Just Hold On | Nightshade {oneshot}

The first time She holds her nephew, her hands curl around his small body so protectively that if anyone tried to take him away from her, they'd have a hard time of it. She's wearing the nurse scrubs and mask that they gave her to wear during the birthing but the mask is pulled down to her neck and her lips are shaped in a soft 'o'. Opal is sleeping in the bed beside them and Nightshade puts her pinky finger to his little lips, wonder transforming her usually cold features. His little hands grips her pinky, a gummy mouth sucking on her finger. He is a beautiful baby, born with a dark head of hair and eyes bluer than the District Eleven sky. He looks just like how his father did when he was born.

She hugs him to her chest, long hair falling across the pair like a curtain. He's quiet now, full. He is only five hours old now and Nightshade has never been so in love. The hospital is relatively quiet around them. Opal is in the Victor's suite and so it's silent anyway. The sun will rise soon and Opal will wake up, she'll want to hold him. Nightshade would cherish this time.

Her memory has always been excellent. She remembers the day clearly that the midwife came and then she had a baby brother when she left. She hadn't known what to think at first, she had been so used to having her parents to herself. However, when she had been allowed to sit on the bed beside her brother and stick her finger in his mouth she had been lost. From that moment on, she had been his.

Now he had left her all alone in this world, the only clue he had left behind was a mortally sad wife and a baby. Nightshade had promised to protect him. Failing that, she would protect the girl he had loved and his son that would never know his father. Not only because duty bound her to this, but because she had truly come to care for Opal Shore and the baby that they had been expecting for the past nine months.

She kissed his toes because they stuck out of the blanket. They were so small. The wonder of them made her eyes ache. Potato would have been enamored with him, he wouldn't have been able to ever let him ago. He had been a boy made for something like this. He had been created by Ripred to love and been made to slaughter instead. The world was cruel, as was fate. She often wondered how different life would have been if he had lived. Happier. Opal would have been the girl still that he fell in love with. For once in their miserable lives, he could have had a white picket fence and a loving family. She would have been the aunt that visited them on Sundays for dinner and always spoiled the baby with expensive and foreign gifts from far off places.

He'd ruined this by dying.

Her gaze fell on the sleeping Opal. Her hair was stringy from sweat and there were dark circles under her eyes. They seemed permanent now. Curious, Nightshade had gone back and looked at photos of Opal Shore, wondering how much she differed from Opal Earnest. It seems that the girl had been happy before. Images had shown her smiling at various charity events, working diligently in District Eleven during the drought, smiling and waving like a good little victor on her tour. Overall, she looked healthier, happier. Potato had ruined her too.

Nightshade was trying to get her back to that smiling girl but it was hard because she wasn't her brother. She was herself and she never smiled as much, she couldn't sing and sometimes she was sad. She was away a lot on cases and wasn't able to drop in to make sure she was eating as often as she would have liked to. If she could she would stay for longer. Every time she came back it seemed that there was cleaning and cooking to do. Every time she came back she found it harder and harder to leave. She didn't want to leave Opal alone when she was hurting so badly. She knew the pain of losing the people you lost but conveying that was difficult when she had never been half as good at emoting as Potato had been.

You could have read him like a book.

The baby was asleep with her finger in it's mouth, tiny fingers relaxed around her larger one. He was sweet so far, didn't seem to cry much. Like how Potato had been he had that curious gaze that told her he was looking.

"I'm going to teach you to read," she whispered to the sleeping form. That had been one of her failures with Potato. He'd only known how to spell his name and nothing else. People thought he was simple and maybe he was but it was in the best of ways. He was smart at other things, like knowing how to make people smile and growing a field full of the most beautiful vegetables their district had ever seen.

Ripred, she missed him.

Everyday.

The pain didn't seem to get less but it just remained there, a dull steady ache. It was now four years since she'd seen him and he'd seen her. It had been easier when she knew that he was still alive, still healthy. Now that she knew that he was gone, she couldn't stop thinking about him, not even to work. When she was running down a dark alley, gun out, ready to catch a killer, he was there in her head. When she was at her desk, late in the night with a cup of coffee in her hand he was there too. When she was here with Opal and now the baby he was so present that her hands sometimes shook and tears welled up in her eyes.

He was haunting her.

She didn't believe in Ripred anymore, he was a ghost story from when she was little. She hadn't been to church in years. For all that she didn't believe anymore, she couldn't help knowing that killers went to hell and Potato was a killer. She didn't want to think of him suffering still, she didn't want to think that he was in pain. So she told herself she didn't believe in Ripred and she left her mother's rosary in her drawer, out of sight and mind. He hadn't deserved hell no matter what they'd forced him to become.

"You're a good boy, like your father," she said, unable to keep the ache that followed her out of her voice, unable to stop the tears from falling and dripping slowly down her nose. They hit the baby's pudgy little cheeks but he barely sighed, sleeping on in comfort. "Let's make a pact. We'll make her happy again, your Ma. We'll work together okay?" she said softly, voice shaking slightly.

The baby snuggled further into her chest and opened it's little mouth in a yawn, baring it's gums for the world to see. She was certainly not the type to hold conversations with babies, let alone small children. However, she would be willing to accept that as an answer.

They watched the sunrise together, and her nephew turned one day old.