Chained Hearts

Chapter Seven

A baby. A baby. A baby.

Katniss could not have a baby.

It was the one rule she had. Do not, under any circumstances, get pregnant. Katniss knew that she couldn't have kids because she didn't want to bring a baby into such a broken world. What if the baby was a boy? She wouldn't be able to live with the guilt of being responsible for creating another soul to be tortured into the submission of slavery. And having a girl probably wouldn't be any better since she'd be forced to raise her daughter on the basis that men deserve what they're getting.

That was something Katniss wasn't capable of.

But . . . if she didn't . . . they'd send Peeta back to the compound. Katniss didn't care if they sent her to the Capitol to die alone and scared in a cell but she did not want Jackson and Harper returning to take Peeta back to the Compound. She didn't want Peeta to suffer any more than he already has.

Which meant that she had to get herself pregnant.

Katniss came to the decision to go to Johanna Mason when she realized she had honestly no idea how she was going to go about getting pregnant. Of course, she obviously knew how sex worked from lessons at school but how she was going to do it herself was beyond her.

"So the stupid one returns," Johanna mused as Katniss took a seat in her living room. "What can I do for you Kat?"

Katniss swallowed the lump in her throat. "I want to have a baby." Johanna choked on her tea and stared at Katniss in shock.

"You're kidding right?" she asked. Her eyes widened when she saw the serious look on Katniss' face. "Well, shit. So why did you come to me then?"

"I don't know how to do it," Katniss said.

"You don't know how to get pregnant?" Johanna asked slowly.

"No, I understand the dynamics but . . . I don't know how to get the . . . slave . . . to comply with my demands," Katniss answered, internally wincing. Johanna regarded her curiously.

"You've changed a lot," she said. "Last time I saw you you were a blundering child and now you're asking me to tell you how to get your slave to fuck you?" Katniss didn't like the vulgar use of the word but she just nodded, deciding it was best just to ignore it.

Johanna leaned forward on the couch, bracing her elbows on her knees, and grinned. "Well you're lucky," she said. "Shouldn't be too difficult. From what I've heard of your slave's past he's pretty used to getting fucked without much reason. Most likely he'll just let you do what you want. I mean, it's the way he should be trained."

Katniss tilted her head. "What do you know of the slave's past? No one seems to trust me with the information . . . not even him." 

Johanna cocked her head and pursed her lips. "What do you want to know?"

"How much do you know?"

"Enough." Johanna put her tea cup down on the coffee table. "Effie has informed me of things the trainers had told her. Which is both a little and a lot."

"Do you know why his mother sent him back to the compound?" Katniss asked, avidly curious. She had to admit that she'd be lying if she said she wasn't curious about Peeta's past.

Johanna frowned. "Why is that relevant?"

"I don't know," Katniss replied. "You tell me." Johanna eyed her suspiciously, sizing her up and wondering what her motives were for demanding one minute for sex advice and asking about her slave's past the next.

"Brunt bread," she finally stated. "The boy brunt bread."

Katniss' heart soared and sank at the same time. It soared from the sheer joy of knowing that her hunch had been correct and that it had, indeed, been Peeta who'd thrown her the brunt bread all those years ago but sank because realization finally dawned on her that it was her fault that he'd been sent back to the compound. Because she'd decided to die under his apple tree and he decided that he couldn't let that happen. It was her fault.