Always

Breaking

When we arrive back in 13, we all go our separate ways. Haymitch, who has a secretive glint in his eye due to reasons I'm not informed of, heads to command. Gale is headed down to Special Defense. He's been spending a lot of time down there lately with Beetee, working on something I assume. Rye is going to a class, probably the same one that my arm says I'm supposed to go to, but it's not as though I've ever followed the schedule on my arm. Why start now? So while Plutarch and the rest of the film crew go to Command and the editing room, respectively, I go to Compartment 307.

When I enter the compartment, I'm surprised to find that Prim is absent. I'm even more surprised that my mother is not in her nurse's garb and working in the hospital, like I assume Prim is. Maybe she got a long shift today and my mother didn't.

My mother's eyes look up to meet mine from her seat at the small desk they've been provided. The picture of my father rests inside of her hands. "He would have liked Peeta," she says quietly.

"Yes, he would," I reply, remembering my father and his excepting personality.

We fall into a bout of silence, but I get the feeling that it won't last long. Like a calm before the storm. A conversation that we've needed to have and yet have avoided until now. The simple, ever growing fact (quite literally) that I am pregnant.

"Why don't you just say it?" I prompt after a few minutes. "Let's just get it out there."

My mother hesitates for a moment before squaring her shoulders and pinning me with a stare full of her disapproval. It's the closest she's come to looking stern since my father died. "How could you be so irresponsible?" she asks. "How could you let this happen?"

"We weren't being irresponsible," I tell her through gritted teeth.

"Really?" my mother snaps, her hands on her hips. "But that's not even the main point. All of this could have been avoided if you just. . . hadn't gotten married," she says, putting it delicately.

But it makes my ire rise. "You think it was the fact that I couldn't resist getting married?" I repeat incredulously before admitting, "Mom, we made a mutual decision that we'd been thinking about for months." By the look on my mother's face, this news isn't helping my argument.

"You're not actually married," she says and I resist the urge to slam my head against the wall. Repeatedly. I am tired of people saying that.

"Yes, we are," I nearly growl. "I don't care if we don't have a piece of paper declaring that it's official. We had a toasting. That's official enough. It's official in my mind. It's official in Peeta's mind. And frankly, I couldn't care less if you disagree."

"What do you think your father would say?" she asks, pulling me up short. "Don't you think he'd be disappointed?"

"Yes," I admit truthfully. "He would've been. But I also know that he would have seen that what Peeta and I have is real, and not some teenage romance. You can't merely have a teenage romance after what we've been through. It's either real or it isn't. You said yourself that dad would have liked Peeta. And yes I'm sure he would have rather we waited, but I don't for a second thing he'd practically ignore me because he was embarrassed that his daughter is pregnant and married at 17." I snap angrily.

"You think I'm embarrassed?" my mother asks surprised. "I'm not embarrassed, Katniss. I'm disappointed and angry you made such a poor decision."

"Poor decision?" I repeat. "Yes, maybe we are young and I know that you don't like that. But our decision to get married, to start a life together, to love each other wasn't a poor decision. It may have resulted in us having a baby; your grandchild, that wasn't planned, but we are still going to love him or her unconditionally." I reply angrily.