60th Reaping [D4]

"Good morning, pretty girl," River coos to the bright-eyed bundle of crimson curls and heartwarming smiles that giggles at her in response even though her demeanor is little more somber than she'd like it to be. She doesn't feel the weight of an insurmountable number of tesserae hanging over her head for the first time in years, but something uneasy and not quite right thrums little electric currents through her veins and makes her eyebrows draw together slightly. As the sole daughter from a proud line of sailors she knows things that others don't. She knows to trust her gut above anything, knows how to feel change come in on the wind, knows how to read the future in the stars and sky.

This morning, the sun rose red on the horizon. The breeze from the ocean blew in so stiff and cold as she sat on the porch with her coffee that the hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she felt something twist ominously in the pit of her stomach. She's never been all that superstitious, but River still can't shake the feeling that she can feel the cold breath of Fate down the back of the soft warmth of her bathrobe as she undoes the stubborn latches on the sides of Brooke's crib.

Brooke finally picked up on how to walk last month and has been an unholy terror ever since (no one will deny that she has her mother's independent streak any more than they'll deny that they share the same fiery locks and dimples on their cheeks when they smile), shrieking happily when her mother picks her up from her rickety crib and wrapping a plump little fist around a dangling tendril of red hair, yanking with all the strength her tiny arms allow her. River laughs, forgetting her trepidation for a few seconds as the freckled skin of her nose wrinkles and she gently pries Brooke's hands away. "Mommy needs her hair, honey. C'mon, let's get you all prettied up."

Brooke looks so mutinous when she's put into a tiny, gauzy white sundress that River laughs again - there's no doubt whose daughter she is, although the petulant glare shot in her direction from grey-blue eyes reminds her more of Fledger than herself - humming a low melody to keep the wriggling toddler relatively still on the surface of the bed as she pulls her nest of downy-soft curls into two tiny pigtails with white ribbons. River had never been one for dressing up dolls or playing house in her childhood, but she can't deny that there's a certain sense of serenity that comes with putting Brooke in cute outfits and doing all of those Mommy-things that remind her so much of her own mother sometimes that it physically aches in a pang of loss that reverberates through her chest.

Getting herself ready doesn't take all that long - she's learned over the last year how to manage her time so most of it can be devoted to Brooke, laying her own clothes out the night before and making sure everything in the house is ready to go from the moment she wakes up in the morning. In the space of five minutes she shimmies into a dress of her own, brushes her hair until it shines in beachy scarlet waves down her back and even applies a bit of makeup, scowling in the mirror as she does so. The Reaping is enough of a horrid thing on its own, but having to trade in her sailing clothes and ponytails for skirts and mascara takes it all to a whole new level of unpleasantry. Still, she contemplates as the soft caress of a blush brush tickles her freckled cheeks, she at least looks pretty for once, chocolate eyes smoldering in contrast to her pale skin thanks to the smoky liner and the forgiving high waist of her dress skirting over the baby weight she hasn't quite been able to work completely off yet. She smiles.

Fledger tells her she's beautiful even when she comes in all windblown and haphazard from days on the water, and his is the only opinion in the world she's ever given a damn about.

"You two look nice," she says to Fledger and Theron when they meet in the kitchen, her voice tight and the words forced because she will never say Happy Hunger Games like it's something to be celebrated, not when that icy terror jolts through her body again when her eyes meet Fledger's as she puts Brooke into her high chair and scrambles through the cabinets for the box of baby cereal. "We ought to be going soon. Don't want to get caught in the crowds."

The walk to the square carries with it an oppressive silence, broken only by the sound of their breathing and Brooke's occasional babbling as she plays with River's necklace and giggles, oblivious to the tension in the air. She purses her lips and thinks for the umpteenth time that maybe they should have gotten a sitter, but money is tight as-is and River's never been one to trust even herself, much less her daughter into the hands of others. But the crowd presses tight, too close for comfort as her hand tightens to a white knuckled grip around Fledger's when they reach the point where they'll have to separate, all three of them splitting into their respective age groups behind velvet ropes to await the tragic gamble of Fate that will have two families (Ripred no, not hers, please not hers, please please please...) forever rent apart at the seams, irreparable and eternally broken. Glassy brown meets stormy bluish gray, like the sky on a rainy day, both sets of eyes unblinking as the frantic clench of their hands say all the words their mouths can't.

She kisses him then, hard and unyielding like the world is ending, the delicate structure and work-roughened texture of her fingers curling into dark strands and pressing the two of them so close that she forgets for the millionth time where Fledger ends and she begins. The adults around glare and grumble about how teen parents are undermining society but River can't bring herself to care, breaths heavy and this horrible icy thing still breathing whispers of doom into her ear as she pulls away and presses her forehead against his, the hand that isn't holding Brooke against her hip curling into the front of his shirt. "I love you. So much. See you in a bit."

River doesn't let her eyes leave him as he walks with graceful the gait she's come to memorize over to the group of eighteen year olds a few yards away. The anthem plays and the talking starts, but all of a sudden River isn't able to hear it, amplified words reduced to a dull mumble over the way her heartbeat roars hot and heavy against her eardrums, her arms wrapped around Brooke so tightly that the little girl wriggles and mutters uncomfortably in response. The Escort's hand disappears in a snowstorm of paper slips and her breath hitches in her throat, the world all of a sudden agonizingly clear when a name rings out over the heads of the audience.

It's not hers.

Even though she wants to kick herself for smiling as another girl ascends the steps to her doom she does it anyway, lips curved upwards in giddy relief as she presses her face into Brooke's hair, calming her raging pulse in the soothing scent of baby powder and sea wind. The baby girl babbles out her discontent again at being clutched so tightly and River laughs, loosening her hold and brushing the bridge of her daughter's nose, callused fingers tracing the smattering of freckles already forming there from her one year spent under the District Four sun. The chill that sat so heavy on her shoulders seems to dissipate, replaced with a relived weightlessness that makes her feel almost like she could fly with the gulls that circle overhead, at peace and happy and-

"Fledger Rells!"

And her whole world comes crashing down.

She looks owlishly at the Escort as if she's not quite sure what's just happened, liquid chocolate eyes saucer-round and blinking in sluggish confusion. Fledger? In the Games? It can't be. It can't. But it is. It hits her as soon as she sees him slowly ascending the steps with his expression just as dazed as hers. River wills herself to do something, to run, to scream, to breathe, but she only stands in stiff paralysis, trembling and rooted to the spot as the anthem plays again and Brooke whimpers at the loud noise so harsh on her tiny ears.

She can't, she can't, she can't do this alone and the knowledge that she's standing here watching the one who holds her heart, her forever, the father of her child being escorted off the stage into a place where she can't follow completely consumes her from the inside out, icy heat and freezing torridity eating through the core of her being as the square gradually empties of people and she's still left standing on the worn cobblestones, lithe dancer's frame shuddering violently and Brooke finally registers the confusion and agony in the air and starts to cry. It's that sound that saps the last of her strength, shatters her composure and sends her to her knees that connect with a painful crack against the uneven pavement.

She's always been strong. Always unyielding in the face of life's storms as she dares them to take her if they can, always the one to be depended upon, all fierce loyalty and a temper to match. She's always been tough, enduring everything from rope burn to broken bones to broken hearts on the deck of a whaling boat and gritting her teeth, pushing through it, never, ever giving into the liquid fire that had the nerve to lap at the backs of her eyes. Except for the one time she does.

There, shivering in the middle of the abandoned square with her daughter clutched to her chest, River lets herself cry.