Chapter Text
One morning, two weeks or so after their return to Twelve, Haymitch stumbled out of his house, his head still heavy and fuzzy from the entire bottle he had downed the previous night, and the air had lost that crisp icy chill that often made him turn up the collar of his coat. He tightened the belt of his dressing gown with one hand and clutched his small cup of coffee with the other, leaning against the porch’s old wooden railing that threatened to give in.
Spring had come.
It didn’t smell any different than before but spring in Twelve hardly ever did. Before, it had meant coal powder would fly more lightly on the wind and that you were more susceptible to get the cough. Now, he would have exchanged the perpetual reek from the devastated town for coal powder any day.
They had made a lot of progress unburying bodies but carrion birds were still circling overhead and what used to be the town was still, for all intents and purposes, an open mass grave. The chemical fire had long burned down but its particular smell still remained like a fizzle at the back of the tongue, something unnatural and potent that made you want to cough when you got too close to one of the charred building.
The others had asked for Haymitch’s help with the bodies and the rebuilding, of course. They had asked all the able men to help. But Haymitch couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t bring himself to step out of his house most days. The sight of the destroyed town was unbearable to him. He felt responsible. He felt each and every of the dead corpses beneath the stones were there because of him, because he hadn’t thought far enough ahead, because he had naively thought the Capitol wouldn’t go that far…
The trek to the girl’s house was already complicated for him and, more often than not, it was Sae who came to inform him of her progress – or lack of therefore. She was still lying on the couch, staring into nothing, lost in thoughts that couldn’t have been nice. The last time he had convinced himself to visit, she had been asleep and he had entertained the thought of just dropping her in the bathtub because she really was starting to smell bad. Worse than he did, which was saying something.
Warily, he took a few steps down the stairs until he was standing in his overgrown front yard, clutching the precious cup of coffee with shaky fingers. Supply shipments weren’t reliable yet, they were repairing the railway but that was taking time – or so Plutarch told him – and coffee was a luxury still for now. The version they shared in Twelve was the same he remembered from his childhood when they could afford it: weak and watered down.
He took a sip of it all the same, digging his bare toes in the dry dirt outside with some childish pleasure. The coffee didn’t give him the kick he needed. It tasted so bland that it made a lump appear in his throat because his first thought upon drinking it was that Effie would hate it to the point she might even spit it out, manners be damned. There was hardly anything she held more sacred that her morning coffee and she liked it bitter and dark. Like her men, she used to joke.
He closed his eyes, offered his face to the soft breeze and took a long deep breath to cleanse his thoughts off her. Not that it was that easy. Or possible. But she had made her wishes crystal clear when she had slammed the door in his face. He had told her to come if she changed her mind but he doubted she would. She was stubborn. The only woman who could out-stubborn him probably. And it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it. He had used her, abused her, failed her when it counted and hadn’t hesitated one second to volunteer to go back to Twelve for Katniss when he knew for certain it meant leaving her behind again even though she needed him.
He missed her.
He fucking missed her.
He slowly made his way back inside, headed straight for the kitchen, counted the bottles that were left on the counter… How long before the next supply shipment arrived? A week? Two? He would need to seriously ration himself if he wanted to make it. Which meant he needed to stop thinking about what he had left behind in the Capitol – who he had left behind – because it was hard enough to keep the usual demons at bay with so little liquid courage.
The changes in the weather were gradual.
Soon, green tufts of grass started appearing between cracks in the dry earth. The dead weeds in his front and back yards, crisped from the frost, seemed to find a second breath of life. The old wisteria plant started its slow creep over the side of his house again and Haymitch watched its progress with displeasure. Every year he cut it before it could fully bloom, every year it crawled back out, determined to make his house look a little charming; Haymitch didn’t want a charming house.
Plants started creeping over the ruins in town and they had to hurry and reclaim the stones before vegetation swallowed them. Most of the bodies had been found and laid to rest in the meadow but the carrions made room for the flies. There were flies everywhere and everyone knew why. There were birds too. And small animals poking their heads out of their dens and blinking at the sun… Buttercup found a new habit of sneaking into his living-room so every morning he would find the cat sprawled in a puddle of sunlight. He wasn’t sure Katniss had realized he had come back yet or bothered feeding him – she was barely feeding herself – so he took the purring for the threat it was and left scraps for him but never tried to pet him. The claws looked sharp.
