#mbbha

Katniss and Peeta hadn’t been around in about two days; it’s cold season, and the children picked up something from school. I hate to admit it, but the noise and company were something I’d gotten too used to. My bones ache as I swing my legs out of bed and head to the kitchen for breakfast. Leftover lamb and plum stew, Katniss’ favorite that she insisted Peeta make at least once a week, more often than not ended up in my icebox.

I have little to do but tend my geese, my flock I bring to roam in her meadow, grazing on clover and little yellow flowers that dot the grassy expanse. The trek out gets harder and harder, but I’d go until I couldn’t get out of bed. When I get back, I tend to let the birds wander about Victor’s Village, ignoring Katniss’ complaints of goose shit.

After I check on the flock, pretending I know one bird from another like Lenore Dove did, I walk back to my place, not in any particular hurry. It’s the same house it’s always been, but somehow it feels more lonely than it ever did when he was actually alone. I used to think the loneliness of having no one was the most painful, but the emptiness of missing someone still around was almost heavier.

I step through the doorway, and already I don’t know what to do with myself. I think to make myself useful, maybe making something to bring over for the little family, knowing they’d have their hands full with the kids, but Peeta was always the cook. Instead, I just sit at the table, nursing a drink. That’s what I do now. I sip and I nurse. 

I’m hesitant to put my glass down near Katniss and Peeta’s memorial book, left here to keep safe from prying little hands until they’re old enough to understand it. I place my glass on the kitchen counter instead and grab the book, though I tell myself it’s just something to do. 

They’d begun to collect things from the rubble a week after getting back from 13, pictures and trinkets that managed to survive the bombs in steel keepsake boxes and such. All these years, and I still have bins of things Asterid gave me over the years of the kids for safekeeping. I didn’t show Katniss until well into the creation of their book, but when I pulled out the first photo, then the next, she wouldn’t let me stop.

The newest page had a pasted-on photo of her first day of school, two braids, and a stoic face too grim for a 5-year-old. On the other side of the group stood a bright-faced, smiling Peeta, the two oblivious to each other.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

My eyes are dry and crusted in the corners, straining against the light coming through the wispy curtains. The ones in my room are blackout, never opened, or giving any hint to the time of day, and it's this fact that tells me I fell asleep downstairs again. Cracked lips and a cough get me up, looking for something to drink, as bottle after bottle scattered around me are empty. My winnings feed families for weeks on nepenthe sales alone, and I already feel my hands shake with need.

My boot laces are loose, easy to slip on and off between trips to the Hob to get my fix. I was never a liquor man before, but now it's how I pass the days with nothing to do and no one to see. An empty house full of empty bottles.

It's early September, the air has cooled off, yet days are still long, mockingjays and other birds still sing, making my headache as I leave Victor’s Village pound all that harder. The paved path beneath me turns to gravel, then dirt as I walk through town towards the Hob. I look on at the small wooden shacks, sometimes housing up to six people, and think of my own home, room after room of plush carpets and painted walls. I look down at my feet and try to focus on the birdsong flitting around me, but only hear a faint and familiar tune coming from a few buildings down; a song coming from the schoolhouse.

The children are back in school, done helping their families around the house or in the market, in favor of an education on coal mining. I didn’t much care for school, but it was better than manual labor, at least until the days that it kept me from Lenore Dove, whose education was more organic. I was never as much musically inclined as her either, but when I hear that reedy, distant tune, I choose a path that will ensure I pass the schoolhouse if only to listen and forget for a moment.

But I can’t forget. When I near the ramshackle school building, a cold flush goes through me as I listen to those words. 

“Go write a letter, send it by mail.

Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail.

Capitol jail, love, to the Capitol jail.

Bake it and stamp it to the Capitol jail.”

The words take me back, images of the warm, dim light, the smell of old wood, and what I didn’t know then but know well now–the smell of alcohol. Arm in arm with Lenore Dove, we dance around to the rhythm of the fiddle, knowing the words but not quite understanding. I remember my forehead pressed to hers, the warmth of her breath against my skin as we laughed, too out of breath to do much more.

“Roses are red, love; violets are blue.

Birds in the heavens know I love you.

Know I love you, oh, know I love you,

Birds in the heavens know I love you.”

I look out at a crowd of bored little kids, not an ounce of recognition in their eyes at the little girl’s sung words, but stop at the sight of a boy with love in his eyes. The scene is all too familiar: a blond boy in love with the song of a Covey girl, and history repeats itself before me.

I want to make it stop, though I know I have no right. They would surely lock me up if my washed-up ass started heckling the poor schoolchildren. Still, I can’t help myself. I peek in through the open window, trying to catch sight of the child who still knew those Covey words. When I see the dark hair plaited in two, and the familiar slope of her nose, my breath catches. Only once the girl finishes the final verse and her teacher pats her on the back do the birds begin to sing again.

