Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a Box.  

Well not a Box. The Box.   

The Green Box. For years it had sat perched on the top shelf of Mother and Daddy’s closet all alone. Taunting her from its perch high above the floor.   

“It’s just a box” Hyacinthus would say anytime she brought it up, but it wasn’t! It was special; it was different from any other box in the penthouse. Then any other thing in the penthouse truly. It was…. out of place. It wasn’t packed away in the back of the closet in the rumpus room like Daddy’s things from District 8, or hidden away in the garret like the gifts from Grandmother and Grandfather they would never use.   

The Box was made of green velvet, she could tell even from the floor. It had fine delicate golden trim all around and a large golden A that served as the clasp. Though perhaps the most peculiar thing of all were the two white doves sewn onto the front, at first it didn’t seem that strange they were Dovecotes after all. But the closer you looked the stranger it became, first the doves weren’t embroidered onto the surface, they were appliqued on, not to mention they had simple buttons for eyes not jewels like any artisan from the capitol would use. No Buttons like someone from the districts would use.  

Valentine had mentioned it to mother and daddy, all those years ago. She wasn’t really supposed to go in their closet, so she’d tried to be subtle at first but obviously they’d realized what she was talking about.   

When she’d asked mother about it, she’d shrugged and said, “It’s grown-up stuff sweetie, don’t worry about it.” before chastising her for going where she knew she wasn’t supposed to. Daddy’s reaction had been more interesting… At first he hadn’t known what she was talking about or at least pretended he didn’t. She still remembered the look on his face, when he’d realized what she was talking about, or maybe it was when he finally let the mask slip, who's to say. He looked…. wounded and ashamed almost like he’d been caught doing something he knew he wasn’t supposed to. Then he’d look angry, disgusted really, the way he looked when the tributes from District 8 were eliminated or when Coriolanus Snow, the head gamemaker, was on TV. Then voice shaking, like he was on the verge of tears he told her “Dearling, some things are easier to live with if you never know about them, TRUST ME!” he’d spat the last part out running the mechanical fingers of his prosthetic through her hair.   

In that instance for the first time in her life she hadn’t found his touch comforting. She’d learned long ago not to fear the prosthetic and what it was capable of. Valentine knew it as the hand that hugged her, braided ribbons and buttons into her hair on Eighlaten holidays, and tucked her into bed. Never paying mind to the scratches it left in the marble countertops, or how its blade had pierced the surface of Dean Blakes desk after she tried to do nothing about Fulvia St. Pierre calling her and Hyacinthus half-breeds. Valentine hadn’t understood the fear in the adult's eyes then but maybe now she did.   

The next time she’d gone in the closet, the box was gone. She’d brought it up several times over the years. But her parents had dismissed it, claiming they had never heard of it, or weren’t sure what she was talking about at all. For a while she had thought maybe just maybe she had made it all up.  

But here it was, The Box, safely tucked away hidden behind the bottom panel of one of the bookshelves in Daddy’s office.   

Gingerly like it might disappear any second, Valentine removed it from its hiding place, now she could see clearly for the first time, it was just like she remembered all those years ago.  

Except for one thing, a thing she’d never been able to see before, a single word embossed in gold, written in Mother’s delicate script across the top.  

Atticus

Chapter Text

Grief was such a peculiar feeling, when you really thought about it. 

Some days it was barely there lurking in the deepest recesses of your mind, and other days it was overpowering. Like a weight tied to your ankle trying to drag you down into the abyss. Clemensia had felt grief before he’d died of course, her grandmother, those lost during the war, Apollo, Didi, Aracne, Reaper, and all the others that had been lost to the senseless cruelty of the games. 

Losing a child wasn’t like losing a friend though, it wasn’t like losing a grandparent, or even a spouse. It was worse than anything you could imagine. A single second and your entire world was destroyed, blown to ashes in an atomic blast only you and your spouse seemed to feel the full weight of. Not to say the others didn’t mourn they did of course but it wasn’t the same. It was nowhere close to the same. 

