Archive of Our Own

i. 

Haymitch looked out at the Presidential ballroom from between gold bars. His cage dangled only a few feet off the ground, swaying, jolting slightly with every sponsor who wrapped their long, thin fingers around the bars, snatching for a piece of him. They wanted to talk. They wanted to take his picture. They wanted him on his knees and with an open mouth for food dangled above.

Effie lingered nearby all night, never leaving, but never giving him more than a tentative glance either. Like she wasn’t sure what to make of it; the sight of him in a cage. Honestly, a part of him woulda preferred for her to go off into the rest of the party. Bragging about his victory like it was her own. It woulda been less humiliating than this.

It woulda been easier to resent that rather than her big, pitying eyes.  

Soon enough, the sun began to rise and the party began to wind down. Daylight leaked through the tall, velvet curtains, cutting across the dance floor like a knife. Haymitch blinked against it. He squinted out at the sorry scene. Faces of makeup, after being worn all night, had begun to crack and crumble and rot. Hair all frizzed and askew. Smoke from the evening curdled in the dome of the ballroom. In the haze, Capitols stumbled back and forth, pupils blown. They hid behind their fans, they draped handkerchiefs over their heads, some sorta desperate attempt to hide their crumbling faces from eachother, from the daylight.

They were so aimless, Haymitch thought, so frantic and lost until a servant finally tucked them into a car. Just watching made his stomach feel heavy and sick.

These were supposed to be his betters? His keepers?

Scattering like bugs underneath a lifted rock.

Haymitch was shaken from his thoughts by Effie approaching the cage, still all pity in the eyes, but with a key in hand. Had she had it the whole time? Or did someone hand it off to her? He didn’t bother to ask. Pointless, really.

He only waited patiently while she fiddled with the lock and opened the door. Like the good, little puppet that he was.

“Here,” she said, trying to offer him a hand.

“I got it.”

“Just take my hand, Haymitch.”

He did, even if it was reluctant. He didn’t want Effie’s pity, and he didn’t want to want Effie’s help. But he was tired and his legs felt like gelatin and she was here, wasn’t she? She was here. So Haymitch let himself be helped down and onto the dance floor.

“Is that it?” he heard himself ask. Stupid and pitiful, even in his own ears.

“For tonight,” Effie promised. Even she didn’t sound like herself. Less pitched than she was in the daytime. And when she smiled, it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Great.” he deadpanned back.

They barely said a word to eachother for the rest of the early morning. There were no words to be said. Haymitch climbed into the car—silent—and balked—again, silent—at the spread that was waiting for him. Food, and not just Capitol shit either. Real food. Big sandwiches with warm bread and thick cuts of cheese; cold carrots chopped into very fine sticks, orange and white and purple too; hardboiled eggs sliced into perfect halves and sprinkled with something red that Haymitch didn’t recognize; chilled water with floating lemon.

It was the only food Haymitch had had the luxury of putting in his own mouth all night, and he forgot to thank her for it.

Effie.

He forgot to say thank you.

The next ten days that passed, at the time, felt like the very worst of his life. Though, he didn’t know he had a lotta worse days to come.

It was mid-August, the Capitol was stifling in a summer heat, and Mister Leto Gallopetal had a collar around his neck. Had Haymitch hooked to a leash, he did. Parading him around the lawn of his foothills estate. A garden party, Effie had said. For the Gallopetal’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Haymitch down on all fours, crawling across perfectly manicured lawn, smiling, obedient, so fucking obedient he wished someone would just put a shotgun down his throat.  

No, he reminded himself.

No.

Haymitch had so much to live for. He had so many people with open arms full of love waiting for him back in Twelve.

And so he crawled and he smiled and he grit his teeth every time Gallopetal pulled the leash.

The thing left a nasty red mark around his neck. No good for cameras, Plutarch had tutted, pulling in his cheeks. Effie hadn’t said a word. And Haymitch hadn’t winced, hadn’t wiggled, he didn’t even complain when she came to his room with a little bottle of ointment tucked between her hands.

“Don’t bother,” he tried to say. “I got it.”

“Let me?”

He oughta just let her, shouldn’t he? Especially seeing as Effie was just about the only person in the Capitol who ever asked permission before she touched him.

“Yeah. Sure.”

He forgot to thank her that time too.

Haymitch got used as a coffee table by one generous sponsor, who claimed he wouldn’t have even survived the Hunger Games without his contributions. He was down on all four, again. An Avox served tea on his back. The saucers left behind these small, circular burns. And still, Haymitch said nothing. He was made to grovel and beg, lick sauces and creams off the floor, like a savage beast, while party-goers giggled and cheered. And still, Haymitch said nothing. They undressed him, and redressed him, costumed him with every kind of ridiculous outfits. A Romanic loincloth, a baby’s bonnet, strings and ribbons, and metal cuffs. And still, Haymitch said nothing.

None of the people he visited ever bothered to feed him, but at least there was always a sandwich waiting in the car when Effie picked him up.

He was never allowed to pee during his visits.

Effie had the lobby bathroom of his jail-like apartment building waiting on standby, and the security footage from that one time he’d pissed himself in the elevator had mysteriously vanished. Good. The last thing Haymitch needed was for President Snow to have grainy, pissed, pantsless, crying-like-a-baby footage somewhere in the ol’ blackmail archive.

The people in the Capitol didn’t believe in wearing any sorta protection.

Not for him, anyway.

Oh, they were perfectly fine at protecting themselves. Unlike in Twelve—where a well-placed sponge and a prayer was about all the birth control you could get—Capitols all had these personal little pill boxes. Compact, easy-to-swallow, one-hundred percent preventative. What more could you need?

But not for him.

They preferred him vulnerable, ya see?

They preferred him bare.

Effie—without so much as a word to anyone else—arranged for Haymitch to be tested as often as they could. Not that he liked that much. Being poked and prodded and feeled up by a doctor wasn’t so different than being poked and prodded and feeled up by a sponsor. Only difference was the white coat. Haymitch’s stomach felt all heavy every time. Like he was full of lead or something. He started counting tiles on the ceiling until he couldn’t hear or feel ‘em anymore.

The doctor?

A sponsor?

Take your pick. Haymitch kept counting.  

