Chapter Text
──── Asterid Pov ────
The sea had not consoled her. Not as she had expected.
Since she was sent to District 4, Asterid had tried to fill the silences with the sound of the waves, the seagulls, the rustle of the palms.
She had tried to make the salty humidity her own, the nets hanging from the porches, the warmth of the people who—though they gave her bread—did not give her belonging.
But the emptiness in her chest continued to burn with the same intensity as the day they tore her away from her daughters.
Four months, twenty days, and nine hours.
She had kept track of the time without meaning to.
The day the district midwife chief knocked on her door, Asterid thought it was to assign her another round of prenatal care to some fisherman's wife. She never imagined those words:
“You can pack your things, Mrs. Everdeen. You are going back to District 12.”
Asterid didn't react immediately. Her body seemed to petrify.
“What...? Why?”
The midwife, a wiry woman with hands hardened by years of delivering births amidst storms, held his gaze with a mixture of respect and resignation.
“That was the deal, wasn't it? The day a seed is planted in the womb of Mrs. Katniss Mellark, you could return. Well then... your daughter is pregnant.”
The phrase fell like a hammer blow. There was no joy, no relief, no redemption. Just a cold oppression that caught in her throat.
Katniss, her daughter, her girl, was pregnant.
She couldn't help but imagine Katniss's still slender body trembling in the middle of a foreign bed, a male figure imposing himself on her in the name of the law and God.
She couldn't help but think of the silent tears that surely accompanied that first night, and the sadness that would have nestled in her eyes when the blood didn't come the following month.
The return to District 12 was the promised reward.
But at what cost?
Of Katniss's freedom? Of her lost youth? Of her silenced voice?
Asterid pressed her lips together.
She didn't cry.
She packed her few belongings into a tattered linen suitcase. Among them, with trembling hands, she wrapped her ceramic mortar in cloth—the one she used to prepare passionflower and lavender teas that soothed her daughter's colic.
Maybe she would need it again.
When he boarded the train, the sea was left behind. She didn't say goodbye again.
She was returning to District Twelve, yes. But she did it as a shadow of the past. Like a ghost returning to care for another ghost: the girl she had left behind, the young woman who had become Mrs. Mellark, an expectant mother... a living martyr of a regime that only spared women when they became vessels.
Asterid thought of Katniss's face, of her eyes that once shone with the same intensity as Burdock's eyes and how that brightness died along with him.
And as the train began to move, he silently vowed that he wouldn't allow her to be completely broken.
Not while she was still breathing.
────────────✧──────────────
──── Prim Pov ────
The Community Home smelled of ash soap, freshly washed linen, and dry bread. Everything was in perfect order, as if the hallways breathed in time with the prayers they chanted each morning at sunrise.
Prim knew every verse, every step of the routine. She had stopped thinking of her old life as something different.
Sometimes, in her prayers, she struggled to forget the scraped knees, the always dirty skirt, and the disobedient goat she used to tend.
That was in the past.
And what was before, they had been told, was disorder. Danger. Pain.
Now she was part of something bigger.
In the community. A family of faith.
That day, the supervisor asked her to stay after the garden work. Someone wanted to talk to her.
Prim swallowed nervously.
It wasn't common.
Had she made a mistake? Did she forget a prayer? Did she salute without bowing her head?
But when Commander Mellark appeared in the doorway of the office in his neat uniform, Prim felt a different knot in her stomach.
He was Katniss's husband.
The district commander... and now also her brother-in-law.
"Primrose," he said with an almost kind smile. “I come with good news.”
Prim held his gaze as he had been taught: without defiance, but without weakness.
"Yes, sir?”
"Your sister has been blessed," he said. “She is pregnant.”
Prim blinked. For a moment, the meaning took a while to sink in. Then she understood, and a small spark of something resembling happiness ignited in her chest.
“A baby?”
“That's right.”·The commander nodded ”God has planted a new life in her womb. And as the sister of the future mother, you will be allowed to visit her more frequently. To accompany her, assist her... and also take care of Buttercup, if you want.”
Buttercup.
The old cat had gotten fat since living with Katniss, and although Prim no longer spoke about him out loud—as she didn't speak about almost anything from before—she missed him.
but even more... she missed her sister.
"Thank you, sir," she said, making a short bow.
The commander left with firm steps, and Prim remained alone for a few more seconds in that silent office. Inside, she felt different. There was something warm bubbling inside her.
She didn't think about how the baby had come to be, nor the sadness she had previously seen in Katniss's eyes. She only thought about what the reverend always said: a woman fulfills her purpose by giving life.
Her sister was doing it.
And that meant their family was being blessed.
