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kentwells · 1 year ago

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Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 10: The best thing that's ever been mine

GUYS WE MADE IT. We are 30 chapters (31 is you count the prequel) into this fic universe. And we are finally finally finally at baby time! I actually graduate this weekend and so it was an absolute priority for me to get this up for everyone before then (and before I leave the country for a few days). It feels fitting that this chapter, at this point in my life, fell so perfectly.

I won't say much. Y'all know the drill by now. Title from Mine (t swift)

Masterpost

AO3

I just want to thank you all for sticking around so long with me. We've been on this journey for like fifteen months together which is absolutely insane. I am so thankful for you all.

As always. Thank you to @kentwells who has known this was coming for a long time. @bodyelectric77 sorry you're getting tagged again. And my dear @crookedlyniceperson who will probably not like the developmental milestones I gave the twins.

Love you love you LOVE YOU

P.s. Now is your LAST CHANCE to guess the name. Proceed with caution.

It is somehow simultaneously the most overwhelming thing she has ever experienced and far less painful than what she anticipated. Perhaps it is the years of training, the endless stressors she has placed on her body both voluntarily and against her will, but she can’t even say it was the worst thing she ever felt.

It is terrifying, and agonizing, and straightforward, and complicated, and life altering, and incredible, and confusing for Clove.

All she truly knows is that although he did not exist a mere twenty eight minutes ago, a world without him in it now seems unfathomable.

The contrast of perfect, flawless pale baby skin directly against the landscape of freckles and scars that is her chest feels idyllic and impossible and so so so worth every single moment that came before this.

Every broken rib in training, every knife sent her way in the games, every single second in Snow’s hands.. Every bit of it was worth this outcome, this moment, this baby of hers.

She’s never had a way with words, and as much as she’d like to say she had some grand greeting waiting for her son, the only thing she had been able to muster was a breathless, overwhelmed, exhausted “You’re okay” to her bruised, smushed little baby boy.

No. Not little. Not little at all, big enough to get stuck, bruised, and come out with a broken collarbone.

He is big enough because she is barely the size of an adult and he has gotten everything from his father it seems.

It’s funny, really, Cato had broken her collarbone the day they met too. Life’s funny that way.

Maybe that simple phrase, that “you’re okay” was her way of acknowledging the trauma and the fear and the uncertainty that had been the last thirty some weeks of her life. A simple you’re okay to signify the crossing of one bridge to another, knowing now without a doubt that this was not destined to be the greatest loss of her life after all she had survived to get to this point.

She believed they were too lucky to have made it this far unscathed.

Cato doesn’t consider the things they survived “unscathed.”

“I just knew he was going to look like you.” Clove doesn’t even look at him, a softness in her voice that feels absolutely foreign in the back of her throat. Her fingers dance along the edge of her baby’s hairline, and slips her fingers under the fabric to pull it off all together. She doesn’t even know how she knows to do it, but she finds herself using the edge of the sheet to wipe at the absolute mass of soft blonde hair that sticks up in every which direction, like some deep seeded instinct she never expected to manifest. While her left hand holds him close to her, the right continues to run the very tips of her fingers through the thick tuft of hair. “I did all the work, and here he is. Giant and blond.”

“Maybe his eyes are Green?” Cato muses, running his hand in circles over her knee, glancing down at him from the opposite side of her. It had been quite a day for him, too. Albeit he had the easy part, letting Clove dig her angry little nails into the flesh of his forearm as hard as she needed. Still, his life had never changed so wholly and suddenly, quite literally in the blink of an eye.

He’d be lying if he hadn’t admitted to even feeling a bit scared at the paleness of her skin, the sheer volume of blood she lost, and above all else the way she herself had actually looked frightened. He could handle her in pain, but fear, that was something completely foreign to them both.

He’d be doubly lying if he did not admit, that despite not even holding his son in his own arms yet, it was not irrefutably one of the top three best days of his life.

“They’re Blue, I think…” Clove insists with a tiny headshake, bringing up a single baby hand to her lips, pausing just a moment to revel in the tiny finger nails before she kisses his open palm.

Then, like her hand wraps around the hilt of a knife, her son’s hand grasps her finger.