Capitol screening panels are very good, you know, Effie had told him once. Efficient. The antibiotics too. She flashed him a smile like she was an actor on a stage. Playing for the back row. A person pretending to be a person. You have nothing to worry about, she had promised.

It was a shame, really.

With everything that was coming to him maybe Haymitch woulda been better off with a few months of nasty sores. Maybe lose his nose. And then just fucking croaking, ya know? It woulda been easier, less painful.

But, at the time, he had been grateful to Effie.

So fucking stupid and grateful.

“It’s a good thing we’ve caught this early,” she said, too-soft, too-gentle. She smiled at him—for real this time—just for him, and her cheeks got all round. A doctor that Haymitch had never bothered to learn the name of stuck a needle in his arm. “A blessing, really.”

Yeah. A blessing.

How fucking blessed was he to have Effie here? Saving him for Ma; her son would come home healthy and not-as-emaciated as the Capitol woulda liked. Saving him for Sid; his brother would come home with two arms to embrace and two shoulders to carry him on. Saving him for Lenore Dove, sweet and wonderful Lenore Dove; her love would come home whole enough to love, well enough to embrace, warm and still with a beating heart in his breast. Beating for her, for her.

But it was too late, wasn’t it? Haymitch came home too late.

He woulda been better off with the syphilis.

ii. 

Haymitch was pantsless the first time he met Effie’s father.

It sounded worse than it was.

Nothing nasty or perverted. There were lots of perverts in the Capitol, but Mr. Trinket was not one of them. A little eccentric, maybe, but not as much as a person might expect. Not as much as Effie and Proserpina mighta led him to believe. The brightly coloured hair clearly wasn’t a genetic trait.

Mr. Trinket’s hair was dark, brown, with streaks of silver shot through his temples. He was passably tall, passably broad, with a thick brow in permanent furrow and thin lips accompanied by a perfectly groomed mustache. A man of no-nonsense, according to Effie. Her father coveted his little pleasure and did not suffer fools. Clearly, Haymitch remembered thinking, once. ‘Cause he definitely didn’t raise one. He had none of the energy of his daughters, none of their unbridled enthusiasm. No, Mr. Trinket was all few words, brief exchanges, clean lines, firm handshakes, dry wit, and only the littlest bit of a scrutinizing eye.

And, ya know, clearly a pretty calm guy seeing as he didn’t scream bloody murder when he walked into his closet to find a pantsless Victor in the room.

“Ah.”

That’s all Mr. Trinket said.

He blinked.

Haymitch blinked back.

“You must be the young Victor we’ve heard so much about.” he said after a moment, removing his hat with one hand and offering the other for Haymitch to shake.

“I, yeah,” he fumbled. “Yes.”

They shook hands, and Haymitch fumbled a little with that too.

“Sorry about, uh,” he continued, gesturing to his obvious lack of pants. “I can—”

“No, no, please.” Mr. Trinket gestured with his hand. “If this is my daughter’s doing, which I do believe it is, I’m sure she gave you very strict instructions not to go anywhere or do anything. Far be it from me to facilitate your disobedience.”

Haymitch jerked his head, a generous person mighta called it a nod. He didn’t want to move.

Mr. Trinket, on the other hand, seemed completely fine to go about his usual business with Haymitch—underwear only—in the center of the room. He watched as the older man hung his fancy walking stick on the wall where two others already hung. As he removed his gloves, folded them, and placed them on a side table. His hat was already set aside. There was a newspaper waiting for him on a low ottoman, a pipe and matches on a nearby shelf.

Capitols were funny like that.

All their lungs were black as sin without ever spending a day in the mines. It seemed silly, in Haymitch’s opinion.

Like a big waste.

He lingered awkwardly in the middle of the room as Mr. Trinket removed his overcoat and put on a very fancy-looking, quilted robe. He wasn’t really sure if he should say something, do something, and if he should what to say or do. He shuffled his feet a little, craned his neck, looking back towards the bedroom. Where the hell had Effie gone?

It was only supposed to be a quick stop. That’s what she’d promised him. We’ll be ever so quick, no one will be home, Haymitch, no one will even know we’ve been there! Just quickly grabbing some more clothes to borrow before they rushed off to the Presidential Manor.

Haymitch shivered a little, and not from his lack of pants.

His Victory Tour started today.

Effie had picked him up in Twelve yesterday. She had peeled him out of his misery and loaded him onto a train that would took him through the districts, to the Capitol, and would eventually take him back again. It was fine. Haymitch didn’t need to be in Twelve to be a miserable cunt. He could do that on a train too. And that’s exactly what he did do.

He didn’t eat, and he slept even less. His family was dead and the backs of his eyelids still looked like the meadow, like Lenore Dove with a red sugarstain on her lips.

He could be a miserable cunt in the city too.

In this stinking Capitol, surrounded by these shriveled souls stuffed into starched collars, pretending to be human. He could be perfectly miserable at their parties, in their clothes, their dining rooms, their drawing rooms, their cages. He could be the most miserable cunt in the whole world right here in Mr. Trinket’s walk-in closet.

Fucking pantless.

All at once, the whole thing became too much to handle. Too much to swallow. Like Haymitch couldn’t quite make heads or tails of himself.

He choaked a little. On air, not really crying. He couldn’t, not here, it wasn’t safe.

Everyone he’d ever loved was dead.

Why couldn’t he have died too?

Haymitch tried hard to contain himself, but his body didn’t listen. Didn’t or wouldn’t. Maybe all it could hear was the horrible, reedy gasping sounds that were tearing through his chest. Every breath in his lungs hard-won and raw. Barely a thing. A horrible sound from so deep inside his gut that made his muscles hurt.

He mighta forgotten Mr. Trinket was there if he hadn’t chosen that moment to clear his throat and speak.

“Come now, my dear fellow.” The sentiment was followed by a slow and awkward pat on Haymitch’s back. “Come now, I’m sure it isn’t as bad as all that.”

He answered with only strangled air.

The room was blurry, everything around him felt blurry. His insides all jumbled up and wrong.

“Euphemia?”

He heard Mr. Trinket shout out the door.

Effie didn’t answer.

