Soli Deo gloria

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own the Hunger Games.

Effie was quite proud of how dinner went. Benjy was calm and quiet. Haymitch, after finding the jam, proceeded to drown his bread with it, making Lily look at him suspiciously and ask him if he wanted some bread with his jam.

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow and said, "Instead of watching me put food on my food, how 'bout you stop complaining and eat your spinach?"

Lily slouched in her seat and used her fork to poke at the dark green mass on her plate. "I don't like spinach."

Haymitch sighed and shifted in his seat as he turned to his goddaughter. "Hey, kid, if we had spinach when I was your age, we didn't care if we didn't like it." He turned back to his food and said, annoyed, "We would have eaten it, damn it."

"Haymitch, you must control your language!" said Effie, looking at him indignantly. She looked at Lily and said sweetly, "Lily, you must hurry and finish eating your spinach or you won't get your dessert!"

"Can I eat dessert and then eat my spinach?" Lily wanted to know.

"No, and eat your spinach now before I eat your dessert," said Haymitch.

Lily sighed and brooded while Effie stood up, wiping her face with her napkin, and proceeded to clean the table. She took the food and stuck it into the fridge, for she was not sure exactly what to do with it. She put the dirty dishes into the sink.

When she went to take Haymitch's dirty plate, he protested as she took it. "I wasn't done, princess," he growled.

"Haymitch, you were, and I need to get the table cleared," said Effie. She gulped and looked a little faint as she said, "Wouldn't want Katniss and Peeta to come home to a dirty house, now do you?"

Lily looked up from her plate and took it and followed Effie. Effie looked down to her and said excitedly, "You ate your spinach, Lily?"

"Kind of. It's gone now," said Lily as she slipped her plate into the sink before she skipped away, leaving behind a confused looking Effie Trinket.

Haymitch sighed and smirked and took a sip of his drink before he said, "She's a smart one."

"Where did the spinach go?" wondered Effie, making her way past the floating island to Benjy. She gave Haymitch a look as she gently lifted Benjy out of his seat and had him against her hip.

Haymitch looked at the ground, making Effie's eyes widen as she did the same. A large cat made a big yawn and walked up the stairs, its orange tail swinging behind it. It was Buttercup the Third, the offspring of the original horrid Buttercup.

Effie gasped and turned to Lily and said, "You fed the cat your spinach?"

Lily turned back to Effie, a plate of chewy cookies in her hands. "He liked it." She walked over to Effie and holding up the plate, said, "Cookie?"

Effie knew that she shouldn't allow the little girl to have any cookies when she hadn't finished her food, but her cute face and the fact that she already had a half eaten cookie in her hand changed her mind. The ex-Capitol lady sighed and took two cookies, one small one for Benjy and one for her.

Lily nodded and moved past her. Effie turned, and handed Benjy the smaller sugar cookie. He looked at it strangely for a moment, as if it would hurt him, and Effie smiled and said encouragingly, "Take it."

He finally did take it and stuck nearly the whole thing into his mouth, making Effie stop him. She carefully moved his hand around so that he sucked on it instead. She nodded and turned to the table, where Haymitch and Lily were fairly gorging themselves on cookies.

Haymitch looked controlled, just taking a couple and dipping them into his drink, but Lily looked like she was getting a little queasy. She leaned against her chair, her hand at her face, ready to give her mouth access to the delicious cookie whenever she felt like nibbling on it.

"No more for either of you," said Effie disapprovingly. They unfortunately did not have any of the throwing up juice, which might have helped little Lily and her evident stomachache.

"Make me stop," said Haymitch frustratingly as he reached for another.

Effie quickly walked, her heels clattering, over to the plate and snatched it away. Haymitch threw her a look before he settled back to his drink. Lily barely noticed as Effie put the plate under a lid. She hurried back to Haymitch and Lily and quickly almost dumped the baby onto Haymitch's lap, making him look up at Effie.

"What are you doing?" he demanded as she hurried away, beckoning Lily to follow her.

"Lily and I are going to do the dishes. You shall watch Benjy and play with him while we do so," Effie told him sweetly before she turned away and took off the rings she wore and her fake nails. She certainly did not need her dwindling supply of pretty things ruined by something as common as dishwater. She turned to Lily and said, "I'll wash and you dry?"

The girl nodded lazily as Haymitch yelled, "What am I supposed to do with him?"

Effie turned to him and said sharply, "No yelling, Haymitch. Manners!"

Haymitch rolled his eyes and said in his normal voice, "What am I supposed to do with him?"

"Play teddy bears or something," said Effie before turning back to the sink.

Lily turned to Haymitch and said quietly, "He likes it when Daddy pretends to be a bear or a big cat. He laughs a lot."

Effie began to wash at the dishes. She was proud to say that after years and years of living in District 12, she had gotten rather good at washing dishes. She heard Haymitch's grumbling quiet in the background as she handed the perfectly clean dishes to Lily, who yawned and wiped at them and stacked them along the counter.

Effie smiled brightly and wiped at the dishes with a sponge. Even if the water made her hands all wrinkly and such, she knew that her perfect dishes would make up for it. She handed another one to Lily, who was yawning and didn't catch the plate quite fast enough, and it fell to the floor, making a loud crash as it fell against the tiles.

