#i imagine them humming 'all the pretty little horses'! though just about any lullaby really | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ellanainthetardis · 7 years

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Hey hey hey! Are you ready for your Sunday dose of baby fic? Let me know your thoughts!

[FF] or [AO3]

22. Twenty-seven Weeks.

Effie passed her hand on the neatly folded piles of rompers, pants and little sweaters she had just placed in the brand new white dresser. They were starting to have a real collection of them but nowhere near enough in her opinion, the two piles looked small and lost in the big drawer. She was eager to go on a shopping spree but found herself hindered by the still deep coat of snow. Reaching the train station to see her mother off two weeks earlier had almost been too much for her, she had slept for hours afterwards.

People brought her clothes though, as well as stuffed animals or colorful toys… Eileen had brought a darling little elephant with a blue bowtie… So soft… She had placed it on the shelf Haymitch had screwed in a couple of days earlier along with a few other toys. The rag doll Haymitch had bought for her, the one he had brought to Four with him, was proudly displayed on the dresser for the time being. She liked touching it when her nerves played tricks on her. It calmed her down, reminded her they were in this together, that they could do it.

The nursery was finally taking form.

The dresser, the baby-changing table, a baby carrier that had been left in the corner for now, soft rugs and lovely little curtains, a rocking chair, shelves that were still mostly empty… She loved the cartoon animals Peeta had painted for their son…

She knew they had time yet, she had barely started her seventh month, but with the beginning of the third trimester, she was starting to fret again.

“We need to baby proof the house.” she declared. They needed to make sure plugs would be safe, kitchen drawers would remain shut, that no little hands would close on sharp objects or little lips swallow something vile… They would need a gate for the stairs and so many other things…

“By we, you mean me.” Haymitch snorted from where he was sitting on the floor, trying to piece the crib together.

There had been a long and heavy debate about cribs. Effie had wanted two. One for the nursery and one for their bedroom because it had seemed logical to her that a baby would require a lot of coming and going at night at first and it seemed stupid to actually get up who knew how many times every night – all the more so given that she would end up having to be the one to get out of bed since she would be the food source. Haymitch had absolutely refused the idea of a crib in the bedroom, arguing that the baby would get used to it and then they would have all the pain in the world getting him used to sleeping alone in his room.

At which point the actual idea of being separated from her child even if it was by a corridor had been too much and she had started to cry.

Haymitch’s face at that moment had been almost comical.

It was exhaustion mostly. She was suffering from bouts of restlessness followed by hours when her whole body felt heavy and tired and all she could do was nap or lie on the couch like the big whale she was in danger of becoming.

Everyone told her it was normal but she was still anxious.

She wanted everything to be ready, she needed everything to be ready. It didn’t matter that they had three months left.

“You will be the hands and I will be the brain.” she teased.

“Sure, sweetheart. Keep telling yourself that.” He rolled his eyes. “Sit down, yeah? You’ve been on your feet for a while.”

She pursed her lips at that deflection but snatched the notepad from where she had left it on the floor – not without a lot of difficulties because her belly was big – and settled on the rocking-chair. She added baby proofing to her long list.

Eileen said she was nesting, that it was normal.

She deeply resented the implication that she was acting like a poultry of some kind but couldn’t deny the truth of that statement.

During their last phone call, Lyssa had laughed at her complaining nothing was ready and had told her what she truly needed to get ready for was the birth, that there was a reason she had chosen to use a surrogate for her second pregnancy. Her sister had meant nothing by it, it was an innocent joke, but it had sent Effie in a state.

She hadn’t really thought about the actual birth yet. The aftermath, yes… Holding her baby, probably crying a lot out of relief at finally having him in her arms… But the actual birth was a sort of limbo she had been happy not to consider.

