Chapter Text
Haymitch is woken up earlier than usual.
Not by his body, not by his mind, but by cold hands, shaking him vigorously until he comes to.
He finally opens his eyes when the shrieking starts. Two blurry figures in front of him jump back from his bed. It’s good, they need to stay away, because soon they will get taken away, too. That’s how it always is.
No, it’s because he started slashing at the air with the knife gripped in his hand.
He rubs his eyes, sitting up, the haze from his eyes clearing. The two people stare back at him, eyes bulging out of their sockets and ready to flee at any second. He squints, his eyes trained on them. The taller one, a woman dressed in a puffy pink dress, looks as if she fell into a large vial of white powder, then applied vibrant and thick makeup over her artificial face. The other one, a young man that can’t be far from Haymitch’s age, has bright green hair stuck out in spikes, his coat an ugly shade of purple adorned with blue spots that clash angrily with his neon yellow skin. The tall one shifts on her feet, clearly unsure what to do now that they had accomplished their task of waking him.
“What’s this about?” Haymitch grumbles, ripping the sweat-ridden blanket off of him and shivering from its absence. It’s a miracle he’s even in his house today and not stranded in some alley where he would only wake when some shopkeeper chases him out.
“You need to get ready,” the tall one tentatively says in a squeaky voice that Haymitch is certain isn’t naturally-possible.
“For what?” He gropes about his bedside table aimlessly until his fingers close around the familiar shape of a liquor bottle.
“The Reaping, of course!” The man says as if it were the most obvious thing, suddenly all smiles.
And just like that, Haymitch snaps. He drops his half-drunk bottle of white liquor onto the floor, the glass shattering immediately. He charges at the man, knife still clenched in his right hand, swinging his arm about wildly but somehow missing his face, the man getting farther away as Haymitch is ripped from him with strong hands…
+
Haymitch wakes again, this time in a chair.
The knife is gone from his hand. Instead, a spoon is gripped just as tightly. A steaming hot bowl of some kind of soup sits in front of him, but eating is the last thing Haymitch wants to do.
“You’ll need to eat,” someone beside him says. The voice is Capitol, there’s no doubt, but it’s familiar, and Haymitch finds a sense of comfort in it, somehow. He figures all these people from the Capitol are here because there’s finally a victor for District 12.
He turns his head until a force pushes him back, though it isn’t the strong hands that kept him from attacking the man earlier. He looks down—his chest is bound to the chair with a thick grey rope.
“They had to restrain you, after what happened,” the voice says again, now closer as its speaker finally moves into Haymitch’s line of sight.
“Effie,” Haymitch breathes, his brows furrowing as his eyes run over her—this time, she has a maroon wig and is wearing a fluffy magenta vest over a pale pink dress. Really, the last person he would expect to set foot in District 12. “Why are you back?”
“It’s the reaping, don’t you know?” She tuts. “I’m the new escort. And you’re a mentor now, isn’t that exciting? The first mentor for District Twelve!” She laughs happily to herself as if it’s the best day in the world. And to her, it may be. Oh, to have the only worry in the world be the opinions of a few Capitolites after being on national television.
Haymitch exhales slowly, training his eyes on the bowl of thick soup set in front of him that could have only come from the Capitol. Endless strains of words flow through his mind… Reaping. Mentor. Justice Building. Tributes.
The Hunger Games.
Something in his chest stirs—maybe it’s Silka’s axe after she drove it into his gut. The pulsating sensation grows before it climbs up his throat, up to his mouth, crawls across his tongue, and out.
He gags violently, vomiting all over the table, and it’s as if all time has slowed. He’s immune to Effie’s yelping, probably for help, but he can’t seem to think straight. Everything takes up space in his mind, too much, and he feels as if he’s about to burst. Everything, out of order but vivid as ever… the candy-pink birds, Sid’s cries, Lou Lou’s bloody ears, the bag of gumdrops, Wellie’s head… he can still see and hear it all, even after he takes drink after drink and he’s wandering through town when the moon is high in the sky and the sun has long been present. See and hear and live it after he wakes in some dingy shop alleyway, his only company the looming cracked concrete walls and broken glass around him, half-dried white liquor on the ground.
He’s splashed with something cold—water, probably—and then it all goes dark. Again.
+
The ground is damp to his boots. Rained earlier, it seems. But the sun still rises, especially today.
Haymitch refuses to look up. Looking up means he sees all the people—all the children— walking towards the Justice Building. All the scared faces, their eyes filled with dread, their prim clothes, and the slow pace at which they walk.
But looking down doesn’t mean he can’t hear. Hear the soft sniffles of the little siblings, of the twelve-year-olds at their first reaping. The heavy footsteps of Peacekeepers trudging along, someone yelling in the distance. The wailing that makes Haymitch stiffen and feel sick. And then comes the soft voices of the adults, mostly urging them along, saying things like “it’ll be over soon.”