“Now, since only Katniss knew the lyrics to the song, I think we ought to talk about why it is outlawed. Do any of you know about the rebellion of District 13 or The Dark Days?”

I watch in horror as Burdock’s girl is the only one to raise her hand. Wrenching myself away from the window, I know I need to speak to Burdock or, at least, Asterid to have her knock some sense into her husband. I know too intimately what they do to those who know too much.

I shuffle off to the Hob with more clarity now, a clearer purpose than the nepenthe, though I will be restocking all the same. Maybe he’d buy whatever game Burdock had brought in when he wasn’t at the mines to butter him up. 

I loiter around the Hob, deciding not to pick up any bottle until after I talk to Burdock. For once, my words will actually have a purpose and I want to think about them clearly. But it’s morning when I get there and the mines don’t let out for a long while. I would like to think I have restraint, but the pounding of my head is ceaseless and I know I need to at least have a glass. I buy someone’s homemade scarf to conceal the bottle I intend to drink. She thanks me greatly for the purchase and even more when I hand over well more than necessary. I don't need the money, and I’m not allowed to give it out. I tried that and learned the hard way, anyone who got more from me than the Capitol deemed appropriate would reap the consequences.

My typical seller already had my usual order ready for me by the time I got there. He knew to set aside at least three bottles every couple of days for when I showed up in the morning.

“Mornin', Mr. Abernathy got your usual right here.” I hated the title more when I was 16, fresh out of the games, than now at 29. The life of a Victor.

I only nod and hand over a small stack of money and tuck two of the bottles into my pockets; the third I open and wrap in the scarf. I find a seat nestled in the corner of the Hob and take a small sip of liquor, just enough to ease the headache, I tell myself. Another sip to stop the shaking of my hands, I reason again. Another to quench the rasp in my voice, I know would be there if I spoke.

~ ປ ~

Hours go by, more than I thought it would take for Burdock to show up; they must’ve hit a vein because it’s long since been dark, and he comes straight from the mines. I know this because he’s covered head to toe in black smears of coal, and his body sags as he orders food. I watch as he sits among the other workers, but shakes his head as two men try to sit at the empty seats next to him. I figure he’s waiting for someone, so I decide to make my move before they show up.

“Burdock,” I say, but he must not hear me because he doesn’t look up. “Burdock!”

Finally, my best friend catches my eye, and I see steely recognition settle on his face. “Haymitch.”

“I’ve gotta talk–” A hiccup catches me off guard. “Talk to you about that girl.” Burdock looks me up and down: my stringy, overgrown hair, my oversized, wrinkled clothing, my pale skin. I try to stand taller, firmer–anything that would make him take me seriously, but it’s as if I can see myself through his eyes, and I wouldn’t take me seriously.

“Haymitch, I think it’d be best if you went on home,” Burdock warns in a kinder voice than I deserve. But the hours here, drinking and ruminating, have soured me.

“Now I’ve been here waiting all day for you,” I say, my voice cracking like I’m not pushing 30. “It’s not safe what you’re doin’.”

“And what am I doin’?” He says, raising a dark eyebrow. 

“Teaching your girl allat…Covey stuff.” I whisper at the end, not knowing what sorts of listening devices Snow’s got around. Burdock looks away from me and huffs, like he’s looking for someone to come save him.

“You’re drunk.”

“It’s not safe, Burdock!” I huff, sounding more petulant than foreboding.

“There’s no one around to even recognize what ‘Covey stuff’ is anymore.” Burdock sighs and looks down at his food. “Haymitch, I know you’re still torn up about Lenore Dove, but no one knows one thing about the Covey anymore.”

“Don’t.” I point an accusatory finger at him. “Don’t say her name.”

“Haymitch–”

“Snow.”

“What?”

“Snow knows about the Covey. He hates them,” I say, finally feeling like I’ve struck something to salvage this conversation. Burdock stiffens and looks around again. I raise my eyebrows, or at least try to with my face feeling a little numb, to show him I think I’ve got him.

“And how do you figure that?”

“Back from when I won. I saw something in the Capitol, a girl in a rainbow dress singin’” I tell him, recalling the tape I had seen, the one I hadn’t seen as a warning. “Singin' like your girl did today. Stoppin’ the birds.”

My old friend looks fond for a moment, probably from the thought of his little girl’s voice, but then his expression darkens. I may have fumbled my way there, but I could see in his eyes that we were finally on the same page. He had to at least know I meant well. 