Prim would leave the Home more often. She would see Katniss. She could help her knit clothes for the baby. Maybe sing her the same lullabies that Dad used to sing to them when they were little.
Everything was fine, she told herself.
And as she headed to her bedroom to put her things away, Prim smiled softly, as if life were finally in order.
────────────✧──────────────
──── Katniss Pov ────
There were days when he would wake up and momentarily forget who he was.
The light came through the window, soft, warm, without the threat of sirens, without the sour smell of coal, without the creaking of the floorboards at home in the Vein.
Just sun. Just silence. Just the certainty of a new day.
She was no longer Katniss Everdeen, the huntress.
She was no longer the girl who promised not to marry, who swore never to bring a child into this sick world.
Now she was Mrs. Mellark.
Wife.
Future mother.
The thought didn't hurt as much as before.
It no longer burned like red-hot iron in his chest.
It had gone out, like a campfire that slowly burns down. The catalyst was subtle: a fainting spell among daisies and orchids, the smell of wet earth, Madge's hand on her back while Mayra screamed for help.
Then the verdict.
A child. A life growing in her womb.
The night he found out, Peeta took her hands and thanked God.
Mayra cried, kneeling on the floor, as if a miracle had been revealed to her.
And Katniss...
Katniss said nothing. She just rested a hand on her still flat and cold belly, and thought: it's done.
Now, every morning, her fingers slid over her abdomen without thinking.
The garden was more alive than ever, as if the plants were responding to her transformation.
The mockingjays followed her from the trees. The sun warmed her skin without burning it.
And inside her, something was growing.
The promise of life.
It was said that child was not going to be born to fight in the Games.
It wasn't going to go hungry.
There would never be a shortage of bread on its table.
What did it matter then that she was no longer the Katniss of before?
The one who rebelled, who resisted, who hated with clenched teeth. That girl had been necessary to survive in a cruel world. But that world had died with Snow.
And this new world —as twisted, false, and imposed as it was— offered stability.
It offered bread.
It offered promises.
Maybe —just maybe— that baby could be happy.
Growing up without the void of a dead father, without having to sacrifice its name for tesserae, without the obligation to protect anyone else.
Katniss closed her eyes sitting on the porch, with one hand still on her belly.
She no longer thought about the past.
The only thing that mattered now was what was beating inside her.
A life.
And with each passing day, with each plate served, each prayer recited without conviction but with obedient lips, the spark in her chest faded a little more.
It didn't hurt.
She was just leaving.
Like a final breeze before winter.
────────────✧──────────────
──── Peeta Pov ────
The train station in District 12 was not a place where people usually arrived with joy. It had been built with cold concrete blocks during the Capitol years, when the only things that came through were Peacekeepers, tributes, or goods that the Seam couldn't afford.
Today, however, the platform had been adorned with garlands of white flowers and sky-blue ribbons, the color of purity, of duty.
The sun fell placidly on the tracks, and Peeta Mellark, commander and husband, waited with his hands clasped behind his back, impeccable in his uniform, the military cap under his arm.
The train arrived on time.
Only one passenger disembarked: Asterid Everdeen.
She didn't quite resemble the woman Peeta had known months ago.
Exile in District 4, under the watch of the midwives and far from her homeland, had left her skin tougher and her gaze steadier. She was no longer the quiet healer or the silent widow of the dead miner. She wore a sober dress, her posture upright, and the way she descended the train steps was almost defiant.
"Mrs. Everdeen," Peeta greeted, with a calm and firm voice. “Welcome back home.”
He extended his hand. She looked at it for a second before shaking it.
"Commander Mellark."
The tone was respectful, but without the submissive sweetness that Mayra or the other wives used.
It was cold. Direct. Honest.
"Congratulations," he said, breaking into a slight smile. “You will be a grandmother soon. A blessing for the whole family.”
Asterid looked at him for a long time. Very long. As if he were trying to measure how much of a baker's boy was in that uniform and how much of Son of Jacob.
"I suppose the news would have been more pleasant," she said with icy calm, "if my daughter weren't about to become a mother while still a teenager."
The phrase fell like a knife between them.
Peeta did not respond immediately. He watched as Asterid picked up a small suitcase and began to walk beside him towards the official car that would take her to the villa.
Daring , Peeta thought. Resistance.
Two words that hadn't been spoken much since the Sons of Jacob had taken control of the country.
And yet, there they were, in Asterid's steady stride.
The sea breeze, he thought, must have brought with it something more than salt and humidity. It must have returned that inner voice to him, which he honestly hoped time and doctrine would have silenced.
"It was God's plan," he finally replied. “My Katniss was chosen for this. With her strength, with her pure heart... there is no better mother to raise a new generation.”
