I want to dedicate this installment to fistfulofhearts, who kindly chose to recommend my Mellark Legacy series on her blog on Tumblr, 'everlarkrecs'. I'm not even on Tumblr myself to give a proper thanks, so this is the next best thing I could come up with. You wanted a 'Rosy the Riveter' Hazelle? Well… I think you'll like this. Let me know if you want more.

Disclaimer:The Hunger Games and all the characters in this fic are the property of Suzanne Collins.

Enjoy!

Hazelle and her oldest figured it'd be difficult to get on once her Jasper passed. However, they never quite imagined finding themselves in this particular situation seventeen days after being told their family's patriarch was never coming out of that mine.

The district was being barraged by a snowstorm that had lasted for the last three days and showed no sign of letting up. There was no way for Gale to make it out to find the midwife and his mother had been in labor for at least sixteen hours that he was aware of.

The fourteen-year-old was horrified.

He'd spent better part of the day attempting to keep his brothers distracted by playing the rowdiest games their combined juvenile minds could conjure up within the confines of their tiny home in an effort to impede them from hearing the agonized moans their mother tried to muffle into the blankets when her contractions hit from the opposing room. The boys were already having fevered nightmares about explosions and death and being entombed in darkened earth, a consequence of coming to grips with their father's death. Their older brother really didn't want them any further traumatized by learning first-hand the gory realities of human procreation.

In the end, however, he resorted to giving them both cups of tea with sleep serum to get them out of the way long enough to deal with their mother.

They were currently blissfully unaware of the pained screams emanating from the Seam woman in the next room, who with her upper body braced entirely against her oldest boy, held her legs apart with her hands under the bend of her knees, bearing down with all her strength.

Gale had no idea if the amount of blood that seemed to emanate endlessly from her was normal. He'd never heard her make such anguished sounds. He tried his best to comfort her in between contractions, reminding her to breathe as deeply as she could, like she'd instructed him to do for days prior. Beyond that, he was at a complete loss, felt utterly useless and was fairly certain his ma was freaking dying in his arms.

After about the third push, the boy saw his mother move one of her hands away from her legs to place it between her legs. With an exhausted gasp, she turned weary, red-rimmed eyes to him. "I'm crowning, Gale. The baby will be out with the next big push. You need to go around and catch it in the blanket for me. Can you do that for me, baby boy?"

The Seam teenager wasn't at all sure he could do that, in all honesty. However, his mother needed him to do this. There simply was no one else…

He carefully moved from behind her on the bed to position himself between her legs. He tried to look at her face to avoid looking at the bloody mess that was presently the juncture of her thighs. Even so, he felt his dinner trying to make a reappearance and his entire body's apportioning of blood rushing to his head.

God! He really hoped he didn't faint! Who'd help his ma if he fainted now?

He didn't have much time to dwell on that particular fear as his mother let out another almost feral scream and pushed while pulling back on her legs. Within seconds, what looked like a bloody blue/black bubble with bits of something he could only identify as scaly or veiny and gross-looking, sort of oozed out of her body from where all the other blood was. He stared down at it dumbly, going a bit green around the gills.

"You need to help the kid out, Gale," his mother grated out tiredly. "Pull the head gently until you see the shoulders, then you can grab those to hoist it out all the way."

Hesitant for a second to touch the bloody mess, the boy quickly gathered up the courage to do as his mother indicated. Curiously, he found the baby slid out rather easily once the shoulders were out. He immediately placed the screeching, squirming, fleshy, little thing on the clean blanket next to his mother's hips and started cleaning the blood off with another clean towel.

"Do we have a boy or a girl?"

Gale looked up from what he'd been doing to see his mother was bracing herself on one elbow and held a pair of scissors in her other hand, the latter outstretched toward him.

There must have been obvious confusion written on his face, because she let out a bedraggled, amused scoff before explaining, "Little ones can't stay attached, baby boy." She accentuated this with a pointed look at the umbilical cord.

Feeling five degrees of stupid, the teenager took the scissors and cut the cord before looking back at his mother questioningly, "Ain't we supposed to tie it off or something? It doesn't look right this long. Mine ain't this long. She's a girl, by the way." He added a grin to this last part, handing the swaddled infant over to his mother.

Hazelle gave her best attempt at a stern look his way, but was unable to keep the mirth out of her exhausted silver eyes, "I'm hoping you know that because of what's missing and not because of practical experience, young man." She then went about tying the newborn's cord into a tight knot, as close to her bellybutton as she could manage.

Her oldest boy cringed at the insinuation in her question. "Yeah… after what I've just seen, Ma, that's probably the furthest thing from my mind. And likely will be for a good long time, at that."