Reading chapters about delivery was somewhere on her list, between getting a diaper bag and buy more lotion because she was running low and she was very invested in avoiding stretch marks. Haymitch loved helping her in that endeavor even though it had less to do with what she would look like once she wasn’t pregnant anymore and more to do with rubbing cream all over her. It was alright with her, her belly was a hindrance now and they needed to be creative where sex was concerned.

“So, I was thinking…” he continued distractedly as he screwed together two pieces of white wood. She wanted to tell him to be careful with the paint but knew it would end up with a rant about how he could still put furniture together without making a mess, thank you very much Effie. “How about Silas?”

Finding a name was at the top of her list, underlined twice and circled three times. She had notepads filled with potential names. The problem was, they didn’t seem to be able to agree on any.

“Silas.” she repeated, testing it out. She imagined herself calling her little boy on the playground and wrinkled her nose. “Why not Chryses? It means golden. I knew a Chryses, very good name…” He tossed her a look and she rolled her eyes, rubbing her belly. “Daddy doesn’t want you to have a pretty name, baby. He wants to call you shrimp all your life.”

“I want him to have a good name, a solid name.” he grumbled. “And you and I don’t have the same definition of pretty.”

She rocked slowly, drawing soothing circles on her belly, humming the tune Haymitch had taught her. Learning nurse rhymes and lullabies were on her list too but for now she was content with only that one. A part of her was impatient for that moment when she would sit there with her baby cradled close to her chest, rocking him to sleep. Another part of her was terrified.

“Hush little baby, don’t you cry…” she sang softly when she felt their son stir a bit too violently. He would kick her bladder again and she would have to rush to the bathroom and she was tired of that happening. “Mama’s gonna sing you a lullaby. Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird...”

She did have the best voice from the two of them but she couldn’t help a soft smile when Haymitch absentmindedly picked up the tune, so focused on what he was doing with that crib she hardly thought he was aware of even singing.

“If that mockingbird won’t sing, Papa’s gonna buy you a golden ring…” The crib was finally starting to look like a crib and he frowned, testing it by pushing down a little. “And if that golden ring turns to brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa’s gonna buy you a billy goat…” More like a pack of geese, she thought, as he distractedly went on with the song up until the crib looked done and secured and he reached out for her, brushing his knuckles against the swell of her stomach. “And if that horse and cart fall down, you’ll still be the sweetest baby in town.”

“I love you.” she grinned. “And you are cute.”

“I’m not!” he sputtered.

“Oh, yes, you are…” she insisted, her grin only deepening when the tip of his ears and the back of his neck started reddening. “You will be a doting father…”

“I’ll count myself lucky if the kid doesn’t end up hating me.” he mumbled, turning away from her.

“If he ends up hating one of us, it won’t be you.” she whispered, averting her eyes. They fell on the cat rag doll on the dresser, on the embroidered I love my mommy that she used as a reminder, and she forced a cheer in her voice. “Now, are you one hundred percent certain the crib won’t collapse?”

“No. I thought our boy would like it better if it broke.” he deadpanned. “More fun.”

She whacked him with her notepad. “I am serious.”

“Well, so am I.” he scoffed, testing the crib’s resistance by placing his heavy tool box in it. “See? It holds.”

She pursed her lips. “This box is filthy. Nothing filthy gets near my son. That includes your birds, by the way.”

“My birds aren’t filthy.” he argued. “And what about your dog? He fucking jumped in a puddle of mud this morning, you’ve seen the state of him?”

She had. Which was why he had been exiled to the backyard for the time being even though it meant the geese honked twice more as usual. She was hoping playing in the snow would wash some of the mud away.

“Snowball is not my dog.” she huffed. “I am not the one who was begging for a puppy like a five years old.”

“But you’re the one who corrupted him with your pretty baby bullshit.” he accused. “You made him a mama’s boy.”

“Oh, are we jealous, Haymitch?” she teased, cooing a little. She trapped his arm in hers and pressed a kiss on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of the woods that clung to the wool from his morning walk with Snowball.

“You stole my dog.” he muttered with a pout.

