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He’s rushing around looking for that one item his daughter just has to have in her bag. A simple dark green bag with dandelions he painted himself, branding her indirectly as theirs. This time the formerly mentioned item is a hair brush.
“Daad, I know I don’t have curly hair like you but I did inherit the thickness, it’s going to be windy today, I need my hair brush.”
So now she’s probably stood by the door, tapping her foot in the floor, arms crossed, waiting for him, because the walk upstairs would ‘ruin her shoes’.
Though anyone who has ever met him couldn’t even lie saying he’s a quiet walker, he manages to acquire the hairbrush from her room without disturbing the shadows that flee at the slightest movement. He carefully twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open, with precision owed to his art.
When he arrives back downstairs, he holds out the hairbrush and his daughter flies into him, wrapping her arms around him, initiating a hug he returns before lightly tapping her shoulder to say it’s time to go. Katniss smiles at him and kisses him on the cheek before herding their children out of the door, leaving him alone, like every morning. He dreams of the day both his son and daughter are old enough to walk themselves so he can have just that bit more time with Katniss.
Sighing, he begins his loud pursuit up the stairs with the intention of perhaps having a shower, grabbing his clothes from their bedroom. He steps into their en-suite and promptly stumbles back. Looking back at him is a man dead and gone a good 25 years ago at the very least.
Frantic blue eyes whiz back and forth across the mirror, he watches the pupils bounce backward and forward until his head starts to spin. He frantically looks up to his hair, a slightly darker blonde, with looser curls that only add to the image of his father. The kindness and vibrancy in his eyes, the well rounded jaw-line, soft face. Even to him, his neck is the same. Then a blink.
This time he does fall back. His father. He is the carbon copy of a dead man. Overtime the initial boyness of his appearance has been chipped away, revealing someone he likes to think looks more stable. In his childhood he remembers the comments everyone made about the Mellark boys’ strong genes, he felt proud, happy to feel included, but now he just feels despair. Only one of those four are alive and that’s him, the one who still marvels about how he still breathes. He remembers people saying him and his older, but not oldest, brother could pull off being twins. And then the very rare old person stopping him in the street to say he looked exactly like his father at whatever age it was. Now no one needs to tell him (the ones that would anyway are nearly all dead) that. At the sight, despair pools in his lungs, coating his insides with it.
After years, going on decades, he finally wonders if his father would be proud of the person his son is. He likes to think he would; he continues the legacy of being a generous tradesman, his kindness still digs under peoples skin, he doesn’t normally let out frustration by means of violence on anything other than kneading the dough a bit aggressively. He’s an active figure in his children’s lives, they can trust him. He’s finally broken free from the chains of his trauma that held him down, he fought his battles head on. For that, he hopes his father would be proud. He hopes they all would be. Bar his mother, who was anything but in the sense of caring for and nurturing him.
He shuffles against the door, knees pulled up to his chest, hands in hair, tugging at the greasy curls. Who’s he kidding? Surely not himself. What is there for his father to be proud of? What is left of the son he sent off to the Games? The son turned insane just for doing what’s right. The son who tried to kill his beloved. The son who had lost control of himself at one of the most crucial times.
That’s where Katniss finds him. Small handfuls of his straw blonde hair sat around him. She doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t need to, only pulls him close to her and begins massaging his hands. Tricking them into letting go. She watches the tears flow down his face and her heart pangs but she knows he’ll be okay in a few. He always is. Always.