Dec 1, 2024
Careers headcanon of the night is they are extremely good at anatomy specifically vascular anatomy because not only do they know how to kill but they use that information to draw out a kill, too
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Careers headcanon of the night is they are extremely good at anatomy specifically vascular anatomy because not only do they know how to kill but they use that information to draw out a kill, too
here’s some silly little fanart of my interpretation of @clatoera ‘s fic picket fence as sharp as knives chapter three (please ignore how i spelled ur url wrong 😭)
image id: glimmer(caucasian fem presenting woman with blonde hair up in a bun and her eyes closed, wearing a big blue sweatshirt) is crying, mascara running down her face and telling clove(caucasian fem presenting woman with dark brown hair that goes down her back and green eyes, wearing a green loose-fitting shirt and red flannel pajama pants and a gold “c” necklace” it’s her fault. to which clove responds with “gurl what?!?” the title says “summary of picket fence sharp as knives chapter three” and there is an arrow pointing to glimmer that says “hormonal mess” and one pointing to clove that says “just woke up”
Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 12: Proof of Life
Hey guys, tik tok went down so I had to write fanfic again. Thats how this went. In reality I had been working on this for a while and I just work a lot of hours so it takes me a lot of time! That being said here it is, Chapter 12 (!) of PFSK. Crazy Crazy. We are now officially on year..three.. of ARWBFB au writing which is crazy. If y'all are still around you deserve an award.
This is also interestingly the first chapter that is not a taylor swift lyric. It's entirely because the entire concept of this is so distinctly different examples of proof of life, and I cant find a lyric to reflect that the way I wanted.
AO3
Masterpost
If you do not like blood or body imagery this is not the chapter for y'all that is for sure. I also toned down the sex to nearly nothing sorry guys.
As always I'm like..let me thank my friends especially @ohhowwehavefallen who listens to my clato rambling all day every day. @districtonekisses is an ACTUAL angel who listens to my ranting about this au on the DAILY and i'm so thankful to her. @afterfawn as always, of course who puts up with my BS.
Well lets just do it!
Fragile. Fleeting. Futile.
These are the things Clove knows life to be, in different words. After all, she’s been motherless for six years, and is reminded of the futility of her own existence by the cruel sneers of her grandmother. It’s at the academy, in the eight daily hours of training, where she is reminded ad nauseam that if she loses focus for even a moment her life will be fleeting and abruptly ended before she is nineteen years old.
Being desensitized to death, or maybe being made indifferent to life, starts early in training.
The bodies belong to criminals, the enemies of the Capitol that exists to protect and guide them all. They are post execution, and their bodies are so generously donated to the future tributes, to give the opportunity to give these criminals the chance to turn the shame of their discretions into pride for the district through training future victors.
(Rumor is that older trainees actually perform the executions, something Enobaria refuses to tell Clove no matter how many times she asks over dinner).
“It’s an honor to have training tools like this, no other district gets such personal experiences with anatomy before the games.” Enobaria lectures, leading Clove with hands on her shoulders to stand at the left side of the corpse. “You can’t kill effectively if you don’t know what you’re aiming for.”
Leave it to District Two, to leave out crucial parts of human anatomy and physiology in their education, but breeding incredibly effective assassins in their children.
They were excellent anatomists where it counted.
There is no preparation for this lesson, no lectures on circulation or where to aim. It’s meant to be this way. The shock value was supposed to be a tool to wean out the first batch of the weak— as if an eight year old flinching at the sight of an open corpse was anything less than normal.
“Come here, Clove.” Enobaria pulls her flush to the metal table, and sneakily slides a metal stool beside her to lift Clove onto. Fair is fair, and how would she learn if she couldn’t even see?
(Clove never finds out that no one else in her class was too small to see on their own)
It’s her first time seeing a dead body in the flesh. She has seen all of the games, including her mother’s, over and over again. Yet there’s something about this- flesh that is still too pink, organs ripe with blood, and a smell- god a smell she cannot explain— absolutely assaulting her senses. It’s her job to take him in, the neat flaps of skin and muscle dissected back to expose the internal organs like wrapping on a package. She makes the mistake to look to his head, where glazed over eyes stare straight ahead, lifeless. There is the briefest moment where she swears the grey eyes of the cadaver flickered over to look at her.
Clove gasps, and nearly steps back to fall off the stool, when she is caught on the arm by Enobaria The organs are plush and almost healthy looking, and that heart- that heart undeniably beats in his chest. “Baria, is he alive?” Clove half whispers, eyes flickering over the stuttering motion of cardiac wall.
“He’s dead how it matters, Clove. And it’s Enobaria only here, don't forget.” Enobaria warns, bringing Clove’s hands back to the open body. “It’s a development from the capitol, and we’re thankful for the opportunities this gives us. Give me your right hand, Clove.”
She doesn’t wait, and simply grabs Clove’s little arm, pinching her second and third fingers between her own. “Okay so, what you’re feeling now, ignore it. It’s bowel. Cut through it, they’ll die eventually, but it’s not what you want. You want to be sure you’re going to get a kill, seconds can matter in the games.”
As soon as her arm hits the warm, gooey, worm-like structures she wants to recoil, her head whipping to look away from what she sees before her. “I-“
“No. Don’t you dare flinch. You aren’t getting eliminated like this Clove, you’re not weak, your mother didn’t die for you to get knocked out at the sight of intestine, look at me, and learn what you’re doing.” Enobaria snarls, grabbing Clove’s chin in her left head and forcing her to look down and into the cavity.
Clove braces herself as her fingers are woven deeper, until they settle on something soft and tubular, a couple of centimeters wide. It pulses under her fingers, and with the little bit of pressure of Enobaria’s fingers squeezing over hers, she can feel the tension building and releasing, a pulse becoming a thrill, ebbing and flowing with the pressure of their hands.
“This right here is what you go for to kill someone. It’s the biggest artery in the body, that comes right from the heart. If you’re drawing a kill out, if it’s about the entertainment, this isn’t the way to go. Once you hit this, it’s going to go fast. It’s called an Aorta, and it’s the money shot. This feeling under your fingers, no matter how faint, is proof of life. And you need to be sure you stop it. ” Enobaria takes her left hand, and runs from nearly the top of Clove’s spine all the way to her hips which makes the little girl shiver . “It’s all thought here…it connects to the heart. Then down your hips it splits into other arteries…”
Enobaria leads Clove’s hand down to feel the split, then back up to feel other points of bifurcation. “Any of these, kid. Hit any of them. The ones down here, they go to the legs. Cut the inside of the thigh for those. This whole big tube though, you just need to knick it. It’s easiest between the ribs and hips, where there's less bone In the way. You can get a kidney too, but this is your goal.” Clove feels her fingers pressed a little deeper, running into something hard. “This is spine. It’s going to protect this from behind. You need to come in on an angle..squeeze, feel how the flow changes with your pressure..” Enobaria smiles in approval as Clove’s little hands constrict, and Enobaria can feel the change in pressure on her own. “Good job, kid.”
Enobaria keeps elaborating on anatomy, on the best places to cut for a fast versus quick death. How in the bloodbath it’s about fast, bloody kills, and the best spot to hit. She is an excellent teacher, as if Clove should expect anything less from her recently victorious mentor.
Clove tries to internalize all the words and their paths-the aorta, the Iliacs, renal something- but all she can focus on is the strum of a pulse under her fingers. Someone’s entire life line contained in this little soft tube. “Why isn't there any blood in this guy?”
“It’s all contained. Blood isn’t floating around, it’s contained in all these little tubes and channels. You have to open one for blood. Keep your hand there..” Enobaria’s instructing, but her hand slips out of the field of Clove’s vision.
She’s so distracted by the thrumming she doesn’t notice a thing until she feels something cold In her free hand. When she looks, she realizes it’s one of her beloved little knives fitting naturally in the curve of her hand. Clove’s head snaps up to look at Enobaria, a million little questions filling her evergreen eyes. Questioning, almost, if Enobaria is suggesting what she thinks.
“Go ahead. Cut it.”
“Where do I-“ Clove stammers, looking rapidly between Enobaria and the body, her fingers still hooked around Aorta to hold it steady.
“You just go for it. Figure it out.” Enobaria instructs, but stealthily takes a step back. “No hesitation, Clove.”
She braces herself, not letting her eyes look to the face, when she takes her knife in her right hand and all but severs the structure in two with one fast swipe of her wrist.
Clove watches, as the heart first flutters faster for merely seconds, before stuttering to a final stop in under a minute. It dawns on her now, as blood fills the cavity and coats her hands, that the body does not work at all like she thought. There's no thrumming, no pulse, no..anything..dancing under her fingers now.
Would that count as her first kill? She wonders only momentarily, before she feels her hands being pulled out of the sticky, coagulating substance .
“You didn’t take any fingers off, right?” Enobaria inspects, ensuring that none of the blood is Clove’s own. Satisfied by her evaluation, she brushes a thumb over Clove’s cheek. “You’ve got blood freckles.” She returns to inspect the body, heartbeat ceased and firmly dead even to Clove’s untrained eyes.
“Good work, Clovey. Get going, you need to shower before class.” Enobaria gently takes her off the stool, gently nudging her between her shoulder blades to move forward. “Go. You did good.”
“…thank you, Baria.” She murmurs, practically running off to find a shower before her basic math class that morning. She finds her blood covered fingers coming up to her neck, her wrists, the bend of her leg, desperately searching for her own pulse, finding proof of her own life and viability.
Life is fragile, she decides, if she can feel it fading under her fingertips.
——————————————————————————————————
She had watched him in the games, watching as he cut someone clean in two through the torso, leaving their upper and lower bodies in two hemorrhaging halfs. She watched him kill a lot, with that sun kissed flush to his skin and the sweat gathering at the base of his neck. He was efficient, he was ruthless, he was hot, and most importantly to her, he was alive.
So Alive, Clove notes, her hands planted firmly over the places of his chest from where she is on top of him. His hands squeeze into the flesh around her hip bones, bruisingly tight, guiding the rise and fall of her hips when all she can do is close her eyes and whimper for more.
He is so alive, he is alive and under her, he is alive and inside her, he is alive and holding her now.
Even with her eyes squeezed together, she can undeniably feel the shared life between them in the way he moves inside of her, the way her hands desperately grasp at the sunburned skin of his chest.
It is under her fingertips, where she can feel the increasingly speedy but steady beat of his heart under his skin. It races, likely as does her own, and even with her eyes squeezed shut she can feel with certainty that they are alive.
In this short moment it does not matter that she has to go to training in the morning without him, that walking is going to leave her with an aching reminder of her current –and frankly, all night long– activities. It doesn’t matter that she’ll likely be physically punished for what she’s doing now.
All that matters is that he is alive and so is she, and when she comes the gasp that escapes from between her lips is yet another example of proof that she is alive.
Alive, Alive, Alive.
——————————————————————————————————
They throw her into her cell. That is not an exaggeration. They grab her under the arms, lift her feet from where they drag on the ground, and fully toss her against the concrete floor before slamming the door locked behind her.
She does not give them the satisfaction of hearing her breath catch when she hits the floor, of giving them the satisfying groan when it feels like her bones crunch under the weight of her body, or letting herself whine out loud when she reflexively puts out her hands to catch herself and the bleeding, broken remnants of her wrists flop in agony and let her land right on her face. The door slams shut and she feels it reverberate through her body as it echoes through the cell, somehow bouncing off of her cinder block prison. The second the door is shut, and she can be sure they don’t get to see her suffer, she lets out the sob she had held back, trying to use what strength she has left in her legs to get up against the wall. She can barely walk, barely move her legs without the feeling of her hips being ripped out of their socket. She cannot support herself on her arms, with the breaks in her wrists, her severed tendons, and certainly not to forget the dislocations and bruising around both of her shoulders. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but she can only imagine it’s a corpse.
She can see the horrific purple and blue discoloration of her hands, of her legs. If she turns her arm the right way she can see greens and yellows, evidence of bruising that is already healing. It’s the same way with her scars– all horrific, jagged lines in various stages of healing– some of which have even been reopened time and time again. All are markers of her stay, markers of the things they do to her.
Her body carries the scars of knowing that it does not matter that she was the best. She was the most loyal. She had given her life to these games, to her district, and it didn’t matter.
She didn’t matter.
All of the blood is not only trapped in her joints and in her skin, but it pools around her. Crimson red and sticky, and it is not the first time she has been coated in blood, and as of late it was not uncommon to be covered in her own. She isn’t even sure where this particular episode was coming from– she just seemed to be bleeding from everywhere all of the time. For all she knows her back could be flayed open and she is so blinded by pain she is none the wiser.
There's a lot of blood this time, so much so that the already small room seems to be caving in on her at a rapid speed. The fingers of her right hand find her left wrist, and she fights through the agony when she presses down to desperately search for her own pulse. She can’t find it and she’s dead, she has to be dead, why else wouldn’t she have a pulse? She can hear Enobaria in her head– Enobaria, is she alive? Is she angry at her?-- telling her to check, always check for the pulse, make sure the job is done.
She didn’t think death would be like this.
She doesn’t mean to lay back down on the floor, but the concrete meets her skull anyway. She must make some noise, and when she forces her eyes open, through the single missing cinderblock in the top left corner, she is face to face with Marvel through the six inch space.