“I thought it was my dog.” she taunted but shook her head. “Do not be ridiculous. Snowball loves you.”

“Maybe.” he mumbled, burying his hands in his pockets. “But give him a choice and he will stay with you.”

“Because I am pregnant and he feels it is his duty to guard me.” She gently bumped her belly with his side. “Don’t you think he knows?”

Dogs knew things. And they had the smartest puppy in Panem. Of course, he knew.

“Yeah.” Haymitch agreed, smirking a little. “You get once the shrimp’s here, it won’t be our dog anymore, yeah? I bet whatever you want, the puppy will be all over him.”

A puppy this size all over her baby didn’t seem safe but she kept her tongue on that front for now. They could always teach Snowball to be careful. The puppy was a fast learner.

“Are you ready to bet chocolate chipped mint ice cream with maybe some whipped cream and a side of orange jam on grilled toasts?” she asked innocently. “Oh, and that hot chocolate with cinnamon they have at the coffee shop?”

“That’s very specific, Princess.” he snorted. “Is that a random bet or is it your way of saying you’re having cravings again and I’m gonna have to rush all around town to get all that?”

She raised on tip toes to press two kisses on his cheek and one at the corner of his mouth. “Please, please, please?”

She was dying for mint ice cream and hot chocolate. And toasts. With orange jam.

The cravings were hitting her late in the pregnancy, later than most women. They had been happening steadily for a week or so and if Haymitch had been amused at first by the few innocent requests during the day, he hadn’t been so amused when she had pitched a tantrum at three am because she wanted strawberries and there were none to be found in the dead of winter.

He made a face. “That’s a lot of sugar, sweetheart…”

“You kept saying I needed to fatten up.” she pointed out.

She was certainly fattened up now. Well… She still wasn’t huge by someone else’s standard but she was a tiny person and she felt like she was ready to explode. The fact that there were still three months to go was frightening.

“Yeah, put on some weight, not give yourself diabetes…” he commented.

She couldn’t stop a flash of annoyance from passing on her face at getting denied. “The baby wants it.”

“The baby wants to be healthy.” he countered and, because she had let go of his arm and was now openly glaring, he lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Tell you what… You can have the ice cream and the hot chocolate but we drop the whipped cream and the jam.”

“I want the jam.” she growled. “On grilled toasts.”

Haymitch had never been good at admitting defeat but he knew for a fact she would brave the snow and trek into town herself if she had too. Cravings weren’t to be taken lightly.

“No whipped cream.” he insisted.

“Spoil joy.” she accused, pecking his mouth. “Hurry, I am starving.”

He rolled his eyes and breathed out a long suffering sigh to let her know just how impossible she was before stealing another kiss.

“You’ll be okay on your own?” he asked once they were downstairs and he was slipping on his coat. “I can stop by the kids’ and ask one of them to…”

“I will be fine.” she interrupted him firmly, as much to convince him as herself. She had hardly been left home alone since… Since Clay. “I am keeping Snowball anyway. He needs a bath.”

And she would be fine with her guard puppy. She had no doubt he would jump at the throat of anyone who would try to attack her.

“Don’t overdo it.” he warned.

The second he opened the back door, Snowball came rushing in, joyfully barking at being allowed back inside. She had to grab his collar to prevent him from running around. Even then, when he shook the water off his fur, he sent speckles everywhere. He was a mess of wet hair and tangled mud crusted fur.

“You are one very disgusting puppy.” she chided him. “Jumping in a puddle of mud like a ruffian. I expect more distinguished behavior from you.” The rebuke flew high over his head. He barked, wriggling his tail left and right in excitement, his head nuzzling her hand, pleading to be petted. When he realized Haymitch was heading out, he tried to follow but she held fast. “Ah. Ah.” She clicked her tongue. “Bad puppies don’t get to go out. Bad puppies get baths.”

