie seemed to think she needed from me as the person who knew Gale the best before her.

Taking his own cue from them, Peeta moved to my side where he reached out to grab ahold of my hand lightly, anchoring himself to me in a way that was meant to reassure both of us.

As we waited for the attendants to unload Gale and Callie's bags, we stood talking about weddings and babies, the irony of how odd it was for all of us to be talking about such things not lost on any of the three of us who had been down such a long, strange road both together and apart throughout our lives.

Somewhere during the course of the conversation, I realized that I'd lifted my hand to rest on the curve of my belly and that Peeta's was resting on top of it protectively. We shared a secret smile during which I missed what Gale was saying and had to ask him to repeat himself.

"I said," Gale faked impatience with our soon-to-be-parents dreamy-eyed looks and made sure to emphasize the said. "it's a girl, huh?" he asked and I noticed that smirk returning to his face from a few minutes earlier when I had been taking notice of his gray hair.

I knew what was coming next and that there was absolutely no way to avoid it so I just smiled and nodded as Gale turned his full attention and condolences on Peeta and reached out to give him a hearty clap on the shoulder.

"Good luck." He laughed and Callie swatted him on the chest in a scolding gesture and told him just for that, he could carry both of their bags to the car by himself.

Later, with the mood of congratulations and excitement having waned upon passing Sae's home on the way to dropping Gale and Callie off at the small hotel in town, Peeta and I headed to the bakery to lose ourselves in work for the rest of the afternoon. Gale promised to stop by before they went to dinner to pick up some of the sweet rolls we made at the bakery which he'd apparently been raving about to Callie.

She had said she wanted to get some to have for a quick breakfast the next morning before the funeral, but I suspected her motive for picking up Gale's favorite treat from the Mellark Bakery of his youth were a little more sentimental than that.

Knowing that having an extra comfort of home would maybe help to ease the pain of why he had come here gave me a strong indication of just how well Callie did know my childhood hunting partner.

When they showed up a few minutes before closing, Peeta had a fresh batch of rolls in special packaging to keep them fresh until breakfast and waved off Gale's attempt to pay for the treats. Gale grudgingly accepted the gift with a promise to pay for some pies he wanted to take home with them on the train the next evening.

I was a little sad to hear that they'd only be staying for the night, but Gale said he had a lot of work to get ahead on if he was going to be taking off time for a wedding and honeymoon later in the year. Ulterior motives for wanting him to stay longer that were mostly based in getting to know Callie better aside, I was at least reassured of their true feelings for each other as I watched them share a secret smile and identical blushes clear across their faces from one cheek to the other at the mention of a wedding and honeymoon.

I may not ever completely forgive Gale for what part he might have played in my sister's death, but it was a comfort to see that he'd softened somewhat with age and maturity, and perhaps with the influence of the pretty woman leaning comfortably into his side at the end of the bakery counter.

"Where's Haymitch? I haven't seen him anywhere in town today…" Gale asked a few minutes later while Peeta gave Callie a quick tour of the bakery. I was counting out the drawer after having flipped the sign on the front door to 'closed'. The familiar motion triggered a quick, but painful flashback to a few days earlier when Haymitch had flipped the sign over, closing the bakery to allow Peeta and I to grieve for Sae in the sanctity of our apartment above the shop. I shook my head to clear the memory and then moved back around the counter trying to remember what Gale's question had been.

Ah, Haymitch. Right.

A snort of derision was all Gale needed from me to figure out just where Haymitch was and would likely be until well into the next night.

I watched a myriad of emotions cross Gale's face and for the first time in all of the years since he had left 12, I truly felt I was looking at the face of an outsider. The face of someone who not only didn't understand the unpredictable way grief can influence our decisions, but also of someone who was too long gone from home to understand the loss felt by those of us who remained and whose daily lives Sae had been a part of for all his years in absentia.

"He's not even going to the funeral?" Gale whispered sharply with exactly the amount of outrage this revelation (and its perpetrator) seemed to deserve in his eyes.

