//a little stranger// [lethe's baby shower]

[Rosetta]

Lethe Turner

Lethe stood in her bathroom, blouse unbuttoned up to her chest, examining the soft swell of her belly. She was four months along and her belly had begun to rise. However, she wasn’t concerned about her belly growing too large and overcoming her trim frame; her first pregnancy had only left her with a tiny bump growing in the front of her body. Her fingers scraped her soft skin before coming to a rest, her palm against her the rounded swell.

Jasper had been overjoyed when the pregnancy test had come up positive. Lethe knew why; he loved Eden like his own, but finally, with his wife, he was going to make something that was his and hers both. He had picked her up and kissed her hard on the mouth as the stick with the little pink positive slipped between her fingers and clattered to the floor.

“This will make things better,” he whispered to his little wife, enclosing her gently in his arms and Lethe, who had bit her fingernails down to stubs waiting for the test to come back, folded into him. Strangely, she felt little but his warmth and the stubble on his chest scratching her cheek. With Eden, as she vomited and sobbed, alone on her bathroom floor, her emotions were uncontested; she was terrified. Here, with life growing inside of her nearly a year after her brother lost his life, she was drifting, slowly, just feeling Jasper.

All good things had to come to an end though. “Take care of her,” Lethe told Jasper, as Eden clung to her waist, crying, on the day of the Reaping. Jasper had grinned back at her and never before, as her stomach fluttered, did she realize how much she liked his smile.

"I always do,”he promised, kissing her on the forehead, before running his hand across her stomach. “You take care of yourself too,” he told her firmly.

“You sound like my mother now,” she groaned playfully and his smile widened.

“I love you,” he told her, his hand now in Eden’s blonde curls. The girl sniffled and raised her head to look up at her parents. At nine years old, Eden struck Lethe with wonder at how much she looked like herself with bright green eyes and blonde hair that seemed to overcome her thin frame. For a long time, Lethe was terrified that Eden would develop the same illness that had plagued her before the Games, but she showed no signs and seemed to be in clear. She was gorgeous, lovely, sweet and growing taller by the second. Each year, it was painful to leave her and now, Jasper, for the two months she was in the Capitol. She could call them there and did so every night; however, that did not make up for Eden’s soft hands nor Jasper’s warm arms.

This year, too, was special. It was ten years since Lethe had won the Games. Where had those years gone? She was sure she’d only just won and only just gotten drunk for the first time and only just conceived Eden. Then, she surely had only just given birth and only just evaded her mother’s attempts at marrying her off and only just chased Eric until he was gone and only just found herself in Jasper’s arms, a ring in her finger. Then, she had only just lost her brother…and thus, ten years had passed.

In ten years since murdering two young men and losing two friends, Anya and Saskia, Lethe felt no lighter, no more absolved of sin. Instead, the same heaviness and scars she’d carried from the Games lingered, hiding until the folds of clear skin and innocently blinking green eyes. She clutched Camalia to her heart the entire way from District Five to the Capitol and barely let her go as the days progressed. In the ten years since she was eighteen, Lethe felt like her body had progressed twenty. Underneath the surgery and Capitol products that she had been forced to apply to her body to keep her pretty, she had stretch marks and scars and her breasts might’ve sagged just a bit with her pregnancies, but no, she still looked eighteen even though she had one working eye and woke up migraines.

Arbor had had a party when ten years had passed, but Lethe would not. Each Games that had passed left her more and more distant and detached. She wanted little to do with her tributes; they’d all die in the end. Erebus’s games was the most involvement she’d shown since Sundra and Aesop. And he had died. The first chance Lethe got, she shut herself up in her room and spent most of her days running her fingertips over her swelling belly and allowing Camalia, slower in her older age, lick her neck affectionately. It wasn’t until the District Five tributes were shunted away to the Games that Lethe could breathe easier. She didn’t need to see them living and breathing before her in the flesh, their wide eyes pleading at her—couldn’t she save them? Little Lethe, her allies dead, a former ally’s knife in her eye, had survived. Did they have hope now?

The baby shower wasn’t her idea. Her stylist, Mel, had suggested it after seeing the state of Lethe’s hair after several days of doing little except for the occasional letter to Jasper and the wobbly knitting of a hat for Eden. “Why don’t you celebrate with the other Victors?” She ran her fingers through Lethe's limp curls. "You're pregnant. You're glowing."

In the bathroom, Lethe buttoned her blouse back up and smoothed it. Mel had helped her into a simple outfit, a blouse and jeans, that would show off her soft bump. Just so a bunch of Victors could insincerely coo over it, Lethe thought bitterly. Half of the Victors were parents as well, but it didn’t make it any easier. One day their children could grow up to kill one another and die for nothing.

Plopping Camalia down on her shoulder, Lethe wandered from her room and absent-mindedly pushed the elevator button to the bottom floor, thinking about Opal Shore. She’d seen little of the new mother since she’d arrived, but Lethe often worried for her and felt a pang of pity whenever she heard her name, and yet also, a pang of understanding. She longed to reach out and hold Opal’s hand whenever she glimpsed her and pull her close and tell her, I know. After all, Eric had largely been absent from her life and Eden’s and today, she had no idea where he was, who he was with, or what he was doing.

