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Haymitch wonders. He knows he shouldn’t, but it is harder to suppress every thought than it is to indulge in it for a second. Simply because it was Lenore Dove for so long and now it isn’t.
-
When his daughter was born she was slightly underweight and premature. But she endured. They named her Calliope Charm Abernathy. Effie had chosen the first name, obviously, but Haymitch had gotten the privilege of picking the second. Charm like the color and like a trinket, a subtle replacement for her mother’s maiden name, one Effie had decided to lose in favor of his, one week before the birth of their daughter. Such a sweet innocent thing doesn’t need such horrendous acts attached to her from birth, Effie had said.
Calliope Charm. Roman and Covey. Capitol and District. Effie and Haymitch. All mixed together in a sample of a person.
-
Callie loved asking questions. She would ask why the sky is blue and why Peeta's bread rises in the oven and why don't her parents allow her to watch the news in the first weeks of July.
One day, as she sat beside her father in the backyard, sipping on her juice and attentively watching her beloved geese, she let out the most innocent-sounding, loaded question: Daddy, do you love me?
Haymitch opens and closes his mouth in hopes of hearing an answer pass his lips. It's obvious he loves his daughter. Asking that is like asking if the sun rises in the morning (that comparison comes with a quiet, melodic voice at the back of his head, one he chooses not to indulge in). Does he not make it clear enough that he loves her? Adores her? Would die for her? Would kill for her? Are the years of practiced detachment affecting the way his kid sees his love? "Of course I love you, hummingbird." is the only sentence he can think of that won’t send his child running back to her mother crying.
“How much?” Haymitch stares at Callie Charm’s big blue eyes as they look at him, the man with all the answers, expectantly. How was he supposed to respond? How do you explain to a three-year-old a force that is larger and stronger and deeper than anything the human mind can formulate? How do you, as a parent, explain the feeling that guides you every day, through your muscles, gut, and bones, and that you only get when you hold that teeny tiny being in your arms for the first time?
“Like all the stars in the sky combined.” That was what he used to tell Syd.
“And?”
“Like every bead in every necklace ever made smashed together.” His daughter giggles, but a lump forms in his throat. Maysilee. He was slowly introducing his baby to all these people that he had loved and she would never get to meet. Even if it had been on a whim, it felt right .
This whole ordeal turned out to be Calliope Charm’s master plan to ask her father to buy her a pet horse. You are just like your mama , he had answered after telling her that that would absolutely not be happening. Callie pouted for a little but then shrugged, as one might say worth the shot . And yet, a question was burning in Haymitch’s mind. If Callie hadn’t been Callie, but a different kid with his eyes and wild dark hair, would he have answered that he loves her like all-fire? Yes, yes he would. But suddenly Effie is standing by the door calling for them, Callie Charm is running to her mother’s open arms and the kids are coming from their house across the village and it doesn’t matter anymore.
-
Haymitch Abernathy only drinks himself stupid once in Callie Charm’s whole life. It was the anniversary of Lenore Dove’s death and someone at the Hob brought her up. An old classmate of theirs maybe. What mattered was the fact that it was the first time someone had said her name out loud, talked about her like he remembered her like Haymitch did. And he simply couldn’t take it. So he brought a bottle, saying that he could handle it. But then the bottle was over and he went home with two others. Effie wasn’t home and Callie was with Katniss and Peeta, which gave Haymitch time to mourn alone.
The only things he knows from after that were told to him. Callie Charm barged into the house to show him her new artwork and he didn’t recognize her. When she said that that was silly because she was his kid, he spat out that a child of his wouldn’t look like her because she didn’t have his Dove’s features. Peeta came in and grabbed Callie, who was silently crying in fear, and Katniss slapped him across the face as soon as they were out of sight.
He was still drunk when Effie came home, called by the kids, but he remembers the exact words she screamed in his face
I might have chosen to be second best to a ghost, but my daughter didn’t.
His wife was on a train to her sister Proserpina’s house, with full bags and a confused little girl in her arms, before he was able to blink.
It took him a week and an angry call from Prosie before he bought a ticket to the Capitol. While his hummingbird had ran directly into his arms as soon as she saw him, Effie had taken more convincing. But they were them and they made up. He loves his girls. He loves his life more than he can ever love some reality he came up with in his head.
From that day forward, he never touched a glass again.
That was also the day he stopped wondering.
-
His little girl is a performer. How couldn't she be? She was raised in a house of victors and an escort, who were forced to perform just to be able to see another day. Not his kid, though. Callie brings light to the world with every note she sings and every twirl she gives.
The first song she wrote, at the age of 5, was titled "Goose Goose" and was known all around the district because she would sing it for each and every person she crossed on the streets.
When she gives shows with her friends, tiny, fun, and messy things thrown together in makeshift stages in front of her Uncle Peeta’s bakery, he hears people comment if she has any Covey in her blood. And Haymitch has made peace with the fact that she doesn’t. While she is named after them, honoring those who came before and never got to see the sun shine free, it is Effie that transpires through their daughter when she is on stage, in the way her blue eyes sparkle and the way she takes up the space and holds the crowd in the palm of her hand.
Her songs scream revolution, a ballad she never had to sing but feels cursing through her blood, pulsing with the need to make her voice heard so it never happens again. Not once is Callie Charm ashamed of her parents’ past, and she sings proudly the melody of their love and fight for anyone who is willing to listen. She fights with her words, not her fists.
-
When Lenore Dove comes to him now, she isn’t angry. Instead, she smiles at his daughter's antics, so Capitol for a girl born and raised in the districts, and offers him unsolicited advice about Effie. She is happy for him and he is happy to still be able to feel her around.
Because, unlike the way Katniss is his sweetheart alongside Louella, Lenore Dove is his girl, forever his girl, but Effie is his wife and life partner. They don't compete for a place or overcrowd his heart. Instead, they complete him. And Calliope Charm, she is his everything, his hummingbird, his heart beating outside of his body until after his last sigh.