I shrugged helplessly and moved around the counter to stand beside him and pressed my palms flat at the small of my back (a pose that had become familiar enough a part of my daily activities that I'd found a handful of sketches on Peeta's nightstand of me in the very same position). I winced and stretched, forcing my already blossoming belly out that much more.

"To tell you the truth," I said with a moan of pleasure as my lower back crackled and popped like the wood in one of the ovens heating up as we prep the morning pastries. "Part of me wants to strangle him, and the other part is tempted to join him until this is all over." I sighed and moved to lean back against the counter, rolling my eyes when Gale seemed to notice my discomfort for the first time and took my arm at the elbow. Never one to like having things done for me, I mumbled a 'thank you' as I while Gale lead me over to the seating area.

I settled in and slowly placed my feet up on the chair next to me while Gale took the seat across the little table and when he caught my eye, gave me a look that was something between a wince and a grimace. I took that to be as much commiseration as a man who will never, ever understand the stress pregnancy puts on a woman's body could offer.

"Yeah, I guess I can understand that." Gale said and leaned forward with his elbows on the table, scrubbing his hands over his face wearily. He scratched at his goatee and then folded his hands together and leaned his chin on them.

Despite my feeling that Gale had been away too long for Sae's death to have affected him the way it did Peeta, Haymitch and myself, I allowed myself to really look at him for the first time since he'd arrived on the train earlier that day.

I took in the puffiness of his face and noticed his eyes were red rimmed and somewhat bloodshot, realizing with a little jolt of astonishment, that Gale had been crying not long before he and Callie entered the bakery. I tried to hide my surprise by pretending that the baby had kicked and turning my attention to my belly as Gale continued.

"Sae was…sort of like a grandmother to us." He said nodding slightly and then laughed humorlessly. "You know, if either of us had grandparents that lived long enough to get to know them."

It was easy to forget sometimes with adequate food, shelter and healthcare now available to everyone in Panem, that life expectancy was so low in the country when we were children (and in District 12 in particular) that very few of our peers had the opportunity to experience the bond between grandparents and grandchild.

It is a relationship that Peeta and I are able to appreciate having missed out on only now as we watch the way my mother and Haymitch interact with our children. It's a truly remarkable bond that has allowed my mother to relive the best parts of my childhood through traditions she now shares with mine and Peeta's children. Seeing the love and affection she so freely gives to them has gone a long way towards mending the bonds of maternal love that were nearly severed with her breakdown after my father died.

For Haymitch, it is seeing him find the fulfillment of a need for the honesty and unconditional love that can only come from a child. Despite his every argument to the contrary, he is ten times out of ten, putty in the tiny hands of his adopted grandbabies. The most exceptional moments though for Peeta and I as the two people who best understand Haymitch's struggle with alcohol dependency, are watching him reach for one of our children to cuddle with when a bottle is so clearly what he really would rather be reaching for instead.

I could only nod when Gale referred to Sae as being like a grandmother to the both of us, my already unstable hormones keeping me from making any kind of verbal response. My body knew as well as I did that once those floodgates opened again, it would take more time than I had between that moment and Sae's funeral in the morning to put myself back together again.

Thinking those words, so close to the blunt warning Finnick had given me while in the bunker in 13 about taking ten times as long to put yourself back together as it took to fall apart, forced forward the tears I'd been struggling to contain.

The pain of so many loved ones lost overwhelms me sometimes still, and those are the days when I find even getting out of bed in the morning to be a struggle. It is only by reminding myself that I serve their memory best by living my own life to the fullest that finally compels me to rise and return to my quiet little life and the husband and children who are the strongest medicine for the post-traumatic stress that will never leave me.

When Peeta and Callie returned to the front of the shop a minute later, Gale and I were holding hands loosely across the table, smiling tearily as we half laughed, half cried through a memory of Sae's quick wit that Gale was sharing.