“Oh,” Clove swears her voice cracks on a single syllable, but Cato for the sake of them both is smart enough not to mention it (or maybe he himself is so overwhelmed he doesn’t even notice). “Hi, Sweetheart.” She all but coos the words, intently focused on the squinty eyes of her literal newborn, fully intending on determining the color of the eyes she had so patiently grew for him.

She doesn't ignore the novelty of the way he just so naturally fits in the space of her arms, and for all the outright fear she had felt with every baby she held before him, she doesn’t feel anything of the sort now. Quite the opposite, actually, in that she never wants to let him go.

“Do you still like his name?” Cato’s own hand practically covers the length of their son’s entire body, and truly engulfs his head when he holds it in his right palm. “He looks like an Atlas to me.”

“Yeah…he does, doesn't he?”

Deciding on a name for this baby had arguably been one of the hardest things they had ever had to do. A girl’s name had been so much easier, but it remains unused in exchange for the brilliant blond, blue eyed little boy snuggled directly against her skin. Maybe the reason the boy's name had been so much more difficult is because they knew deep down that's who they would have. Call it intuition, call it a good guess, but neither of them really anticipated that they would be meeting a daughter today.

Of course they toyed with a C name, a C theme. Cato, Clove… it would be expected to uphold that tradition, to commit to it fully for not only this baby but for any others they would one day have (not that Clove would have even entertained the idea of a second until about twenty seven minutes ago).

Maybe they’re selfish, maybe they’re vain, but it had been brushed aside pretty quickly for the idea that they would get to share that initial with just each other. They would share enough with their baby– he could have his own initials. C would always just be for Cato and for Clove.

That being said, it opened a floodgate of options. There were District Two traditions to consider, and nothing that could be a name reminiscent of the Capitol, a lower district, or any of the people involved in the war would even be a contender. All in all, they had gone through a list of seventy four names, until lucky seventy five.

Atlas.

It checked the District Two box, with roots in ancient cultures. A Greek myth, a man who carried the world on his shoulders, truly holding the weight of the world in his hands.

While unlike his parents, he would never be expected to carry the weight, the glory, the pride of the world in his hands, he is in fact the world to them.

Atlas, without the weight of the world on his shoulders, but the potential of the whole world in his hands.

It made so much sense as his name, it may as well have been created with this boy in mind.

Atlas.

Atlas Kentwell Hadley. In all his nearly nine pound glory, he truly feels like the entire world in the combined arms of his parents.

“It’s perfect.” Clove agrees, offering him a soft, tired smile as she finally tears her eyes away from her boy. She had truly held him for the entirety of his life thus far, and as much as she did not feel ready to let him go, she saw the deep love in Cato’s eyes. It only seemed fair– he had wanted this baby since they were fifteen years old– he had waited long enough. “Do you wanna hold him?”

“I…Yeah, actually. I really do.” Cato admits, unable to resist the smile that spreads across his face as they so gracefully shift the weight of their son from her hands to his own, as if they have practiced a million times. “Hey, buddy..” It’s so natural the way he brings the boy to his chest, the entirety of his baby body fitting over the length of Cato’s forearm. There were a lot of things in this world those arms were meant to do, and clearly, holding their son is one of them. Of all the great things Cato had been destined to be, the father of this baby was clearly one of them.

They haven’t practiced handing off little babies, not once in their lives, but they’ve spent the entirety of their lives moving as one continuous body. Funny, how they really sort of have combined into one human now haven’t they?

Clove watches as he so gently- a word she’s never associated with Cato– holds their son. The way his hands are beyond the size of the baby’s entire scrunchy body, the way his smile reaches his eye. It’s remarkable, really, that while this baby was quite literally a tenth of her body size, he looked incredibly small in comparison to his father’s arms, arms that are littered with half a dozen bleeding half moon scratches from the force of Clove’s nails digging in merely an hour before.

If Clove is sure of one thing, it’s that she has never ever ever in the entirety of her life felt the way she does exactly right now. She’s loved him for almost ten years, but not like this. Nothing close to this. And honestly, she thought Cato was the love of her life, but he may have been usurped by the tiny, innocent little boy they made instead. “....I can’t imagine it.”

“What, babe?” Cato asks, though he doesn’t look away from his son, instead committed to burning every detail of him into memory, as if he will disappear the second he looks away.

