℘.

Burdock looks after them, after his own little girl and his love, separately. Sweet Primrose likes to go with him, or finds company in your presence and Lenore Dove’s. When she first showed up, Burdock scarcely let her out of his sight, if at all. Not so different from how it was when you found one another again in this world. He took that page out of your papa’s book.

There isn’t meant to be pain in the hereafter, but emotions still have free rein. Often, it’s as mournful as it is joyous to receive your loved ones, especially when they arrive sooner than they should’ve. Early on in your time here, Maysilee reminded you that you did too. She could’ve gone years without seeing you, she claimed. You both know full well she missed you in that brief period of separation, same as you missed her.

Patience never was your strong suit—death hasn’t changed that so much as it’s taught you the wait doesn’t have to be excruciating. You have your people here, the ones you watch over there. Knowledge pops up in your head, memories you weren’t there for become yours, and if you’re quiet enough, you hear them talking to you. With your feet in both worlds, your kin and your allies within reach, you don’t get by alone.

Seeing the life Haymitch has built, the good he finally found in a heap of bad, eases your longing, too. It’s all you wanted for him.

You feel the wait coming to an end, anyway.

Haymitch has lived longer than he—or the doctors who gave him his lease on life—thought he would. Before Burdock’s girl and Otho’s boy came around, he was only surviving because you wished it. His pain has lessened to a scar that only opens when it rains, and there have been no storms as of late. Healed by those he’s let into his heart, by the forgiveness he’s learned to apply to himself.

He’s forgiven you, too, for leaving him in what surely seemed like a punishment inflicted upon him alone. He never had to forgive what you believed to be your greatest crime against him. Neither did Sid or Willamae, you realized soon after they joined you. Too soon, but they didn’t let you dwell on that as far as they could help it.

You let go of your own anger—finicky emotion that it is—ages ago. It’s no good here, and neither is regret, after so many years waiting in equal measure, knowing you would’ve done the same as each other, for each other. Despite all your prior human doubts, you’re certain now he feels how truly you loved him, and always have.

In some ways, funnily, death has only strengthened the piece of you that’s occupied by Haymitch. Like the incessant weed he is, nothing could uproot him from your soul. He’s everywhere in your neck of the meadow, home to more dandelions than any other flower. He’s present even without you watching over him, or Burdock’s girl and Otho’s boy and their beautiful children.

Haymitch never denies them a thing, not even the chance to celebrate his birthday. His struggles to view the day as cause for celebration persist, but he likes to make them smile, and they always do when they know they’ve done something kind for him. The two brightest lights in his life. Your people’s future, learning from their past.

He plays it off as annoyance, but you see the smile on his face, too, whenever they burst through his doors beaming and shouting, “Happy birthday, Papaw!”

The girl learned to speak early on, and the first time she named the roles of those in her life, Haymitch complained. Not to her face, but straight to her mama.

“What else is she supposed to call you?” was her answer, mirroring the blunt edges of Haymitch’s tone. She’s exactly like him in most ways, and you rest easier with the assurance that they have an understanding between them. That Haymitch opened his heart to Katniss and Peeta.

Fiercely as your love extends to them, you can stand the wait to meet them. They deserve a lifetime. Some day, you’ll hear all about the good memories they made for yourself. You’ll sit in your dandelion meadow together, taking back your stolen time, as you’ve done plenty with those you only ever met in the impact they left behind. In the pieces that could never really be taken.

You prefer hearing her stories than telling your own, and maybe Katniss will be the same. Primrose sure likes listening to you. It dawned on you after a time that having the truth, having her pass the answers to you, is what you liked best. You imagine that’s true of your nieces.

The performance of it all didn’t hurt either. Guarded as she kept your aunt, your mama didn’t shy from describing her skillful storytelling when she first spoke her name to you.

Lucy Gray sometimes sings the same lullaby that your mama wielded to tuck you in. The very one that drove your desire to know the mind behind it. She’ll perform it with the family she grew in, the one who raised you, for all those who lived without her rainbow eyes. Others, it’s a show privy only to you and Lenore Dove.

And when it’s just the two of you, one lost Covey girl to another, you have the birds do the singing for you. She doesn’t let you off easy, though. You’re meant to listen to your elders, after all, and Lucy Gray doesn’t mind pulling that card on you. So when her tales have run out, repeated and recycled an immeasurable number of times over a blink of an eternity, you share yours.

Though it isn’t yours technically, not by name or in writing, you often find yourself reciting your poem to her. Bits of it, at least. Mostly, just the one:

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,

Beat with my heart more blest than heart can

tell.

Blest, but for some dark current woe

That seems to draw—but it shall not be so:

Let all be well, be well.

You told Haymitch once that it was the happiest part of the poem, but you couldn’t lead him to believe it. He teaches that verse now to the girl and the boy.

You know he trusts the words, you know he’s ready, but he worries about them. About the happiness, as much as the safety, of Katniss, Peeta, and those beautiful, brilliant children. He worries about how he’ll take care of them, and how he’ll teach them about everyone who came before.

But Katniss and Peeta, even with their long-lasting scars, have finally found their peace. They have themselves, each other, the girl and the boy. They’ve memorized the pasts Haymitch has bestowed them, along with their own, and what they haven’t committed to memory is written down in that book of theirs. The girl and the boy won’t go without understanding.

They’ll grow, and they’ll learn, and they’ll get by dancing freely and wildly. The girl’s hair blowing all over her face, the boy’s arms stretched out as he spins. Sunlight glinting off the copper bluebird around one of their necks. Depends on the day.

On the day your waiting ends, Haymitch leaves it to them. You still wear your other charms, though you have your family with you now. Haymitch is wearing his too. It’s the first thing you notice against the flowers and weeds before his pretty eyes find yours. He blends right into your kaleidoscopic sky and steady earth. You can tell he’s thinking the same of you by the curve of his smile.

Your effort to suppress your own is weak, and you fail to keep a scowl as you demand, “What’re you staring at?”

You can’t say who moves first, only that you wind up meeting each other, his back pressed against the dirt and fallen maple leaves, your voice dissolved into a fit of laughter. Haymitch peppering kisses along your eyelids and nose.

“I missed you, sunshine,” he mutters against your temple. “Every day, but I tried. I tried not to—”

“I know. I’m here now,” you murmur, barely getting out the last syllable before his mouth is on yours. As soft and warm as you remember him to have been in life.

It wasn’t dull, exactly, but your meadow feels brighter. Brought to life and color at its fullest by the hands cradling you to the ground.

Between the two of you, you’ve racked up a long list of things you want to say once the glee settles. The agony of waiting mixed with the peace of the other finding their version of freedom. Everyone who’s stuck to your side here, the people who’ve missed him and want their turn at hello. You’ll ask to hear about the girl and the boy, and Haymitch will share the joy of adoring them. He’ll tell you about carrying your spirit with him, and you’ll swear everything he felt was real.

There is no rush. There are no sunsets forcing you away. And when you part, there’s nothing more important to say than the words that tumble out of Haymitch. “I love you.” He kisses the corner of your mouth. “You beautiful, infuriating hypocrite.”

“Oh, you’re still no picnic, peach.” You bring your forehead down to his, but it’s devoid of any worry. He beams, and what other choice do you have but to respond against his lips, “I love you, too.”

Just as good and bad walk hand-in-hand, your proclamations of hate never existed without the truest of loves. They’re distant memories now, tuned out by the confession you repeat over and over. A promise you and Haymitch have no trouble keeping together.

Forever, in every world, and then some.

Though the walls of his room are small, identical in their eggshell shade, they seem larger this morning—afternoon, or night?—and Haymitch feels like he’s falling endlessly through the clouded sky. He waits for the impact, or for yesterday’s claustrophobia to return full force, and instead, all he gets is that incessant itching all over, which convinces him a horde of bugs has made a nest on him. He paws at his neck, chest, arms, and legs, as best he can through the gauze they taped around his hands to stop him from tearing his skin apart like he wants. 

His mouth is dry, despite having water forced down some twenty minutes ago, and his tongue has shriveled up like a dead flower. Haymitch has scratched his throat raw; metal climbs up the lining until he tastes it in his mouth, a byproduct of all the yelling he’s done in the dead of night and height of day. He’s sure he has more in him, but right now, he’s falling again, and that’s more pleasant than the itching. Than the feeling of being turned inside out. 

The most fragile pieces of him are displayed on the outside to be spat on with every too bright clang of trays and too loud flicker of lights. Every one of his senses is jumbled up, and every thought is muddled like he’s still on the alcohol, but he’s not. And that’s the worst part—there is no purpose to any of this besides reacquainting his mind with his body. A necessity Haymitch has dedicated his life to running from. 

Not only will he not survive this, but Haymitch realizes he envies Chaff for not needing to. Oh, and how Chaff teases him relentlessly for his suffering when day six rolls around, after Nurse Esper takes his vitals and brings in the head doctor. 

Haymitch would’ve thought living with the ghosts for so long would make him immune to them now. It hasn’t, and the sequence always starts the same. 

Their wails are loud, healthy, and familiar even though he’s never heard them before. They wake him when the sun sets and his wing of the hospital is empty save for the two night nurses. But they aren’t trained to soothe a pair of dying twins the same way they don’t know what to do with Haymitch when he begins to shout and writhe on his bloodied cotton blankets. Easier to ignore all three of them. 

Haymitch wishes he could. They have no names for him to call, and their cries are only getting louder. He tries to reach for them with frail hands that are better suited to cradle bottles and not babies. 

“They’re all right now, son.” It’d be easier to believe his pa if he were still a kid, but the blood is on his sheets and the walls are dripping with it. 

Droplets pool onto the floor in a puddle, pattering like the saline bag the night nurse comes in to attach to his veins. He tells her to do something about the walls and his sisters, but she ignores him until he makes good use of the barf bucket. 

In the wake of the crimson, the eggshell turns into a burnt orange. Mags perches on the chair in the far corner of the room. Haymitch asks her what he can do to make the spores on her face and neck better, but each time she tries to speak, a piece of her evaporates into the fog that took her. Eventually, there’s nothing of her left besides the pain in his chest. 

Wiress spouts riddles in her place. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” And when Haymitch can’t answer, the slit above her collarbone blows right open. 

Maysilee’s throat wound is nearly matching, the hole at the base of it oozing with blood. It matches the dead ladybugs in her hair, and Haymitch dry heaves at the sight. She teases him for it each time. “C’mon, Itchy. You’ve been around the Capitol long enough—surely, you’ve seen worse.” 

“He’s looking pretty bad himself.” Wyatt frowns at the foot of his bed, but they’re in the same boat. Panache’s sword makes a home in his stomach, the tipped blade pointing right at Haymitch. “She said it’d peak on day four, and you’re already a week in. You don’t need me telling you your odds of living to see the sunrise.”

No, Haymitch doesn’t, because he will not survive this nor does he want to. There is no point to wanting things here, where his sun cannot reach him. Where there is no warmth and no melodies to sing him to sleep. For all that Haymitch searches for you in the space between Wyatt and Maysilee, the vacancy condemns him to hold on longer. 

“Cold,” Haymitch wheezes when the head doctor comes in with a notebook and questions instead of a blanket like he asked. 

“They say you have a fever,” he says, cool-toned like the groups of medical types Haymitch hears outside his door. 

It’s just fevers, it’s just nosebleeds, it’s just an old drunk incapable of riding it out. He’s lucky he hasn’t seized yet, or dropped dead completely, or gone insane. 

Haymitch is so very lucky. 

Over a cacophony of chittering, Ampert calls for help from Haymitch and Beetee before he chokes out, “You said we’d beat the odds.” 

“You said you’d be right back,” cries Wellie, head rolling off her shoulders and landing by Silka’s. Tears spill out of the gap where her eye once was, and Haymitch stammers out apologies to both. 

He said, he said, he said, so many things. 

Sid and Ma repeat each word, each empty promise of his, back to Haymitch. Their burnt flesh clogs his nose and steals his voice. They scream for him like they have in all his nightmares before. The only difference now is that Burdock is right there, attempting to put out the fire only to get caught in it himself. 

It’s during one of those conversations between the robots who should’ve learned better about running their mouths that Haymitch learns the news about Twelve. 

“Have you seen the new refugees?” 

“They brought kids with them. More bodies, but more mouths to feed, too.” 

“That’s not even half of them. Might be a good thing that the others were all killed in the bombing.” 

Haymitch bangs his head against the wall, earning gasps from the other side of the door. For the rest of the morning, before they give in and enter with a sedative to shut him up, he begs them to stab the needle in his arteries. Or to give him a bottle. Whichever stops his heart first. 

Pinned down by his weightlessness, Haymitch can’t do a thing but yell at Burdock to run, to leave before he burns too. Burdock never listens, but the fire dies out, leaving them both to a meadow of ash and blackened skies where his song has free rein to suffocate Haymitch in turn. 

It’s sooner than later that I’m six feet under

It's sooner than later that you'll be alone

So who will you turn to tomorrow, I wonder?

“I don’t wanna hear this,” Haymitch tells Burdock, choking on the soot in his lungs. He can’t hear this, and he can’t see her again—the rainbow girl who isn’t you on that Capitol television. Burdock sings louder, soulful as the mockingjays and furious as he should be over having his twin lost, his family torn, and his little girl made into a pawn of war. There’s no mistaking his agony for anything else, or Haymitch’s role in causing it. 

Lenore Dove picks up where Burdock left off, exacting in the message she leaves for Haymitch. He left her to face the gallows alone. He can handle a song. 

“Do you want to know what it felt like, Haymitch?” she asks, face full of sorrow over the deaths of her people and her dreams of a different world. “To have my neck broken like my heart.” 

Haymitch shakes his head no, but she meant it rhetorically and tells him what he doesn’t want to know in excruciating detail. The burn of the rope, the pressure to her pulse point, the shooting pain of Tam Amber’s sobs. He hears them for himself, under the taunt of Burdock’s voice as he returns to finish the last lines. 

The resulting fracture lodges itself with the rest of Haymitch’s rot. It’s the only place inside him that hasn’t been scraped raw, a twisted safe haven for the worst parts of him to hibernate. From his heightened nerves to the shame he’s racked up to the wicked, vile grief that ravages him anew. All of them twined together at the base of his ribcage like the roots of a tree. 

His rotten tree is an ugly thing with no bright red leaves or branches to climb. No color, no life, and the absence of both, which he should be used to by now, is sharper than he’s known it to be. Even in the once radiant woods of Twelve, everything is loudly barren. 

You're still angry with Haymitch, so he can’t see your face. At most, he catches the angles of your shadow in the glaring sun, which is fine by him. Throw him scraps, scold him until his ears fall off, haunt him however you see fit. Just haunt him. It’s what he’s asked for since you left, isn’t it? 

Haymitch mouths your name, thinks he says it out loud too, but there’s no sound besides the blood rushing to his head and the shattering of glass. 

Steam explodes out of the aftermath, following the current of your hair as it blows around you. Curling around your shadow like a noose, the steam does little to stop you from bending down for a scoop of hot chocolate. 

“No!” Haymitch croaks, suddenly seven and fourteen and sixteen all over again. Suddenly made to confront each age of innocence and fault and all the years in between. “It’s poisoned! You have to—” He stammers and falls lurching forward to get to you. “Drop it!” 

You don’t, because you’re angry, and you’re starving, and you’re desperate for something Haymitch hasn’t remembered to feel in so long. 

“Please drop it,” he begs, shutting his eyes and opening them again, the same force pinning him to the floor at once prying them open. He calls out your name softer, deciding in his panic that’s the only way to get through to you, and he receives your back in response. “You can’t—it’ll kill you.” 

His rot buckles under the burden of the boy he was before the Games and the consequences of the man he’s become since. There’s no safe haven for the excruciating, stubborn pain, and it spills out of him in tears. He cries for a bottle, for death, for you. 

“It’ll kill you,” Haymitch repeats, sobbing. You don’t care to hear him, or maybe he’s just not trying hard enough. He could scream louder, or bargain with you, or wrench the poison out of your grasp and send it far, far away. 

But it’s already in you; already in him. 

Your stomach is coated in decay, dripping onto the glass and down your fingers. Glass, not a knife. Your fingers, not Maritte’s. They’re yours, and you know that. You’ll die, and you know that. 

Haymitch pleads with you anyway, his effort ragged and strained. “Don’t do this, sunshine. Please.” 

By the time he wakes up in his bed again, you’re gone for good. He’s tied down by restraints, which draws a startled, hollow laugh out of him. Feels like a waste of energy and supplies. Where else would he go? The walls are bleeding again, his sisters are wailing, and there’s no place for Haymitch but here. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Somewhere between the second and third week, his ghosts turn over a new leaf. 

They aren’t in a forgiving mood, but they aren’t vengeful, or even fully resentful anymore. Sadness is what Haymitch finally ascribes to them. He realizes it during Mags’s last visit, while she soothes him through the nausea, her face coated in the same ointment he fought tooth and nail to send to his kids in the arena. She watches him with sunken eyes, and when she goes, patting his hand goodbye, she leaves her sorrow behind for the others. 

Anger is easier to feel for himself and to accept from them. Their sadness—their resignation, which extends to Haymitch as much as to themselves—is rough against the skin and harder to stomach. It’s their version of grace, which is different from forgiveness but a kindness just the same. 

Maybe they’re tired of stewing in the substitute emotion of anger and letting it do the work of moving on for them. Maybe they realize it’ll punish him more to stop their cruelty. Maybe Haymitch is tired, too. So very tired, he lets his ghosts be kind, and lets their kindness hurt. 

Haymitch welcomes the sting Chaff and Seeder bring to their shared corner during his weekly check-up, when the good doctor comes in to see if he’s died yet. Maysilee’s frozen fingers check his forehead for fever most evenings, drawing acidic tears out of him when he finally notices her throat’s been stitched up. Wyatt isn’t wounded anymore either, as he watches over the little ones, every dove and every Newcomer, in the springtime meadow. Once is all Haymitch needs to see of them together for it to break him clean in two. 

Those that never come back, he doesn’t call for. He has his own mind fill in the mysteries—Ma and Sid holding each other fearfully, Hattie’s heart giving out on her, Wiress’s eyes twitching into lunacy—but he doesn’t pull them out of whatever resolution they’ve found. He doesn’t try to summon them. 

And if he knew any better, if he weren’t a rotting hole of a person, he’d stop trying to summon you too. Haymitch can’t help himself or his selfishness or the breath that gives life to all the dead parts of him that still have so many questions and wants. He can blame sobriety and the lucidity it brings, but even when every bit of him was good and numb, alive but dead, he wanted more than he should. 

So he doesn’t stop asking for you, and waiting for answers, or even a reminder of how he let you down in every way a person can be. He asks and waits and cries, and the only thing that gets him to calm down in these fits of despair is Lenore Dove’s tune box. 

Her eyes don’t meet his, turned down to the keys over which her fingers glide like the wings of her namesake bird in the breeze. The quiet of her playing, devoid of bitterness, soothes him. Comforts him more than he has any right to accept from her. 

The notes flit into lyrics. Tam Amber kicks them off as he did all those years ago. Lenore Dove’s soft lilt and Barb Azure’s low warmth float alongside him. Together, they lull Haymitch to sleep while singing of sunflowers. 

With his forgiving heart on his sleeve, Burdock’s soot-covered face is there when Haymitch wakes. He isn’t singing, isn’t blended into the backdrop of the meadow, and like the others before him, isn’t carrying a lick of anger in his soul-searching gaze. 

Haymitch blinks slowly, hoping childishly each time he does that Burdock will be gone. It’s one thing for his ghosts to have reined in their vengeance, another to have accepted the lost Covey’s song, but whatever Burdock brings with him now isn’t something Haymitch can take. 

Though he’s the same age as he was the last Haymitch saw him in the Hob, Burdock’s salt-speckled hair has grown well past his shoulders. It unnerves Haymitch to see Burdock settled into adulthood yet carrying the possibilities of youth—a contradiction that shouldn’t fit together so seamlessly—and all he can say is, “I’m sorry.” 

Burdock frowns and leans back in the chair at Haymitch’s bedside. “You’ve told me dozens of times already, Hay. It’s time for you to pick up a new tune.” 

“It’s my fault,” Haymitch mutters, hearing Burdock and choosing not to listen. That’s the cycle they’ve established between them the last Burdock’s hair was this long, so why quit it now? He focuses on the freshest failure, the one without years of resentment built in, the one he’s certain Burdock is here to talk about. “She’s too young for what I roped her into.” 

At the mention of his little girl, the ease in his eyes dissipates into anguish. Even though the symptoms of withdrawal have finally begun to subside, Haymitch is certain he’s imagining the lack of betrayal on Burdock’s face. “Yes, she is. But I can’t fault you for saving her in whatever way you could.” 

“You telling me you ain’t pissed?” he asks skeptically. 

“I’m saying you give yourself too much credit.” Burdock clicks his teeth, and the overhead lights seem to flicker in response. “You’re doing your part, Hay, and you got a lifetime to make things right with both of them.” 

Maybe, so long as Haymitch manages to get one of them back from Snow and the other through this war alive. “I never wanted a lifetime.” Not the one he’s been dealt. 

“You got one anyway. Don’t take it for granted.” 

Haymitch rolls onto his back. Looking at Burdock for too long strains his eyes more than the fluorescents. Poor imitation that they are. He squints up at the dome of light, waits for it to blind him, to make his vision spotty enough to turn to Burdock again. “Is…she happy over there?” As his vision quickly fades back, Haymitch can see Burdock expected some variation of his question, and he almost seems pleased Haymitch isn’t skirting around it. He can’t even if he tried, with the words spilling right out of him now in a pathetic murmur. “She won’t come to me. Won’t let me follow.” 

“For good reason.” Burdock doesn’t say more for a long stretch, laying his palms flat on his lap. He glances at the ceiling, and Haymitch’s head snaps in the same direction, a part of him instinctively assuming Burdock is searching for you to impart whatever riddled wisdom he seeks. The difference between Burdock and Haymitch is one of them has access to you, and the other you’ve shunned for said good reason. 

“You know,” Burdock finally begins, “just because we aren’t here to live life doesn’t mean we can’t see it. I see every day through both my girls’ eyes. Through Asterid’s. You may not believe it, but she’s here, seeing through yours, too.” 

Beneath the rot, where a maple red heart beats unevenly, a memory fizzles of Burdock at Haymitch’s side much like now, telling him death doesn’t mean the end of everything. Maysilee’s voice, repeating her grandmother’s words to him, echoing that old Covey song, sneaks up in agreement. “That’s nice, but not what I asked.” 

Burdock rolls his eyes and decides against pulling out Haymitch’s saline bag. “I think my sister made a choice that you would’ve,” he says pointedly. “She’d probably be happier once you accepted it for yourself.” 

Haymitch draws a painful breath, tries to send Burdock’s answer to where all the unwanted thoughts and ugly pieces belong with no success. It’d be easier with a bottle in hand, but they’ve already wrung him dry and split him open to exposure. He can’t avoid what he’s known in his bones, or heard through his ghosts, or felt in the colorless world you’ve damned him to all these years. And he can’t keep avoiding the pit in his off-kilter, maple red heart reserved for the person as precious as those he brought into his life. 

Haymitch rubs his nose with the sleeve of his sweater. “Did you ever go to Cindy and Hemlock’s wedding?”

The distance between them, which will always exist in some way, is made less impossible by Burdock’s smile. “They had cake.” 

Vanilla, Burdock says, and it’s the last detail Haymitch remembers when he comes to evenings later. A blurred figure stands at the doorway, shaped nothing like his old friend. But his mind’s great at playing tricks, and naive as it makes him, Haymitch would rather believe his ghost has lingered than deal with whatever mess is waiting outside this room. 

“Burdie?”

“Guess again.” Plutarch takes a step forward, all smiles and olive branches Haymitch would rather snap in half. “You’re being discharged tomorrow.” 

Haymitch sits up and drops his jaw in pretend shock. “Am I? They failed to mention that this morning when they brought the head doctor to clear me.” 

Plutarch chuckles, relieved and amused. He scans the eggshell room for the damage he must’ve been expecting, but the cleaning crew discarded all the evidence yesterday while Haymitch was allowed a walk down the corridor. Haymitch resists the urge to say Plutarch should’ve visited sooner if he wanted to revel in the pigsty. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, and right on time. Katniss has agreed to be our mockingjay.” 

“Looks like you didn’t need me after all,” says Haymitch, though he is surprised she agreed so soon. He assumed it’d take months they didn’t have for her resolve to crack, but then again, he has no idea how exactly she’s been faring. The last he saw of her was when he passed her room on the way to his, half sedated himself but lucid enough to see the hatred in her empty eyes. 

Plutarch crosses his arms. “She had a long list of demands in exchange for her compliance—I know you don’t want to hear this, but the resemblance is uncanny sometimes.” 

Haymitch is well aware. 

“Anyway,” Plutarch rattles on, “you should’ve seen Coin’s face.”

Ah, yes, the elusive President Alma Coin with whom Haymitch hasn’t had the displeasure of meeting yet. He doesn’t want to see her face, nor imagine it, if the personnel who’ve come in and out of here are any reflection of her governance. “I reckon the girl’s entitled to some demands.” Good on her for making them sing for their supper. Haymitch knows he’ll have his own hoops to jump through if he ever expects her to trust him again. 