“You’ve looked better. You’re so pale it’s like you’ve never seen the sun.” There's a sunken look to the skin of his eyes, but still an unmistakable spark of kindness as he tries to make her laugh, but that kindness is quickly replaced by something that can only be relayed as concern. “Clove? Hey, Clove seriously, are you okay?’
She forces her eyes open as wide as they can go, which is barely enough of a slit for green to be seen. “I’m dead. We’re dead and we’re in hell.”
“You’re talking to me, you aren’t dead.” Marvel chides, but doesn’t look away from her as she very clearly has to fight not to die. “Why do you think you’re dead?”
“No pulse…” she slurs, using all the effort she has left to lay her wrist by her face. “Dead with no pulse.” Her ability to form coherent, abstract thought clearly slips away from her as fast as the blood pours from her body.
Marvel slips his own skinny hand across, and when he goes to grab her wrist she retracts in pain, actually unable to hold back her cry this time and his hand instinctively drops hers with a soft apology.
“Hey, hey I'm sorry…” He instead finds the side of her neck and presses in, giving her a reassuring pat on her shoulder before his face comes back into view with the retraction of his arm. “It’s there. It’s weak, but it’s there. You’re alive.”
“I don-wanna-be” Clove mumbles, eyes fully shut now, “everythinghurts, I can’t breathe.”
“No no, you want to live, You want to live to get home to Cato, remember? Out of the two of us you gotta get home.” And in reality, it would more likely be him than her. They starved him, they gave him a few beatings, but really they just showed him the truth of Glimmer, maybe in a way they did him a favor. At the very least Cato might kill him if Clove dies and he doesn’t.
“Mmm…you got…-immer.” Clove tries, but the words escape her as she feels the sticky warm sensation of blood reaching her face. “Cato’s dead.”
“I don’t have her, I never did.” Marvel cools, but this is not about him, this is not about his own losses or the betrayal he faced at the realization of Glimmer’s disingenuity. “He isn’t dead. If they were dead they’d have killed us already. Why hurt you if it doesn’t get to him, right?”
“He didn’t come.” Clove slurs, trying hard to catch her breath and never seeming to be able to get enough to make her brain feel less fuzzy. “He always came when I needed him and he didn’t. He’s dead too.”
Marvel gives a soft sigh, and shakes his head though she cannot see it. “Clove you don’t know- Clove? Clove where is all this blood from-” It’s seeping through the single block opening now, deep red and metallic, a slow but unending trickle. “Clove, seriously Clove this isn’t funny, wake up.”
It’s a last ditch effort, not that he can do a single thing for her if she’s dead, but he reaches his hand back in and feels for her throat. Her breathing is there, shallow, uneven, but there. He finds her pulse, too, thready, weak, irregular.
But it is there. She’s alive. For how much longer she will be, though… well.
(He never tells anyone, but he is absolutely sure if they were not found when they were that she would have been dead within a week)
——————————————————————————————————
“Clove?” Her voice is soft, wavering, unsure as it calls out to the otherwise silent room. They sit in beds a few feet apart, in an otherwise bare and nondescript room. It’s technically Clove’s room, too, but she spends all nights and the majority of the time with Cato understandably. Now, Cato is at some mandatory meeting, and Marvel is…well she doesn’t know because he doesn’t want her to know.
Clove sits in ‘her’ bed for now, laying relatively still as she flips through some book that is so old Glimmer cannot read the title. All she can really see is that the pages are so old they’re tinted yellow. She doesn’t glance up, only flipping through the pages absently, as if she is waiting to find something interesting. “Yeah, Glim?”
Her voice cracks in her throat before she can even get the words out, as she anxiously scratches at her wrists. “...can I come sit with you?”
Clove starts to make a face, she can feel her eyebrows scrunching together, before she looks up from the old novel in her hands, to actually see Glimmer. Her eyes are so red, the skin around her nose raw from the irritation of continuous tears. Her hair is in its seemingly permanent frizzy state, honey blonde grown to the top of her eyes before the bleach and capitol coloring continues past that point. She is such a far cry from the bombshell the capitol loves to exploit, and yet, she seems so much more authentically Glimmer. “I…yeah. Sure, Glimmer.”
Clove shifts to the left side of the bed, and Glimmer wastes no time, untangling her legs and hopping off the bed before she scurries over to Clove’s half of the room. She doesn’t press under the covers, only to sit side by side on the left half of Clove’s bed.
“Do I want to ask if you’re okay or…” Clove starts feeling, instead of shared body heat, the actual weight of Glimmer curling up into her side, a blonde head resting on her shoulder. “Glimmer?”
“I just miss being wanted.” Glimmer whispers, curling up on her side and clinging to Clove much against her invitation. “Everyone wanted me and now no one wants me. It’s nice to feel another person.” She explains, and as much as Clove may not like it, she can feel warm tear drops hitting her skin through her District issued pajamas.
“Oh.” Clove says softly, shutting her book with her left hand and placing it on her thighs. She doesn’t even mean to do it, but she lets Glimmer take her right hand to hold, too. “...We want you, Glimmer. Maybe not in the way you’re used to, but I like having you around.”
“You don’t have to lie, Clove. I’m not anyone’s person anymore. Maybe no one ever liked me to begin with! They liked how I looked, but even I was just a cheaper, second rate version of my sister for the people who couldn’t afford Cashmere.” Glimmer explains, quickly working herself back up to a sob, a heavy, awful sound that catches in her voice. “It’s all I was ever good for.”
“No..No, Glimmer that's not true. At all. We like you Glimmer. We don’t care what you look like. I don’t care how good you are in bed. I don’t care, Glim. You’re…my friend. You are probably my first friend, because Cato doesn’t count now. I’m glad you’re here, with me. I’m glad you’re alive.” Clove finds herself intertwining her finger’s with Glimmer’s, squeezing so softly that it was both uncharacteristic for her but also the best she could do with the current weakness she still faced. “You’re like..my best friend, Glimmer. And I am so glad you’re here. Who else would I talk to? Annie, so she can tell me all about using the ocean to clean her energy? Even when we get out of this place you will still be my best friend, Glimmer. I’d say even a District apart, but there’s not even going to be a Two to go back to at this rate.”
“...you can come live with me, if you want. While Two rebuilds…” Glimmer offers softly, her other free hand coming to hold their joined hands. “Thank you, Clove. I’d really like to stay your friend.”
“I think we’re kind of stuck together now, Glimmer. Especially if you let Cato live in your house, he might never want to leave.” Clove subconsciously drops her head on top of Glimmer’s, dark hair mixing in with blonde. “You’re worth so much more than they made you think.”
Glimmer just sort of shrugs, nodding her head towards the book in Clove’s lap. “What were you reading?”
Clove grabs the old book in her left hand, and thumbs through the pages for Glimmer to see. “It’s a recipe book, from something called a Depression? And not the way we feel but I guess it was a thing a long time ago, where people had no money and had to make really bad food. I guess that’s what we’ll be working with when all this is over, but the options suck”
“I’ve never used my kitchen, you can break it in however you like.” Glimmer flicks through the pages absently, before handing it back to Clove. “What’s the first thing you want to make?”
“Anything with flavor.”
Glimmer laughs, a soft girly giggle that Clove can’t help but echo on her own. She feels the soft shaking of her shoulders as she leans on her, but she is drawn to the feeling of someone else's hand in hers.
There is a comforting strum of Glimmer’s thumb over hers, a gentle occasional squeeze between the bases of her fingers reminding her that she is here, she is with her, and they are alive in this place together.
——————————————————————————————————
“I’m glad you’re too slow to get off the couch, I think if you could still get up on your own I’d be dead.” Cato teases, holding both his hands out to her, not really giving her a choice to accept them before his large hands are encircling her elbows and pulling her to a standing position. His hands come to rub at her upper arms soothingly, “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Don’t fucking underestimate me.” Clove tries to threaten, but it falls short as she audibly sighs with the ease at which he pulls her to a standing position. “If I was going to kill you it was going to be last night when you ate that incredibly looking steak that was just so red and juicy and I felt like I had to chew on leather–” Clove starts to complain, but she is quickly out of breath and needs to take a deep inhale before she can even consider continuing her ranting.
“You’re..upset over dinner last night? I can go get you some right now-” Cato quirks an eyebrow, but gives her arms a reassuring squeeze. “That I could fix–”
“NO. Cato. I can’t have that, because I am growing your child, and I can’t eat that because it could hurt him. Or Her. But him.” Clove snaps, but goes to lean her head on his chest. She is stopped by the barrier that is her own body, and the space that is filled with their well grown child gets in her way. She wants to scream in frustration, but instead her body betrays her with the threat of tears. “Speaking of him, he’s kind of my problem. He was supposed to come out Tuesday and it is now Friday and would you look at that, he’s still nestled up in my fucking ribs, Cato. I need this kid out.”
“I promise you, as soon as he’s out, I will go cut you a piece of steak right out of one of Annie’s cows, it’ll still be breathing when you take a bite.” He offers a playful smile, but her frustration is palpable, and instead his hand comes to cradle the back of her head, pulling her against his chest. “I know, babe, I know. I mean we could try what Glimmer said–”
“I know what Glimmer said, and no, we are not having sex. That got us in this fucking mess, in fact, we’re never fucking ever again.” She huffs, before burying her face in the thin fabric of his shirt. She can hear, and feel, his heart beating under her ears, a steady, solid sound that has now carried her through an entire war. It’s almost the sound of home to her.
“And Glimmer only said that because Annie said that, you know she wasn’t doing that. Besides, Her girls had the courtesy to come four weeks early, not overstay their welcome by four days. She’s a hypocrite.”
“He’s just cozy in there, Clove. I can’t blame him, I’d also just live inside you as long as I could if I was allowed. You’re literally his home.” Cato plays, but lays his chin on top of her head, the hand that is not cradling her head coming to rub circles on her lower back. “It’ll be over soon. He’s just an overachiever. Or maybe he doesn’t want to come out because he knows he’ll have to meet our friends. Would you want to come out knowing you’d have to see Marvel?”
“I thought about literally cutting him out myself–”
“Okay no you are not doing that, I know you’re good and all Clove but–”
“Shut up. I said I thought about it. I obviously didn’t do it. I couldn’t really see where I'd need to cut, and frankly I wouldn’t be able to stitch myself back together, and yeah you’re good with your fingers but you have never been good at a suture, even when we were teenagers.” Clove tries to shift her weight, looking for any comfort she can get in this permanently irritating state. Everything hurts. Her joints, her back, her neck, hell even her feet just ached. “Mostly, I know I could hurt him, and we have made it way too far for me to risk hurting him now, Cato. He’s safe in here. I’ll never be able to keep him this safe again.”
“We’ll protect him Clove, even on the outside.” He promises her, letting his hand come down to the under curve of her belly, letting himself press up just enough to take the extra strain off of her joints. She audibly relaxes, not only melting into him but letting out a genuine sign of relief at the release of weight from her hips and spine.
“We’ll try, but he’s just so safe, and he’s warm, and he’s never hungry…I feel bad trying to evict him.” Clove murmurs, pressing herself just slightly forward to take advantage of shifting even more of the weight of her abdomen into his hands.
“It’s our job to take care of him, Clove. He’ll be safe and he’ll be warm, and unfortunately he’ll probably be hungry a lot because he’s mine but we’ll take care of that, too.” He kisses the crown of her head, his thumb stroking at the side of her belly. “What do you think he’s doing in there?”
“Mmm, he’s moving because you’re talking to him.” Clove brings her own hand down, hovering a few inches above her pubic bone before pressing in. “Here’s his big head..” She tracks her fingers up, expertly following the curve of her baby’s spine and body, until she reached, “here’s his body.. and his feet are all the way up in my lungs. Where he kicks them incessantly.”
“He’ll just be a fast runner, strong legs and all.” Cato tries, holding her cheek and chin in the flesh of his palm. “Do you actually think he can hear us talking?.”
“A runner? What are you going to have him training for, Cato? His interdistrict baseball team? And what if it’s a girl?” She teases, but lays her head to be caressed in his hand more fully. “Of course he hears us, he’s right there, and he moves a lot more when you talk. He likes you.”
“Hell yeah I am. We’ve got Victor genes, baby. They aren’t going to waste. Hunger Games or baseball, I don’t care, he’s gonna win whatever it is. Our five year old will absolutely wipe out a five year old from district one, it’ll be a big rivalry. A girl, too, our daughters will also be incredibly athletic you know. They’re kind of bred for that kind of thing.” Cato grins, leaning down to catch her lips in a kiss, that while it starts soft and gentle, quickly evolves beyond that with the fiery passion that so often becomes all that is Cato and Clove. It’s her who pulls away first, with significantly less lung capacity these days, gasping for a deep breath.
“Do you still like me even though i’m fucking huge?” She almost pouts, blinking green eyes up to him with skepticism. “Like really fucking huge.”
“You’re not huge you’re straight up entirely baby, I am quite literally holding our kid through your skin right now.” He offers, leaning back down to catch her lips in another quick, yet equally as adoring, kiss. “Of course I still like you, babe, I love you. So much. Plus, you’re like so hot. Maybe even hotter than usual-”
“I’m still not having sex with you ever again.”
“I know, but I mean it.” He promises, and the warmness in his voice almost makes her believe it. “Besides, I don’t want to hurt it-”
“Oh fuck Cato, your not that big, i’m sorry to tell you–” She rolls her eyes, turning her face up and out of his hand. She winces as she feels one of those big shifts in her rib cage, and ends up stepping back away from Cato. “Can you go start a shower for me? That way by the time I make it upstairs it’ll be warm enough?”