“We thought we’d raise our kids to be victors. I just…looking at him now, I can’t imagine sending him into training, let alone into the games.” Clove admits with a soft sigh, running her hand over her face in exhaustion. “I’ve gone soft, apparently.”

He shakes his head somewhat fiercely, absolutely insistent, looking from their child to her. He never would have imagined saying it either, but she is absolutely deeply right. They never could send this baby off. “No. You’re right, Clove. You’re absolutely right. I couldn’t imagine it either.”

How far they had to have come to be able to look at their son and see anything but their own victor legacy continued in his little baby face.

She watches as his smile switches to a look of almost perplexion, and he starts looking between the baby and her. HIs hands absently twist and turn, while supporting the baby, he twists him in various positions of the horizontal and parallel.

“What are you doing?” Clove huffs, raising a dark eyebrow as she props her elbow on the pillow to hold her head up in her quivering hand. “He looked pretty comfy before.”

“I’m just trying to see how he fit, you’re not very big you know. And he is.” Cato muses, before bringing him back close to his chest again, directing his attention back to the baby and the baby alone.

“He barely did. He’s freaking huge. We wouldn’t have had this problem if he came out a week ago when he was supposed to. Besides, he was all scrunched up.” Clove mentions, running her free hand over the length of her face, pausing to dig her palms into her eyes and rubbing briefly.

“You look exhausted,” Cato brings her out of her mind, the hand that doesn’t hold their baby coming up to brush some of her hair behind her ear for her. “And your hand is still shaking.”

“I am exhausted. That’s fucking hard. It hurt.” She defends, pulling her thin white sheet up almost to her shoulders. “Must be adrenaline.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? You bled a lot, I just don’t want you to die on me.” Not now. Not after everything they went through just to get here.

“I’m fine, Cato, really. I just…I’m tired. I want to go home. This room smells like blood-”

“Yes. Yours.” Cato reminds as if he didn’t just tell her that exact thing moments ago, gently using the hand on her face to tilt her face up to look at him.

She lets out a heavy, anxious sigh, eyes fluttering around the room too look at anyone but him. It’s almost embarrassing to admit how anxious the room makes her. “Exactly. And it just reminds me of– well, that place, and I don’t like how it makes me feel, and I want to go home, Cato. I want to take him home, and I want to go now.”

He doesn’t even question further, he doesn’t push her, just leaning in carefully, mindful to keep enough space between them for their sleeping child, when he places a kiss right on the center of her forehead. As soon as he is pulling away, he swings one leg off the bed, as if he is fully prepared to get up and walk out. “Okay. Let’s go home.”

“Right now?” Clove’s voice fills with audible relief, nearly following his steps to get out of the bed and out the door.

“Right now.”

Clove isn’t sure how she has the energy or pain tolerance to nearly jump out of the bed, a desperate, frantic search for her actual proper clothes. “We need to get him dressed, too.”

“Awe, I think this is a cute look for him.” Cato teases, but nevertheless uses one hand to dig out their designated little blue outfit on the chance they were correct and he was in fact, well, him. “I think he looks cute in just the minimum.”

“It’s fall, Cato.” Clove scolds, though one look at the playful smile on his face tells her he is absolutely just messing with her. “At least wrap him up in his blanket.”

“You’ve gotten bossier, you know that? I didn’t know it was possible.” Cato plays, but dutifully dresses their boy in the (what should have been) Oversized sweater.

“Now I have two of you to keep alive.” Clove murmurs, turning her own fully dressed– okay, fully dressed in Cato’s clothes– body to face Cato. She holds out both of her hands, gesturing towards herself with them both. “Gimme.”

“I thought you said I had to get him ready?” He taunts, but holds out the scrunchy new baby out to her anyway.

She audibly hums in contentment the second he is back in her hands, almost instantaneously pulling him in to lay against her chest once again, both her hands holding his little frame up. “We’ve shared a body for..a long time. I miss him. I feel empty without him.” Clove brings his head up just enough so that she can place kisses all over his forehead and cheeks, absolutely clinging to him as his own little fists cling to her skin. “Mmm..okay. I’m ready. Oh! And Cato?”

“....yes, baby?”