Plutarch hums in agreement. “One of them includes rescuing Peeta and the other captured victors from the Capitol.” A given, but again, Haymitch has to wonder how that’d be possible. Thirteen’s compassion surely won’t be fueling the supplies they’d need for that kind of mission any time soon. “He made a few appearances on Caesar’s show. Seemed unharmed.” For now. Haymitch swings his legs over the bed as Plutarch continues, “My point is we do still need you on this team, Haymitch. Katniss needs you.”

He stares at the chair where Burdock sat. He was right about Haymitch having a lifetime. Whether he wants one or not, whether he’ll get to keep it after this war or not. He’d like to bank on not, but that’s secondary to what his girl needs now. “Well, I’m being discharged tomorrow, aren’t I?”

“Great,” says Plutarch, nodding as he backs towards the door. Haymitch would also get a kick out of slapping the grin off his face—another thing that’ll have to wait. “Get some rest then. Tomorrow’s our first filming day.” 

“Great,” Haymitch echoes dryly, and waits until the door shuts to fall back into bed. 

Without the sedatives, without the numbness or the company of spirits outside his own wayward imagination, Haymitch has no idea what rest looks like. Different from distraction, that much he can say. He’s a miracle case. Sober and alive, and he hasn’t conjured anyone in days. A miracle still in the thick of his own personal hell. Still walking through the fire in the hopes it’ll soon take him too. 

Haymitch fixates on the chair again, thinks about the lifetime he would’ve traded in a heartbeat for yours, and drifts off with a sorrow so spiteful he can only call it his own. 

It’s only in dreamless sleep that the spite chips away little by little. The sorrow’s still there, and so is the shame, but with no company to keep, no nightmares to ward off, and no bottle to distract him from either, Haymitch doesn’t flinch awake from the nothingness. He doesn’t scramble when it turns into a song. Found in the blur of days past, and made real by that long lost, never forgotten melody of yours. 

Are you, are you coming to the tree,

Where I told you to run,

So we’d both be free?

Strange things did happen here,

No stranger would it be,

If we met up at midnight

In the hanging tree.

You don’t show yourself to Haymitch beyond singing that forbidden song. Come morning, a gray jumpsuit and the bracelet that’d been confiscated when he was admitted is all that waits on the chair at his bedside. Detox has done a number on Haymitch, beaten him to a pulp, because the paralyzing urge to call you and beg for more glimpses hasn’t seized him yet. He gives it another minute, and when his chest sizzles, he accepts last night wasn’t a pitiful scrap on your end or a trick of his self-loathing mind. 

Haymitch leaves it be as you meant it: the first sign of dawn in twenty-five years. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Properly rested and miserable, per Plutarch’s instructions, Haymitch dresses the part of a revolutionary, so he might as well fall back into the role of mentor too. What’s it matter that he’s not even forty-eight full hours out of the hospital and wants a drink so bad he might actually rip his own throat out? Doesn’t matter none, because no one else in this nation of robots has the aptitude to state the obvious: forcing Katniss into a box is exactly how their revolution dies. 

After the headache of a morning spent convincing them of her limitations, piled onto an afternoon listening to his girl butcher their chance for freedom one bad line delivery after another, Haymitch is no mood to bury the hatchet with her. He needs to, though, if they’re ever going to get his boy back and pull this war off. 

As Coin—expectedly as dull as the country she’s running—adjourns their meeting, Haymitch asks to speak to Katniss privately. She narrows her eyes at him, turns them into daggers when Coin agrees and the others file out. Gale lingers, the gentle angles of his family’s genes now forged into weapons by what he’s been through. He saved as many as he could from the bombing, Haymitch was told. What nightmares must the kid be wrestling behind his rageful shield? 

Briefly, Haymitch searches for anything Blair might’ve left behind in his nephew. He shakes it off; there are more important things than nostalgia. "What are you worried about?" Haymitch motions accusingly to Katniss with the marker he used earlier. His eye is healed, and the scratches she left on his face have long since gone away, but the damage between them is a physical presence in the room nonetheless. "I'm the one who needs the bodyguard."  

Katniss inhales sharply and looks at Gale, who still seems uncertain. She assures him, "It's okay." 

Gale presses his lips together and leaves them to the purr of the ventilation system. 

Sighing in sync with the room’s humming machinery, Haymitch sits across from Katniss. It takes him several attempts to finally look at her properly. She’s determined to be the model rebel, to do whatever it takes to save Peeta—Haymitch sees it clearly laid out before her. The same way he sees past her stone-faced shield, right into the shame that reflects his own. "We're going to have to work together again. So, go ahead. Just say it."  

Katniss stares at the spot of the table in front of her. It doesn’t take her long to find her voice. "I can't believe you didn't rescue Peeta."  

"I know," Haymitch replies instantly. What else is there to say? He broke his promise, went back on his end of their deal, and did so willingly. He’d apologize if she thought she’d want to hear it, or if he could say it out loud to her without sinking into himself. And that’s not going to bring Peeta back. 

Katniss glances up at him. "Now you say it.”

Haymitch doesn’t hold back his own scorn. "I can't believe you let him out of your sight that night." 

She nods, dropping her gaze again, and it kills him how small she sounds, exactly like she did when they made this drunken, unrealistic deal. Like you, damning him with your own binding yet breakable promises. But when she curls in on herself, the memory of you ripples like a reflection in water, making room for a present which is plenty painful in its own right. 

“I play it over and over in my head,” she starts off, digging her fingers into her arms. “What I could have done to keep him by my side without breaking the alliance. But nothing comes to me."  

"You didn't have a choice,” he says truthfully. If she stayed with Peeta, Johanna wouldn’t have gotten her tracker out, and she’d be in the Capitol too. If Haymitch hadn’t chosen her, both kids would be lost to him forever, and so would the revolution. And if he’d done things right the first time around… For everything that may have gone right if they’d done what they wanted, or thought they should’ve, there’s plenty that would’ve turned out worse. Katniss can’t wait as long as he did to realize it. “And even if I could've made Plutarch stay and rescue him that night, the whole hovercraft would've gone down. We barely got out as it was." 

Hesitantly, she meets his eyes. Her own are red-rimmed and dragged down by sleepless nights. Haymitch says the only thing he knows can comfort her now: "He's not dead yet, Katniss."  

"We're still in the game,” she murmurs, voice cracking on the last words. 

"Still in. And I'm still your mentor." No matter how many people are now tasked with the impossible mission of keeping Katniss alive, the weight of it falls solely on Haymitch. Whatever the cost, he’s not giving up his job any time soon. He points his marker at her. "When you're on the ground, remember I'm airborne. I'll have the better view, so do what I tell you."  

Although it was his idea, Haymitch feels less confident about sending Katniss into combat when she shrugs halfheartedly. "We'll see.” 

Pain in the ass brat. 

Katniss pushes up from her chair, and Haymitch does the same, giving her the go ahead to leave first. She stands frozen for a second, staring at some spot over Haymitch’s shoulder, and it’s all he can do not to react to the look she gets. The very one that crossed her steely expression after he busted her and Peeta for watching his Games, and occasionally popped up in the days that followed. No matter how subtle and how quick it appears, that look is loaded with the desire of knowledge in place of your presence in her life. 

The look is a reminder to Haymitch, too. Peeta isn’t the only broken bridge between them. 

Once she leaves without another word, Haymitch doesn’t stop himself from turning around. There’s no stopping the curdling in his stomach either, no matter how stupid he knows it is to have checked for you in the first place. He rubs his knuckles until they stop trembling, and walks out the door. 

Plutarch waits on the other side with a set of plans and directives he wants Haymitch to communicate to Katniss. Did he emphasize how imperative it is that she stay out of any direct line of fire? Martyrdom is something they can work with, but she’s more valuable alive. It’s important Haymitch second all creative directives Plutarch doles out, too. After all, he is the “mockingjay whisperer.” What a load of crap. 

Getting through that dense head of hers is a waste of energy, and Plutarch’s wilful ignorance on that front is tested hours later when Katniss reminds them just how stubborn and reckless she is. And thanks to her little stunt, Haymitch gets to pay a special visit to Beetee in Special Weaponry.  

It makes no difference where he stands; the lights are dizzying and blinding in this room for all the wrong reasons. They’re even worse than those in the hospital wing, and Haymitch paces through the rows of weaponry to distract himself while Beetee whips out the alternative earpieces he asked for. It’s a marvel Thirteen’s arsenal is so well-stocked, along with the rest of the district. 

A hospital wing with a range of staff, a handful of hovercrafts, and an entire floor dedicated to weaponry. They’ve done more than well for themselves over the last seventy-five years. Have downright flourished when compared to the rest of the districts, who’ve left to suffer under the Capitol’s thumb. Thirteen’s their ally now, Haymitch tells himself. And an overthrow of the Capitol, as his own history has shown, is far from straightforward. Besides, if the nurses’ loud mouths are to be trusted, they’ve had their fair share of challenges. Still, he never has gotten the hang of controlling his bitterness.  

Haymitch fiddles with the headgear Beetee has laid out on his work desk. He’s not big on the idea of muzzling the girl. It’s bad enough he shoved her into this war. “Anything more permanent?”

Beetee nods and sets down a silver chip as small as a grain of bread. “Now this would have to be surgically implanted, but it would allow you to speak to Katniss at all hours of the day.”

“Even better.” Haymitch doesn’t want it to come to this—and as the overhead lights grow impossibly brighter and Haymitch grows doubly nauseous, he thinks about those Capitol surgeons whose teeth he almost knocked out to keep them from “fixing” Katniss. He’d be no better than them if he followed through. But…he’s not above scaring her into being less reckless with her life. “Thank you, Beetee.” 

When the thanks leaves his mouth, genuine as it is, Haymitch’s head spins. He realizes he hasn’t even asked Beetee how he’s been, or offered condolences for Wiress, or made any effort to check in on him now that he’s been out of detox. “I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier.”

“Oh,” Beetee brushes him off with a wave and wheels back behind his desk. “I should be thanking you, too.”

“We’re not out of it yet,” Haymitch reminds him, because it’s important Beetee knows that. He has to know Haymitch has done nothing to warrant his gratitude in the first place. Beetee is the one who helped save his girl, who has continued to trust Haymitch in spite of the insurmountable loss that’s resulted from the moment he walked up to that potato booth with you. Then again, Haymitch has continued to trust Beetee in the face of his own insurmountable loss.

“No,” Beetee agrees, glancing up at Haymitch with a glint of warmth. Haymitch tries his best not to, but his mind wanders to Burdock and his life after death, to Lenore Dove and her angels, to you and your talking birds. He holds Beetee’s gaze, and doesn’t flinch when he catches Ampert looking back. What a strong pair of eyes to see through. 

Beetee manages a hint of a smile, and he adds, “Not yet.” 

Not ever, if Katniss doesn’t listen for once in her damn life. Haymitch thinks he at least manages to get through to her when he pays her a visit in the hospital. Sitting idly by her bedside for a whole afternoon pays off in lunch and her agreement, however begrudging, to save him from a near heart attack by wearing her earpiece. 

On his way out of the hospital, Haymitch passes the corridor which held him not so long ago. And when Plutarch summons him to Command to discuss his next intended propo, a part of Haymitch wants to retreat into that eggshell purgatory, shut off from the world and its demands of him. 

“Cressida wants to do unscripted interviews on the bombing in Twelve,” says Plutarch, pretending not to see the noticeable wince Haymitch gives in response. He hasn’t allowed for much wallowing on the destruction of Twelve since he first heard the news through clogged ears and a thinly constructed door. Plutarch relayed more details the day Haymitch was discharged, but even then, he cared more to focus on Katniss than to take in what Snow had done to his people. To ask of the survivors outside those he’d seen for himself.  

Plutarch sits forward in his chair at the head of the table. He gives away even less than he usually does down here, even though it’s only the two of them in this room. Haymitch figures he has to if he means to stay in Coin’s good graces. She may be fighting for their side, but he reckons there’s more to her behind that head of platinum and a commitment to equality. Enough for Plutarch to fall back on his habit of ass-kissing. “That, of course, requires us to actually be in District Twelve.” 

Cut to the chase, why don’t you? Haymitch feigns well-meaning ignorance. “Y’all have a safe trip then.”

“Haymitch,” Plutarch starts off with his usual I-want-something-from-you friendliness, “You should come with us.” 

Should, he says like he hasn’t already put it in Haymitch’s schedule. “I can’t.” 

“Cressida wants to focus on Katniss and Gale, but it’d be great if we could get you on camera, too,” says Plutarch, drumming his fingers on the table.  

Haymitch scoffs. “Nobody wants to see me in one of those things.” 

“I can guarantee—” 

“Unless you can guarantee me a bottle, Plutarch, I won’t do it.” Already, his chest is tightening and the threat of bile is clawing at his throat. Haymitch hasn’t had a home in what seems like an eternity, and he as good as turned his back on his district. But it was his district. His home, even if it hasn’t felt like it in a long time. And he sees it all now—every place where he grew and loved, every porch he ever sat on with lost friends, every corner you touched—buried under rubble like those in the worst of his nightmares. “I can’t face it.” 

Plutarch waits a moment and is surely disappointed when Haymitch gives him no choice but to concede. “All right,” he sighs. “We’ll handle it.” 

“I have full faith in you,” says Haymitch, offering a mock grin through his trembling breath. 

The funny thing about avoidance, which Haymitch should’ve learned with his time in detox, is it doesn’t work in the long run. It’s a child’s luxury. Everything comes back around eventually. 

While the camera crew and Boggs’s squad accompany them to Twelve, Haymitch is scheduled to assist Beetee in Special Weapons all day. Assist is used loosely, as Haymitch is better served as a soundboard for Beetee to bounce ideas off of. Katniss’s friend is the one who’s taken to this side of the war.

Haymitch keeps his communication device by his side at all times, checking for updates on the crew’s movements, even as they’re herded into the cafeteria for lunch. Mushed peas, stew, and a roll of bread make up his plate. Haymitch has had worse, so who’s he to complain? His appetite is lost to him anyway when he spots a recognizable pair of wrinkled, disapproving eyes attached to a head of short gray hair. 

Haymitch assumed Clerk Carmine was in the group of Seam folk who managed to survive—hoped for it, just as he hoped he’d never have to see the man again in his life. He’s aged, clearly, but he stares at Haymitch from three tables down with the same closed off indignation as the day they buried you. 

Somewhere in the woods, maybe deep enough that your grave, and Lenore Dove’s, were untouched by the bombs. What of Burdock’s? He was buried in Twelve’s cemetery, and Haymitch knows because he woke up in it months after his death and found a freshly dug patch of dirt in the Everdeen plot. A grave without a body, but did Katniss know of the Everdeen’s funeral traditions? Whatever it was Burdock and Sorrel dug for you in lieu of your coffin. 

What about your people’s funeral song? Or your grave? Something in Haymitch tells him no, Katniss doesn’t know. Burdock was the last living person with the knowledge of where to find you. Not counting the scornful old man sitting three tables across from Haymitch. 

His legs nearly give out when he stands and mutters, “Be right back.” 

Beetee’s voice sounds muffled, like he’s underwater. Or Haymitch is the one beneath the waves, and he’s drowning under his curiosity of whether or not the resting places of his family and friends and tributes were collateral. He’s suffocating in this too small cafeteria with no air and no sun. 

He needs out of this room, this underground hellhole, this cycle of constant death and loss and no one to hate more than he hates himself. Except Snow, but he didn’t make Haymitch into anything he wasn’t already. A traitor, a liar, a coward who can’t even muster half a day of support for his girl without a bottle in his hand. 

Rounding the hallway leading out of the cafeteria, Haymitch rubs a hand over his shirt pocket and presses down until he feels the metal leaving an imprint through the fabric. He’s so caught up in trying to erase the images of fire in his head that he nearly topples over her. 

“Hi, Hay.” 

Haymitch takes a large step back and blinks slowly, but Louella isn’t a ghost and closing his eyes won’t make her go away. His hands shake as he tugs on the collar of his jumpsuit. It’s too tight, and the room is too small, and he’s too sober for this. Much, much too sober. 

Louella tries her hand at a smile, but it wobbles when she asks, “How are you?”

“Peachy,” he answers, immediately tasting acid. He forces his hands to stop shaking and manages to get out, “Sorry. How’re you?” 

Louella brushes off his rudeness with a shrug. “It’s different from Twelve. Harder, but that might just be the circumstances of why we’re here.” She glances past his shoulder at the cafeteria doorway. “We’re still adjusting.” 

Haymitch exhales slowly, gives his collar another tug, and feels his chest begin to loosen. We’re, as in her whole family. Not the McCoy clan—though he hopes and imagines they’re included—but the family she made for herself. 

As if picking up on his train of thoughts, Louella supplies, “They’re at our table. Jack and the kids.” 

In all the years she’s been married—how many exactly, Haymitch isn’t entirely sure—this is the first he’s heard her husband’s name. “How many of ’em you got?” 

“Just two. Hewer and Bluebell.” Louella smiles proudly, just like those days she’d trail behind him wherever he went. She’s found her own path now. “Do you want to meet them?” 

“No,” he says clumsily, the walls closing in on him again at the thought of sitting down with her family and meeting the children with no home. His eyes flicker to the space around them. “Not right now. I don’t—I have to—”

“It’s okay,” Louella cuts him off softly, if not disappointed. He doesn’t glance her way to find out. “Some other time.” 

“Sure,” Haymitch says with no intent of ever following through.  

And Louella must know that, but she doesn’t seem to mind the lie. She’s earnest and kind in the way she tells him, “It’s good to see you, Hay.” 

The walls stop where they are. Haymitch looks at her as she is now, the hidden whites in her dark coils, the tough set in her eyes, the lines around her mouth that speak to a life happily built with a future yet to live. But she will. She’ll get to live it. “You too, sweetheart.”

Louella leaves Haymitch to pick up whatever’s left of his shattered will to do anything of real use. When he returns to his table, slots into his seat without a word to Beetee, and musters the courage to lift his head, Clerk Carmine is no longer in view. But you’re there, in the empty space meant to remind Haymitch the old man has every right to avoid him, not the other way around. 

You’re there in the days that follow, too. Little traces of you, Burdock, and Lenore Dove woven into Plutarch’s footage of Katniss singing that same forbidden song you delivered in Haymitch’s dreams. Flashes of your dying breaths sneak up when he watches his boy’s blood splatter on white porcelain before the television turns to static. 

And now, as Katniss crumbles over the stream of wilted red and pink roses, it’s all Haymitch can do not to picture your tears in the taunt of Snow’s sadistic trademark. 

Katniss is a stumbling mess, and Haymitch meets her halfway when she asks for him. He catches her before she can trip over herself. However fraught things remain between them, there’s little worse than seeing her in pain like this. 

"It's okay. It'll be okay, sweetheart." He guides her to a piece of broken marble and sinks onto it with her.  

"I can't do this anymore," she cries, shaking like that ugly Calla look-alike she smuggled in for the little one. 

"I know.” Haymitch wishes he didn’t. 

Much like on the hovercraft, there is no talking Katniss down from her hysteria. The best Haymitch can do is hold her through it as she continues to panic. "All I can think of is,” she gasps, “what he's going to do to Peeta—because I'm the Mockingjay!" 

"I know," he repeats and tightens his arms around her, rubbing her shoulders.  

"Did you see? How weird he acted? What are they—doing to him?" She hyperventilates, her sentences broken and garbled by her sobs. Haymitch shushes her softly and manages to make out a final snippet of her despair: "It's my fault!" 

He shakes his head, a fragment of his poorly patched heart chipping as she wails into his shoulder. She can’t hear him, and wouldn’t listen or believe it if she could. Haymitch didn’t; still doesn’t, really. Yet, he means it when he says it to her. “Sweetheart, you did everything you could.” 

Katniss remains inconsolable, which offsets a meltdown from Finnick. Haymitch would go to him if he weren’t scared Katniss would fall straight through the ground the second he lets go. So he keeps his steady hold on her, even as the ground begins to feel unstable beneath his own feet. Even after they’ve sedated her. Only when they bring a gurney does he let her go, and walks her down to the hospital. 

Asterid and Prim are both in the hallway when they arrive. Similar in their worry, distinct in how it shows up on their identical faces. Haymitch loathes looking at either one of them, and he’s managed to coast by with little interaction with them in the last weeks. Now, he can’t pretend not to notice Asterid’s glassy eyes and Prim’s scrunched up nose, the latter of which guts him as much as the echo of Katniss’s distress. 

Prim is the one to speak up when a pair of nurses wheel Katniss past them into her designated room. She’s calm as she asks, “What happened?” 

“She figured out Snow’s plans for Peeta. Freaked out.” Concise and to the point, as Haymitch prefers all conversation with this pair of Everdeens to be. He goes dizzy for a second when he notices the copper bluebird dangling from the little one’s neck. Last he saw of the thing was when he gave it to Tam Amber to bury it with you. But here it is, making a mockery of his best intentions. “She’ll be all right.” 

Asterid nods, but the sorrow in her eyes is permanent. Haymitch doesn’t remember much about the year Burdock died, besides the forming of another pit in his heart and a matching one in his stomach when he saw his eldest girl in the reaping eligible crowd. He wasn’t any happier with the pair he got. Marigold and Ambrose, more Seam kids. 

That aside, the year is a blur. But Haymitch doesn’t need to remember details to know Asterid’s sunkenness started with Burdock’s death and has persisted ever since. He can’t bear to linger on the thought, or to look at her at all, lest the image of her bloodied forehead creep up. Over the last year, Haymitch has thought to apologize for it more times than he can count. 

He tried once, back around the time Gale was whipped. The house had gone quiet in the aftermath, and Haymitch was in the kitchen sniffing the alcohol they kept around for disinfection. When Asterid walked in, he nearly dropped the bottle, feeling shame and wondering where its origin came from before realizing it wasn’t the drinking he was ashamed of in her presence. 

The words were forming on his tongue, long overdue, and she could probably sense it, too. Asterid always was the understanding type. He’d seen in during their youth—she knew what wounded souls needed before they could name it themselves. Which is why, Haymitch figures, she never held it against him when he couldn’t say them out loud. She just carried on in the kitchen, packed the medical supplies back under the sink counter, and left with a nod goodbye sent Haymitch’s way. 

The same nod she gives him now as she crosses the doorway into Katniss’s room. 

Prim stays put, and he can’t tell if she’s waiting for him to say more or to leave. Strangely, this kid’s harder to get a read on than Katniss. Stonefaced as she appears, his girl’s got a thousand tells for those who pay attention. Whatever turn Haymitch assumes Prim will take, she surprises him by choosing another. She’s her mother’s kid in looks and prowess, but she didn’t go without inheriting a thing or two from her pa’s branch. 

Mystery that the kid is, like those before her, Haymitch doesn’t expect her to say, “We talked about it in the bunker. I told her Snow would do whatever it took to break her. I didn’t think…” 

“She would’ve put it together eventually,” says Haymitch, because it’s true and because guilt doesn’t suit anyone so young. 

“Probably,” Prim agrees in a murmur. “Katniss is really strong, but…” A wisdom beyond her years of life settles in her merchant blue eyes. “There’s only so much a person can take alone. Thanks for looking after her.” 

Haymitch tears his eyes away from the crop of yellow hair the same shade as her namesake flower. The glass or the primrose? Where did you land? The confusion’s still there, even knowing the answer. He looks back down at her and decides on how to deflect when a meow sounds from his feet. 

More orange, less beige, but just as picky as Calla. The cat prances straight into its owner’s arms. Haymitch scratches his temple. “Does that have medical clearance?” 

“Buttercup doesn’t do well staying cooped up in one place, especially after the bombings,” she says. Right. She’s survived two of them now. She goes wide-eyed as she clutches the bag of fur closer to her. “Don’t tell any of the nurses you saw him.” 

Haymitch holds up his hands and shrugs. “I don’t make it a habit of chatting up the wardens.” 

Prim smiles, reflecting the familiar disposition of someone born on the sunny side of life. “Thanks again.” 

Rather than brush her off, Haymitch chooses not to respond at all. As Prim turns to Katniss’s room, Buttercup hisses in his direction. 

“Feeling’s mutual, furball.” But Haymitch takes that as his cue to get the hell out. Katniss is in fine hands now. He only returns to the hospital a day later, when he has good news to deliver to her for once. 

Equal parts good and bad really, considering her anticipated reaction to Gale’s role in Boggs’s rescue mission. All that manages to calm Katniss down when she begins to work herself into another frenzy is the promise to find her a job of some kind. Which is exactly what Haymitch does for both Katniss and Finnick, and Katniss manages to do well filming the footage they need to detract attention from the squad’s break-in. 

Until Plutarch gets it in his head to push Finnick in front of the camera. 

They’re above ground, the smell of wilted roses crushed beneath their boots, the air open and endless around them. But Haymitch can hardly breathe through his fuming. 

Finnick reveals every sordid secret, weaponizes every dangerous detail whispered about their president and government, and exposes the worst of the Capitol’s crimes for Panem to hear. Detached as he is through his recounting, Haymitch can hear the tremor of his breath and see the twitch of his fingers in search of a knot to tie, or a noose to hang around his neck. 