Burdock looks past me suddenly, and I turn around, the sudden movement making my head spin. My eyes land on Asterid and then the baby in her arms and then the little girl with two brown braids starin’ at me, clinging to her mother’s skirt. Asterid eyes me but sits down anyway, and I get a look at the newest Everdeen.

“At least this one looks nothin’ like you.” The baby has a tuft of blonde hair in a perfect curl at its forehead and big blue eyes staring up at me.

“Her name is Primrose,” Asterid says softly, clearly trying to break the tension between her husband and me. 

“What?” That same cold flush from earlier goes through me.

“Primrose, like the flower,” the little girl, Katniss, if I recall, says to me with narrowed eyes and more than a hint of venom. Primrose, like the flower. One word, not two. For a moment, I had searched my mind for poems that I knew in another lifetime, one that could have produced the name Prim. But still, Burdock wasn’t that bold.

“Katniss, don’t be rude,” Burdock reprimands his daughter. 

I look down at Katniss, in this old place full of ghosts, and all of a sudden, it’s too much. Her hair and matter-of-fact attitude too akin to my sweetheart, my Louella. My stomach heaves, but I hold it down and move from the table, needing to leave. The family is a sight that makes me panic, too fragile and new to risk on me. Burdock needed to protect them and I would have to stay as far away as possible.

“Remember what I said,” I call back to Burdock as I stumble away from the memories, my voice trembling and chest tight. 

I’m barely out of the building when I open another bottle. The nepenthe burns as it slides down my throat, but it fights against the cool air of the night. I don’t remember how I got home, just that when I hit my bed, I think of songbirds stopping to listen.

I’m sitting in the armchair by the fireplace, the one that used to be gas but can’t quite shape up after the wreckage, when I feel an unannounced presence next to me. Though Katniss’s presence is always unannounced, even now. 

“Don’t you have little mutts to attend to?” I ask her, the word feeling unsavory in my mouth even now.

“Peeta’s turn,” Katniss says simply, opening up the memory book. “Besides, even little mutts don’t get up before me.” 

“When are you gonna learn how to sleep in?” I ask wryly, groaning as I sit up to get a better look at her. Lines have worn in around her face, a privilege for a victor, even more for a girl from the Seam. I look at her and see Burdock through and through, though older than I’d ever seen him. Prim always had the closer likeness to Asterid, pale eyes and hair, a stark contrast between the sisters. She sits at the dining table, cleared of bottles and food, a space for her and Peeta to work.

“Maybe when you learn to sleep without a bottle. I thought we talked about this,” She replies, wetting her brush with her homemade paste.

“You know it’s not the same as it was. Swear it.” 

I stand and move to the seat next to her. I want to see the new page she’s working on, even if I’m still not too keen on the idea of the book. Besides, I can’t help but want to make sure nothing hurts her, even if it's just a memory. She pastes a photo down onto the page, and I feel a cold flush, guilt still my first instinct when seeing their faces and the bundle they were holding.

“I remember when they were that young. When I was too,” I say, not one to reminisce but knowing she liked to fill in the blanks. “You’d just been born.”

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

My eyes wander the sky, tracing constellations I’d once pointed out to Sid, my hand guiding his as I told him the stories Tam Amber had told Lenore Dove and she had told me. The warmth of the alcohol in my gut is no longer fighting against the cooler September nights, and I shiver at the breeze gliding through the meadow and wish I’d brought a coat.

The grass beneath me is starting to turn to straw, no longer the lush green of spring and summer, but dead, dying. Dying like I felt every day without my Lenore Dove, dead like she is in the ground beneath me. They say time is supposed to heal all wounds, but mine just keeps getting bigger. It’s like whatever they did in the Capitol to put me back together was just a pretty veneer for everyone else; I know they put it back all wrong.

The games being long over, and the victory tour still a ways off, gave me a sense of uneasy peace, a purgatory between the hell of the bloodbath and Capitol frivolities. I’d lost them again this year. The boy was small and the girl smaller, both from the Seam and both starving. They were reaped through tesserae entries, no doubt after the year we’d had. I huffed and threw an arm over my eyes to block out the sky and the sick realization that I hadn’t bothered to feel hopeful for my tributes this year. It made it easier at the time; it made it easier now. It’d been years since I’ve heard from Plutarch, or Beetee, poor man. I always thought losing sight of the rebellion would push me over the edge, break my spirit and the promise I made to Lenore Dove, but somehow it was easier.

I feel it before I understand what's happening. There’s a sharp sting in the arm I don’t have strewn over my face, and I taste coins on my tongue. I fling the foreign body off on instinct, and my eye catches the glint of rainbow on black scales as it disappears into the brush. Snake bite. 