“It’s big…” He mumbles in response, but withdraws his hand away from her lower belly in retaliation. “Sure. Can I join or-”
“No, Cato.”
“...I can just watch.”
“No, Cato.”
He huffs, loud enough for her to hear, but turns to stomp up the stairs anyway. “I’ve seen you naked before you know.”
“Not like this!” Clove calls up after him, before turning on her heels and sinking back into the couch he had hauled her out of. It was exhausting, at this point, to even be on her feet that long.
She pulls her feet up to the couch, having learned her lesson of letting them hang on the floor and barely being able to walk as a result. All the shifting and motion translates directly to her child– boy or girl, which technically it still could be a girl– who decides to roll it’s back to the other side of her abdomen with feet still solidly extended into her torso.
Her fingers find the spine of her son again, and she prods gently to feel him roll to the other side. “Your dad loves you a lot, you know that? He wants you sooo bad.”
But then again…so does she.
“If you could just come out to actually meet us that would be great.” Clove whispers, firmly poking at her own belly. She is greeted directly with what is so clearly a limb– could be a foot, could be a hand— sliding up under her skin and looking as if it is going to break out and escape right through her flesh. “I’d like to see that hand from the outside.”
She pokes again, and is once again responded to with movement that she can feel so distinctly that she would swear her son is right there, just under her skin, even though she knows it not to be the truth. There’s muscle between them, skin, fat, fascia, and even more muscle that keeps them apart. Something like six or seven layers of her own tissue separating her from the baby she made. Seven layers one way, but at the same time there is nothing that separates them, as he literally exists only inside of her.
There is so much between them and yet nothing at all.
Is he just abnormally strong, to so clearly be felt under her fingertips? Or is this just a reminder of how fragile her own body is, how thin seven layers can feel between herself and the thing she wants the most.
“I just want to see you, buddy. I’d also like my spine back, but mostly I’d like to see you. Find out what you look like… maybe finally name you..” Clove talks aloud, a sweetness in her voice truly reserved only for the moments when she is alone with herself and her body. He reacts to her, like he always does, wiggling around and pressing into her as if all he wants is to see her too. LIke he’s also trying to break through to actually see the woman whose voice he never ceases to hear. Maybe he also would like to have a name, even, and not continuously be referred to as baby or buddy.
She has felt a lot of life under her fingers. Pulses, heartbeats, sweat, a hand in hers, a muscle twitch. This, though, is unlike anything she has ever fathomed. A pulse is an abstract way to connect to a heart beat, but this? This is pure, distinct life under her fingertips.
A few days later, he is real and he is fragile on her chest, but he is alive. It’s fascinating, almost instantly, how naturally he fits exactly there, how his favorite place seems to be right over her heart, as if that is the place he had been living and growing.
(Maybe it may as well have been, because it certainly feels like she is looking at the embodiment of her heart when she watches him nestle into her skin.)
She even finds that while she started to love watching his little hands and feet under her skin, she is even more in love with the way his entire hand grasps her finger.
It dawns on her, when he falls asleep again and again over her heartbeat, that while Cato and the sound of him alive is her home, maybe the proof of her own life is home to her son.
Life is fragile and fleeting, but it is anything but futile.
Life is fantastic.
Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 11: When You Can't Sleep at Night, You'll Hear My Stolen Lullaby
Heeeey besties. It has been more than a minute. I work eighty hours a week. Please take pity on me. If you are still here, still reading, wow I love you and I thank you deeply.
This chapter doesn't have a strong plot, it is just about my favorite things. Mamas and their babies.
A huge shoutout to @districtonekisses who has had conversations about explicitly stuff in this fic with me again and again, I love you and owe you cashbaria content soon I promise.
As always @kentwells my beloved, has been keeping my clato thoughts FED in my DMs to keep me moving through this shitty work schedule I have.
@bodyelectric77 you just have to get tagged at this point im so sorry.
Anyway!
Title from T-swift My tears ricochet
masterpost
AO3
He does not fit in the space from her knees to her hips anymore. His body can no longer fit comfortably resting on the short length of her thighs, where she could prop up her knees and take the time to memorize the details of her son in the middle of the night. Really, he never fit there to begin with. His legs would be scrunched up, and if he extended them he gave her an impressively strong kick for such a little person.
Now, though, months and months into his life, Clove could not even pretend that he still fit in her lap.
Her arms, though, oh her arms were another story entirely.
It was all part of her carefully crafted nightly facade, one she had been orchestrating for the last six months, for the entire duration of her time as a mother.
It went the same way every night. Cato would hand her the baby in his little hooded bath towel, all wet eyelashes and big blue eyes staring at her as his little baby hands just reached for her almost as quickly as she’d reach back for him. She’d absolutely insist she was just going to get him to sleep, then she’d be back to bed. Yet, every single night she’d end up padding across the short distance from his room to their own with him firmly asleep in her arms. She always insists that it is just simpler if he is with them, because really, where in the whole world could he be safer than between the people who brought him into it. Cato always knew his part too, when he’d wordlessly just take the baby back from her so she could get into bed. That is exactly where his son would sleep, right there on his chest and in his arms, until hours into the night when the first slight noise he made had Clove pulling him over into her arms. They’d wordlessly, barely even consciously, pass him back and forth throughout the entire duration of the night. Neither mention it. Neither question it. It is their unspoken, unquestioned agreement.
(Neither want to admit just how scared they are at the thought of him being anywhere but between them)
This is part two of that routine, where Clove and her son sit curled up in the corner of his bedroom, her knees tucked under her as she rocks with him in the oversized (for her, at least) recliner. She’s got him in the crook of her left arm, though her right hand comes around to brush her fingers over his still damp blonde hair on his head, her thumb coming to caress his full little cheek. They share the same fleecy blue blanket that she wraps around her own shoulders and covers her arms in, so that he too is protected from any sting of his first District Two winter that bites outside the window.
Not that there was any real risk of feeling a winter sting; from the blanket to his mother’s arms to the little blue sleeper the color of his eyes to the well heated house that his father endures for the sake of his mother- he was never going to be cold.
Cold he is not. Awake, however, he is.
“You gotta go to sleep, sweetheart, come on..” Clove whispers, though there's a softness in her voice that is reserved for this little boy and this little boy alone. “You had such a busy day, you have to be sleepy.”
Busy is a bold descriptor, but he did have an exciting day for a six month old. The first real layer of snow had finally covered the District last night, an uncharacteristically late start in February. Cato had been nothing short of insistent that he got to take the baby out today. Even Clove, who watched from the warmth of the kitchen window, couldn’t look away from the identical smiles of her boys and the sweet baby giggles coming from her son. There was something about the way Cato dipped this baby down into the ground to toe at the snow, and the way he pulled his little feet up in delighted response, that made Clove almost want to brave the cold for them, too.
Still, the day of discovery did not seem to make a dent in the energy level of Atlas Hadley, who was contently playing with the thin strap of Clove’s shirt, an entire little fist wrapped around the fabric. She shifts, just a little, so that he is less facing into her and more looking up at the rest of the room. She catches one of his hands, and brings it up to her lips to kiss his closed fist, which earns her the biggest, widest smile from the blond boy in her arms.
And God, when he looks at her with the biggest, widest blue eyes in the world, as if she herself hung the stars in the sky? The only thing she can wonder is how the fuck she deserves him.
She finds herself humming to him often, and now is no exception. She never full on sings, and she never will, but there's something just..instinctual about how simply it falls from her. She isn’t even sure where she learned it. Normally it works, too. A few minutes of humming and rocking in this chair and he was out, usually with his little cheek pressed flush against her skin.
It’s always the same song, too, oddly enough. It just flows. She isn’t even sure where she heard it or picked it up from– probably Glimmer– but it does the job.
Most nights, at least.
Now, though, she’s still got those sky colored eyes just absolutely staring up at her, like something is so captivating he can’t bear to close his eyes and miss a moment.
“Whatcha looking at? Do you see the snow?” Clove twists her neck to look backwards, trying to glance over her shoulder out the window to see what could possibly be so enticing to her baby. It’s just a dark sky, not even moonlight within frame to have him so entranced.
When she’s glancing out, beyond what her baby could see, she can see the thick blanket of snow draped over the trees and landscape. It’s involuntary, the chill that goes through her, when she sees the eerie stillness of snow in the darkness.
She doesn’t mean to stretch out her fingers, rolling them out as if she is trying to keep them mobile and warm. She can’t help but do her best to wrap her little hands around her son, somehow managing to pull him closer as if she herself will be the final defense between him and an icy, frozen arena.
It’s been what? Five..Six..Seven years since her games? Nearly a decade and that biting cold feeling just cannot leave her.
“There’s no snow falling, what do you see, my love?” Clove tries again, this time shifting him in her arms so that his head is resting on her chest rather than her arms, hoping to distract him from whatever was keeping him so alert.
Still, Atlas twists his little face so that he can still see hers, blinking up at her with the same lovey expression as before. She makes a confused face at him, eyebrows pinching together, but just wraps her arms tighter, holding them both deeper in the warm embrace of their blanket.
“I can’t blame him, all he wants to see is you.” Cato points out from where he now rests in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed over the expanse of his bare chest. “I wouldn’t want to go to sleep either, if my other option was looking at you.”
“And what are you staring at now, Cato?” Clove teases, letting one hand come to the back of her son’s head and strum rhythmic little circles over his hair. “You know you’re going to distract him..”
“Don’t mind me, I’m just admiring my work is all.” Cato grins, raking his eyes over Clove in the corner of the room, so effortlessly curled up around their only child.
Clove, who was once a feral little girl with knives hidden in her socks, now just so delightfully different while maintaining everything that made him love her.
“...your work? You’re admiring your work?” Clove raises a dark eyebrow, though her expression twists into something toeing the line between annoyance and adoration, an expression Cato knows all too well.
“Hell yeah this is my work.” Cato gestures to the two of them with one hand and the most smug smile on his pretty face. “I did make all of this happen so…my work.”
“You’re the worst sometimes,” Clove rolls her eyes, but doesn’t stop the rhythmic rocking of her son in her arms. “It’s our work, thank you very much.”
“Some of our best, honestly.” He agrees, but uses the arm that was reaching out to them to gesture back towards himself. “C’mere. I’m lonely across the hall.”
“He isn’t asleep yet..” She sighs, shaking her head lightly. “He’s got a staring problem like his dad.”
“Can’t blame the kid.” He holds out his other arm as he crosses the distance between them. “Hold on to him.”
“What are you-”
He slips one arm under her legs and the other behind her shoulders, “Just hold him. We’re going to bed.” Cato instructs, before he’s got her scooped up in his arms as if she weighed no more than a baby herself.
“Cato! Be careful!” She shrieked, but curled into his chest as she had done thousands and thousands of times in her life.
“You act like I’ve ever dropped you.”
_____________________________________________________________
“No mama, no sleepy.” Stella Sanford shakes her little head, blonde ringlet curls brushing over her pajama clad shoulders with every move. Regardless of her pouting, and boy does she know how to tilt her little lips into a pout, she flops into her usual bedtime position with her head on her mother’s right arm.
“Yes, Stella, you have to go to sleep. You can’t wake up for your birthday if you don’t go to sleep first.” Glimmer tries softly, bringing her arm up to wrap around Stella, twisting her fingers through the ends of her soft baby blonde hair. She’d remain here until Marvel came upstairs, when she’d effortlessly roll right into his arms for the rest of the night. A baby for each of them to hold– well, toddlers now. “And Sissy’s already sleeping, she’s going to get to have her birthday too…”
“No sleepy,” Comes from the muffled voice of Aurelia on her chest, who doesn’t even lift her head to see her mother or her twin sister, instead keeping her face buried in her favorite pink blanket the three of them fell asleep under every night. “Sing song, mama?”
“You already got your sing song, baby.” She soothes, brushing her hand over the back of her baby soft pajamas, the tips of her fingers tracing the tiniest little shapes on the top of her back. “And your story, and another book, and your kisses..”
“P-eeease, mama?” Stella flutters her long eyelashes at her mother, resting her chin right on her chest next to her twin. “one sing song.”
“One sing song.” Aurelia chimes in, one of her little hands escaping her blankets and coming up to touch her mother’s face gently. “Pease?”
Glimmer audibly sighs, grabbing Aurelia’s little hand and kissing her open palm, using her other hand to pull Stella closer. They’re just her babies, babies who were two years old as of early tomorrow morning, how could she tell them no?
Especially now, when the days of them holding onto her and sleeping in her arms are slipping away so quickly?
“What sing song do you want? You can’t have the birthday one until tomorrow-”
“No words sing song.” Aurelia explains, twisting a hundred and eighty degrees in her mother’s arms so that she can face her sister now too.
“...no words…baby, that's not a song?” Glimmer tries, taking the opportunity to spread their pink blanket out over the three of them, now equally covering both Stella and Aurelia where they would sleep until Marvel was done with birthday set up.
“No words sing song!” Stella agrees with an enthusiastic nod, her little nose scrunching up with her smile in an expression she most definitely did not inherit from her mother. “Like this!”