Long after the crew heads inside, Katniss stays slumped on the same piece of pillar where she broke into sobs not two days ago. Haymitch takes a seat next to her. He picks up on the hint of worry in her tone as she asks him, "Is that what happened to you?" 

"No,” he assures her, ignoring the voice that chimes, oh but it could’ve been. “My mother and younger brother were dead two weeks after I was crowned victor. Because of the stunt I pulled in the arena. And you already know what happened to my—” Haymitch stops himself, a surge of cowardice forbidding him from putting a name to what you were to him, and continue to be. Every description suddenly feels flat. And he doesn’t have the strength to explain that, to talk about you so openly with her of all people, right now. “Snow had no one to use against me."

Katniss doesn’t press on the subject of your relationship. "I'm surprised he didn't just kill you.”

"Oh, no. I was the example. The person to hold up to the young Finnicks and Johannas and Cashmeres. Of what could happen to a victor who caused problems," says Haymitch. And how fortunate he was to have escaped the fate befallen desirable, popular victors. All it cost was everyone he loved. "But he knew he had no leverage against me."  

"Until Peeta and I came along," she says softly, staring at the side of his head. Haymitch doesn’t acknowledge her. He can’t deny it, as much as his instinct is to. And he can’t admit, no matter how true it may be, that after the better part of two decades wishing for death to deliver him to you, they gave him something to live for again. He still doesn’t turn when, after a long beat of listening to nothing, she murmurs more to herself than to him, “It was real for you.” 

Maybe one day he’ll tell her just how real it was. How his love for you has never dimmed a day; how a piece of him was buried in the earth with you; how he carries you and every person he’s lost in the forefront of his mind. He’ll tell her the truth about what you did in the Games together, and how he’s spent year after year seeking a free world with no real hope. Until she and his boy came along. One day, maybe, he’ll have the courage to say everything out loud. 

“How have you endured it, Haymitch?” Katniss asks, more hesitant. 

He hasn’t is the truth, and the liquor is no more than a bandaid over a bullet wound. He echoes the same sentiment he told her back when they came to their truce. “I didn’t have a choice.” 

“You do now.”

Underneath her whisper, floating into the air above them, your own rings, completely distinct in both rhyme and rhythm this time. “Don’t follow.” 

Those two damning words, which Haymitch has never been able to erase, no matter how many bottles he’s chased, will always sting to some extent. They’ll always come with the memory of your empty eyes and frozen skin, condemning him to a lifetime without you. But as Haymitch sits with them, allows them to soak down into his heart, they don’t sound quite like a punishment anymore. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, sparing Katniss a glance, “I guess I do.” 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

For five fleeting seconds, behind the tiers of a blue-green sea and frosted dolphins, Haymitch catches a glimpse of his boy again. From the doorway, he points to the border of the bottom tier. “Missed a spot there.” 

Peeta’s head swivels to check the spot, and he narrows his eyes at Haymitch. “You’ve been told you’re an ass plenty of times before.” 

“Plenty,” Haymitch agrees, guilt lapping at his insides. Katniss’s accusations on the night he allowed Peeta to slip out of his grasp have been playing on a loop in his head since they got him back. They’re fresher than your hazy snipes. “But go ahead. Lay it on me.” 

Peeta sets down his piping bag, the cuffs around his wrist clanging against the metal table. Out of the corner of his eye, Haymitch sees the guards stationed around them tense in preparation. The doctors warned Haymitch not to agitate Peeta, but the boy’s already chained to his work station and he’s earned the right not to be treated like broken glass. An instinct that is admittedly difficult to shed.

Peeta’s nose flares as he glowers at Haymitch. “You should’ve told me about the plan.” 

“Maybe I should’ve.” Haymitch doesn’t see any way in which that option would’ve played out better. Knowledge is a curse as much as it is a privilege sometimes. “But I couldn’t risk the consequences of you knowing everything.” 

“The consequences?” Peeta seethes. The vibrancy of the colored frosting dims with his anger. Warranted but no less cutting. “I’d say what happened was consequence enough, wouldn’t you?”

He’d been prepared to receive Peeta’s ire, to see the damage that was done to him and reckon with his role in all of it. What they’ve done to his boy is a peculiar torture Haymitch couldn’t have imagined. “I’d say so, too.” 

“Then it made no difference in the end,” says Peeta, teetering between resentment and acceptance. Haymitch expects him to fall one way or another, maybe yell or fight against his restraints to throw a punch Haymitch’s way. He takes another step closer as Peeta continues in a sneer, “You lied to me, kept me in the dark, and chose her for nothing.” 

Along with the doctors’ reminders to steer on the side of neutrality with Peeta, Haymitch was under orders to avoid direct mention of Katniss. Peeta hasn’t had a meltdown over her in days—not since he recalled his memory of Burdock singing “The Hanging Tree” around town—and they’d like to keep it that way. Haymitch figures if the boy brought her up first, it’s fair game. He sucks his teeth and taps his fingers to his head. “I know your mind’s still foggy, but you can’t get mad at me for that last one. You asked me to pick her.” 

“I remember,” says Peeta, and Haymitch nearly reels back in surprise. Although Prim’s suggested treatments have helped in the reversement of Peeta’s hijacking, there are still large gaps in his recollection. 

They don’t know what else to call it. It’s more than an injury or an illness or a case of mental disorientation. And it’s not a death, technically. But the Peeta that went into that arena is not the one who stands before Haymitch now, and it sure feels like he died. He hasn’t though. Peeta is here, and he’s alive, and Haymitch is no less responsible for him than he was before this. More so, if anything, given anyone who might’ve served as his guardian is dead. 

Now’s not about imagining his old schoolmates—and nice, generous Oliver Schmidt in particular—turning to ash. So Haymitch erases the pictures popping up in his head. He doesn’t respond either, giving Peeta the floor to work through what he needs to say. 

“You said it’d destroy her not to save me,” Peeta murmurs, and when his eyes drop to the cake, he seems caught in a daze of realization. “You were talking about yourself, weren’t you? You and that girl from the tape who looks like her.” 

Of all the things for Peeta to remember. Haymitch hadn’t been ready for him to bring up Burdock’s lulling voice when he had, and he certainly isn’t prepared for the subject of you right now. He shoves his hands into his pockets and struggles against the newfound heaviness in the room. “Other way around, actually.”

Peeta mutters something under his breath and shakes his head. “I don’t think there’s much of a resemblance anymore. That girl wasn’t cruel. How’d she end up with you?” 

“Beats me.” You would’ve been much better suited for this conversation than Haymitch is. Really, he used up all his luck in becoming yours.  

“I want to see Katniss,” Peeta decides, picking up the piping bag again. “I want to see if she’s as torn up as you said she’d be.” 

Haymitch sighs and looks over his shoulder at the one-way mirror. “I don’t know if I can make that happen right now, Peeta.” 

“You owe me,” Peeta says, parroting the desperation that overcame him on the day he burst into Haymitch’s kitchen with a kinder yet equally taxing demand. “Maybe you made good on what I asked for back then, but you left me to fend for myself again. I figure you owe me for that, at least.” 

And like that day in his kitchen, Peeta has Haymitch cornered. “Look, from now on, I won’t hide things from you. But I can’t promise to bring Katniss down.” It won’t take much to get Katniss to agree to talk to him—whether Peeta is really up for it is a different case. So is the task of convincing the doctors to give Katniss visiting privileges. 

Peeta focuses on the cake, pipes a U shape that’ll surely turn into a ship. Seems a little like the underside of a duck for now. Between the seriousness of Peeta’s concentration and the illusive U, Haymitch thinks of you and your doodling, of Sid and his fuzzy newborn hair. Haymitch takes a deep breath at the same time as Peeta. His boy looks up. “No more secrets.” 

Haymitch holds his hands out in surrender. “I don’t have any more up my sleeve.”

“I’ll have to wait until I see you mean it.” 

“Fair enough.” There’s a subtle tap on the mirror, signaling his time’s up. Haymitch waits for another handful of seconds to pass and another knock to say, “Nice job on the cake, kid. Finnick and Annie’ll like it.”

Peeta murmurs, “I hope so.” 

On the other side of the one-way mirror, Haymitch watches his boy pick up a new piping bag and frost purple flowers onto the top tier. Nearly the same shade as a larkspur. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Freedom doesn’t come easy to Haymitch. 

When they land for the surrender, which isn’t much of one in the wake of the final bombing, Haymitch doesn’t care about anything else but getting to his clever, stubborn, badly burnt kids. Even seeing Snow bound in chains and dragged down his own hallways, catching his eye before he’s turned down a corner to his cell, elicits only a brief satisfaction. Brief but mighty, because what poetic justice it is to be the one looking down instead of up. To have toppled the invincible President Coriolanus Snow from his throne. 

As the satisfaction lessens and his concern for Katniss and Peeta returns full-force, all Haymitch can hear is the sadistic chime of the man who wrung every bit of love out of his life. “What a well-earned victory, Mr. Abernathy.”

Well-earned indeed. The war is over and won, but what did their victory cost? Finnick, little Primrose, and hundreds more Haymitch tells himself not to think of yet. 

Plutarch assures Haymitch on the day before Katniss is discharged from the hospital that they’ll be memorialized in some way for their contributions to the war efforts. As will the tributes taken by the Games. “I’m only brainstorming now, but it’s worth keeping in mind.” 

Haymitch, fuming silently, refrains from telling Plutarch exactly what he thought of that idea. He can’t talk about it with Katniss fast asleep, doped up on morphling, and Asterid in the room, lingering in the corner like a ghost herself.  

It’s only after Plutarch leaves that Asterid moves to the foot of the bed. Haymitch waits for the room to stop spinning to say, “I’m sorry, Asterid. About Primrose, and…” He draws a breath when she flinches and averts her gaze. “I’m sorry.” 

Asterid presses her lips together. Minutes of listening to the beeping machines and dripping saline bags passed before she speaks. “Medicine can treat most anything, but it can’t fix how losing them will change you.” She shuts her eyes, and when she opens them again, she looks at Haymitch. Burdock’s death changed her differently but no less severely than yours changed Haymitch. And with the loss of her little one… Haymitch suspects her eyes will always be hollowed out. “We all knew what we saw wasn’t the whole story, anyway. And it couldn’t have been a coincidence your house caught on fire when it did.”

There is no mistaking her grace, like that of Burdock’s, for anything less than forgiveness. 

Asterid stares at Katniss, and eventually Haymitch turns his focus back on her, too. She’s still fast asleep when Asterid whispers, “You’ll take care of her?” 

“As best I can,” he promises. She doesn’t need to ask it of Haymitch for him to do all he can for Katniss.

Haymitch splits his coming days between visiting Peeta in the hospital and chasing Katniss around the presidential mansion, making sure they’re both fed and medicated. And when his shift with either kid ends, Haymitch is free. Free, and unsure of what to do with it besides what he always has: drinking his own weight, cycling through his worst memories, and searching for his love. 

He’ll never make peace with you, he fears one especially bad night when he dreams of the terrors that must’ve passed in his assigned room. Missing you is all Haymitch seems to know, and it gets worse, not better, in these early days of a new Panem you’ll never get to see. None of his dead will, their resting places blown to bits. Maybe that’s why the nightmares have come back and the ghosts haven’t. They said their goodbyes back in Thirteen’s eggshell hospital room, and the new ones have skipped over their need for vengeance. But you… 

Is this all he’s good for, he wonders while sitting in the mess he can’t remember making. He can’t even pinpoint what pushed him to take his fists to the room besides the instinct to destroy anything he touches and the explosive need to put his emotions somewhere. 

It doesn’t work because it never has. Peel back the bandaid and the wound is still there. The longing, the shame, the self-loathing is sitting right on his chest. It just might be all he’s good for. 

Haymitch’s pity party takes him away from his responsibilities, and Katniss comes to remind him he still has a purpose in this new, free world. 

Things are better but frail between them, and when the dust settles, he’ll have to answer for it. Half aware of the strain, half trapped in the nightmare she woke him from, Haymitch lets a cruel joke slip and watches her face crumble in a way it so rarely does because of something he said. He stumbles up and down every corridor, but he doesn’t find Katniss until a couple hours have passed. By then, she’s sealed her voice to him again. 

The apple doesn’t fall far at all; it just keeps hitting Haymitch over the fucking head. 

But in the days that follow Coin’s death, with Katniss in solitary confinement, his concern for her and Peeta becomes its own living, breathing entity. Coexisting with his grief for you, instead of taking its place. 

They don’t allow Haymitch to speak to Katniss, or even see her, during the weeks of her trial in which he is a witness in her defense. Newly appointed President Paylor finds exile the most fitting for the deranged yet harmless mockingjay. She didn’t seem all that convinced by the opposing argument. Haymitch figures she wasn’t keen on what Coin was selling either. 

Asterid’s letter burns a hole in his right pocket, the envelope jingling with more than paper as he walks the halls of the Training Center. Haymitch already said his goodbyes to Peeta, who he knows will return to Twelve as soon as he’s cleared, and Effie, who he doubts he’ll ever see again. Keeping her alive was difficult, and Plutarch had to help him convince Coin she wasn’t a threat. 

For all her ignorance, Effie never has been the worst of them. Haymitch hates that months of captivity are what finally opened her eyes to the Capitol’s evil and the pillar she maintained under it. She seemed to have some color back to her when he told her he and Katniss were leaving this morning. 

“I don’t have to tell you to watch over her,” said Effie, her voice losing its chipperness, “but don’t forget to take care of yourself.”

He would, and he already has. But he still nodded and said, “Thank you, Effie.” 

Standing outside Katniss’s door now, Haymitch takes a sip from his flask. More out of habit than necessity. The liquor’s effect has been slow as of late. He might as well be stone-cold sober as the guards let him inside to where Katniss is curled on her bed, quietly singing a tune he hasn’t heard since nights spent star-gazing. 

And there's no past, and there's no future, only now

And we have chanced upon this fragile scene somehow.

Haymitch shoves the flask into his left pocket and approaches her bed. If he had any to give, or thought it’d serve her, he’d offer words of comfort. Instead, he tells her the information she needs. “Your trial’s over.” She can barely lift her head to acknowledge him. He squeezes her elbow softly. And even though they don’t have much of one anymore, he says, “Come on. We’re going home.” 

While a team of medics and nurses file in to help bathe and feed her, Haymitch is escorted to the roof of the Training Center. There, Plutarch waits with a hovercraft at his disposal. He’s taken to this new world with no reserve or difficulty, like a leaf in the wind. Who knows where it’ll take him next? Good thing Haymitch won’t be around to find out. He’s officially been discharged of all his rebel duties. Plutarch assured him he and Beetee had a handle on things for now. But Beetee has his own bridges to mend, with himself most of all.

Never one to let things be, Plutarch talks the entire waiting period on the hovercraft. “For what it’s worth,” he chimes, taking the seat next to Haymitch, “your better half would’ve been proud of you.” 

Haymitch has never cared for Plutarch’s opinions on you before, and he doesn’t now. He doesn’t need them either to know that whether you’d be proud of him or not, he did this for every person who isn’t here and those that still are. Finally, finally, after all his failures, he managed to get one thing right. And the success belongs to Katniss more than it does to him. You’re proud of her, of that he’s certain. 

Plutarch buckles his seatbelt. “And I think she’ll make a great special feature on Never Forgotten.” 

Haymitch glares at him blankly. “I’d workshop the title.” 

Plutarch grins. An attendant carries Katniss in and fastens her into the seat across from them. Haymitch tunes out Plutarch’s musings on war and the fickle memory of humanity. He doesn’t say much until long after Plutarch is deposited in Three and Katniss directs her new questions to him. 

He answers every one of them with the delivery of Asterid’s letter. Katniss holds the envelope in both hands, running her fingers over the handwriting, pinching the bump in one of the corners. She only sets it down when Haymitch forces her to eat something, and he sees her pick it back up again on his way out of the compartment. 

When they touch down on the unblemished grass of Victor’s Village, he makes sure Katniss is safe and sound—safe, at the very least—inside her house. Haymitch contemplates staying, but the bottles in his bag are calling to him, and by the empty glower she sends his way, he reckons she needs the space as much as he does. 

So he gives her plenty for the rest of winter. The frost begins to dissipate, the snow long since having melted. So much for landing on top. 

Haymitch visits at night, when Sae is washing the dishes and Katniss is fast asleep in her room. Sae tells him how she’s doing, but there’s never any change to her updates. Katniss wakes and eats and wastes away in the same rocking chair until it’s time to sleep. 

“You should talk to the girl,” Sae tells Haymitch about three weeks into his new, recycled routine. 

He should, and he will, but he doesn’t want to right now, too scared to see her for himself. Scared to find your reflection in her broken spirit. If Haymitch talks to Katniss, it’ll force him back into that eggshell room with no choice but to confront his own damage and make something worthwhile of his new circumstances. 

They continue on their separate and passive paths, more than happy to do so, until Peeta shows up out of the corner of his eye, a moving blur through his kitchen window. Convinced he’s making up the sight, Haymitch scrambles to his feet and towards the front door. 

Daylight blinds Haymitch for a moment, and he rubs his eyes to clear the blur in them. Peeta’s still there when he gets his vision back. He breathes in. His boy is right here, blinking right back at him. “When did you get here?” 

“This morning,” answers Peeta, out of breath. What he could’ve been doing to make him that fatigued—

Haymitch notices the wheelbarrow in his hands, full of primrose bushes. His throat clogs up. “Well,” he sniffs, “good to see you, kid.” 

Peeta offers a smile, as gentle as Haymitch remembers it to be even if it doesn’t shine as bright as it used to, and turns down the pathway to Katniss’s house. Haymitch spends the rest of the day holed up inside his own as usual, but come sunset, he takes a walk to check on the kids. 

Slowly, with the return of spring, Haymitch sees a light come back to Katniss. As he begins to join her and Peeta for the occasional breakfast or dinner, he feels it infecting him too. He starts to look both of them in the eye without flinching or searching for ghosts. Since the liquor’s mostly lost its powers of anesthesia and Twelve’s ration only comes once a month by train, there’s no point in hoarding it. No point in messing up his house again either. 

He slips up as always. Sometimes it’s because the memories of your death and everyone else’s won’t stop tormenting him. Others because it’s the only thing he can count on. Once because he decides to take a walk through the groundwork of a new District Twelve and stumbles upon the ruins of where the old Donner’s sweetshop stood. 

After that, Haymitch spends more time with Katniss and Peeta, learns to nurse his drinks, leaves his house while it’s light out. 

He catches glimpses of the book they’re working on in passing, pictures or sketches of people he knew. He never lingers, and he never acknowledges the book. Sometimes Haymitch thinks they leave it out when they know he’s coming on purpose, to remind him that forgetting is the real betrayal. Doesn’t matter how true it is, or how different their intentions are from Plutarch’s—Haymitch has no interest in contributing to their project. 

But then he sees them working on Burdock’s page, the sketch of his smile so accurate, so reminiscent of the moment Burdock declared them friends, Haymitch can’t help himself. “We used to go skinny dipping, you know.” 

Nothing comes quite as amusing as the reactive disgust on Katniss’s face. 

From there, everything spills out. Burdock taking Haymitch through the woods, days spent throwing knives and picking apples, the love he showed Haymitch even when he least deserved it. Talking about Burdock leads Haymitch to Lenore Dove, how she loved her tune box and geese, and about their Covey roots. 

The more Haymitch reveals, the less it costs to say their names out loud. He describes Sid and his starry eyes, and his ma with her initials written in the sky, for Peeta to draw. They aren’t exact replicas, but they’re pretty damn close. They’re memorialized side by side, as they were in life.

Each day that goes by is dedicated to one of his losses, those he loved and others he never had the chance to. He shares the names of every one of his kids over the first twenty-three years before Katniss and Peeta. Then the names of his allies, and bits of the reality of his Games. To tell it how it happened reminds Haymitch that none of it was in vein. However long it took, the Hunger Games are dead and buried, and the Capitol with it. 

During Maysilee’s entry, he talks about her necklaces and how she loathed that mockingjay pin, but oh how she would’ve loved the poster it turned into. Her page comes between Merrilee’s and Madge’s. 

Somewhere down the line, the memories he’s been carrying on his own become something beyond a burden. It’s strange to think of his loved ones and not have their deaths be the first image that comes to mind. Strange but welcome. And by putting all their good somewhere safe and permanent, Haymitch feels them come alive again. 

The only person he can’t bring himself to share is you. Not fully and not yet, but you come up in snippets. He can’t avoid you when he tells them about Burdock bringing him the bracelet. Or when he mentions your role in tending to the geese, or you and Maysilee singing about ladybugs. 

They never ask for more details, and Haymitch is surprised Katniss doesn’t push on the matter. In the absence of your page, they find other things to contribute: a dried primrose here, a photo of Finnick and Annie’s son there. 

By the time a second winter has passed, the book is filled with hopes of the future as much as recollections of the past. More people return after they break ground on a factory for medicine, including Louella’s family, and the meadow begins to bloom again. 

It’s there, in the fresh grass concealing the graveyard beneath it, that Haymitch runs into Clerk Carmine one afternoon. 

The geese Katniss gifted him have barely hatched, and they enjoy the meadow more than his backyard most times. They honk when Clerk Carmine nears, and if Haymitch weren’t caught up in wishing he had a bottle on hand, he might laugh at the irony. 

Last he’d seen of Clerk Carmine was during Finnick and Annie’s wedding. Lively and downright spirited in a way Haymitch never thought possible. How he managed to keep his fiddle on him was a mystery Haymitch didn’t care to solve. He stuck to the edges of the room, out of his sight, and cared more about how he was going to pull Katniss away from dancing to tell her about Peeta’s progress at the time. 

There are no corners or walls to stick to now. Clerk Carmine stops right in front of Haymitch, wordlessly motioning to the treeline of the woods, now fence-free. Grown as Haymitch now is, Clerk Carmine elicits the same brutal instincts he developed at sixteen. A dozen cruel, petty words come to mind, partially from a need to send Clerk Carmine away and mostly from the desire to inflame his hatred of Haymitch. He doesn’t say any of them. They’re pointless now, and Haymitch’s feet have already decided to walk after him. 

Though it’s been decades since he walked this exact path, his bones know where he’s heading. For years, Haymitch tried to retrace his steps, mimic the trail, and find where it ended. He never did, forgetting turns and markings with each failed attempt. Always retreating with his own vicious reminders of your damnation. Haymitch doesn’t hear them now, neither from your voice nor his. Only birdsong and wind chimes by the time they reach the clearing of graves. 

Haymitch counts the seven headstones, spread across two rows and half filled with the names of those etched upon his heart, and sinks to his knees before yours. They let out a crackling sound in protest, but the dirt softens the stiffness of his joints. There’s no soothing balm for the ache spreading inside his body, credited to loss, not age or liver failure. 

Tears prick behind his eyes, and his lungs constrict with the lack of air, but Haymitch manages to read the words carved on the limestone. 

Where the Youth pined away with desire,

And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: 

Arise from their graves and aspire, 

Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Sensing Clerk Carmine take a step beside him, Haymitch croaks, “Why’d you bring me here?” He’s done nothing to Clerk Carmine to earn his sympathy, and he’s never cared for it anyway. So why would he extend this kindness now? Out of the goodness of a heart completely closed off to Haymitch? That’s unlikely. 

“I have a couple of years left in me, but it’s any day now.” Clerk Carmine lets a beat pass. “I’m ready to be with my people again. Wouldn’t be right to leave without settling things.” 

“What for?” Haymitch scoffs, finally turning to him. Clerk Carmine keeps his gaze on the graves before them. Flitting from the very first behind yours, which tells of a girl named Lucy Gray, all the way to Burdock’s honorary slab. “You were right not to trust me.” 

“Maybe at the time,” Clerk Carmine says, head dropping slightly, “but you were just a boy then. You…weren’t to blame.” He lifts his head, allowing Haymitch to see the guilt written in the weary set of his eyes. “I knew my niece, and I knew her heart. She chose to give it to you for good reason.”

For good reason. Gravitating towards the words meant to immortalize your spirit, Haymitch lets the shame wash over him in waves, and when it calms inside him, he’s no more ready to listen to Clerk Carmine than he was to Burdock in his withdrawal-induced hallucinations. 

“I never thought I’d live to be free again,” says Clerk Carmine abruptly and begrudgingly at the same time. “Suppose I have you to thank for that.”

“Burdock’s girl did all the work,” deflects Haymitch. 

He doesn’t turn to see if Clerk Carmine’s leaving, but he picks up on the shuffling of his steps and the pensive hum. “She wasn’t alone,” he sighs so lowly, Haymitch can hardly hear him. His footsteps dwindle, offering a final kindness of privacy.

The sun dips below the trees and looms directly above your headstone, brightening the hint of blue. Haymitch’s knotted lungs constrict until his breath comes out in a choked laugh. “Hear that, sunshine? I finally won over Clerk Carmine.” 