I can hear my blood rushing in my ears as I try to sit up, my stomach protesting. Bile rises in my throat as my arm starts to ache like there’s no end in sight. My eyelids are heavy, and it would be so easy just to lie here, for it to all end while I’m next to my Lenore Dove. I turn my head to her gravestone, and the etchings carve into my chest as I read them:

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

I lift my arm to my face, the appendage screaming in protest. The swelling is intense, but I can still see those two little marks. I almost laugh, and then I do. I once had the strength, the will to hold my own guts to my body, and two little puncture holes seemed pathetic. I remember my promise, my duty, thinking about how my dove would’ve laughed too. How she wouldn’t have hesitated to suck the venom out and laugh at me for being such a baby.

But what to do? 

The victor’s village was too far, and damn them all if he would have to have a peacekeeper patch him up. There might be someone at the Hob if he could make it there, but who would know how to treat a snake bite? 

Asterid. Between her and Burdock, they’d know what to do. No, no, he couldn’t go there, the last time I’d seen them, he scarred Asterid’s pretty face, and Burdock had never forgiven him. The last kindness my best friend ever showed was the location of this exact spot. I wrack my brain for another solution, but the ache is only getting worse, and I fear that if I don’t get up now, I never will.

I use my good arm to hoist myself up with a low-hanging branch. When I make it to my feet, I nearly fall right back down, my legs feeling like lead. I don’t know how I carry one foot in front of the other, but I do. It’s the loose spot in the fence that nearly does me in, my weight pitching forward as I bend down to get under it. I nearly catch myself with my good arm, but not before it slips out from under me, and I come face to face with a fresh patch of mud. 

I can only imagine how wild I look, stumbling through the Seam towards Burdock’s place with my swollen arm held close to my chest. Dark eyes peer at me through curtains and windows, but none stop to help, and I don’t blame them; that’s not the way around here.

By the time I reach what acts as their door, I can only manage an incoherent yell before I fall inside. I hit the ground with a thud, and high-pitched wails erupt, causing my already aching head to pound. With that sound, I remember the baby, Burdock’s little girl. The way he showed her off at the Hob like a prized hunt.

Blonde hair, blue eyes and a slack jaw blur together as I look up.

“Haymitch?” I hear.

“I never…said…congratulations.”

~ ປ ~

My ears seem to wake up before the rest of me, tiny coos and gurgles fill the space as my eyes struggle to refocus. My mind immediately goes to my arm, and I look to see it bandaged and realize the majority of the pain is gone. My eyes slide around the room until they reach Asterid, sitting in a wooden rocking chair with a baby in her arms, eyes firmly on me.

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel–” I nearly hack up a lung before I can say ‘bad.’

“Drink that,” She nods to the bottles beside me, her hands full of squirming child. I grab the only one that looks like something I’d want to drink, and Asterid stands suddenly.

“Not the antiseptic! The water!” She puts the baby down in a nearby bassinet and strides over quickly.

I bark out a laugh and put the bottle down, trading it for the other. “Antiseptic is just as good.”

“Burdock is out hunting. You should leave before he gets back.”

She’s right, I should go, but I still feel that dull ache, and I can’t help but want to rest my sore eyes on an old friend a little longer. Chances are I’ll never see her again, at least not from this close. I keep an eye on things around the district; there’s not much else to do. My sight sets on the baby, her dark hair and olive skin clear as day, even with how small she is.

“What’s her name?” I ask cautiously. It’s not quite curiosity that makes me ask, but rather a masochistic tendency. Was Burdock bold enough?

“Katniss”

“Like the swamp potato?” I tease, but part of me feels relief. Katniss, just Katniss.

“It was Burdock’s idea, and I liked it,” Asterid replies. She says it with a quality in her voice that those from town get.

“And what do your folks think of it?”

“They think of it the same as they thought of me being with Burdock,” She says, narrowing her eyes at him, “Or at least I assume, I haven’t spoken to them since the wedding.”

Wedding is a loose term in the Seam. In town, they can afford to go to the courthouse, maybe wear a dress of a different color. I wasn’t invited to their wedding, but I know it didn’t look anything as official as that. I look down at the baby. 

“She looks nothing like you, you know,” I say it fondly. Asterid’s always been pretty, but Burdock’s like kin. 

“She’s all Burdock, stubborn like him, too,” Asterid says fondly too. She knows his ways. “Never cries”

“Except because of me.”

“Except because of you,” Asterid echoes with a knowing smirk. The rhythm we’re in, it reminds me of old times. I was distrustful of her, being from town and all, but I knew she was good people by the way I could tease her. Maysilee was the same.

“I’m sorry about the rock and how I treated you both,” I say, looking down. I’ve never been good at apologies. 

“Everything around me seems to die,” I add with a laugh before sobering up, “Couldn’t risk it.”