“I think I earned a little treat on the way home.” Clove holds the baby up so his face rests against her own. “Don’t you agree, Atlas? Don’t I deserve it?”

The smile is audible in his voice when he tells her, “you can have a treat every day for the rest of our lives.”

(Not that Cato had ever once denied her, anyway).

______________________________________________________________

They tell Enobaria first. Clove demanded it, that before his mother, before any of their friends..Enobaria had to know first.

To her credit, no more than eight minutes pass from the moment Cato calls her the second time (to which she does not answer), and her letting herself in from the back door.

Cato never calls, what else could it have been?

Cato, to his credit, hangs back when he sees Enobaria come in, knowing fully well that this was not a moment he wanted to intrude on between them. In fact, he makes a point to slip out the back door himself, to give Enobaria and Clove a much deserved period alone.

Clove has no sooner curled herself into one end of the couch, quite literally just settling in, when Enobaria waltzes right into her living room.

She stops dead in her tracks, as she fully absorbs Clove in front of her. With the dark hair in her face, the way she was all curled up around her kid well– it gave her the sickest, deepest put in her stomach. She forces herself to swallow, forces herself to recollect that she herself is not a twelve year old and Clove is not her eighteen year old mother. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts for Clove only.

“That was faster than I expected.” Enobaria nearly whispers, careful not to startle Clove in her very clearly exhausted state, before she slides in right immediately next to her, so close their crossed-legged-knees could touch. “How are you feeling?”

“Easy for you to say, that felt like twenty four days, not twenty four hours.” Clove huffs, before she practically melts back into the arm of the couch. “I’m really really tired. Sore all over. But I'm okay…I’m really okay.” She lifts her right elbow up, and nothing could hide all the love in the world that is written across her face, as she angles her few hour old son up for Enobaria to see. “Isn’t he just absolutely perfect?”

“Holy shit Clove, he’s a monster. He’s huge? How the hell did you do that-” Enobaria’s eyes actually widened in shock, looking between Clove and the rather large newborn in her arms. “He’s as big as you? Should you even be home yet?”

“He’s almost nine pounds, give or take. He’s not that big…okay, he got stuck. It was very traumatic, apparently all of us like a dramatic entrance” Clove defends with a lighthearted air in her voice, her left thumb running over the exposed baby foot in her hand. “We’ll take him back in a day or two to check on him and finish everything. I hated it there. It was just so much like the Capitol and there was blood everywhere from me and I needed out.” She explains, shushing gently as he starts to stretch his little limbs in his arms. “Oh my god, and he has so much hair Enobaria, look!”

To illustrate her point she once again throws the little knit hat to the side, proud as can be of the literal head covered in hair that she created. The product of all of her hard work, breathing, stretching, and sleeping right there in her arms.

“Now that you point it out he is kind of bruised, huh?” Enobaria muses, cocking her head to truly look down and take in the baby Clove made who, unfortunately, did not get a single bit of her reflected in his appearance. “Another fucking blond baby, Clove, really? I thought for sure you’d come through with that one, did your genes fight at all?”

“I thought the same thing! I thought he’d at least have my hair!” Clove grins, twisting the baby so that he is propped up on her knees, allowing them to get a fuller look at him. “He really does look just like Cato. I think I cloned him.”

“Just what the world needs, another one of him.” She teases Clove, but nevertheless turns on her side to get a better look at her- not the baby, but her. It was like somewhere overnight Clove stopped looking like the toddler she met twenty plus years ago, stopped looking like an overly eager teenager at training, and started looking so– well.. Grown. Enobaria is suddenly glad for another little blond baby in their lives– the dark hair would have been just too deep of a sense of Deja Vu.

“...You look so much like your mother, you know that? You always have, but right now you really really look like her.”

Clove feels her jaw clench just a little, her eyes flickering over towards the kitchen briefly. Her throat feels like razor blades, squeezing shut and cutting off her words as she tries to squeak them out. “...is Cato here?”

Enobaria shakes her head, eyebrows knitting closer in confusion. “He went outside right when I got here, why–”

“What was wrong with me, Enobaria? That she left me?” Clove whispers, and almost like it’s her instinct she can’t help but pull Atlas from her legs to her arms, holding his head and body flush to her chest. “What was wrong with me?”