He stares at the flowers growing from your grave and thinks about all the nights he’s spent wanting to be with you, buried in the same earth. Resenting the life you gave him. “I wish it hadn’t taken so long, me getting here.” No talking birds deliver your voice to him, or give him the answer he wants to hear from you. Those surrounding the clearing flit from branch to branch, free as can be. “And now that I have, I know I can’t stay. I got kids to take care of—you’d love ’em, headaches that they are.” 

His eyes begin to blur. There’s dozens of things he wants to, and should, say to you now that you’re as close to face-to-face as you can get. About Katniss and Peeta, about Snow’s demise, about Twelve’s reconstruction. Apologies, pleas, offerings. Most of them he’s said already, running that tune ragged. 

Haymitch glances at Lenore Dove’s grave, then at the evergreen leaves sprouting from Burdock’s. The plot of primroses are fresher, newly sowed and barely coming into themselves, unlike those Peeta planted about a year ago. They’re everywhere now, carrying the memory of the little one who took on their name as her own. She’s who Haymitch thinks of now when he looks at them. Not the shattered glass and your poisoned blood. Not the death of the little girl he hardly knew except for her sweet soul. But the one whose spirit lives on, as her pa would have Haymitch believe, seeing the world through her brilliant sister’s eyes. 

And why shouldn’t he believe it? Haymitch can almost hear Burdock asking him. He can almost feel you wondering the same. You were always tangled by your roots, as much of Haymitch as he was of you. 

“I’m gonna make good on this new life for us,” he swears, running his pinkie over the words on your headstone. 

Haymitch thinks you believe him, because when he dreams late at night, he finds you in your meadow, dandelions and wildflowers twinkling under the sun. Your face is still obscured from where he stands, but as you recite your dear poem beginning to end, whatever’s left of his rotten heart unfurls.  

It’s still partially dark out when he wakes the kids. Neither of them are pleased, and Peeta’s torture in the Capitol has chipped away at his tolerance some. They both snap at Haymitch, only retracting their hostility when he clues them in to his request and motions to the counter where their book has made a home. 

He sets down the bracelet and a bottle. Katniss and Peeta exchange wary looks, their silence a question for him to answer. Haymitch has been doing his best to make his supply last as of late, and he never drinks when they work on the book. 

“I just need the option,” is what he tells them before sitting at the kitchen table. He needs the drink more like it, but they deserve his memories at their sharpest. So do you.

They follow slowly. Katniss opens the book in front of her, pencil in hand. Peeta lays out his sketching tools. 

Tapping the cap of the bottle, Haymitch lifts his gaze to Katniss. “What do you want to know first?” 

“I don’t…” Her eyes migrate from him to the bracelet to the bottle. When they meet his again, recognition cracks her expression. “She liked maple leaves, right?” 

Haymitch feels a smile tugging at him, and he leans back from the bottle. 

With no shortage of stories, he makes sure they know who you were. Your affinity for tree climbing and rock collecting and maple creams from the sweetshop. The day you showed your hate for him, and the morning you showed up with three hot pepper cherry taffy pieces for his mamaw’s funeral. Even the time his pa made you laugh.

Happy memories weave themselves in with the bad. That scrawny, hideous cat of yours. All the riddles and nonsense you’d sprout about your beliefs, which he never fully understood then. How deeply you loved your people. How restless you were, and self-righteous, and stubborn. What a gift it was to be yours. Even in the wreckage left behind by your absence, Haymitch wouldn’t give that up. 

He tells them that. He shares every bit of you, because it’s all worth remembering. 

And Haymitch gets through it without a lick of alcohol, but after he finishes detailing your last poster together in the arena, your last words, he grabs the bottle and mutters his goodbyes. He’s not two steps down the porch when he senses Katniss hot on his heel. 

“Why are you trailing after me?” he snaps, spinning around and expecting her to snark back. If she thinks he’ll accept her pity—

Katniss wraps her arms around him tightly. The urge to snipe and scold her is stopped short. Hesitantly, Haymitch returns her embrace. 

“Thanks,” Katniss murmurs earnestly. 

Haymitch clamps his eyes shut, feeling the sting behind them. He waits until it passes and lets go of Katniss with a sigh. “See you at dinner, sweetheart.” 

Like the others, it becomes easier to talk about you, even with your entry in their book completed. Little things and details crop up. Moments Haymitch can’t help but want to reminisce on. 

That year’s spring passes by like a breeze, and come summer, on what would’ve been the 77th Hunger Games but is now Haymitch’s birthday, he wakes at peace. 

Though they agreed not to fill the day with fanfare or gifts of any kind, the kids never do listen fully. Peeta bakes a wildberry pie for breakfast, tasting like the jam his ma would make. By the third bite, his hands stop shaking.

Halfway through his slice and his drink, Haymitch watches Katniss slide over a neatly folded napkin. He glares at her but unfolds it gently. Nestled in the center lies your bluebird, vibrant and polished. He hasn’t thought of it since he saw it around Primrose’s neck in Thirteen, which feels negligent on his part. It’s not attached to any cord now, and his mind lands on the envelope Asterid trusted him to pass along. 

“She gave it to you,” says Katniss, anticipating the questions about to fall out of his mouth. “You’ll have more use for it than I do.” 

The memory of you in the arena, of Ampert’s trembling hands passing over this very charm, comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Whatever lump beginning to form in his throat is shoved back down by the wandering cat under the table who bumps into his ankle, looking for scraps and bringing him back to reality. Haymitch swallows, gives her a short nod of thanks, and finishes his pie. 

Less than a week passes when he decides to repay Katniss. High time a proper introduction was made anyway.

Haymitch hasn’t returned since the day Clerk Carmine brought him, but it doesn’t take him long to recall the way. There, carrying enough willow tree branches for each grave, he bypasses the honor to Katniss. 

She doesn’t divide them immediately, stopping right in front of Burdock’s empty grave first, her shoulders rising and falling with the telltale sign of an impending sob. Haymitch reaches out, ready to catch her, but Katniss steadies herself on her own and lays her pa’s willow branch. 

Your grave is saved for last. Katniss crouches down and reads the lines in a whisper, lower than she did with the others. She presses her three middle fingers to her lips, and Haymitch waits for her to lift them. Instead, she places her fingers atop your headstone. 

He looks away while Katniss says goodbye to Burdock again. She returns to his side seconds later. “I’ll meet you back home.” 

Understanding each other to a degree above frightening sometimes, Haymitch appreciates the privacy as he’s sure Katniss appreciates her time alone. 

Once he’s sure Katniss has left, he kneels before you and digs for the bluebird in his jacket. The most precious thing you owned, weighed and measured in the palm of his hands. You’ve been without it for so long, and in returning it to where it belongs, in showing you he finally understands your wish for him, maybe you’ll recognize Haymitch’s own wishes for you. 

He begins to scoop out a small plot of dirt right beside your headstone. He stops, fingers twitching, when an old warmth runs up his arms. One he hasn’t felt in ages but has never fully shed. It’s been lying in wait, nestled beneath his ribcage, alongside the distinct melody of your voice.

“You best not be giving that back, peach.” 

Haymitch takes deep, slow breaths. His heart thumps at the base of his throat, but he doesn’t taste bile or tears. By sheer force alone, he manages to say, “Wouldn’t want you going without the full set, sunshine.” He keeps watch of your headstone as pieces of it glint under the afternoon light. “Besides,” he continues tightly, “I got your gift.” 

“You liked it then?” 

The teasing edge to your question undoes the tension inside him. Haymitch glances down at the charm and picks apart the hazy image of sitting under that oak tree in the schoolyard. He snickers a little. “You were never subtle at all, were you?” 

“You weren’t exactly a needle in a haystack.” You scoff, but he can hear the smugness in your tone and imagines the grin plastered on your face. Haymitch wants to see it. He wants to see you in all your ghostly brilliance and know that you are free. That you’ve found peace in your world where birds talk and lost souls are found. 

Without wasting a second to fear or cower, Haymitch turns his head. 

The passage of years in your eyes strikes him. Unlike your youthful ghost, you hold his gaze without anger or shared resentment. Without pressing Haymitch for more, without exacting any vengeance. But your gaze is as raw and all-consuming as before. Forever the brightest sight he’s beheld. He thinks of the time you’ve lost and the future you’ve lived out together, even worlds apart. A future Haymitch has taken for granted—one he might not have for much longer, if the recent pain in his abdomen has anything to say about it, and only does in the first place because of you. 

All that comes out of his mouth is a murmured “Why?” 

You smile, even as your eyes glisten. Haymitch feels his own welling up. He knows your answer, has known it all along, hidden as you’ve both kept it. Even so, his aching chest calms as you say, “I love you, Haymitch.” You lift a shoulder, shrugging off any other reason as secondary, as unimportant as the simple truth of your unabashed heart reserved for him. No walls could keep him out now, and they never really could, he realizes. “I was never going to choose not to save you.” 

Salt settles on his tongue. Haymitch takes a shuddered breath, the warmth bubbling inside him to a near boiling point, leaving him utterly helpless to blurt out in equal measure, “I love you.” 

The wind passes between you, carrying a weight off his shoulders. Haymitch would’ve died for you too, had the roles been reversed. He would’ve taken that poison in a heartbeat, and he can’t blame you for beating him to the punch. He can’t keep hating himself for what he failed to achieve at sixteen. The only ones to blame have paid for the lives they’ve cost with their own. They’re gone, and Panem is free, and for the first time since, Haymitch feels he could try to be too. 

You tilt your head, beaming, and motion to the spot between his brows. “You’ve been worrying a lot.”

“It’s those damn kids,” he sighs, heavy yet lighter than he’s ever felt in his adult life. 

“Let them fret over you every now and then,” you say, gentle as the tears streaking your face.  

Closing his eyes, indulging one last time in the phantom sensation of your forehead pressed against his, Haymitch wipes his face and nods. They already do, downright irritating in how they stick to him. But he’s their family, same as they are his, and they mean well. And it isn’t hard to catch onto what you really mean. 

Your gift to Haymitch is the time he has left to live with and love them. He’ll visit, and he’ll see you again, and on the days until then, you’ll be with him. You always have been. If a piece of him was taken with you to your grave, then a piece of you is still this side of earth. Steady and true, like the rising sun. It’ll be there tomorrow, in this world and the next. 

The nightmares will still come, too, because there is no cure for them. Haymitch will go on fearing and grieving and drinking because the scar isn’t one that goes away, only fades. And habits are hard to discard when they’ve been drummed into your bones. As impossible as forgetting, but Haymitch has no need to anymore. He accepts his losses and his wounds because he believes that death is not the end. His lost loves are everywhere, in everything he does and sees before he meets them in the hereafter.

So, when Haymitch looks up again to find no more than the rustling branches and dimming light of day, he doesn’t keel over. He patches up the unfinished hole in the ground, and carrying your love, he follows the sun home. 

Taglist: @lovemiss-vale @aureolinb @mqrieshrt @bueburgers @dem1dearest @nikki-is-a-nerd @lovelylittlelesbianlore @jjloveshotch @inneedofcaffine @poetsandroses @kindsleybooks @ivyhaec @x-gabrielle-x @ghostlythinggoingaround @happiness2112 @sundawn1990 @starryjeongyeon @kuurbyfun @lenteheure @petrasbones @wertyuizxcvbnm @shiftingf1 @sarcasm-n-insomnia @defnotbrooklyn @harrypedro465 @rinatzsstuff @whimsybeth @youraggedybitch @poppysrin @watergirl85 @prettyandromeda @gaz0xx @marsupialnoises @madisonosidam @redshinyshoes @comfortcharacterwrites

A/N: and that’s a wrap? 😭 part of this chapter taking so long to come out was my dissatisfaction with it, which i still feel some of. i realize i’ll always be a little dissatisfied by it because i simply don’t want it to be over. genuinely, thank you so very much for all the kindness and support you’ve sent me over this series. it means the world to know y’all care about it as dearly as i do.

there’s still an epilogue to come! and much more content about sunshine and haymitch! but we’ve officially said goodbye to itsdr and here are some parting tweets to cope with my sorrow

You couldn’t have gone far. You were just here. In his arms, breath tickling his neck, heartbeats in sync. Now, his gives an uneven patter. It stalls, then quickens, then stops altogether while he rushes to begin his descent. 

The blanket slips off his body, off the hammock, and lands on its target with a hmph. An exceptionally loud target for a stagnant one. 

“Watch it.”

Haymitch peers down. Past the spindly branches and crops of leaves obscuring you from direct view, your head pops out from the blanket. You stare up at him, your eyes, heavy as they are with grief and exhaustion, rivaling the starlight above. He blows out a puff of air and scampers down the trunk. 

You meet Haymitch where he lands, oddly calm despite nearly sending him to an early grave. Down here, out of the branches and on even footing, Haymitch sees clearly how little hours have passed since you climbed up together. He tightens the blanket around your shoulders when you shiver, and searches for meaning across the slightest spasm of your expression. Your cheeks are silver-streaked and the tip of your nose is pale, but you haven’t been crying again. His own face feels sticky with dried tears. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” you say before he can ask properly, wringing your fingers so roughly he has to take them within his own to get you to stop. You let him and sigh. “Thought I’d get a head start on finding Wellie.” 

Haymitch frowns. “You were going off without telling me?” 

You knit your brows together, hands freezing up. “I wouldn’t do that.” 

His heart gives a guilty pang. No, you wouldn’t. He would. He runs his hands down your arms in apology. Your goosebumps, as stubborn as the rest of you, don’t yield to his touch. “I know. I shouldn’t’ve—”

“It’s okay,” you brush him off, pointing to a patch of dirt by the tree trunk opposite you. “I was making a map.” 

The blanket droops down your shoulders. Haymitch fixes it again. “What for?” 

“To rule out everywhere we’ve been so far.” You squat in front of your sketch. 

He crouches beside you, squinting down at the dirt. “You think the arena’s a diamond?” 

“Just a guess.” You shrug and pick up a stick. “If the north and south come to a point, I figured so would the east and west.” You tap the stick against the tipped edges of the diamond map. “Wellie wouldn’t back herself into a corner. Maysilee was right about that.”  

He doesn’t miss the way your voice catches saying her name. Doesn’t miss the pit in his stomach when he looks over your head and expects Maysilee on the other side. Even more chilling than the gap she’s left is how deeply he misses her. Never before would Haymitch have guessed Maysilee Donner, of all people, to wind up someone he loved this much. 

You sniffle but don’t linger on your sadness. You draw an oval above the sketched treeline, just below a large dot, which he assumes to be the cornucopia. It’s hard to tell with the limited light. “That’s the meadow.” Another oval encompasses the space below the treeline, closer north. “That’s around where we were yesterday. If Wellie made it to the woods before the rain and mudslide, this is where she’d be.” 

“We would’ve found her then if she were there,” Haymitch reasons, shuffling when his thighs start to burn. 

You shake your head. “Not if she kept west or east. We only walked straight down the middle. And she’s just as likely to have found a hiding spot high up as she is to have found one in the meadow.” 

He considers your logic and consults the map one more time. “You really think that’s where she is?” 

“We’ll have to cross it anyway to get to the meadow,” you say, dragging the stick left to right. “Might as well take a look around. Only, I can’t decide if she’d be east or west.” 

“East.” When you look over at him, he expands, “She’d want to head towards the sun.” 

“East it is then.” 

Haymitch stands and, with laced fingers, pulls you up with him. His hands travel back up your arms, all the way to your cheekbones, where he rubs away the tear stains. If the dried drool on his shirt collar is any evidence, you at least slept some. But clearly, you’ve been on edge for longer than you’ve been down here. “You could’ve woken me sooner.” 

“It was only a few minutes,” you say dismissively. “You looked comfortable.” 

He traces your jawline. “Sunshine, that’s ’cause you were there.” 

Your skin finally warms a little. “Besides, you were fast asleep. Chatting up a storm this time.” 

Ah, right. You ungraciously informed him of his murmuring habits back in the apartment. Feels like years ago now. Haymitch is lucky not to be a snorer like Wyatt, but he drew the short end in other ways. “What was I saying?” 

You shrug, biting down on your lip. “I couldn’t make it out.” 

By the way you duck your head, a strange combination of flustered and smug, he doubts that’s true. 

“C’mon.” You step out of his grasp. “We need to get a move on.” 

You’re a quick climber—and one dead set on your current mission—so you reach your end of the hammock before Haymitch slinks up the parallel tree. Once untied, you meet each other back on the ground. You take to folding it, along with the blanket, despite the chill still visibly coursing through your body. He condenses the materials from each pack into one, and rifles through Maysilee’s in search for anything that might prove helpful for the journey. 

A jingle sounds from the bottom of the bag, under a tarp and the now empty bottle of ointment. Haymitch pulls out the potato battery kit. Huh. He figured she already made use of it at some point.  

You, on the other hand, don’t seem surprised to see it. Maysilee must’ve clued you in on her possession of the kit. “Might be good to have some light to guide us.” 

“It might. But it’ll cost a potato,” he says, looking up at you with an arched brow. 

“Well,” you suck your teeth, “I’m willing to pay the price if you are, peach.” 

His lips twitch into a near smile. 

You kneel in front of him, close enough to nearly bump your foreheads together when he reaches for the sliced potato in your hand. He lays out the pieces of the kit on the floor. Copper coins, metal wires, a single lightbulb. He has to squint real hard to get a good look at the inventory. Funny thing, needing light to make it. 

“You remember how to assemble it?” you ask patiently, forming the cuts where Beetee taught you. 

Haymitch nods. “More or less.” 

He hands you the supplies while you work nimbly to forge the battery. When he loses a coin among the dirt and sticks, he supplements it with Maysilee’s copper flower. Just as easy to use your bluebird, but it’s already melded itself into his skin. He’d rather not sully your gift in front of you, either. Even if you’d be willing to sacrifice it, he’s not. And this way, it feels like Maysilee’s still part of the fight. 

Together, you manage to replicate Beetee’s instructions in the darkness. Haymitch attaches the final wire to a tiny lightbulb, and a dim glow flickers across your faces. Hardly anything, but it’s enough to get him to hope. 

You readjust the woven cord, now detached from Maysilee’s medallion, back around his neck. Your hands linger there, and Haymitch uses the proximity and the light to take stock of your well-being. You wince slightly when he cups the back of your head. He presses his forehead to yours and murmurs, “Still hurting?” 

You nod, swallowing down the threat of fresh tears. Your head, your knee, your heart—they’re bruised and battered in more ways than one. You don’t have time to wallow in your grief, to slip through the cracks Maysilee left behind. Not yet. But you allow yourself to lean into Haymitch’s comfort for just a second. Or two. Or three. Definitely more than that. 

Slowly, the pressure pushing against your skull whittles down to a mere throb. You stay put a second longer. One hand travels from the back of his neck to your bluebird, which reflects the faint flicker of the lightbulb. You rub the charm between your thumb and forefinger, feeling the difference in its weight and its eyes. Its time in the arena has taken a toll—you don’t know to credit the change to anything else. 

“Take it back, if you want to,” says Haymitch. 

“I don’t. It suits you.” Plutarch’s request for the charm, Ampert’s reasoning behind passing it along, are long forgotten. You want him to keep it. He could take every last bit of you for all you care. Do whatever he wants, and you wouldn’t bat an eye. He’s already made himself the most precious piece of you. “And I still owe you your birthday present anyway.” 

“I don’t know,” he whispers, leaning back a bit. “I think you’ve given me plenty.” 

You haven’t. No amount of presents, no amount of perfect words sitting right on the tip of your tongue, will ever be enough to express everything he is to you. Or how deeply you wish you were in one of those better worlds with him right now. But you can try. You give the bluebird a light tug, beckoning Haymitch to you. 

A shiver sparks down your spine when your lips collide, but you aren’t very cold anymore. You can’t be, with Haymitch heating you up from the inside out. Your fingers find stability in his hair. Familiar curls tangled between calloused skin. His hands glide up your back, pulling you so close that you’re surprised you haven’t heard the crack of a broken lightbulb yet. You doubt you’d hear it anyway over the thumping of his heartbeat against yours. 

There is no space between you, no room to question, even for a second, what a world without him might feel like. When his tongue swipes your bottom lip, your body tingles from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. All your senses narrow down to this. Haymitch, and his devotion, and everything he elicits from you in turn. Was there ever a time where you felt anything but love for Haymitch Abernathy? You’re hard pressed to remember.  

You part briefly before he chases after you again. Your resulting gasp spurs him on. Haymitch sighs into your mouth; it reverberates inside your chest. He kisses you with the certainty of all you’d give him if he asked, if he didn’t. You kiss him with the intent to ease his desperation, only to make your own worse. In the end, neither of you knows how to let the other go. 

“Haymitch,” you pant against his lips, intertwining your hand with his where it rests against your cheek. When he tries to close the distance, you place the other on his chest. “We don’t have time to waste.”  

He blinks, drawing your attention to those pretty blue-gray eyes of his. In the dark, pupils blown out, his irises lean navy. “Right,” he breathes out. “Wouldn’t call this a complete waste, though.” 

You snort. Unable to resist yourself, you run a finger down the bridge of his nose just to hear his breath hitch again. “I’m sure you wouldn’t.” 

Your knee lets out a bitter crackle as you stand. Every inch of you is still buzzing, but the wind creeps back up your skin, snuffing out your need.  

He passes you the light before following you to your feet. “You ever gonna tell me what you got me?” 

“It was supposed to be a surprise.” 

“Supposed to be. But you might as well let me know now.” 

Might as well. There’d be no harm in telling him. No jinxes or spoilers. But… 

If you don’t tell him, then you can pretend there’s still the hope of giving it to him yourself. You can live frozen in time. In the moment before the Games, before the reaping, when everything you loved was within reach. Not back home, or dead, lost to you in either case. 

You sling your bow onto your shoulder, wanting one hand free to hold onto Haymitch in the dark. Because he is within reach. “Maybe once we find Wellie.” 

He leans into your side. “I’ll wait then.” 

It’s tricky retracing your steps in the dead of night. Sid’s stars are helpful as can be at first, until you remind yourself of the fact that they aren’t Sid’s. These aren’t the real thing, no matter how much you want them to be. You’ve long since shed the ability to be lulled by the arena’s faux beauty. Plutarch did say the arena’s sky would be synced with yours, all but swore it. A lot’s changed since then. It’s likely the Gamemakers have switched things up to throw you off course. Rile you up like a caged bird. 

So, you fall back on your papa’s methods and your familiarity with the plants along the walkway. Must be past midnight by the time you reach yesterday’s terrain. You recognize the tiger lilies and alder trees, the latter eliciting the memory of Maysilee’s curiosity. Your eyes begin to sting. You wonder—fleetingly, because there is no time to wallow—how things may have turned out had you become friends sooner, instead of playing enemies. 

Enemy, ally, friend. 

None are the right words to encompass all she meant to you, and continues to mean. Against all odds, Maysilee Donner wove herself into the fabric of your soul. No one can take that from you, or her. Knowing that doesn’t make you miss her any less, but it won’t be long now until you see her. 

Haymitch squeezes your hand, grounding you, like he can sense your mind skirting the edge of a spiral. “Once we pass the bee balm we’ve hit the eastern woods.” 

“Okay.” You let him lead you from that point on. He’s covered most of the woods’ expanse, and you’ve mostly avoided that neck since the jabberjays. You pick up the pace. “Do you think Silka and Maritte made it over the mud by now?” 

“Maybe one of them,” he whispers back. “I doubt they’re allies anymore.” 

Silka did seem upset with Maritte the last you saw of them, which is putting it lightly. There’s been no cannon, meaning they’re both still alive. So, either Maritte escaped Silka’s vengeance, or Silka took it easy on her. Regardless, their alliance isn’t looking too bright. “Probably best that way. For us, and them.” 

“I see how it works in our favor. Not sure how it helps them.” 

You shrug and glance at him. “It wouldn’t be any easier for them to kill their allies. Careers or not.”

Under the dim lighting, you catch the confusion across Haymitch’s expression. “I’m pretty sure they plan for that kind of thing.” 

“Maybe, yeah. I just—” You exhale slowly. “I don’t know. Forget it.” When he opens his mouth to press on the subject, you point ahead. “There’s your bee balm.” 

That gets you both on track to what matters most again. Haymitch stops, tilting his head up towards the sky. “What’s the plan now?”

You chew on the skin of your cheek. If Wellie is high above, as you suspect, then there’s only one way to narrow down which tree to climb. “Wellie!” 

“Shit—”

“Wellie!” you call out louder, Haymitch’s hand clamming in yours. You let go of him and scurry through the trees. “Wellie, where are you?” 

His footsteps aren’t far behind yours, echoing your hollers. “Wellie! It’s Haymitch!” He supplies your name, too. 

“We’re here to help, Wellie!” You take in your surroundings: the speckled stars and jagged oak trees and Haymitch calling for her. No sign of Wellie, though. You can keep traveling east, until you hit the corner she’s unlikely to be in. Or you can pivot to the meadow where, as Maysilee assumed, she probably is. 

Haymitch throws off your mounting concerns. “Did you hear that?” 

You shake your head. One more time, you shout pitifully, “Wellie!” 

“There it is again!” he exclaims, pointing north. “It’s coming from that way.” 

You seal your lips and listen for the sound. Faintly, hardly audible over the whistling wind and rustling branches and miles of distance, you hear it. 