“Can’t wait for you to give the same lecture to our kid, sweetheart.” Haymitch snorted as a goodbye.

Convincing Snowball to follow her upstairs wasn’t terribly difficult, neither was ordering him to hop in the bathtub. Haymitch had laughed at her and claimed she would make the puppy soft by pampering him like that, he had mocked her when she had ordered boxes of dog shampoo from the city… But having made sure the dog accepted baths easily from the very first week had made it a lot easier to keep him clean.

He enjoyed it well enough even.

He had grown a lot in the eight weeks they had had him. He was bigger than most dogs one could find in the Capitol now.

It took her a good total of twenty minutes to clean him up, brush him, towel him and then blow dry his fur – easily his favorite part of the whole process, he liked to roll around while she did it.

She was really yearning for mint ice cream and her hot chocolate by the time she was done but Haymitch still wasn’t back. She wandered upstairs, looking for something to do…

Her eyes fell on the attic trap almost by accident. She had never been up there yet. She wondered what Haymitch stocked there before her mind flashed to years of boxed clothes she had bought for him and he had deemed too ridiculous or fancy for Twelve – she had given him dozens of suits every Game season but he had only kept the other stuff around the house: the comfortable pants and sweaters, the sweatpants, the underwear and only a few good jackets. With nothing else to do and unable to keep her nesting tendencies under check, she opened the trap and climb the pull down ladder – harder than she had thought it would be.

She panted for a bit once at the top, sneezing because of the amount of dust she had disturbed. Stuck at the bottom of the ladder, Snowball whimpered and then lied down, resigning himself to wait for her.

She struggled to find the switch and made a face once the old bulb slowly flickered to life.

The attic was a mess, messier perhaps than the rest of the house had been when she had moved in. There were a lot of boxes haphazardly piled up, some weren’t even properly closed, the cardboard was wavy… There was a damp musty smell and she wondered if the roof was leaking in some places because some of the boxes were stained at the bottom…

A quick check confirmed that the closest boxes were full of mostly still good clothes. Some clips from newspapers and pictures had been crammed with the suits he hadn’t wanted, making it somehow easy to identify to which year the box belonged. As far as she could tell, there was a box for each of her years as his escort. Before her time, it seemed none of the clothes that he had been given had pleased him because there were at least four or five for each season and she gave up on sorting that halfway through. She did find a picture of Haymitch and Chaff with their arms tossed around each other’s shoulders, grinning hard at the camera, looking not a breath older than twenty and twenty-five, that she pocketed absent-mindedly…

More interesting was the junk piled up at the far end of the mansard roof. She didn’t understand what it was at first, it was only when she walked closer, treading carefully because the floorboard was made of uneven rough planks, that she understood what she was looking at. Twisted metal and charred wood…

Burned furniture…

Burned furniture that had been gathering dust in the attic for almost twenty-eight years.

She reached for the closest piece of wood and then thought better of it, not certain the whole thing wouldn’t crumble at the softest of touch.

She identified a couple of chairs, what looked like a metallic child-sized bed frame, a crudely carved rocking horse cut in half… The rest she couldn’t quite make out but she was certain it had belonged to a small house in the Seam once upon a time. Her eyes kept darting back to the destroyed rocking horse and she couldn’t help but blink back tears at the thought of what had happened to his owner.

Haymitch’s brother had only been eleven. He would have had her age nowadays.

She reached for her stomach but the baby was asleep now, which she regretted. The closest box to the furniture was also clearly the oldest in the room. The cardboard was pliant under her fingers, defeated by humidity. She sat down to better look inside.

It didn’t contain much.

A few forks and knives warped by the heat of the blaze that had swallowed the house, some equally distorted knick knacks and a few blackened books with missing pages, covers or spines. She wondered how all that stuff had ended up there and her heart bled at the thought of a lost sixteen year old Haymitch haunting the charred remains of his family’s house, picking up everything he could find and clinging to those odd mementoes.