Haymitch felt himself sink to the floor, he buried the bridge of his nose between his knees. He couldn’t do it. He just… couldn’t. He wasn’t strong enough. He felt like a flimsy piece of twine, all frayed and pulled apart, too weak. And what? He was just supposed to what? Keep fucking living? Like nothing had ever happened? Like there wasn’t a black tar pit in his stomach, a hole in his head, a rotted-out cavern where his heart had once been.

Something cracked, and he realized later that it was Mr. Trinket’s knees. The man was… kneeling? Stooped down to Haymitch’s eyeline, a grave expression etched between the lines of his face.

“Is there… something I could do?” he asked, quiet. Careful. “Something I could get you?”

No, Haymitch wanted to say.

Nothing.

Unless the Trinkets were sitting on a time machine, a miracle potion, a special something that could bring people back from the thereafter, there was nothing he could do.

“Here.”

Haymitch peered up; Mr. Trinket was back to standing. His knees cracked again.

He crossed the room in a few quick strides while Haymitch’s breath caught and caught and caught. Mr. Trinket paused at some strange-looking decoration in the corner. A large sphere on a stand, wrapped in a map—partly of Panem—but also of a lot more. Haymitch didn’t get much of a look. Mr. Trinket unlatched the thing and flipped the dome back, revealing a standing choir of bottles and glasses, even a bucket of ice. Haymitch didn’t see what was poured until Mr. Trinket walked it back across the room and held it down for him.

He blinked and wiped his nose on the back of his hand, taking in the small, stemmed glass filled with dark liquor.

“Drink,” said Mr. Trinket, no longer stooped. Haymitch still on his knees. 

“I, I shouldn’t, I ain’t—”

“Oh, fiddle faddle, nonsense,” he dismissed lightly, offering the glass again. “Drink.”

Haymitch honestly wasn’t sure he was gonna be able to manage it, even though it was barely a mouthful of liquor all in all. With the lump in his throat; the rolling waves in his stomach. But whatever Mr. Trinket had poured went down smooth and fine, nothing like the stuff back home. White liquor’ll burn right through a man.

But not this.

This left a sweet, fruity taste on his tongue.

“What… what is it?” he asked, tipping the glass to look at the bottom. Haymitch wished it was bigger. He wished there was more to drink.

“Port,” Mr. Trinket answered. “And a very nice vintage at that.”

“Huh.”

Haymitch looked up at the man towering above him—all stoic sympathy and his fine quilted robe—and then back at the glass.

“Is there a ‘nother?”

Mr. Trinket’s moustache twitched. “Would you like another?”

He nodded.

Another was poured, then another, another, and Haymitch drank them all. In fact, he drank as many as he could and Mr. Trinket never denied him. Effie skipped back into the room at some point, with a smile and approximately five-hundred belt options hanging off her arms.

The port made it easier to smile back.

Funny thing.

Haymitch wondered what else all this smooth, Capitol liquor could make easier. And when he thought about it, really thought about it, he kinda thought that maybe Mr. Trinket had saved his life that afternoon. Pantless in a gentlemen’s closet.

He had maybe ruined Haymitch’s life too.

It all comes out in wash.

Effie’s father left them to business, as he phrased it. He dropped a quick kiss on the air near his daughter’s cheek, as well as a firm hand on Haymitch’s shoulder. With a bloodstream full o’ port, Haymitch managed to give a genial nod in return.

“Chin up, lad,” he said, as gentle as his baritone would allow. “Chin up.”

He hadn’t seen it at first. Father and daughter; daughter and father. This kinda stoic, kinda serious, dark-haired man of not-a-lotta words; and Effie. Effie. Rooms got brighter when she walked into them. She did her paperwork in pink glitter pen. She loved daises even though she’d never seen one in real life. But now, now, in the sturdy squeeze that was left on his shoulder. Gentle reassurance. Bright, blue eyes buried underneath that dark brow.

Haymitch could see where she had got it from.

iii.

He couldn’t sleep, not that he’d want to. Sleep was overrated. Sleep was where all the bad things happened. Sleep was where he watched Lenore Dove smile and swallow, sleep was where he didn’t fill the cistern over and over and over again, sleep where Sid yelled for help and he couldn’t answer. Sleep was the very worst of him. Sleep was where Haymitch was never allowed to forget his mistakes.

So, he didn’t sleep.

He wandered the new Tribute Center penthouse instead, watching the clock tick past four-in-the-morning. He lived in his head, hearing only the summer rain pittering outside the tall windows. The low sound of his own breathing.

He drank, too.

He drank a lot.

The liquor made the nights feel longer and his head lighter. He stared at the ceiling. He watched it spin, a little pounding in the back of his skull, a little sick swirling in his stomach. Nothing felt steady. Nothing felt quite right.

But it was easier than sleep. Far fucking easier.

Besides, a little bit of drink was all it took for his internal monologue to become a dialogue. Two inside-voices arguing around in his head, being stupid and mean, begging him to stop, apologizing, screaming, screaming, apologizing again, like stop, make it stop, or leave me the fuck alone!

“Pathetic…” Haymitch heard himself mumble towards the ceiling. “You’re… fuckin’ pathetic.”

He was.

He really, really was.

It was pathetic, being in this much pain, and it was pathetic to express it too. To be this visibly in pain. Like an open corpse at an autopsy. His guts spilling out onto the shiny, marble floors. When Haymitch looks up from his gutted insides he sees a gallery full of white, powder faces. Red lips. Long, shiny talons pointing down and laughing, shrieking, high-pitched cackling echoed across the Capitol. When the show’s over Effie comes in and does her best to stitch him up.

It would be easier, Haymitch thought, still fixated on the ceiling. Still listening to the rain. To be dead. Quickly.

So, so easy.

Well, said the other voice in his head. Do it, then.

“No,” he mumbled. Talking to himself. That’s always a good sign. “No, no… it’s too much.” Haymitch lolled his head to the side, taking in rain streaks and blurry lights behind glass. “Too… too much.”

Too much what?

Too much to bear? Too much to keep on living? Did it really matter? The sorry truth of it was that no matter how much pain Haymitch was in—no matter how much he wanted to fucking croak and not feel anymore—he would, in fact, keep going until something stopped him. Something physical. Circumstantial, maybe. A lethal dose, a well-tied noose. Whatever. It didn’t matter.