Ring, ring! 

“Is that a…?”

“A bicycle bell.” Haymitch pauses like he’s waiting to see if it was a fluke of the imagination.  

Ring, ring!

That’s a bell, all right. Credited to human hands, not nature. Just like the kind attached to the bicycle you and your group of friends found by the road once in Twelve. Or the matching pink bikes Maysilee and Merrilee rode around the square to show off their wealth. The very kind of bell Wellie brought as her token from home. 

You yank Haymitch in the direction of the bell. The ringing leads you back through where you came, forces you to retrace your steps north. Nearly all the way to where Maysilee died.  

The two of you reach a simultaneous halt beneath a large sweetgum tree. What appears to be a sweetgum tree, at least. From the red veins along the trunk, you figure it’s another Capitol concoction. The bell rings louder. Even with the lightbulb catching shadows of the branches above, Wellie is too high up to make out.  

“It’s okay, Wellie,” promises Haymitch, voice lowered back to a whisper. “We’re right here. You can come down.” 

You wait until the lack of response kickstarts the alarms in your head. All of ten seconds. You pass the light Haymitch’s way and begin the climb. 

The height of the tree is of little concern to you—you’ve scaled taller back home, ones as spindly and sinewy as this one. But between the distance from the ground, much larger than where you slept in the hammock earlier, and the delicacy of the branches, it seems an impossible feat for someone as small and frail as Wellie. 

Even smaller and paler than you remember her to be by the time you reach her hiding spot. 

“Hi, little bird.”

She squeaks out a breath. You don’t feel any relief seeing her now, just the guilt of not finding her sooner. Wellie’s cheeks are hollow and gaunt, her entire body shivering like the last leaf on a twig. You try to steady yourself on her branch and immediately retract when it creaks like it’s about to snap. Across from you, the lightbulb pops up. Haymitch’s head follows. 

Wellie fixates on the light. A hint of life flashes across her face, which is next to nothing in her state. Haymitch sets the light in front of her. She chases it with her eyes like a cat would a ball of string. You liked playing those kinds of games with Calla. Sometimes you’d use yarn, others you’d tie a tiny bell that jingled, not rang, to a twig. Sid liked to play with her, too, while Haymitch watched from your kitchen table on the days they were invited over. 

He remembers the first time he ever met Calla, within a week of you finding her. Haggard little thing wouldn’t stop hissing at him, even in her good-as-dead condition. Not so different from Wellie’s appearance. Belly down, crack-lipped, and glassy-eyed, her bell tucked under her chin and a child-sized knife clutched in one hand. If she was scrawny before, she’s practically skeletal now. Too fragile to be moved, too scared to do much else but stare at the bulb. 

Haymitch wedges himself between a branch and the trunk. You’ve found purchase on a sturdier spot. As he searches for the remaining water jug in his pack, he can feel your worry sticking to him. Reaching over Wellie’s branch, you lend a hand when he tries to unscrew the jug with only one of his. He pours some water into the cap.  

“Try to drink a little, Wellie,” you whisper gently as you bring the cap to her lips. “Just a little.” 

Over the next few minutes, Haymitch pours, you coax, and Wellie swallows no more than a handful of droplets. Most of the water spills out the side of her mouth and down her chin. There’s no chance of getting some potato in her right now. 

She manages one mouthful of water, then two. Haymitch brushes her hair back while you get her to drink some more. “There you go, Wellie.” 

She drifts off, but sleep doesn’t erase the fear etched all over her. Haymitch sticks the water jug back into his pack and hugs the trunk when he feels the branch beneath him tremble. You shoot him a wary look. 

Clouds move in across the sky, hiding the moon from view. The air grows heavy, and it smells like the early tell of rain. 

“We can’t let her sleep up here like this,” you murmur. “We should at least set up the hammock.”

“The branches on this thing aren’t steady enough,” says Haymitch, planting his boots firmer against the bark to make his point. The thought of a rainstorm making things slippery doesn’t help. 

You motion to the tree opposite your left. “I can get to that side and tie one end to the trunk.” 

You could, theoretically. If the branches from either tree formed a nice, ideal bridge. If they weren’t one wrong move away from snapping off entirely. If the likelihood of you falling and hurting more than just your ankle weren’t very, very high. 

Haymitch doesn’t like your plan. He doesn’t like it one bit. 

But, to absolutely no one’s surprise and least of all his, you’re off before he can stop you. Crawling on your hands and knees without a care of slipping off. Haymitch doesn’t relax until you make it across and settle on a thicker branch, near parallel to his own spot. Even then, he isn’t in a relaxing mood. 

There’s about six feet, give or take, between the trunks. It takes three tries of tossing before you catch one of the hammock strings. Haymitch copies your movements, tying his own end around the tree. The first raindrops begin to patter on the leaves by the time you finish adjusting the hammock. “Pass one of the tarps.”

Carefully, Haymitch does as you command. This time, you catch the corner on the first try. 

The rain does little to slow you as you slink another two feet up the tree. Haymitch watches with bated breath. Your hair grows damp, and some pieces stick to your neck and bare arms. His own curls feel flat and weighted against his head, the tips poking at his eyes. He doesn’t think to wipe them back, too focused on your movements—on your swollen lips, a mirror to his own—to be bothered by anything. Too consumed by the intensity of your earlier kiss, by the older memory of you bathed in sunlight, the brightest thing he’s ever seen—

“Peach.” 

Not the time. “Right, sorry,” he mutters, and climbs up to fasten the other edge of the tarp. 

The two of you make something of a roof to ward off the rain. A few drops still manage to sneak into your shelter, courtesy of the wind, but it’s as good a cover as you’re going to get. 

Haymitch perches back on his branch, a smidge below Wellie’s. You crawl across the hammock this time, and he pretends his heart isn’t two seconds from giving out when it wobbles like it intends to throw you over. 

You stop right next to Wellie, propping up on your knees. “Okay, little bird,” you whisper, rubbing her shoulder. Her eyes blink open, once again drawn to the light. “We’re gonna move you somewhere more comfortable now.” 

As cautiously as the lack of space and the threat of falling to your deaths will allow, you pry Wellie off the branch. Haymitch holds up the potato light while you guide her onto the hammock. He has to bite down on his tongue to keep from flinching when she lies on her back and reveals her ribs protruding through the dove gray uniform. From the sunken look on your face, he can tell you’re feeling no less nauseated with guilt. 

You wring the knife out of her grip and trade it with Haymitch for the light. Wellie, weak as she is, manages to hold it in one hand, and latches onto you with the other. When the hammock wobbles again from the movement of her squirming into your arms, you lie back too, effectively stilling her. 

You look over at Haymitch and motion to the pack. “The second hammock—” 

“It’s okay,” he says over the uptick in rainfall, which grows so heavy he worries the tarp will collapse in on itself. And the three of you. “I’m fine right here.” 

When your lips press into a thin, unconvinced line, he makes a show of cutting up pieces of tarp and tying himself to the branch. He’s screwed if it breaks off the tree, but at least he won’t have to worry about rolling over. While he’s at it, he hands you the blanket, which you immediately try to pass back to him. 

“For Wellie,” Haymitch urges, knowing that’s the best way to get you to do anything that might benefit yourself too. 

Without further argument, you accept the blanket and drape it over the both of you. Wellie’s eyes begin to flutter shut again. Her head comes right up to your chin, and Haymitch lingers on the sight of you resting a cheek against her. 

You glance his way, the tears on the cusp of your lashes passing on a clear message: keep Wellie alive, that’s the plan now. The only one that matters, that’s anywhere near attainable. Her condition poses a difficulty, but the task of saving her isn’t as much of a longshot as Haymitch’s hopes of bringing down the Capitol. 

Twice now, he’s failed. The second time wasn’t as catastrophic as the first, but it led to a loss all the same. Maybe if Haymitch had been less fixated on the hedge, less taken by his hopeless intent to end the Games, Maysilee would be here. Or maybe not. Those birds were a pointed attack, one the Gamemakers probably had in their arsenal for days beforehand. 

Still…Haymitch has wasted so much time playing rebel with no real success. 

He fiddles with the bluebird, moistened by the rain, and drags it across the cord with a rhythm that soothes his thoughts. You’re already fading into sleep alongside Wellie. A familiar chime reels him back before he can fully succumb himself. 

The rain has shifted into a light mist. Haymitch reaches for the parachute and pulls out its contents. A cup of warm vanilla pudding and a packet of chocolate balls wrapped in crinkly festive paper. 

Someone in the Capitol has a heart, after all. 

Haymitch takes up the effort of feeding Wellie. You sit her up in your arms, keeping the blanket secure on her. With patience, he coaxes bits of pudding into Wellie. She’s able to take more pudding than she did the water. A lot of it still falls down her chin. He catches what he can with the spoon and scoops it back into her mouth. 

Save for the after effects of the rain and Wellie’s wheezing, it’s mostly quiet. Haymitch shifts slightly on the branch when he feels himself going sore from the position. Getting another bit of pudding into Wellie, he takes notice of the leaves dangling behind you. Same as the ones on his branch, of course, except they’re a darker shade of green. Not maple leaves, but close in size and shape. More star-like, though. He tugs at a vague memory of you gifting Sid a leaf like these once. He kept it on the windowsill of their kitchen even after it shriveled into a brown clump. 

“Remind me, sunshine,” he whispers as he points to the leaves, “what kinda trees are these again?” 

“Sweetgum. They seem different though,” you say, brows knitted as you stroke Wellie’s hair. 

“Hm. No surprise there.” He scrapes the last of the pudding around the cup rim. Wellie parts her lips. “Sid, my brother,” he tells her, “would like ’em. He loves anything remotely related to the stars.” 

She swallows the entire spoonful this time. You clean the dribble that sticks to the corner of her mouth. Haymitch breaks a chocolate ball in two with his teeth. 

Suddenly, in a broken croak that reminds him of a frog, Wellie mutters, “I like the stars.” 

Haymitch smiles slowly, sliding a chocolate piece into her mouth. “You’d get along with Sid then.” 

He doesn’t miss the way your lips curve upwards, too. To his relief, you don’t deny yourself the chocolate when he slips two pieces your way. 

Wellie smacks her lips lightly after he feeds her another bit of chocolate. You unwrap your pieces and savor them. It isn’t much longer before the two of you are fast asleep. Haymitch stays awake a few more minutes, chewing on his own ball of chocolate. Usually reserved for birthdays or special occasions, it’s rare to splurge on it in the Seam. And this stuff’s top-of-the-line, melting in his mouth and warming his empty stomach with its sweetness. 

He leans back against the bark and reaches for the second tarp. Repurposed as a blanket, it saves him from the worst of the cold. He’s halfway to mind-numbing sleep when another interruption snaps his head up. A sob this time. Sounds nothing like yours, and you and Wellie are still lost to the conscious world. Besides, the cry is coming from below. 

Glancing down, Haymitch notices what he assumes to be a tuft of yellow hair. Silka? He’s too blurry-eyed to fully tell. She’s not attempting to scale the tree or attack, despite the fact that she more than likely knows the three of you are up here. You may be far up, but if he can hear her, she can most certainly hear you.

And yet, she’s just there. Sobbing and shaking all over. Haymitch never took her as a crier. Then again, what does she have to be happy about? He thinks back to your comments on Silka’s alliance with Maritte. There’s no deep-sea uniform anywhere near now, so he was right about them splitting up. As Silka’s sobs rack up, your own point dawns on him. 

Silka is entirely alone, and for all her bite, she’s probably scared, too. Alone, scared, grieving whatever losses she’s had in here. Because Haymitch doesn’t have a monopoly on that, does he? Every one of you, Career or not, have lost enough allies, friends, kids, to last a lifetime. 

Silka isn’t his ally, but she isn’t his enemy right now either. 

Haymitch digs into his pocket. He rolls the chocolate ball in his hand before he drops it Silka’s way. Her sobs putter into confused hiccups. Briefly, he worries that he dropped it in the wrong direction, but then he hears the crinkle of the wrapper. The hiccups turn to sniffles until they’re nothing at all. 

The Capitol would have every last person in the districts believe otherwise, but for what’s left of the night, you’re united in your struggle. Haymitch closes his eyes and finally falls asleep with a strange sense of pride. 

Not a bad poster at all. 

His next comes unexpectedly, at the turn of sunrise when the morning light momentarily blinds him. Once Haymitch gathers his bearings, he checks on you and Wellie. She’s curled into your side, and you—you look strangely peaceful. The most you’ve been in the last weeks, since long before the reaping. No need to wake either of you yet.

Silka’s gone, which isn’t shocking. Her vulnerability was a one-off—Haymitch guesses District One frowns upon their Careers exhibiting any trace of humanity. She might’ve gone to the Cornucopia for supplies or set off to hunt Maritte. But she’ll be back to kill you soon enough. 

He steals another glance at you. Still cold to the touch when he reaches over to brush your hair back. Haymitch tucks the blanket firmer around you and Wellie. One of your arms is wrapped around her; the other tucked beneath your chin, which is smudged with black ink instead of drool. 

Huh. 

Haymitch touches your wrist, tries to unfurl your arm to find the trail of ink, and is instantly thrown off track when he notices the smudges on his fingers. They didn’t really register in the dark, and they can’t be credited to the tree bark. Or the tarp. What else did you both work with last night? The potato battery, sure. Maybe that’s it, but…

Absentmindedly, Haymitch holds the bluebird between his fingers. Its beak indents the skin of his thumb, reminding him of how you held it, held him. The way you pulled him in for that kiss. That brain-fogging, breathtaking, one-of-a-kind kiss. The bluebird’s dry now, but the cord still feels slippery from the rain. 

A whole bunch of light bulbs flicker inside his head. Ampert’s possession of the bird to begin with, the residue on his hands after he rigged the fuse at the tank, and Beetee’s final advice at the buffet—

“In the event a backup is needed, or if Ampert fails to show at all, we’ve planned for two failsafes—” 

Peeling his hand back, he pretends to fiddle with the water jug lid. Sure enough, his index finger and thumb are both covered in black residue. Did you know their intent with your charm? You must’ve, and that’s why you gave it away. The timing of when is still an issue, but that’s the least of his concerns now. Haymitch wonders what other pieces of the plan you know that he doesn’t. He figures he’s privy to some that you aren’t. 

Maybe the two of you can fill in each other’s blanks. Maybe you can make something of this parting gift. One last chance to blow the Capitol sky high. There’s one sunflower left, after all. 

He can’t be one hundred percent sure until he can unwind the cord and check for the blasting cap. Until he ensures you are on the same page. Until he figures a way to keep Wellie from the fallback, because there is no longer a world in which you and Haymitch aren’t doing this together. 

He unravels the charm out of the cord, then himself from the branch. Quietly, so as to not wake Wellie, he murmurs your name. 

Your eyes adjust to Haymitch before they do to the sun. He’s got a tight grip on the trunk, boots dug into the bark. 

You frown, too hazy from sleep to fully register much else but the sight of him readying to leave. “Where’re you going?” 

“To get firewood,” he answers softly. “The only way we’re getting some potato into Wellie is if we boil it. Couldn’t hurt to warm her up, too. And you.” 

As if responding to his words, goosebumps prick the skin of your neck. Not like they ever left anyway. You’ve been freezing all night. “Yeah, okay. Don’t go too far.” 

Haymitch nods and slides something into your free hand. “I need you to hold onto it again for me.”

“And why’s that?” 

He taps his collarbone, where all his cords rest. Except the one previously attached to the bluebird. “They’re starting to tangle together. Don’t know how Miss Donner managed hers, but the cord fell when I was trying to detangle it.” 

That’s about the lamest excuse he could give. You tighten your hold on your bluebird anyway, a little more awake now. “All right.” 

“I’ll be real quick.” He presses a quick kiss to your temple and scales down the tree. 

You try your hardest not to spiral when he disappears from view. Especially when Wellie wakes minutes later and asks, “Did Haymitch leave us again?” 

“He went to get firewood,” you tell her quietly. “He’ll be right back.” 

Panic flashes in her eyes. “Are you sure?” 

“Positive,” you promise, rubbing her arms to generate more heat on her skin. 

She doesn’t seem very convinced, but she leans closer to you without another anxious word. Her joints poke your abdomen, and it takes even more effort to not recoil from the shame of ever letting her get this bad. 

You pinch the bluebird between your fingers and listen to the sound of Wellie’s halfhearted breaths. No way did Haymitch lose that cord. You look around for something long enough to be used as a substitute. A vine, ideally. You wind up picking three leaves from a branch within arm’s reach, and scrape them until all that’s left is the stem. It’s no different from making wildflower crowns, the very kind you’d weave with Lenore Dove and Burdock on the days it was just the three of you cousins in your meadow. Perfect days, you used to call them. 

Once they’re tied together to form a makeshift necklace, you loop them through the ring atop your bluebird’s head. Momentarily, you’re thrown off by the black smudges on your fingers. You look closer, seeing that they’re splotched around the copper. It’s not dirt. This is thicker, more fluid, like mud but not exactly. Nothing close to the dried splotches from yesterday’s mud bath. Closer to pen ink, or oil. But even then…neither is quite the right texture. 

You’ve dirtied your hands plenty. In the woods, in class. Digging roots from the ground, or drawing with charcoal, or breathing in the soot that covers just about everything in Twelve.

You remember when you were little, after the mine explosion that took Haymitch’s papa and others with him, how much you hated watching your own go out that door. You’d wait on the porch all evening for his return, only moving when prompted by your mama to eat or bathe. If it got real late, the promise of her lullaby was all that’d get you to bed. Burdock would wait with you, both because he shared your concern and because he never really left you alone in those days. Except when it was time for his own bath. Sometimes, Lenore Dove would wander over, and she’d soothe your nerves with an exchange of poems. 

Whenever you spotted your papa heading down the walkway to your home, tall and mighty, it was like catching the first rays of light after a storm. He’d laugh as you threw yourself into his arms. “I’m getting coal dust all over you, maple leaf.” 

“I don’t care,” you always said in return. As if you weren’t already perpetually covered in dust by living in the Seam. You were just happy to have him home. To be lucky enough to still have your papa. 

Your heart gives a heavy pang, weighed less so by the familiar longing for your family and more by the grief you realize they’re in for. They’ll carry on without you, keep you with them in whatever ways they can, you’re certain of it. You just…don’t want to be a smudge on their lives. 

“That’s pretty,” mutters Wellie, a weak finger lifting to point at the bird. 

“My uncle made it,” you tell her. “Where’d you get your bell from?” 

“My mom,” she whispers sadly. “It was a defect from the factory, so they didn’t want it. But I like it.” 

“I like it, too.” You get the feeling it’d bring her more discomfort to talk about it, so you don’t pry about her family or District Six. 

You run your thumb over the bluebird’s face, attempting to clean the mysterious residue. It only winds up smeared across the wings. As stubborn as soot, sullying Tam Amber’s craftsmanship. You’ll need water to wash it off. How’d Haymitch manage this anyway? There hasn’t been another volcano or cloud of ash. Not a person or inch of land would’ve been spared if it there were. Instead, the residue is isolated to the bluebird and your fingers. 

The bluebird and your fingers. 

You jolt upwards, rumbling the hammock and Wellie, who lets out an eek.

“Sorry,” you say immediately. “Sorry.” But your mind is moving too fast to catch up with whatever comes out of your mouth. 

Your thoughts come in flashes, in images and memories: the coal dust on your papa’s face, those field trips to the mines, your teacher’s brief lessons on explosives. Above all, Plutarch dangling a free world like a ripe carrot right in front of you. 

You’ve been north, you’ve cut through the hedge in search of some missing piece to some secretive rebel plan, and you’ve come up empty. Until now. 

So, this is how you blow up the arena. This is how you end the Games. With your bluebird, which doesn’t look anything like an explosive. There would’ve been no time to rig it into one in a single night, either. Then again, you don’t have Beetee’s mind for tinkering. But you highly doubt that’s the case. So then what’s—

The cord! It has to be. How, you have no idea. You only know Haymitch made a show of “losing” it for a reason. 

You chew on your bottom lip. Haymitch hasn’t gone off to complete this task—through whatever means, you still aren’t completely sure—on his own. Not this time. You made a deal, one you trust him not to back out of. And he wouldn’t have clued you in like this if he didn’t intend to see the plan through together. 

Yet…the longer he takes, the worse your head hurts. And the louder Wellie’s stomach growls. Your own isn’t exactly quiet. It grumbles and collapses into itself with an ache so familiar you have to shut your eyes to wish it away. 

“Anyone in the mood for a baked potato?” 

You look over at Haymitch, grateful to whatever angel has answered at least one of your wishes. “If that’s the best you’ve got.” 

He grins. Slowly, he hoists Wellie off the hammock with your help. She stares at him wordlessly, like she’s surprised he came back at all. He gives her a reassuring pat on the head before maneuvering her over his shoulder. It’s not the most ideal carrying position, but it’s the only way you’re getting her down the tree. 

You stretch your limbs as soon as you’re back on solid ground, shaking away the stiffness in your bones. 

Haymitch sets Wellie down against the trunk and gets to work on the fire. You take a seat beside her, lifting the blanket over her each time it slides off her shoulders. 

The potato is nice and baked within minutes, soft enough that it melts with ease when Haymitch uses a fork to mash it into easier pieces for Wellie. To your relief, she’s responsive to every bite. And though she requires a break halfway through eating, what she’s managed to keep down does her wonders. 

You watch Haymitch nurse the fire as you chew on the chocolate ball he forced into your hand. It’s all you’re willing to take. Wellie needs the fuel more than you do. He pokes at the fire with a twig and bounces back when a spark flies near his feet. You stifle a snicker. 

“Breakfast and a show,” you muse, leaning over to Wellie. “Aren’t we spoiled?”

“Very,” deadpans Haymitch, dropping the twig into the flames. 

Wellie, whose color is slowly returning to her, giggles. The sound lightens both of your shoulders. Taking a deep breath, you reach into your right pocket. Now’s as good a time as any to broach the subject. 

You tilt your head, staring straight at Haymitch. “You got dirt all over the bird, you know.”

All he does for a second is blink your way, caught between the relief that you’ve picked up on what he has, and the dread of realizing there really is no way to keep you out of this. “I’ll take better care of it from here on out.” 

“You better.” 

“I found the cord though.” 

“Did you?” You hold out a necklace made of stems and your bluebird. “I already made you a new one.” 

“I like it.” He takes it from you and loops it over his head. 

You shrug. “No point letting the other one go to waste.” 

Agreed. He pats his pocket where the unfurled cord and blasting cap rest. “Got it right here.”

You nod and turn back to Wellie, who's been eyeing you both curiously. “Ready to try some more?” 

She sniffles. “Aren’t you guys hungry?” 

“Oh,” you pretend to grimace, “I’m stuffed from all that chocolate.” 

“Me too,” Haymitch groans, throwing his head back. He mashes more bits of potato. “It’s all yours, sweetgum.” 

Wellie wrinkles her nose, unconvinced, but doesn’t argue against the next bite of food. She’s much more agreeable than you are, that’s for sure. As she swallows down the potato, Haymitch thinks of how to best steer the conversation. It only took close to a decade, but he’s finally got a hang of your riddled manner of talking.  

“Silka was skulking around here last night,” he says nonchalantly. 

Wellie tenses up. You soothe her by running your fingers through her hair. “She was?”

“Skulking’s not the right word.” Sobbing in a fit of anguish is a more accurate description. “But yeah, she was here.” 

“We should move then,” you sigh out. 

“And head where?” 

“Where do you think?” 

“I’m between the meadow and the hedge. What’s left of it anyway. I never did get to show you my trick with the force field.” At the reminder of why that is, at the memory of Maysilee’s bloodied body, his fingers clench. Clearing his throat, he continues, “But if we head to the meadow, we can scour the cornucopia for food.” 

You hum pensively, toying with your pearl charm. “Well, the cornucopia should have something left. We could at least get a show, if not more breakfast.” 

“That was my thought, too.” The horn of plenty for some, a symbol of despair for all. How glorious it’ll be to set it aflame. 

You boop Wellie’s nose. “What do you say, little bird? You up for the trip?” 

She squirms, and though Haymitch isn’t fond of seeing her so nervous, he’s grateful she’s gaining some movement back. “We’re staying together, right?” 

He locks eyes with you, and he’s brought back to your shared helplessness last night. Protecting Wellie is still the priority. 

“For as long as possible,” you say. It’s all you can guarantee. Even without an underlying rebellion, you and Haymitch would have to leave her to take up the victor mantle on her own. 

Wellie gives a nod, loosening up slightly. 

“The cornucopia it is,” declares Haymitch, clasping his hands together. “I’ll start packing.” Not that there’s much to pack. Just the hammocks and tarps. Maybe he should leave the fire going, create a diversion for Silka while you find somewhere to hide Wellie. 

“Okay. I want to check the snares around here before we head south. Maybe try to find game, too.” If you’re to leave Wellie while you carry out the plan, you need to make sure she has some sustenance. Really, you and Haymitch need to eat, too. 

“Why?” he blurts out, unable to conceal the wrinkles between his brows. 

“I assume we won’t be coming back north, and it’d be nice to take protein for the road,” you say casually, trying to alleviate the anxiety on his face. 

