So, for those of you that read my extremely long author's note addendum on goodnight, goodnight, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say this is the second one-shot in Bay-verse. And DUDE, it's, like, 4000+ words or something. Like, WTF? When did I start writing 4000+ word one-shots?
Anyway, I hope you all love this as much as you loved goodnight, goodnight, because, if you don't, I'm hesitant to post the hundreds of Bay-centered shots I've got hiding hiding in my documents folder... Because, you know, my self-esteem is just that fragile. LOL, no, actually, even if you all HATE this, I'm going to post the rest, because I've got a story to tell, and I'll be damned if I don't tell it. ;D
Disclaimer: I totally own THG. Oh, wait, it's not opposite day? Okay, well, nevermind then, I totally DON'T own THG. Oh, and I don't own 'Daughters' by John Mayer (the title and summary for the fic. :3)
commence
Kids are not something they discuss, not even when they get married. His family mentions it from time to time, as do friends and acquaintances, but they generally brush it off, stating that they're young and will continue to be so until they decide to have children. He asks, once, and it fills her with such terror, with such sheer panic that he drops the topic altogether.
She doesn't know why the prospect of children scares her; it's not as if she's unsure of how to make or care for one. She knows the basics of childcare; feed them on a regular basis, bathe them daily, keep clean clothes on their backs, and an unleaky roof over their heads.
It is the finer aspects that she is terrified of, she supposes.
She has no memory of her own mother, and her grandmother wasn't particularly motherly towards her, in general. She could turn to Forte's mother, she supposes, though she is loath to do so. His mother, Melody, has been nothing but nice to her, going out of her way to make her feel welcome in the Aster clan, but she is still the daughter of the girl that murdered the first of the Aster children, and it's weird. She wishes it didn't feel that way, but it does. So, they do not talk about it.
XxXxXxX
They do not talk about their future in general, but it is understood that, if they do somehow end up staying together, and they do manage to live through their Games, children are not going to be part of their lives. Neither would condemn a child knowingly to the life that they lead.
Every once in a great while, they will joke about what horrible parents they'd make, how screwed up their child would be, just by sharing genetic material with them.
But those jokes never last very long.
XxXxXxX
It happens suddenly. She is walking down the street, going to meet Forte for lunch, when she notices a mother with her two children, one older and one an infant on her hip, and there is this longing in her, this yearning for a little hand of her own to hold. It surprises her, makes her stumble a little and sends her headfirst into a lamppost.
At lunch, Forte asks her about the line of bruising down the middle of her face, and she doesn't say what's on her mind, instead begs off and claims general clumsiness. Because –let's be honest– who would want her as a mother?
XxXxXxX
It never quite dawns on her that she might be the motherly type. She has rarely interacted with children, and only then at the Academy, to assist with the younger kids' training.
She supposes that, with time, she would probably grow fond of babies and children; would want one eventually, but she never considers the possibility, because she is a Career, for fuck's sake. Careers don't have children, don't even want children.
It doesn't stop her from wondering, though.
XxXxXxX
She doesn't tell Forte about her suspicions immediately. She keeps it to herself, sneaking out of bed in the early morning to empty her stomach of its contents and brushing her teeth to the point of sparkling before returning.
He catches her, finally, at six thirty in the morning, hunched over the toilet, and he rushes to her side, like the good husband he is, and holds her hair back. He tells her to go see the town doctor, she tells him what, exactly, she thinks he could do with that suggestion.
But, before he's completely out the door, ready to climb back into their bed, she says quietly, "I'm late. Very late."
And he whips around with this grin, this crazy happy grin, and she swears it's infectious, because she never smiled this much before him, but she's grinning too, despite herself, and he's lifting her up, spinning her, and she's laughing, and she thinks ––
She thinks that this is where she's always wanted to be, whether she knew it or not.
XxXxXxX
He notices first, when he's pulling her shirt over her head. He pauses, and she gives him a look, asks, "Are you going to go back to training now, or something?"