Glimmer watches with a bemused smile as Stella tries to demonstrate her request, with little furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips. It’s adorable, almost to the point that Glimmer forgets her girl is trying to show her something.
“...oh you want me to hum you a song? That’s not singing, silly girlies.”
“Hum song.” Stella outright demands this time, resting her little hands on her chin expectantly. “Do the hum song, mama.”
“...the hum song?” Glimmer mumbles, trying to rack through her brain for whatever specific song they mean. There’s the one that comes to mind, though she isn’t sure why or where she learned it. Then again, there aren’t words, it’s only a hummable song.
“Okay. I’ll do the hum song, but you gotta cloooose your eyes.” Glimmer instructs, moving her arms intentionally so that they are both individually cradled in an arm, although they are far bigger than the infant babies she brought home in this position two years ago.
“Goodnight Aurelia-” She starts, leaning down to kiss the top of her far more reserved child’s head, her lips lingering for just a moment as she soaks in the time she gets to share alone with them. “Goodnight Stella..I love you both so so much.”
“Nigh-nigh mama, loves you” Stella announces contentedly, curling up into her mother’s side dutifully, before peaking one green eye up and over at her sister. “Nigh-nigh sissy.”
“Night-night sissy.” Aurelia declares, wiggling her little pink nails (an early birthday fun day gift from Auntie Cashy) out for Stella’s matching ones (and match Cashmere and Glimmer’s, too of course). “Love mama.”
As she hums to her girls, Glimmer watches closely. She notices how Stella’s hand reaches up to hold on to Aurelia’s, and her heart catches in her throat. She can’t help but remember the very first time she held the two of them together, how her girls who never knew anything but each other, reached only for each other within the first moments of their lives. She was not a twin herself, but there was something otherworldly about the bond between her children, beyond anything she’d ever get to know. Even now, almost two years to the day since they were born, they still fall asleep every night holding each other’s little hands. As it was right now, it was almost always intentional. Just two halves of the same soul, always reaching for the piece that completes them.
Glimmer never takes advantage of how lucky she is to have the children that she does, what a miracle it is that she gets to be their mother.
She never forgets just how deeply loved her daughters are, by so many people beyond herself, either.
Now, for example. Her sister and brother were adamantly downstairs helping her husband decorate for the girl’s second birthday, with no fewer than 730 pastel balloons to blow up and intentionally place around the first floor. It is arguably the least sexy, most unromantic way for her sister to spend the eve of Valentine's day, something Cashmere most definitely would point out to her later. Fortunately the seven pm bedtime of the twins meant they would be finished decorating before Cashmere was even due to start her skincare.
The point being, Cashmere and Gloss didn’t have to be here. These twins are not their children, they have no responsibility to them, and yet here they are.
Not to forget that Marvel, the sweet sweet man that he is, would most certainly come up with a gift for her. Claiming that, yes it was the girls’ birthday, but it was her who physically birthed them into the world and that she deserved as much recognition as they did.
There's something remarkable about him as a husband and as a father that almost, just almost, makes her think about risking a boy for just one more child to watch him raise. While she likes to think that she was born to be a mother, it cannot be denied that he wanted those girls just as badly as she did.
She can physically feel Aurelia fall asleep on top of her, when any tension in her little body just releases at once and she fully gives into the embrace of her mother. Stella never takes long after Aurelia, though it is far more subtle to hear her breathing pattern even out so distinctly.
Two entire years of this being her life, two years of big green eyes staring at her, two years of “mama” in high pitched little voices, two years of little humans who trusted her for everything they could ever need.
She isn’t sure she’ll ever get used to this being her real life, as if she will ever accept it as anything more than the dream it feels like.
It’s unbelievable to her, that this is the life she gets to live.That somehow, after everything, she has been granted this chance. It feels beyond a dream to have one daughter who prefers strawberry jelly over grape, or another daughter who cries if her bubbles in her bathtub pop. What a privilege it is to sort little socks embroidered with A’s and S’s, to have two of every set of pajamas and every tutu.
It’s nothing short of a dream, nothing short of a miracle, that Glimmer even survived long enough to be a mother at all.
Marvel moves so quietly that she doesn’t even hear him come into the room, and is only alerted to his presence by the shift of the other side of the bed when he sits on their shared bed.
She pauses her mindless humming, glancing up over at him with a soft smile on her face. She notices something speckled on the thin fabric of his white shirt, but pays very little attention to it as he so carefully slides into bed beside her with a well practiced agility that only comes from long dedication to not waking the girls with a shift in the mattress.
“Don’t stop on my account.” He defends, leaning over oh so carefully to kiss her on the cheek without disturbing the freshly sleeping toddlers in her arms. “Balloons, streamers, and the special birthday plates are set up. Your sister did tell me I’m ruining her valentines day because I said she couldn’t come wake them up to give them their first present. She’ll get over it.”
Glimmer gives him the softest smile as his hands thread under Stella, expertly pulling her to his side of the bed where she would sleep incredibly soundly for the rest of the night . As if to illustrate her thoughts, her baby curled right up against her father, burying her face in the fabric of his shirt. She’s paying such close attention there to his side, that it dawns on her exactly what the speckles on his shirt are.
She reaches out to grab the white fabric, and the deep maroon blossoming along his side confirms exactly what she suspected. “Are you….bleeding?!”
“Oh! Yeah! It’s nothing! Just your brother and the staple gun! No harm done!” Marvel brushes off, grabbing the free edge of the pink blanket and dragging it over him too. He offers her a comforting smile, grabbing at her hand. “Hey. Glim. I’m fine. Seriously. Your brother started thinking a bit too much about why we were decorating and how the girls came to be, and you know how he gets! He’s just..protective of you. He’ll get over it one day. Or he won’t, and he’ll try to kill me one day a year every year for the next twenty. Either way, I can take it. And probably deserve it a little.”
“He does not get to hurt you,” Glimmer warns, shaking her head in firm but loving disapproval. “I’m a big girl, and I made my decision. And I would make that choice over and over and over again. And I will remind him of that tomorrow.” She shifts closer, as far as she can without the risk of waking Aurelia in her arms. “They don’t get to act like they’re number one aunt and uncle and then act like that towards you. It’s infuriating” She mumbles, taking the chance to move just a few inches closer, unable to fully close the gap between them. “You don’t deserve that.”
“It’s okay, Glimmer, I can take it. They don’t mean anything by it. Besides…maybe they’re just jealous.” He does his part to shift closer too, leaving just enough space between them for the girls to move to. “‘Cause I got two of these,” he gestures to the sleeping twins, pulling Stella up to sleep on his chest, mirroring Aurelia on her mother’s. “And they don’t have any. And I get a you, Glimmer. They can say whatever they want, because really, I won.”
“Yeah, well, my sister doesn’t pay attention to anything but her own reflection, and my brother is her lapdog. I wouldn’t want to be them, either.”
“Especially not Cashmere, she’s got Enobaria with those teeth-” Marvel jokes, earning him a little nudge from Glimmer.
“God don’t bring that up, there are some things I don’t need to picture–”
“Hey, that’s just mentally picturing. I have actual proof of the things I've done with their sister.” He teases, pointing between the sleeping blondes in their arms. “We don’t need them to like it. We just need them to help blow up balloons once a year. They like the girls, that’s what matters.”
Glimmer feels like her heart physically hurts in the center of her chest, when she looks up and sees the way he just looks at her with such love and dedication in those blue eyes. Blue eyes she wishes were reflected in one of her daughters, sometimes, if for no other reason than how much she selfishly loves them. “....I love you.”
“I love me, too.” Marvel teases, before catching her face in his hand. “I love you, more than anything. And I’m really glad we accidentally pulled off this two for one special thing, because we have really, really cool kids.”
And for all the anxiety, the uncertainty, the discomfort, the stress, and the downright fear that came with the time leading up to the birth of her children… she wouldn’t have it any other way. After it all.. she’d go through every single moment all over again if she meant she held her daughters at the end of it. “...they’re the best.”
“You’re the best.” He promises, finally just slipping his arm around her hips and pulling her closer, damned with keeping space for now. He pauses, and shakes his head for a moment as if he just remembered something. “That song you were humming when I came in..they ask for the no words sing song alllll the time…where the hell did that even come from?”
“Absolutely no idea.”
_______________________________________________
“Good morning.” Glimmer’s raspy, sleep-addled voice in the doorway would have jolted Clove awake had it not been for the fact she had already been wide awake the majority of the night and into the early morning. She stands in the doorway with hair in two frizzy braids that are passively untwisting and oversized sweatshirt with sleeves that cover her hands, and the way she is rubbing at her eyes with said sleeves make her look nothing short of an oversized toddler coming to her mother for comfort in the middle of the night.
Except Glimmer is a twenty five year old woman and Clove is not her mother.
“Can I get in bed?” Glimmer murmurs, though it is nothing more than a formality as she is already pulling up the comforter on the opposite end of the bed from Clove and sliding one leg in. “Ew, this is Cato’s side, I don’t want to lay in these sheets, I know what goes on here-” She scrunches up her nose, but plops her head down on his pillow anyway.
“The sheets are clean-ish. Nothing is going down in this bed for a long fucking time. Fuck, what time is it–” She twists her head to look over at Glimmer, who is making herself plenty comfortable in Clove’s bed. Clove on the other hand is half sitting, half leaning, with her neck just slightly propped up by the pillows. Most importantly is her baby, all of five (six, now) days old, scrunched up on her chest, but incredibly safe and protected in the arms of his mother. She ceases her humming, some old song she can’t seem to get out of her head, before stifling her own yawn into her son’s hair. “What are you doing here? Did Cato send you to come babysit me?”
“It’s five forty two in the morning. Five forty five is the morning workout start time for you district two psychopaths apparently. Enobaria and Brutus are downstairs with Cato, they’re going down to the basement.” Glimmer stifles a yawn with the edge of the blanket, rolling onto her right side so that she is facing Clove, though her eyes are barely even half open to support her argument that she’s awake. “Huh? No it wasn’t Cato. I’m not even babysitting you per say–just keeping you company while everyone else works out- okay, Enobaria came into my room and pulled me out of bed by my ankle and said I had to come sit with you. Not that I mind!”
“Do they think i’m a fucking baby and can’t watch myself?” Clove snaps, wiggling so that she too is laying flat on her back next to Glimmer. It had been six days– how the hell was she going to do this for eighteen years- and the lack of sleep had gotten to her. It’s not a foreign sensation, they had deprived them of sleep plenty of times during games training and even at the hands of Snow in the capitol…but back then the only person she had to keep alive was herself. Not a whole new needy, helpless human being. “What do they think I'm going to do? Throw him at a target to strengthen my arm?”
“I think they’re more worried about you trying to workout six days after you had a baby come out of you. “ Glimmer explains, stifling yet another yawn into her borrowed pillow. “Not that i’m saying you would-”
“Fuck, Glim, I’m not working out. I can barely walk, it feels like he literally ripped me in half and he might have! I don’t know! I don’t care to find out! I’m pretty sure I'm literally stitched back together!” Clove shakes her head quickly, blinking back the wet feeling in her eyes she doesn’t know whether to attribute to exhaustion or hormonal instability. “...Glimmer everything hurts. It hurts and I can’t do anything and all I do is lay in this bed with this baby and try to pretend that everything is fine but Glimmer it hurts.”
Glimmer takes the moment to prop herself up on her elbow, recognizing the need to feel more present for her friend. “...of course it hurts, Clove. He’s huge. You are not. It hurts even when they’re little.”
“Yeah, well you had two at the same time, of course that hurt,” Clove insists, but uses the chance to pull her son up closer to her face, where she can continue to place kisses on his head and try to keep him asleep. “It hurts and I can’t tell Cato that because he’ll absolutely freak out or think i’m dramatic or something and I just don’t need that right now-”
“Clove..do you think he doesn’t know? Like he’s dumb but he isn’t that dumb.” Glimmer tries, giving just the slightest eye roll. “He’s constantly worried about you. He texted Marvel seventeen –and I counted– times the day you had the baby telling him he was afraid you were going to die, Clove. He’s stupid but he absolutely can read you like a book.”
“Yeah, well I thought I was dying too, Glimmer!” She bites back, tension and something else crawling into her tone. “I’ve been in multiple near death experiences, and you know what, it was the only time I had ever actually been scared of it!”
“But you didn’t! And he’s here and he’s okay and you are okay. You deserve to take care of yourself, too, Clove. I know he’s important and all, but so are you…”
“I am taking care of myself, clearly I'm laying up here in bed all useless while everyone else gets to go actually do something for themselves. And God, Glimmer, this baby wakes up all night and he’s already asleep on me so I just take care of him and I love him and I wouldn’t change a thing but I look at Cato who looks so fucking peaceful and well rested and I want to kill him.” Clove’s breathing and speaking speeds up as she rambles, borderline pushing herself to a meltdown. “I love him. He offers to get up with me, and he does, but he’s just…useless to this baby right now. So he sits up and stares at me as his version of moral support. But it isn’t helping!”
“Oh! Absolutely! I remember one time I woke up in the middle of the night, and I was so tired, and I looked down and I had Stella in one arm and Aurelia in the other and I looked over and Marvel was just..out. And all I wanted was to just slit his throat. After that I started making him wake up all night, too. Which…they’re pretty useless but it makes you feel less alone. You’re the only person in the world who can take care of that baby, Clove, and it’s lonely and it’s hard but when he’s like a year old and all he wants is you, it’s the best feeling in the world” Glimmer sits up just a little, holding both her hands out and making a gesture towards herself. “Give me the baby.”