“Nothing was wrong with you, Clove, nothing at all-” Enobaria tries to begin, but is quickly cut off by Clove’s continued, frantic, heartbroken rambling.

“No, something had to be wrong with me. Because I have had him for less than a day, I’ve only had him for a few hours, and you’d have to kill me, you would have to kill me and drag my body away from him to get me to leave him. I must have been broken, or difficult, or bad or I don’t know! Something had to be wrong with me, because how else could she leave me so easily. I would die before I did that.” For Clove, especially, someone who had been so close to death so many times– it was the deepest kind of love she could offer. “I don’t know how she did it.”

“Clove..nothing in the world was wrong with you. Your father? He left. He deserved every terrible thing that happened to him, Clove, he was a terrible person. There was something wrong with him, yes. But you, Clove, you were just a little girl. You were a baby. Nothing was wrong with you.” She attempts, but Clove is so far gone in her head that she isn’t sure anything she says can help that now.

“Not my father, my mom. How did she just leave, she made me, how did she just..not care to stay with me? Noone liked me but her! At least if I die tomorrow I know that there’s Cato, there’s you, there's Glimmer, there’s people who would want him! Noone wanted me, she knew that, and she left me. How do you leave your baby?” She’s got this baby absolutely pressed to her, as if the weight of him alone will stop her from panicking and hyperventilating.

“I don’t think you can even compare this, to be fair to her.” Enobaria grabs Clove’s hand, and squeezes tightly to bring her back to earth. “If you had him at sixteen years old, with no money, no future, except the one desperate chance you had to give him one, You would have done the same. It’s easy for you to say that you couldn’t leave– you’ve survived an extreme life. It took the two of you three hunger games, a war, the end of every life you have ever known, before you are here right now. Your mother was a child. Your mother had one chance to give you even a fraction of the life you have right now, and she took it. She didn’t leave you, Clove, it was her only chance to give you anything. I am the one and only person left who is qualified to say it, without a doubt, that your mother loved you. There was nothing wrong with you. There was nothing wrong with her. She just wanted you to have better.”

And still Enobaria would venture to say that her decision is the reason Clove is where she is exactly right now.

“I always thought I’d raise a victor baby, you know? If I had to have one, it would be my priority to make them into a victor. But I look at him and I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine being so willing to watch him possibly die. Like look at him, Baria! His little nose and he holds my finger with his entire first. How could I have been so willing to just..strip that away from him?” Clove truly is clinging her infant son to her chest, unable to look anywhere but the innocence that is trapped in his face.

“You should be so proud of yourself, Clove. He is so lucky to have you as his mother. I know I'm not your mom, but if it is worth anything, I’m proud of you, too. And I’m probably most proud that you’re twenty four and not seventeen. That was a scary year for me.” Enobaria brushes some of Clove’s hair back behind her ear, really taking a moment to take in her tired face. “Give me this baby, Clove, you need to rest.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got him, really-” Clove argues, trying to ignore the way her eyes water both from exhaustion and emotion.

“Clove. I spend a lot of my time these days holding blond babies, I have a lot of practice.” Enobaria nearly pries the solid newborn out of Clove’s grasp, with little to no fight on Clove’s side anymore.

“I feel bad, I’m his mother, I should be the one taking care of him.” Clove insists half heartedly, as Enobaria pats her shoulder.

“Clove. You have people who want to take care of you too. Let us.”

(Two years later when Enobaria meets the much tinier, dark haired, green eyed little Sevina Hadley in her mother’ arms, she is infinitely glad that her brother came first.)

______________________________________________________

Cato’s knocked out on the couch, one of his arms and one of his legs dangling over the edge, neck bent at the worst possible angle, shirtless and using a crumbled up bath towel as a pillow.

Clove’s awake, Atlas in one arm, pacing the three steps in front of Cato’s body in repeat, as she tries to simultaneously feed and soothe their –officially twenty three hours old– son.

She’s in a chorus of shushes and humming of songs she can’t even identify, and using the arm that is not responsible for the safety of her son, she half heartedly drags a blanket off the back of the couch and over Cato’s body. They hadn’t meant to spend the night on the couch– exhaustion just got the absolute best of them.