He’d suffer for the rest of his life, doomed to misery and failure, until he was stupid enough or brave enough or in-pain enough to finally do something about it.

Jump?

The voice asked in his head.

Not from here. The windows don’t open.

He could always try the roof.

His knife? That would be a sure thing. But it seemed like a lotta mess for others to clean up and Haymitch didn’t want that. He didn’t wanna leave more pain behind than already would.

Something clean, then, he decided. Something clinical.

Maybe pills. Maybe a bedsheet around his neck. He could fling himself over the mezzanine railing, hope he snapped on the way down, and then it would all be over. No more pain. No more tributes. No more waiting for the hole to fill. No more dreams. And everyone he’d ever loved waiting for him on the other side.

They would understand, wouldn’t they? Yeah, they would. They had to.

All his unkept promises.

A sunrise he’ll never see.

They would understand, one of the voices said, a whisper in his ear. They loved him. They loved him, and they would understand. All you have to do is—

The phone rang.

Shrill and loud, the sound came smashing through Haymitch’s pleasant little ideations like a rock through glass. Eerie sound. Like an almost death knell. He jerked upwards. Had he imagined it? No, no he hadn’t. He wasn’t that fucking crazy.

The phone rang again.

Ignore it, one of the voices told him. Curling in his ear. But he couldn’t, right? It was insane to be calling this late at night. Even in the Capitol. What if it was important? Haymitch stumbled up and off the couch, over to the side table, using the back of an armchair to hold himself upright.

It rang a third time, and Haymitch picked up.

“‘Lo?”

“Haymitch, darling! I do apologize for the late call. Goodness, look at the time, but we’re in a terrible crisis here. Is Effie awake?”

He blinked.

“Uh, what?”

“Effie,” Proserpina repeated, this time a little firmer. Right. Yes. Effie. “Is she awake? You see, there’s been an utter disaster here at Team Eight. The Luxe pulled out and they were meant to be dressing Cecelia for the crowning ceremony, oh, you ought to have seen the gown, Haymitch! Just breathtaking. Anyway, now they’ve pulled out and she hasn’t a thing to wear! We’re all in rather a scramble and I thought that Effie might have an idea of what to do. Is she awake?”

Haymitch blinked again, barely able to take it all in. It felt like his head was full of cement, along with his heart.

“No, no, she’s, uh…” He thought long and hard. “Sleeping. She’s sleeping.”

“Would you be a dear and wake her for me?”

He frowned. “Wake her?”

“Yes, Haymitch, wake her up, please,” Proserpina said again. He could hear something else start to creep its’ way into her voice. Confusion, maybe? Better than concern. “If you could.”

“Uh, okay. Okay, yeah.”

Haymitch pulled the receiver away from his ear. He put it down on the table.

Gently.

He didn’t wanna make Prosie jump at the noise. He didn’t wanna leave a mess for anyone to find. Same shit, really. He shuffled up the stairs and down the long, white hallway to Effie’s bedroom. He found himself standing at the door, strangely, just… waiting. Maybe she would wake up on her own. Maybe something loving and not-broken in her brain would tingle telling her that her sister was in trouble. Maybe the phone call wasn’t real. Maybe Haymitch was already dead.

He knocked anyway.

“Effie?”

No answer.

“Effie?” he tried again.

Haymitch nudged the door open slightly to find Effie stirring in bed. He’d never been in her room before. He’d never seen her sleep.

Her hair was tied up in a shiny, puffy hat. She blinked groggily, pushing a very fancy-looking blindfold up onto her forehead. Who’d ever heard of a blindfold trimmed in lace? There was a small, glowing orb on her dresser. Like she’d stolen the sun, shrunk it, and turned it into a nightlight. There was a fancy robe draped over the chair in the corner. Low, slip-on heels beside her bed. Her windows were set to a pre-recorded rain soundscape. Weird. It was already raining outside.

But it was peaceful, almost.

Yeah.

Peaceful.

Haymitch had forgotten that sleep could even be that. It made him feel guilty, especially seeing how annoyed Effie was to be woken up.

“Your, uh, your sister’s on the phone,” he said. “Somethin’ ‘bout… somethin’.”

All her annoyed-ness vanished.

“Did she say what specifically?” Effie asked, already throwing the covers back, already jumping into her heeled slippers.

“I… I dunno.”

She hurried past him in a whirl of silk and day-old perfume.

Haymitch trailed behind her. He wasn’t really sure he should follow, but he also wasn’t really sure what else he should do. She’d kinda ruined his plans for the evening. Rude. By the time he got to the living room Effie was already yammering away on the phone to her sister, a pen in one hand, a pad in the other, the receiver tucked between her almost-bare shoulder and her ear.

He didn’t bother to listen. He didn’t really care.

He just collapsed onto one of the couches and let the soft lilt of Effie’s voice wash over him at a distance. She doesn’t sound so totally insane when she’s tired, he thought. Less-pitched. Less in her own character. Funny.

He stared at the mezzanine rail and thought of nothing.

“No, no,” he heard Effie say at some nebulous future-point. If the sun had begun to rise the rain made it impossible to tell. “Wait until I get there. I’ll call Cecil on my way down, I’m sure he’ll let me pull something from the archives… Yes, alright… Stay put, darling… Ta-ta.”

She hung up the phone with a flourish, still furiously taking notes.

“I’m going down to Eight,” she said, way too brisk for six-in-the-morning. She was already moving towards the stairs, like she had to grab something from her room. “Would you care to join?”

Would he?

It’s not like I’ve got anythin’ better to do, he thought, his attention still mostly fixed on the mezzanine. The voices shout and argue and name-call in the back of his head. But, no, he told himself. No. One early-morning crisis was more than enough.

Two would be just rude, ya know?

He imagined it in Effie’s clipped, little voice. Her daytime voice. Just rude, Haymitch!

“Yeah. Sure.”

In less than ten, they were in an elevator and headed down to the eighth floor. Effie had her fancy robe tied tightly around her waist. None of the young assistants stood a chance at grabbing a peak. More’s the fucking pity. She took her hair out of the shiny thing and stuffed it into one of those tight little caps and pinned in a wig before he could even blink. Currently, she was in the middle of applying a strip of eyelashes sans-mirror while she chatted away with some mysterious person on the other end of the elevator phone. Haymitch just stood, silent, and watched her work.