“What? No, he’s fine–” Clove shakes her head rapidly, both her hands wrapping around his little back, holding him somehow closer to herself.
“Clove. You’re exhausted. More than I’ve ever seen you, and that's saying something, considering we literally went through Hunger Games together. You came back from literal capital torture looking less tired. Give me the baby.” She once again waves both hands towards herself. “Do you trust me?”
“Well yeah of course I trust you, it’s just not your job to take him.” Clove insists, shaking her head firmly, but glances sideways down at her baby. “It’s my responsibility to take care of him.”
“Clove. Give me the baby. I swear I won’t leave this bed. Give me this baby and take a nap.” Glimmer all but demands, shuffling her body to sit up a little more properly. She shoves her hands closer to the baby, patiently waiting in that position. “Let me help you. It’s what I'm here for.”
“You’re here so I don’t go try to do a sit up.” Clove hesitates, but finally acquiesced and slides her fingers under her son’s chest, lifting her son so that she can look at his sleepy face before gently hovering him closer to Glimmer.
“You don’t have the core strength for a sit up right now, who are you kidding.” Glimmer flashes the baby a bright smile, all but abandoning her exhaustion as she pulls him into her arms. “Hey little buddy!” She coos at him, holding his head in one hand and his body with the length of her opposite arm. “You’re still such a cutie, even though you look like your dad!”
Clove somehow looks both visibly more tense as she rolls on her side to face Glimmer, and also more relaxed at the same time. “He’s got a cute dad, of course he’s cute.”
“Isn’t it annoying that you did all the work and he looks like him though?” She points out, gently shushing the baby as she bounces him just slightly in her arms. “I wouldn’t know what that’s like, obviously.”
“I wouldn't want him any other way.” She half mumbles, reaching her top hand up to hold on to his little body, despite the fact Glimmer is plenty capable of taking care of him. She sees the skeptical look from Glimmer, and gives her a tired half-scowl. “Leave me alone, I’ve been touching him in some way for like..ten months.”
“You’re just so maternal it’s cute.” Glimmer grins, wiggling down so that she is laying more parallel to Clove. “He’s safe, Clove. I’ll wake you if he needs you. I promise.”
Clove rolls her eyes to make a point, but her eyes do not bother re-opening for Glimmer to notice.
Glimmer of course notices, particularly when Clove’s hand goes fully limp on top of the baby. She laughs to herself, never out loud in fear of waking Clove who barely wants to sleep as is, as Clove slips in and out of deep sleep, occasionally humming something over and over even while unconscious.
“You’ve got a good mama, Atlas. Be good for her, okay?” Glimmer whispers to the tiny blond boy– okay, not tiny in compared to the actual tiny babies she herself made. “Your dad though, you can scream at him all you want.”
This is how Cato finds them an hour later, when he comes up stairs and sees Glimmer in his bed. Clove’s practically curled up in Glimmer’s side, her hand resting on top of the baby, though otherwise she is dead to the world.
“Go home, Blondie, you’re in my spot.” Cato demands, holding a low-slung towel on his hips, nodding his head towards the door. “And don’t get any ideas about taking my kid with you.”
“Jealous, I'm in bed with your wife?” Glimmer taunts, but gives a firm shake of her head. “You can have her back after you make me breakfast, as a ‘sorry you had to come over at 5 am’ treat.”
“You act like you mind it. You’re getting to hold a new baby without any responsibilities.” Cato runs a hand through his wet hair, before dragging it down the side of his face. He struggles to get out the words ‘thank you,’ but it’s understood when he rubs at the back of his neck and asks. “Do you want me to wake Marvel to make waffles or wake Marvel to make french toast.”
“Mmm, I was actually hoping for an egg white omelet?” Glimmer scrunches her nose in a semi pout, sticking out her bottom lip playfully.
“Can he make that?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Great. He’s making french toast then.”
It becomes a daily pattern for the next month and a half.
______________________________________________________
It is literal years before anyone thinks about the song for more than a few seconds, other than long enough to remember to start singing it.
“Did you learn that song from Cashmere?” Clove asks from her spot at the kitchen island, sitting on her barstool as she stirs a bowl of ice cream and sprinkles in her hand. It had been her favorite treat for the duration of her second– and final– pregnancy, but usually she had a blonde boy breathing down her neck for a bite. She takes the moment to enjoy her snack in peace– without her husband or toddler demanding she share with the same pouty face and wide blue eyes.
Sometimes she felt like she married a child and then went and made him an identical, miniature version of himself to be his new best friend.
Enobaria crinkles her eyebrows, her face twisting from bemusement at the dark haired little girl in her arms, to actual irritation. “Did you lose your mind when this one came out?” She holds up the tiny baby girl, swimming in the little sleeper that her brother once barely fit in, as if for emphasis. “She’s been here for three days, you can’t blame her anymore.”
Three days which Enobaria has had to hear every night from Cashmere on the phone back in District One, are the longest three days she’s had in years.
Enobaria couldn’t leave her brand new three day old niece any faster than Cashmere was willing to leave her ten day old one.
“What! I learned it from Glimmer I think. I dunno. It always puts Atlas to sleep, Sevina doesn’t seem to care about it yet.” Clove shrugs, glancing past Enobaria to catch a glimpse of her two year old son, being chased around the pool by his father. “I just assumed if I learned it from her, you learned it from Cash too-”
“Clove, that song is old District Two. I’m talking before the first war level old.” Enobaria explains, before her attention is brought right back down to the tiny girl in her arms. She never knew Clove at this age, but she can’t stop herself from wondering if this was exactly what it had been like to hold her.
“How would I know it then?”
“Because you were once a toddler who didn’t sleep and I was a desperate teenager.”
What’s everyone’s phone lock screen in ARWBFTB au :) just thought I’d send a fun one today 😅
Oh this is sooooo fun omg especially bc like…theres so many options ✨Ironically the answers are mostly like…each other. I’m so excited okay sooo
Cato’s is definitely Clove looking annoyed. Like giving him enough attitude in her face that you can see it in the picture. I don’t know exactly what she was doing IN the picture but she looks annoyed and he loves it. Thats the like outside lock screen picture, the INSIDE picture is absolutely one that should not be seen publicly. LIke…absolutely not for public consumption but for his yes indeed okay. He later becomes obsessed (and I mean obsessed) with pictures of Clove and their son so it’s an ever changing combo of pictures he takes of them. Not the inside picture. That one NEVER Changes (except to other pictures that should not see the light of day).
Clove’s is the two of them together probably looking at each other and not at the camera. She’s probably in his lap, they’re probably staring at each other, her arm over his shoulders kinda thing. Like taken candidly by one of their friends at a party or something, like Glimmer seems the type to just take random pictures of people and friends because love is all around her blah blah blah. So yeah. It’s them together. Looking hot. The usual. His giant hands on her waist is a focal point.
Finnick and Annie absolutely have the same exact picture, it’s each other and their son like a professional picture of the three of them probably on the beach. They do that thing where they’d both pick up each others phones and get so confused when they lock themselves out because they cant tell them apart.
Marvel’s is Glimmer. He’s in the picture too but the focus is very much Glimmer like he’s stand-in behind her with his arms around her shoulder and he’s Clearly saying something in her ear because she’s laughing and THATS why it’s his favorite because she’s laughing and smiling and there is literally nothing he likes better than Glimmer being happy enough to actually laugh at something. It later becomes ever changing pictures of Glimmer and the girls and they are definitely all three matching and have the same smile and eyes and hair and it’s everything and it changes like monthly because theres constantly new outfit updates.
Glimmer also I think has two. The like front lock screen is definitely her girls. All different variations of them but it is always them together. Usually in matching outfits. Or like snuggled up together. She is DEEPLY obsessed with them. The inside picture like barely ever changes it’s from when the girls were really little and they were exhausted with two little babies and it’s him asleep on like the recliner or something with both of them also sleeping onto of him. It’s a favorite of hers.
Enobaria’s is just Cashmere. Like at a wedding or something with her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. Or like laying in bed. Or literally just any way shape or form of cashmere. But it’s not like the capitol/D1 glamour shots it’s her all excited in the winter bundled up holding her little peppermint coffee, or laying on the beach in 4 in a big sun hat. Or one specific moment in the like 6 weeks of whirlwind wedding planning of Glimmer which involved Cashmere literally laying in the living room covered in sparkly light pink tulle and flowers because it was literally covering the entire house. Like moments where she seems genuinely happy and genuinely smiling because thats the part of her she never got to be prewar ya know? Sometimes rarely it’s the two of them together but mostly it’s like..just little happy pictures of cash.
Cashmere’s is always people together. The like main one is usually her and Enobaria, like one of them looking at each other at one of the like 7890 parties they end up at post war and by that I mean dinner parties and weddings. Theres a picture of the two of them at Glimmer’s, Enobaria covered in a layer of Glitter from Cash’s dress just so so cute. I feel like theres a lot of beach gatherings because of Finnick so theres definitely pictures of the two of them extra tan that becomes a favorite of like…Cash practically sitting ontop of her. The inside picture is always like of her/gloss/glimmer I think. Sometimes the girls make the cut in the group picture, but it’s usually the three of them.
One time Marvel got so severely sunburned he couldn’t move and Finnick made him take a picture holding up a cooked lobster for comparison and that became like at least the group chat picture if not everyone’s contact picture for him en masse. It’s not a phone screen but it’s a funny thought.
so this got waaaaay out of my hands i'm sorry I just got so excited it was a lot of fun 😅 Thank you my friend this was SO so fun!!
In a world where they celebrate christmas in panem, would you have any Christmas headcanons for arwbftb au?
OH BOY DO I EVER. first of all sorry this took so long I have had a wild few weeks (months) at work and simply have done nothing but sleep and work but I have a lot of conversations on this website and I had EXTENSIVE conversation with @districtonekisses about this exact topic and so many of these come from our lil messages back and forth okay i'll put under a cut incase these get long!
This is obviously like a late ARWBFB like post war because I dont think pre war thats really something they'd have the option of celebrating. Glimmer and Cashmere and Finnick would be sold as Capitol Christmas gifts. It would be bad it would not be holly jolly.
Okay so Christmas as a concept is a D1 holiday. It is those D1 girls who go hard with the decorations. They Floor to Ceiling decorations. I think Cashmere is very white Christmas very glamor very white and silver sparkles not a lot of color. Glimmer I think has pastels mostly pinks and golds. It's giving like glamorous gingerbread house if that makes sense. But yes those D1 girlies they go hard and frankly they compete, if one has four trees the other has six. I think Cashmere has fake trees though because she hates the needles but Glimmer has real ones because she likes the size differences and the smell.
Glimmy looooves christmas. She loves it, it's absolutely her favorite holiday. She decorates so early and falls into actual depression when its time to take it all down again. It's just so cozy and comforting to her to live this so feely. In fact, some of the best sleep she gets all year is when there are multiple trees with soft white lights in her living room while she curls up on her couch.
Glimmer wins when she claims having Christmas celebrations at her house. Cashmere hosts a lovely, sophisticated Christmas Eve party. Glimmer wants the holiday itself. She wants the magic.
Cashmere is the best at gift giving.
It would make sense for it to be in D2 because they are in the mountains and have significant snow and cold weather EVERY year like clock work. D1 also gets that, but not to the same level of D2. That being said, if it were in D2, nothing would get done because Cato would see snow and a hill and he, Marvel, and arguably anyone else with half a brain cell would be sledding on plastic lids.
...they do it in d1 anyway. Someone gets a concussion or a broken wrist. Happy Holidays!
Clove doesn't like the cold weather, not only does it remind her of the games, but it absolutely hurts in a post war life. That being said, Clove has never had a good experience of holidays or birthdays. it was never her thing. Noone celebrated her ever, her grandmother certainly wasn't finding any joy in the world without her daughter. She is fine relinquishing it to Glimmer and just..going to D1.
That being said...Clove still has to cook. Glimmer has her over a day or two before where she like mass preps. She tried sending Marvel and Cato to do the grocery shopping once or twice. That ceased by the third time they came home with living lobster which wasnt on her list at all.
Cashmere tries to hire catering, this DEEPLY offends clove. She absolutely loves to Cook and more importantly she is cooking for her family and noone can do that better than her.
The wine drunk christmas eve party means noone wakes up until like..11 am on Christmas day.
Glimmer is big on the matching pajamas thing-- no one indulges her but Marvel and Cashmere. By extension they can rope Gloss in. Enobaria is a firm no, even to Cashmere's big sad eyes, which is a rarity.
The Christmas cookies go hard, likely imported from Peeta. Gloss gets physically sick from how many gingerbread houses he eats one year.
Cato LOVES Christmas, he is soo tis the season about it, him and Glimmer weirdly go mutually hard for this holiday.
Speaking of Glimmer, she enlists (requires) Marvel and Cato to put up her decorations on the tallest points of her house. She gives big sad teary looks and reminds them how sad she was in the war and they're like..okay glimmer yes glimmer anything for you glimmer.
As with most holidays, it highlights how important Clove is to these people who have become her family. It's a life she never would have imagined having as a little girl.
Always Remember We're Burned For Better Epilogue: I Vow I Will Always Be Yours, For We Survived the Great War
Here we are. The end of an era. I have..so much to say.