“If you eat like your dad we’re going to have some problems, buddy.” Clove mumbles to her baby, continuing her three step pace back and forth back and forth back and forth. “I won’t sleep for the next year and a half.”

Clove quite literally almost screams when she hears a knock at the door. Not a scream of fear or anything of that sort. But more of a who the fuck is at my house at 7 am kind of scream.

Who the fuck do they know that even knocks?

Clove is literally shuffling her feet to the door as she realizes she only has one sock on, an unzipped sweatshirt, and a baby quite literally attached to her. Not quite the way to maintain her reputation.

Fuck it. Whoever was stupid enough to be on her porch at seven in the morning probably knew what they were getting into.

“....you most definitely have a key!!” Clove quite literally screams out, knowing the list of who it could be is an exponentially short list.

The babbling and gasp of “shhh no you can’t say that word!” on the other side of the door tells her exactly who it was.

She can hear clumsy fingers trying to shove the key in the correct slot, followed by the same voice as before instructing “no no that's the bottom key!” before the door does in fact fly open.

“Gooooood Morning sunshines!” Comes the bright ringing voice of Glimmer, standing just beyond the threshold of the door with one of the wide awake pink tutu-clad toddler girls on one hip. Her other arm dons multiple large gift bags overflowing with tissue paper, with a wheeling suitcase by her feet. Marvel looks almost identical, with the matching twin in his arms, a similar array of bags, and a suitcase of his as well. Glimmer’s clicking heels announce her entrance into the foyer, followed by the tell-tale sound of suitcase wheels on marble flooring. “Oh! Clove! Perfect! We brought brunch!”

Clove glances at the clock above the television as if she needs to check that one no, she is not in fact dreaming and two it is in fact seven in the morning. “...Brunch typically means later than seven a.m. Glimmer.”

“Well, you can’t call it breakfast when there’s mimosas.” Marvel explains as he follows in right behind Glimmer, careful to shut the door loud enough that it startles Cato awake. Clove takes the moment to zip up Cato’s sweatshirt, still maintaining that cadence of a pace to keep the baby happy and content in her arms.

He truly must have been sleeping well, because the slamming door has him quite literally jolted awake, throwing off his precarious balance as he rolls off the couch onto the floor. “What the fuck-”

“Oh! Careful! The girls are repeating everything these days!” Glimmer warns cheerily, before she is setting all her gift bags on the ground around her. “Clove! Let me see this baby!”

“Why are you here?” Cato mumbles as he pushes himself off the floor, running an exhausted hand down his face as he tries to wake himself up more thoroughly than even hitting the floor could do. “No, let me rephrase, why are you here so early? Do the trains even run that early?”

“Don’t be silly, Cato, do you know how difficult it is to take two toddlers on the train? Well.. you’ll know soon enough but! We drove here, it took longer but, at least when Stella starts yelling at the trees only the two of us have to hear it.`` Glimmer takes the moment to drop the aforementioned toddler off in Cato’s lap before he fully has the chance to even wake up. “And we’re here to help!”

Clove pauses fully in her place, looking between all of them, the flurry of life and energy so bright in the morning. “What do you mean you’re here to help?”

“You moved in when Glimmer had the girls. Like literally moved in. I think we still find some of those frozen sandwiches in the back of the freezer sometimes.” Marvel explains, his voice so much softer than his wife. Marvel, unlike Glimmer and like all of the others, is far from a morning person. Aurelia, rubbing at her little eyes with her head on his shoulder, seems to agree. “And we can’t cook, but we are professionals at takeout ordering so…we wanted to help.”

“We know you have Cato’s mom and Enobaria! But, well! If we hadn’t had you two…it would have just been us. Gloss and Cash are great but! It was different. I didn’t realize how lonely It was until you guys got there.” Glimmer shuffles directly in front of Clove, her hands hovering just a few inches away from the baby. “We’re staying with Enobaria and Cash, of course! Aurelia learned this week that if she wants a snack in the middle of the night she just has to scream to wake us up. You don’t need our babies sleep schedules fucking up your baby’s sleep schedule. If he’s anything like the twins were though he’ll be up every hour and fifty eight minutes like clock work!”

“Does Enobaria know you’re staying with her?” Cato grumbles, leaning back onto the couch while Stella crawls all over him, babbling and wide awake like her mother.