“You think we caught something?” he asks, eyes flickering to Wellie as she takes the last bite of potato. She might be able to handle something heavier once the potato’s settled as much as it can in her stomach. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to find some meat for her sake. But—

“Worth checking.” You clean the fork and hand it over to Haymitch. 

When you move to stand, Wellie grabs onto your wrist. “You can’t go,” she whispers.  

Haymitch stretches a hand out in her direction as if to say, Thank you, Wellie!

“We don’t know if there’ll be any food at the cornucopia,” you tell her gently, easing her into releasing her hold on you. “I need to at least try to find us some now.” 

“Then take us with you,” she says, frowning. 

“I’ll be quicker on my own.” 

Yeah, okay, that’s true. Haymitch is well aware that Wellie still has a ways to go before she’s even halfway recovered from her emaciation. She can’t go with the two of you, and she’s not going to get any better without more food. Or at least something to hold her over until the Games end and there’s no other choice but to declare her the victor. 

You tighten the blanket around Wellie, tying two corners together to keep it properly secured. Your efforts do little to reassure her—you can tell by the way her shoulders refuse to drop—but you try to leave her with the promise of a speedy return regardless. 

Haymitch pushes up on his feet when you stand with your bow. “Are you sure—” 

“You got the firewood,” you say, pointing between the two of you, “I’ve got the snares.” 

“Checking the snares will take longer. ’Specially if you plan on hunting, too,” he counters. 

“It won’t be as long as you think.” 

“Well you shouldn’t go off alone.” 

“Hi, Pot, have you met Kettle yet?” Your own hypocrisy isn’t lost on you, but you care more about getting Haymitch to let you go right now. 

“You’re hilarious,” he snipes. 

Tugging him by the elbow, you pull him a foot away from the fire and lower your voice. “Wellie will only slow me down, and someone needs to stay with her.” He opens his mouth, and you bulldoze over his next argument, “And I’m the better shot.” 

Haymitch clamps down a scoff, because for all that you’re right—you are a better shot, you will be quicker without extra bodies to carry, you can hold your own—he only cares about all the things that might go wrong without you by his side. 

You rub the crease between his brows. It’s a tall order to ask him not to worry. Your thumb stops short of the bridge of his nose before pulling back entirely. “I’m not going back on our deal. I’m asking you not to follow me this once. Please.” 

He bites his tongue, runs the tip of his teeth along the buds. “Okay,” he relents in a grumble. 

You extend your pinkie. At his hesitation, you take a step closer into his space. It’s a second longer before he loops his own around yours. With a sigh of relief, you peer past Haymitch to shoot Wellie a soft smile. “Keep an eye on him for me, yeah?” 

She tries to return your smile. 

Haymitch is staring at you with wounded, pleading eyes when you focus on him again. Lighter in color this morning—no longer navy, but a muted wild blue reminiscent of a gnatcatcher—they pull you back to his warmth. All-encompassing and dizzying. He reads your thoughts, follows them all the way down to your lips. You allow yourself the indulgence. For both your sakes. 

Full of an entirely different need from last night—one built on promises both spoken and unsaid, on hopes tender and steadfast—the kiss seals your resolve. 

You pull back right as Haymitch lowers his arm to cradle your waist. Suddenly, the urge to give him more, the instinct to stow him inside your heart next to all those little things you cannot yet say, overcomes you. Swallowing down the instinct in exchange for a more necessary directive, you brush your forehead against his. “Look after her. I’ll be back before you can miss me real bad.” 

“I’m holding you to that,” he murmurs, kissing the tip of your nose. 

It takes all you have to suppress the shudder creeping down your back. Even more to walk away. 

Haymitch doesn’t move an inch. You leave him with another quick smile over your shoulder, then you disappear entirely. Deadweight on legs, he takes your place on the ground next to Wellie. She doesn’t need his wayward worry infecting her, so he tries to sound confident as he says, “Think we can hold the fort down?” 

Wellie nods, not torn up as he expected. Instead, she comes off incredibly amused for someone still one strong wind gust away from blowing off. 

“What?” 

“I thought you weren’t together,” she says, her mouth twitching. 

Haymitch clicks his tongue. “We weren’t.” 

“But you are now.” 

“Sure we are.” How else does he explain to her that it’s complicated, and you haven’t really defined things past kissing, and under different circumstances he’d ask you properly to be his? It’s true enough to just say yes. You’ve been entwined by your roots for longer than either of you have cared to admit. 

Wellie regards him suspiciously. “Relationships are weird.” 

He snorts and throws another dry branch onto the fire. “Tell me about it, kid.” 

Seconds trickle into minutes. In between distracting Wellie and fueling the fire, Haymitch keeps his attention on the gaps between the trees, willing you to return. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

The sun beats down on your face mockingly, as if reminding you of those counting on you to come back to them soon. Time racks up to longer than you anticipated. Longer than you promised you’d be. 

You shouldn’t be surprised when there is nothing in most of the snares you set, but you are disappointed. No game of any kind in sight, no trails to track down. You know it’s a message from the Gamemakers: they’re growing restless and bored. 

They’ve drawn things out long enough. In their minds, that is. It’s only been a week, and Games past have lasted longer with fewer tributes. Forty-eight children, and forty-three dead in seven days. How could they possibly be bored? 

You retrace your footsteps to the very last snare, not too far from where you’ve left Haymitch and Wellie. A halfway point between them and the scene of Maysilee’s death. You call it quits when you come up empty again. 

If you were back home, or if it was just a couple days earlier, you’d spend more time venturing the terrain. Patience is a virtue for most, and a necessity for hunting. Your papa always made sure to remind you of the fact when you’d groan about Burdock’s prodigal talent. So did Clerk Carmine when he first passed on your guitar. Lucky thing you picked up on that much quicker. 

Impatient as quicksand, Haymitch is surely expecting you back by now. You’ll have to settle for the hope of another sponsor gift. This time, you wouldn’t be too upset with a feast. 

You keep your bow clutched in one hand, crossing another over to rub away your goosebumps. They fade to nothing, but your bones stay frosted over. Today’s sun is only for show, it seems. 

Mags and Wiress must have a way of reading your mind, you decide, when a parachute floats down from above. Instead of a feast, nestled in a snowy linear napkin, you find a pitcher. A brilliant white china, resting within a spiral staircase. An eagle sits atop the lid. You press the eagle’s tail, and the lid pops open. Hot chocolate steam curls up your nose. 

You fall back on the familiar pattern of those first days on the mountainside, on the inclination to riddle-solve, and make quick work of connecting the dots. Plutarch’s final message couldn’t be any clearer: you’re right where you need to be, finally doing something of substance, making an actual rebel of yourself. His past instructions were a stepping stone for what’s to come. What you now know to be the real plan. 

Holding the pitcher in the nook of your elbow, you quicken the pace back to Haymitch and Wellie. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Haymitch grows restless by the fourth story he tells Wellie. He’s already detailed everything there is to Twelve that makes it worthwhile. It was a short run-down. Every time he asks her questions about Six, or anything she’s fond of, she supplies him with minimal details and the request for him to keep talking. You’d be much better suited to fulfill her wants.  

But you’re not here. The fire’s fickled down to pure billowing smoke now. And still, you aren’t back. 

He distracts them both with another memory, recounting the day Sid was born, the happiest baby to ever grace the Seam. Born on the sunny side, Mamaw used to claim. 

“Your pa was the same when he was little,” she once told Haymitch while putting him to bed. “All smiles and optimism and mischief. You got that last part from him.” 

Haymitch believed her. Hard not to. His pa was a fortress of a person, steady and strong and constant. He was soft in all the ways that mattered, too. For all that the world whittled down on him, it never could harden his heart. It never could change who he was and what he believed. 

He feels certain that you would’ve gotten along. You would’ve understood each other to that extent, at least. 

Pa only met you once before he died. Haymitch was more likely to pay your household a visit than Burdock was to play at his in the early years of their friendship. And when he did trickle on over, it’s not like you’d ever want to. Even though you and Burdock had yet to outgrow the need to go wherever the other went, Haymitch’s house was the one place you’d never willingly travel to. On account, of course, of Haymitch being there. You made that plenty clear. 

One evening, when Barb Azure was teaching Burdock and Haymitch to play a game of cards, you spent most of it on your porch steps. That was your routine whenever he was present: you’d find somewhere else to be. Halfway through the game, with Haymitch in the lead, Sorrel breezed through the kitchen with a tiredness in his posture. Exhausted as he was, he rallied to greet them with a smile. 

He kissed Burdock’s head, then Barb Azure’s cheek, and patted Haymitch on the back. “Your pa’s here, son.” 

They finished the game within minutes. If his pa was in a rush, he would’ve called out for him. Haymitch won, leaving with spoken thanks and goodbyes and the anticipation of telling his pa all about his victory. 

He never got to, his plans interrupted by a strange, melodic sound that grew louder as he walked outside: your laughter. 

Out on the porch, his pa was kneeled on a step below yours, staying eye level with you. Upon seeing Haymitch, he smiled widely, and you dropped yours completely. Jaw dropped, Haymitch could only peel his eyes away from you once prompted by his pa saying, “There you are. Let’s head on home.” 

He had to manually remind his feet how to work. They remembered pretty quickly once you glared daggers at him for blocking the doorway. You walked back inside, bidding his pa farewell with a lighthearted wave and Haymitch with a sour, “Night.”

On the path to their house, Haymitch worked up the guts to voice his curiosity. “How’d you get her to laugh?” 

His pa gave him a peculiar smile. “I told her about my day.” 

“What was so funny about your day?” asked Haymitch, scratching his nose. 

“Nothing,” he said, “but then she told me about her day. And you. Had a lot to say about you, that one.” 

“Me?” Oh, he could only imagine all the insults you spewed about him. It was plenty fine when you directed them straight at him—he took them in stride, in gratitude when coming from you—but he didn’t want his pa converted to your side. “What’d she say?” 

“Not a thing I don’t already know.” 

Haymitch blanched. How could he say that? “Pa, she hates me.”

Pa laughed, a hearty, joyful melody much like yours. “Oh, my boy. You’d be surprised.” 

His laugh sounds different now in Haymitch’s head. Faint, muted by too many years gone by without hearing it. He wonders if that’s what’ll become of him in Sid’s memories, and Ma’s. A distant illusion. 

The thought cracks his chest wide open. He wants so badly to be home with them right now. Home with you, too. 

“She’s been gone a while,” murmurs Wellie drearily, following his line of sight. “You don’t think…” 

“We would’ve heard a cannon,” he reminds her, and himself. 

A haze falls over her eyes. “Atread was dying a long time before his cannon went off.” 

Wonderful point. What a vivid image it produces. He clamps his eyes shut, and when he pictures Atread, another of his soft-spoken doves, you pop up too. Writhing in pain, dying alone. “I’m gonna go get her,” he blurts. 

“Okay,” she agrees and wiggles out of the blanket to stand, only to immediately buckle down. 

He catches her instantly. “No, Wellie, you have to stay.” 

She wheezes, panicked, “Don’t leave me.” 

Haymitch squeezes her shoulders lightly to calm her. “It’ll just be to bring her back. I’ll make sure you’re good and hidden.” 

“Don’t. I can’t be alone again. I’ll go with you.” Her bottom lip wobbles. 

“It’s okay. You’ll be okay. Look what I’ve got for you.” Haymitch hangs Maysilee’s blowgun around her neck. “This was Maysilee’s. It’s all loaded. All you do is take a deep breath, blow real hard in this end, and a poisonous dart comes flying out. She killed Panache with this. Saved our lives.” 

“Maysilee’s dead now, too.” Wellie hugs her knees. 

His throat tightens. “Yeah, she is. But she’d want you to have this. She thought you’d make a good victor.” 

“She did?” Her eyes widen. “What did she mean? A good victor?” 

A great question, an even harder one to actually answer. “It means that you’re good to your core. You never stop being a Newcomer.” 

Wellie tears up, ultimately settling into her determination. “I can do that. For the others. For her.” She whispers your name. “Hide me.” She holds out her arms for Haymitch to carry her. 

Nearby, he pinpoints a tree almost hidden by wild grapevines. Tucking Wellie behind them, he arranges the cascading vines into a curtain that’ll conceal her. 

“Remember,” he tells her. “You’ve only got one dart, so make it count.” 

She lifts the blowgun to show him she understands how to use it. 

He taps her chin with the knuckle of his index finger. “Atta girl. Now, sit tight and I’ll be back before you know I’m gone.” 

He intends to make good on his parting assurance. And when he spots you after covering a half-mile of woods, he’s relieved to know he will. 

You’re not carrying any game, but you aren’t empty-handed. Haymitch can’t quite tell what it is you’re holding from afar—he knows to credit it to a sponsor gift. You are also evidently, expectedly seething when you notice him. 

“Why are you here?” you demand, not bothering to keep your voice quiet. 

“I got worried,” Haymitch answers candidly as he approaches you. 

Of course he did. That’s expected, understandable even. The absence of your ally, however, is not. “And Wellie?” 

“She was worried, too.” His eyes hone in on the pitcher, and he goes completely still. 

“Was she?” you snap dryly. “If you’d waited a few more minutes, she wouldn’t be, because she’d have both of us there.” 

He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t even look at you, more taken with what you have in your arms. 

You stomp your foot, childish and petty and completely warranted in the heat of your frustration. “Honestly, Haymitch, is it gonna take a real blood oath to get you to listen to me?” 

He snatches the pitcher from you suddenly. “You didn’t drink any, did you?” 

Are you kidding me? “No,” you scoff. “Obviously not. I was bringing it to—”

Your huff comes out muffled against his chest. Haymitch holds you close, tight enough to stop the breath in your lungs. “What the hell?” 

His lips brush the shell of your ear, and the shudder that passes through you, too involuntarily to contain this time, almost quells your anger. Almost. What really does it are the words he whispers: “It’s not from who you think.” 

Pulling back, you search for answers in his expression. He gives you the one you need, the one you already assume deep down, with a quiver of his chin and a furrow of his brows. 

You take a deep breath and plaster on a scowl. “I don’t think you should get any hot chocolate.” 

He blinks, then pouts. “Oh, come on now.” 

“You don’t deserve it,” you say sharply. “I mean, you accuse me of hogging it.” 

“I only asked if you tasted it without us. That’s a fair question.” 

“And you left Wellie after you agreed not to.” 

Haymitch tucks your hair back. “I missed you too much, darling.” 

A cover or not, your stomach bubbles. “And you’re just plain annoying me right now, peach.” 

He laughs, tugging you to him when you take another step away. “Forgive me.” 

You narrow your eyes, a smile playing on your lips. “I—”

It all happens so fast from there. Too fast for Haymitch to pick up on the details. He only hears the way you cut yourself off. Only notices when you whir around, notching an arrow on your bow and lodging it into Maritte’s collarbone. Only sees when her knife flies into your lower abdomen at the same time. Only feels the drop of the pitcher, the fear clawing at his ribcage, the weight of his dagger before it finds the space of her neck, finishing her off.

Haymitch catches you before you hit the floor, before you land on the pile of broken glass and spilled hot chocolate. He props you against a berm of primrose. Blood spools around the dagger like the tendrils of a poppy. The black of your uniform can’t hide the shape, or the texture of the crimson. Thick as strawberry juice. 

“What do I do?” He all but spits out. “What do I—”

“Get Wellie,” you gasp, feeling nothing but the urgency to get Haymitch back on track. 

“Do I pull the knife out?”

“Get Wellie,” you repeat through gritted teeth.  

“No, you’ll bleed to death.” His voice cracks on the last syllable. “How do I stop the bleeding?”

“Haymitch.” You dig your nails into your palms to keep from wincing. “If it hit anything important, I wouldn’t be speaking right now. Go get Wellie.” 

He shakes his head. “I’m not leaving you alone.”

“Silka’s around here somewhere.” 

“Exactly why I can’t leave you!” he exclaims, exasperated and scared and on the verge of something far more painful than tears. “I can’t.”

“Haymitch, you promised!” you choke out through the lump in your throat. 

The threat of your scrunched nose, the evocation of his promise—that absolute, binding pinkie promise—cuts through him. 

“Please,” you croak, finding solace in the dirt beneath you, scraping the underside of your nail bed with rocks and twigs. “Go.” 

Your face begins to blur, and Haymitch realizes he’s in danger of breaking out into those horrible, wretched sobs that only overcome him when someone’s died. And he can’t let that happen right now because you need him. Wellie needs you both. “I’m getting her and coming right back, you hear me?”

You nod. “Go.” 

He cradles your face and presses a long kiss to the crown of your head as if that’ll bring his wishes into existence. Your hands clutch him, pushing him away. You shove your own dagger into his grip. It’s only after Haymitch backs off, running with all his might through the trees, that you allow yourself to cry. 

Every breath you take inflames the bursts of ice shooting up your side. You can feel the blade brushing against your insides, forcing you to confront just how much pain you’re in. 

It sits right above your hip, perfectly content where it is. You’re no Asterid, this is not a deceptive laceration, and it hurts a hell of a lot worse than a sprained ankle. But you can’t pull it out. Haymitch wasn’t wrong—you’ll bleed out, send yourself to an earlier grave than the one you’re already in, if you do. 

You try to slide up the trunk, push yourself to your feet, but your limbs protest angrily. They resort to going numb, a roundabout paralysis where you still feel every single sting.   

Shedding the numbness, your mind detaches from your body entirely, guided first and foremost by the boom of a cannon. 

Hissing, you push forward and hold out your hands before you can collapse face-down. 

“Ah!” You lift a hand back, burned by the hot chocolate, no less steaming than how you received it. You wipe yourself on your pant leg and assess the spillage, laid out in a stream of glass in front of you. You’re quickly reminded of the river at the base of the mountain, of the snake swallowed by its own foamy blood, of the frail man perched on a frail throne. 

“It’s not from who you think.” 

And if you were wrong about that, if it’s from who Haymitch would have you believe… 

What’s the point in dwelling, in waiting, in trying to redecipher some grand rebel plan that isn’t going to save you now? Silka is alive, and so is Haymitch. It’s a feeling as true and palpable as the stinging. 

You pocket a piece of hot chocolate soaked glass and lift yourself off the ground. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

That cannon wasn’t for you. He just left you, breathing and alive. Injured but alive. You’re right—you wouldn’t be talking if the dagger was lodged anywhere truly fatal. You’d be gone by now, and you aren’t. 

You’re not dead, you’re not dead, you’re not dead. 

But Wellie is when he reaches her. A dead, headless baby dove. Another casualty of a broken promise. Another image he’ll never be able to scrub clean in his memories. 

“What did you do?” he hisses. 

Silka holds up Wellie’s head defensively, drawing attention to the blood spatters on her snot-green uniform. “She attacked me.” 

Haymitch notices the poison dart hanging from her blousy sleeve. Wellie tried to protect herself, tried to stay strong, tried to uphold the Newcomer honor. And as she feared he would, Haymitch abandoned her. Oh, Wellie, what have I done to you? 

“She had to go. You have to go,” Silka continues robotically. “It’s the only way I get back to my people.” 

“We all have people. You think yours will ever be able to forget this? I know mine won’t.” He hopes Sid disowns him, curses his weakness, spits whenever he hears his pathetic brother’s name. 

“I’ll tell it how it was, when I get home,” she says. 

“Oh, you’re not going home, Silka.” He pulls the ax from his belt. You should hate Haymitch all over again—you will. You’ll hate him when you return home for letting this happen, for leaving Wellie behind in the first place, for forcing you to fulfill Maysilee’s deathbed demand on your own without so much as a goodbye. And he’s at peace with that. It’s what he deserves. 

Silka tosses Wellie’s head aside, no regard or compassion for her even in death. Her callousness does wonders for Haymitch’s resolve. Even more so when she spews, “Where’s your ally?” 

“I’d worry more about yours,” he seethes. His ax feels right at home in his hands. “Who do you think that first cannon was for?” 

Nostrils flaring, eyes welling, Silka’s first stroke comes straight down at his head.

The clash of metal echoes across the woods. You follow the sound with an agonizing hobble. The clangs and grunts lead you back to your campsite, ravaged in the wake of a hateful battle. Beyond Silka’s attempt to dislodge her ax from a tree, and Haymitch’s quick swipe at her thigh, and her retaliation, Wellie’s head lies detached from her body. 

Your feet stammer, and a low hanging branch provides stability. Nothing in your stomach but a knife, you force yourself not to keel over. 

Later. There will be time to feel it, to hate yourself, later. 

“Hey, snot-face!” you call out, raising your bow. Your papa would chide you for startling your prey, but you want her looking at you when you land the arrow. 

Silka shrieks when it strikes through her shoulder, immobilizing her left arm. You grab another arrow, but she runs your way, rams your body to the ground, and sends the arrow aimlessly through the wind. Your bow slips from your grasp. 

At the impact, the tip of the blade digs deeper. Your yelp is cut short by Silka’s forearm pressing down on your throat. You claw at her face, taking chunks of skin and blood, but the only thing that gets her to let up is a dagger to her eye. Her howl comes with a blind swipe behind her back, in the direction of the culprit. 

Haymitch, consumed by his rage for Silka and distracted by his one-track-mind for you, fails to jump back. He pays the price with a giant gash across his lower abdomen. His grip loosens on his ax as he scrambles to keep his guts from spilling onto the floor. 

You elbow Silka in the nose and make a dash for Haymitch. “Nice eye!” you shout over your shoulder as you yank him away. 

Wounded and weaponless, his intestines twisting in his fingers and your abdomen burning with each step, your sprint sputters into a staggered zigzag. You come to a stop where the alder trees make way for the burnt hedge. 

Haymitch leans back against one of them, his legs shaking like they’re about to give out. You hold him up, keeping your attention on his eyes, his nose, his lips. Anywhere but the very fatal injury. 

“What’s the plan?” he strains to say. 

Your chest heaves. “Force her to split her attention.” 

He can’t fathom leaving you again for more than a second, doesn’t want to, but there’s no good alternative. You’re running on fumes and borrowed time. Haymitch knows that as well as you do. Why couldn’t you just stay put? 

Why couldn’t he?

He gives a curt nod and dashes towards the cliffside, both hands cupping his wound now. You find cover among the trees, where he hopes you’ll be safest. 

Back pressed against the jagged bark, pinecones dropping overhead, you look down at the only weapon you have access to. You wrap your trembling fingers around the handle of the blade. Like ripping off a bandaid. You don’t stifle your cry; you need Silka to find you. 

And she does, with a fist to the face, paying you back for bloodying her nose. One eyed and all, Silka is a master at regaining the upper hand. You swipe the knife at her throat; she strikes your wrist and knocks it out of your grip. Knuckles will have to do then. You lift them and swing, spent as you are, because you’ll drag her down with you by any means before she ever gets the chance to reach Haymitch. 

Silka doesn’t bother with her ax. She punches you instead, square in the jaw. You go down, but not without punting her in the shin. Dodging your next attempt, she grabs a fistful of your hair. You shriek with indignation as much as with pain. 

Dragged like a rag-doll by the roots, you go kicking and screaming the entire way through the hedge’s boundary. Up until you’re both feet away from Haymitch. 

“Let her go,” he coughs out. “Let go!” 

With a curse of her name, a shout of yours, Haymitch tries to run your way, only for his knees to buckle entirely. He resorts to throwing whatever rocks in his vicinity at her. Does she plan to make him watch? Is she so sick in the head, so poisoned by the Capitol’s need for spectacle, that she needs to draw it out for them, even now? 

Silka throws you down, unphased by the stone that hits her in the chest. Weakly, you lift your head, hold it up high, and spit out a curdle of blood. Right at her feet. She’ll have to look you in the eye and live with whatever shame she’s capable of. Same as the very people who’ve turned each of you into pawns. 

But she doesn’t care about you right now. No, not at all. Silka has another target in mind. A different, equally vindictive parting act. 

She wants you to see Haymitch die first. 

“Kill me,” you croak, rolling onto your stomach, pushing up on your forearms. Kill me, kill me, kill me. Not him. You make a play for her ankle, and Silka steps on your fingers, cracking them in half. 

Your scream doesn’t stop her ax as it flies through the air. It never reaches its target, though. Haymitch falls forward on his face before it can, narrowly dodging the impact. You breathe out, relieved. What a pity she’ll have to settle for you. 

Silka stands over you, her hand against her eye socket, seemingly contemplating how you should go. Her momentary setback hasn’t derailed her confidence. She has time, the upper hand, and—

The ax lodges in her head with a sickening squelch. 

She writhes on the ground across from you. Your head snaps Haymitch’s way, in the direction of the glistening illusion of a force field behind him. Some trick. 

You scramble onto your knees to get to him. You fall back down when Silka stops gurgling, the cannon sounds, and it sinks in that the worst of your fears has come to pass.

Haymitch is alive…but so are you.

Your fingers are surely broken, and you’re set to bleed to death any second now, but you’re a lot better off than Haymitch. Still face-down feet away, his guts splattering out of his body, good as dead. 

He’s as good as dead. 

So you don’t think about home, or about notions of revolution, or about Wellie’s decapitated body, or about the millions of things you have yet to feel and do. 

You just reach for your failsafe. 