He shakes his head, keeps his eyes glued to her middle, and, finally, fed up with his lack of passion, she glances down. And, God, she freezes, because there is a disturbing roundness to her abdomen, slight but definitely rounded out where it was once flat. And it terrifies her.
He sputters, "You're– you're pr–."
"No. I can't be," she snaps, though it doesn't have quite as much venom as she'd been going for. Instead, she just sounds scared, and young, and worried, and, oh, did she mention scared?
She scrambles backwards, pulling her shirt on quickly, and hisses, "This is your fault. This is all your fault."
He raises his eyebrows, entirely too calm for the situation, and smirks, responds, "I'm pretty sure you were involved too."
And she slaps him, a little harder than she normally does when he's being an ass, but she thinks it's justified.
XxXxXxX
The first month (third, technically, though she hadn't noticed before) passes without incident, and Forte's family (all of his family) calls her to offer their congratulations, to offer advice, as well, which she appreciates, but doesn't.
Forte picks up extra shifts at the factory. She works overtime at the school, tutoring after class is out for the day. They slowly but surely start saving, start planning the spare room's transformation into a nursery.
And mixed in with all the terror, with all the excitement and anxiety, all the happiness and panic, there is grief, raw and true. Because, every day, when she sees herself in the mirror, sees that 'glow' everyone comments on, she can't help but wonder if the dark haired girl looked the same way, looked as pleased, when pregnant with her. She doubts it, but it doesn't keep her from wondering.
XxXxXxX
She doesn't speak to him for a month. Goes to training, as per usual, but avoids looking at him. He keeps trying to talk to her, keeps trying to corner her in an attempt to work things out, but when she sees him walking her way, she'll rush off in the opposite direction, too completely drained to even attempt a conversation with him that will undoubtedly end with them screaming at each other, and, as far as she's concerned, there is nothing to talk about. She is going to get rid of the problem in a week, so what does it matter?
If anything, it is better that things happened this way, gave them a reason to break up, if you count their whatever-it-was as a relationship.
But then the day comes, and she finds herself unable to get up, unable to summon the will power to go through with the procedure. She finds herself grasping for the phone, dialing his number without thinking about it, and, god, she just about loses it when there's no answer, because she is not doing this alone, if at all.
And then she hears someone pounding on her door, shouting her name, and she rolls out of bed, not caring much about her hair or how she was dressed, though she has the presence of mind to pull on a pair of sweatpants under his t-shirt (not that she's been sleeping in his shirt, or anything).
She's not halfway down the stairs when the door bursts open, splintering from his force, and left hanging off its hinges, Cato standing in the foyer, looking around for her. She blames elevated hormone levels for the tears that spring, unbidden, to her eyes, stinging and traitorous. She doesn't make it a step forward before he's there, right in front of her, and crushing her against his chest.
They don't speak, but it's enough.
XxXxXxX
She's not really that big, she muses one day, when fighting with the top button of her pants, though they might disagree. Finally, she gives up, and kicks them off into a heap, opting instead for a white sundress, a flimsy little thing with a forgiving empire waistline, and stretchy enough to accommodate for her increasing bust.
Forte groans when she walks out of the bedroom. "You're going to go and teach a bunch of pubescent boys…wearing that?"
She frowns and fiddles with her wedding ring, twirling the silver band around and around, until the solitaire diamond is facing her, away from the rest of the world.
"I can't fit anything else."
And he doesn't understand why that's such a big deal, why that's a problem, just assumes she's used to looking a certain way, and is startled when she no longer looks that way. So, he hugs her, kisses her cheek, and rushes out, worried about being late to work.
And she is close to following, but pauses by the mirror hanging in the living room, mostly there for decoration, but good for when she's second guessing her clothing choice. She studies herself, poses with her stomach pushed out far, her hands on her back in an effort to look, well, pregnant.
It occurs to her that, for all she's seen of the dark haired girl on the tapes, from all she's seen in photographs, she's never seen her pregnant.