“Gem of Panem, Cecil, you’re an angel! An angel, I swear… Mhm-hm… Yes, yes… Yes, alright. See you soon!”

The elevator dinged at the eighth floor.

Prosie greeted them both with a hug that was more tackle than anything else. Haymitch’s stomach lurched ‘and the touch felt funny on his skin, but he managed to return it in a semi-passable way.

They spent the rest of the very-late evening slash very-early morning in Eight.

The place was a rotating turnstile of people. Stylists, Avoxes, administrative assistants, District Eight’s people, Cecil’s people, Cecil himself, whoever the fuck he was. Haymitch didn’t pay attention to any of it. He was fine to let the world happen around him. Hung-over and tired and responsible for nothing. The rain started to clear out, eventually, but it was too late. The sun had already risen.  

But wasn’t the end of the world, was it? Not worth crying over.

The damn thing’ll still rise tomorrow.

“Golly, what a crisis,” said Effie, sometime around nine. She was sipping black coffee and kicking off her slipper-y heels while final touches were being put on the dress. She bent to rest her chin on her sister’s shoulder. “Thank Panem you called, darling.”

Yeah, Haymitch thought.

Thank fuck.

iv. 

“No, no, I don’t think it’s fuckin’ right,” Haymitch said, though, maybe he was shouting. “It ain’t right, a-and I don’t care who knows it! He’s just a kid, ya know? He… A fuckin’ kid…”

It wasn’t his fault, ya see, none of it was. He hadn’t even wanted to come tonight, but Effie had forced him. It isn’t my call, Haymitch, she had said, whispering, her brow pinched. It… it’s not me. It’s above me.

Who, then? That’s what he had asked. Who?

Effie had shrugged.

It’s… beyond the remit, she had answered, which was just a round-about way of saying something else. Don’t ask.

And there he was, tangled up in the human currents of a Capitol ballroom. The 65th Annual Hunger Games was being projected in large-form up the tall, marble walls. Most people were happily distracted by food, music, the dance, the thirty-foot tall image of the almost-Victor, Finnick Odair, standing knee-deep in a stream, drying his hair with his shirt. The camera punched in, leering and hungry.

Disgusting.

It was fucking disgusting.

But it was all enough that most of the people in attendance didn’t give two single shits about Haymitch, as he stumbled and shoved his way through the crowds, a bubbly-champagne in one hand, a dark whiskey in the other. He didn’t care who he clipped in the shoulder. He didn’t care who he spilled on. And, most of fucking all, he didn’t care who heard him.

Unfiltered in vino veritas, baby. He’d like to see them try and stop him.

“Why not just round ‘em up and pimp ‘em out in bulk? Forget the fuckin’ tesserae. Whore yer kids out tomorrow, get a sack o’ grain today!” he said, gesturing wildly. If they stopped him, they’d kill him.

Hell, Haymitch wished that they would.

Behind him was a waves of whispers. Of uncomfortable shuffling and shared glances.

“I say—”

“Is there any way to make him quiet?”

“What on earth—”

“Are you very interested in district politics, Mertie?” asked Mrs. Trinket, who happened to be standing nearby when Haymitch had started shouting at the asshole who’d set him off. He couldn’t even remember what good ol’ Mertie had said now. Probably something gross and pervy.

“He’s interested in district repression,” Haymitch snarled, pointing right in the guy’s face. Right at his waxy, stretched face, his big, sprouting nostril hairs. Fuck. Fuck that guy. “Just like the lot o’ you! The whole… whole lot o’ you!”

If he wasn’t shouting before, he definitely was now.

It sent a ripple through the nearby crowds that even Haymitch could hear. Capitols burying themselves in their drinks, hiding behind masks or fans, turning the other way, all of them pretending like they hadn’t heard him. It only made him angrier. It only made him want to grab them by the shoulders and shake. How could they stand it? How could they just fucking look away when they were all living knee-deep in evil, world-ending shit?

A sick empire full of sick and getting-sicker people.

But before he could shout anything else, a hand took him by the shoulder instead. Tightly. Mrs. Trinket’s long, squared-off acrylics digging into the suit jacket that her daughter had dressed him in.

“Are you quite well, darling?” she asked.

Her smile was calm, almost sympathetic; her gaze was sharp steel.

“I’m fine, I—”

“No, no, I can see that,” Mrs. Trinket said loudly, cutting him off. Squeezing him tighter. Smiling. Weirdly, he didn’t bother fighting. In his drunken haze, she looked just like Effie and it made him go soft. “You’re not well at all, are you?” she asked, squeezing again.

Like she was tryna juice the drunk right outta him.

And it worked, a little. Mrs. Trinket was staring at him so intently, but she wasn’t the only one. Every eyeball in the room craned to look at him, before darting away again. Whispers crawling up his spine; curling around his neck. And Mrs. Trinket’s eyes—a hazel, like honey—were shifting from left to right, refusing to break away from his own. Haymitch swallowed a thick knot at the back of his throat.

“I… I’m not?” he said, half-question half-answer.

“No,” agreed Mrs. Trinket, still loud enough for everyone to hear. Oh. Oh. “You’re not well at all, I’m afraid. Let’s get you home, mhm?”

Yeah. Maybe.

The word home rattled around in his cotton-stuffed brain as Mrs. Trinket led him outside, held upright between two Avoxes. Home. Home. He repeated it over and over again until it didn’t sound like anything at all. Until it lost all its’ word-ness.

Home had been the old house, with Ma and Sid, and even Pa before that mine fire took him. Light peaking in between the slats. Straw strewn across the flood. The creak of Sid climbing into his bed in the early morn’. That had been home. And he’d imagined that, one day, he’d have shared it with Lenore Dove. They’d have moved Ma’s bed in with Sid, and a marriage bed into the main. They all woulda lived in closeness, in kind, until Ma passed at a ripe ol’ age and Sid married for himself. Their own children woulda been born in the warm underneath that peaking light.

The house in Victor’s Village was no home; it was a tomb.

Haymitch had no home in the Capitol. Not by a long shot. He wondered what Mrs. Trinket meant when she said home. Was she sending him back to the penthouse? Taking him to sleep off his stupor in her own guest room? He hoped not.