Her apartment had been ransacked enough during the war that there hadn’t been much of anything left for her to find when she had finally been released from the rebels’ custody. She understood what it felt like to lose everything: your belongings, your keepsakes, memories, objects that were sometimes the only thing you had left from someone now deceased… It had nearly destroyed her at thirty-five, she couldn’t imagine going through that at sixteen.

She shouldn’t have been going through those boxes. It was clear they hadn’t been touched in decades…

The next box she opened was from his old house too but more terrible in the sense that it was almost empty. She picked up a crumpled yellowish glassy paper before realizing it was a picture that had been half swallowed by the fire. Ironically enough, the only face that hadn’t melted on the picture was Haymitch’s – which was why it had been crumpled no doubt. He looked younger than she had ever seen him, around thirteen or fourteen maybe, boyish still yet not quite carefree…

There was a metal box that looked rusty but untouched by the flames and absolutely too chiseled for something coming from Twelve. She turned it around, not quite surprised to find the mark of a now out of fashion Capitol jewelry maker underneath. She struggled to open it, not quite surprised either to find two rings in there. One was shaped like an iris and had probably been destined to the woman who shared the flower’s name. The other was plainer, a spiral of dozens of smaller diamonds, so obviously an engagement ring that it made her rub her belly again, too aware that in another life, things might have turned out very differently. She closed the metal box and placed it back down. Those were gifts that Haymitch had never had an opportunity to give…

She found various yellowed sheets of paper, half burned or torn away, pressed into an empty notebook. Numbers mostly, grocery lists, single words that made no sense without the context the missing parts would have afforded… It took her a minute to realize it was probably his mother’s handwriting. Likewise, she found a faded blue exercise book that had clearly belonged to his brother. Hayden Abernathy. The name was written on the inside in neat pointy letters.

She brushed the tips of her fingers against it, wishing with all her heart things had been different. No matter what it would have meant for the two of them… Haymitch would have been much happier not being the example. If he had only been allowed to keep his family…

She placed the exercise book aside and reached for the last item, an old warped tin can that might have belonged in a kitchen at some point. She opened it, expecting… something, anything… but not ashes.

She almost dropped the box.

“It’s not them.”

She startled and jumped, only managing by sheer reflexes not to spill the contents of the box. She placed a hand on her chest, trying to convince her heart to stop hammering as she glared at Haymitch.

“Do not creep up on me like that!” she snapped.

“I banged the door, the dog made a racket and I fucking called you three times.” he snarled, just as irritated as she was. “What the hell are you doing snooping around here anyway?”

Had he called her? She had been so wrapped up in this weird moment…

He was tense, in full fight or flight mode, and she licked her lips, her annoyance fading, knowing she needed to tread carefully.

“I was not snooping.” she denied.

“Could have fooled me.” he sneered.

“I apologize. I truly did not mean to intrude. I just… I saw the boxes and… I didn’t realize what these ones were until I had opened them.” She put the lid back and cautiously placed the box down where she had found it before trying to get up – something far more difficult than it used to be.

He hauled her up with a hand at her elbow and the other under her armpit, his face unreadable.

“Your snack’s downstairs.” he told her and turned away without a single look for the burned mementoes of his past.

He went down first and made sure she walked down the ladder without problem but he didn’t say a word. She tried to lighten the mood once they were in the kitchen and she spotted the chocolate chipped mint ice cream, the orange jam and the steaming cup of hot chocolate with cinnamon branded with the Clarkes’ coffee shop logo, thanking him cheerfully by kissing the corner of his lips. He suffered the kiss but didn’t encourage her to do more or joke about how cheap a date she was.

He grabbed the second cup that had been abandoned on the counter and sipped from it, paying her no attention as he watched the backyard through the window over the sink. She could smell the rich flagrance of black coffee from where she was sitting but she didn’t complain, spooning some ice cream directly from the tub instead. His back was on her, tension obvious in the line of his shoulders, and she bore it as long as she could.