She stares in the mirror, stops posing, and decides she's better off not knowing.
XxXxXxX
Training is the first thing to be dealt with. The instructors at the Academy are livid, but they can't do anything but release her from classes until the baby is two months old. Cato is pleased with it, she significantly less so. It's not as if she'll have anything to do for the next six months, while he's off kicking ass.
He even tells her not to practice knife throwing in her kitchen, something she's been doing since forever, because he doesn't want to risk a knife ricocheting and hitting her (see: their unborn child). She has to admit, though, protective is a side of him that she rather likes.
...That doesn't mean she listens, of course.
XxXxXxX
At five months, she balloons. Her face grows rounder, her hips widening, and her bust increasing drastically. Her belly is officially unable to be hidden, now. Forte begins talking about names. She ignores him.
Until that baby is in her arms, she will not get too excited, will not plan too much. She, of all people, knows that things can be taken away in an instant.
That doesn't stop her from grinning in surprise when she feels the baby move for the first time.
XxXxXxX
The baby is hyperactive, she decides. She can't sleep at night, because the baby is moving. She can't walk easily, because the baby is moving. She can't throw knives behind Cato's back, because the baby will move and will throw her off balance, send the knife into the dining table or something.
Sometimes, at night, when she's seriously uncomfortable, and exhausted, and really rather bitchy, Cato will roll over; press a hand to her stomach and whisper, "Baby C, if you could cut it out for five hours, your mother would appreciate it. And I would appreciate not being almost stabbed every morning."
And she'll frown and feel like a failure, because he talks to her stomach, all the time, and she refuses to, even though all the books they've read, all the advice they've been given, it all says that she should. But she doesn't, because, really, it's a fetus. It's not absorbing anything, other than everything she eats, apparently, and since Cato's got it covered, she figures she doesn't have to.
But, when he does this, and when the baby settles down, it never fails to make her want to.
XxXxXxX
At seven months, the nursery is done. They have decided on no name, as of the moment. Maternity leave has been planned, scheduled, and confirmed. Family visits have increased tenfold, making it seem like every other weekend they have one of Forte's relatives in their guest room. Finally, after his sister and brother-in-law leave, she states that she wants to visit Two.
It's been about six months since the last time she went out there, almost to the day, and she has found that whenever she stays away for more than a month, her heart starts to hurt, just a little, throbbing dully around the ragged edges.
He buys them train tickets that evening. They're in Two the next morning.
Walking (read: waddling) around the place she grew up is different, when seeing it through pregnancy clouded eyes. Suddenly she's noticing the distinct lack of cheer, no children running through the streets freely, like in Five or Eight or Twelve. People here look straight ahead, or at the ground, no smiles gracing their lips.
She tugs Forte through the maze of streets quickly, sighing in relief when the familiar blue roof of the blond boy's house comes into view. She doesn't know why, but she desperately wants the comfort that seeing her old home provides. Forte hesitates at the front door, begs off, saying that he needs to go and see someone about something. She doesn't mind, because she's not really sure if she wants him there.
Slowly, she wanders in, goes straight up to the attic, climbing the stairs carefully. In the corner, there are a few boxes, ones that she moved up from her room when she was nineteen, right before she got sober, when all she wanted to do was to forget who her parents were. Now, all she wants to do is remember some part of them, any part.
She pays no mind to those, at the moment, however, because she doesn't really want to see them murderous and bloody and dea– she doesn't want to see them that way. She maneuvers over to the other side, the side her grandmother filled with everything vaguely relating to the blond boy, to the dark haired girl that she blamed for everything. She bypasses the boxes labeled with clothes, books, posters, and heads straight for the ones labeled photos and videos.
When she was younger, she never came up here, fearing it with the blind terror of a child. When she was up there, at nineteen, she was so drunk out of her mind, she isn't surprised that she missed them.
The photo box, at first glance, is populated solely with pictures of the blond boy growing up. Digging further, she finds pictures that make her choke on her breath. She runs her fingers over the frames lightly, staring at the smirking faces of her parents, and at her own grinning countenance.