Gale was the first to notice them standing in the doorway to the kitchen. The look on his face paired with the speed with which he let go of my hand and sat back struck me with a chilling reminder of the last time Peeta had walked into a room to find Gale and I in an innocent moment of comfort that sparked one of the longest hijacking episodes Peeta had ever had.

He hadn't been through a full-blown episode in quite a while (something Peeta, Haymitch and I all pointedly refused to acknowledge because we were sure doing so would jinx the luck we seemed to be experiencing in that particular regard), but I feared seeing Gale and I in a close moment so similar to that time years ago might trigger one. Gale's response to seeing Peeta in the doorway told me he had the same concern in mind.

"Everyone okay?" Peeta asked evenly as he and Callie moved with a cautiousness that said they didn't want to intrude on this moment between friends as they made their way across the room to us.

I could tell he was working to keep his voice in check. I knew Peeta long enough by then to pick up on little things like the way I could see him carefully breathing in and out and how his hands clenched and unclenched a few times next to his thighs as he moved to stand beside me at the table and Callie moved to place a comforting hand on Gale's back.

Gale and I both brushed away any remaining tears as our respective significant others doted on us and we tried to laugh off their concerns.

"Just reminiscing about some of Sae's friskier days…" Gale said with a little snort that betrayed just how much affection he still had for the woman who was the first 'adult' in the Hob to begin trading with the two scrawny, fatherless youths who were either brave or desperate enough to enter the woods and hunt.

While the rest of the Hob vendors wouldn't trade with us initially because they assumed we'd be caught sooner rather than later being so young, Sae saw something different in us. She also surely knew that as one of the older, established traders everyone would look to her to see how she responded to us first before deciding whether we were worth their time.

This proved true as about a week after Sae started trading with Gale and I, a few other vendors began to give our game and herbs a look.

"Have Sae's days ever really been anything but frisky?" Peeta asked with a grin, breaking the tension of the moment as expertly as ever and I let out a soft sigh of relief when I realized no episode was forthcoming.

Taking her cue from Peeta by some extra-sensory means, our daughter chose this moment to voice her opinion on how far past dinner time we were and my stomach growled loud enough to draw the attention of the other three people in the room.

"Well, I see she's already got her mother's appetite." Gale smirked as he stood from the table only to have Callie scold him once again, not yet accustomed to the sort of ribbing that was once a staple of our friendship.

To placate his embarrassed fiancée, Gale looked between Peeta and I and asked if we'd like to join them for dinner. As the pregnant half of our marriage and therefore apparently the maker of all decisions for the foreseeable future, Peeta looked to me for an answer which I was able to easily give thanks to my aching back and swollen feet.

"No, no…you guys go ahead." I said waving them on ahead towards the door. "We're gonna head home for a quick bite before Peeta uses the juicer on my feet and maybe a rolling pin on my back." I joked and Callie reached out and gently patted my arm, telling me to get some rest.

"I will, thanks. Have a nice dinner." I said and leaned back into Peeta's arms as they came up around me tenderly, allowing me to lean back into his strong embrace.

Gale looked at the two of us intently for a long moment as if as he was deciding something and then reached for Callie's hand. She took it in both of hers, giving it a supportive squeeze with a smile to match when he turned his attention back to her.

The loving look Gale gave her in return was so intimate that I felt for a moment that I was intruding on their privacy and had a momentary shock as I got a brief, uncomfortable taste of what it might have been like to be Gale watching Peeta and I through the fake romance of our first Games, to the very real feelings that he likely caught glimpses of in them.

Where a lifetime ago I might have felt the same heated rush of jealousy that Gale must have felt when watching us, at that moment, seeing my oldest friend's face soften with such uncharacteristic tenderness pleased me. I could finally see that in Callie he'd found his own gentle match to the fire he and I both carried within us. He'd found his own dandelion in the spring.

When Gale's gaze moved back to Peeta and I, the two of us shared a look that said as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud that we were happy for each other.

We were truly and completely at peace with where we were in life and who we had ended up there with.

