Chapter Thirty-Nine
During the Rebellion, Haymitch had been a strategist and with that came his ability to compartmentalise major issues, separating and segregating them into manageable problems. Presently, his mind was doing the same. It was worrying that he seemed to have taken Effie's admission as a problem but he couldn't deal with it all at once so he had broken it down. First, his son's name and then he would think about Effie.
He trekked his way up to the NICU. This was an unconscious decision on his part but his mind knew better. He needed peace and it led him to the one place he didn't consider – his sons.
Haymitch sat quietly, his eyes fixed on Tristan. He had gotten used to the idea that his first born is called Tristan, even if he had only been born a few days before and Haymitch actually liked that name. Effie could have chosen something far more extravagant, something so impossible to pronounce, something that would have sounded so foreign in District Twelve but she hadn't. Instead, Effie had given a name that far surpassed his expectations and one that she had clearly put much thought into. He would not dishonour her choices. There was nothing wrong with the name.
Tristan moved in his incubator, his tiny hand poking out of the blue blanket and Haymitch moved to cover it. He stroked the boy's cheek. So innocent and vulnerable, the thought flashed in Haymitch's mind. His mother had named him after love. That child embodied something that Haymitch couldn't seem to give to Effie and carried with him his mother's quiet dreams. He wondered if it was fair for Effie to impose such a thing on the boy.
"Sometimes you love someone who doesn't love you in return and isn't that tragic in itself?"
The words rang in his mind, loud and haunting in the silence of the hospital room. Haymitch moved towards the window, staring down at the empty road four floors down. He released a shallow breath. The glass pane misted and clouded very much like his thoughts, murky and unclear.
There was a time in his life when Effie had confused him with her excessive fashion before the Rebellion and obsessive preoccupation with manners and schedules but this one, being in love with him, seemed to top the list. He didn't quite understand how she could love him, how anyone could love him for that matter. He wasn't an easy man to deal with; a drunkard with terrible manners and sharp tongue.
And a murderer – icing on the cake, he thought grimly.
This was not something he could figure out, he realised as he walked back to Effie's room. Haymitch clenched his hand into a tight fist at that thought, dirty nails digging into his palm. It felt surreal. It felt foreign. And Haymitch was unsure of himself. It was very much like standing on thin ice and waiting for it to crack at any moment. Effie didn't expect him to reciprocate, that much was clear and that in itself made his stomach turned. How could she not expect something from him? Everybody wanted something. Quid pro quo – that has always been the way with the world.
Then it came to him. He heard her voice in his head, repeating the words she had told him earlier.
"Promise me you would love your sons the way you could never love me."
That was it. A simple request.
His gaze was drawn to the form huddled on the bed, asleep and unaware of the storm raging in his head. His mind retraced the day when she gave birth to the twins. He had squeezed into that tiny bed and held her close to him because she had asked him to. He had done that for her. He had rushed down to the hospital from the Capitol. He had … he had done a lot of things. And they had gone through a lot of things together but did that equate to love? Had he done all that because some part of him loves her?
No, he frowned.
They are married and as her husband, it fell to him to protect her. He did what he did to keep her safe and made sure she was cared for. Caring was not synonymous to love, surely?
Haymitch visualized her out of the context of the hospital and speculated to himself, wondering if she would have admitted the same. If she had not just given birth, would she have sought his comfort and confessed the things she did? Had she done all that because she was under the influence of medications and antibiotics?
The more he rationalised and provided the narrative to support his speculation, the more firmly he began to believe that Effie was misguided in her feelings. Crossing the room, he lowered himself into the seat next to her bed. Effie would not have said all that nor would she be so needy as have him close to her all the time. Transference – it was something he had read about once.
"I love Tristan and Ethan, and I love their father."
She loves the twins and because she loves them, she thought she love him, too. It appeared to be a legitimate explanation to him. Effie must have expanded what she felt for the twins to encompass him. It followed that it would be unfair for him to prey on such delusion. It was the excitement of having the babies, he was sure that was all there was to it.
XxX
Haymitch slept very little. Years of fighting a losing battle with nightmares and resisting sleep had accustomed his body to having minimal slumber, and he was sure he would have little to no problem dealing with the twins when they start crying at odd hours of the night. He would be awake anyway. He would soon find out that he was wrong.
At the first appearance of daylight, Haymitch was already sitting on the chair perusing the forms he had cast aside previously. Effie was still asleep and usually, he would have left her alone but he needed her signature before the officials could process the form. He roused her gently and she signed the forms without much question, blue eyes heavy with sleep.
How trusting. I could have made her sign any forms.
"The counters should be open in ten minutes," he glanced at the clock. "I'd rather be there before the queue starts to form."
"Alright. Should I start packing while you handle the registration?"
"If you're up to it, go ahead. Need my help? I could pack when I'm back," he offered.
"I'll do it," she told him. She shuffled slowly to the bathroom with Haymitch's help. "Have you thought of a name yet? For Tristan."
