Chapter 22
Fallen

"No, I haven't seen him," the bartender said, pouring ale into a crystal clear glass. "Try The Forum."

Effie nodded.

"Alright. Thank you."

"Is it true you're having his kids?" he called after her before the door swung shut between them.

Back on the square Effie drew a deep breath of the sweet air. She needn't go to the pub in The Forum. She'd already been at the shopping center, under the pretense she'd pick out some things for the babies.

He wasn't there. He wasn't in any of the pubs, taverns or liquor licensed restaurants in the Capitol.

She would have welcomed the sight of a plastered Haymitch at two in the morning but he never returned. She wasn't sure what she thought she'd accomplish by looking for him. Just, holding on to her foolish hope.

But who was she kidding? He was long gone.

She didn't blame him.

"You have to tell him, Effie," Annabel said from the beginning. "He's the father. He deserves to know."

Yes, he was and he did and each time she dialed his number, after that first disaster of a call, she lost heart.

Because how could she tell him he was going to be a father when she knew Haymitch didn't want kids?

Just falling pregnant felt like a deceit but she just couldn't bear the thought of an abortion, not after what she did in the Games.

She'd been so careful. She couldn't even understand how it still happened until she retraced her steps with her doctor.

That night after the December Fair when she and Haymitch slept together and it all ended so badly she woke with one of the worst migraines of her life. That's what stress did to her sometimes. They weren't frequent but whenever one hit, sooner or later she always puked.

The idea that the pill she took each morning might not have been completely absorbed by her body yet never even cross her mind. She just had two spoonfuls of sleep syrup and went back to bed, leaving her where she was now.

She rested her hand against her stomach and felt the hard stares thrown her way.

People expected her to feel too ashamed to even leave the house and the bigger she got the more it seemed to agitate them that she wouldn't play by their rules. But she didn't care what they thought or did. She refused to apologize for her babies.

It was time she headed back. She needed to call the children for starters. Make sure he got home OK. It was long overdue.

She heard them before she saw them. It was like they materalized on to the square and Effie's heart sank.

Of all the people in Panem!

"Effie!" Gloria shrieked and flashed a white grin.

It was hopeless. She was too big now, too slow, there was no way she could escape. Realizing there was no way out, she just stood her ground as the flock surrounded her.

"Where's Prince Drunkard?" Gloria asked and muffled chuckles came from the other girls. Their perfectly manicured hands held everything from soda pops to ice cream to licorice strings and blood red lollies. They looked from Effie to Gloria and back again, eager to see what happened next.

"Let me pass, Gloria."

"Just curious," she smiled. "Mind you, I never spilled your little secret. Wouldn't want to spoil the fun. Oh, no. Let's just say I… pointed him in the right direction. Where's hubby now? He already walked out on you?"

"Let me pass!"

"Think we hit a nerve there, girls." Gloria snickered and the others giggled in assent. She looked Effie up and down. "A district breeder," she tsked. "I suppose we should've seen that coming. And with Haymitch Abernathy of all people! You sure scraped the barrel."

"Haymitch is a far better person than you'd ever hope to be!"

"And where is he now? Hm? Seems very clear to me he doesn't want anything to do with you or the bastards you're cooking. And you kinda deserve it, don't you think?"

Effie's lips were pressed almost no non-existence. Because it was true, what Gloria said. The younger woman smirked and took a step forward. The others followed like obedient dogs until all gaps had closed.

"Leave me alone."

Gloria shook her head.

"I think not. I think we shall have a look in the pretty little bag. Presents for the half-breeds?"

She could have tore her apart with her bare hands and thrown her into the river but she had the babies to think of. Gloria took another step forward and Effie took one back, only met by a wall of the others.

She looked around the square for help but everyone, from the stall owners to the shoppers to the passers by all went by their business like the neither saw nor heard. Only Jerome's son looked straight at her. He stood alone behind his father's fruit baskets and his eyes showed no mercy.

Gloria tried to grab the bag and Effie whipped it away.

"Don't touch me!"

Boosted by her friends' chuckles Gloria tried again and this time she seized it. The straps snagged on one of Effie's fingers and she staggered forward a step.

"Hold it!" a voice boomed across the square, making everyone look up. Not just Gloria and her gaggle of friends but everyone. The ring around Effie dissolved and in the crack between two of the women she saw Haymitch, heading straight for them.

"The hell is this? What's the matter with you?" he asked, face beet red. "What's she done to any of you lot?"

It was like a spell had been broken. Many of the young women looked confused, dazed, like woken from a dream. Even regretful, some of them. Not Gloria. She only seemed slightly startled by this turn of events but she recovered quickly.

"Well, well, well, baby daddy to the rescue."

"Stop acting like a damn five year old!"

"What a catch you got there, Effie. I can smell it on him from here. Yeah, who wouldn't want to dip into that gene-pole? But I suppose, anyone sharing beds with you turns to drink sooner or later."

"Enough!"

"Or what, handsome?" Gloria asked. "You're gonna knock me out with your breath? Not in front of the rat pups, huh?"

Something flashed across Haymitch's eyes. A rage so deep some of the women shrieked and their sodas and popsicles all splashed to the ground when they fled. He was over at Gloria's in two strides and whipped the bag from her hand.

Gloria didn't run. She only blinked, her mouth forming a perfect O. She glanced to her friends for assistance but the few who remained had all given her a wide berth, watching with horrified excitement.

She looked back at Haymitch who towered over her and her Adam's apple bobbed up and down as she swallowed.

"You can't hurt me," she said, her voice small. "I'll scream. Everyone is looking."