“She’ll find out soon.” Marvel shrugs, stifling a yawn as he sits on the opposite end of the couch from Cato. “Cashmere knows, I think?”

“Hiiiii Ca-yo!” Stella giggles, wrapping her little toddler arms around Cato’s neck and holding on for her life.

“Hey, kiddo.” Cato pats the top of her head gently, really only half awake. “Is it nap time yet?”

Clove watches the way Glimmer’s hands just hover over hers, and offers her a tired, but genuine smile. “...do you want to hold him, Glim?”

“Very, very much!” Glimmer nods enthusiastically, holding out her hands to take the baby from her closest friend. She audibly gasps when he is placed in the crook of her arm. “Clove! He’s so big!”

“Eight and a half pounds, actually.” Cato chimes in, as Marvel’s head absolutely whips to face him.

“Are you serious? He’s fucking huge, Clove, how can you even walk?” Marvel gapes, as he earns an outright glare from his wife over the choice of his language.

“Very, very carefully.” Clove jokes, taking the baby free opportunity to lower herself to the recliner where she instantly pulls her knees to her chest to get comfortable.

“...I had two babies. At the same time. He is almost bigger than them combined Clove! That’s insane!” Glimmer remarks in nothing short of awe, naturally continuing to sway him back and forth the way she had done countless times with her own children. “...no, seriously, he’s almost as big as my girls combined.”

“Yeah, well, blame his father.” Clove offers warmly, not even a hint of malice in her tone. “He got everything else from him too.” “Seriously, you aren’t kidding. Maybe he inherited the Clove Obsession gene.” Glimmer smiles down at the baby, taking his little hand into her own and grinning as he wraps his hand around her thumb.

“Are you disappointed, Glimmer?” Clove asks softly, propping her head up in the palm of her hand.

“About what?” Glimmer draws her attention back from the weight of the boy in her arms to address her friend.

“You know, that he’s a boy?”

“No. Not at all. How could I be? I mean, just look at him, Clove! Oh, and we brought presents! They’re mostly for you, but I just finished his sweater with his name on the ride over.” Glimmer gracefully leans down, slipping one hand through the laces of one of the bags before handing it to Clove. “It’s meant to be kind of oversized, but I don’t know now that I've seen him..”

“What do you mean you brought presents for me?” Clove raises a dark eyebrow, but shifts through the bag anyway. She pulls out the aforementioned sweater, little and blue, with Atlas hand stitched across the front in the pale yellow yarn. “This is beautiful, Glimmer, thank you..

“...you just had a baby, Clove. You deserve all the presents. It’s just stuff that’s nice to have! Those really soft button down pajamas, and those slippers you really liked at my house, and I think there’s things to hold your hair back because you may not think a baby has a good grip but wait until the middle of the night when he figures out what pulling it does!” Glimmer bounces Atlas just slightly, watching his eyes continue to flutter open and shut with her movement. “I didn’t have anyone to teach me how to be a mother. And that’s not what I'm here to do. I just..hope to make it easier! You aren’t on your own, you’ve got people who want to help you, Clove. That’s all. And presents are allllways nice.”

“You’re going to make me cry, fuck, Glimmer.” Clove warns, running her hands over each of the items Glimmer listed as she takes them out one at a time. Not only had she taken the time to get her gifts..she had clearly paid attention to the kind of things no one teaches you about if you don’t have a mother anymore yourself.

“Oh for the love of god please don’t teach the girls that word, they’re going to learn how to use it in context too!” Glimmer warns, but it's far too late as the soft baby voice of Aurelia calls out to her.

“...mama?”

“Yes, angel girl?”

“Bee-bee?”

“You want to see the baby, honey?” Glimmer offers, glancing over at Clove first. “Ask Auntie Clove if it’s okay.”

“Bee-Bee, Co?” Aurelia directs, pointing at Glimmer’s arms while she looks in Clove’s direction. “Peeeeas, Co?” She flutters her long eyelashes, the sweetest little pout forming on her baby lips.

“Sure, you can see the baby. Maybe Uncle Cato can help-” Clove begins, but when she glances over at her husband she can see he has since lulled back to sleep, Stella still happily babbling at him regardless.