He watched the changes taking their course, spring slowly but surely chasing winter away, and he felt the familiar bouts of anguish deep in his stomach because spring meant a new Reaping and a new Reaping meant more dead kids.
Rationally, he knew there would be no more Reaping. That it was over and done with. But a part of him couldn’t quite accept it and kept waiting for the last week-end of spring when it was traditionally held. Dreading it like he did every year. Wishing it would come quicker because it meant Effie would show up at his house with veiled insults on her painted lips. Despising himself because he wanted to fuck her so badly some part of him was actually impatient for the day to come.
Peeta arrived with the first blooms of flowers.
Plutarch called ahead to warn him to expect the hovercraft with supplies and the boy along with them. He didn’t ask if Peeta would have an escort and he didn’t question it when the kid walked out of that hovercraft alone. If he stared at the empty mouth of the vehicle a little longer or harder than necessary, nobody noticed. He hugged Peeta tight, the relief at finally having him back was enough to bring tears to his eyes that he blinked away before the kid could see them.
Plutarch had kept him appraised of his progress, of course, but he hadn’t been there for the boy as much as he had wanted to in the last few weeks. That had been someone’s else prerogative. It had felt a little fitting somehow that Effie would stay to take care of the boy while he went to take care of the girl but he had hoped…
“All better now?” he asked, clasping the boy’s shoulder to distract himself from his treacherous thoughts.
“As much as I can be.” Peeta shrugged with a sheepish smile. “How’s Katniss?” Haymitch’s face fell a little and it was probably all the answer the kid needed because the boy nodded knowingly. “It’s alright. We’ll help her.”
And just like that, it was decided.
And just like that, the boy made it happen.
He didn’t understand shit about their dandelion analogy, all he knew was that once Peeta was back in the Village, Katniss seemed to find some sort of balance. She was still prone to bouts of nostalgia and apathy but no more than was expected. She went hunting, she laughed sometimes, she helped Haymitch cook when it was his turn to make dinner – because the kids insisted they should have dinner together every day – she leaned into Peeta’s side more and more… He wasn’t actually surprised when he caught them kissing under a tree in the girl’s backyard.
The weather warmed up.
The flies infestation was finally brought under control.
They finished clearing the town’s ruins.
The new railway tracks were fitted and trains came back and forth once a week, bringing more workers and more refugees back. Supplies were still irregular but the whole country was suffering from it, that was an aftereffect of the war.
The last week-end of spring was slowly approaching.
Haymitch started drinking more heavily.
The children didn’t make any comment, not even Peeta. They didn’t ask either. There was an odd tension in the air on the eve of what would have been Reaping Day, an old terror that was impossible to ignore. The whole District seemed to be holding its breath.
And yet the next day came and with it no train branded with the Capitol sigil, no Peacekeepers reminded everyone to gather up in the square at noon sharp, no escort invaded his house to pester him into a shower, a haircut and clean clothes…
The children showed up to have breakfast with him, which wasn’t at all the norm. He got up far much later than either of them. He appreciated the company anyway. Katniss was nervous. She couldn’t sit still. When her fingers weren’t drumming on the wooden table, she was pacing the length of the room back and forth under the thin excuse of fetching more tea. Peeta was contemplative in a way that didn’t bode well. Haymitch was wary of him having an episode and so he didn’t protest when the kid quietly excused himself to go paint in his basement. Katniss left soon after him to head to the woods.
Haymitch remained alone in his kitchen and poured himself drink upon drink that he sipped slowly. Countless Reapings were flashing by in his mind. Some were more blurry than others because he had been drunker. Some of the tributes’ faces were blurry too.
His eyes were on the clock when the big needle struck twelve and, somehow, he wasn’t surprised his phone started ringing, almost as if he had been waiting for it.
“Hello.” he said in a softer voice than he usually used.
There was no answer at the other end of the line, just a gentle breathing that was as familiar to him as his own. He leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and listened.
He was certain of how long it lasted because when he glanced up at the clock, it was a quarter past noon. She would be wrapping up the Reaping by then. Twenty minutes was as long as it took.
When it was over…
When it would have been over, he heard her lick her lips. There was an odd clicking sound and he wondered if she was drinking too.