Both were immediately sent out of their reverie. Lily's eyes widened as she bent down and began to gather the pieces of the plate. Effie gasped and dried her hands on a towel as she bent down as well, fretting as she said, "Don't cut your hands, Lily!"

"I'm not going to cut my hands, Aunt Effie," said Lily quietly as she stacked up the plate pieces and put them in Effie's towel. Effie shifted it and lifted the corners, and they both stood up, looking at each other, each a little horrified.

"We have some glue," said Lily quietly as they looked at the mess in the towel.

"Well," Effie breathed, looking fairly alarmed, "how about you go get that and we'll go to the living room and see if we can fix it?"

Lily said, "Okay," and darted up the stairs.

Effie gulped, and feeling ruffled, took the towel and carried it to the coffee table in the living room. She stopped at the back of the couch, however, and watched the scene in front of her. Was Haymitch Abernathy actually pretending to be a bear or was she imagining?

Baby Benjy was sitting on his blanket and giggling his heart out as Haymitch held a teddy bear in front of him, saying, "The bear is going to eat you. Rawr!" and the teddy bear darted forward and snuggled against Benjy, making him laugh harder.

Effie hid a smile as she sank into the green sofa, set the towel on the table and watched the two. Haymitch looked a bit strange, being in his sixties and known for being a gruff alcoholic, but he seemed almost grandfatherly toward the little boy. Gruff, but a softer Haymitch than there had been before the children.

Lily ruined it when she came running down the stairs and stopped short to look at Haymitch and Benjy. She cocked her head to the side and said, "That's not how Dad plays Bear with him."

Haymitch let out a loud sigh and turned to her and said, "This is how I do it."

"Dad chases him and growls," said Lily as she joined Effie on the sofa. Haymitch noticed Effie properly and swore under his breath as he stood up and tossed the teddy bear to the baby as he sank into a chair.

"Oh, please continue, Haymitch," said Effie sweetly as Lily placed the glue on the table.

"Oh, please shut up, princess," Haymitch said, annoyed, though his eyes never left the little boy, who was starting to play with a bunch of blocks on the floor.

Effie smiled, her lips pursed, and turned to Lily, who looked confused. "Shall we fix this, then?" said Effie.

"Yes, please," said Lily, and Effie, fluffing up her wig, said, "Alrighty then," and they turned to the towel. Effie daintily unfolded the towel and Lily slid to the floor, kneeling in front of the coffee table.

"It's like a puzzle," the little girl mussed, picking up pieces. Fortunately, there were not too many tiny little chips of glasses. It was mostly in big and quarter size pieces. "We just need to somehow fit them together before we glue them." She looked up to Effie and said, "I'm quite good at puzzles, you know."

"That's quite excellent," said Effie as Lily turned back to the pieces of glass, fitting them around. She leaned forward and said, "Let's see if we can figure this out."

It took them some time. There were a great many pieces, and every one had to be spun and smashed against another and reformed until they were perfect and then Lily let one slip under the sofa and they had to move the sofa. She successfully found it, however, leaving Effie quite shaken as the girl went calmly back to the plate.

At one point, Benjy began to whimper, but when Effie looked up, he was gone from his spot on his blanket. She looked around quickly, and finally her eyes fell on the sight of Haymitch sitting in his reclining seat, shifting back and forth to calm down the little baby. Benjy looked quite content while Haymitch was looking annoyed and borderline uncomfortable.

Effie smiled and bent back to Lily, pretending that she hadn't looked at him, for his sake.

After about forty minutes, they had nearly the entire plate put back together again. There was a chip on the bottom missing, but Effie was sure that neither Katniss nor Peeta cared about a chip missing from the bottom of the plate.

The gluing had been the hard part. The dish had been wet when it fell to the floor and the glue was resisting. Lily blew on it hard and finally, they had the plate back together again. Effie let out a sigh of relief and said calmly, "Now, can you go put that back in the cupboard?"

"I'm not going to break it again, if that's what you're saying," said Lily as she stood up. She nodded, though, and quickly ran into the kitchen.

Effie sighed and stood up carefully, looking at Haymitch and Benjy. The little baby was sucking his thumb, his eyes were drooping. Haymitch looked exactly the same as he had forty minutes ago.

"I can take him now," said Effie, and Haymitch quickly handed the baby to her. Effie smiled as Benjy leaned against her shoulder, closing his eyes. "Oh, isn't he precious!" she said.

"Yeah, a real joy," said Haymitch gruffly.

Effie smirked at him as she said, turning, "You're making quite a good godfather, Haymitch."

He rolled his eyes as she turned and said, "I'm going to go set him down for a nap. Katniss will know what to do with him when she gets home."

She headed up the stairs as Lily ran to Haymitch in the living room. Once up in the nursery, Effie gently laid down Benjy in his cradle, sure that was what she was supposed to do. Looking warily at the open window, she put a blanket over him and placed a stuffed rabbit next to him.

"Well," she said quietly to herself as she headed out of the room, "that went quite well."

She closed the door just as Benjy let out a cry. She sighed and walked back in.

Haymitch can be paternal when he wants to, though he won't admit it. HE HE HE. Thankies for reading, and please, let me know what you think!