“Don’t think I didn’t know that was why,” She says, picking up the baby. Asterid holds the bundle close like someone might take the child away. “Your poor Lenore Dove… appendicitis. I don’t believe it for a second.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” I say, a little too sharply. I look at the baby in her arms, and I know she sees me do it. “It’s best I get going, can’t risk being seen here by any Peacekeepers.”

“That’s all you had to say, you know? Back then. We would’ve understood,” 

“Burdock wouldn’t have,” I call back to her from the doorway. “You know that.”

“Don’t be a stranger, Haymitch,” She says, even though we both know I will.

“Goodbye, Asterid. I’m sorry again.”

Last night, Peeta asked me to bring the memory book back to their place in the morning, so here I am braving the early morning frost of February, lugging over the book. It was the baby boy’s second birthday and Peeta insisted on making a cake whose recipe only existed in the pieced-together book.

I stand at the door breath, visible in the air, and prepare to knock, shifting the large, bulky book in my arms but before I can even raise a hand the door is wrenched open.

“Haymitch!” Peeta is all smiles and far too loud for my liking at the early hour.

“Peeta, so much enthusiasm for so early in the morning!”

“Well, it is someone’s birthday today,” He says cheerily, grabbing the curly haired toddler and presenting him proudly. The child squeals in delight at the attention and my cold heart thaws just a little but not enough to stop my commenting.

“I don’t think he knows the difference between today, tomorrow, and yesterday,” I say, lightly poking the boy’s cheek.

“Well he’ll learn the difference when he can have as much cake as he wants today,” Peeta replies, aiming his overexaggerated tone and words at the boy.

“Cake for me, Dada?” The little girl asks, appearing without a sound from somewhere else in the house. 

“The cake is for your little brother. Its his birthday today.” The girl, still not even five herself, begins to cry at the idea of missing out. I smirk, amused at Peeta’s panic and attempt to backtrack. “But you still get to have cake!”

“Nice going, Peeta.”

I enter the house and quickly scoop up the crying girl while also depositing the memory book on the kitchen counter, bouncing the child in my arms to get her to calm down. 

“I think it's time to take a breather, little goose,” I tell her, patting her on the back. She lays her head on my shoulder and sticks out her bottom lip, milking the attention that I can’t help myself but to give her. “Why don't you go work up an appetite for all the cake you’re going to eat later, huh?”

Satisfied that if her father won’t be baited, I will, she runs off as soon as her little feet touch the ground, her brother following after her as well as he can. I see the children playing together, despite their age difference and it reminds me of Sid and I when we were little. Though, nothing looms over the heads of these children, the children of Panem who do not dread the sunrise.

“What’s so special about this cake anyway?” I turn from watching the children to see where Peeta flipped the book open to and has already begun taking ingredients out.

Honey Plum Cake

By: Pippa Mellark

Plum Topping:

One jar preserved plums

2 tbs soft brown sugar 

Cake:

3tbs water 

100g butter 

1tbs light brown sugar 

250ml honey 

1tsp vanilla

3 eggs 

280g plain flour

2tsp baking powder 

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

220ml milk

1tbs vegetable oil

“My mother made it for special occasions, usually important birthdays or for the new year,” Peeta tells me. I can see he’s avoiding my eye but I can’t think of any reason for it. “I don't know. I suppose I missed having it and we have stored honey and plums preserved from when Katniss found them last fall so I figured since we have everything there’d be no harm.”

“Two isn’t that important a birthday though, is it?” 

“No I suppose not.” Peeta’s fingers brush over the page, his mother’s handwriting and I begin to understand. I don’t know why a man would wish for someone who never treated him like they should, but I know complicated, and I sure as hell know longing. New family, better family even, doesn’t replace the old.

“Well, who cares I think two is plenty important,” I say, clapping him on the back and picking up the recipe to review.  “Let’s have cake!”

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Rain blurs my vision as I walk through the mud streets of the Seam, away from the Hob and back toward Victor’s Village. I didn’t think it was going to rain from the looks of the sky that morning, but now, mud coating my boots, I wish I’d just stayed in bed.

My stomach aches as I walk, and I can’t remember the last time I ate. The smell of freshly baked bread wafts through the air as muddy paths turn to cobbled streets, and the Merchant Market comes into view. My mouth waters at the thought of sweet rolls, and my feet lead me to the bakery.

There isn’t a long line at the bakery, not that there ever is, but the rain has kept even the few better-off folks from making the trip. Still, the matron of the place is running about as if she has endless orders to fulfill, ordering her boys around with fervor. I almost rethink my decision, the shrill sound of her voice is enough to make me take a couple of stumbling steps back, but Otho, whose face I vaguely recall, is already asking what I’m in for. 