First of all..if you do not like the canon epilogue you will not like this. If you do not like the choices Katniss makes you will not make the choices they make.
Secondly...This fic took me exactly forty weeks to write. That is intentional, as forty weeks is the length of an average pregnancy is forty weeks. This is my baby. You have all travelled with me from the middle of my third year until the middle of my residency interview season. I hope you will continue to follow for what comes next, but this is my baby. Today I release her into the world for the last time, and I am incredibly sad about it. Thank you for loving her with me.
Third.. I hope along this journey you have grown to empathize with the four careers of the first Hunger Games Book. I hope you see them as the children they were, I hope you have even grown to care about them. I am a careers apologist (one of the OGs thank you very much) and I hope you have all opened your hearts to them, as well.
Finally.. thank you. I will never be able to thank you all enough for your endless support and comments and likes and reblogs and asks. Thank you to you all. I of course want to give shoutouts as usual. There are so many people beyond this list. Who I don't know well, or I don't talk to enough to want to bother them with a tag (like you @dukeysquid I dont want to bother you). But you are ALL seen. You are all loved.
I cant give one to the og, who has to keep her socials clean, but you know who you are. You are the first person I ever told about this fic, and have been around for allll the changes. Thank you friend.
@mollywog a TRUE og who has stuck around even though this fic is far far from her usual andher cup of tea. She's a real one. I love her. I thank you, friend.
@cyansadness another OG friend. I don't even know what you're into these days..but thank you for listening to the earlier iterations.
@bodyelectric77 a NEW friend, who has given me such insight on Enobaria and the older careers. Thank you for taking a chance on this fic which is not in your usual wheelhouse.
@crookedlyniceperson I am so sad for my last set of memes, but so thankful for the memes that brought us together. Thank you, and I cannot believe the insane AU in our DMs that I'm going to bring up after this immediately in the DMs. Thank you.
@clarascrabarmy ANOTHER OG who I always feel like i'm bothering, but I could COUNT ON YOU to read these when I was dropping them at 4 am when I was on night shift. I love you, and I thank you.
@lwveless my little college baby I dont know if you're even around but I wanted to give you love for loving Marvel with me.
@kentwells a TRUE BACKBONE of this fic. A sounding board of all my insanity. I want you ALL to know that the outcome of Glimmer and Marvel (Namely them not being back together) is entirely her fault <3 It was her idea and it is her fault. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Ultimately, I cannot thank @ohhowwehavefallen enough. In the last nine months you have become one of my legitimate besties. You have supported me here and in my actual life beyond anything I can put into words here. Our constant, non stop Clato aus and talks literally keep me going on my bad days. I love you. I thank you. And of NOTE: She is entirely responsible for the wedding rites of District Two. I struggled so much creating them, it took me forever to figure out and I owe the answer to you. I owe this fic to you. I love you. Thank you bestie.
Fun facts:
The kids at the end are not named because it is hard to name them but I have ideas <3
There are jokes for most of my friends here
The sequel is called Picket Fences, Sharp as Knives (High Infidelity, Taylor Swift)
Alright.
AO3
tumblr masterpost
Title from The Great War, Taylor Swift.
The End.
Thirteen months after the end of the war
“Clove, stand still.” Glimmer clicks her tongue, hands tugging tighter the fabric at the small of Clove’s back for emphasis. “If you fidget I can’t get these buttons. I don’t know what I was thinking when I added them, knowing Cato’s probably just going to rip them off like a heathen–”
“Oh no he won’t, Glimmer, you have no idea how much he’s going to love it.” Clove assured, taking in the length of her body in the mirror. It was the first time she had seen the dress too, and unsurprisingly Glimmer did far surpass any expectation she had. “You missed your calling with design, seriously, this is insane. You made this?”
The ivory crepe fabric was fit like a second skin through her thighs, where it fell freely to the floor, even fanning out a little behind her. The trail end of the train had little windows of lace, with the entire trim a continuous border of hand placed lace appliqués. The top of the dress was similarly overlain with lace, a few pieces trailing up at her hips before coming to cover the entire top half of the dress. The thin v-shaped straps were made of the intentionally placed lace, and though the entire back of the dress was open from the middle of her back upwards, a couple appliqués seem to float along the top of the fabric. Even the open sides are overlapped with the ivory design. The most unexpected aspect may be the deep cut of the sweetheart neckline, and the large strip of open skin from her neck to midway down her sternum.
“Of course I made it Clove! It’s just for you! I even used the lace from that dress, like you wanted. I was worried I didn’t have enough but with the open neckline I made it work.” Glimmer hooks the last button with the use of her littlest finger nail, pushes herself to standing. “It’s going to be the only wedding dress I ever make, though. It’s an honor but I was so afraid of messing it up. Besides…everyone else is dead, already married, or not going to be.”
Clove turns to the side, catching the back of the dress in the mirror so she can fully appreciate it. She could not, no matter even if she wanted, wipe the smile that stretched across her face. “I know you think the deep plunge is a lot, but I don’t want to ruin it with blood–”
“I know, I know, you District Two freaks have a fucking blood ritual.” Glimmer bristles, taking her hand to wipe at Clove’s side, to swipe away some of the golden glitter from her own dress that transferred in the hustle and bustle of getting dressed. “You know in District One we just exchange jewelry like normal people.”
“We do that too.” Clove teases, bringing her left hand up to wiggle her fingers in front of Glimmer’s face. There was certainly no lack of the jewelry aspect either, with a flashy, oval shaped diamond with the equally shining gold band that had come to live on Clove’s left hand. “And it’s not a District Two tradition, Glimmer, it’s a District Two Victor tradition. We are the only ones that are left– we’re also the only two victors who have ever married each other. We have to do it.”
Glimmer grabs at Clove’s left hand, running her thumb over the diamond with a reverence only a girl from One, especially one with no marriage prospects of her own, would manage. “I just want to know how he got it. The diamond mines in one have been closed from the war, this should be impossible to get. I’ll never get my hands on one of these, and my cousin worked in gemstone acquisition. I should theoretically have a whole closet full.”
If she can smile any bigger, she somehow manages. Clove twists at the ring on her finger, exceptionally excited to add another band underneath in just a short hour. “He’s had it for years. From before the war, back before the Quarter Quell....he had it since the seventy fourth games.”
“I don’t think anyone loves anyone else more than he loves you.” There is a wistful edge to her voice that Glimmer tries her best to tamper, though the loss of love still does not sting any less even now, almost exactly one year after the end of the war. “It’s extraordinary.”
Clove grabs Glimmer by her wrists, wrapping the woman’s arms around her waist so they were half hugging, still facing the mirror. Glimmer rests her chin on top of Clove’s shoulder, careful not to disrupt the soft, free flowing curls that were still cooling at her shoulders. “Thank you, Glimmer.”
Clove takes a moment to soak in Glimmer, too. She would have laughed, and maybe stabbed, anyone who told her two or three years ago that Glimmer Belcourt from District One would be standing here getting her ready for her wedding. And yet, here she was.
Looking at their reflection in the mirror she could see there was finally a little bit more to Glimmer, far more like the girl she met in the capitol, and not like the starved skeleton of a girl she found in district thirteen. Her hair was perfectly curled and incredibly shiny. Her skin had the healthiest, most intrinsic glow to it, with the most beautiful pink flush in her cheeks. Even the gold shimmery ball gown– yes, ball gown– that she wore only added to the warm tones in her skin. Oh Glimmer, how she did indeed shine once again.
“Glimmer? Why did you pick a glittery ball gown for a wedding in my backyard?” Clove raises a dark eyebrow, craning her neck to make eye contact with Glimmer directly rather than with their reflections. “It is summer, isn’t all that tulle going to weight you down.”
Glimmer cracks a smile– a genuine, gorgeous smile that Clove had not seen since a time before the war, a time before Glimmer’s heart was broken, a time long ago on a rooftop in the capitol– and gives half a shrug. “I don’t think I'm going to get many opportunities after this. I always wanted to wear one.” She steps back, giving a little spin for Clove to truly appreciate her hard work on her own dress. It was solid gold, glitter covering every spot of the tulle underneath. The dress sat just off her shoulder like a princess, and truthfully the dress moved around her like something of a fairy tale. “Cash always got to wear big princess dresses in her interviews and parties and stuff after she won. I was so jealous, and when I won I was so so excited to get my turn. Cash was always in pink and I was hoping I’d get the same..they skipped the ballgown stage with me and went right to the– yeah. I just…always wanted to wear one. They never let me be pretty, it was always sexy and sultry and glamorous. I just wanted to be pretty. And today is my last chance… Thank you, Clove. For letting me have this.”
Clove’s hand slips down to grab Glimmer’s and gives the softest squeeze. “You look so, so pretty. You look beautiful.”
“You look beautiful, Clove. Thank you for letting me be part of this. Even though I am your only friend–” Glimmer teases, smile never leaving her face, revealing that it is truly just a joke.
“Oh way to ruin me trying to be nice,” Clove taunts, but turns to face the mirror once again. “Thank you, too, Glimmer. For all of it. The dress. Being here. Buttoning me in.”
“Of course! Now, I think I'm about done…oh! Do you need lipstick, I know you’ll just get it all over him, but–”
“Blood ritual, Glimmer.”
“Right. Freaks. Okay!” Glimmer reaches down to fan Clove’s dress out behind her, gently running her hand over Clove’s bare arm. “Okay. You look beautiful. Enobaria should be in soon to do your hair… I’ll see you out there.” She pauses, taking a moment to appreciate her months of hard work, finally coming to a head on Clove’s body. She lets out a content little sigh, approving of her work, approving of the little victor girl in front of her. “I’m just… really really happy for you, Clove.” She squeezes her arm one last time before slipping out the door, a flurry of gold and glitter.
Clove takes her final moment alone to look at herself in the mirror. She looks more adult than she ever has in her entire life, in a tight white dress, long dark curls free around her shoulders. It is different than any other time she has been dressed like this in her life. There is no Capitol makeup obscuring her freckles, no intricate twists and pins in her hair. Notably, of course, are the faded scars along her shoulders, elbows, wrists. In a different world her scars would be wiped away, her skin unblemished and holding no evidence of the horrors she endured. Now her skin bears the proof of her survival.
She had begged Glimmer to give her sleeves to cover them. Glimmer in return had insisted there just wasn’t enough lace for sleeves, and even if it were untrue, maybe now Clove could see that she was right to deny her request.
Her moment alone is only brief, when the bedroom door in her usually untouched Victor’s Village house flies open again. This time, another blonde flurry of tulle rushes in, this one only half the size of the last.
Cora rushes in, in her little white dress. It’s gorgeous, too, with layers and layers of tulle with beautiful hand beading on the edges that make her look like she wears snow covered rose petals. Glimmer clearly spent excessive time on this dress, too.
“What else am I going to do with my time?” Glimmer had asked when Clove insisted she didn’t need to go to all these lengths for them.
Clove turns from the mirror to look at her sister in law, and with the girl’s ever increasing height she doesn't even need to kneel to hug her any longer. “Oh you look like a princess, Cora.” She pulls her into her arms, leaning down to kiss the top of her perfect, ringlet curls. “An absolute princess.” She does crouch down just a little, holding Cora’s angelic little face in either of her hands to look at her from eye level.
“Cato’s jeeeeealous I get to see you and he can’t.” Cora gives her a mischievous smile, one that Clove had seen on Cato hundreds of times and hopefully would see hundreds more. “You look soooo pretty Clove..” Cora reaches her hand out and gently touches the lace on Clove’s hip. “This is so sparkly.”
Clove puts her hand on top of Cora’s, squeezing so gently. “Glimmer really knows what she’s doing, huh?”
At the mention of the blonde woman Cora somehow lights up even more. When Cora met Glimmer it was like the stars aligned for them both. Glimmer, who needed to see this beautiful little girl grow up safe, loved, and far from the grasp of the games and the capitol and Snow’s best clients. Cora, who thinks she has a real life princess in her family, to teach her all the things Clove never got to learn as an orphan girl. “She has a pretty princess dress, too, Clove.”
“You should tell her that, she’ll love to hear it.” Clove straightened herself, afraid to wrinkle the tight fabric of her gown. “Thank you for coming over to see me, since everyone’s probably having so much fun over with Cato.”
Cora gives a little half shrug, bouncing forward onto her toes before rocking back onto her little mary jane heels. “Marvel is lying on the couch saying he’s sick, and he won’t get up. Finnick is telling him to rally.. What does ‘rally’ mean, Clove?”
Clove’s eyes go wide, and she would not be shocked if alarm is written on her face. That is not something she was anticipating explaining to Cora for at least seven or eight more years. “You know, you should ask Cato when you go back, that sounds like a boy thing.”
The little girl accepts that answer, and nods enthusiastically. “Okay! Oh! Clove! I have a present for you!”
“A present for me?” Clove kneels down to her height again, disregarding the fear over wrinkles and creases in the fabric. There was so much more in life than the perfect press of a dress. “That's so sweet, Cora, you didn’t have to do that–”
“It’s yours though!” Cora digs into the little pocket of her dress, fishing out a little silver pile that she holds out in the palm of her hand towards Clove. “You told me to keep it safe, see? Do you wanna wear it?”