The Trinkets were nice, but their house was not a home.

They had a framed portrait of President Snow hanging in their dining room. They kept an Avox named Servus in the basement. All butlers are named Servus, Effie had told him once. The house was always cold. Always still. Quiet.

No amount of niceness could fix the pit in his stomach whenever he stayed over.

The two Avoxes helped him down the stairs while Mrs. Trinket summoned a car, all before Haymitch could even blink. She was the tree, and that Trinket apple didn’t fall far.

“Haymitch! Mummy!”

He turned a little, even though it sent his stomach spinning.

Effie was hurrying down the steps, taking them two-at-a-time in her six inch stompers. Impressive fucking bitch. And she looked all concerned in a way that he mighta found cute if they were all completely different people who lived a world away.

“I’m fine, it’s fine,” he said, tryna wave her off. It didn’t work. Probably because he stumbled as he said it, and nearly yakked his guts out on the pavement.

“What happened?” She smelled nice standing so close.

Like vanilla and lavender.

“Oh nothing, darling, nothing,” Mrs. Trinket said breezily. “Only our dear Haymitch is rather on his way and I thought that perhaps it was time he saw his bed.”

“Of course, oh, of course,” nodded Effie. “I’ll just…”

She came closer again, bringing all the vanilla and lavender with her. Haymitch swayed. Her touch danced around his face, brushing his hair back behind his ears and then smoothing out his brows. It sent a shot of adrenaline straight through his sternum.

Haymitch watched in a half-daze as Effie then jogged around the car, holding her shirts in a bunch. She knelt slightly when she got to the driver’s door. No doubt giving some very precise orders to the Avox behind the wheel. Effie. Effie, Effie, Effie. He suddenly felt struck with the stupid realization that even though he would never go home again, Effie wasn’t such a bad middle-ground. A halfway house. A decent hotel suite located somewhere between home and death. Good service. Soft pillows. Pretty smiles.

It took Mrs. Trinket and both Avoxes to wrestle him into the back seat.

“I pray you won’t remember this in the morning,” she said, reaching across Haymitch to buckle him in. He coulda snagged a pretty decent peak at her cleavage if she wasn’t so busy with Effie’s cleavage still leaning in the driver’s seat window.

“I will,” he mumbled, still spinning behind his eyes. “I remember everything.”

The good; the bad; the worst.

Everything.

“Well, remember this,” Mrs. Trinket whispered, still very close, pretending to straighten his collar or something equally as stupid. “You’ve been very reckless this night.”

That got his attention.

Haymitch looked away from the driver and up, meeting those same hazel eyes from before. They looked darker in the dim light of the car. Sharper, maybe. More dangerous. It took every bit of sobering instinct Haymitch had in him to keep steady.

“How?” he asked.

“What’s that, dear?”

“You said reckless,” he repeated, and even though he knew exactly what she meant he still wanted to hear it. He wanted to hear someone actually fess up to the black tar beneath their feet. “Reckless how?”

Mrs. Trinket’s lashes fluttered a little, her smile widened. An expression of nothing.

“Goodness, what a question.”

And she never answered.

Instead, Mrs. Trinket looked him very closely in the eye—closely and carefully—and when she spoke it was so quiet it was barely a whisper. Barely a secret. Barely anything. “You’ve endangered yourself this night, you know that. My daughter, too.”

He was kinda scared of what would happen if he moved.

“I… I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no need. All can be amended, of course. Anything can be fixed. But do see that you don’t make such a misstep ever again.”

Haymitch swallowed and nodded. “Yes. Yes, ma’am.”

And she was nearly gone—stepped back out onto the walkway and ready to close the car door behind her—when Haymitch stopped her. He couldn’t help it, really. Her little, whispered words were sticking in his mind. Rattling around in his skull.

“Anything?” he asked, blinking against the streetlights as he looked up at her. “Anything can be fixed?”

“Well…” The older woman shrugged.

She gestured vaguely at… what? All the cobble and concrete. The constant hum of the city around them; the hum of the machine. Haymitch heard a canon fire at a distance. That was it, then, wasn’t it? It was over. Finnick Odair had won. Soon the streets would be flooded with people, parades, parties. An endless river of gold and champagne. A river of blood.

“Not everything.”

The other car door opened, Effie climbed it.

“Some things are simply…” Mrs. Trinket shrugged again. “Natural.”

The Capitol Star ran a third-page gossip piece the next morning which told the very quick and uncomplicated tale of Haymitch Abernathy’s nonsensical rambling. No quotes, no accusations of treason, nothing. A drunken fool, they said. Clearly unwell, they said. He obviously didn’t know, or mean, what he was saying, they said. Word around the Tribute Center was that he had puked on his escort’s mother.

But, all in all, no harm done.

No foul.

He was just a washed-up has-been who wasn’t to be taken seriously. A hot mess in an expensive suit. The Echo said he was getting fat. Which, ya know, wasn’t untrue. Capitol Weekly Exclusive implied that he was a jealous, old hag that couldn’t handle the imminent success that was Finnick Odair.

Every article was all gold and champagne. None of the blood.

v. 

The sound of glass shattering echoed through the penthouse.

“You’ve lost your mind, Trinket! You’ve lost your fuckin’ mind!” And Effie listened as Haymitch threw another empty glass at the wall, listened to it shatter.

The word empty, really, was the crux of the issue.

Haymitch had been hell all summer, starting with the Reaping. Shouting expletives from the stage. Making inappropriate cracks at the Peacekeepers. He had refused to wear the clothes Effie had so graciously provided him, insisting on wearing some filthy rag of a shirt with missing buttons and a hole in the chest. He had looked like hobo, and Effie had taken the heat for it.

Since arriving in the Capitol, his moods had been much of the same. He wouldn’t wear what he was told, he wouldn’t do what he was told, he wouldn’t say what he was told. His drinking was near constant. Much worse than Effie remembered it being, actually. He had threatened a potential sponsor in the Lounge today, as well as insulted the Head Gamemaker right to his face. He’d vomited several times in the past week, once on Effie’s bed. A targeted attack, she presumed.

All in all, she had been feeling rather at the end of her rope.