“Uh, just a couple of sweet rolls.” My words sound slurred even to me. “Or whatever you’ve already got in. S’fine.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Abernathy,” Otho says with a smile brighter than the situation calls for. “I’ll throw in an extra cookie for the patronage on such a foul day.”

“Awful nice of you.” And it is awful nice even though I know the only reason people around here treat me well is that I have more than enough to tip them. Capitol fascination with victors ends at the district lines.

As Otho turns to pack up my order, I see his youngest son in the back, standing idly at the oven and staring at a figure through the window. His eyes dart to the baking bread every few seconds, clearly close to being done, before focusing his attention back outside. From where I’m standing behind the counter, I can’t make out the figure in the rain, but my curiosity is piqued when the blond boy pushes the nearly done bread further into the oven. I feel my eyebrows furrow at the action, but Otho is back, and I’m digging in my coat for money.

“Uh, how much?”

“20 is fair, especially since you’ve been in the rain,” Otho says meekly, though the wringing of his hands tell a different story.

I nod and hand over 50, for their generosity and the hard winter that was coming to an end. Just as I hand over the money and get my food, the smell of burning fills my nose, and I see one of the boys quickly taking the burnt loaves of bread from the stove. Like a hound that caught a scent, Otho’s wife storms into the kitchen, eyes honed in on the resigned-looking boy.

A sharp whack of the back of a hand meeting skin sinks the room into an uneasy silence before the outburst.

“Peeta Mellark, I told you to pay attention to the bread that’s 80 dollars gone!”

I cringe at the crack of his mother’s hand across his face and hurriedly pluck two more 50s from my pocket and leave them on the counter before leaving. My own mother never laid a hand on me, but I knew more than one kid from the Seam that got the same treatment from their parents. I guess it's no different in town. 

As I amble out the door, I hear the slam of the side door against the wall almost simultaneously. I duck out of the way, or at least I try to, but my drunken step makes me slide a little further with the mud until I’ve found myself on the opposite side of the bakery, watching the scene like a creep. 

The pigs on the boy's side, Peeta’s side, waddle up to him with as much enthusiasm as a hog could have and await the burnt loaves, quality no matter to them. I have a half-baked thought of a painted poster Lenore Dove would conjure up, something about the Capitol being the boy and us district the pigs, when I’m startled out of it by the boy's exclamation as he chucks the loaf far off and in the opposite direction of the swine. I follow the arc of the loaf to the same figure the boy was watching out the window, but now, even in the rain, I can see her; Katniss. 

After a beat, the boy goes back inside, back to his work, but I’m frozen in place. I’m not one for keeping track of time these days, but I know it has to be less than a handful of months since I’d last seen her, and here she was, skin sticking to bones like my clothes sticking to my body in this rain. Her usually olive skin, the gift of her father, sallow and her braid limp and lifeless against her shoulder. I want to call out to her, but I am overwhelmed with shame. I only watch as she picks up the bread and walks back toward the Seam.

~ ປ ~

It’s been a week since I saw Katniss outside the bakery, and my mind refuses to rest, replaying the scene of an emaciated little girl saved by the baker’s boy. The images concocted late at night of a frail Asterid holding a crying Primrose, with Katniss as their only provider has left me catatonic. I’ve been holed up in my house, too paranoid I’d see any of them and my guilt would overcome my good sense to stay away. I imagine them dying, exposed ribs, confined to their beds as fatigue takes over, and I drag myself to the Seam with food, money, anything that could save them. 

But at the end of every spiral, I remind myself what my help would look like: the Everdeen family dead at the hands of Snow, be it torture, poison, or a burned-down home, they will die if I’m involved. At least they have a chance that someone else could take pity on them, like the boy from the bakery.

My curtains are drawn, darkness consuming every room in my home save the few beams of light that sneak through the cracks. I’m lying on the floor of my sitting room, rug stained to hell, when a knock echoes through the empty home. I blink at the noise, believing it must be a trick of my mind rather than someone at my door, but when it happens again, I sit up. The last time someone showed up at my door, it was Peacekeepers forcing me to stay alive, and I fear I’ve been out of the public eye too long, invoking the ire of Snow. 

The knocking continues until I reach the door and open it with shaking hands. Spring has thoroughly thawed out 12, and rain has drowned the Seam, leaving nothing but mud in its wake. This is all I can think of when I see Asterid standing in front of me, covered in muck.

“Haymitch.”

“Asterid?” I ask, genuinely unsure if I’m really seeing her. I hadn’t even laid eyes on her since the funeral, and I was under the impression that she wasn’t planning to speak to me or anyone else for quite a long time. 