"A generation of obedient ones?" Asterid replied without raising her voice.
"A generation of the pious," Peeta corrected calmly. “Of children who will not know hunger or death in an arena.”
She turned her head towards him.
“And does that justify everything else?”
Peeta pressed his lips together.
He didn't respond.
He couldn't.
He believed.
He had done all this because he believed.
Because he had seen how chaos had consumed Panem. Because he believed his mission was to build something that would protect, even at the cost of the souls of those he loved.
The rest of the journey was made in silence.
When they arrived at the house, Buttercup was the first to come out to greet her, weaving between her legs with a rough meow. Asterid crouched down, petted him, and then Katniss appeared at the door, pale.
Madge followed her, like a sad shadow.
Katniss was at the top of the stairs, and upon seeing Asterid, she hurried down so quickly that Peeta was afraid she would slip and hurt herself and the baby in her womb.
When she got down, she ran and hugged her mother tightly, who wrapped her thin arms around her firmly.
Katniss wasn't smiling.
But he wasn't crying.
And that was more than Peeta could ask for.
Maybe Asterid came with thorns.
Maybe the sea winds had made her less docile.
But he had what he needed: the District had stabilized, the mine coexisted with the medicinal factories, and his wife—his Katniss—was carrying their child in her womb.
A family.
A new era.
Peeta turned, putting the military cap back on his head.
There was work to be done.
And he couldn't afford to let the old ghosts of the past disturb the future he was building, stone by stone.
────────────✧──────────────
──── Asterid Pov ────
Commander Mellark's house was not a home. It was a fortress disguised as domesticity, with its clean walls, flowers perfectly arranged in thick glass vases, and curtains that didn't let too much sunlight in. Asterid quickly realized: everything was measured, regulated.
Every gesture, every word.
Even her welcome.
The room they assigned him was in the east wing, with a view of the garden where the plants were beginning to sprout like a miracle. They told her it was a privilege, a symbol of trust. But she knew well: it was a decorated cage, like everything in that regime.
The first time she saw Katniss after the exile, her heart sank.
His daughter slowly descended the stairs, one hand resting on the railing and the other on her flat stomach. She was pale, no longer as thin as he remembered, her cheeks slightly fuller, a sign of good nutrition, and her hair had been gathered into a perfect braid reminiscent of Merilee's dolls.
But that wasn't what shattered her.
Katniss had not always been quiet. When Burdock was alive, she was like a canary, singing up and down with laughter as sweet as spring pollen. When Burdock left, silence enveloped Katniss, but it was a silence of struggle: it contained rage, fire, determination.
It was the silence of someone who observes, measures, and prepares to shoot.
But this...
This new silence was not that.
It was the silence of resignation.
A submissive silence.
Void.
And behind her, like a long and tenacious shadow, she was there: one of the so-called Virtuous Women, widows of the martyrs of the Sons of Jacob, dressed modestly, hands clasped on her lap, hawk-like severe gaze. She watched Katniss like a kindly jailer, always nearby, always ready to intervene if a word went awry.
Asterid understood at that moment why they had allowed her to return.
It wasn't a concession. It was a calculation.
With Katniss already subdued, she could return... as long as she didn't talk more than necessary.
That night, the four of them had dinner.
Katniss, Peeta, Prim... and her.
The table was set with simple and abundant dishes, nothing ostentatious, but enough to indicate that bread was no longer scarce. Buttercup was sleeping in a corner, as if he too had learned to hold back in this new world of vigilance.
Primrose...
Her little Prim was no longer the girl who petted goats and whispered stories to her cat. She was transformed. Neatly styled hair, modest dress, measured words, and a smile that seemed stitched to her face. They had molded her like fresh clay.
And she, without realizing it, seemed to enjoy it.
The prayer before dinner was led by Katniss.
"We give thanks for the bread on our table, for the guidance of our husbands, for the peace in our district," she said with a clear voice, without trembling. “And for the new life growing in my womb. And for the return of my mother home.”
Peeta nodded contentedly, gently taking his wife's hand.
Prim smiled, murmuring an "Amen" with conviction.
The Virtuous Woman closed her eyes, silently approving.
Asterid simply lowered her gaze to her plate.
She couldn't speak. Not yet.
But inside her, deep down, something was burning.
The fire was not out.
She was just sleeping.
And now that she saw her daughter reduced to ashes, she knew she couldn't stay silent forever.
Katniss was fertile land, that's what everyone said now.
And maybe... just maybe... the forest had not yet spoken its final word.
The image from the previous chapter. Of Reverend Wraton's blessing after the revelation of Katniss's pregnancy.
