Prompt : Love all your stories! Could you please do a prompt where Haymitch finds out effie lost their baby he never knew about?

A Wise Man's Words

Haymitch found her cleaning their kitchen.

Bouts of compulsive cleaning were nothing unusual when she was upset. It gave her something to do, kept her mind focused on a mindless task and helped her spend some of her endless energy. He was used to finding her cleaning in stressful times – that or smoking behind the garden shed, but she had quitted that habit the day he had managed to stick to a glass a day.

"You disappeared." he accused.

She glanced up at him but quickly looked back down at the sink. She was trying to get the whitish scale off the base of the tap with a toothbrush. It was an impossible mission, the plumbing was old. All she would succeed in doing was probably damage it and trigger a leak.

"How is Katniss?" she asked in a cheerful voice that rang fake – and out of place.

"She's fine." he said, finally closing the back door behind him and shedding off his coat. "The doctor sentenced her to bed rest for a week. She's loving the sound of that."

She cleared her throat. "And the baby?"

Haymitch did his best not to think back too much to what had happened an hour earlier, to how they had all panicked when Katniss had started having cramps that wouldn't go away, holding her now protuberating stomach with both arms, tears rolling down her cheeks as she repeated again and again that something was wrong.

The war might have happened fifteen years earlier but the possibility of losing the baby their whole lives had started revolving around hadn't been good for anybody. Peeta had been useless in his panic, Katniss had soon turned hysterical and Effie had stood there, watching the whole thing unfold instead of being her usual efficient self. It was Haymitch who had called the doctor, Haymitch who had ushered Katniss to her bedroom and urged her to lie down and Haymitch who had clasped Peeta's shoulder and told him to get a grip. He hadn't noticed Effie hadn't followed them upstairs until the doctor had let himself in. He had wandered back downstairs while Katniss was being examined, sure he would find her doing something helpful – or that she would have thought to be helpful – in the kids' living-room or kitchen but she had been nowhere to be found.

"Fine." he shrugged, reaching for a glass and the bottle of whiskey he kept in the cupboard. "Told you. Bed rest for a week. The doctor said something about Braxton X contractions or something like that… He said most women didn't feel them."

"She won't lose it then?" she insisted, finally letting go of her toothbrush.

He frowned, distractedly capping the bottle. "No. Sweetheart… What's up with you?"

She shook her head and nodded to the whiskey he was still holding with a small smile. "Pour me one will you?"

That was a strange request coming from her. Effie hardly ever drank. She had wine at dinner sometimes but aside for the times of years when Johanna and Annie visited, she never had anything stronger than that. For her to ask for a drink hadn't happened in… a long time.

"You don't like whiskey." he pointed out, already reaching for another glass.

"True but we are short of vodka or tequila." she retorted. "It shall have to be your poison instead of mine."

He granted that with a small shrug and fetched ice from the freezer. He added some orange juice in there for good measure. She hated straight whiskey on a good day and, clearly, this wasn't a good day.

"You're going to tell me what got you so worked up?" he insisted, passing her the glass before taking a sip of his.

She made the liquid twirl for a moment, the ice clinking against the edge of the glass. "I do not deal well with miscarriages. I am sorry I deserted Katniss but… It was too much." She didn't meet his eyes, simply took a sip of the liquor and made a face at the taste. "This is awful." she declared, a forced cheer in her voice. "Truly, you…"

"That's a trigger?" he cut her off. "'Cause that's not one of your usual ones…"

The triggers she had collected during the various stages of the war, he knew by heart. The ones from before, he was still learning even after fifteen years.

The odd comment would make her withdraw sometimes, not in an obvious way, not in a way anyone but him would have noticed, but it did. Sometimes, he would say something harsh or joke about a ridiculous quirk of hers and it would ring too close to what her mother used to say or how her father dismissed her and, suddenly, Effie would vanish and he would be left with Effie Trinket, star extraordinary. He hated it when she played at being the pretty dumb thing. He had always hated it. But it happened so rarely nowadays it always brought him back to darker periods of their lives.