Haymitch was positively unmanageable. Pressure coming from all sides—Gamemakers, the public, head of escorts—not to mention the Presidential Office breathing down her neck.

Effie hadn’t known what else to do.

Every bottle in the penthouse had been emptied. Every bottle on eleven and eight, too. Every drink cart made vacant. Every flask, every hidden bottle, every secret stash. All of it down the drain. The Tribute Center staff were under strict orders not to serve him a single drop. Effie had locked down every bar within a quarter mile radius. The drivers had all been instructed to take him no where without her permission.

Really, he had left her with little choice in the matter.

“Now, before you blow a gasket—” she had tried to say, approaching him cautiously, calmly, the way one might approach a dog in a muzzle.  

“Oh, too late, Trinket, way too fuckin’ late,” he had replied. “You little, fuckin’—”

You might imagine how that went.

Presently, Effie found herself barricaded inside one of the bedrooms and yes, alright, even she could admit that perhaps it wasn’t her finest idea. But what else was she to do? All Haymitch did was drink. Drink, and drink, and drink. She had ignored him, she had smothered him with attention, she had berated him sometimes, comforted him others, she’d watered down bottles, she’d switched bottled, she’d done it all. Nothing ever worked.  

She jumped as he banged on the door again. The lock rattled.

Once, there had been a Haymitch that she was so sure would never harm her. A Haymitch of summer’s past, young and fresh-faced and unburdened. Effie never had anything to fear from that Haymitch.

But the lock rattled again, and Effie steeled her back against the door. A uneasy sway in her stomach, the bridge of her nose burning.

Haymitch was an entirely different beast these days.

A different man.

“Let me in!” he shouted, continuing to yank on the handle, shaking the lock. “Let me in the fuckin’ room, Effie!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fuck you! Fuck, fuck, fuck you!”

She closed her eyes and took in a steadying breath.

“You… you fuckin’ bitch, fuckin’ kid murderin’ whore, fuck you! Fuck!”

And it was fine.

Effie could take it on the chin.

The door rattled again. She only steeled harder. “I know you’ve got shit in there, Trinket! I… I know you’ve got booze, please, please…”

“I don’t,” she shouted back at him through the door, and it was the truth.

Not that he’d believe her.

“You do!”

“I don’t, Haymitch, I really, really don’t!”

“Please, fuck, I… please…” There was a thud from the other side. She imagined Haymitch slumped against the door. It was a sorry sight, even when it was only inside her head. “Please, Effie, I… you gotta. You… you can’t do this…”

“I’m sorry, Haymitch—”

“Please… please,” he begged.  

Then, silence.

He sounded sad, and Effie hated that. Sad and young and scared. Just like the Haymitch-of-old, the first one, the Haymitch who had stumbled into her life by accident—and her into his—all those years ago. It sent a wistful nostalgia chasing through her. She wondered, sometimes, if she’d ever care for anyone as much as she’d come to care for Haymitch. Especially after everything they’d been through. The thought of trying to do it with some other man, the loving, the feeling, of trying to do something normal and real, it just made her feel tired.

Together they were so… clunky. A little not-quite-right. A clumsy, chubby-handed toddler forcing a square peg into a circular hole. Two tree planted a little too closely. Roots all tangled together.

Effie sniffed a little, suddenly aware of a tear tracking its’ way down her cheek.

“You’re... you’re drinking yourself into an early grave, Haymitch,” she whispered through the door. If she spoke any louder, she’d crack. “You’re killing yourself, a-and it’s killing me, and… and I don’t see what else I can do.”

There was another long stretch of silence.

Effie thought—she hoped—that maybe she had gotten through to him.

But then, a deafening thud. She felt his fist make contact with the door. Effie jumped at the sound, the movement, but quickly refortified herself. She lifted her chin and swallowed whatever was left of her tears.

“Fuck,” Haymitch roared from the hallway. “Fuck!”

It was followed by more glass shattering, a bigger sound than before. Perhaps a vase.

Maybe a mirror.

Effie sunk deeper into the floor and buried her head between her knees. She closed her eyes. She listened to the sound of her own breathing, underscored by the noise of Haymitch continuing to yell and throw and cry and pound and beg for her to open the door. It went on for what must have been an hour. Still, she never wavered nor did she give in. It was one of her best qualities, she thought; it was also one of her worst.

Eventually, the penthouse went quiet.

Still, Effie waited.

She breathed.

She listened, and she waited.

A part of her did wonder if Haymitch had left. She opened the bedroom door with what one might call an earned amount of caution. The hallway was a mess. It was also empty. Effie stepped out, skirting the toes of her heels around broken glass, overturned side tables, puddles of vomit, water, and flowers which were strewn across the floor. The sitting room was in a similar state. Cracked lamps and shattered glass. A few of the throw pillows had been torn up and destuffed. Feathers floating in the air.

Haymitch was collapsed on the sofa. Folded at the middle. Hands buried. He was shaking, and it made Effie’s chest feel tight and wrong.

Not crying, per say.

But something very, very similar. A sort of halted, stuttering breathing.

His knife on the coffee table also caught her eye.

Effie approached silently. She took the knife when she was close enough, chucked it away, and said nothing. Haymitch still didn’t look up. He kept his face hidden, out of anger or shame, Effie didn’t know which. She hoped it wasn’t the latter. He had nothing, nothing, to be ashamed of with her.

“You thought I was gonna hurt you, didn’t ya?” he asked into his hands.

“No.”

Haymitch shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe her, forcing his knuckled deeper into his sockets. “Fuck…” he whispered. This time to himself, rather than at her. “Fuck.”

“It’s alright, Haymitch.”

Was it a lie? Was he right to be disbelieving of her?

Effie couldn’t say.

Maybe. But nobody had been hurt, had they? No blood, no broken bones, no permanent damage. Just a couple of bruised feelings, perhaps. Horrible words exchanged, yes, but nothing that couldn’t be taken back. Nothing that couldn’t be made better with forgetting and excuses.

“I don’t feel… alright. I feel fuckin’ crazy.”

He looked up, finally.

Effie didn’t soften at the sight of blood-shot eyes. Puffy and unfocused. She didn’t soften at the sight of his waxy skin, that graying afterglow, shaking hands and unshaven cheeks, his hair a filthy, greasy mop dangling in front of his eyes. She didn’t need to. She was already all soft for him.