None of us said, 'see you tomorrow.' because that was a given and we'd had enough reminders about why Gale and Callie were visiting 12 already that evening. A quartet of tight smiles were volleyed back and forth between us and then Callie and Gale turned hand-in-hand and headed out into the dusk.

When the door closed softly behind them I dropped my head back onto Peeta's shoulder and giggled happily when he brought his nose down into the crook of my neck to nuzzle me lovingly. I could feel his cheeks rise as he smiled against the skin there when I laughed.

I relaxed even more when it became clear that mine and Gale's little moment of shared sorrow had only caused the most minor of reactions in Peeta, but that nagging sense of responsibility I'll likely always feel for his hijacking episodes compelled me to say something anyway.

"Sorry about that, we just got to talking about old memories of when we first started trading with Sae at the Hob and I—"

Peeta cut me off with another nuzzle to my throat which elicited a sound from me that was not quite a sigh, but just short of a moan. It caused my breasts to tingle, the baby to roll and my stomach to make a second, louder and more primitive plea for food which completely killed the moment.

Damn hormones.

Peeta chuckled and brought his hands up on either side of my belly, giving its active tenant a whispered hello before he returned his attention to me.

"Oh, stop it, Katniss." He said quickly and the smile in his voice tempered the scolding behind his command.

"You'll be happy to know that I find it really difficult to allow 'the other guy'—"He whispered quietly in the way he did when talking about the hijacked side of his personality, "—To voice any of his concerns about you and Gale when I'm standing here with my hands on your exceptionally pregnant-with-my-child belly." He finished and for good measure, rubbed his nose against my neck again.

I gasped and that tingle his first nuzzling had ignited in my chest shot through the rest of my body, extending all the way out to my fingers, my toes and most definitely to the place where this exceptionally pregnant belly got started

"—Peet…" I murmured as my hands shot to cover his where they lay on my belly and my back arched, the motion causing my behind to rub provocatively against the front of his pants. Even through the folded apron and heavy work slacks he wore I could feel his response to my breathy reply.

Without another word, heads turned and lips found one another. We shared a long kiss that was one part reassurance and two parts longing for something we'd only just rediscovered after months and months of nausea, morning sickness, mood swings, sleepless nights and just plain feeling uncomfortable in my own skin.

Peeta and I got lost in the kiss, allowing ourselves a brief respite from the pain we'd been feeling since we learned of Sae's death. Our therapist, Dr. Aurelius, had stressed over and over throughout the years that we needed to allow ourselves these moments of joy during periods of sadness so we'd be reminded that the pain of that sorrow wouldn't last forever.

"Peeta…" I said softly after turning in his arms as the kiss progressed. I had a flash of that first real kiss on the beach in the Quarter Quell when we were wrapped in each other's arms and forgot my protests for the moment. A warmth spread through me as I vividly recalled the feel of the sand shifting to accept our bodies as we writhed against one another, unable to tell where one ended and the other began as I had explored the first stirrings of real physical attraction for Peeta.

By Peeta's response, I wondered if he wasn't maybe reliving the same memory.

His answer was a muffled grunt as his hands began to roam up and down my back, kneading the aching muscles in such a deliciously relaxing manner that I almost didn't say his name again.

"Peeta…" I said a little louder but reluctantly because I knew drawing his attention back to my words rather than my body meant he'd stop touching me. That he'd cease using those hands that had an almost magical ability to find every twist and knot in my muscles and work at them until they disappeared like perfectly blended ingredients in one of his recipes.

I pulled back from Peeta's lips, one hand flat on his chest where I could feel his heartbeat thrumming with the excitement of our kiss and the other lightly cupping his cheek to make him look down into my eyes.

I held his gaze for a moment, panting to catch my breath after such a deep and heated kiss and it was just long enough for Peeta to read my thoughts as only he can.

He hitched a breath as it got caught on the beginning of a chuckle and his eyes dropped to the floor and then back to my face as he nobly fought the smile threatening to spread across his own.

"You're starving, aren't you?" He whispered and dropped his forehead to mine.

