Chapter Text
He wakes slowly, blinking towards her bustling with sleep still hazing his brain. “What you doing?”
Effie heaves another box, simple cardboard to carry the ornate hand-finished midnight corset; cardboard to protect what will possibly be the Season’s most famous outfit, how very amusing the contrast. “Packing,” she says, balancing the box on a crate so she can turn to give her son the attention he deserves. “How are you feeling now?”
“Better, thanks,” he answers, running his fingers through his sandy hair. It sticks up in twisted mayhem – does he never use soap? Honestly, she tuts, flattening it carefully into something more reminiscent of ‘deliberately tousled’ than ‘related to hedgehog’, of all the things to take after his father in, these blasted sleep-spikes had to be it. “Do you want me to help?”
Pleased by his offer, by the unspoken want to spend more time with her in her home, her home of felt and needles and trace-paper designs, she accepts, directing him to help her carry the heavier boxes out to the gate of the cottage. Transport to the train station, and thence to the Capitol, should arrive two hours; time enough yet for tea and a shower and to prettify herself into sly, pretty Effie Trinket. “Watch out for those ones in the black, with the tape over the boxes. They’re my Season costumes, I’m hoping to get into the Annual again,” she cautions her son, inelegantly stuffing a few prettyish scraps into the top of one box as extra padding. Where is she to get more of this sparkling dark blue? That orange – paired with a subtle sort of pink, that could be really rather striking, something for a Capitol darling or tribute from One trying make an impact: a short day-dress, pinstriped orange and pink on white? No, embroidered blossom on the orange, paired with a dark green, perhaps. What is she missing, there is surely something else to be squeezed into her trunk that she’s forgetting in this bustling haste.
“Mum,” Peeta says, smiling, holding her needle-box up. “I collected everything, even out of the wall by the stairs.”
“Oh! Best of children,” she praises, plucking it from his grasp and whirling on one (admittedly comfortable, she will wear these more often) block heel to tuck the precious case into her satchel. “Now then, we’ve got my Season contributions, and the sketchbook for the Games. Needles, threads in the blue case, silk in the yellow and my felts all in the purple. Where’s the other, the green?”
Sighing lightly, Peeta trails her back through to the study where the half-packed green case of her own clothes sits, sorrily abandoned in the upheaval. “Mum, are you even planning to take clothes?”
“Well,” she mutters dubiously, “I can’t just send for my things, can I? I have clothes in my Capitol apartment. My fabrics...”
“If you need them, write me,” Peeta tells her firmly, dragging the trunk into the hall. “Clothes, mum. Sensible ones.”
His practicality makes her laugh – that’s from her, alright, making a step-by-step scheme to get what she wants from whoever it is necessary to get it from. “Indeed,” she teases, “I, of course, simply cannot possibly organise any of this by myself, despite my degree, and my jobs, and my ability. I am, after all, only your mum.”
Peeta laughs too, now, a little chastened by her tease. “Alright, point made, mum. Let’s get you packed and in fighting form.”
And so, between the two Trinkets, one of whom sold her dreams to idiots and one of whom dreamed of doing the same, the house is ordered into must-be-taken and covered-by-sheets and send-me-these-later. The truck arrives: they are apart. He is just a boy, and she is Effie Trinket the escort with too many clothes – and that, she thinks fiercely, is the great thing about idiots who accept an assumption. The thrill of hiding her creations in the emptiness of an Escort rings into her very fingers like the finest wine. Perhaps, as her father once accused, she does have a little of the thrill-chaser about her. What is Haymitch if not a thrill?