The Seam woman quirked a bemused dark eyebrow at him before stating almost mockingly, "Well, I'm certainly very glad to hear that. That kinda thinking won't get you anything but trouble, anyhow. Just look at me. Four of you 'cause I never did figure out how to say 'no' to your pa." She then added with a mischievous glint in her eyes, "Now take your baby sister, 'cause you have to help me deliver the afterbirth."

And here is where dinner made its reappearance.

"Is it even healthy for you to go out looking for work so soon, Ma?"

The Seam woman shrugged one shoulder casually, pulling her infant daughter away from her chest and doing the buttons up with the practiced ease of a woman who'd done this with three previous children in her lifetime. She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, "Ain't much choice in the matter, Gale. The stipend the government allotted us for your daddy's passing's almost gone. It's dead of winter. Most animals are hibernating. You're good out there, baby boy, but there's just not enough to be had- not that it should fall on you to provide for all of us single-handed. You're still just a boy. I need to go out and make a way for us."

The rage that swelled within the fourteen-year-old at his mother's simple words was almost suffocating. He was a failure. He was supposed to take care of them and he couldn't. Now, five days after giving birth to his baby sister, his mother was relegated to going into the streets to find work- doing what, exactly? The mines were out of the question with a newborn in tow. What was his mother going to do?

He had to figure out a way for them not to starve. He just had to think harder. There had to be another way…

He hadn't realized how his breathing had quickened or the fact that he was physically trembling from the anger until his mother pulled him into an embrace, apparently realizing how upset he was becoming. Hopelessly unable to discern any course that would prevent the woman who held him from having to go out into the bitter cold today, he resigned himself to bury his face in the crook of her neck like he did when he was still, well, little. He inwardly mused, that at least physically, this had not been in the last couple of years.

When he pulled back, his brow creased in confusion at the stain of moisture on the woman's shirt where his face had just been and the thumbs that gently rubbed at his cheeks right beneath his steel eyes.

Had he been crying? When had he started crying? Oh, for God's sake! He was sputtering like an infant in front of his mother!

Mortified, the teenager dropped his gaze to his boots, trying to pull away.

His mother, however, was having none of that. Forcefully planting both hands on either side of his face, she forced him to lock eyes with hers. He found himself entranced by the shared grief, loss, anger and determination he found in those eyes so unlike his own. He had his pa's eyes. Everyone said he was his daddy's spitting image when he'd been younger.

"You listen to me, Gale Hawthorne." He found the edge to his mother's voice jolted him out of the trance as if he'd been doused in snow water. "Ain't no shame in crying about what's been taken from you. The loss of a man like Jasper deserves to be mourned proper. He was a great man. He deserves better than you foolishly choosing bravery over missing him. You cry if you have to. Ain't no shame in a man crying over losing his daddy- really ain't no shame in a man crying when there's real emotion in his heart worth shedding those tears over, at all. And besides, you ain't even close to being a man yet, baby boy. You go ahead and let go of every tear that man deserves from you, 'cause he darn well earned it."

She didn't stop the tears that flowed freely from her eyes either, adding in a softer voice, "As for my going out to find me some work? Well, me and you, we're going to have something of a partnership. You help me out when you can and I'll help you out when I can. That's how things are gonna work here. I can't have you worrying yourself sick about all of us when there ain't nothing you can do. So, I want you to get your brothers to school, check the snares after and let me worry about Posy and the rest. I take half and you take half. Sound fair?"

No. It didn't sound fair, at all. Nothing about this waking nightmare the last month of their lives had become was fair. However, this was obviously how it had to be. He was hardly going to be difficult to the woman who'd given him life about it.

"Yes, ma'am," he assented grudgingly in a voice that bellied deep respect and adoration, as he wiped the tears off her face the way she'd done for him moments prior. Then, turning away from her, he hollered in the direction of the room he shared with both his baby brothers, "Vick, Rory! Get your butts up! You're going to be late for school!"

"Take it back!" The five-year-old shoved his older brother viciously, catching the bigger boy completely off guard and sending him plummeting into the snow in a graceless heap.

In what seemed to take less than a breath, the seven-year-old had corrected himself, lunging at the younger boy and wrestling him to the ground. "You take it back!" He shouted in his little brother's face as he pinned his arms painfully at his sides, using his knees to keep the younger, struggling boy from landing a kick to his lower body.

Huffing out an exasperated breath, the Hawthorne oldest grabbed both grappling boys by the scruff of their shirts, unceremoniously hoisting them off each other and a good three feet off the ground to face him.

They'd been arguing about something or another from the moment he'd gone to their respective classrooms to pick them up after school in order to walk them home, but he'd been far too engrossed in thoughts and worries over their mother to pay any particular head to whatever their little tiff was about. That is, of course, until he heard the abrupt thud behind him and turned to find them wrestling in the snow.