Eventually, you move on of course you do you have to. If you don’t….you die, that was the hardest part for her. Realizing that if she didn't move on she would die. 

Clemensia would be lying to herself if she didn’t acknowledge the fact that it had sounded appealing the first few times it came to mind. Dying. Maybe it would give her a chance to see him again. The people in the districts believed that she knew. The afterlife. A thing school had taught her they foolishly clang to in order to believe they had a greater meaning than their lives. 

She had wondered if a belief in the afterlife would offer her any greater comfort than the science behind what happened had. It was foolish really it hadn’t seemed to bring Bobbin any comfort so why would it bring comfort to her? 

That's another thing about grief, it turns you against each other. Clemensia and Bobbin, they had been a pair for years before it happened. Despite all the things the capitol or life had thrown at them they had stayed together, even when no one else believed they should have. Then he died, and suddenly it was like they couldn’t be further apart. The guilt was all-consuming, it turned them against each other. The logical part of her knew there was nothing either of them could have done to stop it, but they should have, the irrational part of her screamed, he should have, you should have. 

So apart they drifted for years in fact. Suffering through each other's presence at first. Arguing about the cause of their great misfortune. Bobbin didn’t believe that there truly was no answer as to why it happened. Why would he after everything the capitol knew, after everything they’d taken from him? It hurt her more than anything when he’d said he thought she was lying to him about it too. It hurt almost as much as his death if she was honest. 

Eventually, she’d forgiven him for that, she knew why he said it. She’d have said the same thing too if she were in his shoes. He’d forgiven her for the things she’d done when she was lost to grief. They got back to where they were. The same but different.

When the twins were born they had problems again. Clemensia was an only child, she didn’t know what it was like to have a sibling let alone lose one. Bobbin had siblings, brothers, and sisters, more dead than alive. He didn’t want their children to feel the same way he had growing up, trapped in the shadows of his parents' grief. Weighed down by all the hopes and dreams her in-laws had had for their children. 

In the end, what he said made sense and so all of his things had been tucked safely away, somewhere only they could see it. Safely tucked away until the twins got old enough to understand what the world was truly like, and join in their grief. But as time passed she found it harder and harder to tell the truth. As much as she hated to admit it, maybe she liked him tucked away in that box. It helped her tuck him away in her mind, helped her not to feel his loss crushing her like a vice around her soul tightening with every missed milestone. So even if it was Bobbin’s idea she was his willing accomplice now, maybe that made them bad parents to him, but the sad fact is it made them good parents to the twins.

Perspective is a hell of a thing.

She knew this day would come soon, the twins were nearly reaping age, they knew about death and knew why they were treated differently than those around them. She just didn’t expect it to come like this. Catching her daughter trying to pry the box, his box, open with a pallet knife in the atelier. 

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Bobbin hated funerals. 

He’d been only three when he went to his first one. For his older sister Barathea, he had no memory of this event but he was sure it was miserable. 

By the age of eleven, he had gone to the funeral for every member of his family, except Brocade. Brocade had told him then, that he hoped he would be the only other family member Bobbin had to bury in his life.

He’d gone to the funeral of every tribute he’d lost to the games. No matter how much their parents screamed at him, or how many disgusted looks people threw his way. He’d gone because he owed it to them for his failure. 

Of all the funerals he’d attended in his life, this one was by far the worst. Funerals back home were much different than the ones in the Capitol. The family would embroider their loved ones' shroud, wrap them in ribbons, and place buttons over their eyes.  Then on their day off they’d go to the family plot, dig down until they found the last relative they’d left behind, and place them on top. Then they went home shared stories drank themselves to sleep and then in the morning they got up and tried their best to move on.  In the Capitol it seemed even death was an ordeal. People from all over, friends both old and new, some people Bobbin would hesitate to even call an acquaintance had flocked to their apartment to tell them how sorry they were about what happened. Then their had been a service with a long-winded talk about what Atticus had done in his short life, what he had meant to them all. Followed by more food then Bobbin was sure he had ever seen in his life. Even at his wedding, they hadn’t served this much. 