"Effie…" he started. "About that… I don't have – "
"I can go on from here, Haymitch. You better hurry before the counter opens," she said brusquely. With that, Effie shut the door with a soft click, leaving him staring at the patterns of the wood.
XxX
There was nobody at the registration centre on the first level of the hospital and he was first in line when it opened. The registration was over faster than he had anticipated, a few signatures here and there, and then he was told to wait as the birth certificates were generated.
He trailed a lone finger over every detail in both birth certificates, making sure that the twin's names were spelled correctly and that everything else was accurate. It wouldn't do for there to be any mistake. Effie would have his head for not being thorough. He paused over the time of birth, unsure if what was reflected on it was true.
19 minutes apart. Really?
He never knew that. He supposed he would just have to trust the hospital with that particular information. His finger hovered over a small section that contained his particulars.
Father: Haymitch Abernathy
His date of birth and his residential address was stated in the certificate along with Effie's.
It was official. In the eyes of the Government, he was now the father to these two boys. He had done it, completed what the law required him to do and by that extension he had fulfilled his duty to this country. That being said, he knew his responsibilities were far from over. It had only just begun.
Slipping the birth certificates back into the brown envelope, he went on a detour to the NICU before returning to Effie's room.
"Have they been registered?" she inquired.
"Yeah," he nodded, patting the brown folder. "There was a penalty fee because we registered them late. I settled that, don't worry."
"You," she jutted her chin towards him, "you registered them late."
He gave a nonchalant shrug. "Doesn't matter. They're in the system."
"That's it, then. Marriage law babies," she said bitterly.
He froze. His children would forever be known as such, as would hundreds of other children. Bile rose in his throat at the very thought. He didn't like this distinction at all. Haymitch frowned as he considered the possibilities that these children would most likely receive treatment that would set them apart from those whose parents married freely. There was already a policy in place providing education fund or government subsidy in a bid to ease the parents' financial constraint for children born out of this law. It would create a social divide which was not a good foundation for a country rising from a recent war.
Shoving that thought aside with a mental note to revisit this line of thought at a later time, his eyes swept across the room. It looked exactly the way it was when he left her an hour ago. Contrary to what Effie had said she would do, nothing had been packed. The bag sitting on her bed was still empty.
"Trouble packing, sweetheart?" he teased.
Effie sat at the edge of the bed, watching him quietly as he packed what little belonging she had in the room.
"I went to see them at the NICU while you were away. Can't we bring them home with us?"
He sighed. "Not today, Effie."
"But they're off the breathing tube," she countered.
The boys were able to breathe on their own, something that filled his heart with a little pride when he found out. Haymitch had seen them without the tube when he swung by after the registration.
"I know but one thing at a time, okay? First their breathing then there's their feeding. You know this, Effie," he said. "The nurse told me that they could probably be discharged in two days' time… tomorrow if we're lucky," he tried to placate her. "We'll go home in the meantime and make sure everything's ready for them."
"It's not right to leave our babies here, Haymitch. What if they need us?"
"They'll be alright. They were born early - they need to be observed."
Haymitch handed her the brown envelope knowing that she would be preoccupied with the certificates while he settle her discharge form. Since his attention was not focused on her, Haymitch was startled when she turned him around, wound her arms around his midsection and buried her face in his chest.
"You kept his name - Tristan. You kept it."
His thumb brushed soothingly against her hip bone.
"If you had read the forms before you signed it, you would know that was the name I filled in," he mumbled. "I wouldn't change his name, anyway. Nothing wrong with that name and I really didn't want to have to think of another."
He felt her nodding against his chest.
"I thought… that you hated… after what I said – "
"We had a deal," Haymitch interjected before she could bring the incident up. "You choose a name, I choose another. I don't… Tristan is a good name, Effie. I don't have a problem with it except maybe one."
Effie stiffened in his arms and pulled her head back to look at him.
"What is it?"
"The kids' names spell out your initials, doesn't it? E.T"
"No it doesn't," she shook her head vehemently at him.
He arched a questioning eyebrow. Of course it did, unless she had forgotten how to spell her own name.
"It's not Effie Trinket. It hasn't been for more than a year now."
Haymitch bit his tongue. Effie tended to say unexpected things that made his heart clenched, things that reminded him that they were more than just colleagues. It made him feel wretched because he should remember it but he didn't and it only reinforce her belief that he saw her as nothing more than just somebody he used to work with.
"No need to be jealous that their names didn't spell your initials," she chuckled.
Alright, nobody panics because I missed updating it last week. I haven't forgotten about it nor have i abandon this story. I had writer's block. I know what I want to happen in this story but I have trouble moving forward with it. I'm still struggling with it atm.
Haymitch is a tough one, isn't he? Effie would need a lot of convincing to do. Also I hope that little bits and pieces about the law would help to give you an idea on how challenging it would be for Haymitch to overturn it.
Please review, it would mean so much to me.