Chapter Text
Loneliness is what brings Lucy back to Twelve, eventually.
There’s really not much for her up north and yeah, she can survive on her own in the woods, but Lucy Gray Baird has always been a creature of companionship, and, after a while, when she doesn’t find other people, she starts to make her return to the district that isn’t exactly home but it’s the closest she has to one.
The journey back takes her a couple of days because she’s still healing from an injury. One of Coriolanus’s bullets did get to her and hit the side of her stomach when he had his mental breakdown in the woods and she had to run when she noticed because it was that or risk dying if he were to find her. Thankfully, she had enough knowledge of medicinal plants to stop the bleeding and cure herself in the aftermath of the whole situation, but she still needed someone to complete the process for her.
So, when she saw the large machinery in the distance, through the woods as the afternoon was ending, a sigh of relief escaped her lips and she made the last effort to get back into the district.
It didn’t take long for Lucy to find Maude Ivory after that too. The preteen was seated on top of a boulder near the edge of the district when Lucy came through the trees. The younger girl jumped when she saw her cousin, excited and wanting to hug the older girl, but the smile that had appeared on her face as soon as she saw Lucy Gray changed when she realized that her cousin was holding onto the side of her stomach with a pained expression.
Maude ran to her side and together, as silently as possible because it was already sundown and people were starting to get back into their houses, they made their way to the apothecary where Maude traded some fruit she had acquired from the woods with the healer and the young man who was the district’s healer started to work on Lucy Gray immediately.
A curfew had been established not much later after Coriolanus had left the district due to all of the strange killings that had surrounded the young man’s tenure in the peacekeepers and the death of the mayor’s daughter, Mayfair, and because of this, the two young women had to spend the night in the small operating room above the apothecary’s store after Lucy’s surgery was finished.
The young doctor was at least, kind to the girls, and lent them a couple of pillows and a blanket that they ended up sharing as they cuddled together on the operating table after he left them for the night and went back into his apartment to sleep.
That night, in the silence that surrounded her, with Maude already asleep nearby, Lucy Gray looked up at the wooden ceiling and cried.
She cried for every single person that had died for her to be in that surgical cot at that very moment. For the children whom she had seen dying in the arena, for the mentors who were either killed by their tributes or in the bombing, for the ignorance of the children of the Capitol, for Sejanus, who probably thought that Coriolanus was a good man till the moment he died…
But most of all, she cried for Coriolanus and what could’ve been had he not decided to use the words that he used and made her realize too early what he was truly capable of.
They could’ve had it all.
Freedom, a family, happiness…
Love…
The thought of them being happy and in love living in a small cabin in the middle of the woods with their little family, away from everybody who wanted to harm them was the only thing that gave Lucy the strength to fight through the night against the pain of the stitches on her stomach and before she could realize, sleep had overtaken her and it dragged her into a world where she was happy and safe in his arms.
In her dreams, there was a beautiful green meadow filled with colorful flowers where she sat over a blanket underneath a tree, the sun shining bright down on her and making her feel warm as the bundle in her arms cooed and giggled. She looked down and found a baby with olive skin and blue eyes and she smiled when a small hand emerged from the blankets where the child was swaddled and held onto her finger.
In the distance, Lucy found a young man kneeling in front of another child, the two of them had the same hair color, blonde, but the only thing that set them apart was the fact that the child had brown eyes like his mother and was chasing a butterfly while his father looked on with a look of pride and love in his eyes.
A love so good, so pure, that dream Lucy couldn’t help but feel it as his eyes found her and he gave her a beautiful smile.
She smiled back immediately. And it felt as if it was a natural thing to do, like it was something that she did every day and never really grew tired of it.
“Hey, boys! It’s time for supper! Come!” She waved at them after a moment longer of smiles and she had to bite back a laugh because of her boys' excitement over the prospect of food.
Lucy watched them run to where she was seated with her baby in her arms and when they finally made it to her, her son handed her a dandelion.
“Look, Mommy, look what Daddy and I found there!” He squealed while his father made his way slower behind him.
“Oh yes darlin’ I can see it, did Daddy tell you the name of this flower?” She asked her son in her dream.
“Yeah!” The child bounced in excitement, sitting in front of her. “He said it’s called a dellion!”
Lucy shook her head with some amusement and the baby in her arms cooed again just as her husband finally reached them.
“No Rhodes, it’s called a dandelion,” Coriolanus explained when he finally reached her and leaned down to ruffle their son’s head of hair and kiss her.
Lucy met him in the middle and the kiss they shared was perfect.
“I love you, Lucy Gray Snow…” He whispered into her lips with their children happily smushed between them.
“And I love you Coryo…”
Tears alerted Lucy that what she had experienced was a dream. A beautiful but unfortunate dream where she experienced for a moment what could’ve been had things not gone the way they did.
In the distance, the sun started to come up and when she turned to check on Maude, she was grateful that her cousin was still deeply asleep next to her.
She stood carefully and made her way to the window, where she cried, and cried, and cried as the sun finally rose on District Twelve’s grounds and that’s where, hours later, Maude saw her as she woke up.
Pale, tired, and crying.