It was like she shrunk under Haymitch's stare. Deflated like a balloon and for a second, Effie almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

Then Haymitch's lips suddenly curved into a dark smile. His gaze fluttered up to her hair. Too late Gloria realized what he was going to do.

"No! Don't you dare!" she cried when Haymitch simply reached in.

And plucked it right off her head.

Gloria's friends gasped, not quite able to surpress the giggles bubbling up inside them. Clearly they didn't know Gloria's beautiful, perfect, stunningly glossy hair, now in Haymitch's hand, was in fact a wig and they didn't seem too sad about it.

"Give it back!" Gloria shrieked. Hand pressed against her lank, mouse gray hair forced down with pins she tried to grab the wig from Haymitch but he held it out of reach. He backed from her, turned in a half-circle and threw it as hard as he could.

Every pair of eyes on Heaven's Square, including Effie's, watched it fly high and far until it landed right at the top of a big tree.

Gloria was positively livid. She stomped her foot on the ground like a three year old.

"Animal! You inhuman monster! You get it back to me right now!"

Haymitch didn't waste one more look at her. He went over to Effie and with his hand against the small of her back he walked her off the square, leaving Gloria to hover under the tree with her friends, the wig hoplessly out of reach. Her howls followed them all the way.

"Go back to Twelve! You don't have a job anymore, no place to live! What are you still doing here!? Everything was perfect! Absolutely perfect and you and that worthless drunk, you ruined everything!"

"Did they hurt you?" Haymitch asked.

"No, I'm OK," Effie said but the words were almost immediately contradicted by a small intake of breath. She placed her hand against her stomach.

"What is it?" Haymitch asked in alarm. "What's wrong?"

Effie rubbed her belly in soothing circles and gave him an apologetic smile.

"Just a kick."

Haymitch's face was marred in concern.

"Maybe we should get you to a doctor."

"No, no, Haymitch. It's fine. They're responding to my heartbeat is all."

"That damn woman," he said. "I should just…" Effie rested her hand against his arm.

"She didn't do anything, really. We're OK."

"Alright, alright," he said. "Come on. Let's get you back."

A few moments later the cab rolled up outside June's and Annabel's house with the apple tree out front.

Effie may say she was perfectly fine but she leaned heavily on to his arm as he helped her inside.

"You really OK?"

"A little tired," she confessed.

Yeah. Join the club.

"Perhaps you should try and get some rest. After what happened and… everything." He made a vague gesture toward her stomach.

Effie nodded.

"Yes, it's... maybe that's a good idea."

She let go of his arm. Yet before she could turn a corner her feet slowed to a stop. She looked back and Haymitch knew what was on her mind without her having to say it.

"Don't worry, Eff," he muttered. "I won't go anywhere."

Alone again, he walked in to the living room. No one there but the lizard in the tank. It fluffed its spiky beard at him but when Haymitch didn't flail or yell this time it just returned to it's sunny tree root.

He sank down on to the couch. He'd never felt more exhausted in his entire life and that was saying something.

It took him a moment to realized he was still holding Effie's bag. It was light as air and sported a logo of a needle and a scissor crossed together.

I'm not gonna look.

He dropped it on the couch next to him but just as he'd decided he didn't want to see it, definitely not, he pulled it toward him again and slipped his hand inside.

His fingertips brushed against something soft. Kitten soft, just like Scotch when he was little. The bag floated silently on to the floor.

He was looking down at a pair of playsuits. He didn't know what he'd expected. Little clown outfits maybe with sequins and bells and all that jazz.

He caressed the fabric between his fingertips and just felt like breaking into sobs like a sissy.

One of them had the same pale blue color as the sky on a warm summer day in Twelve. The other was pink, just like those little flowers inlaid in Effie's tea cups.

One blue and one pink. Simple and soft and so unbelievably small.

Holding on to them he dragged himself up. There was a phone built into the wall. Some fancy version that reminded him of those mouthpiece thingies you ordered food from at the penthouse.

"Haymitch", Peeta answered at the sound of his voice. "I was hoping you'd call. You're at Effie's?"

"Sort of," he murmured. "Look I, I need you to send me some things. Clothes and stuff."

"Sure. We'll do that. How long will you stay?"

"I don't know. Check on the geese for me, OK?"

"Of course," Peeta said. "Everything alright?"

Looking down on the playsuits in his hand, Haymitch rubbed the space between his eyebrows like warding off a headache.

"Haymitch?"

He drew a silent breath.

"No."

Once the phone disconnected he heard the sound of footsteps, expecting Effie but it was the brunette. Flickerman's daughter. Annabel.

She was taller than Caesar but the resemblance was still striking. Same cheekbones, same elegantly arched eyebrows over a pair of brown eyes.

But these were eyes that lacked the vain and foolishness her father had in spades. He recalled yesterday's catastrophe of an entrance, when she stopped him from chewing out Effie and thought maybe, just maybe here was someone he could trust.

"Look, ' bout earlier," he muttered. "I'm sorry for…"

"Don't worry about it."

"How long's she lived with you?"

"A couple of months," she said. "We weren't in town but we heard rumors and took the train back. Mr. Abernathy," she hesitated. "Effie is welcome here for as long as she needs to stay. The same goes for you, until you two have descided what the plan it."

"I already know what the plan is," Haymitch said. "I just don't get it. Having kids out of wedlock doesn't cause this much of a flip in the Capitol. Why's her whole life falling apart?"

But as soon as he said it he already knew the answer. Something he should have realized from the start.

"It's because of me, isn't it? Because they're mine."