Prompt: Hi! I've got a promt for HADS! You've written a couple oneshots where Effie thinks she's pregnant but she's not/she has a miscarriage. I would really like to read one where she turns out to be during the game and has to have an abortion because she realizes/Haymitch convinces her that it's not safe for neither them nor the baby to have the baby. Lots of angst please :3

Hopeless Wishes

"What?"

Effie licked her lips. His voice was gruff on the line but she didn't know why she had expected it to be otherwise. He had agreed to his phone being repaired for the children's sake but he had never liked the thing and she never seemed to call at the right time.

"It's me." she said, forcing the right amount of cheer in her voice.

She lied down on her couch and closed her eyes against the harsh light spilling from the bay window. She should have thought about closing the blinds. The pain wasn't terrible, she had had worse cramps in the past. It was what the cramps meant that was difficult to bear.

"Kinda figured." he snorted. "How many people do you think call me?"

"True." she conceded the point. "How was training today?"

She regretted asking as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The Quell… The Quell was looming ahead, closer with every new dawn.

"Same as every day. I still won't last five minutes in an arena." he sighed. "Hazelle got me some booze while the kids weren't looking though. Not much but enough. Stopped the shakes a bit. I can actually hold my fucking fork today."

Peeta was a darling with the best intentions but cutting Haymitch dry wasn't an option and he had agonized over the thing on the phone every time she had called him since the announcement. His housekeeper – who was not an idealist seventeen years old – had taken to bringing him small amount of liquor now and then so he could cut down progressively.

"Don't talk like this." she said quietly. "You cannot die." Her hand fluttered to her stomach and she swallowed back the lump in her throat. She couldn't lose him. Not after what she had done that afternoon. She couldn't. "Do you ever wish…"

She let her voice trail off into untold possibilities. A life with no Games where they would have been free to do something crazy like try to actually be a couple instead of people who fucked and pretended it didn't mean anything. A life in which she wouldn't have been forced to abort a child so it couldn't be used as a pressure point against his father. A life in which they could have been a family.

She shouldn't be thinking about that, she knew, and yet it was too late. She was picturing it, had been picturing it ever since the pregnancy test had turned pink really… A little girl who would look just like the perfect blend of them… Or a little boy who would be his spitting image… Sandy hair, grey twinkling eyes and a charmer's grin…

Her heart ached for this.

But that was lost now anyway.

Tears escaped her eyes and she took a shuddering breath that must have betrayed her because Haymitch's voice softened. "Effie…"

"I shouldn't have called." she said quickly. "I just needed…"

She had needed to hear his voice.

"Everything's okay over there?" Haymitch asked and she could hear him frowning. "You're okay, yeah?"

She wasn't. But it wasn't what he meant.

He was talking about Peacekeepers being overzealous, Twelve not being in favor with the Gamemakers and the government, her life not being as safe as it otherwise would have been…

He wasn't talking about the baby they would never have.

He didn't know.

He would never know.

That was a secret she would take with her to her grave.

"Everything is perfectly fine." she forced herself to chuckle. "I am just being overly emotional today."

"You're sure?" he hesitated.

He knew something was wrong because he always knew. She sometimes felt as if she was an open book to him.

"Absolutely." she lied. "I have to go actually. There's a party I need to be at in an hour and I am far from being ready!"

He chuckled a little. "Okay, sweetheart. Go doll yourself up."

"I will call you soon." she promised.

"Can't stop you." he snorted.

He hung up without saying goodbye but that wasn't surprising. He had no manners.

She curled up on her side and hugged a cushion close to her chest, her eyes lost somewhere in the distance.

She forced her feelings down.

The regrets, the yearning, the wishes there had been at least one option that would have allowed her to keep the baby…

She forced it down, shut it away and swore to herself she would never think about it again.