Pictures buried further down are of her, are of the dark haired girl as well, but she doesn't stop there. She keeps digging until she finds a singular photo of the dark haired girl, with a glare that isn't quite convincing, and a smirk that is more so, and a belly, round and full.
She sighs and remembers why she never wanted to see pictures like that.
It's a bittersweet feeling, leaning more towards bitter, but she still has this pull towards it, something in her very soul moving her hand to it, scooping it up and staring at it.
XxXxXxX
Cato keeps trying to get a picture of her, with her seven month belly, but he's not all that good at sneaking up on her, and she manages to push the camera away every time. He doesn't quite understand that he's a big boy, and big boys don't sneak very well.
After a month of him badgering her, she thinks she's safe. So, she lets her guard down (always a bad decision. Hasn't the Academy taught her anything?) and pours over this book they found (that Cato's mother gave them, actually, but Cato refuses to look at it like that (she's not sure why; at least his mother is alive and cares)) that's supposed to tell her how to soothe a colicky baby, and though she's almost sure that any child of hers will not have colic, she'd rather be safe than sorry.
She is reading a particularly interesting chapter when Cato jumps out of nowhere, making her jump and scream, sending the book flying and her heart racing. She blames being extra jumpy because of the baby, because anyone who knows anything knows that she'd never scream like that.
She smacks his chest angrily and curses him out, but she knows she's already smirking because even she has to admit that he being able to surprise her is pretty god damn amazing.
And that's when he snaps the picture with the camera he had hidden behind his back.
XxXxXxX
Her boss makes her stop coming to work, not just because there is only a month between her and her due date, but because her eight month stomach is difficult to maneuver in between the desks in her classroom. Which leaves her with nothing to do around the house, because her nesting phase struck early and the apartment is so clean it's clinical.
She thinks she could take up knitting or sewing or some other equally domestic activity, but she worries that if she does, she'll manage to somehow make the world end, because, excuse me! Bay Aster doesn't do domestic.
So, she spends her days reading, and making lesson plans for after her maternity leave ends, and watching the new shows that have been cropping up for television. She also begins unpacking the few boxes that she shoved in the back of the hall linen closet.
She had brought back a few boxes of things from the blond boy and the dark haired girl's houses, some old toys of hers, a few books, the photos, and most of her baby clothes. Forte surprised her at the beginning of her eighth month by replacing the rosewood crib they had bought with the darker one from her nursery in Two and by shipping her grandmother's rocker up, and placing it in the corner of the nursery, right by the window.
So, she props her feet up on the ottoman and relaxes into the rocker, and places the first box on what's left of her lap. The baby kicks, and she can see the little outline of its foot through her thin dress.
Slowly, she sorts through the things she brought back with her, smiling softly whenever she stumbles across something she actually remembers from her childhood. And she realizes that, no matter how terrified she is, she can't wait to see her child, her little baby with Forte, playing with these toys, wearing these clothes, hearing these stories.
XxXxXxX
When Cato is at training, she takes to walking through the small patch of woods, out behind her house. At eight months, it's somewhat tiring, but she can't do much else, so she walks.
When he comes over one night, and she's not there, she assumes he panics, because the next thing she knows, he's crashing through the trees and calling her name. She glares at him, annoyed that he had to interrupt her quiet, but the look on his face makes her soften. After that, she starts taking her walks later in the day, when he's home to walk with her.
She blames the hormones for making her go all soft.
XxXxXxX
She is doing laundry when she feels it; this great whoosh! of liquid tumbling down her legs. And she just freezes. Because, no matter how much she's read on the subject, no matter how many times she's imagined this moment, she's absolutely terrified.
Forte answers his work phone on the first ring and after she tells him what happened in a rushed, breathless voice, he says, "Uh, I, um, oh, fuck."
And she couldn't agree more.