The clever approach would have been to drop the matter entirely, to pretend nothing had happened and let him come back to her on his own terms, once he would have calmed down. That was what she would have done a few months earlier, not force the issue in fear he would run away from her.

But since the baby…

They had been good at talking the issues through – well, maybe not good but at least they had been trying. And that was a particular issue she had though he had laid to rest.

“Those ashes…” she ventured eventually.

“Told you. It’s not theirs.” he cut her off with a warning growl. “Probably not, anyway.”

“Haymitch…” she said, taking pain to keep her tone neutral.

“Their bodies were charred, alright?” he spat. “The mayor said… They buried little more than bones. I don’t know what I was thinking… I just grabbed what I could before they cleaned up to build another shack. And I thought… I thought… In the off-chance that…”

The pain in his voice was much more than she could handle, the way it broke even though it had been decades…

She moved in a flash, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek between his shoulder blades. “I understand.”

He untangled himself from her arms and took his distance. “No, you don’t.” He shook his head. “You don’t.”

“Alright.” she offered, lifting both hands in a peaceful gesture because she could see he was getting worked up and because she wasn’t sure they hadn’t moved right out of upset and right into trigger territory. “I am sorry. I should not have…”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” he sneered, rubbing his eyes. “I need some air.”

“You just came home.” she argued.

“You want me to spell it, fine, then I need some space.” he snapped.

He grabbed his coat and slammed the door and she was left staring at it, not sure if she should follow or not.

She just hoped he wouldn’t go straight for a bottle.

At some point, the children arrived for dinner but their happy chatter slowly vanished when they realized Haymitch wasn’t going to show up. She invented an excuse, something about someone needing his help with a fence – a ridiculous flimsy excuse they saw right through in about a minute – and declared they should eat without waiting for him.

By ten, he still wasn’t back and Peeta tactfully asked if she wanted him to look around for him – at the bar was implied but not uttered.

“I am sure he is fine.” she promised again and again, to the children and then, once they had left, to the puppy and their unborn son.

She went ahead with her nightly routine, taking her time in the shower, hoping against all odds that he would be waiting for her in the bedroom when she would walk out of the bathroom. He still wasn’t back when she got into bed, so she exceptionally allowed Snowball to climb in with her, needing the cuddles the dog was always too happy to provide.

The baby was restless once more, having a mad party in her uterus, kicking and rolling.

“Shh, he will come back…” she whispered, slipping a hand under her nightgown to stroke the tight skin of her belly. “That’s the thing about your father… He always comes back. Hush little baby don’t you cry…”

She hoped to calm the baby but she ended up singing herself to sleep…

She felt the light touch of his fingers brushing her hair away from her face and her eyelids fluttered open. He was wandering around the room, trying not to wake her as he grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the drawer. A glance at the clock confirmed it was late, past midnight.

“Go back to sleep.” he muttered when he realized she was watching him.

“Did you drink?” she asked, unable to hold it up any longer, just as he lifted the covers up to get in bed.

He froze. “Seriously, Effie?”

It wasn’t such a stupid question in her opinion.

“I was worried.” she argued. “I thought maybe… Where did you disappear to, then?”

His face closed up and he tossed the covers back down with a sneer. “Where my old house used to be.”

“Oh.” she winced, feeling like an idiot. He snatched his woolen dressing gown from where he had tossed it at the foot of the bed that morning and turned away. She sat up, confused. “Where are you going?”

“To sleep on the couch.” he declared.

“No, Haymitch, don’t be ridiculous…” she pleaded but he was already gone. Snowball hesitated for a moment and then jumped off the bed and paddled after him.

She was reasonably certain the issue wouldn’t be forgotten the next morning and she didn’t really know how they had gotten there.

A few hours earlier he had been singing lullabies to her stomach and now…

Now it was a mess again.

#hayffie #effie trinket #haymitch abernathy #april showers

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