I heaved a huge sigh of relief and hugged his neck tightly, making Peeta pretend to choke as he laughed and rubbed his hands brusquely up and down my back.

"I love how well you know me…" I murmured and kissed all over his face, ending with a big smacking kiss on his lips. I pulled back and looked up into his eyes with real, honest gratitude.

Peeta's answering smile was so tender and loving that I almost told my appetite to take a hike so I could go back to kissing on my husband a little longer. Almost.

"It's so much easier to be emotionally incompetent when you can read my mind." I whispered, an easy smile gracing my face in spite of the last few days' pain when I felt Peeta's shoulders shaking in silent laughter against my forearms folded around his neck.

"And I just plain old love you." He whispered back, pressing his forehead to mine and swaying from side to side gently with my belly pressed to the lower part of his.

A comfortable silence hung between us for a long few moments before I opened and closed my mouth once, then twice, not wanting to interrupt the peace, but also almost certain that I was going to probably eat all of the leftovers that we had packed up to take down to the orphanage on our way home if I didn't.

"Right, food." Peeta said breaking the silence for me and earning himself at least the possibility of giving him a little romance later once the hunger for food that was mine and the baby's first priority had been satisfied.

"You're a beautiful, beautiful human being, Peeta Mellark." I sighed and kissed him once more quickly before we finished closing up the shop for the night and headed home.

The next morning dawned crisp and cold with overcast skies and the kind of blustery, biting winter wind that cut through even the warmest coat. It was exactly the kind of day where there would have been a line of patrons snaking through the narrow aisles of the Hob as everyone waited for a bowl of Sae's wild dog stew.

It seemed a fitting tribute to a woman who was as much a part of Twelves's history as the mines that had once provided the coal that warmed every home in Panem, just as Sae's soups and stews had warmed the empty stomachs of its most downtrodden citizens for years and years.

It looked as if every resident of District 12 had made the journey to the area known as the Seam that Greasy Sae had called home for all of her long life. After the war, the Seam had been turned into large neighborhood of modest, one-story homes for the oldest members of 12 to live out their final years with comforts that had been absent for most of their lives before the revolution.

Never wanting to draw attention to ourselves, Peeta and I arrived early at the place on the outskirts of town where the Hob had once stood to give our condolences to Sae's immediate family before mixing into the crowd that was beginning to gather there for the memorial.

I didn't search for Gale and Callie but we found them and ended up all standing talking quietly together until the District 12 fiddle music Sae never stopped dancing to (even in her last months) began to play quietly somewhere at the back of the quickly growing mass of people. People who respected not just Sae as a person, but as a revered member of society who carried with her the memory of so many years of the horrors visited upon our country.

There was no schedule, no set time for the ceremony to begin, but once it seemed that everyone who would be coming had arrived, the fiddle music ceased and Sae's family moved forward to the front. Because we had arrived so early, Peeta, Gale, Callie and I were among those closest to where the family stood and we had a clear view of the proceedings.

Sae's children and grandchildren were a testament to the pride their mother and grandmother had passed on to them all as they stood tall, chins raised proudly at the front of the gathered mourners. Each of them released a small bottle of her ashes into the crisp, cold winter wind and said their last good-byes to a woman loved by so many. I watched them sail through the air past sky and trees that had once framed the building where I had first met Sae and grown to love and accept her as a part of my own small family.

Even the granddaughter who still spent most of her days in her own world seemed to comprehend the loss of the grandmother she had spent most of her childhood in the loving care of.

While Sae's oldest son said a few words to the crowd, my newly acquired motherly instincts kicked in and I noticed the granddaughter was rocking from side to side in an agitated way. Without even thinking about it, I stepped quietly through the crowd a few feet to my left and first touched her arm to let her know I was there. Then, when a brief look of recognition crossed her face as she looked over at me, I took her hand in between both of mine and squeezed gently.

