Kindred

Chapter Fourteen

A/N: Hello! I'm on twitter now guys so you can follow me for updates, tips, news and other random bits and pieces. I'm BBerrychills94 :)

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games.

Warning: Some of the content here could be described as disturbing. In other words, some things about Peeta's imprisonment that some may disagree with or not like.

Chapter Fourteen

Her name was Hayden Abernathy. Allegedly anyway.

Peeta and Katniss sat on the sofa, both of them flanking Willow who sat between them with innocent naivety. Hayden kept glancing at Willow longingly, trying to hide her desperation to swipe the baby up and run. She knew Katniss and Peeta weren't going to let that happen but despite it all, she kept considering it.

"Explain," Katniss demanded. "Slowly and from the beginning."

"We can't let Willow go until we know for sure that you aren't a fraud," Peeta explained, a lot gentler than Katniss did.

Hayden nodded slowly. "My grandmother . . . she was Haymitch's girlfriend before the Games. They were inseparable, so in love that they thought even the Hunger Games wouldn't ruin it. When Haymitch was reaped for the 50th Games, my grandmother promised that she would wait for him. He won-as you know-and they were reunited. But things weren't that easy."

"We know that Haymitch's family were killed by the Capitol," said Peeta, a tinge of disbelief to his voice. "He told us . . . How can you be alive if that's true?"

"They weren't killed," said Hayden. "My grandmother wasn't anyway. They were taken prisoner when Haymitch refused to sell his body. Maybe they convinced Haymitch that they were dead or told him they were murdered, I don't know. All I know is that my grandmother died in a cell, after giving birth to my mother."

"Your mother?" Katniss repeated incredulously.

"When they took my grandmother away, she was pregnant," Hayden explained miserably. "She gave birth alone and in the dark and the cold. Snow took her baby and tried to raise it as a Capitolite. It didn't work but to save her skin my mother played along. She tried to convince Snow of her loyalty but it didn't work. As a relation to Haymitch, she was always going to be treated badly, no matter how much of a fighter she seemed to be. She was way too young when she became with child. I don't wish to discuss how young she was. All you need to know is that it was Snow's fault. All of it was."

"Let me guess, so were you?" Katniss spat acidly. Peeta dug her ribs with his elbow, a warning to stop being so rude.

"I'm sixteen, if you must know!" Hayden snapped. Katniss blinked. She couldn't believe it. Hayden looked at least in her mid-thirties. "This is what Snow does to people! You, of all people, should understand this! Snow tried to do to me what he did to my mother but the rebellion started and everything went crazy! If he had had his way, I'd have died giving birth just like she did!"

"How old is Willow?" asked Peeta, acting much calmer and in control than Katniss was. Which was odd, since she had never cared that much about Willow until the past couple of days. Now she was on mega defence mode.

"I gave birth to her just after the rebellion ended," Hayden answered, the relief of this clear in her tone. So Willow really was clean of the corruption of the old world. "I'd go so far as to say that she's the first baby of the new world. Her birthday is the day Katniss shot Coin in the neck and President Snow died."

Katniss was surprised. Maybe Hayden was right. If she was telling the truth then Willow really could be the first baby of the new world. She would never know what it was like to live under President Snow's fraudulent rule. That was a good thing. The new generation of Panem was already beginning.