It takes all in Clove not to grab the necklace out of her hand, to snatch it and keep it safe as soon as she recognizes what it is. She doesn’t have to, because Cora unclips it for her and gestures like she wants to secure it around her neck for her. With a nod, Clove pulls her hair out of the way, and blinks hard, willing away tears that would otherwise ruin the minimal makeup she was amenable to wearing. Clove runs the tip of her fingers over the script C, the sterling silver chain tarnished and worn, emblematic of over twenty years of wear.
Clove pulls her in, both hands around her little shoulders as her hand comes to cradle the back of her head. “Thank you, Cora Jade. Thank you so much for keeping it safe for me.” She kisses the side of her temple as the door flies open once again.
“Clove lets get this- oh! Cora. Cato is looking for you.” Enobaria warns before she steps into the room. “Something about getting to sample the cookies–”
“Bye Clove!”
The little girl nearly runs out the door and out the door before Clove can process it, and she is left staring at the doorway where Enobaria enters.
“God damn, look at you Enobaria” Clove calls out, pursing her lips and looking her mentor up and down. Enobaria rolls her eyes but leans on the door frame. She’s opted for a well tailored black velvet suit, except that her skin is completely bare underneath the jacket that is held together with a single gold button. Her natural curls frame her face, tamed only by the gold victor’s crown around the center of her forehead. “You look hot.”
“Yeah, well, were you expecting me to be in a ballgown like Glitter, she looks ridiculous. I didn’t know we were playing dress up today.” Enobaria flashes her a coy grin, a grin that is no longer serrated like a shark, but restored to her natural, blunt smile after the war. No need to upkeep a defense when the threat is eliminated.
“Oh be nice, she feels pretty, Baria. Let her feel pretty.” Clove warns, holding her hands out to take the bundle of flowers that Enobaria brings her in her left hand. “And it’s Glimmer, You really should know her name if you’re going to continue to sleep with her sister.”
“Chill, I know her name. And I'm kidding, I had to talk Cash out of feathers this morning. You’re welcome.” Enobaria’s eyes roam from her toes to the tip of her head and she gives just the slightest nod of approval. “You look like such a grown up.”
“I’ve been an adult for a minute, Baria.” Clove reminds her, but does turn her head to catch her appearance in the mirror once again. She feels almost vain for the way she keeps looking at herself, but if there is ever a moment to feel that, it’s now. “I feel like I wore a lot of dresses on the tour that showed a lot of skin, too-”
“And you were a child, then. A little girl playing dress up, even if you didn’t think so. Now, you look like such a woman. You are just beautiful” Enobaria comes behind Clove, and brushes her hair back off of her lace capped shoulders. She looks at their shared reflection a little longer, and Enobaria can’t help but imagine Clove’s mother would have looked all the same.
“Noone uses that word very often for me, but you all keep saying it today.” Clove shifts the flowers in her hands– she isn’t entirely sure what they are but they are red and white and there is no rose in sight– and swallows her pride as she locks eyes with Enobaria. “You told me I was going to thank you, one day. Back when you told me you were pulling us from the same games. You said I’d thank you one day, and I guess that day is today. Thank you. For not letting us kill each other, or die together. Thank you for keeping me alive my entire life. In so many ways, I wouldn’t be here right now, if you hadn’t been there.”
“Keep telling me I'm right, I like to hear you admit it.” Enobaria teases, but gently squeezes both of her arms. “I’m proud of you, Clove. Do I wish it were literally anyone but Cato, yes, but I'm still proud of you.” Before Clove can refute, she turns her away from the mirror and to face her. “I’m kidding. I’m not kidding about the fact that we all know you should have chosen something other than white to wear considering what you did on national television–”
“Enobaria!”
“I’m proud of you. I mean it. Now. Lift your chin.” Enobaria nudges the tip of her chin up with her knuckle, before reaching to lift the golden band of metal from inside her suit pocket.
She centers Clove’s head, before gently and intentionally placing her well earned Victor’s crown along the top of her head. Once it is settled she pulls her loose curls to the front, untucking pieces from behind her ear. Once she is happy, she places her hands on Clove’s shoulders and twists her to face the mirror. “There. You’re ready. The last Victor of District Two..”
It had been a debate, how many of the traditions to follow. District Two had enough Victors that they had their own marriage traditions. It was questionable, if in a world without games did it really make sense to wear the crowns and say the lines? Ultimately they decided, yes. Because before they were here, before they were considered rebels, before they were even victors…they were partners. Partners who gave their entire lives to end up here.
“Thank you.” Clove emphasizes again, nodding at herself in the mirror. The dress, the flowers, the crown… he’ll love it. “I think i’m ready.”
“Perfect. I’ll see you down there then. If you change your mind just say the word, we can sneak out the front.” Enobaria promises, stepping back, giving her one final look over before turning to leave. “Good luck.”
“Wait!” Clove freezes, suddenly overly aware of the pounding in her chest, the deafening sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. She has not done any of this alone, and she will not start now. “Will you walk with me?”
Enobaria pauses, and cocks her head as if she’s debating it before cracking a smile and holding out her hand. “Thought you’d never ask, kid”
Clove is unsure if she blacks out in the following moments or if time skips on her, but the next thing she knows is she is on the other end of a short aisle from Cato.
Cato. Identical crown on his head, perfectly tailored black tuxedo clinging in all the right ways. She notices the white button down underneath is unbuttoned most of the way down his chest, and if she weren’t so aware of the blood pounding in her ears she’d make fun of him for it.
She wants to kiss that absolutely infuriating smirk off his face, and she’s about to. When Clove looks up and catches his eyes with her own she is sure her heart stopped. She’s vaguely aware of Enobaria to her right, holding her arm and guiding her the twenty or so steps, but all Clove really can recognize is him.
She doesn’t absorb their friends line either side of the short aisle, in perfectly floral lined chairs. Johanna making a face, or Annie and Finnick waving with their baby. She doesn’t notice that Glimmer is sitting directly beside Marvel, her dress acting practically as a blanket over Marvel’s hands. Cashmere and Gloss are there, somewhere amongst the florals. She does not notice Cato’s mother in the front or little Cora in her lap. There are others– kids they went to the academy with, friends of his parents– but none of them matter, not now.
All Clove knows is that the second she’s in reach of him, he grabs her by the forearms and pulls her into a burning, heated kiss with a hand on her face. Clove half heartedly tosses the flowers in her hands in the general direction of Glimmer, and grabs firmly on the unbuttoned edges of his shirt to pull him into her.
“Hey! Not yet.” Brutus interrupts from his place at the head of the altar and the laughs of their friends pull them out of their locked embrace.
Even when they pull away, his hands are still on her hips, holding her flush against him. “Hi.” He whispers, a boyish smile spread across his face, a joy in his eyes that she isn’t sure she’s ever seen.
“Hi.” Clove whispers back, a heat in her face that she is all too aware of as she catches the way his eyes are trailing down the front of her dress and her body.
Brutus must repeat himself once or twice before finally reaching out and breaking the reverie in which they stare at each other by nudging Cato’s shoulder.
“For the third time…” He starts, and the distinct howling laugh of Johanna firmly plants them in reality. “I never thought I would be officiating a backyard victor wedding a year after a war ended the Hunger Games.” Brutus explains, before giving a jerk of his head to signal Clove to take a step back away from Cato, who is still holding her body against his. She obliges begrudgingly, knowing the moments they have left apart are counting down by the second.
As Brutus begins to read from a long book of District Two traditions, Clove feels Cato tighten his grip on both of her hands. “You look incredible.” He mouths, and Clove can’t help but feel the blush rising to her face again.
“Like the lace?” She mouths in response, and sees the recognition fall over his face as his features soften just enough for Clove and Clove alone to notice.
“Like I was saying.” Brutus raises his voice, once again snapping the two of them back into the moment beyond just themselves. “ In District Two, we are not known for verbal displays of love. We do not have deep professions of love through vows. This tradition is rooted deep in the history of District Two Victors. We are raised and trained in bloodshed. We are also aware of the vulnerability of allowing someone to raise a weapon against us, and trust them so entirely not to cut too deeply. This is particularly special for these two, for many many reasons. As all of us know, they are the only two District Two Victors to marry each other, and they will be the only ones to ever do so. What is most special, of course, is that these two were raised to be partners. I remember the day we paired them up, this giant monster of a boy and this feisty, scary little girl. They hated each other and then when they didn’t hate each other was when it became a problem for Enobaria, myself, and the other trainers. We made them too good of partners, because here we are today. What you’re about to witness is the blood oath of Victors. It is tradition to use their weapon of choice. Cato, will be first.”
Their hands fall as Enobaria comes and first, places the hilt of a sword in his hand, before slipping the handle of a knife into hers. Vaguely, Clove can hear Glimmer go “oh my god an actual blood ritual’ from her place in the front row of chairs, followed by a whispered “fuck I hate blood” immediately after from Marvel.
Clove takes a step back, making room for the duration of the silver blade of the sword between them, and tilts her chin up to give him space. She does not flinch when the sharp tip slices through the top layer of her skin overlying her heart, she does not unlock her eyes from his when she feels the sticky warmth of blood pooling and dripping down the front of her chest. It’s not deep, but it’s enough to sting. Her eyes are locked on his, never once breaking when she feels his thumb wiping through the blood on her chest. She feels like prey and a prize at the same time, with the dark look in his eyes locked on her. He breaks their locked gaze to look down at her hand, where he slides a solid gold ring onto her left hand, resting securely above the diamond she already wears.
She does not even wait for instruction that she is next. She steps forward and the knife in her hand closes the space between them, and Clove cannot help but flick her wrist into the shape of a C as she slices into the skin directly over his heart. She hesitates, for only a moment, watching the blood run down the plane of his chest, before she too runs her thumb over the blood. Clove cannot get her hands to work fast enough as she grabs his left hand in both of hers, and works as fast as she can to get the gold band on his hand, to claim him as hers, hers, hers forever.
Brutus is talking again, but it doesn’t matter. He’s got her by the waist, and she’s holding his face in her hands. She brings her bloodied thumb to his lips, smearing his own blood along his lower lip as he does the same to her.
“I love you.” He whispers first, pressing his forehead against hers, pulling her body against his, taking careful care to only touch the bare skin of her back with his bloodied finger, not daring to stain the lace she wears.
“I love you.” Clove responds, and is somewhat aware of Brutus in the background formally announcing them as married in the rites of victors. Cato Hadley and his wife Clove Kentwell Hadley.
Her thumb hovers over his lip, before she threads her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “You’re my partner.”
“You’re mine.” Is all Cato gets out in response before he crushes his lips into hers.
The taste of blood and each other is familiar and enchanting and all exciting all at once.
It tastes like victory.
Pictures, dinner, all of it passes in a blur.
It’s nearly night now, and drinks are long past flowing. Cato’s mother has taken Cora to Clove’s house for the night, allowing the adult behavior to come out in full force.
Clove is pressed into his side, his arm around her hips, hand firmly grasping the top of her thigh, when the sun starts to go down and Marvel makes a point to gather everyone’s attention.
“Hey guys, you all unfortunately know who I am. Noone asked me to speak, in fact Cato explicitly begged me not to this morning, and Clove threatened that if I did she’d cut off my-”
“Anyway!’ Glimmer interrupts, taking the champagne glass from his hand and holding it at her side and out of his reach. “I also was told not to do this. But I planned this whole thing, and so I think I can say whatever I want. Besides, you owe us this, because we did keep watch while the two of you fucked in the middle of the Hunger Games. Also, the world was convinced for a little while that all four of us were-”
Marvel interrupts before she can continue to ramble on.“Originally, we were going to do this separately. I was going to talk about Cato, she was going to talk about Clove. I’m sure no one's expecting Glimmer and I to be doing this together..this is quite literally as close as we’ve physically been to each other in months.” Marvel begins, and turns his attention directly to Cato and Clove.
“What are they doing?” Clove gets out through clenched teeth, pseudo-rage flashing in her eyes. Maybe it was the drinks, maybe it was the pure joy she felt, but she couldn’t find it in her to actually be angry with them.
“Embarrassing themselves.” Cato pulls her closer, and leans them back in their chairs. “What's the worst they could say?”
“Noone expected us to be friends! We all could have so easily ended up in the same games, all of us dead.” Glimmer begins, a giggle escaping her that had Clove not been with her all day, she would have assumed to have been nervous. But no, that was the giggle of a drunk girl, who had been drinking mimosas since sunrise, that is about to recount something horrendous. “But by all accounts..things worked out for us. The stars aligned, fate stepped in..whatever you want to say. And I know Clove didn’t like me the day I met her. I can’t blame her, I looked at her and said we should have a double wedding and look where we are! They’re married and me and Marvel here can’t look at each other for more than five minutes without one of us leaving in tears–”
“He was drunk crying about her this morning. He had three shots and went down, going on and on about how he threw away the love of his life.” Cato leans over to whisper to his wife, who whips her head over to look at him with wide, amused eyes. “Finnick was literally holding his head in his lap like..stroking his hair. It wasn’t even eight a.m. yet.”
“I heard about that… You need to teach your seven year old sister what rally means, by the way.” Clove admits, poking him in the knee playfully.
“Well one of us wasn’t stupid enough to throw away the best thing we’d ever have.” Marvel gets out, and Clove gasps so loudly at his repetition of the words Cato just whispered that everyone whips their head around to look at her this time. “Anyway! Clove also found me exceptionally annoying, and it’s okay, everyone does!”