A I did so, that same mothering instinct that had drawn me to the young woman's side hit me with an unexpected second dose of strong emotions. Upon searching my eyes further, a broad grin of recollection crossed over her bright, childlike face and she reached into her coat pocket where she pulled out a small ball of blue yarn. Certainly not the same ball of yarn I'd permitted her to take from my mother's knitting basket during one of Sae and her granddaughter's first visits to feed me when I returned to 12, but knowing that she and I alone shared this special memory of mutual time spent with her grandmother brought tears of both deep joy and sorrow to my eyes.

In that moment as I found myself stricken by my dear friend's loss all over again, I was shocked to suddenly feel the somewhat awkward, but still strong embrace of shared grief from the most unexpected place; from that granddaughter who I had never, in all of my time knowing the young woman, seen offer a hug of greeting much less one of comfort as she seemed to give so freely to me right then.

Just as quickly as it had begun, she released me and scurried back to her father's side a few feet away and I stood dumbfounded until the warm weight of Peeta's hand covered the cold and clammy skin of my own and he gently guided me back to our places in the crowd.

I reached up and wiped away the tears with my free hand and turned my attention to Peeta when he gave the hand he was holding a little squeeze. I narrowed my eyes at him when I found that he was smiling at me in that way he still always does when I suspect he sees in me whatever he saw that first morning of school when I stood on a chair in pigtails and sang "The Valley Song".

"You still have no idea…" He whispered and tugged me into his side, his arm coming around my shoulders and holding me close.

I sniffed back my tears and searched his eyes in confusion until Peeta leaned down and kissed my cheek beside my ear. "….the effect you can have on people." He whispered in very nearly the same tone he'd used a lifetime ago while we were hiding together in a cave during our first Hunger Games.

Remember, we're madly in love, so it's alright to kiss me any time you feel like it.

Sometimes the little reminders of the boy with the bread I found in the man I had come to share my life with were just the thing I needed to keep going when times were toughest. Unlike the sometimes tedious game of reminding myself of each good deed I'd seen someone do in my life, these times when the Peeta he'd been before everything he had been through shined brightest of all never failed to make me feel instantly better.

I smiled in spite of the tears on my face and the remains of my dear old friend that I could still see dancing on the wind as Sae's family emptied those bottles and knew that for now at least, I would be okay.

As if by some unspoken signal, the fiddles started back up once Sae's family had stepped back to become part of the crowd once more and I felt more than saw the movement beside me as Peeta brought his free hand to his lips. I glanced over in time to see him extend his arm with his thumb holding down his pinkie to create the three finger salute our district had used for hundreds of years as a sign of respect to someone who has died. It wasn't being raised, as it once had, to honor a scared girl who mistakenly set off a chain of events that led to full scale revolution, it was being raised for the purpose it had always been intended and another small piece of who I was before the Hunger Games changed my life forever slipped gently back into place.

With a feeling of abundant satisfaction, I watched as the crowd followed Peeta's example, kissing the three middle fingers of their left hands and raising them in the direction the wind had carried Sae's scattered ashes. With my own free hand I did the same and as we all stood there saying a final goodbye to Greasy Sae, I felt a peace that I would carry with me throughout the remainder of my pregnancy with Bow. I would draw strength from the memory of her when I was at my most apprehensive about bringing a new life into the world and it would help me to feel a little less scared.

It was the last, most extraordinary gift I would receive from a friend who I had already planned to thank by giving her name to the child I carried. My own private three-finger salute to the woman who had helped bring me back to life after my return to 12 as much as that loaf of bread Peeta had thrown to me in the rain brought me back to life after my father's death.

The fiddle music continued to play as each mourner finally lowered their hands down out of the cold winter air.

It continued as I linked arms with Peeta and Callie linked arms with Gale.

It continued as we four walked back towards the Victor's Village together to collect Haymitch for a memorial lunch of wild dog stew at mine and Peeta's home.

It continued as I leaned into Peeta's side, thinking of so many happy nights laughing and dancing around a warm kitchen with Peeta and Sae to a comfortingly similar tune.

To be continued...