Haymitch is slipping, literally. In-and-out of consciousness, intestines coiling around his palms like a snake. You should be by his side right now, yelling at him, scolding his audacity, kissing him goodbye. You wouldn’t deny him a deathbed wish. And yet, you’re nowhere near. 

He raises his head, feeling the weight of a dozen dumbbells threatening to push him back down. He finds Silka’s dead body, the reflective ax sticking out of her head. And you. Slightly closer, curled on the ground, frozen completely. 

Why aren’t you moving? 

His incoming death means nothing now. Haymitch comes to his senses, alert and desperate as he drags himself across the dirt with one hand. 

Your tears, trickling out the corners of your eyes, are all Haymitch sees after you roll onto your back and he props up on an elbow. He’s slow, too slow—he shouldn’t be this slow—to notice the change in your blood. From crimson to pitch black, same as the veins running in spirals across your abdomen when he lifts your shirt. An abnormality credited to foul play. To poison. 

No. No, no, no, you said you didn’t drink the hot chocolate. You didn’t have any. You didn’t—you would’ve already been dead. And you weren’t. You aren’t. 

Sunlight glistens off a piece of glass stuck to the edge of your wound. How did— 

Haymitch was careful setting you down, wasn’t he? He’d been panicked and frantic, but he was careful. 

You rasp, “H-Haymitch, I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize, sunshine,” he croaks. “You aren’t—” You aren’t dying. You can’t be dying. You can’t—he can’t—how can he stop this? He needs to stop this, needs to save you, needs to—

Your fingers twitch like you’re attempting to grab him. Attempting to wipe away those telltale wrinkles. “Should’ve…said it sooner.” 

He shakes his head. “Just—just wait.” 

“Should’ve shown it,” you breathe, a ragged whistle of a note.

“You did. You do,” he says hopelessly, truthfully, piecing the fractures of your puzzle. “B-but you gotta hold on. You have to stay with me.” 

You try to tell him that you won’t be apart, not really. You’ll be with him forever. But the promise comes out in a strangled sputter, which he leans in to will away. Your bluebird brushes your shoulder, reminding you there was never a chance of escaping this. Not from the second Haymitch was damned to your side. There is peace in accepting your fate. There is freedom in the world that comes next, where every last one of your people awaits. Where the ones around your neck will find you someday. 

My sweet family, my formidable kin, know I fought like all-fire. Know we’ll meet in the meadow. 

You can’t make out his pleas anymore, just his horrid, haunting gasps of air. It’s all that hurts you now. Whatever strength you have left is used for one last attempt to tell Haymitch all he means and all you want for him in lieu of a life together. “Don’t follow.” 

The sun fades around the corners of your vision, leaving you with only Haymitch. I love you forever, in every world, and then some. 

Haymitch presses his lips to yours, trying to breathe into you, attempting to give you what’s left of his life because it’s yours anyway. He’s yours. Everything he is, everything he feels, belongs to you. “I love you.” He tastes salt mixed with metal. “Please don’t leave me,” he pleads against your frozen skin. “I love you, I love you.” 

He opens his eyes to the empty look in yours. Once brilliant, now lost to him forever. The agony builds and builds until it scratches his throat raw with an unending scream. But it’s not enough to numb the rest of him. He sobs, closes your eyes with shaky fingers, buries his face into your hair. “I’m sorry.” 

And it’s in the despair of the words that Haymitch realizes it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. This hole in his heart, this anguish in his body, is temporary. Because he has a much more fatal, much more literal gap dragging him down beside you. Even ground, right? 

The hovercraft fades in from afar, no announcement of the victor as far as Haymitch is aware. But it’s coming. They’ll drag him out of here, resuscitate him from the brink, stop him from following you. Just like you want. 

He acts on pure instinct when he digs for the makings of the bomb. The sunflower, the blasting cap, the quartz, his flintstriker. Thank you, Ampert, Wyatt, Maysilee, Lenore Dove, for laying the groundwork. The Gamemakers’ warnings fall on deaf ears and a grief-stricken heart. Keep your head up, Sid. Don’t fret for me now, Ma. I won’t fail again, Burdie.

Haymitch manages with one hand and his set of teeth. He rolls onto his back, tears the blasting cap, shoves it into the sunflower, dodges the stray bullets from above. Driven by a sole purpose, and the bonus of another. 

Forgive me, sunshine, for I cannot live without you. 

He’ll tell you himself when he meets you again. He’ll take your anger in stride, as he always has, because he knows where it comes from. And it won’t matter so long as he has you. You and everyone else who’s found their way to your heaven. Losses of old and those yet to pass. Pa, Mamaw, his unnamed sisters. Haymitch believes it, he feels them all waiting. Any second now. 

When he launches the sunflower into the canyon, it’s for every loose cannon, every person back in Twelve, every life the Capitol has tried to twist into nothing. It’s for you. 

Black specks dot his eyes, blocking out the arena’s artificial light, and so, he finds you. The last thing he ever wants to see in this world, the first he’ll wake to in the next.  

His brilliant, dazzling sun, keeping him warm, singing him home, as the earth crumbles beneath him. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Haymitch wakes later, not to the lull of your voice or the greetings of his lost loves, but to stark white walls and gloved hands on bare skin and half-eaten nightingales filling the absence of your warmth. The sorrow he sought to ward off, the loss he fought with all his strength to avoid, crashes into him at once. Permanent, wretched, vengeful. Inevitable. And he knows you have not forgiven him. 

You never will.

Taglist: @lovemiss-vale @aureolinb @mqrieshrt @bueburgers @dem1dearest @nikki-is-a-nerd @lovelylittlelesbianlore @jjloveshotch @inneedofcaffine @poetsandroses @kindsleybooks @ivyhaec @x-gabrielle-x @ghostlythinggoingaround @happiness2112 @sundawn1990 @starryjeongyeon @kuurbyfun @lenteheure @petrasbones @wertyuizxcvbnm @shiftingf1 @sarcasm-n-insomnia @defnotbrooklyn @harrypedro465 @rinatzsstuff @whimsybeth @youraggedybitch @poppysrin @watergirl85 @prettyandromeda @gaz0xx @marsupialnoises @madisonosidam @redshinyshoes @comfortcharacterwrites

A/N: so how y’all feeling?

“Oh, you look darling!” Effie squeals, pulling back the brush from your face. Your eyes blink open as she spins you around to look at yourself in the mirror. You’re no stranger to makeup–one of your favorite pastimes is trading lipstick with Lenore Dove–but you have to resist the urge to wipe at your face right now. The glitter itches, coarse against the sensitive skin of your eyelids, and the mascara feels heavier on your lashes than you’re used to. On the bright side, you do look nice. 

The amber eyeshadow compliments the little crystals sewn along the high waistline of the gown.  An hourglass silhouette, Effie called it. Whatever it is, you’re grateful you won’t be so plain. The crystals stand out against the black silk, offering a necessary bout of color further highlighted by the silk scarf meant to go with the dress. Beginning with marigold in the middle, the scarf ranges in shades of orange before ending with crimson on either end. 

Effie tosses the scarf over your head and drapes it across your neck, allowing it to cascade down your back. Your charms peak out under the fabric. You pull your hair to the side so she can adjust the scarf behind you. 

Maysilee walks into the bathroom with Prosperina on her tail. She looks like a dream in her velvet gown, off-the-shoulder as opposed to your completely strapless dress. Her eyes are dusted periwinkle to match the feather boa Effie found, and her hair is pinned up, a few loose strands curling around her face. 

She stares at you through the mirror, devoid of her usual judgement. “I like it,” she says finally, as though her approval is the finishing touch you require. 

You accept it anyway and gesture to her outfit. “You look pretty.” 

“I know,” Maysilee responds with a slight grin, but you can tell by the deepening blush on her cheeks that the compliment means more to her than she lets on. You smile, and her eyes flicker to your mouth. “You need a red lip.”

“Genius! I was thinking the same,” Effie exclaims and beckons for you to follow her out. “Come, come.” 

You sit on the edge of your bed while Effie rifles through her makeup box for the perfect shade of lipstick. Across the apartment, Haymitch and Wyatt are getting dolled up themselves. You caught a glimpse of the suits Effie handed to them before she swept you and Maysilee away, and really, you’re all fortunate Magno never showed. 

“We need to do something about that hair,” she says, inching away when your eyes narrow. You wonder if Prosperina told her about the biting incident. Must be why Vitus stuck to readying the boys. Effie offers a smile. “It’s lovely, but you simply cannot wear it down with this dress. No one will be able to see the scarf. Can I…?” 

No, she cannot. You may not hate Effie, but you don’t trust her not to pull out a lock of your hair, or to handle it with the same care your papa and Burdock would. You rub your hands along the silk of the dress to ground yourself. 

“Maysilee,” you call, her name tumbling out before you can stop yourself. Maysilee peaks her head into the room curiously. You nearly choke on your pride, but the words manage to form against all odds. “Can you do my hair?”  

Her eyes widen momentarily, and you expect a jab or a jest of some kind. You should know better by know–Maysilee has surprised you plenty the last few days. Without a word, she walks over and motions for Effie to hand her a hairbrush. Effie does as requested and takes to shuffling around for more hairpins and hairspray. 

Instinctively, you tense when you feel Maysilee grab ahold of your hair with one hand. She waits until you relax to begin brushing through your hair. Her touch is gentle and patient, a sharp contrast from her general disposition. It reminds you of the care with which she pieced together each of your allies’ tokens, and in turn, you think of Tam Amber in his workshop once again. Maysilee Donner, the meanest girl in town, has elicited many emotions throughout your lifetime. Over the past four days alone, you’ve ranged from contempt to trust and back to disdain. For the first time, despite your better judgement, or perhaps because of it, Maysilee Donner makes you feel safe. 

Maysilee weaves your hair into a braid down your back first and then pins it around your head like a crown. She lets the shorter pieces frame your face similar to her own style. When she’s done, she stands in front of you to admire her handiwork. 

Effie and Prospering rush over with complimentary squeals. “You are simply divine,” Prosperina gushes. “And Maysilee, you are an artist!” 

“I think so too,” you say gratefully. 

Maysilee snorts, uncharacteristically flustered. “You should see yourself in the mirror first.”

You shrug. “Don’t need to.” 

She rolls her eyes but grins. 

“Well,” Effie says brightly, “are we ready?” 

Smoothing the wrinkles on your dress with both hands, you stand up and hold your chin high. 

“Remember,” said Drusilla before she retreated to the kitchen to curse Magno’s name, “you are a flame, and everyone else is a moth caught in your elusive, unattainable orbit.”

You suppose that’s easy enough for you to summon with the ombre scarf, which resembles a fire kindling. With its warm undertones, you think a sunset is a more fitting description.

Effie and Prosperina walk out first, makeup box and unused dress bags in hand. The boys are waiting in the living room with your mentors, Drusilla, and Vitus. You peer over Effie’s shoulder before you enter the room. Wyatt cleans up nicely in the tuxedo borrowed from the Trinkets’ Great-Uncle Silius. And Haymitch…

Okay, fine. Objectively, Haymitch has always been good looking. Biased you may be, but you aren’t blind to the truth. He’s handsome, beautiful even, under most lights. Under all lights. Now, in a dashing three-piece suit, curls left untouched and untamed, with the unnatural fluorescents somehow brightening the flecks of blue in his eyes, is no different. 

You tear your eyes away from him, which is an irritatingly impossible task, and try to send away the warmth crawling all over your skin. It doesn’t work. In fact, it only worsens when Haymitch notices you, lips parting and eyes widening just a smidge. He rubs the back of his neck like he’s trying to soothe himself. You feel it then, as you have ever since you first saw it in the hallway: his devotion. 

Drusilla snickers from her place on the lounge chair, casting a sidelong glance at Haymitch. “Moth.” 

Wiress presses the back of her hand to her mouth. Mags doesn’t try to hide her amusement. Nor does the rest of the room. “We should make our way now,” says Mags, motioning for Wyatt and Haymitch to stand. 

Drusilla pushes herself up. “Yes, we should. You,” she points to Effie, “are coming with us. Everyone must know you are responsible for this, not Magno.” 

Effie, an avid rule-follower you’re gathering, objects, “But–I don’t even have a backstage pass.”

“That, at least, I can remedy. Come on, you lot! We need to make it to one event on time.” Drusilla ushers you and Maysilee ahead. Vitus rushes around you to press the elevator button. 

“How’s my mascara?” asks Maysilee while Effie stops you to touch-up your lipstick. 

“Perfect,” answers Effie. “You hardly need it with those long lashes of yours.” She hands Maysilee a small cotton ball. “Just in case.” 

You and Maysilee are the first to enter the elevator with Vitus. He keeps to the opposite end and avoids direct eye contact while you wait for the others to trickle in. He looks much less threatening like this, which stirs the slightest of guilt inside you. 

“I’m sorry I bit you,” you say suddenly. Beside you, Maysilee lets out a gargled sound. 

Vitus looks up, and in an instant, his chirpiness returns. “Oh, it’s all right. That was a stressful day for all of us. And I know you aren’t diseased.” 

You force an accepting smile. “Thanks.” 

Maysilee leans over to whisper in your ear. “You bit him?” 

“He cut my hair,” you whisper back. 

She bites down on her lip, you lift a shoulder, and the two of you burst into a fit of giggles. 

The others step in one-by-one, and you’re thankful there’s enough space in the elevator to keep you from feeling claustrophobic. As is now customary, the four of you are hauled into the back of the windowless van. Wiress and Mags are allowed to accompany Drusilla, which is a relief. They’ll at least provide the comfort Drusilla is physically incapable of mustering. 

The interviews will be televised from an auditorium full of a few thousand people, and apparently, there will be no delay like there was for the reaping. Drusilla issues about a dozen warnings to mind your manners and not screw up. Lovely words of advice. While the rest of you are taken backstage to a waiting area called the greenroom–ironic, given it’s painted a pale white–she walks off to speak to Caesar Flickerman. “Shrew, calculator, enigma, rascal,” she repeats in a mutter as she stalks off.  

Most of the districts, including their mentors, stylists, and escorts, are already waiting. Stylists fuss over tributes’ outfits, escorts recite the official lineup, mentors offer final bits of advice. Their words clamor into one ear-splitting blob. 

Effie finds a nice corner for your team to wait by, and she falls into stylist mode immediately, fixing the boys’ collars, tearing a broken feather from Maysilee’s boa, adjusting your silk scarf. Mags and Wiress take the time to review each of your strategies, and you do your best to commit every piece of advice to memory. 

Exaggerate the accent but don’t overdo it. Be charming, not a pushover. Answer candidly but steer on the side of secrecy. The contradictions make your head go dizzy. 

You slink back from your team, only a pace away, skull contracting with each clink of your heels on the floor. The green room is crowded with people and conversation, but you find a sliver of wall space behind you to rest. You close your eyes and lean sideways, careful not to ruin your updo. Your temple presses against the cool tile in search of release from the pressure in your head. 

A mirror, an enigma, a flame. What a convoluted performance you’ve taken on. 

Haymitch doesn’t say anything at first, but you can feel him take the spot beside you. His presence grounds you, and the pressure begins to evaporate. You open your eyes. His back is against the wall and his head is swirled straight ahead. Even from this angle, you can see his eyebrows bunched up. “Nervous?”

He turns his attention to you. “Yeah,” he admits. 

“Good.” You pinch your nose. “Not good. It’s not good that you’re nervous. I don’t want you to be nervous. I’m just–”

“Nervous?” Haymitch finishes with a grin. 

You breath slowly to steady yourself. “Yup.” 

He sighs. “Maysilee’s right.” You arch a brow, and he winces. “I heard it.” 

You huff through your nose, light and amused. 

Haymitch’s mouth twitches as he continues, “I mean, you’re good at affecting people.” 

“Doesn’t mean it’s always a positive effect,” you counter. The tile grows warm under your temple. “I didn’t get a ten because the Gamemakers liked me, Haymitch.” 

“No, but everyone out there is only going to see the number. A ten will go over smoother than a one.”

You shake your head, hearing his nerves seep through. “It’s like Mags said. You’ve got their attention.”

“Not all attention’s good, sunshine,” he says, mimicking the bleakness in your tone. 

“Fair.” You lean closer until your shoulders are pressed together. “It’s a good thing we have each other then. We’ll get dragged down together.” Your words ease him for all of five seconds. Then his worry lines return. You nudge him gently. “Hey,” you say with mock seriousness, “the jackass bit should be easy enough for you, peach.”

“Ha, good one,” Haymitch responds, deadpan. 

Dropping the facade in exchange for sincerity, you continue, “You’re not whoever they make you out to be on that stage. And you better not let them convince you otherwise.” 

His shoulders drop. He shifts his body to fully face you. “I won’t if you don’t.” 

“I won’t.” You extend your pinkie in his direction. A smile cracks through his nerves, and he wraps his pinkie around yours. For the briefest of moments, the room narrows down to this: Haymitch, warm and alive and at your side like the incessant weed he’s always been. Then something else catches his attention. You spot the second he tenses and his smile falters. He lets go of your pinkie before you can ask what has him worked up now. “I’ll be back. I need some punch.” 

“Okay–” 

Haymitch disappears through a crowd of peach tulle and butter yellow suits. The pressure returns full force, and the solace you found against the wall is nowhere to be found. You turn forward, hovering instead of leaning back now. Drusilla has returned to make sure everyone knows Effie is responsible for your transformations. Her presence must be why Haymitch tensed up so quick. Except…

Through the pockets of people, you see Haymitch by the buffet now. Beetee stands across from him, gathering food onto his plate. Huh. 

Wyatt and Maysilee take the wall space on either side of you. “Where’s he off to?” questions Maysilee. 

“Punch bowl.” You cross your arms over your torso, suddenly cold. 

Wyatt hums, twirling his scrip coin. “Think it’s any good?” 

You watch Haymitch linger by the buffet. “We can go find out.” 

The appearance of an electric blue blazer stops the three of you from proceeding. Ampert greets Wiress as he passes her. You bite down on your lip to keep from laughing. Not because he looks bad, or even remotely ridiculous. Quite the contrary, he’s adorable. 

“Don’t you look dashing,” Maysilee tells him, buzzing with her own laughter. You nod in agreement. 

“That’s what my father said.” Ampert fiddles with the collar of his blazer, his smile turning downright proud. He runs his hands down his matching slacks. “I came to talk strategy for tomorrow. I spoke to Six already. We’ll need to band together as soon as possible.”

Always right down to business with that family. You appreciate their directness. “We’ll be scattered away from each other, so we need to find a meeting spot.”

“It’ll be hard to pick one when we don’t know what the arena will look like,” says Maysilee. 

You glance at Wyatt. “Well, if the tarps were a clue, it might be a rainforest. There should be bodies of water.” 

“Or a body of water,” she counters. “Singular. Maybe they’ll want us all fighting for a sole water source.” 

“If they mean to drag out the Games, that’d be a sure-fire way of ending them too soon,” says Wyatt. “Unless they put us on an island of some kind, like they did that one year, but it’s more likely to be somewhere rainy.”

Hazy images comes to mind: a beach terrain surrounded by the illusion of an ocean, the closest you’ll ever see to the real thing, vengeful crabs emerging from the sand dunes, a twelve-year-old boy from Seven swept up by the Gamemakers’ flood. 

“We need to prioritize the younger kids. Make sure they…” Survive the bloodbath. Stay alive. Keep from dying sooner than they’ve already been promised. Your throat burns as the inevitable reality sinks in. “Don’t get lost,” you ultimately land on. 

Ampert reflects on your words like he’s not one of the very kids you’re trying to protect. “The oldest among us should try to get some weapons, too.” 

“I can gather the little ones,” volunteers Wyatt. “I’ll get them away from the cornucopia.” 

You nod, wary but thankful. “The rest of us will follow after you then. I’ll try my best to get a weapon or two.” Ideally, there will be a bow for you to get your hands on. 

Maysilee tucks a strand of hair behind her ears. “So will I.” She addresses Ampert. “You should tell the others about this.”

“I will,” says Ampert. “Eleven is my next stop.” 

It’s a flawed plan, the more you ponder everything that could go wrong. Without an official meeting spot, you’re sure to lose track of each other in the bloodbath. You think of Wiress following the light beam, of sweet Sid and his starry eyes. “We can use the stars in case we can’t find each other right away.” Whatever the arena may be, the night sky should be the same as yours. 

Ampert tilts his head. “How?” 

“Find the star that looks frozen. It’ll be pointing north, so head in that direction.” Technically, it only seems frozen. Sid calls it the diamond star. He’d explain it much better than you can. 

“Head north,” he murmurs. “We should go south instead.” 

You lift a brow, urging him to explain his logic.

Commotion bursts across the room in the form of Magno Stift and a cage of reptiles. “The party animals are here!”

“Oh hell,” you groan.

A group of Peacekeepers attempt–and fail–to corral him. Ampert wrinkles his nose and turns back to the three of you. “I’m going to talk to Eleven. Good luck out there.” 

Ampert hurries away, leaving you with no choice but to squash your lingering concerns. For now, at least, your focus needs to be on the interviews. Though your lunatic of a stylist steals plenty of it. He’s backed himself into the corner across from your team’s and managed to free a six-foot snake from the cage, waving it around in people’s faces. “Where are my tributes?” he demands. “I need to dress them!”

“He should worry more about learning to dress himself,” you murmur. Maysilee snorts beside you, and you realize, dreadfully, that you sound like her. Wyatt laughs under his breath. 

Shrieks erupt at the sight of the snake. The Peacekeepers pull out their tasers. Drusilla claps and shouts, “Take him down! Take him down!” They make quick work of tasing Magno, but he puts up quite the fight. 

By the time they’ve hauled him and his snake out of the room, the television at the end of the green room flickers to life. Haymitch returns, leaving little room between you two as you watch an overhead view of the audience on-screen. You’ll have to tell him about your conversation with Ampert, but for now you accept the warmth of his hand in yours and try to tamper your nerves. 

“Ladies and gentleman,” a booming voice announces, “welcome to the Fiftieth Hunger Games Night of Interviews. And here’s everybody’s favorite host, Caesar Flickerman!”

Caesar descends from the ceiling on a crescent moon with sparks shooting out behind him. Real classy stuff. He looks the same as always: young, adorned with a tailored dark blue suit, tall hair slicked back into a ponytail. This year, he’s dyed his hair pine green, and he’s painted his eyelids and lips the same shade. “Hello, Panem!” he exclaims as he demounts the moon. “Shall we get this party started?” 

The audience roars with excitement; your stomach stirs with sickness. 

While Caesar launches into a retrospective on the Games and the nature of the Quarter Quells, a young Gamemaker lines up Districts One and Two in the greenroom. You make eye contact with Silka on her way out the door, and it’s clear she’s thinking up the numerous ways she plans to kill you.

Caesar spares no details, spewing facts about past Games, the Treaty of Treason, and the treat you’re all in for with this year’s arena. The real treat is how disastrously the Careers perform as they cycle through their turns on stage. Silka does fine enough, only failing to give a satisfactory answer when Caesar asks about the Careers’ alliance. Panache follows and is quickly humiliated by Caesar. From then, the remaining tributes from One and Two are the butt of Caesar’s unending jokes. 

Their alliance is revealed as fragile and disjointed, their prowess is downplayed, and their intelligence is continuously called into question. What began as a positive for your own team quickly turns into a slight against every one of you. The Careers may be placed on a different pedestal than your own lowly footstool, but you are all on the receiving end of their cruelty. You have no shortage of hate for the Careers and their own callousness. Still, you feel for them. They don’t deserve this any more than you do. 

Your mama’s voice rings clear as a bell. “Hate can’t exist without the capacity for deep love. Don’t you forget that.” 

You make it through District Three’s interviews without losing your lunch. Dio kicks off by discussing the Newcomers’ alliance and Ampert closes with his theories on the power in numbers. When Four’s turn rolls around, and Caesar’s line of questioning shifts to an interrogation on the Careers versus the Newcomers, your stomach ache worsens. Something sweet will settle it. Hopefully. 

You steal your hand back from Haymitch and turn away from the screen. His head swerves in your direction. “You okay, sunshine?” 

“‘M fine. Just need a drink.” 

He stays back, but you can feel his eyes following after you for a beat. District Four is wrapping up on screen, and Five has huddled together by the buffet to recalibrate. Least they’re too busy figuring out damage control to bother you. 

You’re halfway there before a flurry of gray chiffon crowds you. Wellie, leading your doves with tears in her eyes, blinks up at you. Velo stares at you with the same distrust that afflicted her in the locker room when you first met. Miles and Atread avoid eye contact all together. You crouch before them on shaky legs. “What’s wrong, little birds?” 

Wellie croaks, “Are you leaving us, too?” 

“What? No, I–” You grab one of her hands to soothe her trembling. Her skin is cold against yours. “Where’d you get that idea from?” 

Wellie looks past your shoulder. You turn your head to see Haymitch now chatting up the quiet, melancholic tributes from Nine. Your stomach churns with something else entirely. Why would he tell them that? You look back at your flock. 

“You were Haymitch’s ally first,” Atread murmurs, tossing Wellie a worried look. The floor is still of utmost interest to him. “Since he’s leaving, we thought you’d go with him.” 