But they’re wrong. These things never end. What Haymitch would give to do it all over, to never even have it to have happened at all. Maybe if he had followed the signs, didn’t rebel at every turn, everyone’s blood wouldn’t be on his hands. So many mistakes… Don’t drink the milk. Don’t leave Ampert. Don’t leave Maysilee. Don’t leave Wellie. Don’t feed Lenore Dove the gumdrops…
Oh, how long had it been since there were things other than the Second Quarter Quell on his mind? Since Snow wasn’t on his shoulder, watching his every move? Too long. And still, he couldn’t rid himself of this, of moments like this, which brought the memories back fresh on his mind like blood at the Cornucopia.
He would have to go back to the Capitol. Back to the Tribute Center. But instead of venturing into the Arena, he would have to watch, helpless. Like how he watched Sid and Ma die. And Ampert. And Maysilee.
Someone’s pushing on his back. Haymitch blinks. He’s standing still, his hands on his knees, panting heavily. Mechanically, he resumes the walking rhythm others carry around him.
Although the Justice Building hasn’t physically changed (apart from a few small cracks on the front pillars), all Haymitch could think about was himself up there, a year ago, with three people that were long dead. He knew, going in, that only one out of forty-eight of them would be left. He just hadn’t anticipated that it would be him.
Stealing a glance at the stones on which Woodbine Chance was shot, Haymitch is forced up the steps to the temporary stage set outside the stone building. Someone instructs him to stand off to the side, overlooking the square. There are more Peacekeepers, it seems, probably because of what happened last year. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Haymitch isn’t sure what to do with his hands now that his knife is gone. Instead, he just leaves them limp at his sides as he looks at the children filing into the pens. They look at him, too, but dark expressions cloud over their gloomy faces. They’d probably seen him roam about with a liquor bottle in hand, throwing rocks at Burdock and Blair and Asterid.
Suddenly, there’s a flash of pink and red and Effie is in front of him, scrubbing at his face with some kind of sponge, muttering, “there’s cameras here, you could at least try to look clean.”
And then the anthem starts, amplified through crackly speakers issued around the square. Haymitch doesn’t move his lips until someone—Effie—pinches his shoulder and he begins to mumble something that vaguely resembles the anthem as the screens project short clips of Peacekeepers, clean hovercrafts, and Snow’s presidential mansion.
Haymitch is closing his eyes when Mayor Allister reads the Treaty of Treason, but when Effie Trinket saunters up to the podium and Peacekeepers place large glass balls filled with paper slips onto the stage, Haymitch is the most awake he’s been.
“Ladies first,” Effie says, the only one with a smile on her face. She slips her hand inside the rightmost ball, ruffling around for a bit to the point where it gets redundant until she extracts one and opens it. “Ardis Liller!”
That draws a few gasps from the crowd, but for the most part, it seems as if the majority of the girls’ pen has breathed a large sigh of relief at being spared another year. You can tell exactly where Ardis is, judging by the distancing of people around her. They clear a path as she slowly makes her way to the stage, and Haymitch can finally get a good look at her.
He’s seen Ardis before, only once, at the entrance to the caves when her father and older brother were killed in the same coal fire that took Haymitch’s father. Her face has now gone pale, her bottom lip quivering, as she joins Haymitch on the stage, and her dark hair is loose over her faded pink dress that’s too big for her.
When Haymitch meets her eyes, it’s not Ardis in his mind but Louella’s. How similar, they are—the black hair, the grey eyes—not to mention how young Ardis looks; if the minimum age for the reaping wasn’t twelve, Haymitch could’ve guessed she was ten.
Effie brings everyone back to attention when she dips her hand into the ball for the boys. She does her routine of drawing everyone out until finally selecting one. “Cliff Barnett!”
Unlike Ardis Liller, Haymitch knows exactly who Cliff Barnett is. He’s seen him around the Hob, helping his mother sell stews on weekends and for hours after school after his older brother went to work in the mines. Haymitch had only ever had their stew a few times in exchange for some clean laundry, but he did remember how much he liked what Mrs. Barnett could do with little meat.
Fourteen-year-old Cliff stumbles through the pen and onto the stage, an unconvincing scowl settling on his lips. He sees Mrs. Barnett at the front of where the adults stand, her eyes wide but her face stern as Effie continues to go on with the program.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the District Twelve tributes of the Fifty-first Hunger Games!” There’s little reaction in the crowd, mostly just stirring as most people exhale a sigh of relief. Effie turns to Cliff and Ardis, who are trying their best to come to terms with what has just happened, and that’s when Haymitch sees it: just two kids. Two new doves for him, who just want to live, to see their family again, because if they do it right, they might be able to.
Haymitch knows his mistakes. He went wrong at almost every opportunity, when it was him. But now, he has a chance at redemption… because he knows the ins and outs of this game. He knows Snow. And he won’t let these kids wind up how he did, his family dead and him, isolated and guilty and alone.
He’s all they have left.
Effie smiles widely, probably relieved that nothing has gone wrong the entire ceremony. She’s done with her job. But Haymitch’s has just begun, and there’s a lot more at stake than just the opinion of a few Capitolites. “And may the odds be EVER in your favour!”