“Do you remember them all?” she asked.
It was the first words he had heard her say in months and he wished they were different. I miss you, he wanted to scream back. I’m fucking using lavender detergent just because it makes my sheets smell like you. Please come home I’m useless without you.
“I remember everything.” he answered.
That was their curse.
No amount of alcohol or sleeping pills or sex had ever been able to erase the striking face of a child who knew they were about to die.
It wasn’t all he remembered though.
He remembered the softness of her skin, the taste of her lips, the comforting embrace she would wrap him in when he was too drunk and too clingy to know better… Most of all, he remembered all the times she had tried to tell him she loved him and all the times he had scorned at her and belittled her for it. How she had grounded him, kept him together, when all he had wanted was to crumble in a thousand pieces.
“How are the children?” she asked next, a forced fake cheer in her voice.
“Better.” He sighed. “Some days are easier than others. You should come and see for yourself.”
It was a clumsy attempt. Before the war, she would have giggled and played it coy. Right then, she sucked in a breath as if he had hit her straight in the plexus.
“How are you?” she asked next.
It was progress, he told himself, that she hadn’t hung up on him yet. She had vowed to never talk to him or see him again before he had left the city, when she had slammed that door on his face. And yet she had called him. She hadn’t hung up yet. She…
“Miserable.” he deadpanned. “Ain’t that the point?” He couldn’t control the sarcasm or the bitterness in his voice and he closed his eyes, banged his head against the wall once. “When will I have been punished enough, sweetheart?”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line, so long he almost thought she was gone.
“Goodbye, Haymitch.” She whispered.
Then there was a click and she was gone and he cursed himself to hell and back for having scared her away, for having butchered it up like he always did…
When the kids found him that night, he was passed out and his carefully rationed stock of alcohol was all gone.
He threw up on Katniss twice.
She dumped him in his bathtub and turned the cold water on. She didn’t understand why he laughed so much and his slurred explanations that he had toyed with the idea of doing it to her went misunderstood.
It wasn’t that funny anyway.
°O°O°O°O°
The first day of spring in the Capitol passed without the traditional fanfare it always brought and, like most of her fellow citizens, it left Effie feeling at a loss. Usually, on the first day of spring, a countdown started on Main Square, ticking the months, weeks, days, minutes and seconds off to the next Reaping. People started getting excited for the next games, Gamemakers promised an even more grandiose spectacle and everyone speculated on arenas and what victors would mentor that year. There were interviews and TV shows and themed parties…
Effie didn’t regret the lack of Games but she couldn’t help but feel bereft without the structure the Games had brought to her life.
On the first day of spring, she usually started planning her Reaping outfit. She visited shops, interviewed stylists, took advantage of all that shopping to order Haymitch’s new wardrobe of the year, bought wigs and shoes and accessories… Anything to be the best dressed escort out there.
On that crisp spring morning, drizzle splattered the bay window in her living-room, making the tiny people walking in the newly rebuilt streets blurry and grey. Somehow, she couldn’t help but think it was fitting. Everything in her life seemed grey and blurry at the moment.
She took a drag of her cigarette, staring at the unfamiliar city like she did for most of the day lately. The rebuilding had been a quick affair because the Capitol was still at the heart of the country, the destroyed sectors had been cordoned and hastily brought back up, the bombs craters had been quickly filled with cement… All the technology available had been used to make the city new again.
Sometimes, she thought it was too new. She got lost more often than not every time she ventured out. Things were not where she expected them to be, there were new streets, new avenues, new shops, new statues… The style itself wasn’t even really Capitol anymore. The vertiginous skyscrapers were still there but the new buildings had a distinct District feel to them. The people in the streets had a distinct District feel to them too.
Being Capitol wasn’t in fashion anymore and only the most resilient – or brave – went out with bright colors nowadays, never mind wigs or cosmetic alterations. The days after the Capitol’s surrender were still too fresh for the citizens not to remember the bloodbaths that had taken place in the streets. People dressed in wash-out colors now and called it fashion, District chic, they wore their hair in natural colors – not quite so natural as dyed but nothing eccentric. And as a consequence, the world of bright colors she had known all her life had turned just as grey and bland as her nightmares.
It didn’t help.
