Work Text:
Haymitch asked Lenore Dove one time what she thought his name would be if he were covey. They were fourteen, and he’d just been brave enough to kiss her, long and sweet, hidden in a copse of weeping willows. They were lying, hand in hand, watching wisps of clouds drift over the sun, causing dappling shadows to weave in and out of the willow shade.
She turned her face towards his after a momentary pause. “I don’t know of any ballads with the name Haymitch in them.” She said teasingly.
Haymitch shrugged. “Fine, just a color then.”
Lenore Dove pursed her lips then, her eyes narrowing. “Our colors are pretty special to us. I usually don’t go around giving them out willy nilly to just anyone.”
“Am I just anyone?” Haymitch asked with a poorly contained smile. He knew he was pushing his luck, but Lenore Dove’s boldness had been rubbing off on him the past few weeks.
Lenore Dove flicked him on the nose and he drew back giggling. The grass rustled as she propped herself up on one elbow. Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Not just anyone, Haymitch. But also a pest, to be sure.” She said with a light smile.
He pulled in his legs and rocked back so he could shimmy up into a sitting position. His ma would complain when he got home about the brambles that were surely stuck in his hair. Right now though, all his focus was on Lenore Dove. Her eyes traced across his face and down to his shirt collar, making him feel oddly exposed. He reached up a hand to try and pluck a few of the brambles out of his curls on a self conscious reconsideration.
“I could be finch color. Yellow like my hair, and a bird your dove.” He offered.
Lenore Dove wrinkled her nose and tossed her curls over one shoulder, the way she did when she mocked the merchant girls. “My bird is mine for the keeping, thank you.” She said it all haughty, but he could see a hint of mirth in her expression, and he laughed again. She smiled, then smoothed her features back to serious and reached out a hand to tilt his chin one way, then the other. He could feel a flush creeping up the back of his neck despite the kiss they shared mere moments before. “I don’t think a bird fits all that well. You need something that’s wholly you. Something that says something about who you are.”
“Who do you think I am?” He asked. Now truly unable to look away from her.
Lenore Dove tapped his cheek thoughtfully with one finger before dropping her hand and nodding. “I like Amaranth for you. It’s a family name, belonged to my great grandpapa. The color of ripe berries in the summer time. Rare, and sweet, and precious.”
Haymitch frowned. “Haymitch Amaranth Abernathy? Don’t the middle and the last names sound too similar?”
Lenore Dove dropped back into the grass with a sigh. “If you’re not ready for a Covey name, don’t ask for one, Hay.”
“No- no, hey, I love it! I love it. Amaranth. Haymitch Amaranth Abernathy.” He dropped back into the grass next to her and turned the words over a few times in his mouth. Haymitch Amaranth Abernathy. Haymitch Amaranth Baird. For a moment, he imagined a world where he was born Covey. Not primed to bootleg white liquor as soon as he was old enough, but taught to sing, and paint, and rebel instead of stand by when peacekeepers hurt people he knew. A world where Clerk Carmine and Tam Amber wouldn’t disapprove of him so strongly. Then, he stopped, because that was also a world where he and Lenore Dove would be cousins, and the fantasy fell apart pretty quickly.
His ma and Sid and Lenore Dove and Burdock and Blair don’t need him to be anything other than a boy from the Seam anyway. He was not unhappy on the whole with the life he’d fallen into. There were moments like this, though, when he wished that the world didn’t have things like the Hunger Games, or the peacekeepers to worry about.
He reached his hand for Lenore Dove’s, and she entwined their fingers together.
“Thank you.” He said quietly. “I love it.”
She squeezed his hand gently. “Someday I’ll get my uncles to like you. Then, when we get married, you can add it to your name for real, if you like. It’s tradition.”
“When we get married, I’ll buy you a whole bushel of berries.” He offered back.
Lenore Dove laughed lightly.
“A bag of fruit candies will do.”
“Deal.” He agreed.
Two years later, the color of amaranth never looked so detestable as it did painted across his girlfriend’s lips while she coughed up blood and foam under a willow tree in the meadow. A small bag of berry colored fruit candies forgotten next to them both.