“You let me in,’ She says, not quite a question nor a demand but the unsteady tremor of an unused voice. I step aside, though, as if it is the latter. She strolls in, glaring at the walls, the furniture as if they did something to her. Then, she finds herself a seat and sinks into it without another word.

“Asterid?” I repeat, now standing in front of where she sits. “Ast–”

“Katniss. It’s Katniss.” 

She says the girl’s name so gravely a pit in my stomach tries to tell me that the girl is gone. It’s only when Asterid explains the situation that I understand she is gone.

“She told Prim. She’s gonna take out tesserae,” Asterid says, “She’s twelve now and with three of us…Oh, Haymitch.”

I look at the woman before me, a far cry from the shell of a human being I saw only months ago begging him to save her daughter from the games, the same games I lost everything but my life in. Asterid is weeping into her hands, choked sobs that steal her breath, and I realize, in losing Burdock, she lost herself, but losing Katniss would kill her. Katniss, who is Burdock in every way that mattered, condemning herself for the sake of her family.

“I can’t help you, not directly.” My voice has sobered up along with my racing mind, trying to come up with a way to give them what they need.

“Please, anything, I can’t let her do this.”

I agree. If Katniss started taking out tesserae for the family now, her odds would be less than favorable, deadly. I know I don’t technically owe them anything–don’t owe anyone anything at this point–but Burdock was like my second brother and if he was kin, they are two. But I can’t be too obvious or let my guilt get anyone killed. I’d need a cover. I look behind me at the house, too large for one person, but large enough for one person to do plenty of damage and I make up my mind.

“You could clean for me, cook meals too. Bring the girls while you’re here, and I can feed all of you. Pay you too, not too much to raise suspicion, but enough to get you through while I’m away mentoring for the games.” I have to think about the future, and I have to think of a way to make this convincing enough for Snow.

“Thank you, thank you.” Asterid’s hands are shaking as she grasps my own, and I’m startled at the contact.

I usher her back out of the house, fast enough that I don’t take it back and don’t have to think too much about how either of us got here in the first place. There’s always been a part of me that wants to help, but the other, louder, part says that everything I touch is ruined. I can only hope the former wins out.

I look at myself in the mirror and there’s not much there to see but an effort made. It isn’t like going over to Katniss’s for dinner is a new occurrence but Peeta was insistent on tonight being ‘special.’ I tried to tell him that his definition of special was far different from Katniss’s but he wouldn’t hear it and I certainly wouldn’t mind tonight being entertaining.

My hair is more grey than anything as I try to brush through it, pretending I care where the strands fall. When I look in the mirror now, all I think of is my Lenore Dove, if those curls would’ve gone grey by now–if somewhere they are. My thoughts hold me down like a weight and I know that if I don’t go downstairs and out the front door now, I never will.

I carry with me my small basket of goose eggs the short distance over to Katniss and Peeta’s, feeling more like a little old lady than a house guest. As I approach the door I can hear the muffled pleading of Peeta and the stern no-nonsense tone of Katniss’s voice. I roll my eyes and knock on the door, having wished Peeta had listened to me.

“Sweetheart, would you give the boy a break?” I hand off the basket to her as soon as she opens the door. Instead of welcoming me in as I just know she would’ve done otherwise, Katniss storms past me after dropping the basket at the door.

“I told you not to do this.” This time I direct my disappointment at Peeta as I catch the eye of a little girl and a grin breaks out on my face. 

Peeta strokes the girl’s dark hair and presses a kiss to her head. “I was trying to do something nice. It's been 25 years.”

“Well, some people aren’t very good with anniversaries,” I say, keeping a happy smile painted on for the kids, “your wife being one of them.” I can’t deny that the situation amuses me. They’re like players in a Capital stage show, doing exactly what the script says.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Haymitch is going to go get mommy,” Peeta directs towards his little one, a pawn for making promises one has to keep.

“Oh am I now?” I cross my arms over my chest. I know I am but like Katniss, I can’t help but watch him squirm. 

“Haymitch please.” The boy’s hazel eyes bore down on me and I know I’m a goner. I always thought it’d be her and Gale, especially after they started going to the woods together but looking at the pleading man in front of me I know how he makes her soft. 

I huff and shoot the little girl an exasperated face before turning around, knowing just where Katniss will be. The walk is a short 25 yards around the fountain and across the road to the house the Capitol ‘gifted’ Katniss and her family all those years ago. The place is dusty, frozen in time the way any relic of war is after the fallout. The stairs creak as I make my way up, closer and closer to soft sobs until I push through Prim’s bedroom door.

“C’mon, sweetheart, Peeta made your favorite.” Katniss wipes the tears away angrily but they don’t stop coming. I perch on a stool near the bed, speaking as tenderly as a man like me could. “You know he means well.”