She had rebelled by dying her hair a vivid shade of bubblegum pink. She had thought it would cheer her up. It hadn’t.
Spring promised to be a sad affair.
The sun never showed up. It kept on raining for days, mostly because, as she understood it, the controlled weather system had been relegated to a storage room since it took too much power and had been labeled unnecessary by officials in charge. The weather was bound to be a little capricious for a while, the forecast anchor had warned on the news. Mother nature asserting her rights.
Not that Effie really cared.
She didn’t care for much.
She spent most of her days smocking next to her window, dwelling on things she couldn’t change, feeling lonely and miserable and despising herself for not being able to do something about it. Like calling Haymitch. She could have called Haymitch. He might have made a few gibes or even taunted her but he would have also asked her to come to Twelve again and this time perhaps she would have said yes.
She toyed with the idea.
She toyed with the idea every day.
Living in Twelve sounded dreadful, all the more so with the destruction he had described, but living in the city wasn’t much better anymore. Not only was it so different from what she remembered but the Capitol had become a sad place. A sad very expensive place. She was lucky to have an apartment in her name, luckier still to not need much food to survive. She knew a few people who had been forced to relocate to one of the cheaper Districts because life had just become that hard. The government did what it could, she supposed, but a war was costly and there was simply no more money.
She toyed with the idea of calling Haymitch, yes, but she never did. Thinking about it was like probing at a still aching wound just to check if it still hurt: something you knew was stupid but that you kept doing anyway in the off chance it would work.
The wound still hurt.
After the war… After she had been rescued from that cell, after she had finally found her sanity back, after Haymitch had negotiated her full pardon and she had been released from the hospital… She had thought they had been building something. She hadn’t been angry with him then, despite his own obvious guilt about what had happened to her. She had needed him too much. She had needed him to hold her after the nightmares, to coax her through her panic attacks, to remind her flashbacks were just that… It had all been so different… Being allowed to share a room with him properly, being allowed to sleep curled up against him at night, being allowed to openly care for him… Even the sex had been different. Tentative on his part at first and then slow and tender…
She had felt loved.
She had felt loved and after Katniss had killed Coin, after they had moved back to her apartment while the trial was going on, she had thought they were building a life together, she had thought… It wasn’t entirely his fault, of course. It was Aster Everdeen who was responsible. If she hadn’t run away to Four, Haymitch wouldn’t have been forced to become the girl’s guardian and…
But that was all moot because Haymitch was gone and she was terribly angry at the injustice of it. She was tired of always having to give up everything, of being the one who was sacrificed for the greater good. Haymitch never put her first. It was unfair to accuse him of that because, given the choice, she would probably have put the children first too but she couldn’t help the resentment. It had been building for thirteen years. She had never been a priority to him. She was always an afterthought.
She visited Peeta at the clinic every two days. She attended therapy sessions when his doctor asked her to, dodged any question about how she was doing with her own trauma… She took care of the boy because the boy was all she had left. She put make-up on for him, wore bright clothes that attracted glares in the streets, smiled and laughed on command… Peeta was doing so much better and she couldn’t help but be happy for him.
Of course, it also made her a little sad. She knew that the better he got, the sooner he would leave.
A month into that rainy spring, she was told Peeta was ready to go home. The boy was excited but a bit frightened, unsure that he would manage to control himself without the clinic and the team of specialists…
“You can call me.” Effie promised as she helped him pack his bag. “You can always call me.”
Peeta flashed her a smile with genuine affection and reached for her hand, stopping her from properly folding a shirt he had already placed in the bag. “Why don’t you come with me? I’m worried about leaving you here. People…” He shook his head. “People aren’t nice to you. I don’t think it will change anytime soon.”
The mask slipped on before she could even think about it. A cheerful laugh, an open happy expression, a bright dazzling smile… “Nonsense. All my friends are here. My family is here.”
It wasn’t a lie. Even though none of her former friends would take her calls or acknowledge they even knew her. As for her family… Her sister hated her guts and couldn’t stand the sight of her. She blamed her for the death of her husband because, for her family, Effie had been involved with the rebels and could have stopped the execution of Lyssa’s Gamemaker husband if she had so wished. It didn’t matter that Effie herself had barely escaped execution, they refused to accept the truth. Unsurprisingly, her parents had taken Lyssa’s side.