“I feel… all apart.” he said before hiding all over again.

Effie nodded, momentarily forgetting that he wasn’t looking at her. Her emotions—all her little soft bits—were threatening to overtake her.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked instead.

He snorted. “Pour me a drink?”

It earned him a small smile.

“Anything but that.”

Haymitch came out of hiding once more. He collapsed back. A big, sad noise escaped him. With his arms pinned to his sides, his shaking hands braced against the sofa’s cushions, he was looking up at the ceiling like his life depended on it. Like the solutions to all of their problems might be etched in the industrial, yet fashionably-exposed, concrete.

Effie rounded the coffee table, slowly, and joined him.

She clasped her hands neatly in her lap. She watched as Haymitch brought his hands to his knees, dragging his palms up and down and up and down again, leaving these horrible sweat stains in their wake. It struck her as being painfully vulnerable, then. Kind of horrible and human.

“I won’t hurt ya.”

“I know that,” she said, and that time she knew it wasn’t a lie. It never was. “You know I do. Or, at least, I hope you do.”

Effie’s hand landed on his knee, stilling him.

Neither of them flinched. Neither of them pulled away, either.

i + v.

“Mummy!” Effie shouted.

“Euphemia! Oh, oh, Euphemia!”

Haymitch hung back, a little awkward in the doorway, as Mrs. Trinket rushed to her daughter’s hospital bed. Mr. Trinket was close behind them, though, he didn’t say anything. He looked like maybe he couldn’t.

Mrs. Trinket hovered at the bed, for a second, looking almost… unsure of what to do? Like maybe this was her first time having hands. They didn’t embrace and Haymitch wondered if they knew how. If they did, he’d never seen it. Oh, they definitely loved each other, don’t worry, they just did love in that weird, Capitol way. A little chilly, a little not-right.

The older woman quickly decided on taking Effie’s face between her palms and showering her cheeks with a hundred quick kisses.

Mr. Trinket had one hand on his wife’s shoulder, another on his daughter’s.

Kinda circling them.

Like a hug, but also not really. It was very Trinket.

“Oh, but look what they’ve done to you,” Mrs. Trinket whimpered, trying to take in all of her daughter’s injuries.

The cuts, the bruises, the welts. Effie’s left wrist was in a cast and her hair had been hacked away in horrible, uneven chunks. There were nasty, open cuts all up and down her back. Someone had been playing with needles in her joints. Specifically her knees and ankles. The doctors were optimistic, though. Effie would be able to walk just fine, even if she won’t never be as quick or agile as before. Prison had aged her and thinned her and weakened her, but Haymitch didn’t mind.

He was just happy to have her back, and he knew the Trinkets were too.

“Thad, look!”

“I can see.”

Mr. Trinket’s voice sounded thick and grave.

“My sweet darling, my sweet, sweet poppet,” Mrs. Trinket continued to coo. She was running her hand through her daughter’s patchy hair, pressing more kisses to her cheeks. For the first time since she’d been pulled out, Effie was smiling. Like, actually smiling.

And Haymitch couldn’t help it if he lingered, he wanted—needed—to take it all in. It’d been so long since he’d seen her smile.

And, sure, maybe a small part of him wished she had smiled when she’d seen him.

But that was family, right?

It was different.

Haymitch might not have had a family in a long time, but he remembered what it felt like. And he remembered enough to know that the Trinkets were no replacement for all the things he had lost—all that closeness, real shit, understanding and affection. The Trinkets could be cold, even if they were kind. They had never turned Haymitch away from their home as long as he could stand to look at that hideous portrait of President Snow in the dining room.

They had always tried their very hardest to make Haymitch’s life easier, less painful, but never dared or bothered to think about cutting his suffering at the root.

And now, they hated the Capitol.

They shook their fists at the smoke-filled skies and cursed the city. Because now they had a reason, a real reason, don’t ya see?

Effie—bruised and bleeding and bedbound—was their reason.

If that weren’t the case…

Well.

Haymitch only wondered, that’s all. He wondered.

But, even with all that, they were so grateful to Haymitch. For finding them, for pulling them out of that Capitol refugee camp, for putting them up in a temporary housing situation, for giving them their daughters back.

Effie in a hospital bed; Prosie in a pine box.

They were so grateful to have something to burry when so many people had nothing.

“I can never thank you enough, my dear chap,” said Mr. Trinket. He looked older than Haymitch had ever seen him, but just the same amount of serious. War made everyone old, apparently. Even Capitols. “Thank you,” he said again, all thick in the throat. “Thank you for my family.”

And then Mr. Trinket held his hand out for Haymitch, and he had no choice but to shake. Whatever. If it made the guy happy, he’d participate in the weird, Capitol ritual of un-sentimentality.

Just this one last time.

“You must come to the funeral, of course,” added Mrs. Trinket, who was still standing by Effie’s bedside. Petting her daughter like a cat. “Proserpina would have… have wanted you to come.”

“Yeah. Yeah, ‘course I’ll come.” he said.

The Trinkets had cared enough about Haymitch to worry about him whenever he was circling the drain. Effie had cared enough to keep an eye on him—that first year, and every year after that. Mr. Trinket had cared enough to try and ease Haymitch’s worst days the only way he knew how. Prosie had saved him even when she didn’t know it, and sometimes when she did. He hadn’t been able to do the same. A funeral was the least he could do. And there was Mrs. Trinket, always the tree to Effie’s apple, who cared enough and was quick enough to keep him from getting himself killed on the public gallows.

Like he said; it all comes out in wash.

“Haymitch.”

He turned to see Plutarch doing a kinda rushed half-jog down the hallway.

“You’re needed.”

“Right,” he nodded, turning back to the Trinkets. “I better, uh,” He gestured vaguely, not really sure what else to say. The demands of New Government were apparently endless.

“Oh, please, please,” Mrs. Trinket waved him off. Nothing else need be said, apparently. “Our very own rebel saviour.”

“Right. Sure,” he nodded, smirking to himself just a little.

He left the Trinket to their hug not-hug. To coo and fuss and do whatever they needed to do for eachother. It wasn’t really for him to join, anyway. Not his scene.