Author's Note: I'm definitely not new to the world of fanfic, but I am new to the world of the Hunger Games and to the Hayffie pairing. I read the books and watched the movie pretty recently, thought they were awesome, loved both of these characters (especially Effie; she's just so damn funny) and had to write a fic about them, specifically about Effie, as I would have liked to have seen her character developed more. I may write another, if I have any really good ideas and if this one does well.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters—they're the intellectual property of Suzanne Collins.

She holds her hands gently before the fire, sighing in relief as the warmth flows through them, seeming to thaw her frozen blood and loosen her stiff muscles. Now she can move her fingers again without pain. She does so gingerly, observing the orange flickers of firelight reflecting off of her milky skin, making her flesh seem to glow.

It's been quite some time since she has taken a good, reflective look at her hands, a long while since she has cared what they looked like. Who would have thought that she, a product of the Capitol and all of its foolish vanity, could ever have been indifferent to such a detail? There had been a time when she wouldn't even set foot outside her home unless her fingernails were perfectly manicured and painted some eye-catching shade of electric blue or glaring fuchsia.

Her lips curve in a bitter half-smile at the memory of who she used to be. So vain, so oblivious and naïve. Yet she had been happy in her naiveté, perfectly content not to trouble her pretty, pink-wigged head about all of the suffering that she could have observed, right in front of her very own face, if she had bothered to look closely enough.

She never had bothered to take notice of it, not until she, too, had been subjected to the Capitol's cruelty. Then she had seen it all too clearly, had spent every day of her imprisonment, in between the interrogations and the beatings and the sexual assaults, thinking about the suffering that she had seen yet refused to take in throughout District 12 during her stint as Escort. How it should have been obvious to her that it was all brought on by the very government to which she had stupidly been so loyal. How it should have been blindingly apparent just how miserable it all was and that it had to come to an end eventually.

She shivers in the cool air of the room, pulls the knitted blanket closer about her, and then brings her hands back to the fire. I knitted this blanket myself, she thinks, pride swelling within her. Sometimes she wonders if, given the chance, she would ever go back to her carefree, ignorant Capitol life. There are times when she even wishes for it, for things to return to the way they were before the 74th annual Hunger Games changed everyone's world forever. And then she looks at her hands, with their short, unadorned fingernails and roughened knuckles and the burn on the right hand that she sustained the previous day, taking biscuits out of the oven. She thinks of all of the things that her hands can do, now.

In the Capitol, her hands had been just another decoration, a pretty part of her perfectly sculpted body. Here they can knit, sweep floors, cook stew and, ever since Peeta started giving her baking lessons, make bread. Here her hands are useful; here she has a purpose, things to do, someone to take care of. She had no purpose in the Capitol, not anymore. She wasn't sure that she ever really had.

In the Capitol, too, she had been alone. Here in District 12 there was someone whose hand she could clasp in her own, whose arms could shelter her. Life with Haymitch wasn't perfect, of course—never had been, never would be, but it had quickly come to be the only kind of life she could imagine.

It had taken her some time to figure this out, many lonely, agonizing months in the Capitol, doing nothing but staring at the walls of her barren apartment, trying to drown out her thoughts with the drone of the television, to keep the menacing memories at bay with fancy pills, before she figured out that the Capitol wasn't her home anymore. It never could be again, although it was the only home she had ever known. The sense of betrayal simply ran too deep.

And so she had called him, one night, seemingly out of the blue. He told her later, during one of those still, silent nights when they lay in one another's arms after making love, that prior to that phone call, he had never expected to hear from her again. He had not hesitated to make the suggestion that she come to his home, to be with him, at least for as long as it took her to figure out her next move. Her next move, it turned out, had been to make no move at all, to stay with him, to learn how to live without her gaudy clothing and makeup and other fancy Capitol trappings. It had been easier than she had thought it would be, and her new life was happy, for the most part.

Happy, but not perfect, she reflects. Haymitch still drinks, though he spends significantly less of his time pissed out of his mind these days. She still wakes up screaming and crying from nightmares about her time as the Capitol's prisoner. She's not been able to fully shed the husk of her Capitol self, and so she still annoys Haymitch at times with her lectures about manners. They still fight and take jabs at each other. Some things, she knows, will never change, although of late their insults have taken on more of a playful, teasing air and been meant more to entertain than to offend. Haymitch still calls her Princess, the nickname he thought up for her years ago when she had first begun working with him as District 12's Escort, originally meant to mock her but now a term of endearment.

A door opens and closes behind her, and she turns around to see Haymitch striding into the room, back from The Hob, cradling a bottle of white alcohol under one arm. He sets the bottle on the table and comes over to join her on the sofa in front of the fire, holding out his hands for warmth.

"Getting cold out there," he says. She nods.

"It's cold in here," she replies.

"I can build up the fire some more if you like," he says, though she can tell that he's not excited about the prospect of going back outside for firewood.

"No," she says, scooting herself closer to him and snuggling into his body for warmth, "Just stay here for a bit." He complies, one arm moving around her shoulders and the other moving lower so that he can place his hand upon her stomach, which has just begun to swell noticeably.

"How's your day been, sweetheart?" he asks, lightly stroking her abdomen.

"Fine. I've been making some more bread since we're almost out—"

Haymitch cuts her off. "I'm not talking to you, Princess," he says, "I'm talking to her." He gives her belly a light pat, and she glares at him briefly before shaking her head and smiling despite herself.

"You're so sure it's going to be a girl," she says.

"It will be," he insists.

She thinks to herself that it doesn't matter one way or another—all that she can think is that this child will be hers, theirs. She still can't believe that there is even going to be a child. When Katniss's mother diagnosed her fatigue and constant sickness as the early stages of pregnancy, Effie had been shocked, for no reason other than that she had never thought of having children before, never imagined herself pregnant.

She supposes that this seems odd to the District 12 people among whom she still feels herself out of place. Here, marriage and childbearing are viewed as the logical and natural progression of a woman's life. However, in the Capitol, where everything was about appearances and even a woman's womb could be artificially regulated, there were so many different pills and other concoctions to prevent pregnancy that a woman need never even think about children if she didn't want them. Most Capitol women were reluctant to have children, and a good amount never did—children got in the way of going to parties and having a social life, and pregnancy ruined a woman's figure forever.

Now, she finds that she isn't the least bit concerned about her figure, or how pregnancy will mold and re-shape it. All that concerns her, at the moment, is Haymitch's hand resting protectively on her belly and his insistence that he can feel their daughter moving though even she knows that it's far too early for that. She covers his hand with both of her small, plain, slightly rough, but ultimately useful ones, burrowing deeper into him and allowing herself a few moments to dream about the future before her household chores call her back to the reality of her reinvented life in District 12.