Chapter Text
Haymitch
I jolt awake at once, bright lights blazing down on me, and my eyes can’t make heads nor tails of nothing for a spell. They dart around every which way until the room finally settles into shape, and near everything I’m looking at is white as a bedsheet or shiny silver. I lick my sandpaper lips. For one stupid second I reckon I done died and made it on up to heaven. A cursed soul like me, getting rewarded with the sweet old hereafter. Ain’t that a hoot.
The thoughts that come crashing in right after are all tangled up and fighting each other.
Well, darn. This is what it was all for anyway.
I accepted the hand death extended to me from the moment I risked myself in front of those peacekeepers and caught Drusilla’s eye. But… But now that it’s actually come to this… I don’t want to leave my ma. Or the twins. Or Sid. Or Lenore Dove, my one and only love. I’d give anything to tell them all I’m sorry for going, and all I can do is hope they get on alright without me dragging them down. My heart aches just thinking on it.
Then, it actually does. I go to sit up before I realize I’m strapped down. A steel table is a mighty poor excuse for a bed, but I must’ve been sleeping on it for however long, so it may as well count as a bed despite the lack of mattress, sheet, or pillow. My breath comes fast and ragged. My head starts pounding something fierce and I groan low. Some afterlife this turned out to be. Am I so cursed that even dying can’t go right? That even my eternal rest’s got to rough me up some? But the conclusion I just come to is plain foolish. The sweet old hereafter ain’t supposed to hurt none. Wouldn’t be called ‘sweet’ if it did. Maybe I landed myself in eternal punishment instead. Like dying by death match wasn’t enough on its own.
But before that thought can set its roots, I start paying mind to the rest of my senses.
Like my heart and head teaming up to torment me wasn’t proof enough, I go and bite the inside of my mouth hard—like I done lost every lick of sense I had—and I yelp loud enough to embarrass myself. My first instinct’s to clap a hand over my mouth and choke my parched voice back down, but the straps won’t let them reach no higher than across my belly. My fingers find a long row of stitches stretched clear across my gut instead.
I notice these tube-like contraptions hooked up to my two hands. One on the back of the right and the other on the left forearm, and other parts of me besides, running clear up to these big metal machines. But I’m so addled right now I don’t reckon my brain’s got the room to make sense of them proper.
It’s more focused on the fact that I’m not dead. That despite everything I tried, I’m not dead. Something in my chest just drops clean out, and worry comes creeping in behind it. I was supposed to die. There was supposed to be no victor walking out of this year’s Hunger Games. Maysilee and I made a pact that we’d die together after we’d hunted down Silka—
Maysilee…! Oh, Maysilee.
If I’m breathing, then... does that mean she ain’t? My mind starts racing toward my last moments in the arena with her.
In a voice steady enough you’d never know she was hurting, she told Wellie, “You’ve only got the one dart, so make it count. Now sit tight. I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.”
Maysilee had her mind made up about finding more wood to burn, and no amount of protesting from me was going to change it, never mind that she was in no shape to be out there—blisters and deep cuts held together with more hopes and dreams than bandages. But we argued about it still. Kept our voices low, away from the little one we were both betting our lives on.
“Come on, let me do this myself. It’s Wellie who needs protecting.” She reasoned first.
“Like you ain’t fierce enough for that too. I swear you’re better off with her. And if nothing happens, then you get to rest up some more. You need it, sis. I can handle the manual labor. You’re better company for her than I’d ever be, anyway.” I tried to put some cheer in my voice, hoping she’d come around.
But that stern, stubborn face of hers went soft instead. “No, I’m not.” She hesitated for a moment, her breaths coming through her mouth without her noticing, dry and uneven. “I left her my last dart. Well, last dart-looking dart I got. Least I could do. Maybe I can find some wood out there I can carve up sharp into one. But I won’t find a thing if you won’t let me go.”
