Title: Constancy
Author: karebear
Rating: K+
Characters: Mrs. Everdeen, Hazelle Hawthorne
Disclaimers (Hunger Games): The Hunger Games trilogy was written by and belongs to the brilliant Suzanne Collins. I'm just borrowing the characters and world for a short while.
Summary: "They sat together through the long night, and in the morning drifted apart, because what else could they do?"
Notes: Just a quick one-shot. I had to knock it out even though I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.
The first long night she spent with Hazelle Hawthorne, they didn't talk at all.
They waited. It seems like they spend all their nights waiting.
That night, it was waiting for news in the aftermath of a mine explosion. Their husbands were trapped deep in that ground, as they stood helpless and freezing, their breath puffing out in white clouds as they shivered in the winter cold. She handed the other woman a mug full of tea, and its steam mingled into that crowded air. Hazelle nodded her thanks, but both of them were focused on the entrance to the mine, a yawning cavern drawing people like magnets, men who darted in and raced back out with equipment.
Shouting, commotion that brought hope, because they all knew no one would waste their time if there wasn't a chance... but as the night dragged on, the bustling slowed to a crawl, until all that was left was the quiet. Waiting families, holding their breath, shivering with cold and anticipation.
As the first rays of dawn broke the morning, they got the news.
Official confirmation of the fears that had been clawing at them all night, starting with nervous "I'm sure we're overreacting" anxiety, long hours of pacing and sidelong glances and half-hearted attempts at conversation, until it settled like a heavy weight, true irrevocable knowledge. No survivors.
Their eyes met at the medal ceremony, as their children were given gifts that did nothing to fill the holes - not the absence of their fathers, not the hunger in their bellies. Prim held her hand so tightly it hurt, which was good, because without that pain to anchor her she would have lost herself completely. And Hazelle held an infant in her arms and had two small boys clinging to her legs in addition to the teenage son standing on the podium with the mayor. They gave each other tiny smiles, nods of encouragement. "We'll make it through this," they said without words. "Because we have to. For our kids."
But she couldn't keep that promise.
She couldn't find it in herself to get out of bed, and she told herself it would be better the next day, but it never was.
And she had no idea how bad it was until the day Katniss came home with a couple of squirrels and told her angrily that she shot them in the woods with Gale Hawthorne.
And she should have felt worried for her daughter, or thankful for the food, she should have felt something, anything, but she didn't, because what immediately overwhelmed her was the knowledge that the only reason Katniss knew anything at all about those woods was that her father had taught her.
So she wrapped the blankets around herself and disappeared again.
Spring brought warmth and longer days and Katniss' twelfth birthday - tesserae and guilt pulled her slowly back to life.
Her older daughter never spoke to her unless absolutely necessary, but Hazelle kept her updated even though she never asked her to. While Katniss avoided her own home except to check up on Prim, she spent nearly all of her free hours with Gale. At least somebody's mother was there to look out for her.
The night after the Reaping, after Katniss left for the Capitol, after Prim finally fell asleep, as she sat in her tiny kitchen staring at nothing and repeating over and over to herself her promise that she would not lose herself in depression this time, no matter what, she heard a knock at her door. And somehow, she was not surprised at all to see Hazelle Hawthorne there, with two mugs full of tea.
They waited on the front porch of a house she neither wanted nor deserved, while inside Hazelle Hawthorne's son drifted between drugged unconsciousness and agony.
They'd figured out a sort of pattern, to their days, to their lives. A choking panic settled in their stomach every Reaping Day, the fear that they would be forced to watch one of their children die.
Then it actually happened, but somehow, even that passed. Katniss made it through, and Gale turned nineteen, and they figured they had months before they'd be holding another late-night vigil to chase away the anxious fear.
But Gale fought for his life not in an arena, far away, not in the predictable once-a-year worst days, but because under the cold sun of a completely average early-winter afternoon, they were hit with the worst possible reminder that Capitol control is so much bigger than the Hunger Games.
And they sat together through the long night, and in the morning drifted apart, because what else could they do?
They found each other again in the night after the end of the world, down by the lake that Katniss shared with her father. And for hours, she stared out at the smoke and the red heat of the fire that choked the air just far enough away, close enough to touch, and wondered why they survived when so many others did not.
"Because we have to," Hazelle reminded her. "Because that's what we do."
She came to Hazelle in the bomb shelters under District 13, and they watched their children go off to fight a war.
Hazelle came to her when Prim didn't come back.
Katniss and Gale have gone away, far apart, they've given up on each other and their mothers.
But somehow she knows they'll get through this too, because they've gotten through everything else.