She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t tempted by the boy’s offer as she sat in the back of the car Plutarch had sent to the clinic though. Would Haymitch welcome her if she just showed up? Or would he understandably be upset with her? Where would she live? Would he let her share his house like they had shared her apartment for a couple of months? Or would he tell her to find her own place because he valued his privacy too much? Twelve was a frightening unknown. Too frightening.
The devil you knew was preferable to the devil you didn’t know and, right then, she knew the Capitol far much better.
Plutarch met them on the hovercraft landing field, with two assistants in tow. The Secretary of Communication was a busy man nowadays. He exchanged a few words with the boy, hugged him and then ushered him up onboard. Peeta embraced her tight before getting on the hovercraft. He didn’t say anything, probably because he didn’t trust himself enough to talk. She didn’t either. There was a lump in her throat and burning tears in her eyes that she hastily blinked away by forcing a smile.
“Take care of yourself.” she whispered, planting a quick kiss on his cheek.
Oh, but she loved that boy… She didn’t think she could have loved him more if he had been her own.
“You too.” Peeta pleaded right back, squeezing her hand.
A small smile and then he took a deep breath, grabbed his bag and climbed on the hovercraft. She stood there and watched until the ship was gone. Plutarch stood with her until they couldn’t see it anymore, then the Secretary of Communications turned to her, his eyes darting to her pink hair with something that wasn’t quite disapproval but was certainly not amused either.
“You look lovely, if I may say so.” Plutarch gallantly offered. “However… Aren’t you afraid that your hairstyle might be seen as a little too… Snow conservationist?”
She didn’t even bat an eyelash at the accusation. “I am the last living escort. My very existence is controversial, I hardly think my hair color will matter in the grand scheme of things.”
The former Head Gamemaker watched her for a long time and Effie held his stare, refusing to be cowed. They were the last of their kinds, the two of them. The only escort and the only Gamemaker left. Although their circumstances couldn’t have been more different… Plutarch was the hero when she was the villain.
“There are… things in the work.” He finally sighed. “I am doing my best but I am not entirely sure I will be able to spare you. Come find me if you need anything, dear.”
With that mysterious warning, he turned around and walked back to his car and his impatient assistants.
Without Peeta to visit and take care of, her days were empty.
She smoked too much, relied too heavily on sleeping pills she was now pretty sure she couldn’t have done without and didn’t eat enough.
A week and a half after Peeta’s departure, it finally stopped raining. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed the sun until it started shining again. She went out for long walks, got reacquainted with the city, ignored the stares and the glares, the insults and the people spitting at her feet.
There was no huge countdown on Main Square but it didn’t matter because she kept count in her head. She felt the same familiar impatience and anguish at the approach of Reaping Day as she did every year. She couldn’t quite believe she wouldn’t be sentencing two children to death that year.
She wasn’t the only one who viewed the looming day with apprehension. The Capitol portion of the city’s population talked about organizing a huge party in the park on the day the Reaping would have taken place, the District portion of the city’s population screamed in outrage at the proposal, saying it should have been a day of remembrance and not a day of celebration.
The debate lasted for weeks.
Effie missed all of it because two weeks after Peeta had left, someone knocked on her door a little after dawn and her whole life was turned upside down. A Capitol man in a suit thrust a paper in her hands and then Peacekeepers forced her away from the doorframe and her apartment was invaded with people with work overalls, more Peacekeepers and what she supposed to be government officials.
She didn’t understand everything because her ears were ringing and she couldn’t stop staring at the Peacekeepers who threateningly stopped her from doing anything else than scream her incomprehension. When she finally collapsed on the floor, unable to breathe, unable to think, only certain that she would be grabbed and tossed in prison again, nobody moved a finger to help…
They kept on inspecting every little thing in her apartment, labeling baubles, artwork and furniture with little colored stickers that were meant to indicate a price range.