It becomes increasingly difficult to speak with the lump lodged at the base of your throat. “But Haymitch isn’t leaving. He wouldn’t...” Your voice trails off, and your insistence comes off as disingenuous, because he would leave. 

If he thought it was for the greater good, Haymitch would. He is leaving you. 

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Haymitch chalks it up to your nerves, but he can tell there is an underlying cause to your silence. 

You returned from the buffet with a calculated, unnatural ease. As if the handful of minutes you were gone fixed you right up. When Haymitch sought your hand again, you offered it with tight lips and a scrunched-up nose. In a blink, any threat of tears zapped right up, and he convinced himself that the cracks in your demeanor were an illusion. Of course, they weren’t. 

Every passing minute, your silence grows louder than the unending list of concerns in his head. Haymitch is relieved, at least, to see his doves perform without a hitch when their turn rolls around. He worried that the news of his departure might’ve shaken them up too bad. One by one, they prove him wrong. Wellie steps up to Caesar’s mix and assuredly answers the very questions that tripped up the Careers. Miles, Velo, and Atread follow with their own additions to the Newcomers’ advantages. 

Seven and Eight display similar composure, highlighting Ampert’s plan and their commitment to the alliance. Maybe they don’t stand a chance, but they’re sure making their people proud, and the audience seems to be buying their potential. 

Everyone clearly strategized beforehand. Haymitch assumes Ampert left him out of the conversation because he knew his efforts would be focused on the ploy to sabotage the arena. Part of him appreciates the sentiment. With all he has to worry about–not making a fool of himself on-stage, keeping the sabotage a secret, the blow-up he’s in for when you learn he’s separating from the Newcomers–he could go without another plan to keep in mind. 

His barely-covert meeting with Beetee cleared up some concerns: which direction to head, how the fuse will be supplied, and where to access the explosive. He’s not too keen on how Ampert will have to scavenge Nine’s dead bodies for their sunflowers. Haymitch looks over at you, quiet and glued to the television screen. He’s not keen on leaving you either. 

The best way to watch your back is to keep you far away from any plans of rebellion. He figured that much when Beetee first clued him in on the plot. His score and Beetee’s directions only confirmed the undeniable: ensuring your safety entails keeping you away from Haymitch, too. Whatever you may think, a one sends a more dangerous message than a ten. Haymitch is on a tighter leash than you are, and he will not drag you down with him. Your fate is not set in stone. 

The Newcomers continue building their case. Soon enough, after the second palate cleanser and a terrifying review of the deadliest mutts in the Games history, District Twelve is up. The four of you are lined up on the side of the stage in order of appearance. Haymitch stares at the skin of your shoulder blades while he attempts to keep his heart from lurching out of his chest. 

The selfless resolve of the Newcomers is admirable, but Haymitch can tell Caesar is itching to amp up the entertainment factor of the interviews. A quick confirmation of Twelve’s commitment to the Newcomers is plenty for him, and he’s more than ready to see what each of you have in store. 

Maysilee garners a lot of laughs with her arsenal of insults and jokes about the front row’s poor taste. Caesar himself is brimming with amusement, egging her on. A man dressed in a suit made of bills receives an especially fatal blow. “That’s sweet,” Maysilee says, dripping with sarcasm. “You wore all your friends tonight.” She finishes by calling a lady with surgically implanted cat ears a flea bag. 

Wyatt blows Caesar and the audience away with his complicated odds. A Gamemaker with a calculator confirms his prediction on the amount of sponsor dollars it would take to send a tribute a stuffed pheasant two weeks into the Games, given rising inflation of thirty-eight percent a day. Caesar exclaims, “I don’t know if the odds are in your favor in the arena, Wyatt, but if you win, I’m taking you to the casino!” 

As Caesar wraps up with Wyatt, your body bunches up on instinct. Haymitch reaches out and runs his hand over your shoulder, the muscles momentarily relaxing. You turn your head. He attempts to relieve the rest of your tension by teasing, “Don’t choke.” 

Immediately, you give him that unassuming, too-practiced smile that anyone who knows you could sniff out from a mile away. And Haymitch does. Even with your unforgiving walls and unreadable expressions, he knows you. “Don’t trip.” 

Your name booms from Caesar’s mouth, and the audience breaks out into applause. Haymitch watches as you glide across the stage and their applause grows louder. 

“My, my!” Caesar jolts a little when you reach him, the back of his free hand coming up to his forehead. He addresses the front row. “I think I lost my breath for a second there.” They all nod in agreement. 

“Oh, come on now, Caesar,” you say, simultaneously sweet and sardonic, not missing a beat. “Surely you’ve seen worse.” 

That earns you a round of laughs. Caesar shakes his head. “I can promise I’ve never seen better. Now, I speak for all of us when I say you are our most anticipated guest of the evening.” 

“Who?” you ask, wide-eyed with feigned disbelief. “Little old me?”

“Don’t be so humble,” chides Caesar. “You obtained an unprecedented score for a tribute from District Twelve. That’s no simple feat. Care to share how you made that happen?” 

You rest a hand over your chest. “Hand to heart, Caesar, I didn’t do a thing. I was saving my best bits for all’a y’all to see.” 

He turns to the audience, eyebrows shooting up. “I don’t believe that for one second.”

“Honest! But one thing about those Gamemakers is they know a performer when they see one. So I think they appreciated my intentions.” Your eyes flicker across the crowd before they land far above where the Gamemakers are seated. With a wink in their direction, you tease, “Ain’t that right?”

The camera pans to them, and Faustina Gripper nods curtly. Some of the Gamemakers in the same row give hearty laughs and thumbs up. The one with a calculator winks back, and Haymitch’s stomach lurches like he’s going to be sick. 

“A performer in our midst,” Caesar says, tapping his fingers to his lips. The audience oohs and ahhs. “And what is it you perform?”

“Songs,” you answer. “When I have a worthy cause to.” 

“Is it rather presumptuous of me to assume we are a worthy cause?” 

You smile, bright but hollow, a deceptive imitation of a real sunbeam. “The worthiest one. But I can’t let you taste the cream before you buy the cake now, can I?” 

“Oh!” Caesar croons, receiving matching reactions from the crowd. “What a cheeky thing. I love it!”

Watching the effortless nature of your performance quells some of Haymitch’s own worries. Then Caesar returns to his previous questions about the Newcomers. “What will follow if you do take out all the Careers? Will you turn on each other?” 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, Caesar,” you respond candidly. It’s the closest you’ve sounded to yourself since walking on that stage. “All I know is every one of us is willing to lay our lives for one another, and that won’t change once the Careers are gone. I can promise you that.” 

A chorus of coos erupts. Caesar gives an overdramatic sigh and presses his hand over his heart this time. “I do hate to let you go.” The buzzer goes off. “But I’m afraid our time has run out.” 

The room lets out murmurs of disappointment, and Caesar nods sympathetically. 

“Until we meet again,” you say, mimicking their sadness, and dip into a bow, which elicits a standing ovation. The first few rows go crazy pretending to catch the kiss you blow as you walk off. 

Before long, Caesar segues into introducing Haymitch as the final tribute of the evening. Haymitch calls upon his assumptions of Great Uncle Silius, a man with enough status and wealth to grant him patience, and saunters across the stage. Caesar jumps right in. “So, Haymitch, what do you think of the Games having one hundred percent more competitors than usual?”

His thoughts wander to Woodbine Chance, the real rascal who should be here in his place, then to you, who wooed the audience against your own odds. Haymitch gives a shrug. “I don’t see that it makes much difference. They’ll still be one hundred percent as stupid as usual, so I figure the odds will be roughly around the same.”

He’s gifted an appreciative chuckle from the audience. He returns their attention with a half-smile. “I’m speaking of the Careers, of course.” 

Caesar plays into his bit, jabbing the Careers himself and allowing Haymitch the space to assure the Newcomers, at least, are safe with him. He walks right into Caesar’s joke about his score in training, but he’s quick to defend himself and highlight the courage it takes to piss off the Gamemakers. “I mean, I’ve got thirty-one sworn allies, this rock-hard body, and more brain matter than all the Careers combined. Know what else I’ve got? Guts!” 

He can’t disparage your score without disparaging you, so he stays neutral, keeps the attention on him and not you. “A ten is great, don’t get me wrong. But a one takes a special kind of trouble, am I right?” He opens his arms to the audience and paces along the front of the stage. They hoot in support. “I can tell some of you know what I mean.” He points out a man in the second row with a glass cube of live bees on his head. “This gentleman gets into all kinds of trouble.” He nods vigorously. “And you, darling?” Haymitch leans over the lady with cat ears. He can hear your eye roll, and he refrains from recoiling when the woman covers her face in gleeful embarrassment. “Sure, you been there.” 

Caesar oohs dramatically. “A real ladies man. They must fawn over you back home.”

“Don’t you know it, Caesar,” he says with a proud grin.

Jackass, rascal, play-boy. Haymitch assumes it all, and the audience eats it up. What has he gotten himself into? 

Caesar comments on his knack for pissing people off and digs for more details on his after-school activities. Haymitch steers clear of any signs that would implicate Hattie. “Let’s just call it science homework. Did you know you can make hooch out of just about anything, Caesar? District Twelve can’t brag about much, but we’ve got the finest shine in Panem. The base commander will back me up on that!” 

“But…isn’t that illegal?” Caesar leans forward. The room quiets a bit.

“Is it? For real?” Haymitch gapes at a mustachioed man nursing a oversized snifter of brandy. "You’d think the commander might’ve mentioned that.” 

A roar of laughter. Caesar slaps him on the back as the bell rings, signaling the end of his time. “This one’s a real rascal, ladies and gentleman! Haymitch Abernathy from District Twelve! May the odds be EVER in his favor!” 

Haymitch garners his own standing ovation from half the audience. The cat-eared lady nearly squeals when he winks at her before exiting the stage. 

Mags and Wiress are waiting backstage as Haymitch walks off. He receives a hug from Mags and a quick nod from Wiress, who tells him he has some sponsors already. 

“Rock-hard body?” echoes Maysilee, snickering alongside Wyatt as Haymitch approaches the rest of the team. So long as he fooled the audience and won over sponsors, he can handle her mockery. He waits for you to chime in with a quip or two. 

You don’t. “Nice job,” is all you say before turning on your heels to follow Mags down the halls. Huh. He blames residual nerves and whatever else is weighing on you. 

Haymitch quickens his pace to keep up as they reach the exit. He’ll ask you what’s wrong when you get back to the apartment, or when he wakes you up for your turn on watch, or when you wake him. And somewhere in between he’ll sneak in the news of him flying solo in the arena. Damage control first, then blow-up. 

When the team arrives at the van to find Plutarch waiting, Haymitch knows you are not heading to the apartment yet. He sucks his teeth. 

Plutarch congratulates Drusilla on a job well done wrangling everyone together. “You know, these kids never got a proper photo shoot. Why don’t we swing by my place and correct that? We can even film some footage to have for cameos if they hang in there. It’d keep others from assuming we aren’t doing our jobs.”

Drusilla contemplates his suggestion. “So long as Magno Stift is never mentioned.” 

“Magno who?” says Plutarch. She hums, content, and flounces off to her private car. 

Effie sighs. “Why they married in the first place will forever be a mystery.” 

Haymitch’s jaw goes slack. You snort. “Drusilla married Magno?”

“Yup,” confirms Plutarch. “Their thirty year anniversary is right around the corner. Now, shall we?” 

Mags and Wiress don’t join the trip to Plutarch’s mansion, but the rest of you wind up at the threshold soon enough. Plutarch leaves the Peacekeepers at the entrance, claiming his private security team to be sufficient. He narrates a quick history on the estate and the portraits hanging along the hall, much like he did on Haymitch’s earlier visit. He tunes out most of it. He lingers at the entrance to the library, allowing everyone else to file in first. 

Haymitch makes it two steps inside before you send him tumbling back into the space beneath Trajan Heavensbee’s watchful eye. 

You’re on him in a second, hands on his shoulders, keeping him pinned to the wall. Brain going blank, he doesn’t register the inherent threat of the moment. He just sees you, impenetrable walls dropped, fuming and livid and vulnerable. He grabs onto your forearms but doesn’t try to push you away. This is safer than your empty smile. 

Effie shrieks, Drusilla complains, Maysilee chokes on a laugh, Wyatt gasps out a whoa. Plutarch is the only one who makes a move to tear you away. “Hey, hey now.” 

Neither of you pay him any mind. You demand, “What is wrong with you?” 

Haymitch opens his mouth to respond, but you barrel over him. “You couldn’t even muster the decency to tell me yourself? You were just going to abandon us without a word?” 

Oh. It seems Wellie did get the message around. “Sunshine–” 

“Don’t call me that,” you sneer. You rip your arms out of his grasp, shoving his shoulders again and stepping away right as Plutarch reaches to pull you off. He takes one large step back when you rear your head in his direction like he’s the next victim of your tirade. 

Haymitch’s hands flex around nothing, pathetically itching to reach out for you again. “You saw my score. I got a one. It’s not–” 

You scoff mockingly. “You got a one, did you? I wasn’t aware.” 

“Let me talk, will you?” snaps Haymitch, frustrated and scared of failing the rebels, of losing his life, of losing you. 

“No!” Your chest heaves, and the scarf around your neck slips forward a little. You throw your hands up in a shrug. “We’re not allies anymore, so you don’t owe me anything, right? And I don’t want to hear it.” Your chin quivers, and Haymitch thinks he can hear a piece of his heart chip away. “You’re a coward, Abernathy.” 

Despite his best efforts otherwise, Haymitch remains immobile. He forces his lips to move, but the only sound that slips past is a pitiful murmur of your name. He wanted this, didn’t he? Your hate was always the expected outcome. As inevitable as his decision. 

Drusilla mutters under her breath about the impossibility of taming beasts, and Haymitch can tell she means it specifically for you. He pushes off the wall. 

Plutarch takes up the space between you and Haymitch, a blockade for him to proceed in any direction. “If you two are done,” he says before Haymitch even has the chance to insult Drusilla, “we do need to get those shots.” 

“Oh, please do,” Drusilla groans. She steps closer to a wide-eyed Effie. “This stock is much worse than the last. You wouldn’t believe how difficult this job is.”

Maysilee rolls her eyes. “Have you considered your retirement is long overdue?” Thank you, Maysilee!

Plutarch clears his throat, seemingly in a hurry himself and desperate to keep another scuffle from arising. A dying president and a pair of loud-mouthed teenagers must be enough action for the Heavensbee estate. “We’ll practice one-by-one in the conservatory. Everdeen, you’re with me first.” 

When you don’t respond, Plutarch takes that as an okay. He motions for you to follow him, and Haymitch recalls the deadly glare looming above you from the president’s terrace, Plutarch’s curious attention back in training, the sight of President Snow tumbling through the flowers. Haymitch’s feet shuffle forward. No. Nope. Don’t go. 

“Oh, wait,” says Effie as she prances over to you. Yes, wait! “Just a little touch up.” She applies another layer of lipstick and readjusts your scarf. “Good as new.” 

You murmur your thanks and whirl around after Plutarch. 

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. 

Effie fixes his vest, Drusilla snarls his name, Maysilee grumbles a complaint, Wyatt sidesteps him to observe the library. You disappear down the hallway with Plutarch, and the sun turns its back on Haymitch once more.  

✶⋆.˚꩜ .ᐟ˙⋆✶

Plutarch gives you five seconds to catch your breath. It’s enough time to force back your tears, collect your thoughts, and calculate your next move by the time he opens his mouth. 

“Listen, kid, I know you don’t like me–”

“What did you say to him?” you cut him off. Haymitch will die before he gives you an honest answer himself. Your eyes sting. He’s leaving, he’s leaving, he’s leaving to die and you’re to blame. 

“Hm?” Clueless works for the Trinkets–it’s a shallow tactic for Plutarch. 

“What did you say?” you repeat, hands balling into fists. No Peacekeepers or private security in sight. Dumb play on his part. 

You recognize the melody of the finches chirping overhead. They flitter between tree branches, unbothered by the disturbance of your presence. If the circumstances were less dire, you’d admire the garden more. If it weren’t Plutarch’s garden, you’d see it as more than a cage for pretty little things who belong to the wilderness. 

“I say a lot of things,” muses Plutarch. He brings his fingers to his forehead. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“When you pulled Haymitch away for close-ups.” You take a step down the cobbled pathway, the warm air hitting your lungs with each breath you inhale. Haymitch’s skittishness, his tangle of secretive behavior, his departure from your alliance all lead back to then. “What did you tell him?” 

“Nothing.”

Anger lights a flame inside you, and your lungs start to burn. “I’m not cooperating until you tell me what you said.” You doubt you’re only here for practice–he wants something you’re unwilling to give without answers. 

“Nothing,” Plutarch repeats, even-toned. This is all one big show to him, isn’t it? “I’m not the one who requested an audience with Haymitch, and I don’t know what was said in that room.” 

That gives you pause. “Who else—” You stop short, considering Plutarch’s words, his tone, his casual stance like he has nothing to hide from you. If Plutarch is to be believed, then Haymitch was pulled aside for something more than covert schemes. Faustina Gripper comes to mind, but no, that’s not correct. Why would the Head Gamemaker want an audience with Haymitch? To punish him for the parade, maybe, but she could easily do that in the Games. She has, and she will. 

And why would Haymitch be called away when you are equally complicit? The flame in your lungs goes out. An image falls into place: the fearful glare of a frail man. 

“You’re a smart kid.” You know the answer. 

Your mouth goes dry; you try to swallow the lump in your throat anyway. 

“Here’s what I can tell you,” Plutarch plows through your silence, steering back to the real reason you are here. “A desire for freedom is not limited to the districts, and you possess the rare ability to change people’s perception.”

Do I? You laugh bitterly. “The man who films our final days for entertainment isn’t free? Don’t tell me you’re forced to do that.” 

“No one forces me,” he concedes. 

“What then? All those years buttering kids up for the slaughter finally melted your conscience?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’m interested to know if real freedom is possible,” Plutarch says with a little more urgency in his tone. “Haven’t you ever imagined a world without the Hunger Games, Miss Everdeen?”

You resist the urge to laugh in his face again. “I’ve never known a world without the Games.”

“If we play our cards right, you will.” 

“And what cards am I being dealt now, Mr. Heavensbee?” you ask dryly. 

“There is a plan to break the arena.” Straight to it then. At least he recognizes you’ll respond better to transparency. “District Three is in on it; spear-heading the whole thing, in fact. The details are unimportant.” 

“Unimportant?” You sputter, waving your hands around, “What—You—You’re sitting on knowledge of a rebel plan and you mean to tell me the details don’t matter?” 

“It’s a risk for you to know everything right now.” 

“Why are you telling me this at all?” Why are you involved? 

“I’m putting myself at risk here, too, because we need you, Miss Everdeen.” We. Plutarch, the rebels, District Three, and–

“How can we break it, Beetee?” 

“Who else is in on it?” You don’t really need to ask, but the question carries through the wind with a tremor. 

Plutarch checks his watch. “We don’t have much time left, and like I said, the details are unimportant right now. Are you willing to cooperate?” 

Time is ticking away, but you don’t respond. The realization sets with a chill in your bones. Haymitch’s skittishness, his secrecy, his departure lead to you, on that stage, damning Haymitch to a death by your side. How selfish of you to expect him to stay there. How foolish of you to not use your death for something greater than yourself. 

Goosebumps bloom across your arms despite the humidity. What’s a final act of recklessness for a cause you are willing to die for? “What do you need me to do?”

Plutarch visibly relaxes. You know he’d have found a way to spin you in his favor anyway, but your cooperation takes a load off. “I’ll need to borrow that bird of yours.”

Your hand closes around Tam Amber’s gift. The other charms jingle with the force of your movement. Plutarch is right–revealing his knowledge puts himself at your mercy nearly as much as you are at his. That doesn’t mean you trust him. When all is said and done, he is still Capitol. He will never understand. 

He holds his hands up like he’s approaching a wounded animal. “Don’t worry, you’ll get it back.” 

Doubtful. You tighten your grip, hoping to leave an imprint that will last in the wake of your bluebird’s absence. What good will your charm even serve him? Plutarch’s likely answer rings in your head. Need-to-know basis. 

With a shaky breath, you undo the cord and slip the bluebird off. Fortunately it sits at the edge, or else you’d have to undo all of Maysilee’s knots. You press your lips to the charm before handing it over. 

Plutarch pockets the bluebird after a brief inspection. 

You clench your jaw, fixing the necklace back under the scarf. “That it?” 

As expected, it is not. 

“When you’re in there, perform as you naturally would, though it wouldn’t hurt to add some flare.” You roll your eyes as Plutarch continues, “Keep away from the north. The arena’s sun isn’t always synced to our own, but it will be this year.” 

Hm. If the sun is the same, you were right to assume the night sky would be too. And that partially explains Ampert’s resistance to leading the Newcomer’s north. You can only guess what exactly will be happening up there. You wonder if all of Three’s tributes are part of the plan. It doesn’t take a genius to piece together that Beetee is the real spearhead of the logistics. 

“And pay attention to your sponsor gifts,” adds Plutarch. 

You run a hand along your arm. “Meaning?” 

“You like riddles, right?” Plutarch offers up a smile. “You’ll be able to solve these.” 

Somehow, despite the lack of details, you trust that you will. 

“Last thing: don’t die.” Plutarch shrugs. “More a recommendation than a directive.” 

“Helpful,” you mutter, head spinning with what you’ve learned and agreed to. You’re not sure how any of this will be remotely helpful to the grand plan of breaking the arena. But…sabotaging these Games is not where it ends, is it? A free world is made up of more than one act of rebellion.

Effie appears at the door. “Mr. Heavensbee? Oh, there you are. We’re nearly finished the others’ photos already. Is it almost time to switch?” 

Plutarch nods. “Yes, we just wrapped up. Come along, Everdeen.” 

You inhale another whiff of warm air, picking up the scent of flowers and herbs this time, and walk back up the cobblestoned path. 

On the trek to the library, Plutarch spends a fair amount of energy reassuring Effie on her decision to forgo cosmetic procedures for the time being. Their conversation is a sharp contrast to the information dumped on your shoulders, but it leaves you space of mull over your vaguely-existent role in the rebel scheme. 

Halfway down the hall, you think of your paw-paw, a man you seldom remember, old enough to recall the horrors of the Dark Days in a way both of your parents, practically babes at the time, could not. Most often, in the haze of memories, his voice sounds like your papa’s and his words blur like a reflection in a stream. But you hear him clearly now, echoing deep in the forest, under the happiest willow tree you’ve ever encountered, you and Burdock nestled on either side: “One day, sweet ones, this earth will belong to the people again.” 

You can fight for one day, for your family, for your people. 

Maysilee is locked into an argument with Drusilla upon your return. Wyatt stands by the camera like he’s ready to intervene if it escalates. Plutarch rushes over to diffuse the situation and gestures for Effie to prepare you for your photos in the meantime. She already touched-up your lipstick earlier, so there isn’t much for her to fix. You let her fuss over you anyway–it keeps you from looking at Haymitch, who makes sure you feel him watching you. 

You won’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. It’s your fault. I’m sorry. But acceptance doesn’t ease the sense of betrayal. Please don’t leave. You weren’t deserving of his honesty, so he does not deserve–

Your head snaps in his direction. Haymitch sits up on the couch. His lips move and no sound comes out. You’re fairly certain he mouths your name. You wonder what he sees in your eyes, because he doesn’t move to come closer. You don’t want him close, and yet, your fingers twitch at your sides, frustrated by the distance. Best get used to it. 

When he is the first to look away, your heart cracks open–out spills anger, pride, guilt. They rise to a boiling point, and for the briefest of periods, you fear they are making a permanent home inside you. Then, stubbornly and painfully, they ebb. To your dismay, a familiar sensation takes their place. No. Nope. Absolutely not. You have rebel plans to decipher and the chance for your people’s freedom on the line. Anger, pride, guilt hold a welcome place. One day, your family, your people are causes you will fight for. This is not welcome. This is not fight you need. 

The feeling doesn’t listen to you; it never has. It doesn't care that you are confused and scared and mad at Haymitch in spite of all you know and suspect. It festers in your lungs, soaks into your bones, poke holes in your resolve until you’re forced to confront the truth your mama tried to teach you under the safety of a storm: 

The line between love and hate is a frail, fickle thing, and you do not hate Haymitch Abernathy. 

Taglist: @lovemiss-vale @aureolinb @mqrieshrt @bueburgers @dem1dearest @nikki-is-a-nerd @lovely-waves @jjloveshotch @inneedofcaffine @poetsandroses @kindsleybooks @ivyhaec @x-gabrielle-x @ghostlythinggoingaround @happiness2112 @sundawn1990 @starryjeongyeon @kuurbyfun @lenteheure

A/N: this is lowkey my favorite chapter so far (and the longest). the interviews and entire aftermath were some of the first scenes i thought up for this fic, so this was very satisfying to write! i don’t normally include song recs to listen to while reading the chapters—the fic playlist is plenty—but this song was on repeat while i was writing so i thought it deserved an appearance. as always, thank you for all the love!