Katniss is under the covers of the only clean room in the house. Prim’s things were all left exactly how she kept them since the day 12 was evacuated. 

“He made a page in the book. For him.” Katniss’s voice is hoarse, which makes my heart ache, but from all the times and reasons I’ve heard it like that before, this isn’t so bad. 

“I think it’s only right,” I say, not only for her father but for my best friend, old Burdie.

“He used the medal to make a rubbing,” She says with venom in her voice. I agree; a medal is a poor substitute for a life. “I don’t know why I still have it. Capitol trash.”

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

There is no body to bury. The blast vaporized Burdock and another man who stayed back with him. Survivors said they got everyone out and up the elevator as fast as possible when one of the Powdermen noticed the charge malfunction. They said there wasn’t enough space. Burdock got off when the elevator wouldn’t rise, then another man, a Mr. Hawthorne, they said. The elevator rose, and they stayed behind.

“You're headed for heaven

The sweet old hereafter

And I've got one foot in the door

But before I can fly up

I've loose ends to tie up

Right here, in the old therebefore”

For some reason, there are more people here than I expected. Just a miner from the Seam and half the town is standing in their Sunday best listening to an 11-year-old girl sing a song for her father. I expected the others from the mine, even those Burdie sold to at the Hob, but the mayor is here with his daughter. Katniss’s friend, I figured, by the way she’d been holding her hand since she arrived. Even old Cray came out of uniform to pay his respects to the man he turned a blind eye to whenever he brought around a fresh kill.

Before the funeral, Katniss and Mr. Hawthorne’s boy were made to stand at the Justice Building with their families to receive medals for “their father’s acts of bravery in service of the Capitol.” Her face was stone as the mayor handed Katniss the box with the medal, her expression contrasting the blaze in her eyes. Asterid’s face was blank, nothing shining through as she looked on; she seemed empty as she held a crying Primrose’s hand.

My eyes water at the lyrics, unable to keep my composure. The last time I heard this song was when Burdock himself sang it for Sid and Ma’s funeral. The funeral of my sister, my sweetheart, and the son of an oddsmaker whose own luck ran out the day of the reaping. You could hear a pin drop in the silence between the lines, shaky little breaths barely holding on before the melody leaves her lips.

“When I'm pure like a dove

When I've learned how to love

Right here, in the old therebefore

When nothing is left anymore”

When Katniss opens her eyes, a beat of silence holds still in the air before she walks over to Asterid and her sister. Primrose looks sad but clearly confused as she looks up at her blank-faced mother, and I can’t help but go over there. My feet are moving faster than my brain, and suddenly I’m standing before the trio.

“Asterid, I–” I start and I’ve never been good with words, but suddenly I realize I’ve never been worse. Instead, I’m honest. “I don’t know what to say.”

Asterid doesn’t look at me and I don’t blame her. I was supposed to be Burdock's best friend, I was Burdock’s best friend and maybe if I hadn’t pushed him away, I could’ve made a difference. I could’ve found a way for him not to have to work down in the mines in the first place. Katniss looks angry rather than hurt, and I wonder how much her parents have told her about me, if anything. But I don’t give up, I can’t; not like I have in the past.

“If there's any way I can help, I’d like to,” I say, tail between my legs. “You know I can’t give you much, but I can give you enough to make sure your girls don’t starve.”

“She won’t talk back,” Katniss says plainly, the dark look in her eyes a ghost of her father.

“What?” I ask dumbly.

“She hasn’t talked since the explosion.” When she speaks, her eyes aren’t on me but on Primrose, who tugs at her mom's sleeve futilely. 

“She hasn’t–?”

“I don’t know if I know you. I can’t–I can’t think,” Katniss says. There’s a maturity there I shouldn’t have to see, the maturity of someone who had to grow up too fast. I think again about a past where she might have known me well, had I been someone worth knowing.

“We’ve met before. At the Hob, at your house, but you were only a babe then.”

“Did you know him?”

“Bur–Your dad?” I nod. I had known him like a brother once. “I do, I did.”

“Were you friends?” She asks skeptically. 

“The best,” I say and I stupidly hope my tone conveys even an inkling of what I felt for her father.

“How do I know if you’re telling the truth?” Her eyes narrow and I wish she had the privilege of being the kind of kid who could put her trust in her elders.

I look between Asterid, who looks off into the distance, practically unblinking and Primrose, who has never known her mother as someone other than her very foundation to life. Then I look back at Katniss, who has inexplicably become the head of the family before reaching her teen years. All I can think is that they need someone and I’m not who they need, but all they’ve got.

“Just ask me, I’ll never lie to you. Cross my heart,” I promise, those words not having crossed my lips since the last time I had a little brother who I could hold in my arms. 

“Cross your heart.”