Many people would turn up their noses if they knew how exactly Clemensia had indulged him when it came to the funeral. Brocade had been allowed to come from District 8 for it.   Something even the most polite of their friends had made know they disapproved of. They would certainly be aghast if they knew how much work he had actually done on the ceremony. 

It's not like he and Clemensia were in any state to do anything. They could barely drag themselves out of bed in the morning. Brocade had tried to involve them as much as possible at first, but after Clemensia had unceremoniously vomited all over the rug after hearing Brocade use the word body, he’d done all the work necessary unassisted. That was probably for the best, part of him thought. Another part of him called him a coward, and a sorry excuse for a father, for being unable to properly lay his son to rest. 

Still he'd gone to the funeral and tried his best to keep his composure, to be the beacon of strength his wife needed in this time, to be the strong victor they claimed he was. Despite the feelings of doubt that whispered in his mind that "SIDS" was nothing at all. That their son had been killed and she refused to tell him why. Something they'd fought about then, and for years after. Something he still sometimes refused to accept the truth about.

Still they'd stood side by side, her in black lace from brow to toe, him in a suit covered in buttons and ribbons galore. Him and Brocade, mosaics of grief surrounded by pits of it on all sides.

He'd had trouble believing that anyone else cared about their sons death at all during the proceedings. They'd cried, lots of them had but it felt hollow compared to his and hers, only their families came close.

During the proceedings when they'd finally opened the door to the Dovecote monument his final resting place, something that had caused much gossip he was certain. Did he find himself missing Dr. Gaul, such a strange thing to feel.

Bobbin was almost certain he was the first person in the world to ever miss the woman, but he did. She'd died two years prior, at a spry one hundred and thirteen. She was the only person who'd been genuinely excited for them when they said they were trying for a baby. He knew deep down she probably had some sort of demented thought about his son and him and Clemensia's marriage, but he didn't care he wished she was there.

She would certainly have some sort of spectacle that took he attention away from them if even for a moment, but also he missed her because he's certain her grief would have been genuine. She was perhaps the only person besides his brother and wife who cared for him in a real way. Who loved him, for some fucked up reason.

Had she been alive the funeral probably would have been even more like a District 8 one than it was. Atticus had lived in the Capitol, he could be eight in death they'd agreed. The fact that the Capitol had no belief in the afterlife like eight did made the decision easier than it really should have been. Hopefully his parents cared for Atticus in death in the way they'd never truly been able to care for him in life. Till he and Brocade joined them in the Creel, where the spools of life, death and destiny were spun, from the fibers of fate. The end and the beginning for man, the midpoint in the weaving of the gods' tapestry of time.

Brocade had gone home shortly after the funeral and they were left alone in their greif. Something that nearly destroyed them both. They'd grown apart, he'd spent more and more time in eight, 'trying to find another victor," he'd claimed, even though he'd always been adamantly against the idea of careers. She knew the truth that he was avoiding her.

At one point it looked like they'd divorce, but eventually found their way back to each other and had the twins. That when they pushed the grief away, pushed him away. He didn't want them to feel like a replacement eventuall,y he'd convinced her to hide him, so they did.

There were questions and disapproval from others of course but no one ever tried to break that boundary. Better leverage he guessed.

It had gone well until one day when he heard Clemensia scream bloody murder. When he'd rushed to her side he'd found Valentine having pried the box of his things open, spilling them all over the floor in a heap.

He hated to admit he didn't even think he'd just rushed forward and grabbed the girl screaming in fury, before tossing her over his shoulder and marching to her room as Clemensia rushed to the box and began shoving the contents back inside.

Valentine pleaded for them to calm down, but they didn't. His mind his heart was consumed with fury and greif. It was like he'd died all over again. He'd been safe. Safe in the box all these years and she'd gone and desecrated him.

He'd flung the door to her room open and thrown her onto the bed forcefully. A part of him wanted to say he'd merely set her down but he knew that wasn't true. Before he'd stormed out yelling at her to think about what she'd done before slamming the door in her face. The claws of his metal hand leaving large deep gash marks in the golden doorknob from where he'd held it so hard.