She had to fight through the panic attack by herself. She had to pick herself up from the floor, leaving her dignity there, and beg to be allowed to get dressed… The Capitol man in a suit wasn’t unsympathetic once she had calmed herself enough to read through the papers properly. The government was seizing everything she owned as compensation for her war crimes. The apartment, anything of substantial value in it, her bank accounts… He told her she wasn’t the only one who would wake up rough that morning, that they were targeting any considerable fortune related to the Games industry that had escaped the purge, that they needed the money, that she should call her lawyer and see what could be done…
She didn’t know how to explain that her lawyer wouldn’t take her calls any longer because nobody wanted to be seen with the last living escort. She didn’t know how she would have paid him anyway.
In the end, she was kicked out of her apartment with a small suitcase and several plastic bags. There were very few clothes in the suitcase because her wardrobe was full of haute-couture and furs and there was little deemed cheap enough to be given away. She had been allowed to keep her photo albums, her meds, a few keepsakes that were worthless, her toiletry bag and all the cash she had had in her wallet. She had asked for her grandfather’s violin and had been denied.
When she emerged from her apartment building for the last time, she threw up and sat down on the pavement, dazed and panicked.
She didn’t know where to go or what to do and she refused to cry. Already, there was a crowd forming and she hastily picked herself back up, pushed through the gawking people and fled before a journalist could snatch a picture of her sitting in the gutter.
She went to Plutarch in the end because she didn’t know what else to do. He had tried to warn her, hadn’t he? The former Gamemaker greeted her somberly, ushered her in his dining-room with her suitcase and her plastic bags and made her some tea. He had already found her a job, he announced, and she realized he must have known it had been coming for a very long time. A more specific warning might have been appreciated, she mused, she could have secreted money away. He would have taken her on as an assistant, he claimed, but… But nobody wanted her associated to the new government, he didn’t say.
That was how she ended up working as a secretary in a second zone modeling agency, a job she was vastly overqualified for not to mention humiliated by, renting a one room apartment with the smallest bathroom in existence.
The weather turned sour again. She had never seen a spring that gloomy. But, then again, she had never lived in a hovel before either. The building gave her the chills. There were five apartments on each landing, people were crammed into them… Some of her neighbors were destitute Capitols like her, others came from Districts and were trying their luck in the city…
She hated it.
She hated everything about it.
She couldn’t afford the food, the sleeping pills and cigarettes if she wanted to pay the rent each month so she made a choice and prioritized pills and cigarettes. Sometimes, she treated herself to a bottle of hard liquor and mixed glasses with pills, telling herself she wasn’t actually trying to kill herself but that it wouldn’t be so bad if she did.
The closest they got to Reaping Day, the worst it was.
She couldn’t help but think about what she should have been doing, about the glittering parties and the sumptuous feasts and the people begging for her attention…
On Reaping Day, she called in sick. At the time the Reaping would have started, she dialed a number she knew by heart.
“Hello.” he answered almost immediately, as if he had been waiting for her call. For her.
She couldn’t say anything. There was a lump in her throat and the sound of his voice after so long… She wanted to wrap herself in the sound of his voice, to wrap herself in him… She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of his breathing and tried not to think that she would have preferred to be standing on a stage a thousand times to standing there in her decrepit kitchen. A Reaping would have meant more dead children and yet a part of her was fairly sure she would have exchanged that knowledge against her previous life of leisure.
She was a bad person.
She deserved what she had gotten.
“Do you remember them all?” she asked softly when the blinking numbers on the oven told her the show would have been over.
There was a soft exhale at the other end of the line. She could imagine him so perfectly. He would be cradling a glass in his hand, his hair disheveled and dirty, his shirt probably frayed at the cuffs…
“I remember everything.”
There was a world of unsaid things in that statement.
She asked after the children because she didn’t want to hang up yet but she was a little afraid that if she kept going she would blurt out everything. The fact that she was living in little more than a shack, the fact that her boss like to pat her ass when she walked by him, the fact that she missed him so much she couldn’t breathe…
“How are you?” she asked next, almost tentatively.
“Miserable.” he deadpanned. “Ain’t that the point? When will I have been punished enough, sweetheart?”
The accusation left her reeling.
Was she punishing him? Or was she punishing herself?
They were both miserable… They were both…
“Goodbye, Haymitch.” she whispered before he could convince her to forgive him. He had always been very good at making her forgive him.
She hung up and she clenched her jaw against the tears rolling down her cheeks.
She took too many sleeping pills and she drank too much but she only succeeded in making herself sick. There was no oblivion and there was no end to the nightmare.