“You…” The argument fell flat right there on my tongue. I looked at her. Looked at the wrappings on her arms and legs where the birds had tore into her. I knew they’d never stay clean, but they were muddied through and soaked with big dark patches of crimson. And a thought settled quiet into my head.
“Quit your arguing, Abernathy.” She rolled her eyes. “Just stay with Wellie, alright? Do I need to tell you I’ll be back before you know I’m gone too?” She tried to tack on a little laugh at the end, all casual-like. I didn’t buy it for a second, but I had to. This was maybe the first time in her life Maysilee Donner was making an effort to perform for the Capitol, and if what I gathered from her held true, it’d be the last time too.
“Fine.” I gave her a nod. I supposed I’d have to see our shared goal through on my own. But that was alright. She’d done her part well enough.
“Thanks. You two be safe,” was the last thing she uttered to me before she went.
When everything else had come and gone—my fool decision to leave Wellie behind because I accepted Maysilee wasn’t coming back and we needed that firewood still, then Silka getting the jump on her while I stood there wasting precious time trying to decide whether to give her that milk—what I’d figured was flat-out impossible turned out to be true. At the base of the cliffside, Maysilee came rushing back. I caught sight of her just as my axe was flying back into Silka’s face. In fact, it almost threw me off focus.
The guilt and worry climbed back up into me all over again. Maysilee and I were the final two left standing. The fate we wanted to avoid. The fate we never thought we’d share. I thought she intended for it still when she left.
I’m certain we both swallowed our aches. We shared a look. A look that said we needed to paint our posters still.
I tossed Maysilee my knife. Same one still wet with Silka’s blood from where I’d dug her eye clean out. Maysilee made a face at it, but the arena had been changing her same as it had been changing me. She didn’t even bother to wipe the blade clean. Just gave me one nod and slit her own throat.
I remember patting through my pockets after, unearthing up whatever was left of my last plan, or second-to-last, hell, I’d lost count. The tools I needed to blow a hole clean through the Cornucopia. Well, that notion was dead in the water now. Though at the time, it’d seemed a real shame not to try for a greater final poster. One that could make my blood count. Figured maybe I could still go out with a bang. Really drive home everything I’d been through.
Maysilee had killed a Gamemaker. Unforgivable, that. They’d sent those pink birds after her for it, and she’d barely crawled out alive, even with my help. So I aimed to make my own unforgivable act like I hadn’t made so many already. Didn’t care what mutts they sent my way for it. I’d be good and dead before they ever made it through those portals.
With what little strength I had left, I hurled that sunflower into the canyon. If nothing else, it ought to make for one hell of a boom. What’d happen when that explosion hit the force field, I hadn’t the slightest idea. There was no use wondering on it neither. It was the end anyway. The quartz dropped to the dirt, lost among the other rocks. I tucked the flint striker up under my collar, resting it right over my heart.
I feel it still resting there, partly on account of it being the only stitch of anything left on my body. Only now it’s tied fast to my neck with a leather bootlace. Somebody’s gone and fastened it there, and it sure wasn’t my ma. Other than that, I’m naked as a jaybird.
The memory swoops back into my brain. I recall the wind carrying off the last bits of ash, scattering them into nothing. Black specks swarmed my eyes, thick enough to block out the sun. Then the whole world shook with the blast. Last thing I felt was my own guts slipping wet through my fingers, that songbird pressed flat against my skin, and the ground trembling underneath me. After that, I didn’t even try to hold myself together no more.
I should’ve died right then and there. My body shut down. I wanted to go. So why the hell am I still here?
After a spell of worry gnawing away at my thoughts, I try to settle myself the way Proserpina and Vitus must’ve talked about when they were dealing with their own rattled nerves working under a toad-sucking stylist. Because I can’t rightly recall who else I’m drawing these methods from. Might not even be remembering them right, the way those two used to work through them, but I got to try something to quiet all this warring in my head.