“Ca-yo seeeeepin, Co.” Stella tells her, bringing a little finger to her lips in a gesture Clove can only assume is being told to be quiet.

“Did your child just shush me?” Clove feigns offense, but rolls over to the other side of the chair so that she can watch more fully. “Wake him up Stella, tell him it’s baby time.”

“Cayooooooo, wake uuuuuuuuup.” Stella practically sings in his face, little hands coming to pat his face gently at first then not so much. “Cayooooooo”

“Huh, what, i’m up what's going on-” Cato’s eyes fly open, looking back and forth somewhat frantically again.

“Bee-bee.” Stella explains, the little proud smile on her face demonstrating her joy at successfully completing her task.

“Okay, why don’t you both sit right here,” Glimmer instructs the toddlers to crawl to the middle couch cushion, where she gently pushes them right up against each other. “Cato’s going to hold his head, okay girlies? Just to help!”

Cato, for what it’s worth, does get the memo, and leans an overly long arm down to support Atlas’s little head and shoulders (and entire upper body, really), as Glimmer gently lays the baby out across both the twins' laps.

“Hiiiiiii bee-bee!” Aurelia, who is more responsible for the lower half of his body, coos with equal excitement and gentleness. One pointer finger comes out to gently touch at his cheek, pressing ever so slightly, almost stroking his face in a way she could have only ever learned from the comforting touches of her own parents.

“...heavy.” Stella whines, lulling her head back against the couch cushion. She gives a dramatic sigh, but keeps her own hands gently patting his chest. “Heavyyyyy.”

“Why is that what everyone says, he isn’t that big?” Cato defends with a bemused grin, reaching down with his other hair to brush Stella’s hair out of her eyes. “You’re a drama queen like your mother.”

It’s crazy, really. Somehow Atlas looks massive compared to the tiny twin one and half year olds, and yet at the same time makes the girls look like they themselves are practically teenagers with how old they look in comparison.

There was never a time in any of their lives where they would have believed they’d be exactly where they are right now in this moment, watching their children (with each other, nonetheless) be held by one another.

There is a shared silence of appreciation amongst the adult victors in the room. The words don’t need to be said, but the shared looks from Cato to Glimmer, from Clove to Marvel, and from the couples themselves say everything that needs to be said.

These are three children who in another life would have been stripped of everything and sent to the games, without a second thought, if for no other reason than who their parents are. It would have been a question of when, not if, and the thought of it would have consumed and destroyed the four of them.

The twins simply never would have existed in that life– Glimmer wouldn’t have allowed it.

Atlas would have, Clove and Cato know that much, but they don’t think they would have dared to allow themselves to love him as much as they already do a mere day into his life.

This is not that life, though.

In this life Stella will not have her hair dyed before she can spell her name, she will not be sold as a little star from the time she can walk. Aurelia will not be stripped of the innocent way she speaks to her fellow babies, her kindness will not be replaced with manipulation and a hundred and one ways to kill a man. Atlas will not be handed a weapon before he can walk, he will not be told that the way he immediately gravitates towards his mother’s arms as young as a toddler is a show of weakness that must be ceased.

They will not know Marvel for killing a twelve year old girl with a spear to her chest, nor the years of nightmares that followed Snow’s torture of him. They will not know Glimmer for stripping down in a desperate attempt for survival, they will not know of her exploitation as a result. They will not know Cato for dismembering a boy in the final two, in his last ditch attempt to get home (and home, specifically, to Clove). They will not know Clove for skinning a man alive in the Quarter Quell, or the way she could gut her fellow tributes like an animal for slaughter.

They do not know their victor parents for who they were. Victors. All of those things, those memories, those..actions– lead them to where they are now. Children who otherwise would not have existed if not for the lives, training, and survival of their parents.

They know them for who they are now.

Just their parents.

And aunts. And uncles. And cousins.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Clove interrupts their shared awe, siting herself more upright so she can join the six of them on that side of the room.

“What is?” Cato muses, gently taking the opportunity to pull Atlas into his own arm more fully, already craving the feeling of his child back in his arms.

“One day you’re learning how to hunt children and the next you’re holding the son you should never have even been alive to have.”

#AHHHHHHHHHHH #READ READ READ READ READ READ READ READ READ READ READ

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