He really wasn't in the mood to deal with whatever these two where quarrelling over right now.

Releasing a slow breath and trying his best to remember the particularly rough few weeks his baby brothers had been going through, he ventured with as much equanimity as he could muster, "You guys know Ma doesn't like you brawling like that. What's this about, now?"

Pointing an accusing finger at the older boy while scrunching his face into an almost painfully adorable pout, little Vick huffed out with that particular cross between anger and hurt only a very young child can muster quivering his voice, "He says he misses daddy more because he knew him longer. But, that ain't fair! It ain't my fault I'm littler and couldn't know 'im as long!"

Oh, wow! Gale really was in no way, shape or form prepared to handle this!

Setting both boys down, he bent on his haunches so that he was at eye level with his second youngest sibling, who was adamantly glaring at a snow bluff near his feet. Raking a hand briefly through his hair, he sighed in reproach, "Did you really say that to him, Rory?"

Not meeting his older brother's gaze, the seven-year-old brought his short arms up to wrap across his chest obstinately. "Well it's true, ain't it? He can't miss dad as much as I do if he didn't get to be with him as long!" The statement was obviously meant to come out as an angry outburst, but the way the young boy's voice choked off in the end, spoke volumes of the sorrow that had truly engendered it.

The fourteen-year-old brought a hand up to rub down his face, taking a moment to formulate the best response to end this conflict between his younger brothers without causing any more damage to their already frail psyches. In the end, he decided to go with the honest, direct approach. He'd always been of few words, after all.

"Guys, the truth of the matter is: having known Pa longer doesn't mean you miss him any more or loved him any less." When Rory raised his face to him defiantly, clearly ready to retort to the contrary, he quickly added, "What knowing dad longer means in this family is that you have an even greater responsibility to take care of anyone who knew him less time than you did, 'cause you know that's what he would've wanted you to do."

The expression on the seven-year-old's face immediately warped from insubordinate to repentant and he shifted his eyes away from those of his older brother's to lock on his younger sibling with resigned understanding.

Vick, for his part, was tugging at Gale's jacket with large inquisitive gray eyes. Once his brother turned his attention to him, he uttered in a low, unsure voice, "So, I have to take extra special care of Posy, 'cause she didn't get to know daddy, at all."

Allowing a sad smile to tug at one end of his mouth, the oldest boy ruffled both his brother's hair gruffly, righting himself and continuing along the path home.

What could only be described as a mountain of fabric met them at the entrance once they opened the door.

This being far too much a temptation to the over-stimulated imagination of a seven and five-year-old, Vick and Rory instantly dove into the mass of clothes as if it were some kind of snow bluff- their innocent, juvenile minds completely oblivious to just how bizarre the random appearance of such a thing in the middle of their domicile actually was.

"You boys get out of there this instant and get to your room to get on your homework!"

The Hawthorne eldest turned his questioning scowl from the heap on the floor and his retreating little brothers, who grudgingly mumbled dissention at having to get off it, toward his approaching mother. She had Posy strapped to her back, sleeping soundly. He inwardly mused that kid's ability to sleep through raucous would come in infinitely beneficial in this family.

"So, what do ya think? Bet ya never thought you got your smarts from your old ma, huh?" The Seam woman's smirk was impossibly smug.

The crease between her son's brow only further deepened. "What is all this, Ma?"

The woman swung her hand out over the clothes on the floor, explaining casually, "I went out today, trying to figure out what I could do to earn us a living. I figured I'd walk around the town square to see what popped into my head, when I overheard two Merchant ladies talking. One was complaining to the other about how her girl was having a rough time with the harshness of the winter and having to do her wash due her delicate hands." She paused here to very pronouncedly, roll her eyes before continuing, "So, a light went off in my head and I stepped in and offered to do the girl's wash for her for a few coins a week. The mother asked me to take her wash through the winter, also. Seems Merchant folk don't take kindly to washing while it's cold out. So, I went to all the houses in town and offered to take their wash off their hands for them. It's a darn decent take, once all's said and done. And, you know how these town women are, once they get comfortable with not having to this themselves, they'll likely keep me on even after winter. This may be stable work for me."

The teenager found it difficult to reciprocate his mother's verb. He still felt a failure for relegating her to the position of wash woman to the better-off residents of the district. Apparently, his feelings were broadcast plainly on his countenance, because he found the woman's arms encircling him in a tight hug.

"Cheer up, baby boy. This is good. You and me? We're going to make one heck of a team!"

In spite of himself, the Seam teenager found himself returning his mother's brilliant smile. He couldn't help it.

He hoped with all his being he'd inherited even an iota of this amazing woman's irrepressible spirit.

A/N: I have many ideas where this can go from here, but no time to write. Reader input motivates me so...

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