I look the room over a second time. Try to fix my eyes on the machines. One of them beeps over and over again. Another makes a sound like a cow with a real low moo. A few got tubes running into my body, most notably my hands. I want to yank them clean out, but the second I flex my fingers a pain shoots through that tells me that’d be a fool’s idea. I don’t recognize a single one of them nor know what any of them are supposed to do for me. Far as I’m concerned, they ain’t a lick of help.
There’s also a bag of some kind of fluid hanging off one of the tubes. Clear as water, and near empty at that. Nothing much to make of it. Once again I ain’t got the foggiest notion what it is or what it’s doing in me. All I can really feel is the cold metal pressing against my bare back and the cold metal pinning me to it.
There’s a sharp smell of alcohol all tangled up with chemicals socked right into my nose, coating my tongue. It smells so... clean in here. Almost makes your head swim. An unnatural kind of clean. My eyes itch something awful but I can’t get my hands up to scratch them.
I used to think having to keep moving through that arena was a wearing, miserable thing. But having my movement taken from me entirely is a whole other kind of torment.
Then I hear the door come open and footsteps, muffled-like. Somebody tugs at my tubes and I cut my eyes over to catch sight of a woman in a mask, swapping out an empty bag of fluid for a full one.
“Where am I?” I rasp out. She makes like she doesn’t hear me, but stubbornness is about the one thing I got plenty of and I press on. “Hello? Where am I? What is going on?” My voice cracks trying to holler it.
She looks at me for what feels like a good long while. Then she lowers her mask just for a second and gives me this strained little smile. “Congratulations, Mr. Abernathy.”
It sends a chill clean down my spine. There it is. Confirmation. I’m this year’s victor and there ain’t no denying it no longer. Anxiety creeps up so bad I can hear my own heartbeat loud in my ears. Reckon one of them machines picks up on it too, because it catches the woman’s eye and she glances over at it.
“Yeah, thanks. You didn’t answer my question though,” I bite back, my frustration boiling right on over. “I thought you Capitolites were supposed to have such fine manners.”
She does a better job ignoring me that time around. Just dabs at my gut stitches with some foul-smelling liquid that sends shocks of pain ripping across my middle worse than anything I’d felt before. “Stop! You’re hurting me!” I thrash against the straps. She doesn’t stop. I stop, because moving only makes it worse.
She leaves, muttering to herself. This time I catch a few words. “Laboratory.” “Sepsis.” “Disruptive.” Next thing I know, a coldness surges up from the needle buried in my arm, and then there ain’t nothing at all.
When I come to again, I got myself one new piece of knowledge. In this place, disruption brings oblivion, dispensed from afar just like the drugs in Lou Lou’s pump. I make it my business to be as disruptive as I possibly can for however long I’m kept here—hours, days, weeks, I couldn’t rightly say. Nasty concoctions get forced between my lips to shut me up.
All my thrashing around eventually seems to get through to somebody that I ain’t cattle and can’t rightly be expected to lie still, naked and strapped to a steel table, every hour of the day. Or maybe they’ve gone and decided to treat me like a human being now that I’m a victor. I don’t fully believe either reasoning myself.
They finally unstrap me from that table and hand me a thin robe to put on and nothing else. Well. Better than nothing at all. After that, a peacekeeper cuffs me again and him and another one of his kind march me off to another room. He tells me to lay down on the bed, which has got a mattress hard as a creek rock, but it’s an improvement. They uncuff me for half a second before one hand gets cuffed right back to the bed frame. Though the peacekeeper does fumble some with it, on account of the needles and tubes still running up my hands and arms.
Everything’s still mostly bright white, since most of the machines didn’t make the trip with me. I feel a little less like some Gamemaker’s prized lab rat with the change of scenery, but I do believe all this lack of color is slowly working on my sanity, because I start dreaming about being back in the arena—its colors and its scenery—and it ain’t near as dreadful in my dreams as it ought to be. At least until I remember all the blood I’ve spilled and the blood yet to be spilled. No daylight gets through the walls, no ally beside me. I am well and truly alone.