"It is not like that." she replied, her face closing off. "It just brings back bad memories."

She took another sip of her whiskey and turned back to the sink. He placed his mostly untouched glass on the counter and wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her against his chest.

"Bad enough that you left the kids?" he commented, trying and failing not to sound judgmental. They never left the kids. The kids' biological parents had done that enough. They never did that.

She let out a long sigh. "I will go check on them in a moment. I just couldn't… I couldn't watch Katniss go through that, alright?"

The sudden spike of anger came out of nowhere and she tried to push his arms from around her. He held on tighter.

"You lost one." he said and it wasn't a question.

He wasn't stupid. There had been clues over the years. Things she had never openly said but he had pieced together anyway. And he had had his suspicions around the sixty-eighth Hunger Games. She had been weird that year. She had been teary about babies and she had completely shattered when they had lost their tributes and she hadn't let him touch her for the longest time…

The fight deserted her.

She slumped against him.

"It wasn't yours."

The words were spoken loud and clear in the kitchen, confident in a way that told him everything he needed to know.

"I can tell when you lie, you know?" he snorted bitterly before pressing a kiss against her neck. "Stop trying to protect me. That's my job, sweetheart. I know I'm shit at it but that's my job."

She turned around in his arms and buried her face in his shoulder.

"It was better this way." she whispered but the grief was still audible in her voice. He didn't know if he felt grief or not. It was difficult to feel sad about something that had never happened so long ago. "I think I would have been crazy enough to keep him and it would have probably ended in disaster."

He closed his eyes and propped his chin on her head, perfectly picturing the disaster in question. He had a gift for imagining doom scenarios. Any child of theirs would have turned up dead before they even learned to walk. Snow would have found out. Snow would have found out and either made Haymitch his bitch or punished him for the fun of it.

"It was a boy?" he asked with some hesitation. He wasn't sure he wanted or needed details.

"I don't know." she whispered. "I didn't even know I was pregnant before it happened. I just… I would have liked a boy. He would be twenty-two now. Can you imagine? I think about it sometimes. What might have been."

He didn't.

What might have been often hurt when he was entirely happy with what he had.

They had a good life. Boring in some ways, yes, but boring was good.

"I can't have them. Children." she added even though it was unnecessary. He knew that. He had known for a long time. It was one of her deepest secrets and one she had shared even before Katniss and Peeta came around. "I would have liked it perhaps. Being a mother."

"You already are." he argued. It wasn't the first time he made that point, he was certain it wouldn't be the last. "And the kids… They need you right now. So you're going to freshen up and we're going to go back over there, yeah? 'Cause Katniss needs you to fret and fuss."

"She hates it when I fret and fuss." she chuckled.

"Sure, she does. She's supposed to." he mocked. "'Cause that's what kids do with their mom and you can tell me whatever you want, she loves to hate it. Wasn't ever fretted and fussed upon enough, that girl."

"Too true." she agreed. "Poor Peeta could also probably use a good cup of tea. I am sure you didn't think about offering him some."

"See?" he teased. "I'm shit at this. You're the one who deals with crisis, sweetheart."

She raised on tip toe and pressed a kiss against his lips. "Do not sell yourself short."

He responded to that kiss without hesitation, deepening it a little if only because he could taste whiskey and orange on her tongue.

"Don't waste time thinking about what might have been, Effie." he advised quietly. "What we have… That's what counts. And it's better than everything I ever thought we'd have."

She smiled a bittersweet smile and brushed her hand against his cheek. "When did you become so wise?"

He rolled his eyes. "Always been wise, Princess. You just couldn't shut up long enough to listen."

That warranted him a whack on the shoulder but she laughed and so he declared himself content.

Her spirits were lifted up.

Mission accomplished.