“But what Clove has never heard about, is this story. We met Cato during his tour, of course, and he was this cocky kid. We thought he was just a standard District Two victor, nothing special.” Glimmer goes on, this time bringing the glass she confiscated from Marvel to her own lips and draining it. Clearly, the slip from Marvel left her flustered, too. “But, then it was the seventy third games. And Cato would not shut up about how good this girl was. He never looked away from her on screen. He stole all the sponsors talking about how incredible she was. He thought he was being so nonchalant and sly about it…but we all knew.”
“And I remember getting a knock on my door in the middle of the night. It was Glimmer, but I was positive it was someone saying Clove died and that Cato was coming to kill us all. Because I knew, if Clove had died, every single one of us, our tributes, and anyone else he could get his hands on, we're going to be dead.”
“And then it was down to the final few. I remember him sitting on that on that couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together so so nervous. And she threw this knife and she missed and I saw the color drain from his face. The fear in his eyes when he thought you were going to die, Clove, I wish I could say that was the only time I had ever seen it.” Glimmer shakes her head, the curls in her hair starting to slowly fall and frizz around her face like a little halo. “But then she won. And most of us were there when it happened, most of us remember the way he jumped up. And Clove, without thinking, he pumped his fist in the air and he said “that's my girl.” And we had all known. But the look on his face..I’ll never forget it. That boy was so deeply in love, and today I am so sure he still is.”
Marvel clears his throat, and it is clear from the way his face drops that there is a serious turn about to be taken. “I mentioned that we were originally going to speak only for one of them. But, it is a disservice to the way they love each other to do that. I went through the worst experience of my entire life with Clove, in the capitol, and Glimmer similarly can speak for what she went through with Cato. We’re so uniquely privileged to have seen the way you both love each other so deeply. Most of you know, or unfortunately were part of, the horrific things we went through in the Capitol. Clove…she had it worse than maybe anyone. We all know that Clove is incredibly stubborn, and incredibly strong. What I am unfortunately aware of, myself, is the extent of what was done to her. It is not my story to tell. But I know that all those fuckers wanted was to get her to scream, and she refused. She wasn’t going to give them that. The only thing Clove ever asked for, wanted, and she’s going to kill me for exposing this, but the only time I ever saw her cry in those entire months of torture…was Cato. It was towards the very end, and I was scared, truly scared, to know they had brought her to the point of crying for him even alone in her cell... because I thought that meant we were all going to die if even Clove was at her breaking point. There is a deep, deep, incredible trust and love between them, beyond anything I have ever seen.”
At some point Glimmer had started crying, because it is through heavy tears that she concludes her aspect. “We are so lucky, to be witnesses not only to today, but to the way you two love. Through multiple Hunger Games and forced separation and a war..there’s never been a moment where I thought of you as separate. You are always Cato and Clove. Please don’t kill me for saying this, but I mean it, when I say you are my best friends. I do not think I would be alive without the two of you feeding me and pushing to keep going. I’m also really really excited for you two to have babies for me to be Auntie Glimmer to, I’m already in my fairy godmother dress, so if you two could like…hurry up with that and maybe give me a girl in like…nine months I’d really love that, thank you. We love you guys.”
Marvel’s hand experimentally finds the small of Glimmer’s back, and she doesn’t flinch away. He grabs a champagne glass off a table and raises it infront of him. “To Cato. And To Clove.”
Glimmer interrupts with a smile on her face that juxtaposes the tears running over her cheeks “to Cato and Clove.”
When Cato turns his head to look at Clove, who’s curled into him, he notices the way her eyelashes are clumped and wet. “Are you crying?”
“Shut up.” Clove warns, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand, before she more properly turns her body to fully lay against his side.
Enobaria takes the moment, then, to stand up while the attention is still drawn all while drawing the attention away from Glimmer and Marvel, who seem to be heading towards the bar set-up together. She’s also clearly enjoyed her night, her jacket now unbuttoned (and missing the single button), the fashion tape underneath holding it closed, but more notable was the pink lipstick faintly visible along her neck and collarbones.
“I..couldn’t pass up the opportunity to embarrass you.” She starts gesturing towards Clove. “As everyone here knows, I raised Clove. We can say I was a mentor to her, but in reality, I helped raise her. I met her when I was twelve, and she was two. Her mother was my mentor, and we all know that her mother is not here with us now. I only feel so inclined to do this, because of the fact her mother isn’t here to do so. I remember Clove as this tiny tiny toddler, about the same height as now. I remember the day her bitch of a grandmother dropped her off at my house to teach her how to throw knives. What she didn’t know until right now is I really had no idea, and actually had to ask Cashmere and Gloss how to teach her. But hey, clearly, I made her a victor anyway. And then… there was Cato. This little infuriating prick of a kid, who broke her clavicle the day they met. I knew he was going to be a pest in my life, ever since. They were the best partners though. They knew each others moves, their strengths, and their weaknesses. They were good and then when they were teeangers exactly how good of partners they were became all of our problem. Clove..she was traumatized. A dead teenage mother will do that to you. I was not worried about her…repeating…that statistic. Until fucking Cato Hadley won the games and came home a cocky Victo. And then…I caught her sneaking out of his house the day he got home. I about killed her. I went home, and I called Cash, BEGGING her to help me figure out how to keep her from getting pregnant too. Cato, Clove, remember to thank Cashmere for all the years of risk free sex, later.”
“Maybe she should also be thanking Cashmere for all the risk free sex, look at her right now?” Clove murmurs, and the shaking of Cato’s chest underneath her is all she needs to know he is holding back a laugh.
“I was ready to kill Cato, because I was sure he was going to distract her from her last year of training. But to his credit, and I hate saying that, he pushed her harder than even I did. I remember telling him to back off, and when he didn’t, I was so hopeful Clove was going to get over him. Clearly..I had no such luck.” Enobaria gives a smile that is so soft without her filed teeth that it nearly does not look like her. “When she was in the games, and Cato and I went through the fear of losing her together…I decided he was okay. If she was going to pick one, at least he was a victor, too. And as much as I hate to say it..he loved her then, too. When they went into the quell..I knew they were not going to come out without each other. I wanted to kill them, and I do mean that literally, when I saw them covered in that blood and going into the cornucopia, but then…everything went to hell. I was in the dark about them the entire war. I did not know if they were alive, I did not know if they were dead, though I assumed that they were. I’ll never forget when one day, when she appeared on that stupid video and she looked..off. One of the worst moments of my life was when I heard her scream for him in the background of that video. Because I knew…I knew he was not there. I did not know if he was alive, but I did know that if he was, he was going to get to her and get her home. And he did. I cannot believe I am about to say this, but I am so happy to see you marry each other. I am also very glad it is now and not because you were seventeen year old teen parents. Above all else…I am so proud of you both. Cato…Clove..you are both my victors.”
At the conclusion of her speech, Clove pushes herself up just in time to meet Enobaria half way as she leans across the little table to hug her. “Thank you, Enobaria.”
One of the biggest joys of their wedding is to watch their friends enjoy themselves.
“Annie!” Clove grins, throwing her arms open to offer the redheaded woman a hug. “Thank you for making it, I know it has to be hard with the–where is that baby of yours?”
“Oh, Glimmer has him.” Finnick explains, taking his turn to hug Clove as well. He nods his head to the corner of the room, where Glimmer is seated at a little table, gently rocking the three month old baby to sleep. “She also gave us the whole Aunt Glimmer Fairy godmother talk this morning.”
Glimmer is in fact swaying in her chair, clearly singing some song to the boy. The longing in her face is evident, even from across the room, from the way she offers her finger to the baby in her arms to how she holds his bronze covered head intentionally above the glitter of her dress so as to not irritate his baby skin.
“I think she should just have one herself.” Annie remarks, leaning her head against Finnick’s chest. “I think she’s meant for it.”
“Yeah, well, she’s missing half that equation.” Cato recalls, pulling Clove’s back to his now entirely bare chest, his shirt having lost the rest of the buttons throughout the night.
“I don’t think she will be for long.” Finnick suggests as Marvel settles himself in the seat directly next to Glimmer, reaching out to tickle the bottom of the baby’s pajama covered foot. Glimmer gives him a smile before redirecting her attention to the baby, but Marvel, oh Marvel never looks away from the expressions on Glimmer’s face.
Johanna finds them as they’re sitting next to the cake, in their own little world, spooning bites of the confection into each other's mouths.
“Okay, Lovebirds, where are all the hot people for me to go home with?” She remarks, slamming herself down in a seat across from the two of them.
“Nice to see you too, Jo.” Clove murmurs, wiping icing off the corner of her mouth gracefully. “I dunno, I bet Glimmer would be down.”
“Are you serious? Her and Marvel literally snuck off into your house fifteen minutes ago. I don’t want to get in bed with them.” Johanna scoffs, shaking her head. “I thought Cato would have a hot brother or something here..”
“Wait Glimmer and Marvel did what?” Cato interrupts, holding up a hand to stop her from continuing with her subject change. “In our house?”
“Well, in Clovey Girl’s house I think. Marvel had a plate full of cake and a bottle of the good stuff in his hand too, like the kind of shit Haymitch used to hoard at the games…speaking of Haymitch! You didn’t even invite them? Miss Mockingjay I understand, but after all Peeta went through with us..” Johanna clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “Cold even for you two.”
“We did invite them, Johanna.” Cato defends, reaching behind them and getting another slice of cake for him and his wife– oh he could say it in public now— to share.
“Katniss is still on District Twelve house arrest. Peeta didn’t want to come without her. He did make the cake though. That kid can bake.” Clove swipes her finger through the ivory icing, before dolloping it on Cato’s nose. “We tried.”
“Ugh, you two are so gross. I’m going back to the bar.” She pushes herself to a standing position, surveying the room before straightening her dress. “....congratulations, I guess.”
“Thanks, Johanna.” Cato calls as she walks away, before pulling Clove fully onto his lap.
“We did it.” He teases her, pressing kisses along the juncture of her neck and shoulder, “You’re my wife, Clovey.”
“I’ve technically been your wife for years.” She turns so she faces him, her arm languidly draped over his shoulder. Clove strokes his cheek with her thumb, and flashes him a wicked grin. “Now it’s just public.”
“Are we ever going to tell anyone we did this before?” Cato’s hands come to rest on her hips, squeezing, promising of what is to come later in the evening as he leans forward and once again starts kissing from her jaw down her neck.
She lets out a delighted gasp at the feeling of his lips on her. “Absolutely not. This is for them. That? That was for us.”
I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this.
It is worth saying that life blooms through the cracks of a broken nation, love takes root in the rubble and ash. It is life itself, it is love embodied, that is a true pioneer species rising like a phoenix amongst ash riddled towns.
It is the passage of time that lets life and love flourish in the new panem.
It is friends in District One. Marvel who remembers the way cold aches in the very core of Clove’s body, and always has extra blankets casually lying out for her to take without ever needing to ask.
On a beach in district four, It is Glimmer and Finnick, watching her blonde little girl and his bronze haired little boy playing along the shore, with no care in the world other than their mission to find whole sand dollars and laughing in delight as hermit crabs scurry across their toes. Two children who, along with their siblings and friends, are free. Their childlike innocence intact, their bodies forever their own.
It is Johanna in District Seven, who finds that she had more in common with career victors than she thought. Or maybe, Cato and Marvel just make her feel like a fucking genius when it comes to women, and thats good enough for her.
In District Twelve it is a baker and an ex-revolutionary, who are never quite expecting for literal career killers to show up to a tiny little bakery on the edge of the seam. They come looking for cinnamon rolls and maybe tease Peeta a little too much about the status of his relationship. Peeta never turns them away (even if Katniss does pretend not to be in the shop that day, sometimes).
And in District Two.
It is in the combined efforts of Brutus and Enobaria, in establishing a recreation center for the surviving children of Two. It is far from the training empire it once was, let there be no mistake, but it gives a playground to the ghosts of the victors they once were. It serves as a memorial of sorts to the nearly one hundred and forty tributes who did not come home to District Two.
Cato and Clove, above all else, are happy.
These days, Clove does not have much use for throwing knives.
The ache in her body, the sharp pain in her wrists simply isn’t worth it anymore.
Clove Kentwell Hadley still never misses, but she is so much more than a girl with perfect aim.
Clove is the friend of the only surviving victors, she is the sister to the most affectionate Hadley she knows.
They are Aunt Cove and Uncle Cayo to the identical little daughters of their best friends, who wrap their tiny arms around their necks and smother them in honey blonde curls and pure, unfiltered adoration.
She is half of the best dinner parties– Clove makes the best food, but Glimmer plans the best parties. (It’s a bold statement to call them parties when it’s the four of them and the only other career victors, but Glimmer won’t have it any other way).
And she is loved. So, so, so loved, by the only man she’s ever trusted, wanted, and needed.
Clove is no longer just the girl who never misses.
In fact, three years after the end of the war, the only time Cato finds Clove throwing a knife is in their kitchen.
Her only goal?
Trying to earn the brilliant, infectious laugh of their blue eyed, blonde haired infant son in her arms.
This is the life of a victor.
The end.
I have this theory that D1 training not only involves media training and choosing angles/how to present themselves in interviews but they also train them in victor talents like congratulations if you win you’ll be a singer or a piano player or a dancer or a painter heres your mandatory lessons