But, then again, at least Eric was alive and had seen his baby girl. Opal would never see her baby’s father’s eyes light up like that.

When Lethe saw the hall she gasped. Her mother had thrown her a small private baby shower for Eden in their parlor with a few family members and some pink streamers. But, of course, the Capitol had to top that with the high-ceilinged hall adorned with long, pink ribbons. Light filtered in, bright and brilliant, from painted glass windows. Lethe’s chair was at the head of a beautiful set table with silver tea cups and already Victors were getting ready to sit. Several of them had dressed up, others not so much. Lethe smiled at Saffron as she came in; the girl’s innocent gaze reminded her so much of her own it was hard not to.

Awkwardly setting Camalia down on the table next to her tea cup, Lethe took her seat at the head of the table and forced a smile. Arbor had made a speech at his ten year party, but Lethe would do nothing of the kind. The baby shower simply meant she’d receive gifts, sip tea and have her belly rubbed. Placing a protective hand over her belly, she coughed and addressed her guests, “Thank you all for coming. Time, ah,” she chuckled loudly, falsely, “does fly. I’m glad you’re all here to celebrate my second pregnancy. Thank you.” That part was true. Her first pregnancy had come and gone alone, friendless and scared.

Some of the Victors, at least, knew the pain of raising a child they may one day have to give away to the same horrors they had only barely escaped.

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

a note from the desk of

Mace Emberstatt

of District Ten

when you never thought that it could ever get this tough,
that's when you feel my kind of love

"No."

"You don't want to see Eden and Daisy and Penelope and Media and March and Cedar and Ky?"

"No."

"What about Aunt Lethe?"

"No."

Mace sighed, slapping the last of the tape onto the slightly smushed box. He'd intended to find his own wrapping paper, but then Esme had miraculously survived another day and he had to be there for her when he wasn't being a father and then she was gone and he was left with the garish mess Olive insisted was wrapping paper but looked more like silk. The corners were already threatening to tear. He hoped Lethe ascribed to the old it's what on the inside that counts. Because that part was totally, one hundred percent Embryze.

It would be a miracle if she ever saw it. He pouted dramatically down at Mason, who had wrapped himself around the table leg.

"I don't know if Kieran wants to see you today."

"Yes he does!" Mason screamed, a banshee sound that was as unique as it was godawful.

Mace flinched. "We can't force other people to like us. Trust me on that." Mace tucked the box under one arm and held out his hand. "Last chance, buddy. Maybe we'll be lucky and Kieran will be there. But if he's not, that's okay, because it's not his party. It's not your party. This is for Lethe and her baby. Understand?"

"No!"

"Okay. Olive will watch you."

"No!"

Mace's jaw ticked with every no from the bedroom to the elevator. He kissed the side of Julian's neck even though his teeth were on edge. Mason burst into tears as Mace pushed him into the carriage. He caught a flicker of humor on his lover's face. "He'll grow out of it," Mace muttered. "Don't for a second think this deters me. I'm hoping Lethe will trade us her baby for this." He rattled the ridiculously wrapped present, a broad grin steadying his jaw.

The waterfall of tears shut off like a faucet the moment Mason saw the other children. He grabbed Juliet's hand and they barreled into the pack of victor children. He forced down the desire to do the same. Instead, he followed Julian around, waiting until he settled into a conversation, and then made a beeline for the serving platter. He managed to pluck only one tea sandwich from among the pile before an avox shooed him to his seat.

He sank into his chair, staring down at the triangle morsel. He could it in one gulp, one satisfying gulp, or he could chew it piece by piece, stretch it out until the tea was served. Which was better? How could he maximally enjoy this cucumber sandwich?

Saffron sat down beside him. Mace shoved the sandwich into his mouth, swallowing it whole before turning to her. He dropped a slightly wet kiss on her cheek and then pulled at one of her red curls. "Juliet's been asking about how you make your hair like this. I told her we could try curling it with some of the toy truck wheels. Right?"

He glanced over Saffron's head to Lethe. She looked like a queen, at the head of a table, bathed in pink and gold light. Mace put his present on the table and gave it a push towards her. "For you and the baby." It wasn't his best work but then, he hadn't realized he would be attending a baby shower when he'd left Ten. He should have brought more wood, or better tools, or more helpful advice. Because now he had a slightly off-center wooden rattle for a baby-not-yet-born and two children to bury.

Mace swallowed. "Hope you like it."

He turned his attention back to Saffron, ready to hear any advice she had to give about raising a girl, when he caught movement across the table. Opal, the rather the ghost of Opal past, the girl whose eyes haunted his nightmares. He didn't know what to say. He thought of Ky every day, but his name always died on Mace's lips. After a moment, he realized he was staring, and dropped his gaze to his empty plate, once again confounded by conversation.