When I think enough time finally passes, the woman comes back into my room wearing that same tight little smile. “You have been discharged,” she says, and I just stare at her dumb. Did they get sick of me? Or am I fixing to be executed? I lean toward the latter when peacekeepers come and haul me out again, and there’s a whole swarm of Capitolites in their flashy outfits with even flashier cameras waiting outside the building, hollering questions at me all at once.
I can’t make much out, the flashes near blinding me and drowning out their obnoxious accents, but I do catch a few words here and there. “Sickness.” “Untimely.” “Confinement.”
From what little I piece together, since I roughed myself up real bad in the arena, the Capitol patched me back up—the light remnants of scars all over being proof enough of that—and now they aim to finish the job themselves. Deal the final blow proper-like. As they load me into a car with blacked-out windows, I go ahead and brace myself for my imminent death for the second time at the grand stage for all of Panem to watch.
Or maybe they aim to drive me clean out of my mind first. Executing a crazy victor’s probably better for their posters anyway. Doesn’t go against what they already expect from us district folk. Covers up every rebellious act I did in that arena, whether the whole nation took notice or not.
I surface in a nest of burnt orange. The peacekeepers have dragged me back to the tribute apartment. Across the room, Wyatt’s bed sits stripped bare of its covers, and the sight of it hits me somewhere I wasn’t ready for. I realize I still haven’t had the room to mourn him properly either.
Gingerly, I wriggle my fingers and toes. All the tubes and restraints are gone, but a pump just like Lou Lou’s has dug itself deep into my chest, daring me to pull it out. I fold back the fuzzy spread and the fine sheets and take a look at my gut wound. No stitches left, just a puckered, angry scar like a crooked little smile. My thigh made out better, but I’ll carry that mark the rest of my days. I go to jump up and my legs give clean out from under me, sending me right back down onto the mattress, clutching the covers while the room tilts and spins. I wait for it to settle before I try again. This time I plant my feet careful on the floor and ease myself up slow.
My pajamas are still in a heap on the floor right where I left them the morning of the Hunger Games. Ain’t got much else in the way of clothing unless I want to keep wandering around in this thin robe that barely covers my backside, so I go ahead and put them on.
“Mags?” I croak out. “Wiress?” Not a sound. It’s quiet as a grave. The street outside the window, empty. Locked down. The whole block barricaded off. I’m a dangerous young man now. The charming rascal turned deadly rebel.
In the kitchen, the table’s bare, but the refrigerator’s got a platter of rolls and a shelf full of little cartons of milk. Snow’s diet, after the deadly oysters. My stomach’s shrunk down to the size of a walnut, but it’s still craving something, so I tear off bits of bread and dip them in the milk and suck them down. Being poisoned doesn’t worry me none anymore. That ain’t how the president means to kill me anyway. He’s got bigger plans than that. The camera in the corner of the room reminds me somebody’s watching every move I make, or at least recording it. No, at this point I’d wager they’re watching live. Eyes on me, 24/7.
After a while, the silence breaks all of a sudden and I go stone still. It doesn’t sound like the elevator, nor the main entrance coming open. No, I’m locked in here good and tight. This is my second prison, after that bright white place that smelled so intoxicatingly clean. But whatever broke that silence, it sure does sound like a door.
I get to wondering what caused it. A peacekeeper sneaking in some back way? Fixing to catch me off guard before he hauls me off to my execution? Maybe they were just waiting on me to have my last meal before they dealt with me nice and easy. Some kind of Capitolite show of class and etiquette, I reckon, because folks back in the districts just get dragged out to the square to meet their end. If you could call the mockingjays’ song after any kind of grace, well. Maybe that. Doubt there’d be any of those here of all places.
Despite my fears, I wobble my way into the living room. And there, I see her.
Maysilee.