Fifteen minutes later, she's lying in a bed, in a hospital, because, while she wanted to have the baby at home, Forte convinced her, way back in month five, that it'd be better, safer for her to have the baby in a hospital, packed with doctors and nurses that could step in in case something went wrong.
And, damn, she's glad she's in a place where people know what they're doing, because she sure as hell has no idea what the fuck she's doing, and the pain just keeps rolling over her, flattening her, and she is acutely aware of how much she wants her mother there. She may have no memory of her, may have nothing but pictures and tapes, but there is something deep within her, some small girl, crying out for her mommy, and her heart is just aching, just killing her with this hollow feeling, this place that she wishes was filled.
When the doctors tell her to push, she does, and she wants to scream, and yell, and curse Forte for even looking at her. But she doesn't, because she swears she sees in her peripheral vision a girl. A dark haired girl, with her eyes, and her smile, and god, everything about her is familiar, but not. And she starts crying, part from the pain ripping through her body, and part from the pain in her heart.
And suddenly, a newborn cry pierces the air, and there's this overwhelming sense of relief, and the doctor announces, "It's a girl!" and the dark haired girl in the corner (in her head?) smiles, and she knows what she's going to name her daughter, who no doubt looks just like her, and the girl that came before her.
And Forte doesn't look surprised at all when she holds her baby close, and runs a hand over her downy head and says, "I swear I'm going to make it right, Clove."
XxXxXxX
They're walking through the woods, again, when she stops abruptly. The pain she'd been feeling all day intensifies suddenly, and she grips Cato's arm so hard her fingertips are whiter than they normally are. He looks at her, his eyes panicked, and there's not quite a thing either of them can say, because, for all they say, they're nowhere near ready to be parents.
And they're halfway back to her house when her knees buckle, and dammit, this kid is coming now. He offers to carry her, but something in her eyes must tell him that that would not be such a good idea, and he instead helps her sit down and lean up against a tree.
She grits her teeth and breathes through the pain as it rolls over her, grips his hand a little too tightly, tries to be a Career again, and fails terribly. This is one thing that she cannot do by herself, and she is so incredibly glad that she doesn't have to.
She's not sure if it's been minutes or hours or days, but in all honesty, she's not thinking too much at all, with instinct kicking in, her body seeming to know what to do of its own accord. Cato catches the infant and she's not sure she's ever been so glad to hear a baby cry.
The name does not come to her immediately when she sees her daughter. She and Cato sit out in the woods for a while, just looking at her in fear and disbelief and she has this intense need to keep her close, to keep her safe, but she tries to keep her mind off of this as she and Cato suggest names.
"Violet?"
"Too prissy."
"Scarlett?"
"Keep away from colors."
He huffs and says, "Well, you pick something, then."
And she rolls her eyes and glances up, and she's not one for fate or signs or symbolism, but she realizes the tree she's leaning against is a bay tree, and she thinks it just…fits.
"Bay," she says, not as a question, of course, because she's always right, and when she looks at Cato, he's smiling at their daughter, who's sleeping peacefully.
"I like it," he murmurs.
XxXxXxX
In the moment that two become three, when a woman or girl becomes a mother, a man or boy becomes a father, the world shifts.
When a dark haired girl and a blond boy hold their daughter, they are unwittingly taking another step towards the end of their tunnel.
When a five-years-sober young woman and a grinning young man marvel at their daughter's newborn blue eyes, already turning a dark brown, they are knowingly taking the first steps towards making it all right, again.
fin
Er, so the ending was rather sappy/cliched, but I really don't care. I'm rather proud of this, because I've never had kids, never been in labor, never been pregnant, so this was all guesswork. I hope you like it too!
Quick note: The Bay-verse one-shots will never really go in a linear fashion. #2 in the series (this one) is during Bay's adulthood, but the next may very well be during her childhood. I will number them based on when I post them, so #3 might be her childhood, and #4 might be her in later years, and so on, and so forth. I hope that's not too confusing! I know it confused me...
Anyway, please review!